Suggestion on far-seeing

[frag971]

Hello all, this is my first post. I've been lurking around these forums and website and i find this very interesting. The cooperation with Curse defenetly made things alot better.

I played (and still play) WoW been raiding at top raids and pvped alot too so i guess i can call myself a veteran *brag brag, pff* and im looking forward on Aion as a possible wow-replacer game since my friends are going to switch to it most likely and we will form a guild for ourselves (old linege hardcore farmers *headbangs*) and i kinda like this game alot. Wow is slowly dieing with all the casual stuff. Ow, btw, english is not my native language so ignore the mistakes. ^_^

Hanyway enought of introduction. I was playing my paladin and it stroke me...

Once thing i hate about all MMOs is that all the land further than the "player area" one is empty... I hate when i wanna see if that tower over there has mobs or players but i cant see unless i get closer. I know, i know its because of the network trafic... But why not simulate all the stuff? I just invented a new technology (no technical stuff, just the concept) that allows to see if there are mobs/players over that mountain far away or not... Basicly it works like this:

-Every player has his own "personal zone" around 100 metters in the visible radius. Here is what we see and the servers communicates with us and send all the info about every player/mob in that zone including positioning, movement, actions (attack, spells, emotes) and chat strings.

-Usually if i go too far away the mobs/players will disappear and it will become an empty place. They are actually still there but since im far away no point on loading the net and server trafic sending that.

-My idea was to divide all zones (a small village, a lake, a basin, a forest) into separate "Living Action Sims" (LAS).

-A LAS can be for example ill use here a small basin surrounded by cliffs and forests with around 300x200 meters across. If my character is inside the basin i would see all mobs/players in it as usual. But if i go out of it to a nearby mountain i would stop seeing all those things. Trees or boulders i would cus they are static objects.

-This is where the LAS comes in. In the game client every LAS will have its properties such as type of mobs, amount of mobs, type of grass, corpses decalls etc... Since the server will not send all that stuff (lol, imagine the amount of Mb/sec would be if sending all in visible range on top of a mountain where i can see half of the world) the cliente will generate all that on my screen.

-The only thing that server sends is the amount of mobs, amount of players, how many players are engaged with mobs (see? just 3 numbers).

-Cliente will generate the scene based on that info so if we have 2 players engaged with mobs and 2 players sitting and chatting the client will show us 2 players fighting with mobs. Nothing special, just looks like players are shooting/casting/beating mobs with 1-3 pre-generated animations; and two other players near eachother.

-The scene you are seeing does not correspond to the actual occurrences in that zone. But lets us grasp the basic info on that zone. So if i want to farm some specific mobs i dont need to get there just to find out that there are 3-5 players farmign those mobs.

-When the player get close enought the client will animate then as running to their positions once the server sends the info on that zone making all the experience smooth and seamless. When those scenes are generated we cannot target or interact with any of them. We cannot get any information like name, level, faction or even send whispers to that. Its just for simple graphical representation of all that.

-The models used in those generated scenes will not be full-scale ofc but just small-scale silhouettes with 30-100 polygons each with no textures or special effects (and replaced by simple sprites at very long distances, is this called "Dinamic Mesh"?). This will ensure good performance with not-yet-seen epic scale scenes. All players will have 1 model for all, all boars, cats, dogs and such small mobs would have another model for them. rhinos, elephants and just big looking monsters and alike will have another. No need to make 1 model for each mob type, just 8-20 models spread across all of them. Ow yeah, very small mobs will not be generated.

-Arenas such as caves, forests and inside cities will not be generated like that. Cities will have a static "busy" animation with silhouettes of humanoids walking around when seen from afar while flying. Forests will only show some lightening glares or fire bursts if there is some big battle involving 10+ players. We cant see there anything anyway so no point in generating anything there.

I hope a Dev reads this and thinks about. I fail to see that this is impossible. I know it might not be possible in the release but would love to see it implemented in the first patches. This is perhaps too much for the game engine but, hey, we can turn this off on the graphics options menu and it will be like usual. It will be the first game to show all that stuff... We want a living world, not something in a 100-200 meters around me. I want to see living beings on that mountain, big monsters by that lake. It will make a cool, living and breathing world. You want? I want.

Please coment/flame/criticise.

[N0rdic Ninja]

Impressive first post, and equally impressive idea. I don't think I've ever thought about that before, through the years of playing MMOs I just kind of accepted that you display as much as you can and F*ck the rest. =P It's not a make or break kind of thing, but I would love to see something like this implemented, being able to see people practicaly a mile away doing whatever it is that they're doing, it would def help to suck me in. =P

[Xander]

Fantastic idea. /signed! It would help the game world be even more immersive.

[hirantha]

hell 2moons would love this idea.. all the fuking vac hackers will get enough time to exit the game before another player approaches them... sorry i do not see this idea working.

[frag971]

Originally Posted by hirantha

hell 2moons would love this idea.. all the fuking vac hackers will get enough time to exit the game before another player approaches them... sorry i do not see this idea working.

Details like players moving will not be generated. One can see how many players in a zone and thats it. Not their directions, actions, etc. Flying players are also not generated.

The only thing that could be generated is when a player buys a flight ticket to some place the client would display a couple of pixels or shader effect moving on the pre-generated path in the sky, thats all.

This is only for the nearby zones you can see, not all zones in the game lol.

[Casket]

Bad Idea.

Firstly you are increasing lag this way. It's just useless information. If I wanted to see what was over there by those trees, I would bloody well go over and look at the trees. It doesn't seem like a lot but those three variables for every person adds up.

Secondly, you are going to rape the client computer. Not only does the game need to render what is around you (which is comparitively not that bad(it's just doing what it is told)) now, you are asking to completely create a scene from some small information.

Bad idea.

[N0rdic Ninja]

Well this is something that could easily be turned on or off in the options, so if it would lag your system you could quite easily turn it off. But I don't think it's going to be as bad as you think, the way he described it each player would only receive 12 bytes of information, (3 floats) even if there's a thousand people that's 12,000 bytes that the server needs to send out to different people, that's a mere 12k, any server worth it's weight would scoff at such. And since each person will only ever receive 12 bytes of info the clients themselves won't be too affected by network traffic. The only issue may be rendering, but once again, it's an option that you could turn off =P

[frag971]

Hm... I dont think this would generate EVERY mob. I meen if there are like 100 mobs in a zone no need to place 100 mobs in the LAS. just 10-20 enought to fill the visible area... Same for players. If you experiance low fps or lag just turn it off indeed

Besides, when you are in a city or cave or dungeon you wont get this. Only few places with open areas so you usually see 1-3 LAS in certain vistas.

[Casket]

12 Bytes? Lol.

My guess would be at least a 1kb. And, even 12bytes think of place like Shattrath in WoW...how much it lags there...just imagine.

[N0rdic Ninja]

But the way he described it they just give you the number of mobs, number of players, and the number of people engaged in combat. That's 3 floats, hell they don't even need to be floating point, you could make them shorts for a huge 6 bytes. It wont take much network traffic, the hardest part is going to be recreating the scene on the client like you said. But even still it would be simplistic.

[Casket]

Originally Posted by N0rdic Ninja

But the way he described it they just give you the number of mobs, number of players, and the number of people engaged in combat. That's 3 floats, hell they don't even need to be floating point, you could make them shorts for a huge 6 bytes. It wont take much network traffic, the hardest part is going to be recreating the scene on the client like you said. But even still it would be simplistic.

Male/Female
Class
Gear 1-6
And then all the custom toon stuff needs to be configured.

There is a lot more variables that go into this that I don't think some are seeing.

[N0rdic Ninja]

Well both gender and class can be calculated with a single bit array, and the facial features can be pretty much ignored cause you wont be able to make them out. Gear could complicate things but you could use a standard for any single class that will always be rendered until you're in the same area. There's always way to simplify things. I just don't think it's something that is a "no way in hell"

[frag971]

Originally Posted by Casket

Male/Female
Class
Gear 1-6
And then all the custom toon stuff needs to be configured.

There is a lot more variables that go into this that I don't think some are seeing.

If you read the original post carefull i stated that any player will have 1 model. 1 model with, i dunno, 50 polygons without textures and particles. Just a black or whatever color fits better in the zone. No race/class/gear can be seen. Just a simple silhouette.

[Casket]

Originally Posted by frag971

If you read the original post carefull i stated that any player will have 1 model. 1 model with, i dunno, 50 polygons without textures and particles. Just a black or whatever color fits better in the zone. No race/class/gear can be seen. Just a simple silhouette.

That would just look dumb then...