How do they go about creating open-ended worlds

[darkchrono]

I have been playing Oblivian quite abit lately and when I play it just amazes me on how much work it would have to take to create a world like Oblivian has.

It took me almost an hour and a half just to go from one end of one of the countries on the game to the other. And that is just one country (their are like seven or eight different countries within the continent of Tamriel that you can explore).

And it gets mind boggling when you think that they would have to create a picture from every single possible angle from every single possible distance on every single spot on the map.

I know that they use computers alot to help them out in it but you would still have to tell the computer what to make.

Does anybody know how they go about creating open-ended worlds. I would think it would take years just to create the map let alone any of the storylines or quests that make up the actual game.

[Tavrobel]

They probably have a larger development team than most, and one that works outside of the conventional X number of months, and work regularly on the game. Patches and such keep the game dynamic, aside from all of the over-the-top plethora of options.

I could throw in psychology, too; the most addictive things are those that reward you spoiradically, rather than in fixed intervals. Gambling (and probably most RPG randomizer systems) are exactly that.

They probably just go about it like normal games, in terms of what order things are done in. They just create multiple versions, and continue adding on as desired.

[Captain Maxx Power]

Does anybody know how they go about creating open-ended worlds. I would think it would take years just to create the map let alone any of the storylines or quests that make up the actual game.

This goes into a lot of fundamentals of Computer Games Design, but I'll try to brief.

Firstly when it comes to actual interaction with the world it's relatively simple (figuratively speaking). A game world is actually remarkably simple compared to our own. Once you have the basic rules for what different objects do, how they react to the player and each other, then you've got the building blocks to add other stuff. For example, you can define behaviour for melee weapons against enemies and objects, then simply create several different, unique types of weapon (in Oblivion there's an editor to do just that).

Oblivion is kind of unique in that a lot of it's environment was procedurally generated using a series of specialised tools. I don't know the exact names, but I do know for example there were separate programs used to create the terrain of the land and another to create trees and place them on the terrain. For the most part vast game worlds are usually a mix of procedurally/randomly generated sections with specifically designed parts e.g. the general wilderness versus towns and cities. Since players won't expect every single square foot to be significant you can get away with many places being sort of bland provided they look the part.

The biggest undertaking is actually deciding what you're going to put in the game world once it's created. This includes NPC's, items, buildings, quests etc. In this sense this is probably the longest part of development. Everything that is placed will have to be tested/edited/balanced. For something like Oblivion though you can technically split the game apart into different sections that are independent from each other. Quests in one city may not have an effect to the world at large, though you may have massive quest chain linking various locations. Whatever the case, you can still approach this task in the same way as you would when creating the interactive elements; through a series of steps.

Open-ended worlds actually don't differ too much from most other games with the exception that they don't follow a linear path and generally have a lot more things for you to do. There's virtues in both and I can enjoy both equally.

[Markus. D]

The game that suprised me when this kind of thing was getting further in trend was Lineage II.

There's just... just so much effort put into the geographical enviroment... I had a pleasure just walking on the overworld!

I can't wait for GW2, I hope they don't fail in this sense... now that everything lacks instance...

[Madame Adequate]

It took me almost an hour and a half just to go from one end of one of the countries on the game to the other. And that is just one country (their are like seven or eight different countries within the continent of Tamriel that you can explore).

Afraid not, you can only go to Cyrodiil in Oblivion.

[Skyblade]

And it gets mind boggling when you think that they would have to create a picture from every single possible angle from every single possible distance on every single spot on the map.

No, they create a world. It consists of one or two things: Primarily, a gigantic wireframe landscape that is covered with a picture of the terrain. Secondly a backdrop or sky, which is a simple bitmap placed behind the primary world (which is why there is infinite sky anytime you fall through a world). When you're in the game, a portion of the wireframe world and its corresponding texture (programmer talk for the picture that covers the wireframe, or mesh, as we call it), and that portion of the world is rendered on your computer. The developers do not create views from each angle and each position on the map: Doing so for a 3-D game would be nearly impossible. They create the outline of the world, and your computer uses that outline to calculate what the view should look like from your current position. Primarily, that is the job of the Graphics card and processor, which is why the game slows down if those pieces of equipment isn't up to spec: The rest of your system is having to talk over the job of your graphics unit and is doing too much work as a result.

[Gilghamut]

Oblivion is very amazing. Unfortunately for me, I've played it so much that it has come boring to me. For as amazing as it is, there's a lot of room for potential for it's sequels to grow into even more amazing games, just by making the world even more alive than it already is. I look forward to see the future installments.

[darkchrono]

It took me almost an hour and a half just to go from one end of one of the countries on the game to the other. And that is just one country (their are like seven or eight different countries within the continent of Tamriel that you can explore).

Afraid not, you can only go to Cyrodiil in Oblivion.

Gosh darnit you're right. I tried to go up to the country just north of cyrodil and it wouldn't let me go any further.

This is the first Elder Scrolls game I have gotten so I didn't realize that the world of Tamriel consisted of all the ES games and was not just for Oblivian.

Oh well, there is still plenty to do in Cyrodill but that definitely does narrow down the scope that I thought the game had.

Do some of the E.S. games let you explore more than one country or are some of the countries for future E.S. games yet to be made (their has only been four E.S games that I know of yet their are seven or eight countries).

[Gilghamut]

I might be wrong on this, but I think Elder Scrolls: Arena or something, I've heard allows you to go into more than one country, though I am not sure on that. I'm not sure what number it is in the series.

[o_O]

An interesting technique used in Oblivion is procedural generation. What that means is that instead of storing a model of every different tree, rock and flower, it stores an algorithm to generate a model of a particular object. The two major benefits of this are an unreal saving in drive space (A demoscene team developed a full 3D level of an FPS in 96KB. The same game would normally have taken 200-300MB of disk space.), and that the algorithms can be developed to generate object with some randomness. That means that you aren't seeing the same three trees everywhere you go, adding realism. Procedural generation is also the reason that wandering outside in Oblivion is quite hard or your CPU and GPU.

To put it simply and to paraphrase others, in a game, the characters, landscapes, objects and physics are all simulated rather than played back as a series of still images. Mathematical formulae determine how two objects will interact and events occur and are handled by the game engine, as a result.

[q=Gilghamut]I might be wrong on this, but I think Elder Scrolls: Arena or something, I've heard allows you to go into more than one country, though I am not sure on that. I'm not sure what number it is in the series.[/q]

Arena is a ridiculously enormous game. The reason for that is that all of the terrain and cities/towns are procedurally generated. Since disk space was a huge factor back then, this meant they would be able to include a huge world at low cost. As far as countries go, I don't know. I didn't play long enough.

[Captain Maxx Power]

Arena is a ridiculously enormous game. The reason for that is that all of the terrain and cities/towns are procedurally generated. Since disk space was a huge factor back then, this meant they would be able to include a huge world at low cost. As far as countries go, I don't know. I didn't play long enough.

While Arena does allow you to visit every location in the Elder Scrolls world, Daggerfall is actually the largest in terms of sheer size. I believe it was estimated to be in excess of the size of the UK, which is over 94000+ square miles.

[Loony BoB]

What's the largest single player game in terms of open world space in recent years?

[Renmiri]

For those who like to explore different 3D worlds, Second Life is awesome There are thousands of them!

[darkchrono]

One thing I have begun noticing after being on about day 30 on Oblivian is a complete lack of kids. Their are lots of grown-ups walking around but no kids whatsoever that I have seen.

With it having a bit of a middle ages setting when couples would commonly have 10+ kids together (even though probably half of them wouldn't live very long) I would think putting kids in from time to time would be a good thing to do.

[KentaRawr!]

What's the largest single player game in terms of open world space in recent years?

A very unpopular MMORPG.

*Badum Psh*

Anyway, to answer your question Loony BoB, Wind Waker definitely had a lot of open space, as did Twilight Princess. However, my experience with open-ended games is pretty limited, and it seems like Oblivion beats those two out easy as pie. However, Shadow of the Colossus had an absolutely immense map. Seriously huge. Of course, maybe that's just an illusion, since the World Map is actually the only area in the game, and thus, the world map may actually have less space taken up on areas than other games.

But I'm really not one to answer this question. Clearly, if those 3 are what I come up with for games with lots of area space, then my taste in games leans towards more linear experiences.