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What would happen if entire map loaded?


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Instead of the chunks around the character loading what if the entire map loaded in?

 

Because the entire map doesn't load and it just loads a square around you would things break if the entire map was loaded?

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Instead of the chunks around the character loading what if the entire map loaded in?

 

Because the entire map doesn't load and it just loads a square around you would things break if the entire map was loaded?

No, you'd just need a BEASTLY pc.

Hur Hur it's mah 69th post!

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It's not so much a matter of things breaking if the entire map was loaded into memory at once, but a case of it being impractical to load the entire map all at once.

If it was theoretically possible to do though, it would solve (or make it a lot simpler to solve) some of the most difficult hurdles currently existing in the game.

 

As a case of what would happen, if all the game's chunks were 'loaded' at once -

I'd take an educated guess that your game would freeze, and probably crash.

For several reasons:

  • You'd run out of memory after loading just a few more chunks (the Devs have likely sized that 'square' around the player to be the sweet spot, not too much memory required, but not so little that it's often noticeable).
  • Your CPU would max out, suddenly it's not just calculating paths and collisions for those 30 zombies near you, it's calculating for all 8000 zombies on the map.
  • Your graphics card would start throwing errors, because you aren't just trying to store and render what's on the screen and nearby anymore, every frame you're processing an entire map worth of data just to display the tiny portion visible on-screen.
  • Your hard drive would be making gurgling noises as disk swaps start occurring to try and free up some more RAM to use for storing those chunks, processing the paths/AI/collisions, and preparing your VBOs.

 

It would be like trying to run Battlefield 4 on your calculator.

And that's the simplified explanation of why I think it would be pretty much impossible to play the game with all of the map loaded at once.

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Idk man

 

It's not so much a matter of things breaking if the entire map was loaded into memory at once, but a case of it being impractical to load the entire map all at once.

If it was theoretically possible to do though, it would solve (or make it a lot simpler to solve) some of the most difficult hurdles currently existing in the game.

 

As a case of what would happen, if all the game's chunks were 'loaded' at once -

I'd take an educated guess that your game would freeze, and probably crash.

For several reasons:

  • You'd run out of memory after loading just a few more chunks (the Devs have likely sized that 'square' around the player to be the sweet spot, not too much memory required, but not so little that it's often noticeable).
  • Your CPU would max out, suddenly it's not just calculating paths and collisions for those 30 zombies near you, it's calculating for all 8000 zombies on the map.
  • Your graphics card would start throwing errors, because you aren't just trying to store and render what's on the screen and nearby anymore, every frame you're processing an entire map worth of data just to display the tiny portion visible on-screen.
  • Your hard drive would be making gurgling noises as disk swaps start occurring to try and free up some more RAM to use for storing those chunks, processing the paths/AI/collisions, and preparing your VBOs.

 

It would be like trying to run Battlefield 4 on your calculator.

And that's the simplified explanation of why I think it would be pretty much impossible to play the game with all of the map loaded at once.

Eh, if my Macbook Pro can handle Bioshock Infinite, Warframe, Skyrim, Crysis, BF4, and other MMO's while streaming it to a 40inch HDTV, it can load a 2D isometric map lol.. Wouldn't even mind a loading bar displaying the status. I would MUCH rather have the entire map load, or at least more cells so I never see black boxes loading in. Makes it look kind of bad with tiles just popping in and ruins the immersion a bit. 

 

*edit* to be fair though, it is early alpha.

 

It's mainly the low-spec people who might be holding this feature back possibly? Not sure. Would make a lot of sense though.

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Eh, if my Macbook Pro can handle Bioshock Infinite, Warframe, Skyrim, Crysis, BF4, and other MMO's while streaming it to a 40inch HDTV, it can load a 2D isometric map lol.. Wouldn't even mind a loading bar displaying the status. I would MUCH rather have the entire map load, or at least more cells so I never see black boxes loading in. Makes it look kind of bad with tiles just popping in and ruins the immersion a bit. 

 

*edit* to be fair though, it is early alpha.

 

It's mainly the low-spec people who might be holding this feature back possibly? Not sure. Would make a lot of sense though.

It's not an isometric 2D map though, it's partially in 3D now (models and such, not the map itself), and managing to integrate the 2D map with 3D models takes a lot more processing than you'd guess.

Even your Macbook Pro would not handle the whole map being loaded at once; Maybe a quarter of just Muldragh, but certainly not even a tenth of the entire map.

 

It's not the low-spec players holding this feature back, it's something that I'd imagine no-one on these forums has a PC that could manage it.

 

To note a couple of your game examples here, not all the 'strain' on your PC is caused by fancy graphics - modern graphics cards take care of that (they're essentially a PC inside your PC now).

Probably the biggest reason that PZ can't load more of the map, is the amount of processing needed for AI and pathfinding -precisely the reason BF4 doesn't have bots to fight against (like they did back in the days of BF2).

 

In my experience, it's far less computationally expensive to process logic and render something like a 16 player shooter in first person view, than a top-down strategy or isometric game with more than a handful of units.

Instead of comparing it to a whole different genre of game, you'd make a more reasonable comparison for PZ with something like Total War, C&C, or even Civ 5.

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Eh, if my Macbook Pro can handle Bioshock Infinite, Warframe, Skyrim, Crysis, BF4, and other MMO's while streaming it to a 40inch HDTV, it can load a 2D isometric map lol.. Wouldn't even mind a loading bar displaying the status. I would MUCH rather have the entire map load, or at least more cells so I never see black boxes loading in. Makes it look kind of bad with tiles just popping in and ruins the immersion a bit. 

 

*edit* to be fair though, it is early alpha.

 

It's mainly the low-spec people who might be holding this feature back possibly? Not sure. Would make a lot of sense though.

It's not an isometric 2D map though, it's partially in 3D now (models and such, not the map itself), and managing to integrate the 2D map with 3D models takes a lot more processing than you'd guess.

Even your Macbook Pro would not handle the whole map being loaded at once; Maybe a quarter of just Muldragh, but certainly not even a tenth of the entire map.

 

It's not the low-spec players holding this feature back, it's something that I'd imagine no-one on these forums has a PC that could manage it.

 

To note a couple of your game examples here, not all the 'strain' on your PC is caused by fancy graphics - modern graphics cards take care of that (they're essentially a PC inside your PC now).

Probably the biggest reason that PZ can't load more of the map, is the amount of processing needed for AI and pathfinding -precisely the reason BF4 doesn't have bots to fight against (like they did back in the days of BF2).

 

In my experience, it's far less computationally expensive to process logic and render something like a 16 player shooter in first person view, than a top-down strategy or isometric game with more than a handful of units.

Instead of comparing it to a whole different genre of game, you'd make a more reasonable comparison for PZ with something like Total War, C&C, or even Civ 5.

 

 

Makes most sense, with all that being said, how many cores or processing power would you think it'd take to load a good portion of the map?

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Eh, if my Macbook Pro can handle Bioshock Infinite, Warframe, Skyrim, Crysis, BF4, and other MMO's while streaming it to a 40inch HDTV, it can load a 2D isometric map lol.. Wouldn't even mind a loading bar displaying the status. I would MUCH rather have the entire map load, or at least more cells so I never see black boxes loading in. Makes it look kind of bad with tiles just popping in and ruins the immersion a bit. 

 

*edit* to be fair though, it is early alpha.

 

It's mainly the low-spec people who might be holding this feature back possibly? Not sure. Would make a lot of sense though.

It's not an isometric 2D map though, it's partially in 3D now (models and such, not the map itself), and managing to integrate the 2D map with 3D models takes a lot more processing than you'd guess.

Even your Macbook Pro would not handle the whole map being loaded at once; Maybe a quarter of just Muldragh, but certainly not even a tenth of the entire map.

 

It's not the low-spec players holding this feature back, it's something that I'd imagine no-one on these forums has a PC that could manage it.

 

To note a couple of your game examples here, not all the 'strain' on your PC is caused by fancy graphics - modern graphics cards take care of that (they're essentially a PC inside your PC now).

Probably the biggest reason that PZ can't load more of the map, is the amount of processing needed for AI and pathfinding -precisely the reason BF4 doesn't have bots to fight against (like they did back in the days of BF2).

 

In my experience, it's far less computationally expensive to process logic and render something like a 16 player shooter in first person view, than a top-down strategy or isometric game with more than a handful of units.

Instead of comparing it to a whole different genre of game, you'd make a more reasonable comparison for PZ with something like Total War, C&C, or even Civ 5.

 

 

Makes most sense, with all that being said, how many cores or processing power would you think it'd take to load a good portion of the map?

 

 

A lot, considering the strain that servers have with regards to multiple players. I don't think it would necessarily max out the CPU (actually no, it probably would if the entire map was loaded) but RAM would probably be the bigger resource hog.

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  • 4 months later...

I would have to agree on this, after some tests with CPU, GPU, and RAM with my friends laptop (4GB RAM, GPU is 1/2 GB DDR3, and CPU is 2 core at I believe 2.3GHz) the game with about 2k zombies on screen in West Point can take about 15-25% of his laptop up, now I would say we could load 3x3 chunks and increases their size to that (though it would knock this particular laptop and others out of the park) however an increase in chunk size by 20-50% shouldn't cause too much strain and may actually help later on (less chunks means an easier way to load in multiple, also allows for easier map transitions) though I am sure there are people who have computers being taxed while playing (that laptop cost him 300 buck so I can't see why people can't just buy one) so idk if this will happen (even a 5% increase of size of chunks is better than none at all)

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The real problem becomes catching up to a simulation time for a chunk when loaded. Doing this efficiently is the challenge. Say you have not touched a chunk for 3 weeks, and it magically loads like the rest, except the chunk has 3 weeks of erosion, living entities (Zombies), and other various game logic like fires to simulate through. Most games either freeze the data, or chop some kind of speed calculation, usually ending with a roughly inconsistent simulation. 

 

Loading the entire map is not probable with the power of modern average computers. You will find plenty of computers which can barely or properly load a map and simulate everything. 

 

Another solution that has been widely used is dedicated official servers with more hardware backing their simulations being sent to you as the player, rather than have your computer cry for some amount of time when something needs calculating. 

 

With the budget TheIndieStone probably has, and the people, and the time, and the schedule they have for themselves, I do not see any of these being implemented beyond catching the game up in some kind of speed calculation. Loading the entire map would crash a lot of computers, or Java, unless someone upped the memory cap (default is 2GB on 64bit Oracle HotSpot! JVM's). 

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Instead of the chunks around the character loading what if the entire map loaded in?

 

Because the entire map doesn't load and it just loads a square around you would things break if the entire map was loaded?

My laptops CPU would go BOOOM! then my  curtains would rise in flames then Ill run out and jump off the balcony and run in circles on fire whilst screaming DONT LOAD ENTIRE MAP !:P

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Ok lets just put this simply. Do you want to lag out while screaming that your computer is running a tad too hot for your tastes? Constantly?

 

Try putting 1000 zombies on the map at once in your general proximity. You may notice turbulence. Now try 4000-8000 depending on settings, as a default. Besides the memory you are now using simply as map data. There are not many rigs designed to handle that many processes at once(not likely you have anything close to it AT ALL commerically), much less contain the information in general... for the single instance of a program. Meaning this is ignoring literally every other program running on your machine. 

 

Much less even if you COULD hypothetically run it, which would be insanely labor intensive on your rig (yet again), due to the fact you are not viewing anything else there is no point to it. You are just running more operations that you have no hopes of acting upon. Hence, as EnigmaGray stated, is a common business practice. In all reality the better option is to limit view distance to reduce strain on the machine/program and then use those freed resources for more detailed models(art) and functionality. 

 

What you could, and should argue for however is having the ability for a higher draw distance so more of the map loads if the user chooses.

 

Tl;dr: This is a stupid fucking idea and you should never think of it again because you don't know what you are walking into. Look for the ability to get the option for more of the map to load at once rather than the entire map itself.

 

Edit: Checking with the fact that my current game is going at 950mb-1500mb I'd rather not test this whatsoever. 

Edited by Paprika
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  • 3 weeks later...

I would have to agree on this, after some tests with CPU, GPU, and RAM with my friends laptop (4GB RAM, GPU is 1/2 GB DDR3, and CPU is 2 core at I believe 2.3GHz) the game with about 2k zombies on screen in West Point can take about 15-25% of his laptop up, now I would say we could load 3x3 chunks and increases their size to that (though it would knock this particular laptop and others out of the park) however an increase in chunk size by 20-50% shouldn't cause too much strain and may actually help later on (less chunks means an easier way to load in multiple, also allows for easier map transitions) though I am sure there are people who have computers being taxed while playing (that laptop cost him 300 buck so I can't see why people can't just buy one) so idk if this will happen (even a 5% increase of size of chunks is better than none at all)

For a lot of people, like myself, saving up $300 is just not feasible if I want to have housing and food.  Lots of folks are extremely lucky to have a working PC at all with the money they have!  I got mine as part of a trade-in and an extremely generous payment plan from my friend.

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