Crispy™ Why are there no round game worlds yet?

[Horus]

Most of the JRPG's that allow flying vehicle's has round game world. Especially ones that were made after PS1 era. I don't know why you ask for it though, it's not that important as a game mechanic. It just allows you to travel a little bit faster when you are flying.

 

[DraQ]

IIRC there's some sort of space RTS in development where you pilot a probe on a small planetoid building colony modules and stuff... I remember that it has great graphics, but that I was kind of skeptical about the gameplay. Maybe it was on kickstarter?

Yes and it failed.

"Star Quest I: In the 27th Century" is another space game with completely accessible planets and seamless space-planet traversal.
One of the missions had you crash-land on a planet, where you then had to deliver pizza in a car in order to earn enough money to repair your ship.

It is funny how everybody is still impressed by Frontier, but this shareware game made by a single guy is almost completely unknown. The guy claims to be working on the sequel again, but he seems to be intent on beating breaking Cleve's record. He asked for Beta Testers for the sequel more than 10 years ago.
http://virtuadv.com/

Well, Frontier was 2 years earlier and was an extremely popular sequel to an extremely popular game.
Also, how big was Star Quest and how was its flight mechanics?

 

[DragoFireheart]

Most of the JRPG's that allow flying vehicle's has round game world. Especially ones that were made after PS1 era. I don't know why you ask for it though, it's not that important as a game mechanic. It just allows you to travel a little bit faster when you are flying.

I guess I thought something meaningful could be done with it.

See: Super Mario Galaxy.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

You know, I wish game developers would experiment more with different space geometries for their levels. Portal did this a little bit, and Antichamber had a good amount of puzzles which were just about navigating a weird space, and they were pretty cool. A puzzle game about navigating the boundaries of various weird 3-manifolds could be pretty cool, and educational as well.

 

[felipepepe]

Would be cool to see on a game with third-person or isometric view, but I guess it would make the world look like a very tiny place...

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Spore

 

[DraQ]

You know, I wish game developers would experiment more with different space geometries for their levels. Portal did this a little bit, and Antichamber had a good amount of puzzles which were just about navigating a weird space, and they were pretty cool. A puzzle game about navigating the boundaries of various weird 3-manifolds could be pretty cool, and educational as well.

Pics relevant:

Anyway, some shots of a very basic non-euclidean map I threw together in ol' UT some time ago just to see if it would handle it gracefully :prosperous: :

Overwiew - the map is is essentially a dodecahedron with opposite pairs of faces identified with each other with pi/5 twist (using warp zones to stitch the geometry with itself).

A burst of DP shots traveling around level.

Self.

A single Redeemer missile traveling around level.

Conclusion:
Old Unreal engine is - as you can see - surprisingly robust and good at withstanding abuse, but player pawn code would have to be modified to make crossing the boundaries truly seamless - as it is it doesn't map entry rotation to exit rotation properly, presumably by not allowing player pawn to roll, even transiently.

You can approximate pretty much any sort of topology in UT (in the same way a polyhedral 3D model approximates the real thing - your curved space will be made of flat cells stitched together in a curvy manner) provided you don't run out of zones (the limit is pretty strict, alas, given that you need two extra zones (dummy) for single stitch).

 

[deuxhero]

I was expecting this thread to be about how worlds are actually doughnut shaped. when they loop (if you go down, you come out exactly opposite vertically of where you poped out, but the same horizontally.

Disappointed.

 

[Caim]

Spore

Yes, especially the fourth and the second and third to lesser amounts.

 

[SCO]

Almost all games with a centered-on-npc-camera do this. It's those where you move the camera yourself and the world is represented as a 2d surface that prefer to decline on realism because it looks weird.

 

[DraQ]

Almost all games with a centered-on-npc-camera do this. It's those where you move the camera yourself and the world is represented as a 2d surface that prefer to decline on realism because it looks weird.

I can't make head or tails out of what you were trying to say, so I won't even pretend to try.

In before posting stoned on the codex.

 

[:Flash:]

Well, Frontier was 2 years earlier and was an extremely popular sequel to an extremely popular game.
Also, how big was Star Quest and how was its flight mechanics?

It's not really comparable to Frontier, as it is a mission-based game with actiony flight mechanics.
However it is one of the very few games with seamless space to planet traversal, and that's quite impressive for Dos game from a time without 3D accelerators.

 

[Gregz]

X-COM