Dividing maps ?

[Kunisch]

Hmmm? I don?t know if this is possible with the current PS design, but what about dividing the worldmaps in to smaller maps and then let the client load the maps in the background when the character comes near the ??edge? of the current map ? it would hopefully kill the loding map time ?

/Kunisch

[wormking]

Yes this could help stop loading times, cool idea!



Talcil

[DaveG]

A rolling load would be wonderful.
Of course, they\'d have to fix the virtual memory leaks first...
We\'ll probably have to wait until after the alpha for this.

[Aiselyn]

I think it\'s a pretty good idea all in all. My one concern would be the people who don\'t have fast computers while playing Planeshift.

What I could see happening with this....you\'re walking along and come to a point where maps are changed. It then gets really really REALLY choppy as you\'re switching maps. For about the same amount of time it takes to currently go into the load screen and come out on the new map, you\'re sitting there because your game is too choppy for you to move. This can really have an affect for some of us who don\'t have 5 GHz 512RAM etc. It may even take longer just to come out of being choppy.

It\'s a good thought though.

[Cyl]

So you mean something like in Soul Reaver 2?

Well, I dont know if this could be kept up for more complicated maps, and I think that it would slow down the server to. But if it sould be possible it would be cool.

Btw, you can load all maps at the beginning, if you have the ram. Just set this in your setup.

[wormking]

but think about loading all the maps when PS has much much more maps...

[Kunisch]

Well the general idea would be to divide the maps in to smaller sections. Then there would be set some kind of threshold near the ?end of the map? and when one crosses that the PS client would start loading the next map/section in the background (with what is left of the recourses). This would (if it could be done and if it works) at least reduce the loading of the new map, and if it worked perfectly it would kill the lading time. The threshold should be set so that when the character crosses it, the computer will have enough time to load the map in the background, so that no extra loading time is needed.

But then again I can?t code (yet) and I don?t know if this is even possible, and there are probably many better things the devs could do.

/Kunsich

[DaveG]

Yes Kunisch, it is quite possible.  What you just described is what a \"rolling load\" is.  It\'s very common.  Anytime you play a game that has \"no\" load times, this is part of what they\'re doing.  (decent console games for example)

As I posted before, though, PS currently has allot of VM leaks.  Every time you load a new area, it is supposed to unload the   last one.  It doesn\'t do this perfectly, and eventually the leftovers build up and slow things down.  Depending on your system, you\'ll get a popup error and/or slow down to a halt.  This is what the devs are working on first.  If they didn\'t, the extra loads would reek havoc.  (Once all the leaks are fixed, I\'m sure this is on the list of things to peruse.)

BTW, the \"load all maps\" thing gives me a blue screen of death...  (It seems you need more RAM than I have...)

[Kunisch]

Okay, thank you for the tech-pov. on things. But well as you said, the devs have a lot of things to do before this becomes important