Busy working on the engine, trying to figure out how to implement the overworld.
I'm thinking instead of having the entire island loaded as one big area, I'll separate it into chunks based off of the in game areas (village, forest, beach, etc) would mean smaller load times and it would increase performance on older computers, thoughts?
Also, once I get the basic mechanics implemented, I will probably put up a public alpha for feedback on the movement, physics, controls, etc. (this will not be the beta that I have planned for later, which will basically be the actual game up til the first dungeon) The public alpha (and all subsequent releases) will be PC and Mac compatible, and will come in both downloadable and web based forms.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
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Sounds awesome. I'm all for doing everything possible to make it run smoothly... we are talking about a game that ran on the classic brick.
If you wanted to go mad with the streaming world, you could break it up into its individual screens, then you'd only really need to have five of them loaded in at any one time- six, tops.
It'd be a lot more work from a programming point of view, but it'd be even smoother when it comes to load.
Yeah, I'm totally on board with that idea, anything for the better of the game's smoothness!
It would be cool if you could include a feature like controlling a bird so you can fly around the island just to enjoy the scenery.
Keep up the good work!
To be completely honest, I wouldn't care if the 3-D remake loaded screen-by-screen like the original did.
Are you talking like a sort of Pokemon-esque system where it loads a given area, and when you go outside of it it loads the next?
Also, I'm not sure if this was covered in an earlier post, so sorry if I'm asking a stupid question, but will the "camera" in the game be fixed like the original, or will you be able to rotate the screen around? Either way would be great- the project looks amazing already!
@bm03 What I'm talking about is only loading whats needed per area, so instead of having one overworld file filled with everything thing, the game only has to load from a file containing only whats needed in a specific area, it reduces initial load times and makes things more organized.
@Anon, it would be cool, yes, but at the moment I'm more concerned with getting the game done :P
@Human, yes, exactly like the Pokemon games, along with scenery outside the playable area, I think it would work pretty well. my only concern is breaking up the feel of the overworld being one massive island.
As for the camera, for the most part it will be just like the gameboy game, but it will move around, zoom in, etc at certain points, going top down when climbing a straight cliff face, dramatic angles when bosses appear, that sorta thing.
Well I can't say much about coding things, my knowledge is limited there, but isn't there that method of technically making everything appear at once, but only render whatever is in the view of the camera?
Also what you said at Just Another Human made me think of the short introduction clips that play whenever you got to a new major area or city in the 3D zelda games, the camera panning around an area alongside with the name of said area.
Like when you first leave Marin's house, it shows Mabe Village from a few angles along with the name of the village appearing on-screen and then cuts back to the controllable Link.
Just a random idea, but it might work to give the game a more feel of the epic 3D games (and also for you to show off all the hard work you made in the various areas :P)
otherwise, is it possible to write a engine that loads specific parts of the island. The engine should calculate your distance to an object, if the object is close enough it will render, otherwise it will not be rendered. ("draw distance") If such a system is possible, there will be no struggling for the hardware, and you wont lose the "feel", as you call it.
This is a system used very much in professional games.
Loading times for specific regions sounds much more appealing given the size of the overworld. Though I'm not sure how "big" it is since it's not heavy on graphics and whatnot.
Personally, I would load things screen by screen. Stuff like trees and houses are commonly occurring so keep those in the main memory in order to keep loading times short.
Also, make sure to provide the ability to load any number of screens at any one given time so you can do some cool camera effects such as panning and zooming out to show a larger area than just the one screen.
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