Believable level borders

Hello everyone,

I would like to start a discussion about ways to make the borders of your level believable. It would be interesting to share what everyone is doing to achieve that.

Let me explain what I mean exactly.
This is about 3D only. Say you have a level (i.e. terrain) and your player character can move around freely, even fly up a little. One way to provide natural borders would be to use mountains or ocean, but in the case of mountains it will always feel like a valley and you don't want to use ocean or mountains all the time.

What other methods are you guys using to make the level borders believable?

Cheers,
duplexius

 

When you go too far out at some random time you get eaten by a Sarlaac.

 

Yeah, that's a good option. Make it impossible to survive when you're close to the border.

 

one option is to export your terrain in 3dsmax ie, then expand the borders or add a mesh so it looks like an extend...
then, optimize the border, export it and put it around your terrain
then add some obstacles so the player can't reach that border but just see it...
another option is a skybox

 

Hey antislash, the question is not really the visual part. There are many ways to do nice level boundaries. But the obstacles you mentioned, those are question. You wouldn't want to put an invisible blocker there, right? But believable obstacles.

 

right... cliffs, rocks, dens shrubs with a collider Inside, slopes, tranchees, canyons, barbwire, wood barriers....so much options
the last being some claymore.... (preferably, you can remind the player is leaving objectives too)

 

Maybe that's the key: less focus on enforcing borders, more focus on encouraging exploration of the primary content you've designed for them.

That's not really an answer to your question, though. Personally I don't like border obstacles that get progressively harder until they're impossible to surpass. If there's a monster, I assume that the game is designed so that eventually I'll be able to defeat it and move past it to get to the content that's been designed on the other side. If I can't defeat it, I assume I'm doing something wrong.

I prefer unambiguous, you-can't-go-there borders that make sense in the context of the game. If you're designing a moon base, you're stuck inside where there's oxygen. If you're on a magical floating island, you're stuck on the island unless you want to plummet to your death.

I suppose, to take a different approach, you could always generate procedural terrain past the borders of your designed level. Then players could travel as far as they want.

 

I find that water (The ocean or some other large body of water.) works well for borders.

 

I'm going to assume you're referring to exterior levels or worlds, like the Capital Wasteland in Fallout 3. Real, natural, borders usually consist of dense woods, oceans, mountains, cliffs, and ravines. With some creative applications, you can replicate these in a way that can effectively mask the "invisible walls" in place in your levels. With some man-made barriers, you have even more variety. Densely packed buildings, fences (modern or otherwise), damaged or destroyed roads and bridges, and other high man-made walls all can serve as realistic and effective borders.

With interiors, you have much more control. Locked, damaged, or barricaded doors, walls, and rubble work, or, as one of the previous posters mentioned, logical borders like oxygenated rooms in a space station, all make simple and contextual borders for your levels.

EDIT:
The Halo series made use of barriers that killed the player upon leaving a map, called "The Guardians." While this is a niche example, it may work in some games.

 

This reminds me that jagged borders, such as densely-packed buildings with lots of different-sized, deep, twisty, dead-end alleys, mask borders more effectively than long straight walls.

 

Instead of having 1 type of border. Have many varieties. Don't completely surround your map with mountains. Have a mountain on 1 side, a river on the other, a great ruined wall or something(depending on your games setting) and then fill in the gaps with things like dense forests, rocks and shrubs. This way the player won't think of any of these things individually as borders, especially if you use those same props throughout the map where you can just walk around them. This will create a more immersive experience.

 

There probably isn't a clear definitive answer as it will always depend on what the setting is. In certain circumstances you may be able to use the one barrier all around your play area e.g. On a space station with no means of space walking outside or in the moon with no portable oxygen tanks or pressure suits, whereas in more open world areas there'd be more variables e.g. your player can only breathe underwater & hasn't developed the means to breathe on land (great epic adventure turns out that the hero is actually a sea monkey in an aquarium) & terrain blockers that all need to be integrated smoothly. Given the state of the world immigration issue, especially in Europe atm, massive fences along a countries border are becoming more realistic even though most people would at first glance think it was a cop out excuse to restrict their movement.

Water needs to be thought out tho because these days everyone expects their character to be able to swim, so do you let them swim & use a stamina tracker that means they just get exhausted & can't go any further at which point they drown or a shark eats them?

For land do you have dense forests with small trails that the player has to hack their way through that twist & winds like the alley ways mentioned above so the player is slowly forced back into the game area? It being a game the player would be expecting that any enemy (creature or npc mob) they encounter in the border areas can be beaten so they can continue on.

 

I will be using invisible borders, but it works with the game type. It's a sci-fi/fantasy game, and there is a central power (neutral to the player, more of a background story for planets), this central power determines how far away from central hubs the player can move. The story part of it is that the central power determines where non-native sentient life is allowed to go because of environmental or safety aspects. Game play wise, it allows me to put up any barriers as I see fit and give the blanket "you are not authorized in that location" excuse. The story takes place over several planets, so this gives a great reason why players are restricted to hubs or surrounding areas.

Further along in game play it also means that I can have closed off areas and only open them after the player has completed enough quests or has the reputation etc. The actual scene is just a square terrain (or multiple terrains stitched together) where the borders are extended like antislash described above. Oh yeah, the reason the player can't move past the invisible boundaries is because of a "tracking/tether" device placed on them when they go through immigration/customs when first arriving at the planet.

Instead of spending time trying to create believable boundaries, I just came up for a believable reason why invisible boundaries exist.

 

The player's really going to dislike that though...

 

Depending on your game, a globe could be another solution.

 

Thanks for all your suggestions.
One thing to note is that the environment has no man-made objects, so the borders can either be natural or some alien thing. And the problem with such natural barriers is that the player can fly a little, which creates an extra challenge. Can't put very high obstacles everywhere.

You guys are right about the "unbeatable" hostiles near the border. The player could interpret them as a challenge.
But what if it was very obvious? Or if the player is warned about this specific danger and that he must avoid it at all cost?

 

Since they can only fly a little, can you design it so they get tired or run out of fuel before they pass the border?

Can you make it fit into the game world? For example, in a semi-realistic medieval fantasy sailing game, where players are regular people and not godlike superheroes, your ocean map could have "Here Be Dragons" areas. If sea monsters surfaced and swallowed the player's ship in this context, I don't think the player would expect to be able to kill them with a sword.

 

why don't you consider the player must have a kinda remote link with the origin (remote control, some energy flux)?

 

If you are replying to my post, then I would like to explain why I don't believe my solution is bad, and why the players won't be bothered by it.

First there are 5 main planets, with a few outlier planets; these are each a different scene, and each planet is a minimum of 10km x 10km. All of my design concepts will be based on the minimum size, then it's easy enough to extend the artificial border another 1km making the actual terrain a minimum of 12km x 12km, but only the interior 10km x 10km can be visited by the player. Boundaries are an inevitable part of the game design, and I am choosing to put more time into the creation of assets, than trying to artificially create mountain borders etc.

My solution, while having the exact same effect, has a better story wrapped around it than say Archeage where sailing your ship past the border just killed you. Sure they gave a warning, but it was very artificial, and the only reason it was there was because of the terrain border.

I could see the weight of your argument if the terrain were smaller and only 1km x 1km, but a 10km x 10km terrain is actually rather large, and can accommodate a lot of exploring. Most players will not even be drawn to go out that far because the main game play will be around mob hubs, crafting hubs, pvp hubs etc. Personally I feel that my approach would not work if it was a straight up hi fantasy game.

 

The most fun borders to interact with are oceans with things in them that kill the player as they go too far out. It'll be hard to find a better 'believable' border. But if you want to think outside the box... have your game world border America. When you reach the border, the entire united states army will show up and stop you. I'd expand on what specifically they would probably do to your character, but this topic is still young.

You mentioned flying. Does your game involve magic? You can have a plot line where the people born in your region are cursed and physically cannot leave the area. Or you can be a little more sci-fi with it and say the area has the strongest magnetic field on your game world's planet and the people are charged with them. The magnetic fields flip at the borders of the region and would tear the people apart of they tried to leave :3

One last idea, hmm... you mentioned nature and aliens. How about an alien plant. You can have the region surrounding by carnivorous plants that launch vines that wrap around anything near them. Or you can simply make those plants the only thing keeping your region safe from the naturally toxic atmosphere of your game's planet. Maybe the plants bordering the region make air for your people, so you can go past the border, but you'll quickly die

 

It's simple: do anything you want except invisible walls.

Some ideas:

- it's an island!
- it's an oasis!
- there's mountains!
- there's mountains on one side and a beach on the other!
- impassible swamp!
- desert!
- minefield!
- surrounded by forum moderators!

 

Is this a horror game? ( ͡o ͜ʖ ͡o)

 

oh yeah! scary !

 

Ahh. That's much better. I thought you were just going to see an awesome path leading into the forest, run towards it in utter glee, and BAM! Smack into some invisible barrier. I didn't realize you were making the maps larger.

 

Dan Felder posted an article, "Design 101:Emotional Alignment", yesterday that discusses invisible walls and borders.

He coincidentally describes a scenario with a frustrating invisible barrier in a forest:

In contrast, he cites Journey as a good example of border design:

(Apologies to the author for chopping up his text. Go read the whole article. It's well worth a few minutes of your time. )

 

"'suddenly....a huge stone slab falls from the roof" .... was an answer when i used to play paper RPGs and when a player behaved as an A......le....

 

The tech net idea is good, it could be related back to wireless charging that everyone is aware of these days. Once you step outside the netted area everything stops working including your oxygen pump, you have to turn back & get in range for everything to work again or you die.

 

in Metro last Light you had to change gasmask capsules or you 'll die, so you had to stay in the game area

 

A Giant massive sea/ocean of Lava!
And no land, or place to walk across safely, in sight.
With dark eerie night like skies and tall Volcanic mountains, far in the background, Spewing Lava's!

If you try to walk or run through the lava sea/lake, you will be immediately burned to a crisp!!
And be "Toastied!"

And far off in the distance, are all sorts of Super sized Lava monsters, splashing and spewing lava all over the place.
In other words, You cannot pass!

Or as the old guy, Gandalf would say:
"YOU,...........SHALL NOT PASS!!!!!!!"
Literally!

PS: At least it's a more original border idea, and probably less used, than tall mountains or endless oceans/sea.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

 

I think I will go for a combination of the techniques mentioned by you guys. I shall find a compromise between the need to explore and leading the player by goals or other game design mechanics. For me it's just very annoying to not be able to explore an area if it's there, for example the invisble blockers in Halflife 2 or the forest that TonyLi mentioned.

Some sort of danger or energy mechanic could work out the best. If the player (not a human btw) moves too far away from where I want him/her to move, there will be consequences. If those are explained early in the game, clearly enough, that should work out ok.
Playtesting will show how it's perceived.

 

Even Witcher 3 has a problem with this, there's invisible walls that can actually get you stuck on cliffs, and other areas that just say "you have to turn around now" and then teleport you back. I like the idea of some danger mechanic that gives the player a warning, then instakills them, if that works in your game, like how Borderlands (and tons of others) do it.

 

You can take the natural borders even farther than just oceans and rivers. You natural occurrences such as storms as a border. This was done in DA:I when you are in the desert; If you strolled far away from the main map a sandstorm came which slowed you down and made movement very hard.

 

Water is the ultimate barrier.

Once you get far enough from land, stop rendering it, let them swim around until they realize that... hey... it's the ocean.

 

Well, in case you have an ocean at your disposal, put sharks in them and I won't even try to go out of bounds.

It kind of depends on the theme you have in the game. Some level border examples are: radiation, mines, animals that eat you, a sniper, a bomb around your neck / in your body, aliens, mutants. Basically you could have an 'open world' with borders that are in some way guarded and prevent the player from wandering of too far.

If you want actual borders that the player can see from a distance and interact with (as in walk up against) then you always have rocks, fallen trees, barbed wire, broken down cars/trucks/jeeps/tanks, crashed helicopters/planes, washed away roads, cliffs, dense bushes and so on.

 

Try to remove the need for arbitrary barriers - Yes, games use it, and that doesn't make it strong design.

"Only try to remember, there is no spoon."

Gigi

 

Has anyone mentioned making the world / area loop around yet? .hack// is a PS2 era game and it had tiny worlds that you could run in 1 direction and eventually loop back in.

 

The most memorable natural borders I can remember are from Final Fantasy 12 - after the first 20 hours of game play tutorials going out into the wild and seeing that big ol' T-Rex wandering near by. Just him alone made me grind for several hours before exploring beyond and learning I could evade him without dieing.
In Fallout 3 I loved how we could see off in the far distances the crippled over passes tall buildings. Knowing you could go there but learning quickly there were strong enemies that were too strong to get past.
Same as in Skyrim - Yes by all means go check out the Giants camp near Whiterun. It's really not a border, unless you consider whatever is in the giants camp is worth so much more than what you currently posses.
And I still remember the destroyed sink hole cliffs in the early Silent Hill games.

I don't think cinematic/playable cut scene events have been mentioned as an option.
Playable cut scene / cinematic events have been used in AAA games to shape the path forward and steer the player in the direction they want them to travel.

 

The spoon is a lie.
The spoon is a lie.
The spoon is a lie.

 

What about deliberate barriers? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

Say they were put there by wizards.

 

The games I play usually have the characer saying something like:
"No, I won´t turn my back on them" or "no, I have to face this", and making a u turn wenever you reach the boarder. That way the message is clear, it makes sense in that universe and you´re not putting some wall or obstacle where shouldn´t be one (like the air if you´re game has a plain).
I think is a clean solution. You could think of something more clever, but better put that energy in the game itself.

 

(Emphasis added.) It depends on the game, but I generally don't like when the PC says something in opposition to what I'm controlling the PC to do. However, I think your last sentence is key. I quoted an observation about Journey above. Rather than putting their energy into enforcing hard borders that the player can't cross, the developers put their energy into enticing the player into wanting to explore the main path.