Open World Game

Im planning one making an open world game and there was a few things I was wondering before I begin...

1. All these new open world games, for example: Red Dead Redemption, Fallout, etc, have an absolutely massive world, what terrain resolution would provide a similar size map?

2. How would I go about writing an AI script for villages, animals, etc.

3. Finally, is there anyway to achieve different times of day that change in realtime.

Thanks

 

1. none. you must use pro + asset bundles + multiple terrain chunks to even stand a chance going there

2. you would start by creating new scripts and then write your ai system for the next months

3. Pro again

 

A little more information for you since the above was a little vague.

1: Terrain will be broken up. You will have to create multiple terrains and line them up and turn them on and off to get the proper performance. If you have pro, Umbra's occlusion will be very valuable in further optimizing high resolution terrain maps for in game performance.

2: AI is entirely up to you, I would write a generic script for animals and have values you can input for things like movement speed, aggression roaming range etc. Then you can modify these variables to create different AI for different animals. Write once, tweak for everything you need. For villages, you will probably want to have a custom AI for each vilage class, such as civilain, shop owner, bar tender etc. Flesh out the basics for each specific type of AI you need and then figure out what they need to do. Then it will take some time coding all the AI you will need to enable quests etc. on top of general path finding, offering goods/services to the player etc. This will probably be one of the most complex parts of the process.

3: Dynamic day and night is easiest pulled off with Pro as you can change the lighting more easily, however you could swap baked shadow maps for terrain etc. That wil have to be another scripted system that will be time consuming to write, you can search the forums and there are a few dynamic time of day systems available to achieve what you want. Pro is not required but it would make things much easier and give better lighting effects.

Notes: I get the feeling you are new to game design because of these questions. If you are I would suggest starting with a small project and working your way up to a larger one. An open world game is a massive undertaking. If I am wrong, I am sorry to have passed such a quick judgment on you. Just do some simple research, check out gamedev.net and Gamasutra.com for tons of articles on game design and they will let you know all about what you'll have to do to get started with your project. They have everything from AI to level design. Good luck!

 

One studio said that using bundles is bad idea becouse of memory,what do you think?

 

This thread is 8 years old (almost 9). You probably should find newer information on this subject as things have changed a lot.