Roughly what size terrain is The Witness Island

An island with multiple areas to explore, etc. Not small, but not too dauntingly big as well. The default terrain is 2000 x 2000, if 1 unit = 1 meter do you think 2km by 2km is large enough or could a single player run around it in 5 minutes?

 

Well, that's a perimeter of 8 km. How fast can your players run?

 

I would say each dimension is under 4 km, probably under three. A big thing to consider is that it's probable only half of that area is actually navigable, and two-thirds of that is strongly structured. There are all sorts of paths that effectively increase the length the player has to explore

 

Thanks for the replies.

I was thinking of 5 or 6 zones on an island for the player to navigate through. I was thinking it may be best to increase to 3km by 3km...

 

Chances are bigger is actually detrimental. What is much more important (and interesting) is density. If the player can practically trip over things of interest, they are likely to enjoy their time much more than if they had to comb a desert for nothing.

 

Agreed, I was mocking it up and the larger sizes 3k x 3k, for example, looked way too big. It felt far bigger than the what I have seen of the Witness Island... Granted it was just an empty island, but a central hill looked really far away. I guess the trick is to make it relatively small, but delineate the space appropriately to guide the player. Just to point out, my game is nothing like the Witness, I just think they nailed it on the scale.

 

Don't forget the impact that changes in FOV might have.

 

Ahh very good point. I guess the key is to find a happy medium. Mock up an island and play with the FOV to strike that balance. Does anyone have a setting they prefer over the default as a starting point, for the FOV?

Also as an aside is it an ok plan to just use the first person controller during the creation of the environment as a way of testing and examining with the goal of eventually replacing it with a 3rd person controller and model? Or will this create problems down the road?

Thanks for the replies, btw.

 

No, you should keep FOV in mind, but not use it to achieve this. FOV in first person games needs to be adjustable by the player to compensate for different screen setups and motion sickness issues. If you have a narrow default FOV and don't allow the player to change this, some people will be unable to play your game. Total Biscuit rips apart every game that has no FOV slider and a narrow default FOV because playing those causes him and many others physical discomfort. I'm not super picky about the FOV, but I prefer 90° horizontal FOV on a 16:10 display with 22 inch diagonal. I don't know what that would be in Unity's settings.