Posted July 05, 2014
I just posted this musing on my Facebook, and I thought I'd share with you guys. I have no thesis, I'm just thinking out loud.
Video game design... I'm always torn about "edge of the world" and "camera" interactions. In an overhead type game (god game/building game/etc)... should the camera be constrained to only viewing from within the buildable world, or should it be able to extend out beyond it? Nearly all games, for many reasons (not the least of which is easier camera controls) allow the camera to extend a little bit beyond the world bounds so you can see more of the game world.
HOWEVER, if the camera extends outside of the boundaries... what do you do with that area? Older games used to clip the world off there and just show emptiness (or a skyboxed background) there, so you didn't experience "you can see it but it's not part of the game" syndrome. Newer games more often than not pad out the boundaries of the game world with "you can see it but it's just decorative" that can sometimes frustrate the player.
But that leads to another question: what do you pad the game boundaries with? If you populate with exactly the same stuff as the interactive game world, the player will want to interact with it, and become frustrated (and jarred) when he cannot. But the same "jar" happens when it's just a terrain mesh unpopulated by doodads, where you can clearly see the borders. But then, later, if you DID populate it with doodads, and the player "harvests" all resources near that border, or otherwise builds near it, the "jar" you were trying to avoid returns even stronger as it's clear to see "oops, there's the forest line, we can't interact with it". I have seen a few (rare!) games that poll what's going on near that border and extrapolate from that. Dense with trees? Continue out beyond the borders. Sparse? Populate similarly. Scorched earth? Make it go on.
What brought this up? I've been playing Banished this weekend (http://www.gog.com/game/banished) and its solution "camera goes outside of world (so you don't have to rotate to see the corners), and show a terrain mesh continuing outside of the region's borders, but don't populate it". It's the right decision for Banished, since it's very resource gathering micromanagement intensive, and showing trees/rocks/etc outside of your borders where you can't harvest them would be a far worse offense than showing blank textured ground.
FYI, I feel the RollerCoaster Tycoon series has done this the best. The worlds your parks are in are fully developed, but beyond your control outside of the borders of your park. Many levels let you purchase (or lease, with limitations) more land outside of your exiting park borders to expand out, but never to the bounds of what's visible. It gives your park a sent of being in situ. Oftentimes, the "outside of buildable borders" area would have props showing a parking lot for your park, or the city/countryside in which it exists. On some maps, the actual buildable park area is only like 20% of the whole map. Of course, in-game it gives you very clear reasons why you can't do anything outside of your borders: "You don't own that land!" But it ALSO lets you move the camera even outside of THIS area, beyond which you just get cut-off polygons and a skybox. But you don't go there often, unless you want to, because there's so much space between your park and end-of-the-world.
Black and White (2, at least) did this pretty well too. It used your territorial borders loosely. You could do things outside of your borders a bit, but the further outside of your borders the cursor (representing your godly hand on earth) went, the faster your mana degenerated, until you had no power to influence anything.
This is ALSO why so many games are set on islands (or island analogs, like steep-cliffed canyons). Because islands don't have this problem. "You don't find a ship, so you can't sail away."
This is also an issue, albeit to a lesser-important degree, in other games. FPSs, MMOs, and so on, run into the "invisible barrier" problem (if designed poorly) or the "fence you can't jump over" problem (if designed a bit better).
NB: Go vote for Black & White 1, 2 in the wish list. http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games#search=black%20white&order=votes_total
Video game design... I'm always torn about "edge of the world" and "camera" interactions. In an overhead type game (god game/building game/etc)... should the camera be constrained to only viewing from within the buildable world, or should it be able to extend out beyond it? Nearly all games, for many reasons (not the least of which is easier camera controls) allow the camera to extend a little bit beyond the world bounds so you can see more of the game world.
HOWEVER, if the camera extends outside of the boundaries... what do you do with that area? Older games used to clip the world off there and just show emptiness (or a skyboxed background) there, so you didn't experience "you can see it but it's not part of the game" syndrome. Newer games more often than not pad out the boundaries of the game world with "you can see it but it's just decorative" that can sometimes frustrate the player.
But that leads to another question: what do you pad the game boundaries with? If you populate with exactly the same stuff as the interactive game world, the player will want to interact with it, and become frustrated (and jarred) when he cannot. But the same "jar" happens when it's just a terrain mesh unpopulated by doodads, where you can clearly see the borders. But then, later, if you DID populate it with doodads, and the player "harvests" all resources near that border, or otherwise builds near it, the "jar" you were trying to avoid returns even stronger as it's clear to see "oops, there's the forest line, we can't interact with it". I have seen a few (rare!) games that poll what's going on near that border and extrapolate from that. Dense with trees? Continue out beyond the borders. Sparse? Populate similarly. Scorched earth? Make it go on.
What brought this up? I've been playing Banished this weekend (http://www.gog.com/game/banished) and its solution "camera goes outside of world (so you don't have to rotate to see the corners), and show a terrain mesh continuing outside of the region's borders, but don't populate it". It's the right decision for Banished, since it's very resource gathering micromanagement intensive, and showing trees/rocks/etc outside of your borders where you can't harvest them would be a far worse offense than showing blank textured ground.
FYI, I feel the RollerCoaster Tycoon series has done this the best. The worlds your parks are in are fully developed, but beyond your control outside of the borders of your park. Many levels let you purchase (or lease, with limitations) more land outside of your exiting park borders to expand out, but never to the bounds of what's visible. It gives your park a sent of being in situ. Oftentimes, the "outside of buildable borders" area would have props showing a parking lot for your park, or the city/countryside in which it exists. On some maps, the actual buildable park area is only like 20% of the whole map. Of course, in-game it gives you very clear reasons why you can't do anything outside of your borders: "You don't own that land!" But it ALSO lets you move the camera even outside of THIS area, beyond which you just get cut-off polygons and a skybox. But you don't go there often, unless you want to, because there's so much space between your park and end-of-the-world.
Black and White (2, at least) did this pretty well too. It used your territorial borders loosely. You could do things outside of your borders a bit, but the further outside of your borders the cursor (representing your godly hand on earth) went, the faster your mana degenerated, until you had no power to influence anything.
This is ALSO why so many games are set on islands (or island analogs, like steep-cliffed canyons). Because islands don't have this problem. "You don't find a ship, so you can't sail away."
This is also an issue, albeit to a lesser-important degree, in other games. FPSs, MMOs, and so on, run into the "invisible barrier" problem (if designed poorly) or the "fence you can't jump over" problem (if designed a bit better).
NB: Go vote for Black & White 1, 2 in the wish list. http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games#search=black%20white&order=votes_total
Post edited July 05, 2014 by mqstout