Invisible walls

[Jeff]

Judging by the blog comments yesterday, this is a pretty sensitive issue. What should happen when the player leaves the main part of the level, runs cross country, and finds the edge of the map?

[John]

In Far Cry 2 your character catches a violent case of Malaria whenever you leave the allowed area. I think just about anything is better than that.

[Hazel-roo]

Automatic U-turn! If you are walking into the barrier, the camera should auto rotate so it's facing the opposite direction and it should make the character run a short distance away from the barrier. If you're jumping through the barrier it should slow you down until you land, then make you turn like the walking scenario.

[Ozymandias]

In Far Cry 2 your character catches a violent case of Malaria whenever you leave the allowed area. I think just about anything is better than that.

How about Turner catches a violent case of spontaneous combustion then =) That would be awesome.

EDIT: more seriously, I'll just paste something I made in the blog.

I had a thought just now, but it involves the invisible barrier idea... Maybe if the player gets too close to the edge of the level the game warns them that they're going to leave the level/return to the world map. Perhaps they could hit the 'use' key or whatever to go to the world map, or once they actually stay in there for long enough it brings them there automatically... I guess.

I guess it would be similar to Fallout 1 & 2 or some other games that allow you to leave the battlefield at the edge of the level... like Mount & Blade.

[GDer]

In my opinion,

What should happen when the player leaves the main part of the level

He should be forced to go back. Or, better, he could only see the big world behind the side of a level. That would be more natural. (..if the level designer is good enough) Then he would know the area to explore and have more fun searching for something in a closed area.

runs cross country

Story and gameplay should stop him from doing that ever. That's how CoD4 did it.

and finds the edge of the map

He should be thinking that there's a large world behind the edge. Here you could use something like Unreal Engine skies.

[Eric]

In a nice homage to Skifree, the Whaleman could come out of nowhere and eat Turner once you get close to the edge of the map.

Replace the skier with Turner and replace the abominable creature with Whaleman

[zamzx zik]

Well, it depends on how much you want to put into this.

A more elegant solution would be to create the entire island of lugaru. When making levels, you'd select how much of the island you want to include on the first load (That would be what you'd be editing, the map size if you will...) typically you'd have the center of the map be the starting point or something like that. Then if Turner were to go out to the edge of the map, you could have the game re-center the 'sector' (Or the terrain/objects/enemies that need to be loaded) and allow turner to continue on.

If you did something like this, you could still use the 'invisible wall' solution(on a map-to-map basis), along with the U-turn solution. The difference is, if you wanted to, you could allow the player to see distance terrain and objects (But not be able to reach it) have maps about navigating/exploring and a ton of other things.


Only that would take about 1/5 of your overall production time

[Eric]

that doesn't solve the solution for user-created maps, which knowing the Wolfire staff, is of immense concern

[Viking Zippy]

What about a system where there is no edge of the map, you just keep running, and eventually end up right back where you were? If the view distance only lets you see so far, you'd get to a point where you couldn't see anything in any direction, but after running further, you'd be back where you started.

[Eric]

that actually would probably be harder to do (from a time PoV) than "walls"

[WingedWolf93]

I think the game was called Project IGI, not sure through. I remember that you ware able to leave everything behind, and then you could go miles away, i think they made the terrain to just repeat itself in case if the player decided to go out of the map. Maybe this could do it? Creating a never-ending terrain, that just repeats itself?

[Viking Zippy]

that actually would probably be harder to do (from a time PoV) than "walls"

Good point, there's probably a fair amount of coding that would have to go into that.

A step down from this could be something similar to that in Mario 64 with the 'endless staircase' where you could run forever, but whenever you look behind you, you'll find that you never made any progress at all: basically, an invisible invisible wall

I think the game was called Project IGI, not sure through. I remember that you ware able to leave everything behind, and then you could go miles away, i think they made the terrain to just repeat itself in case if the player decided to go out of the map. Maybe this could do it? Creating a never-ending terrain, that just repeats itself?

Do you mean never-ending terrain as in Black Shades, where you could run and run and run and get lost in it? Because if you ran long enough, you will get lost, and unless there's some way to point the player back where they came from, that could present quite the problem

[Johannes]

It's a difficult issue...

Ofcourse first and foremost the level design should prevent the player from getting that far. however if by some quirk they manage to do so, what then?

Fact of the matter is that the player isn't supposed to be there. They should be very much dissuaded from wanting to go there. There needs to be a clear cost to doing so, so the player doesn't do it again.

With what the original Lugaru did you could actually get lost that way. I myself often ended up running from enemies and then not being able to get back to the original map.

I personally like something bad happening to the character, like in another indie game from a few years back, Bugdom: when you flew too high you were eaten by a bat, or the creature phase of spore: you got eaten by a giant under-water creature if you swim too far from the main continent. It may be harsh, but the player should associate enough with the character that they develop enough of a sense of self preservation to not want this to happen, and so will learn very quickly to stay in the limits of the game. Ideally the level would be the whole island, and thus the natural boundary being the ocean, but with your current approach that wouldn't be an option.
That or being teleported back to the beginning of the level. It might not be realistic, but after it happens once or twice you would probably never do it again.

Repeating the map is too confusing, and disorienting, and with auto u-turn, I know personally I would keep trying to bounce off the 'u-turn wall' until I manage to get past it, trying to walk very slowly, and trying to stop the camera from turning, and for someone like me it would encourage trying to find a way past it, making a game of it, because there is not enough of a cost to try.
That and I want to be in control of my actions. the game taking the controls away and walking me manually back into the level area is just annoying.

I like the Mario 'endless staircase idea', but it would be hard to implement since you can see behind you while walking forward, which you couldn't do in mario 64.

[Lotus Wolf]

i've seen a bounce effect in games that the character can find the edge of the map. Once they reach the very edge they are flung backwards. sometimes its across the map and back to middle, and sometimes its only a few dozen yards. this may not be appropriate for OG but its a suggestion.

[Mykei]

Either use the same method most MMO's do or just put water around the edges that goes on for infinity.