Frontier are going to put this as the first scenario. rotfl.
Land expansions
- Thread starter illuminati
- Start date
And play coop with friends... [big grin][big grin][big grin]
I like the idea of having unlimited space. Definitely future proofed. 
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[up][up]Never let a production team decide the map size.
I'd rather play on low settings with a big big map till it gets a little laggy, then a small map with high settings, and running out of space.
Rct3 Biggest map size was on the edge of crashing my pc, but still i wanted to get it as good as i could make it.
I'd rather play on low settings with a big big map till it gets a little laggy, then a small map with high settings, and running out of space.
Rct3 Biggest map size was on the edge of crashing my pc, but still i wanted to get it as good as i could make it.
I really want to be able to purchase unlimited expansion.
This is a lovely idea, but power will become a problem in the long run.
The only suggestion is when you build on new plots of land, the other plot become less detailed in the distance. The farther you are, the less detail. But you can still get the full park to look nice in a distance.
Unlimited plots will not be fun... I'd suggest more of having it just like with KnoxVegas said with Cities Skylines. You can own 25 or 26 or so plots. But what are your chances of filling all of those plots. C:S is already an extremely power based game play anyways. But they made it work without having unlimited plots.
Plus. IF you play the game like a real park, not all parks use their land completely. Kings Island still have a few hundred acres of undeveloped fun, but they build within the park that's still existing today. Cedar Point takes out things that are old and no longer get any views (Plus it doesn't help that they are water-locked on a peninsula with no room to go anywhere)
So honestly, UNLIMITED plots is a bad idea... but having some expansion is a good idea
The only suggestion is when you build on new plots of land, the other plot become less detailed in the distance. The farther you are, the less detail. But you can still get the full park to look nice in a distance.
Unlimited plots will not be fun... I'd suggest more of having it just like with KnoxVegas said with Cities Skylines. You can own 25 or 26 or so plots. But what are your chances of filling all of those plots. C:S is already an extremely power based game play anyways. But they made it work without having unlimited plots.
Plus. IF you play the game like a real park, not all parks use their land completely. Kings Island still have a few hundred acres of undeveloped fun, but they build within the park that's still existing today. Cedar Point takes out things that are old and no longer get any views (Plus it doesn't help that they are water-locked on a peninsula with no room to go anywhere)
So honestly, UNLIMITED plots is a bad idea... but having some expansion is a good idea
I know this thread is a bit old, but didn't seem like a good idea to make a new one when it's referenced in the pinned topic. What if plots were smaller, like 1/9th the size of the current park max. The game would then only render what's in the plot currently at the center of the screen plus the surrounding 8 plots. Or at the very most, would have low definition silhouettes of the plots surrounding the rendered nine plots. Move to a new plot, it loads in the eight around that plot. You could keep expanding without taxing the system too hard.
I'm not sure an approach that's highly system dependent will work for a game like this. You want a clear idea of what specs are going to work for players and not be forced to tell people "well it depends how much you expand." I'd be pretty unhappy to see "unlimited expansion" as a feature, only to find out it's based on my computer's ability to handle it. I'd love to see fewer restrictions on park size, but not at the expense of performance.
I'm not sure an approach that's highly system dependent will work for a game like this. You want a clear idea of what specs are going to work for players and not be forced to tell people "well it depends how much you expand." I'd be pretty unhappy to see "unlimited expansion" as a feature, only to find out it's based on my computer's ability to handle it. I'd love to see fewer restrictions on park size, but not at the expense of performance.
We really should consider people that may not be able to afford super rigs, Frontier would want to keep the game enjoyable for them too, but there has to be a way to expand beyond the initial map size although not unlimited.
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My main comment is I would really like PC to implimwnt a system where the areas of land to build are not square. No park irl is built in a giant square.
Having sections of land that are freeform in design means as a player you would have to use the space as best as possible and to think more about park layout. Similar to what theme hospital achieved by having different rectangular buildings to build within. It is a challange to optimise the area then.
Then for sandbox you can just have map creator and create any shape you like. I believe it needs to be limited to a size but what size that us still needs to be decided once we've seen more of the game.
Having sections of land that are freeform in design means as a player you would have to use the space as best as possible and to think more about park layout. Similar to what theme hospital achieved by having different rectangular buildings to build within. It is a challange to optimise the area then.
Then for sandbox you can just have map creator and create any shape you like. I believe it needs to be limited to a size but what size that us still needs to be decided once we've seen more of the game.
A lot of people are saying to make it like how cities skylines has it but I don't think it would be a good idea to do it how they have it. It's a good idea but there is a hole in it, not all parks are a perfect square or rectangle so instead of having it like how cities skylines has it instead just have it to where you select only what you need. I think that would make parks look better than having park be a square or rectangle.
I'd love to be able to expand the size of land we can built upon, but not at the cost of lagging issues.. My pc exceeds the system requirements for RCT3 many times, but when I have built upon a quarter of the maximum land size, the game get's extremely laggy. Most likely an optimization issue I guess. Hope this won't be the case in the final version of Planet Coaster!
Almost no developer locks gameplay features to how good your PC is and/or how much framerate you are willing to give up... but sometimes, they should. Like here.
With that said, it will never be unlimited. At a certain point, precision becomes an issue. Star Citizen grappled with this for more than a year.
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You are right, "unlimited" space is impossible*. Let's say "really big". To be honest, I said that, but I do not even know what is possible technically speaking at this level.
* = Or maybe with a quantum computer or something. Idk [big grin]
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Depends on the what the smallest degree of precision/unit of measurement is for the engine. I don't know what Crysis' smallest degree of precision was, but I think the maximum map size was around 8x8 km. But you should leave a very large amount beyond the playable area, because that map size includes the backdrop, too. That means that it was often standard practice to use only 4x4 km of the 8x8 km available. A lot of games use various tricks to get around this limit. I am sure Skyrim and Witcher 3 do something, but whatever they do probably wouldn't work when the entire map is active at once.
Star Citizen worked really hard to make the jump from 32-bit to 64-bit precision to break those limits. But the map size would be a bit... excessive for a game like this. In SC, the smallest unit of precision is around 1 mm I think, and the map size is a respectable fraction of the size of our solar system. The jump to 128-bit would give a map size bigger than our galaxy, I think... did the math once, but might be misremembering the details.
Anyway, 64-but is probably way too much work for a game like this. Don't forget that we have great terrain editing tools, so we can make use of height to expand our parks.
Star Citizen worked really hard to make the jump from 32-bit to 64-bit precision to break those limits. But the map size would be a bit... excessive for a game like this. In SC, the smallest unit of precision is around 1 mm I think, and the map size is a respectable fraction of the size of our solar system. The jump to 128-bit would give a map size bigger than our galaxy, I think... did the math once, but might be misremembering the details.
Anyway, 64-but is probably way too much work for a game like this. Don't forget that we have great terrain editing tools, so we can make use of height to expand our parks.
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