I have a large world that uses level streaming, with a landscape broken up into chunks. Over time, I’d like to release expansion areas to the map, but I’m a little foggy on the best method to do this and I’m looking for help/tips/ideas/advice/thoughts.
It almost seems like the only way to do this is to create the -entire- world map and then break that up into chunks like I did for the initial map, but that would be a pretty insanely sized mesh to go over. I don’t have the funds for the fancy world designer programs, so what I’ve done so far is create the initial area (a very large island) in Unreal, then export the hieghtmap from that, break it up in my image editor, and then create the new streamed levels from those pieces via importing. This has worked really well so far.
But doing it with the entire world map would be absolutely insane.
Another idea was to make each expansion area in the above method and then import them as individual streamed level… areas. For example, area A has a 4x4 streamed landscape grid. 4 pieces to the area. Area B has its own 4x4 landscape grid. Area A and area B each have their own persistent level? But then I’m concerned with a load lag between areas. It also would need to ‘feel’ seamless moving between area A and area B, so I don’t think that’d work.
Anyway as you can see I’m pretty lost on the best practice here and would absolutely appreciate input. Thanks folks.
