Earthlike map possible?

Hi. I have some great ideas about building a game, I love gaming and I want to bring it to life. I never used any game-development program or have knowledge about programming, but I am a fast learner and I will abuse them tutorials xD . I don’t care if it will take me 2, 3, 4 or 5 years, really want to bring it to life. I’m 21 btw.

Anyway, my question is: is it possible to build an earthlike map? I mean a single huge map, no portals / transfer from a map to another. And is it possible for it to sustain all the objects and players ? I guess this requires a lot of resources to be played if it’s even possible. And I want the map to work exactly like our earth. Example for dumb: So you can walk in straight line and after you’ve traveled round the world to reach the exact point you’ve left. Anyway…you get the point. I guess the terrain will look kind of round if the map is little…but how round can it get? Oh and I almost forgot, I want to build a MMORPG. If this is not realisible, it’s a big, big, very big minus for my project.

P.S. Forgive my bad English, not native.

If you have no game development experience then I would just abandon this kind of idea, because the most similar types of games are very difficult to make.

On a more practical matter, it’s not something UE4 was designed to support. It has the ability to combine maps to make larger worlds, but that function does not work in multiplayer. It’s possible to create a solution that works with multiplayer but obviously you have to actually make a solution for that.
Besides that, you get other issues. If you design the whole “world” then you run into an issue of storage space, it will be impossible to work with and too much data to install. Most games that want to do world-scale type games (like No Man’s Sky) will use some procedural method, where the world doesn’t actually exist until you get to it. The problem there is trying to make the generated results look good, because it’s not going to look as good as it would if you place everything yourself, in terms of sculpting the landscape and placing things like vegetation. Also, you would have to come up with a way to make that function as well.

The biggest thing though–Why would you want a game like that? What does an entire planet offer over something like a very large map? People keep mistaking size for substance, you aren’t making a game better by making it as big as you can, you’re just spreading your resources over a larger space.

darthviper is right, OP. For a good example of what he’s saying about UE4 not supporting this type of thing, go look at Outerra. That company had to make an entire engine to do what you’re describing, and it is EXACTLY what you’re wanting to do.

Thank you for the tip.

It’s not absolute necessary that I use only ue4 for building my game, I’ll use other programs too. And about why I would want a game like that, well…let’s say that my project only works with a map like that. I won’t talk much about my ideas here because it’s never been done and I don’t want them to be stolen. I just wanted to know if my ideas can be put into real game (and the map is the most important for the hole project to work).

Start with something simple and make your dream game when you are ready for it. If you need to ask then you are not ready. I started 20years ago and I would’t feel comfortable with planet size game. It’s doable but really hard.

Currently it is not possible. Unless its proceduraly generated. But then see: “No Man’s Sky”.

Earths lands surface it 150 000 000 km2. Lets say you go for 1/100th of that. It is still 150 000 km2.
Lets assume that one square km map piece would be around 100mb (realistically i think it would be at least double of that).
You are facing 100 000 000 * 150 000 bytes for just map data. That is 1.5 TB for just map (if i counted zeros correctly).
And its data you need to produce/download/upload etc. Game Engine also needs to swap it around in realtime.

Another factor is (unless you want to make **** like no mans play) creating content for such huge world. ! sq km is comparable to huge map from shooter games.
Are you ready to make 150 thousands of such maps, then sell game for 99.99$ ?

What if I just make the ideas of the game into sqetches and write everything for it and then sell it to a company? Is this better? Or do you think no one would be interested?

Ideas have exactly zero valuation. Game companies does not even read ideas you would send them. Just learn to make games and do it yourself if you really want to play it.

That absolutely never happens, they have many resources to come up with new projects on their own without taking submissions. They also have many talented and experienced game developers who come up with ideas as well.
Also, most of the time, if you think you have a unique amazing idea, it rarely is all that amazing.

It’s always interesting to see the ‘Game Design’ 101 folks end up on these forums. For as many as there are - usually avoiding some basic research to help them before asking such broad questions - it’s nice to see the overall intent to be supportive and otherwise friendly atmosphere from the forums.

Beyond that, it’s cool to learn something - I hadn’t ever seen Outerra before; pretty interesting tool. Looks good for flight and similar scale simulators.

Everyone has ideas - everyone. It’s about what you do with them. For the creativity and joy that the games industry brings, it’s still something that takes some effort and discipline to make a go of it. What’s great is that it’s more supportive and lucrative (relatively) than other types of creative works for indie developers. So you can learn the programming / scripting and basics to create some ideas yourself. Beyond that, if you want to design games, then start doing it. The trick is how you represent your designs; it’s feasible to pair that to a 3D art or 2D art path (modeling or concept art). But I’ll tell you from the perspective of a professional designer - it’s tough to break into games as a designer without knowing some scripting and programming.

How does Kerbal Space Program manage to have several large planets you can freely travel between?

You see t here is huge difference between what can be theoretically done, and what can be done with profit. Nobody will invest a penny into projects that do not return profit. I think i give quite good estimation of work that needs to be done for your idea. 150 thousands of maps is order of magnitude more that total number of maps created until today (and that is optimistic evaluation). Your idea while technically doable, will never give any profit. Doing same stuff proceduraly will give you game like no mans sky. I am uncertain if procedural generation of huge areas is less or more work than old fashioned making maps. Yes one can make some procedural map quite easy, but then look “no mans sky” making fun procedurally generated map is a whole new story.

So for your idea:

  • is it technically doable? My answer is i think so, no big obstacles here
  • can it be used to deliver fun game? And my answer is no, cost of making fun environment outweighs potential income of one or more orders of magnitude.

What if it’s a big multiplayer open (round)world with a castle on an isolated islan that only opens once/month for pvp battles with an interesting story ? And you can explore every inch of that world with medieval houses where players can live and do things.

the problem is U said that U want a full map of Earth every single time U load the game but the problem is it would reduce the game performance very much as the textures and lighting would take up massive amt. of power to run bro. and how do ya think of creating such large surface ???

510.1 million km²

The problem with a lot of these dream projects is scope, ability, and making something fun. It’s entirely possible to make spherical planets you can walk around on in UE4, Astroneer is a great example. Looking at a lot of different games that have entire planets, you really get to see the limitations. LODs and view distance limitations are always obvious. It’s basically impossible to have a large number of assets that fit the planet well, they are going to look barren or repetitive or both (No Mans Sky). Star Citizen is probably the closet thing to your dream project, and they’ve basically had to rewrite most of CryEngine, and from what I’ve seen, there’s still a lot of bugs with the multiplayer aspects even in space, due to scale. And they have $137 million in funding, probably about 100 people working on the game, 5 years in development, and the game is still far from complete. Even though planet exploration isn’t their main focus, they still spend more time, experience, money, and resources than you’d be able to.

My suggestion would be to either

A. Try to make a working spherical planet for fun, and don’t worry about having a realistic scale or MMORPG elements.

B. Take the RPG elements from your dream game and work on making a good RPG without the planet aspect or the MMO aspect.

C. Make a simple multiplayer project where players can interact with the world and each other.

Limit your scope and goals to something obtainable, and don’t try to do everything at once.