Hi I am currently working on a large RPG game and want to know the best optimal way of creating one for best performance. I am currently creating it with the blank open world level option and want to know the best settings to use to create a large open world map.
This is kind of a non-starter as a question. The ‘best’ settings are going to vary wildly depending on a bunch of different factors like: what’s your target platform? What’s your target minimum system spec? How dense are you planning to build your world (i.e. are you making an open world with big cities, or smaller villages, or just occasional buildings, do you have super dense forests, or more of a desert/savannah/grasslands, or a mixture of both)? How much water is in your world? How large is ‘large’ (100 square km? 1000? 10000?)
I could go on.
There is no ‘silver bullet’ of best settings for an open world game.
Depedning on size, the maximum allowable map size in 2x2 configuration is probably what you have to use to maintain things working.
However, if you are serious about your project and wanting it to work, you will probably forget entierly about landscapes and map sizes and move on to better systems of your own making, or possibly of someone elses making that isnt Epic.
There is plenty of work out there that supports infinte maps created at runtime, just nothing made by epic.
I guess, unless you count stacking up infinite amount of rock instances, turning on nanite, and calling that a “solution”…
Anyway, point being. What you are doing is already going to fail just because you want to know about landscapes.
1 Like
Thanks for getting back. I am looking to create a vast map with a desert wasteland and a city that is way past the desert limits, think Fallout and other RPGs, I would like to know the steps to create mpas along those lines. With target platform, I would like it to run on modern consoles.
Roughly what size is a typical open world game? Say on the lines of Fallout or others in that region.
Depends, size can be huge if you do things proper.
As far as steps go.
Learn a GIS program. Make the terrain using that, or world machine, or anything that manipulates height-maps.
Assemble the height-maps in Houdini (or any DCC you prefer). Slice them up and import into the engine for assembly.
Rough sizing should be 1km^2 parts, well below a total vert count of 1vert per meter.
Then you need to create a replacement HLOD system that will swap out distance pieces with aggregated pieces (which are also reduced in vertex count with proper lod).
Doing it that way, you can get even the Switch to do massive things…
Cool thanks for letting me know I will try this. Apologies for the late response.