I was looking on the Net and find only few informations so I want to ask my self on the forum.
Is Unreal Engine able to hold Multiplayer game (4-6 players) on a Huge map? Maybe half of Arma III size. As far as I know UE4 allow to make 10km^2 on single landscape right? It will work well if I create 9 landscapes and make a Grid 3x3 of them?
There is also .unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/LevelStreaming/WorldBrowser/index.html - but i read a text about Multiplayer.
***Big Worlds and Multiplayer
Right now world origin shifting is not supported in the multiplayer games. Here are two solutions that can be implemented for your specific needs:
Implement your own server solution. MMO licensees mostly do .
Implement some layer between clients and unreal dedicated servers which will transform shifted absolute positions from the clients and route them to the right dedicated server, which only holds part of the world where client is.
However if you disable world origin, shifting you can run a tiled world with a dedicated server. Dedicated servers will load all distance dependent levels, and each connected client will work as usual loading only level that satisfy streaming distance settings. A server holds a list of visible levels for each client and filters Actor replication by list.***
is only limitation to MMO? - that for me is a game that keep hundreds of people running around the whole map doing random things. I know Epic work on solution but how long it can take, if is near future my team can just keep working on Gameplay mechanics, and all other stuff until Epic polish aspect.
Maybe better idea is to make landscapes as instances that will load while passing thru gates etc. I was thinking about limit instances only too big Cities, some indoor places like caves, undergrounds & buildings and keep rest as single worlds but if there is no other way its better then nothing. Something like Borderlands, but with out keeping all players in same instance and traveling together.
Now to put it into perspective. Single continent on Azeroth in WoW (exluding Northend and Pandaria) is something like 7x4km.
Assassin’s Creed Unity, which is for some reason advertised as biggest AC game is something about 4km x 4km.
Skyrim is also about 4km x 4km.
the only realy big mutliplayer game which is not racing game, that I’m aware is ArmA 2/3, with maps up to 200km x 200km+.
My tip is, stop worrying about how big map can be, and start worring to fill that map with something to do. Even the only thing to do is going around and looking at vistas (;.
Wait Im confused someone else told me arma 2 chernarus is less than 20kmx20km but I thought it was 200kmx200km like you said
So arma2/dayz map is 10 times bigger than the world_max in 4.6?
If you use level streaming (through world composition, or actual streaming) you can achieve a nearly infinite sized game world.
I have seen many posts talking about the limit and currently:
The maximum size of a single landscape 8km x 8km
The maximum multiplayer size game is 20km x 20km
The maximum size for single player is almost infinite. If you adjust the 1cm=1uu units and use level streaming, you can create an absolutely massive landscape
But as inside mentioned, the size of the land is not important if you are having trouble filling it with assets.
Best bet if you want a large world, start out using the World Composition tool and keep building until you reach the limit. If you still feel the need to add more, drop to 1cm=0.5uu, and see if that gives you enough space.
But going back to my original question i did some tests on my own and played on Landscape map from Market that is a little smaller then actual maximum and i must say its decent size. But i had some performance problems on MAXIMUM size flat landscape - placing simple box took few seconds and any other action take time too.
GTX 780ti
i7-4770k non OC
16GB RAM
Its only me or it works like that? Will try tomorrow again after PC Reboot
Maybe there is option to hide part of landscape?
For now i think actual size will be OK for us, with 4.6 there will be some backup but anyway i would like to know if way is good for Multiplayer? Or its safer to make smaller “Zones” that will load from time to time?
Cheers
EDIT:
I heard that playing with scale can mess things - physics etc or is that myth?
It does make everything more complicated, as you need to adjust everything else to match that scale (physics among others), so would only be an option for a single player game.
However in 4.6 they have been working on getting multiplayer to work on much larger maps, so we will have to see what the release notes say about thiss when it is available.
Arma II map Chernarus is actually 12kmx11km or something like that … there is no way it is 200kmx200km. It takes you about 45 minutes to run from one corner to the other.
Chernarus is 225 square kilometers (so about 15*15km) and Altis of Arma III is 270 sqare kilometers.
I don’t know of any maps that are much larger than Chernarus for Arma II. Might be because 100 of it’s square kilometers are covered in forest and a big bunch is just open fields that keep people thinking it’s larger than it is.
Looks like Full Open world is not going to work in our case.
First of all its too small (not max one couse its make my UE lag with simple operations) i played with terrain editor + placed some prototype meshes from our concept map in scale 1:1 and i ended with 3 big cites (out of 8), 2 small villages (out of 13). On bigger landscape i could maybe achieve 40% of total space that we need.
Level Streaming works like charm and would solve problem but there is Multiplayer that is important for us.
So i think we gonna abandon open world and divine in into smaller squares with loading to other places that have logical and common sense. way we can have infinite world but at cost of freedom But there is a pros, if Level Streaming will start working with MP we can jump into Level compositor.
See the link provided above by Denson for implementation, and Denson for #2 as well with one caveat -> There are some changes coming in 4.6, so keep an eye on the release notes when it is available, you should be able to shift the world origin through composition, still waiting on the details though.
I’m really wondering if there are no precision issues at the extremities with 20kmx20km and how much testing they did as well,
I asked zoombapup about and he said Mikko (the guy who wrote Recast which is what Epic are using for navmesh generation) told him once that 8k was a pretty good max size for precision issues (he worked on the CryEngine AI stuff)
So I’m not sure how Epic magically got around , unless he also said
It could be that improvements in the physics engine allow for a greater space without precision issues (just a theory)
I really hope we can use the new max world space in multiplayer with no issues because that would be a dream, Hopefully its not just 10
There has been alot of improvements in the physics engine and the engine in general to get the increased size. It’s not something they just sit down and said we are going to change the max world size and just changed it. There was / is alot of other things that have been happening over the last few releases that has gotten it to the point.
Our team just implemented the game world with world comp (215km^2) and I was just curious about multiplayer, that’s why I asked. I hope origin shifting is fixed within a few months.
But there is a pros, if Level Streaming will start working with MP we can jump into Level compositor.