AC2 was RE: [MUD-Dev] Total Annilation of Downtime

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: Brian Hook [mailto:brianhook at pyrogon.com] 
> On Behalf Of Damion Schubert
  
>> trying to make UO2 was trying to make interesting places to go
>> using a heightfield engine.
 
> And this is why I think heightfield engines, as enticing as they
> are, are destined to be irrelevant if you want significant areas
> of detail -- you simply can't get enough detail when working in,
> essentialy, two dimensions.
 
> The fallback, of course, is to use a heightmap for large swaths of
> generally unpopulated areas, but then switch to a pure mesh based
> representation for small areas of detail.  This also has its own
> peculiar problems as well.

Or why not just treat heightmaps as a specialised mesh in your
general engine?

What looks to be a bigger problem is that developers have removed
zones, or have at least implemented invisible transitions. They then
have a really limited working set of textures+meshes for the whole
world. I guess limiting the potentially visible set with a zoneless
world is actually a pretty tricky problem, especially if you don't
want people fleeing monsters to be able to reach a certain point
past which a monster can't chase them further.  I imagine being able
to step over an invisible line and see a monster wink out of
existence would look a little silly.

Personally, I find a low poly world with good textures more
interesting than a high poly world with poor texturing (which is why
I think the PS2 sucks).  The character in the EQ monster models just
outclasses the others that have come since. This is partly because
they leverage traditional fantasy lore using the resonance these
mobs already have, but also because simplicity often looks nicer
than the fussyness of newer games models.

The other important factor, that commonly seems to be overlooked, is
getting the height, fov and combat range of the player characters
right. Its amazing how little of the monsters you can actually see
when fighting in 90% of these games.

Maybe I'm just jaded, but it seems that the majority of these
products fail on the small, but incredibly important details that
would probably have taken 2 weeks to sort out prior to release.

Dan
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