Robert The Rebuilder wrote:So, the main issue is: what to do in the game while Plasma pages in the other districts? The fade-to-black and subsequent blackout period is an in-game way of hiding this pause; you can pretend that the sliding doors make it pitch black, and that it takes a while for the other door to open. Initially, the pause will be 2-5 seconds, but it will grow as more shells are added.
If the loading triggers an actual pause of the game rather than a simple slow down or stutter, then yes it would be good to try and hide it somehow.
If you replace this door mechanism (and the blackout) with a corridor that you're running in between districts, your avatar (and viewpoint) will freeze while it pages in the other districts. There won't be any moving parts, but it may break the immersiveness of the experience.
Personally I dislike any kind of interface that is shoehorned on top of the screen, I find that very dis-immersive (yay I just made a new word!). So in any random game I'd rather have my avatar freeze but still see the game world than have a large 'loading' GUI pop up or a fade to black.. That's why I suggested the twisty corridor solution. I agree automatic mechanical solutions are very handy (for instance in Garrison), but I really feel this doesn't suit the city style. I'd have no problem with this in a shell, but I'd like to maintain the city at a more medieval level of technology, if that makes sense.
In the end this kind of thing tends to come down more to personnal preference than anything else. Should we vote?
Regarding boats: luckily, this same mechanism (with the sliding doors) can accomodate boats as well. I simplified the city geometry in this prototype, but I can add the canals to it to demonstrate.
That's what I guessed. In the end my problem is that it would be best to decide how to design this before we start implementing anything, because regardless of what we do for the pedestrian part of those zone the canal design may (and most likely will) influence the full shape of those buffer zones.. So if we ignore it for now latter on we might be stuck.. Designing streets is less of a problem because avatars can move around easily, so we can have twisty paths, stairs, bridges etc. Boats are much more limited, so they really are the determining factor here..
This whole issue annoys me..I had been avoiding it so far, thinking that I would only have to deal with it much latter, unfortunately that isn't the case. I will think about it seriously over the week end and come up with various solutions. If you have any more ideas they will be welcome.
Ehren wrote:The performance is getting ugly? Wow, how many filled shells are there now? Performance certainly is fine with the pre-version 1 that we have now.
Yes in the released version it is decent, but in the version I am putting together many things have been added and it starts to hurt performance quite a bit.. Also right now we only have 3 shells, but as soon we will have more performance will decrease again.
Hope it isn't delayed too much, will be fun to see.
Thanks. I had to walk away from it quite a bit lately, but now I'm working again full time. I'd rather not commit to a release date though.