As the title implies, I'm trying to figure out the formula to figure up how large your world is based on the number of terrain blocks and so on, but i'm missing the basic understanding of how many meters are in a terrain block. I asked several times on other threads but didn't get a response so I'm making a new thread. There's a big of weird terminology and the world editor is pretty vague.

For instance in world info i get Area Size: 128. Well, that's cool but what is an "area" and 128 whats? Meters perhaps?

The current world extends from -12,-5 to 42, 26
How many square kilometers would that make the world currently, and also how many meters in one terrain block (the engine calls these "areas" perhaps? I'm not sure).

Thanks

• An area is one terrain block
• An area size of 128 means there's 128x128 units in each area
• According to the export guide, 1 unit is 1 meter
  

With an understanding of the above, you can come to the conclusion that each area in your world is 128x128 meters or 0.128x0.128 kilometers.

Assuming your world contains every area (i.e. no gaps, is a perfect rectangle) between (-12, 5) and (42, 26), your world stretches across 55x32 areas for a grand total of 1760 areas.

55 areas x 0.128 km = ~7.0 km
32 areas x 0.128 km = ~4.1 km

7.0 km * 4.1 km = 28.7 km²

Or, (1760 areas * 0.128 km) * 0.128 km = 28.8 km²

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Also I should note that scale is what you make it. You are really the one who determines the final scale. You could make your character have a scale of 0.0001f and fit your entire world onto 1 area if you wanted and still have the appearance of a world with 1760 areas, for instance.

Excellent. So that would mean that it's 7.6km wide currently if I get my math correct.
At that rate, barring unforseen cataclysmic events preventing the engine from handling it, it's very much possible to create worlds larger than those in most MMOs, when you figure in each SWG planet was around 12kmx12km.

Thank you very much!

(11-20-2011 05:40 AM)EthanC Wrote:  Excellent. So that would mean that it's 7.6km wide currently if I get my math correct.
At that rate, barring unforseen cataclysmic events preventing the engine from handling it, it's very much possible to create worlds larger than those in most MMOs, when you figure in each SWG planet was around 12kmx12km.

Thank you very much!

Don't worry about that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFgBlfp01kE

(11-20-2011 09:23 AM)evldmn Wrote:  Don't worry about that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFgBlfp01kE

Can someone advise how Esenthel handles that on the server? You have clients streaming a large world, but the server needs to have it all loaded I would assume - so that physics events etc are accurate.

And if so - then you aren't going to have too many players logged in on the server before it start grinding to a halt.

Also - how is object loading / unloading handled on client (trees / houses etc)? Is that loaded / unloaded on a per area basis?

This is why I thing its better to build large terrains from multiple interlinking worlds (so each world has its own server to handle logins and physis etc). But then we need visibility across worlds so we can see the next one as we approach the border.

Thanks aceio76 ... I refreshed but recall reading those wiki pages a few months back.

My post may have not been worded well ... I guess my concern is more understanding at what point the server will start stalling ... streaming on the client by loading/unloading areas is one thing, but the server is quite another as it will have a lot going on in a large multi-player / small MMO application. Once you have a decent number of players logged in and physics flying around on a largish world the server is going to be doing a lot fast.

Essenthel seems to be suggesting a max world size of about 40x40km on another thread due to position being stored as 32bit floats, but I guess a dense world with a number players connected in battle etc might only be a fraction of that size before the server reaches that critical point and starts lagging.