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user123

disappointing map - why have you just copy & pasted islands and rotated some?

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On 12/22/2018 at 4:45 PM, user123 said:

will we not just sail around and notice majority of the island are the same..?

Visit them.  You will learn that while the shape is the same, the island's are actually very different.  For instance, that one that looks like a slice of bread with a bite out of it...I have seen 3 of those...one is jungle, with a land bridge over the mouth of the bay, and one is temperate, with a statue of Paul Revere, complete with lantern, on the left side of the mouth of the bay, as you approach the island, and one is a polar island.  I think there are even Desert, and Tundra versions of that island.  I am OK with it being the same footprint.  I actually enjoy noting the differences between the islands, even though the shape is the same on the map.  If you did not have a map, would would never even know they were the same shape.  They look completely different in first person.

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1 minute ago, Captain Jack Shadow said:

Visit them.  You will learn that while the shape is the same, the island's are actually very different.  For instance, that one that looks like a slice of bread with a bite out of it...I have seen 3 of those...one is jungle, with a land bridge over the mouth of the bay, and one is temperate, with a statue of Paul Revere, complete with lantern, on the left side of the mouth of the bay, as you approach the island, and one is a polar island.  I think there are even Desert, and Tundra versions of that island.  I am OK with it being the same footprint.  I actually enjoy noting the differences between the islands, even though the shape is the same on the map.  If you did not have a map, would would never even know they were the same shape.  They look completely different in first person.

I suspected this but had not gotten around to verifying it. While 700 distinct shapes would be preferable in a perfect world, in the practical world of limitations of game design I'm perfectly willing to accept this. I can't speak for anyone else, but the prospect of 700 unique islands to explore was a major draw for me in playing this game, so what you're saying here keeps that draw intact. Thanks for putting this out there.

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They are different but it wouldn't take much effort to generate different island shapes since the stuff on them is all different in some way or another. Mind you there are still SOME islands with identical features but different foilage etc which does make it look different. The Unofficial I am on has multiple copies of the island I was living on in official and I do agree they were distincly different there was areas under water, or where land was missing but it didn't make sense that the island looked the exact same since those spots should appear differently on the map. But I am hopeful this is something they will adjust before the game comes out of EA because I think it is an important thing to do.

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11 hours ago, Caldrin said:

Can you imagine the size of the client if you had 700 (or whatever the number is) totally unique islands.. 

Technically there are.

Borderlands doesn't actually have a Bazillion guns stored. No mans Sky doesn't actually have 18 Quintilian planets, but technically all of these statements are accurate and true. 

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This is just a guess, but the island terrains are made up of a variety of objects.  There are a set number of objects.  I would expect that they could, and will have, more island shapes to work with in the future.  I would like to see it such that each grid has at least one large island, with a large bay in it, in the future.

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The amount of actual cut paste is usually 2x from some north and south replication although tundra is more like 4x (there is no western/eastern/central tundra as region map indicates -  it is all the same)  with freeports being 8x.  Each island shape has biome variations that loads in new sublevels (mountains, rocks, buildings, statues etc) that makes it look entirely different, and often there might be even four variations within the same biome so that even if it is used in same region it looks different.   

There are indeed hundreds of unique islands when you consider sublevel and resource variations.    Equatorial has no mountains and maybe some easter island style statues, east tropical and west tropical have three variants of the same shape with different mountains and rocks and each of those are in turn multiplied for resource variations.   So even though they might all have similar palm trees and ferns named differently, they still feel different.   Likewise Northwest vs.  Northeast Temperate also has a different feel much like on earth temperate rain forests can be very different.

I have flown the entire map and observed the true uniqueness of these isles that share nothing but a footprint, even from the air it is difficult to realize it is the same footprint.  Even that larger island with a very distinctive bay you would be hard pressed to guess  you are on the same shape 

What we did for our unofficial server is push isles together jigsaw style, even for freeports (we did not need 8x copies).   So even though a north south freeport might be true copypaste, it looks very different from the docks because we created a new harbor using another isle.  We actually spent weeks of time air traveling to make sure each grid had a similar theme as there was many islands to chose from.   

 

Part of the problem is the map - it is only showing the base island shape.  It is not showing the sublevels - like where the freeport dock is.  It is interesting how they reused the sublevels to make things look different - even the same sublevel like that equatorial skull freeport - that same skull gets used elsewhere.

 

This thread was worth necroing the game got a bad rap for copypaste from those who only compared shapes without visiting them in the game.   I think now that more have the island editor for their own maps using the hundreds of library islands that people know better

 

Edited by krazmuze
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I expect over the course of EA more unique islands will be added to the game to add move variety.

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They have to improve client/server performance first, that is the drawback on our unofficial as it is denser than official at fast speeds sublevel popin becomes a problem.  We had to stop flying and get into real boats to test our density was OK.   And of course base loading is even worse so more land means more bases which means more popin.  So there is a limit how much more tightly they can pack the map, I bet they add expansion grids before they retrofit.

Edited by krazmuze
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2 hours ago, krazmuze said:

They have to improve client/server performance first, that is the drawback on our unofficial as it is denser than official at fast speeds sublevel popin becomes a problem.  We had to stop flying and get into real boats to test our density was OK.   And of course base loading is even worse so more land means more bases which means more popin.  So there is a limit how much more tightly they can pack the map, I bet they add expansion grids before they retrofit.

Exactly. People breeze over patch notes like this: - Optimized performance of various server subsystems.  then complain about X,Y,Z not being addressed because it didn't directly impact their experience. What they don't realize is that these are the necessary steps to get from here to there.

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On 2/20/2019 at 10:09 PM, Nari said:

Technically there are.

Borderlands doesn't actually have a Bazillion guns stored. No mans Sky doesn't actually have 18 Quintilian planets, but technically all of these statements are accurate and true. 

Ok maybe I should have said 700 unique heightmaps 😉

No man's sky is very different in the way planets are formed with the game engine. I would imagine they use a seed system so when you enter an area to get the seed from the servers and then the client generates the planet on the fly.. but they created their engine from the ground up for this.

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If you think that is is bad then it gets worse. There is even at least one region that I have noticed that has the exact same island copy pasted twice in it. The only difference is a bit of rotation. I noticed this because I tried to do some treasure maps there and went to the exact same spot where it showed on the map and oddly there was no beams there. So I did a bit more sailing around and discovered this second island which was a 1:1 replica of the first..........

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The only place I am aware of that the  same island is repeated within a grid is in freeports - they always have the same island repeated 4x and yes that does make freeport treasure mapping annoying - but you do not have to sail those you can take the free ferry.

So what island was you actually in, as it is likely you just did not notice that it was a unique variant.  I would like to investigate exactly how different they are.

 

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