Worldmap... is BIG.

D

Dubby

Where'd That 6th Toe Come From?
If you want to explore it, open the console and type the following lines:

setini "bBorderRegionsEnabled:General" 0
setgs fBaseMoveSpeed 750
TCL

The world map, as seen in the pipboy, is about 85,000 x 85,000 units. As far as I can tell, 20.8 units is about the same as 1 foot. If you're wondering how much that is - then the pipboy's worldmap is somewhere around 0.6 square miles. However... the ENTIRE world map seems to be much, much larger... somewhere around 750,000 x 750,000 units. This is actually rather excessive - the LOD doesn't even handle all of it. In addition, the map also appears to have been generated from a rather detailed topographic map.

Just some interesting info I thought I'd share with you boys and gals.
 
WOW nice find...i wonder why they dident use all this space expansions?

Well Dubby i got to say this your one of best modders so far keep it up :)
 
Ravager69 said:
They will make a lot of DLC and they'll need space for it, I guess.
Click to expand...

My quess is same DLC and expansion 1 or 2...well i dont mean to be rude but maybe F3 will not be that bad...and im not talking about mods...
 
They may haved used a digital elevation model created by a Satellite image. It's very simple to do and very accurate. I should know since it's my job 8-) .

You can head over to geocommunity http://www.geocomm.com/ and pick up as many DEMs as you like. I used a model of Fairfax County Virginia to produce several 3D projects for various customers, and for personal use. I think the models come in a proprietary format that can be converted to VRML.
 
My question is, is this extra space usable somehow? Once the G.E.C.K. is released, are these locations valid, in as much as we can send players there via scripted functions? For example, a man from northern Maryland needs help, can his conversation port someone into this region, and would we even want to if it's beyond the LOD?
 
I was wondering if its possible to scan this undiscovered terrian maybe there are some place or easter eggs?
 
So your saying the world map is roughly 8 times what it is in FO3, that is a lot of land!
 
Yoshee said:
So your saying the world map is roughly 8 times what it is in FO3, that is a lot of land!
Click to expand...

IM preaty sure its not mistake and bethesda will use this land maybe they will improve f3 step by step...
 
This just makes the compressed non-desolate nature of the 'active' worldmap even more damning. So much space to play with in making a wasteland and they only used so little.

Oh well, good news for modders and expansions, I guess.
 
Yeah, only bad news? Obviously, no path grids in the area beyond the borders. So if you want to make it usable, the path grids have to be made...
 
I'm a bit mixed at whether it is a good sign or bad.

On the surface, it seems like the engine must have a built in max size of considerable dimension, which gives me hope that significantly larger maps than FO3 are possible.

On the other hand, they only chose a small part of it for actual use, so I'm worried whether the actual performance limits of the engine will fall apart if the map gets much bigger than the area they used.

My hope is they just wanted to make a very detailed compact area, and only used as much space as they had time to populate according to their vision. If that is the case, hopefully a world map of wide stretches of nothing is possible. (I like the desolate feel of having to really travel, one thing I liked about Oblivion is that it felt like a cross country journey to go from city to city most times). FO3 is almost too dense, although it makes sense for the setting.
 
I am just wondering if anyone has made any progress yet with the map size situation?
 
If I ever get a free moment I am going to make a mod to let me walk around the terrain to the south of the map. I'm sure someone else will have figured it out by the time I can comment though (most of my dev time needs to come around the holidays).
 
Doesn't this game use cell-based streaming? If it's not loading every single cell in the game into ram at the same time I don't see why a bigger world would cause the game to fall apart.

I think this is more of a sign that they generated the world before they had planned much content.

Perhaps they expected to use a scale similar to Fallout 1 or 2 where you wander more or less down the entire coast with vast distances in between points of interest?
 
I read on one of the blogs that Beth actually condenesed the city down and expanded the wasteland to help with game flow. That's one reason I think Beth's building is slightly off.


Fallout 1 and 2s maps did look huge but you didn't actually travel it. your travel was represented by an icon drawn on the map and the map opening up as you moved around it. I'm not saying either way is better in fact I'm kinda nostalgic when it comes to most of the stuff in FO1&2, but I much prefer Beths way for fallout3s world.
 
Aero said:
I read on one of the blogs that Beth actually condenesed the city down and expanded the wasteland to help with game flow. That's one reason I think Beth's building is slightly off.


Fallout 1 and 2s maps did look huge but you didn't actually travel it. your travel was represented by an icon drawn on the map and the map opening up as you moved around it. I'm not saying either way is better in fact I'm kinda nostalgic when it comes to most of the stuff in FO1&2, but I much prefer Beths way for fallout3s world.
Click to expand...

Well I agree, it was a choice that served their particular gameplay style better. I did find the fact that you were limited to essentially one city to be unfortunate though.

The fact that you could set out from the Hub and end up at the LA Boneyard about one in-game month later was more interesting than the half a day hike across Fallout 3's entire world.
 
I think wide open waste and manual travel has some charm if done properly. I'm also worried I'll bore the more rabid tweens in the audience with my concept of travel actually taking longer than two minutes (until you get a vehicle mod which will probably be fast travel like morrowind).

My concern about size is mostly to deal with LOD and how much detail gets on screen if I have these wide open spaces with a large number of features. I want you to walk to a city and see it coming on the horizon, and it looks like an incredible location, even if I have to use all sorts of tricks to undo the scale afterward (like empty buildings, collapsed ruins, other excuses why the city looks big but only has a dozen main characters and maybe a couple dozen dronelike ones :) ).

My worrying is probably pointless, game engines have come a long way since the ancient days!
 
Of course, Dubby knows far more about this than me, but I'm not sure what LOD has to do with this at all.

As I understand it, the game world is broken down into squares and depending on your ini settings, only the squares surrounding the player are streamed into RAM. so no matter how big the total game world is, wouldn't the graphics engine, LOD included, only account for a small amount of it at a time?
 
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