I don't think Radiac is talking about outdoor maps but rather indoor maps with a view to the outside, those are significantly different. Think of all the buildings we've entered during our time in CoH and not one single one had a window so you could see the actual outside.

The hard would be in making the window properly reflect the outside based on the player viewing angle, perhaps even including other players (or "copies") who travel past them.

Gangrel wrote:

Not hard to do in the slightest. As a idea of "how hard": 2 of wildstars dungeons/adventures happen inside "dungeon" style area's (Stormtalon and Kel Voreth)... the others are in an "open world" (as in pretty damn large maps).
One of the adventures is actually in a *copy* of the zone that it is placed in pretty much (Malgrave trail)[1]. The latter 2 dungeons (Skullcano/Sanctuary of The Sword maiden) are in open world map areas (pretty much).
So not hard to do actually.
Actually, when you get down to it, the Dreck mission in CoX was an "open world" instance... well custom map.
[1] It isn't the full zone map, but still pretty damn large.

Kel-Voreth technically does not qualify as that now I think about it. It looks very similar to the outdoors Osun stronghold outside of it. Only with Eldan stuff built into a part of it.

As far as I know an indoor instance with windows of the outside world would not be that hard to do at all really nowadays. The only reason CoX never got it was simply because the game was old and the code was finicky as hell. I imagine since Titan City has plenty of skyscrapers that we'll have a few missions were we can see a view of the outside world. Perhaps even missions in Hardlock might provide this, or other cities or locations if they got that far....

Gangrel wrote:

blacke4dawn wrote:
I don't think Radiac is talking about outdoor maps but rather indoor maps with a view to the outside, those are significantly different. Think of all the buildings we've entered during our time in CoH and not one single one had a window so you could see the actual outside.
The hard would be in making the window properly reflect the outside based on the player viewing angle, perhaps even including other players (or "copies") who travel past them.

That could be significantly harder, because you would have to get the player location information for everyone just outside the same instance but in the same zone and communicate that with the instance server[1].
And then this leads just to the question of "are the windows one way", because if they are... you might as well just *fake* what is happening outside (to a greater or lesser degree) for ease of use. If they are two way... what reasoning do you have to stop people entering the same door and walking into your instance?
It might well be easier to *fake* for a similar result (ie it is just computer controlled copies of Heroes/villians/mobs that you see outside) and not an actual copy of the real game world.
Course, it could always be fun to send a message to those inside the game world by emoting outside their game could provide support.
Personally, I am of the view where "If I can see them, I can get to them",
[1] This is assuming that they are going a similar route to CoX where instances had their own map server. Yes, it is an assumption, but as so little is known about how they are setting it up

Thinking a bit more I think that "faking it" is the only realistic option for this. Based primarily on that because even the open world will be instanced (to not overcrowd it) then trying to correlate one dungeon instance with one open world instance will be very difficult, especially when the number of instances in both cases are different.

Honestly, this would Still run much faster than a Rikti Invasion even! :/

Creating a map with both an interrior of a structure and exterior larger map is completely possible. It would however come with quite a few non-trival issues to deal with.
Namely, most instanced maps of interior locations are not designed to scale with the structure that the map is tagged to. The scale is off set fo accomodate the full possible groupings of player character, with spacing for spawns (and size of said spawns - which in our game will scale with team size), possible other osbstacles, and of course, providing something of a broken up lay out to avoid extreme monotony that would other appear in more 'realistic' maps, particularly when we are talking about something like an office building.

Having a building with both interior and ways to enter / exist a larger city map would mean that if the building was used from an existing city map of the open world level, then its interior would not most likely be suitable for full player character groupings and all spawns. Possible yes, but it would be a very different experience and probably not the most beneficial to successful play in the typical design sense. There would need to be a lot of things done differently to resolve spawning logic. Which means a separate spawning logic system. Which can be rather redundant if not used in abundance.

The other way, and this is something I would (as a dev) use as a "cheat". I mentioned this as a possibility for another scenario of involving the idea of a moving train instance. That is, making a video capture of the world map zone in question from the pov of the camera placement (like windows of a building), and use the video as a texture on a wall placed outside the building as part of the instance. Literally, right up against the structure PCs are within. It would give the illusion of the "world" outside the building. The downsise is, it may not always match up with what is actually going on outside within the world map level. But it could be used to provide a sense of atmosphere if done right as well.

Well, this would lend itself well to penthouse type of missions, where you can see the whole city, but cant break through the insulated windows, but could possibly zipline from one building to the next to continue the pursuit of the perpetrators, in a sort of Cut-Scene fashion, after you click on a specific door that is. ;)

Gangrel wrote:

The important thing is *what exactly* do you want to show on the outside of the buildings? Do you just want to *look* like the normal city, minus the Player characters, or would you want it to *Have* the player characters outside running around/flying/beating up the bad guys... where you could go "I just saw my best friend Super McBobPants fly past the window"

That's the question about which I'm still unclear, in this whole discussion. I assume it's the former, since there really is no reason to do the latter. I expect that very few people would pause to enjoy the view out of a window, if they're on a mission map. Even then, having some image of the city is more than adequate (perhaps even with some moving cars, pedestrians, and whatnot). If someone wants to see the full, living city then all they need to do is not go into an instance.

WarBird wrote:

If the space requires an exterior 'scape with windows and so on, I'd kind of expect it to work like Pocket D again. In that there is a less detailed but real (in the sense that there are 3D objects that exist within the map space) cityscape outside and visible through any windows.

The key phrase being "Less Detailed", or just a lower LOD (Level of Detail). :)

An issue, I see in this, is 'forcing' instanced maps to conform to the dimensions of open-world locations. I suppose one solution would be to place these viewable windows only approximately correlated to exterior dimensions. What I mean is that, the view through such a window is generic, replicating what one Might see from a window in a particular location.

As exciting as it might be, to look out a window and see the actual game-world, and to message your friends to come and 'look in' a window that you're looking out of, I think that would require too much localizing data. One would need to correlate the mission instance with a Specific location in-game and map all of the characters and other assets into the space around the mission instance. Too much data.

Instead, the space outside a window could be just an extra 'room' beyond the barrier, which is populated by a loop of scenery from an approximate exterior location at the time being viewed. It can be generic, instead of specific and accurate. Much easier to do.

There could even be doors that enter into this 'exterior' space, and the space might correlate with an existing space in the world-map. However, Exiting that 'exterior' space towards 'the world' would result in a zone-crossing event as the character is removed from the instance and placed in the referenced location.

What I don't think should happen, is for the scenery viewed through these windows to have a direct, real-time correlation with open-world locations. I can think of some undesirable scenarios that might be played out, if it were actually so.

Be Well!
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