Subject: RE: [stella] Role-Playing Game Development From: Amos Bannister <arb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 15:54:51 +1000 |
> From: Dan Knapp [mailto:dankna@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] > > Incidentally, this (256x256) is the exact size of > Britannia, at least in > > the Commodore 64 and PC versions of Ultima IV (and > probably all versions). > > Before I wrote a map decoder for Ultima IV and deciphered > the game map > > file on the floppy I would have sworn that the surface of > Britannia had to > > have been larger than that since 256x256 doesn't sound > very large, but in > > practice it does yield quite a large world. > Oh, yes. It may be sacrilege to mention it on this list, > but Hyrule is > only 16*16 (in Zelda 1), plus the dungeons which are really > just a few > basic room-patterns used multiple times. So 256*256 is more > locations by a > factor of 256. However, you can't possibly fit that many > distinct locations > in 16k - at a byte per location that would be 64k; multiply > by 10 or more. Speaking of sacrelige - never say something can't be done on the 2600 in this list! A 256*256 grid fully populated would need 65536 cells to be encoded true, but mapping that much area is going to be very time-consuming, and not worth the effort. Instead, all you would have to do is create a sparse-array of "populated" cells, and have a handful of "generic" "empty" cells which could be used for cells not in the sparse-array. You could use a simple function to map broad details (desert, water, forest, mountain, snow) and have maybe two or three generic examples of each type. When a cell is referenced that is not in the list, pick a random cell of the relevant type and use that one. I could envisage a 256*256 world being able to be encoded in 16K. Admittedly only a small percentage of it would be actually defined (say 10% - still a large number of cells) but most users would not notice this, and the world will seem incredibly rich and "explorable". Personally, I think 256*256 would be overkill on the VCS, but I'd love to see someone do it. (And I am sure someone will.) -- Amos Bannister Principal Developer Stratagem Infobase West Melbourne, AUSTRALIA -- Archives (includes files) at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/ Unsub & more at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/
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