System Requirements

[Mati9319]

Recently I've been thinking and here are the results.


In order to run this game completely smooth, we'd need a computer that is able to handle calculations and executions of tons of:

• physical interactions between:
  • NPCs and NPCs,
  • NPCs and objects,
  • objects and objects.
• AI interactions between NPCs and NPCs,
• individual decisions made by EVERY SINGLE NPC.

And all of that in real time. Let's just put it in a large open world without loading times containing this vast number of objects and interacions and we're probably gonna have one of the most demanding games in history.

I hope I'm wrong. But hell... I'm already experiencing regular slow-motion moments interrupted by Benny Hill sequences in Exanima so it can't be any better for me in Sui Generis. I know there's still a lot of optimalization to come, but it probably won't help me much.

 

[konggary]

Pretty sure it will feature a type of instancing, not every little thing everywhere will be calculated in real time. Economy and global things will be background processes though.

 

[Mati9319]

Pretty sure it will feature a type of instancing, not every little thing everywhere will be calculated in real time. Economy and global things will be background processes though.

Well, you must be right. Pretty much every open world game is working this way. It's a shame I didn't think about this. I'm still only curious about the decisions of NPCs in that matter, like is this system gonna work only in our vicinity or is going to be a background process too?

 

[konggary]

In some games with this kind of rendering, there's an area around your character (radius is defined by devs) where things are active. This is where enemies will roam around and things will be activated. The specifics of how enemies and events come into being within this area varies by the devs. In this one STALKER mod, there's an option to set the distance at which NPCs are active. If you were out of this range, you could see an NPC but they would not move or anything, and could not be harmed.

In, say, Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous, there is a global economy and other global processes. These take place while the game is unpaused, regardless of where you are or what you are doing. As long as time is passing, traders will trade, bandits will rob, wars will progress, even if you do not see it happening. In Dead Rising, you can roam around in like "Mall Area 1" and the enemies will be active there. Other parts of the mall may appear to have zombies in them, but they're not really there: just fake ones. Meanwhile, there are a few processes running, including the time of day and the status of other survivors.

I cannot speak for the devs on this, but this is a tried and true formula. What you are wary of is what makes ARMA so laggy at times: this game keeps all the characters / events, etc constantly running, regardless of distance.

Right now in Exanima, there is a type of instancing: the loading between levels acts as the instance. The specific "minutia" of this instancing is up to the devs: for example whether they track the placements of NPCs in a tavern across the map, etc.

What has lagged me in Exanima is the rooms with 100 objects and intense lighting, rather than the combat.