Quote: "While I dont really want to argue with Dryll as his terrain trickery is very impressive,"
*blush* - but really it is not very complicated, at least the matrix side of things isn't. The difficult part is filling a large world with enough objects to make it interesting.
Quote: "I can run a single matrix thats bigger than 10Kx10K units and is 100x100"
The significant thing is the number of tiles, 100x100. Whilst not overtly huge, it is far from optional when the camera can only see an area of around 20x20.
When you divide your area (10,000) by the tiles (100) you end up with 100 area per tile. The original post is aiming for 20 area per tile in the same map size.
To achieve this, that would take a 500x500 matrice (rather than 100x100) which neither DBC or DBP inately supports, and if they did, this would display very slowly indeed.
The same onscreen effect could also be achieved with a matrice texture 5 times the size. However DB's size limit on matrix textures (because of 1 texture per matrix) is really very inhibiting and makes this inplausable. Especially if you wish to have some 'blend' tiles.
Therefor upgrading to DBP isn't going to solve these issues, whilst it does allow for a slightly larger matrice and certainly the 3D engine is much faster - it still wont be sufficient to create the world.
Using techniques like my Terrascape engine however will get around the problem, and give you the ability to make a world any size you like, with as much detail as you like, but like I said earlier, any idiot can make a big game world, it takes a skilled programmer to fill it with content.
Pneumatic Dryll
