Forum ‹ Multiplayer ‹ Large Persistent Worlds...

[NPSF3000]

Is/will it possible to create large persistent worlds?

[Oliver]

Yep.

You can create infinitely large worlds be dividing your world into zones just like all other MMO games does it.

You'll be able to make it persistent when we make the persistance api available.

[NPSF3000]

Okay then, how do I move users from zone to zone, and what are my options if a zone gets overloaded? How do I tell a zone which area it is, and how do I create one?

Sorry for the stupid questions, I can't find any pertinent documentation.

[Danenania]

There is a 40 users per room limit, correct? Will there be any way to have this restriction lifted in order to create seamless worlds without zones?

[NPSF3000]

Personally I think a seamless world is critical to the engine, however:

If I am allowed to have a client establish at least two connections (to different rooms), and inter-room communication I think I can pull it off...

Edit:

These are serious questions!

[Oliver]

The limit is 45 people pr. room.

You can have connections to as many rooms as you want at any given time. We don't have any built in limit in Player.IO.

Okay then, how do I move users from zone to zone, and what are my options if a zone gets overloaded? How do I tell a zone which area it is, and how do I create one?

Every single MMO divides up their world into zones or regions: they're just more or less clever about it. EverQuest just had fixed areas. One area = one zone. WoW uses dynamic zones that shrink and expand (as far as i remember) to work for varying amounts of players across the world. It's a complicated area.

My suggestion would be to take the EverQuest approach, and simply divide your world into small enough units. You can then have the client either "rezone" when moving from one zone to another, or use multiple connections to enable players to walk seamlessly from one end of the world to the other.

[Danenania]

Seems reasonable Oliver. Any suggestions for how to deal with zones that reach the 45 player limit? Would be bad to tell a player: "sorry, zone is full, you can't come in." Also makes it difficult to do social hub zones (Bazaar or PoK for example in EQ ). Are there ways to work around this?

[Oliver]

Seems reasonable Oliver. Any suggestions for how to deal with zones that reach the 45 player limit? Would be bad to tell a player: "sorry, zone is full, you can't come in." Also makes it difficult to do social hub zones (Bazaar or PoK for example in EQ ). Are there ways to work around this?

Some suggestions:
- Smaller zones
- Do like the D&D game: have multiple instances of the same zone (I'm in bazaar #2)
- Close of the zones when they're full (as you mention yourself)

It depends on what kind of gameplay you want.

Also:
- We might let you have more people in a room if you hit the limit and you become a paying costumer.

[Oliver]

Hi Guys,

Just a short note to let you know that we've launched the persistence/database solution

It's called BigDB, and you can read more about it here:

http://playerio.com/features/bigdb/
http://playerio.com/documentation/bigdb/

- Oliver