ArmA II's infinite land

[walker 0]

Hi all

As we all now know ArmA II now includes the compliment of OFP/ArmA's infinite sea. ArmA II's infinite land.

I wonder what it is like to walk in the infinite land?

One of the first things I intend to do when I get into ArmA is an expedition to the infinite land.

The concept of dynamic infinite land leads to some interesting philosophical and practical programming questions.

How infinite is infinite?

If I die in Infinity have I really died?

How do you construct dynamic infinity?

If it is based on a mathematical formulae a kind of Koch curve formulae why not just create all game land this way?

If it is based on a Koch curve type formulae can we discover the underlying structure and from it losslessly compress any real land mass?

Just my first thoughts

If we go on an expedition into infinite land we would need a server running 24/7 though saving might be as good.

We would need to set up FARP and Logistics to resupply fuel.

Markers as waypoints would be usefull.

Any one else want to come on the expedition?

Kind regards walker

Edited May 22, 2009 by walker

[ultimateflashpoint 10]

You just asked some very hard question.:p ArmAII will have infinite land? Where was this reported from?

[NeMeSiS 11]

If I die in Infinity have I really died?

Do you die in a crash when you fly above the endless OFP oceans? ;)

[avibird 1 141]

Hi all

As we all now know ArmA II now includes the compliment of OFP/ArmA's infinite sea. ArmA II's infinite land.

I wonder what it is like to walk in the infinite land?

One of the first things I intend to do when I get into ArmA is an expedition to the infinite land.

The concept of dynamic infinite land leads to some interesting philosophical and practical programming questions.

How infinite is infinite?

If I die in Infinity have I really died?

How do you construct dynamic infinity?

If it is based on a mathematical formulae a kind of Koch curve formulae why not just create all game land this way?

If it is based on a Koch curve type formulae can we discover the underlying structure and from it losslessly compress any real land mass?

Just my first thoughts

If we go on an expedition into infinite land we would need a server running 24/7 though saving might be as good.

We would need to set up FARP and Logistics to resupply fuel.

Markers as waypoints would be usefull.

Any one else want to come on the expedition?

Kind regards walker

MR. WALKER you make my head hurt and I need to smoke some good stuff to keep up with your thoughts.

I will get back to you very soon lol.

[WOMBAT33R 11]

MR. WALKER you make my head hurt and I need to smoke some good stuff to keep up with your thoughts.

I will get back to you very soon lol.

LOL, is this Nobel peace prize material?

If you get there... try playing Enya on your MP3.

Edited May 22, 2009 by wombateer
?

[Yoma 0]

You touch a very important point:

If infinate land is created, will YOUR infinite land be MY infinate land?

And if trees are run over in your infinite land, will they be in mine?

Will your infinate land have houses?

Does infinate land get synchronised over network, how can this happen without being a total bummer on network performance?

Personally I didn't think the infinate ocean was a bad idea as it totally solved the above problems. Without solving the above problems, the infinate land would be pretty useless anyway?

[NeMeSiS 11]

You touch a very important point:

If infinate land is created, will YOUR infinite land be MY infinate land?

And if trees are run over in your infinite land, will they be in mine?

Will your infinate land have houses?

Does infinate land get synchronised over network, how can this happen without being a total bummer on network performance?

Personally I didn't think the infinate ocean was a bad idea as it totally solved the above problems. Without solving the above problems, the infinate land would be pretty useless anyway?

If its just flat, endless grass (what i expect it to be) then those problems wont really excist. :p

If there are objects though maybe they are placed in blocks. Imagine a game logic which spawns 500 trees/buildings/whatever around itself (Not randomly, just with a certain predetermined offset from the logic) and have those randomly placed in inifinity, then you would only have to synchronize the placement of those logics.

[Misfit Leader 1]

That's the point of view of BIS at the London showcase :

Terrain beyond the main region will be generated randomly for ever. So you will never reach an end. In multiplayer sessions, everyone will see the same detail and terrain beyond the 225km region as well.

But as the system that should generate this infinite landscape isn't done, we don't know how it will be when done.

[Heatseeker 0]

Its meant to be useless, like the infinite ocean but unlike the ocean it will make Chernarus feel like its part of a continent instead of just another island, it shouldnt have any trees or houses.

Venturing into the infinite land should be as interesting as venturing into the infinite ocean.

[SFG 1]

Will we be able to find our way back to the "map". I remember getting lost in infinite ocean land back in ofp and not knowing where I was going. Also, will AI spawn in this infinite land or is it without life?

[alan8325 10]

There has been some speculation about the main Chernarus "island". What lies to the north and western borders?

"There be land Jim lad!"

Well yeah its land. Right now its not entirely usable but its there. The current build we were shown - this will change apparently, what to we don't know - basically extrudes the border's terrain profile out into infinity. So if you have a hill straddling the border its profile will just continue off into the distance.

I have to say I wasn't impressed by this. There are a lot of words I could use to describe this "feature". Disappointing is a mild one, I'll stick with that for the moment. Jan (BIS) did go on to say that there was an effort under way to ensure it was textured and randomised but even so I felt it just left the north side of the island feeling unfinished.

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=5694

This quote from the 505 press event seems to indicate that the "infinite-land" at this point is just whatever land contour exists at the map edge extended out to infinity with no textures, possibly with some random forests scattered on there.

I don't know how they plan on making it a random landscape, but maybe the terrain elevation can follow some formula that creates a random-height hill every few hundred meters in each direction or something. The same output for the random heights and locations for hills would have to be the same for all people playing though.

A more simple, non-random solution which I would be content with, would be to mirror a portion of the actual South Zagoria playable area into the "out-of-bounds" area. For example if you are approaching the border and you come across hills A, B, and then half of C, as hill C is cut by the border, then on the other side you see the same half of C mirrored, then B, then A.

[HOPEnSPIRIT 10]

How long can we travel in infinite land before server memory runs out and crashes?

OMG! you got me talking crap now, fast foward to release date to stop these insane WFRDS posts.

WFRDS = Waiting For Release Date Sickness

[walker 0]

If its just flat, endless grass (what i expect it to be) then those problems wont really excist. :p

If there are objects though maybe they are placed in blocks. Imagine a game logic which spawns 500 trees/buildings/whatever around itself (Not randomly, just with a certain predetermined offset from the logic) and have those randomly placed in inifinity, then you would only have to synchronize the placement of those logics.

Hi all

If it was just flat land why be at pains to point out that each player in MP sees the same land?

If it was just flat land why call it dynamicly created?

If it is dynamically created land using at a guess, a fractal landscape generation system and seed, the land need not conform to the profile of the edge.

Kind regards walker

Edited May 22, 2009 by walker

[LaMuerteX 10]

This means that with an active community of MODS, we could create an entire a state? or even the world? LOL

OMG!

[mr burns 131]

If i understand the recent 505 preview from london correctly it looks exactly like on Opteryx´ Avgani atm, with the intention of inserting some seeding & texturing routine in the release version (in the tacticalgamer mobile phone videos there´s only barren textureless terrain beyond the mapboarders) :confused:

[walker 0]

I asked James from BI this question at the press launch in London and he said the radnomly generated landscape beyong the 225 sq km will have the same detail with towns and roads, etc.

Every new gaming session will have a new random landscape generated, but all players in the same session will see the same detail as everyone else, so continuity is retained.

Arma 2 felt great to play. Especially playing close combat which really pleased me.

Cheers

Jason [TG]

Hi all

If the land truly has towns and road systems and from that I would expect forrests and the rest, we truly have a form of infinity engine.

Exploration will be very important and specific seed numbers should become usefull items that can be explored by all. Infinity exploration could be as valuable as modding to the community

Discovering good seed numbers will be of both aesthetic and scientific interest.

Kind Regards walker

[max power 21]

A few things:

Procedural does not imply random.

You cannot create a whole state out of procedural terrain. Objects can only be placed in the 'play area' of the map.

I don't know if you would run out of memory because the terrain is being streamed. I assume this means that it's unloading terrain information it's not using at the same time. Although, there may be other limits that I'm not aware of... like maybe your 3d world coordinates go out of range at some point.

[Yoma 0]

The thing is, if it's useless anyway i might just prefer it being an ocean.

As an ocean is more realistic then generic non usable land.

Allso, when flying it gives you a better idea where the "real" land is.

But let's just see how it is implemented before commenting about it.

[Landstalker 10]

so far Walker all your posts have been awesome, and this one tops the Lott i enjoyed reading it as usual you'll be a real credit to who ever's clan your in thanks ~

[Yoma 0]

I asked James from BI this question at the press launch in London and he said the radnomly generated landscape beyong the 225 sq km will have the same detail with towns and roads, etc.

Every new gaming session will have a new random landscape generated, but all players in the same session will see the same detail as everyone else, so continuity is retained.

Something tells me stuff might have been misunderstood there.

If not, for all the better, but techically i think that might just raise more then a couple of problems.

[frederf 0]

I was initially confused how you can have infinite multi-player compatible land with any features whatsoever. Now that I think about it, your position on the map (in multiplayer space) is simply coordinates.

There's really no problem sending a set of 3 10-digit numbers around the Internet to a few people. Billy's 1,000m away? Billy's 1,000,000m away? What does the computer care it's only 3 extra zeros. Nobody's computer has to graphically render anything beyond its own view distance so tracking a non-rendered entity with simple numbers at extreme ranges is not a concern.

It's when you have an (information density greater than zero) x (an infinite land area) = (infinite information)? I guess if everyone had the same seed and generation algorithm then people don't need to communicate to have the same terrain picture. You can't possibly load an infinitely featured map into memory but I guess we've had terrain streaming for a while in ArmA. (Or is that wrong?)

It shouldn't matter if the terrain is being streamed from memory or some artisan's file or a terrain generator. A terrain generator is not going to make terrain you really like since it takes the human artist's touch to do that but it'll do to fly over.

Personally I would love to have a map with an airfield template script-stamped down 50km away from the main artistically-created terrain for some better fly time. I can't really see why this couldn't be done.

[easty 0]

Hasn't everyone who played OFP and ARMA co-op bailed out of a chopepr far to early and felt like there in the middle of infinite land already?

I think cyanide or a saved bullet with your name engraved is required for such times.

The Islands capture my imagination, the infinite land in my useless opinion, adds curious frustration, something my mind tells me over and over.. you have to see the other side, or just be satisfied you never will.. It's simply unacceptable for me just thinking about it, please don't leave me alone with this game I'll go bloody mad!

P.S. So walker, if your looking for a "one flew over a cuckoo's nest" clan I may be a good candidate. :)

[Scrub 0]

The thing is, if it's useless anyway i might just prefer it being an ocean.

...

Not so sure it will be useless. Imagine having a 'capture the flag' or some such.. Either way, the other side wants to see you dead. You have a huge furball which gets carried into 'moebius land' (there's a trade name for the technology, Moebius). You get shot down, and they send in troops to hunt you down and finish the job. Towns, geographic formations, roads, forests all become concealment, cover, and landmarks for your team to come get you.

I'd imagine BIS -who have made a virtual memory addressing system among other nifty and ingenious numerical gymnastic routines- could make the relative coordinate system for this land so we do not have the same issue as BF where the AI cannot go outside default addressable space.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Hi all

If it was just flat land why be at pains to point out that each player in MP sees the same land?

If it was just flat land why call it dynamicly created?

If it is dynamically created land using at a guess, a fractal landscape generation system and seed, the land need not conform to the profile of the edge.

Kind regards walker

Seeing as they also said that there would be a 3d editor i take everything coming from the twitter thing with a pinch of salt. :p

Completely generating everything (especially random objects*) would probably give too much synchronisation issues. And since it has been confirmed that it wasnt in at the last version we have news about im not getting my hopes up for the release version either. Its pointless as there is no real reason to hope for it.

*We havent even begun on the discussion on how you would randomly generate good looking towns combined with roads/forests/whatever which also takes the generated landscape into account. Sure its possible, but is it going to be in within 2 weeks? :confused:

[walker 0]

...Completely generating everything (especially random objects*) would probably give too much synchronisation issues. And since it has been confirmed that it wasnt in at the last version we have news about im not getting my hopes up for the release version either. Its pointless as there is no real reason to hope for it...

Hi NeMeSiS

I actually built a procedural land generating engine for the ZX81 back in the early eighties. It was for a game called Land of Limbo, a roll playing sword and sorcery game. A mixture of text and two D block graphics. I tried to sell to CDS micro systems but the Spectrum came out and I had not the energy or time to convert it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDS_Software

Creating land from a seed is not that hard. The problem is in creating believable land. There are ways of doing this.

There is zero synchronization issues in creating the land, it is created dynamically on all clients through the same algorithm as they are all issued with the same seed at the start they will create identical dynamic terrain.

The synchronization would only be altered objects such as knocked down trees and long term left objects, cars ammo crates etc. That is a database (DB) with object ID generated from its location stored in the altered terrain DB. When a player alters terrain the alteration is noted then when another player enters that area they get any alterations sent.

Kind Regards walker

Edited May 22, 2009 by walker