Running the whole world

[Tristan de Inés]

Greetings,

I'm curious; I first played Ultima 7 on my 286 with 12MHz and I guess something like 2 or 4 MB RAM. I think that U7 has always only a small part of the world loaded, like 5x5 chunks or something. Shouldn't it be possible to load and run the whole U7-world at once on modern computers?

[Skutarth]

Nah. You can only display a certain number of objects at once. If you try to, objects will randomly become invisible or dissappear. For a fine example go to it-he.org. Read the section about making money in The Buccaneer's Den. Even the Exult Engine wouldn't be able to display EVERY LAST THING (no offense intended). It's fine how it is! You don't need more than that!

[drcode]

Maybe you're asking if we can't keep all the data in memory? In that case, the answer currently for Exult is yes, in the we keep around everything that we read in. However, that will probably change soon, since it wastes a lot of memory.

[Tristan de Inés]

I'm not sure what applies. I was just thinking about how NPCs disappear and reappear from places spontaneously if you leave the area and their shedule changes. It would be cool if NPCs where to actually move from one place to another (maybe with the help of a few intermediate waypoints) so that you could meet them on the way and not having them "teleporting" all the time.
I think that NPCs actually "try" to get to their new shedule destination if you always stay close to them, so as to keep them in the "loaded part of the world". Thats why I was wondering about just loading the whole world at once and see what happens

[wjp]

Sounds like a big pathfinding nightmare at 0, 6, 12 and 18 o'clock

[drcode]

Yes, I see. They're only supposed to teleport when you're not looking, or as a last resort if pathfinding fails. I think there are NPC's who have to travel a long way between schedule changes, and pathfinding that distance could be fairly slow. Your idea of providing waypoints is really good, but it would involve a lot of enhancements.

[nadir]

If you've managed to run U7 on a 12Mhz 286, you are indeed very capable

U7 *REQUIRES* a 386 to run.

[Tristan de Inés]

Now that I think about it, you're right, it was on my second pc, a 486DX2....
it's been so many years...