I also prefer endless terrain. But DrMol asked about borders....so I gave him borders.

If it is a physical terrain border (river, ocean, mountain) ... then make it LOOK IMPASSABLE. tagged mentioned that he wonders why his character doesn''t just swim through the river. Well don''t make it a babbling brook ... make it a wide raging river ... filled with rapids and jagged rocks. If you really want to be cool ... let the player go into the river. And either wash him back on the shore, further downstream (my choice) ... or ... make him drown.

Oh...and never use a forest or a wooden fence as a barrier type. Those are just sad excuses.

Have you seen "Dark City"? The avenues of the city form an spiral, with some streets interconecting them, so the main character cannot escape from the city, because no road leads out!


theNestruo

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Ok

In answer to the original question:
You don''t. Make a donut world(that is, once to the far right the world wraps round to the far left)

I''d write, but I''ve got to get on the bus. One thing though:
Monster truck madness had a fence on the edge of the map IIRC. Kinda neat

Discworld effect, like Terry Pratchett''s books where the world is in fact flat not round, and the edge of the world is a gigantic waterfall.

Saying that you need certain vehicles or inventory items (magic gloves, aqualungs) to access various places is cool too.

IMO it''s poor design to have invisible barriers.

Options:
--turn the gameworld into a sphere
--ocean, with sharks if the PC can swim
--mountains, chasms, cliffs, etc
--invincible monsters (will piss players off if they don''t know)

Here''s an example of good design: the Gothic series
Gothic I: Entire gameworld bounded by a magic barrier which is a large part of the story.
Gothic II: Ocean with sharks, impassable mountains, and a palisade which is part of the story.

I''ve been working on this issue with my partner for our game and I mentioned the Guithic series as well

This is a relavant issue, but there are no perfect solutions. Well, the spherical world is probably the most perfect solution, but even with a giant completely spherical world, you STILL need bariers either to help guide players along or prevent them from going to more advanced areas. If it''s a single player game, with a strong storyline, you need to design to make sure the player at least has a chance of following the story. If it''s more of a simulation, than barriers still can be important for the world designer. If the world designers have to pack gameplay into every square inch of a very large world, they will go mad. Barriers can help block off a very large world into a manageable size. Terrain can still exist everywhere, but you only have to worry about putting gameplay where players will be.

I''d like to mention zelda/metroid for some interesting barriers. In zelda64, while they still use the dreaded tree barrier way too much, they do have some good ideas. The guard wont let you leave the town until you have a sword, a guard wont let you pass into the mountain, you can''t enter an area before you get the horse to jump across, you cant go underwater very far until you get a good dive. Using the infinite ocean idea could work similar to this: character has stamina, after swimming so far out they drown.

Metroid uses similar puzzle-ish barriers that the player eventually overcomes but this scheme could be used for barriers in that kind of game.


Big worlds are very difficult to deal with however, and I''m mad that Gothic already did the magical barrier so well

quote: Original post by Saluk
I''ve been working on this issue with my partner for our game and I mentioned the Guithic series as well

Yeah, they''re some great games.

quote: Original post by Saluk
This is a relavant issue, but there are no perfect solutions. Well, the spherical world is probably the most perfect solution, but even with a giant completely spherical world, you STILL need bariers either to help guide players along or prevent them from going to more advanced areas. If it''s a single player game, with a strong storyline, you need to design to make sure the player at least has a chance of following the story.

Again, we can go to the Gothic series (and many other games as well): you can use monsters to channel players away from certain things and toward certain things.

Or you can make certain areas only accessable by certain means which you gain through the story, eg a jetpack, teleportation device, etc.

Ask yourself this question:
How important is the content that my level designers are making?

Even if you could write a z=f(x,y) that would look at least interesting, if not believable, would you neccessarily want the player racing off in that direction forever and ignoring the careful detail put in by a human creator?

I think randomly generating tiles is a bad idea.

I think some kind of infinite, but tangible, wilderness is a good feature. In Excape Velocity, which takes place in space, You could fly for a very long time before hitting the "edge" of a system map. I would often be just a little bit faster than pirates or police, and have to maneuver and sprint for a long time before I built up the elbow room to make a hyperjump. That space was very useful for me, although I did on more than one occasion actually run out of space, and hit the "wall". Most disappointing, and often catastrophic.

In an isometric game like Fallout, being able to flee into a green "edge" field and escape the battle is something of a cop-out. I''d rather be able to see the radscorpions a mile away and modify my course slightly to avoid them (or to hunt them) than to find myself surrounded and fight my way twenty meters to safety.