Random World Generation suggestion for the Dev's.

[McKeighan]

I've noticed that with hosting, even creating a small "new" map takes a TON of time to initially spool up to a playable server. (This morning, we've been waiting over 1/2 an hour to get into our "new" map - a 4096 size random generation map on a pretty beefy NFOServer's rig.

 

That got me wondering how is the random gen now performed? It's now building 100% of the map before it allows anybody to correct, right?

 

I also understand there's a lot more to this logic then lets on. Cities have to be generated, and then roads have to be constructed that populate around the map and connect these areas to eachother or the map just doesn't look right.. (So yes, there's a lot to it, I get it).

 

But here's the ask.

 

Would it be possible for when it's generating the actual map, to build it more like how water would ripple out from a stone dropped out in water... from a central point (where players would most likely spawn in), and then build the chunks out from that point in some sort of spiral pattern that filled out the rest of the map behind the scenes?

 

My thought is that if the piece of the world where players would normally spawn in is created first, then the login could happen and players could get going immediately. While they're getting set on the initial newbie quests and dealing with their first walkers, the server can continue to build out the rest of the map in the background. The chances of ANY player being able to run in a straight line fast enough to get to a chunk the server hasn't built yet would be relatively low I would imagine...

 

I hope that kinda makes sense.... Waiting for over 45 minutes for a 4096 size server to come online seems a bit silly. We tried the 8K size the other day, and that took well over an hour to come up. We gave up after 2 hours of waiting on the 16K version, as I thought maybe I had set something wrong and I think we just got impatient waiting for it.