I understand that the size of the MCX360 world is limited in size due to the memory constraints and the overall processor power of the xBox 360.
To allow for a larger map, the concept of load zones could be implemented, where 3/4 (or more) of the world is saved to the harddrive and not loaded into active memory, and the game only focuses on the 1/4 of the map that your minecraft character is currently on. As you traverse into an adjacent 'zone' past a defined boundary point, the game may need to pause a bit to store the part of the left region, and load the new region into active memory. This would ofcourse have to be subdivided further when playing MP from the same xBox 360 as players spread out into different regions so that only 1/4 of the map is loaded at any given time.
Handoff of where to load cureent update information will have to be tracked (or periodic updates to all networked systems) in networked MP games would have to be accounted for. This would allow for, potentially, much larger MCX360 worlds.
Maybe even include a world build interface at world creation:
1x1 map
2x2 map
3x3 map
etc.
maybe use a minimalistic file update strategy by only updating the 'changes' until the Game is actively (or passively) saved during a full game save, rather than doing a full region save everytime a player enters/leaves a region/zone, this should help in reducing overall load times.
I know this could get a lot of negative feed back in the way of 'its too hard', 'it takes too many resources', 'it can't be done', and especially from people who may not know the first thing about programming, let alone data management and paging technologies. (But negative feedback is better than no feedback... 1 view/0 replies at the time of this post... and allows me to explain my thoughts further if they seem somewhat unclear.)
This idea is actually pretty simplistic, though. Sure, there are some MP complexities that need to be overcome. But the core idea is to only have one MCX360 map grid worth of content to deal with at a time, but spread that out over a larger area to allow for a bigger game world experience. Really, with this load zone idea, you are limited only to your Hard Storage (Hard Drive/Cloud Storage) Space.
Pro: Paging and more sophisticated memory management techniques will allow for a much bigger game world and more territory for Biomes to spread.
Con: Will cause players to have to wait as they move significant distances for content to save old area info and load new area.
Con: MP on same console (over HDMI feed) will tend to create much smaller load areas (especially as players spread out, if 4 players on a single console spread each to separate full map grids, then only 1/4 of a full map grid can be loaded for each player, this could potentially impact horizontal visual distances for each player).
Con: MP on same console (over HDMI feed), in the event that players are spread out, 'could' (worst case scenario) cause up to 4 times the time required to save/load games (1x for each player).
MP Technical Note: instead of streaming full data for each player that are significant distances from each other, only stream block changes and player coordinates and wait on saving map changes until the next zone load or full game save.
In concept, this would sort of be handled like a MP game where one player is in the main world, another in the Nether, and a third in the End. technically, since these worlds are disjoint, the amount of data they need to share between players and consoles is minimalistic.
Making a bigger world would cause a lot of lag, especially when playing multiplayer. But it would be nice to have a option that when making a world, you can chose if you want a small, medium, or large sized world.
I support.
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I play MINECRAFT. And TERRARIA. MESSAGE me if you want to play Terraria.
256Mb of ram is enough for even the pc version except those memory leaks. The concern is not memory but hard drive space and processing power.They would have to rewrite the entire game for this to work though.
They would have to rewrite the entire game for this to work though.
I think this is a good idea. But I think it can be made a bit easier and simpler if you just make it where you can create a portal that would bring you to another world that is the same size with different generations of course. This would allow you to go between different areas in worlds with minimal lag if it is set up the same way the neather is. Also it would create an infinite amount of just about anything. There is a con to this tho. If you have too many portals then you would lose track of other people because the world would be simply just to big. But if you could add a way to limit the amount of portals built then it would be perfect. Also the only work that you would need for this to work is already done because you could use the portal mechanics from the neather portal and the world generation mechanics for the overworld and put them together to build this new feature. If you could do this I think this would be a great idea.
Another good idea would be to rewrite the game so it uses memory the way the PC version does, in the way that it unloads unused chunks from memory freeing it for other chunks, swapping them in and out of use.
To allow for a larger map, the concept of load zones could be implemented, where 3/4 (or more) of the world is saved to the harddrive and not loaded into active memory, and the game only focuses on the 1/4 of the map that your minecraft character is currently on. As you traverse into an adjacent 'zone' past a defined boundary point, the game may need to pause a bit to store the part of the left region, and load the new region into active memory. This would ofcourse have to be subdivided further when playing MP from the same xBox 360 as players spread out into different regions so that only 1/4 of the map is loaded at any given time.
Handoff of where to load cureent update information will have to be tracked (or periodic updates to all networked systems) in networked MP games would have to be accounted for. This would allow for, potentially, much larger MCX360 worlds.
Maybe even include a world build interface at world creation:
1x1 map
2x2 map
3x3 map
etc.
maybe use a minimalistic file update strategy by only updating the 'changes' until the Game is actively (or passively) saved during a full game save, rather than doing a full region save everytime a player enters/leaves a region/zone, this should help in reducing overall load times.
This idea is actually pretty simplistic, though. Sure, there are some MP complexities that need to be overcome. But the core idea is to only have one MCX360 map grid worth of content to deal with at a time, but spread that out over a larger area to allow for a bigger game world experience. Really, with this load zone idea, you are limited only to your Hard Storage (Hard Drive/Cloud Storage) Space.
Pro: Paging and more sophisticated memory management techniques will allow for a much bigger game world and more territory for Biomes to spread.
Con: Will cause players to have to wait as they move significant distances for content to save old area info and load new area.
Con: MP on same console (over HDMI feed) will tend to create much smaller load areas (especially as players spread out, if 4 players on a single console spread each to separate full map grids, then only 1/4 of a full map grid can be loaded for each player, this could potentially impact horizontal visual distances for each player).
Con: MP on same console (over HDMI feed), in the event that players are spread out, 'could' (worst case scenario) cause up to 4 times the time required to save/load games (1x for each player).
MP Technical Note: instead of streaming full data for each player that are significant distances from each other, only stream block changes and player coordinates and wait on saving map changes until the next zone load or full game save.
In concept, this would sort of be handled like a MP game where one player is in the main world, another in the Nether, and a third in the End. technically, since these worlds are disjoint, the amount of data they need to share between players and consoles is minimalistic.
I support.
I play MINECRAFT. And TERRARIA. MESSAGE me if you want to play Terraria.
I think this is a good idea. But I think it can be made a bit easier and simpler if you just make it where you can create a portal that would bring you to another world that is the same size with different generations of course. This would allow you to go between different areas in worlds with minimal lag if it is set up the same way the neather is. Also it would create an infinite amount of just about anything. There is a con to this tho. If you have too many portals then you would lose track of other people because the world would be simply just to big. But if you could add a way to limit the amount of portals built then it would be perfect. Also the only work that you would need for this to work is already done because you could use the portal mechanics from the neather portal and the world generation mechanics for the overworld and put them together to build this new feature. If you could do this I think this would be a great idea.