How to deal with large open worlds?

Posted by Mr. Beast on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by Mr. Beast
Published on 2012-09-29T13:54:37Z Indexed on 2012/09/29 15:53 UTC
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Performance

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memory-efficiency

In most games the whole world is small enough to fit into memory, however there are games where this is not the case, how is this archived, how can the game still run fluid even though the world is so big and maybe even dynamic? How does the world change in memory while the player moves?

Examples for this include the TES games (Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind), MMORPGs (World of Warcraft), Diablo, Titan Quest, Dwarf Fortress, Far Cry.

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