Thursday, July 7, 2011

The Limits of the Drawing Engine

In every Online game, there is a drawing engine which depicts in a window the virtual world you are visiting.  Some games use DHTML to display the game in an internet browser.  Other games, like Wizard 101, have their own game browser, which have been pre-loaded with graphic models of all the objects in the game, to help speed up the animation frame rate.

When you first install the W101 game browser, it comes pre-loaded with all of Wizard City.  But as you begin to get access to other worlds in the game (Yes, NOOBs, there are other worlds besides WC!), you will notice that you may have to wait to go to other places in the game until the "world data" is downloaded into your W101 game browser.

There are limits to the drawing engine.  To save processing time, things that are very far away are not drawn until the come into your field of view.   This is why the names of objects appear over their heads in large print.   You can see the names from pretty far away before you can see the object.   Watch the following video as I descend the Stairway To Heaven to visit my Myth House.   You will slowly see more and more detail as I get closer.

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