I have sold my house and and I am about to finance a game development where the planet Earth would be modeled and then let's say there would be 100 cities in which a user can zoom in and everything would just load in without a loading screen. Eventually the user should be able to zoom in into a single building and go inside of it. (many buildings can be easily just copies of 150 premodeled buildings).

So I already sold my house so please do not try to tell me how "it is destined to fail". I only have one life I am willing to try something and other than that I have a small flat I currently live in for one person it is more than enough. So don't try to talk me out of this. It is too late... I am a 3d designer I will give my best to contribute and someone who is a programmer can be a good partner, I have couple of them interviewing now but I need to know how to formulate my interview and what to ask them.

So when viewed from above entire earth would have its properties and behaviors and characters but then again zooming in to the city, rules and characters change and then of course once inside of a building new characters and rules. So on the streets we would have cars and clours above them. Inside of the building we would have a human standing and a toy car driving around him.

Basically a level within a level within a level.

Keep in mind, other than playing some games I have 0 experience in these things especially coding.

So when I meet some programmers, I have to tell them what to do. What technique is best for this? what coding language? What game engine? Is Unreal engine suitable for this?

you know what tom "Sloper", Did I ask you to tell me if my question is smart or not? Really?

If you're not going to help then don't talk to me. Ney sayers are the worst kind of people.

You know Tom, if I have 5 programmers telling me different things, how can i tell them apart? Are they supposably ALL good? Maybe you need to realize you're ignorant before judging peoples questions. BYE! You can lock my account with that attitude. I never said I'd be telling them what engine to use but I'd try to remotely understand what they are telling me and which one is right and which one is not.

BYE! 

37 minutes ago, Tom Sloper said:

You are not asking Game Design questions, so I'm moving this to the Production/Management forum.

A good project manager doesn't tell the programmers what to do. He gives them a detailed GDD and because they're experienced, they know what to do. They know what engine and language to use. You don't tell them what engine and language to use, if you aren't a programmer yourself.

I HATE YOU! I literally HATE people like you. If I pay yes I tell them what engine to use. Some dumb programmer wants to use crappy game engine that he can easily program in and some java crap. Plus you move my thread to here? REally? THis is not  a game design question??? Really???? Well if this isn't a game design question then i don't know what is. I am asking about designing the actual levels and THAT IS DESIGNING THE ACTUAL LEVELS literally! You feel competent to talk here and to judge??? Move my thread like that? Really? And then tell me to blindly listen to some scammer programmer?? Really?????? WOW thank you Tom... thanks a lot! So helpful

well, you could try to quickly get up to speed with [ this ] highly organized, to the point, gentle reads on those types of queries. On that also, I feel you may have not meet successful programmers yet judging from your reaction. I think I understand though, It's rough starting out with nothing. I'm wondering how detailed these 150 unique buildings would need to be? Instead of zoom in, might we have a vessel of sort to get around in and the ability to stroll on foot. Do you need artists/modelers also? besides programmers??? Don't forget the sound guy and the tax and paper work guy. Whatever those costs are, plus next to nothing for marketing when that time comes, how much development time does your current plan allow you before you'd be looking to replenish funding? Oh, and is multiplayer a must have or could do without kind of thing...

2 minutes ago, GoliathForge said:

well, you could try to quickly get up to speed with [ this ] highly organized, to the point, gentle reads on those types of queries. On that also, I feel you may have not meet successful programmers yet judging from your reaction. I think I understand though, It's rough starting out with nothing. I'm wondering how detailed these 150 unique buildings would need to be? Instead of zoom in, might we have a vessel of sort to get around in and the ability to stroll on foot. Do you need artists/modelers also? besides programmers??? Don't forget the sound guy and the tax and paper work guy. Whatever those costs are, plus next to nothing for marketing when that time comes, how much development time does your current plan allow you before you'd be looking to replenish funding? Oh, and is multiplayer a must have or could do without kind of thing...

wow thank you so much for this helpful... comment I really appreciate it. 

Focused on the actual subject. I am driving back home will reply in about 20 minutes. 

3 minutes ago, GoliathForge said:

well, you could try to quickly get up to speed with [ this ] highly organized, to the point, gentle reads on those types of queries. On that also, I feel you may have not meet successful programmers yet judging from your reaction. I think I understand though, It's rough starting out with nothing. I'm wondering how detailed these 150 unique buildings would need to be? Instead of zoom in, might we have a vessel of sort to get around in and the ability to stroll on foot. Do you need artists/modelers also? besides programmers??? Don't forget the sound guy and the tax and paper work guy. Whatever those costs are, plus next to nothing for marketing when that time comes, how much development time does your current plan allow you before you'd be looking to replenish funding? Oh, and is multiplayer a must have or could do without kind of thing...

One man has developed an incredibly good project and it takes my breath away:

Something like this, just with more characters and functions. For example interactive clicks on characters or cars etc...

When entering the building, would be able to do stuff inside of it interactively. 

This kind of algorithm sounds dumb and pointless but the possibilities are huge what could be made

7 minutes ago, GoliathForge said:

 

Also my game wouldn't be a game with prupose of me getting rich or idk... The game would be practically usable in some scientific and engineering things. Also with only 10 % of it developed, it would already be usable and ready for sale. Eventual cities and stuff would just be an upgrade. However ensuring that proper algorithms and designs have implemented so that future adding of "levels" and "sublevels" is possible would be actually mandatory. 

I'm working on something similar, not the Earth exactly but large world technology.   The difference is with a procedural planet, what I'm doing, you aren't trying to duplicate something existing like the Earth. You are specifying parameters and letting the functions generate something. 

That being said there is a mathematician named Michael Barnsley who did a lot of advanced work in Fractal compression (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_compression) .

This is what you will probably need. You will also need a good meshing system to turn those fractals into actual terrain. This is the part I've been chiefly working on for my game.

As I'm sure you are aware, this is not going to be an easy thing to write. I've been working on my stuff on and off for a few years and only now am beginning to see a flicker of light at the end of tunnel.  Whatever programmers you get, they will absolutely need to be well versed in multi-threading, or at least willing to research it. The free ride is over with computers.  To get the power out of them now, you NEED multi-threading.

As an example I wrote my fractal voxel engine and I was only using about 13% of my computer's 4 cores.  I had to scrap a fair chunk of it in the last few months and rewrote it for mili-threading. Now I'm up to about 70% and it runs a LOT faster. I actually had to do it more than once because until you try it and profile it, it's hard to tell where the hangups are.  There are still things I can improve on too, but at least now I understand the data flow issues better . I advise C++ for maximum performance. I'm not anti C# or Java but this kind of thing needs all the power you can get.

Also you might have a problem with game engines, because most use 32 bit floating point CPU side (GPU side 32 bit is OK as long as you use view coordinates) . 64 bit float will make your life a LOT easier for planet sized stuff.  The one I know of that uses 64 bit is Unigine game engine. Also I think Amazon Lumberyard is going that that direction, but I don't think they are there yet except for the Star Citizen version. And of course you can write you own, which is kind of what I'm dong.

In any case, good luck. You have a long slog ahead of you.......

26 minutes ago, Gnollrunner said:

I'm working on something similar, not the Earth exactly but large world technology.   The difference is with a procedural planet, what I'm doing, you aren't trying to duplicate something existing like the Earth. You are specifying parameters and letting the functions generate something. 

That being said there is a mathematician named Michael Barnsley who did a lot of advanced work in Fractal compression (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_compression) .

This is what you will probably need. You will also need a good meshing system to turn those fractals into actual terrain. This is the part I've been chiefly working on for my game.

As I'm sure you are aware, this is not going to be an easy thing to write. I've been working on my stuff on and off for a few years and only now am beginning to see a flicker of light at the end of tunnel.  Whatever programmers you get, they will absolutely need to be well versed in multi-threading, or at least willing to research it. The free ride is over with computers.  To get the power out of them now, you NEED multi-threading.

As an example I wrote my fractal voxel engine and I was only using about 13% of my computer's 4 cores.  I had to scrap a fair chunk of it in the last few months and rewrote it for mili-threading. Now I'm up to about 70% and it runs a LOT faster. I actually had to do it more than once because until you try it and profile it, it's hard to tell where the hangups are.  There are still things I can improve on too, but at least now I understand the data flow issues better . I advise C++ for maximum performance. I'm not anti C# or Java but this kind of thing needs all the power you can get.

Also you might have a problem with game engines, because most use 32 bit floating point CPU side (GPU side 32 bit is OK as long as you use view coordinates) . 64 bit float will make your life a LOT easier for planet sized stuff.  The one I know of that uses 64 bit is Unigine game engine. Also I think Amazon Lumberyard is going that that direction, but I don't think they are there yet except for the Star Citizen version. And of course you can write you own, which is kind of what I'm dong.

In any case, good luck. You have a long slog ahead of you.......

Thank you so much! That's a good read! I will look into this and research each and every topic... I am willing to do 1 -2 years of research and designing, testing and trials before actually going ahead with it. 

26 minutes ago, Gnollrunner said:

I'm working on something similar, not the Earth exactly but large world technology.   The difference is with a procedural planet, what I'm doing, you aren't trying to duplicate something existing like the Earth. You are specifying parameters and letting the functions generate something. 

That being said there is a mathematician named Michael Barnsley who did a lot of advanced work in Fractal compression (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_compression) .

This is what you will probably need. You will also need a good meshing system to turn those fractals into actual terrain. This is the part I've been chiefly working on for my game.

As I'm sure you are aware, this is not going to be an easy thing to write. I've been working on my stuff on and off for a few years and only now am beginning to see a flicker of light at the end of tunnel.  Whatever programmers you get, they will absolutely need to be well versed in multi-threading, or at least willing to research it. The free ride is over with computers.  To get the power out of them now, you NEED multi-threading.

As an example I wrote my fractal voxel engine and I was only using about 13% of my computer's 4 cores.  I had to scrap a fair chunk of it in the last few months and rewrote it for mili-threading. Now I'm up to about 70% and it runs a LOT faster. I actually had to do it more than once because until you try it and profile it, it's hard to tell where the hangups are.  There are still things I can improve on too, but at least now I understand the data flow issues better . I advise C++ for maximum performance. I'm not anti C# or Java but this kind of thing needs all the power you can get.

Also you might have a problem with game engines, because most use 32 bit floating point CPU side (GPU side 32 bit is OK as long as you use view coordinates) . 64 bit float will make your life a LOT easier for planet sized stuff.  The one I know of that uses 64 bit is Unigine game engine. Also I think Amazon Lumberyard is going that that direction, but I don't think they are there yet except for the Star Citizen version. And of course you can write you own, which is kind of what I'm dong.

In any case, good luck. You have a long slog ahead of you.......

Do such services already exist and would such software be possible? 

I have one question though...

I have seen 5G in Shenzhen China providing almost instant remote control over computers. So people used cloud computing to play heavy games like Crysis 3 on their very cheap laptops (basically instant streaming service). 5G is crazy... Is there any way to plan ahead and implement a platform where users would actually be getting a stream of the software, rather than the software itself and as a compensation some computing power could be provided from a third party?

THis is 100% definitely possible with 5G technology. 5G does not just mean higher bandwidth, that thing is fast as hell. I was still under impressions of what I've seen in China... The aim is to give that kind of strategic game on a small android phone for let's say 20 bucks a month. 

30 minutes ago, AlanDontAsk said:

Thank you so much! That's a good read! I will look into this and research each and every topic... I am willing to do 1 -2 years of research and designing, testing and trials before actually going ahead with it. 

I have one question though...

I have seen 5G in Shenzhen China providing almost instant remote control over computers. So people used cloud computing to play heavy games like Crysis 3 on their very cheap laptops (basically instant streaming service). 5G is crazy... Is there any way to plan ahead and implement a platform where users would actually be getting a stream of the software, rather than the software itself and as a compensation some computing power could be provided from a third party?

THis is 100% definitely possible with 5G technology. 5G does not just mean higher bandwidth, that thing is fast as hell. I was still under impressions of what I've seen in China... The aim is to give that kind of strategic game on a small android phone for let's say 20 bucks a month. 

I'm not an expert on this but I imagine with a high enough band width it's possible.  However now a player's phone basically just becomes a monitor and input device, and you have to provide all the computing power for players. I assume that's why you said 20 bucks a month. That's pretty steep for most games however.

There may be some compromise where you are only sending down polygons and still doing some rendering on the phone.  In that case the task becomes to figure out the minimal data that needs to be sent.

Simulating the whole Earth with all the detail down to the toys inside the houses is a very ambitious goal. Rockstar's GTA series comes to mind and it doesn't even come close to what you're talking about and they have hundreds of people working on it for years. I'd start with one city and several small buildings to get a taste for the challenges ahead.