How to import Antarctica into game?!

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#1

I am trying to get the entire Antarctica into my game, but I don’t know how to go about it.

I found this website Tangram Heightmapper to get heightmaps. I don’t think it has detailed enough data though cuz when you zoom in the height data disappears.

Another side I found is Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica – Polar Geospatial Center but I have no idea what to do on it.

How would I systematically create and import heightmaps in the right locations so that I can have an accurate representation of Antarctica?

Also since Antarctica is over 5 million square miles, I want to make it 1/100th or maybe even 1/1000th to scale.

help appreciated thanks

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#2

That title is so hilarious.

Anyway, what would this be used for? Nobody has ever really figured out how to import Earth into Roblox even. Just make an ice block or something unless you have a good reason.

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#3

It’s used for my game where you can explore Antarctica.

I want it to be an accurate scale of Antarctica with all the Antarctic terrain (e.g. Mount Vinson)

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#4

Oh, so an entirely science-based Antarctica RPG? Sounds hype, let us know when it comes out.

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#5

Well, I wish you the best of luck in doing that. Actually making the entire Antarctica, even on a smaller scale, would still be almost impossible and very costly (both performance and money) to be able to achieve something like that. Better stick to just recreating a smaller one, like the size of baseplate² or even a bit larger

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#6

What about StreamingEnabled though? It wouldn’t be possible with StreamingEnabled?

Also I found this btw Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica – Polar Geospatial Center maybe it can be used.

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#7

Might be worth trying to achieve this using a different program, then exporting it to Roblox (if possible).

This video might be of help to you (specifically 2:08 through 10:40): I Tried Creating a Game Using Real-World Geographic Data - YouTube

This seems like a really large and difficult project to create and I wish you the best of luck.

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#8

Streaming enabled would help reduce memory load on the client, but the server might suffer with so many parts. You will probably need to geographically break up the continent into different places (zones) in addition to streaming enabled.

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#9

Use Google Earth and export the whole continent as a mesh and import it to Roblox.

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#10

Oh because the Server can’t stream it. Makes sense, I didn’t think of that.

I was hoping I could make an indefinitely massive world by just streaming things in and out.

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#11

On a serious note: Look into procedural generation. May be what you need to make something like this happen.

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#12

Would Roblox be able to even import all the edges of cliffs, big rocks, etc?

(If all else fails you would have to just build it manually probably.)

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#13

If it’s not possible I might end up just making specific Antarctic landmarks small enough that the server can handle and then connect them using multiple places.

@Tyler148 But the point is that it’s an accurate map of Antarctica not just a random snowy place.

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#14

This seems like the most reasonable approach.

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#15

Yes, of course. If there are too many tris in a mesh you could always divide the mesh into smaller parts.

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#16

That’s actually a good idea but it gives me a question. Why can’t they just download the whole mesh/small pieces and put them in manually?

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#17

You would procedurally generate your “accurate” terrain in a viewing distance around the player. So again, procedural generation. There is no possible way to store this in a performant way so you have to take a more elegant and dynamic approach to tackle something this huge.

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#18

wait you might be onto something.

I’m still not sure what you mean about procedural generation (maybe idk what that word means)

but what if I streamed on the server only areas of the map where players are. That way I don’t have to have the entire Antarctica loaded onto the server.

If any of this is possible I still have know idea how to go about it so that the terrain placement is accurate.

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#19

Here is a talk about Procedural Generation by a member of the community.

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#20

I would watch that video about Procedural Generation, but to answer your question:

I think that’s actually a good idea. You could store parts and their location in a datastore or something if you wanted to since data stores have no maximum size limit. However, they do have rate limits, so that could be a bottleneck. To get around that bottleneck, you would likely need to store an entire “zone” in a single data store entry and load all zones near the player.

1 Like