Scenery Leaping

I’ve come up with a cool way to help keep the game light and fast while appearing full.

Each level in my game will be made of a bunch of streets in Toronto, but I don’t have the time to go and model every building, so the game will show a generated approximation of Toronto.  For a residential street, there will easily be over a hundred houses.  Since I will have about 10 different house models, I have to spread them along the street repetitively.

As the character walks forward, the same houses will leap from behind them to in front of them, giving the player a view of a fully designed street, while it’s actually all being built just out of view.  This way, I’ll only have to have a few houses in memory at one time.

I call it leaping.  Although I’m sure something like this has been thought of and done before, I’m still pretty proud I’ve done it myself.  Don't get me wrong, it's simple, but it's very useful.

The same tactic will be used for fire hydrants, street lights, stop signs, etc.  The code doesn’t change between these types of scenery objects, so fleshing out Toronto will be a breeze!