This may be an unpopular opinion, but I feel as though the current map sizes for Unturned are too small, even Insane feels smaller than I would really prefer and being unsupported has many flaws. However, I understand the size limitations due to performance, stability, and the common notion that anything bigger than Large/Insane would be seen as “unnecessary” or “impractical”. So rather than suggesting a bigger map size, I wanted to suggest an experimental feature that I think would not only solve this problem, but would actually open the door for potentially “infinite” worlds.
The ability to teleport or travel from one map to another has been a suggestion for as long as there has been more than one official map in the game. PEI > Washington > Yukon > Russia > etc. Obviously in the past such an idea was impossible because we didn’t have teleporter editing until after Russia and the Devkit, and even then it was restricted to quests and triggers. Now however, we have new teleporters that can be simply walked into and can be linked to other teleporters without the need for quests or special triggers. Meaning theoretically, if you could somehow link a teleport in one map to another you could load that new map and appear in that other location, but how?
Well an idea I had was for all maps, including workshop maps, to have a unique ID similar to GUIDs, and that ID/GUID would be used in the Config.json file to tie one map ID and teleporter ID/Name to another map and it’s own teleporter. There would of course have to be a limit in case of stability or other issues, so there would either be a limit of 4-8 of these unique map crossing teleporters, 4 in my opinion makes more sense for the NESW directions. Allow me to visualize:
LinkMapID: “(insert map ID you want to teleport to)”
LinkMapEntranceTeleporterID: “(teleporter on the current map that you need to enter/trigger)”
LinkMapExitTeleporterID: “(teleporter from other map that you want to appear at)”
(could be repeated 3 more times)
If you wanted to add travel back and forth between the two or more maps then each map has to have the same lines and link to the correct map and teleporter IDs.
When the player triggers one of these teleporters only the player will be teleported, no vehicles since I don’t think vehicle teleportation has been figured out yet. They will keep their saved inventory from the previous map and will appear at the teleporter location on the new map after it loads. The previous map will also save before the player unloads the map to avoid lost data.
Just to put into perspective of what could be possible with this system, you could make multiple medium/large sized maps for each of the US states with tunnels at the NESW sides of each map, then when the player walks through they could load a new state based off of where they would be realistically, each with there own stories, locations, weather, seasons, and more with virtually no performance impact because you are unloading the previous map and all it’s assets and then loading a new map in it’s place. It’s basically like the Fallout games where multiple areas are split into cells rather than just being loaded at all times.
Now one might ask how you would even call for a teleporter ID from another map if it isn’t loaded? Well this is still just a concept, not what I imagine the final product looking like. Functionality wise though, I think what would happen is that when you enter the teleporter to leave a map there is a moment where the map you were on needs to save and process what your inventory is before the next map loads, and I would assume that in this transitional moment both maps are technically loaded at the same time. So while one map is closing, saving, and taking a screenshot of your inventory, the next map is opening and checking to see where the game should spawn you at. Of course while it’s checking it will ask if you loaded from the menu, or from a teleporter. If you came from a teleporter then it will check which teleporter and where it is linked to. Once it’s done with that quick calculation then you’ll get placed down in the correct location.
Again all of this is just theoretical and experimental. There is a high probability that nothing I just said is possible in the current version of Unturned, and that’s fine, but I think it would be quite interesting to see an attempt made since this idea could open up so many possibilities for much larger map projects, as well as story driven maps with Chapters and such.