What happens at region borders when regions are added to existing regions?

[Lawrence Pierce]

I have a single region world. I'm considering turning it into a 4 region varregion. This means two sides and one corner of the existing region will align with new, blank (and presumedly flat) regions. Where the existing and new regions are side-by-side, how does the terrain match up? Also, what happens to objects that are projected out past the original region boundaries? And finally, will the numeric object location values change for the original region, or will they retain the original coordinates and the added regions would therefore extend out from there, from 256K to 512K in each direction?

[Ilan Tochner]

HI Lawrence,

In a VarRegion the entire area is one big region, with coordinates larger than 256. When you increase your worlds size you can select whether to add flat land or ocean area. After the resizing is done it will be up to you to teraform the enlarged world.

Object locations are based on a single point that is inside your region. Offsim objects are always linked to a root object that is inside the region. When a world's size increases that doesn't change the point where the objects were located inside the region. However, during the resizing process you select where to locate your existing region inside the enlarged VarRegion, and that will move objects accordingly.

[Lawrence Pierce]

When the larger world is created, terrain (or water) is added at the original region borders. But if the original terrain is hilly, for example, does it adjoin new flat terrain (or water), and leave "holes" where the underlying terrain heights inevitably do not match up?

Although, along the same lines, perhaps the creation of an enlarged varregion automatically flattens the original region to a default elevation?

[Ilan Tochner]

The original region's terrain isn't changed. The enlarged VarRegion uses a single height map for the entire terrain so there won't be any holes in the terrian but there may be very steep clifs where a mountain needs to connect to an ocean or lower elevation flat land.

[Lawrence Pierce]

Okay, now I better understand how the addition of terrain looks...

If at some point I want to go back to the original single region, is that possible? Does the system ask which 256 x 256 region to preserve?

[Lawrence Pierce]

Yes, you can both enlarge and reduce the size of existing worlds. See: https://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-ne ... ical-tool/

[Dot Matrix]

I've used these tools many times -- they work well.

When enlarging a world from a single region to a 2x2 (or larger), selecting the ocean option for the new regions gives a more attractive result (to my mind).

Don't forget to save an OAR before enlarging/reducing -- just in case!