Two questions: Geometry that moves and dealing with large, complex maps

[Gibby]

Hi-hi,

Right now, I'm starting work on a rather large map, in this case, it's an office skyscraper. I want to use it for a multiplayer game, and I do realise that multiplayer maps in general tend to be small for the gamemode purposes, but lets say that I've planned a gamemode that requires a large amount of space, what methods can I use to make sure that players don't get bogged down in terrible amounts of lag? Reducing the draw-distance for each player is one solution, but what are the others?

Also, I plan to work on another map which I haven't started. The thing is, I want to make the whole map feel like it's actually moving. In the case of this map, it's going to be a large ship and I want to make it tilt side-to-side or at least simulate the effect of tilting by making the player camera move instead. Are there any tutorials I can follow (or tips that you can give me) that deal with this?

Any help or links that anyone could give me will be greatly appreciated and of course, thanks for your time!

[darthviper107]

For something like a skyscraper, that really wouldn't be an issue--yeah it'd be a lot of rooms, but you wouldn't be seeing them all at once. So basically limit how much stuff is actually visible at once and it should be fine.

For the ship thing, well you could use dynamic lighting, but that would mean you could only use one light if you want good performance, and I'm not sure how the shadows would work with that.

That's one of the issues they were struggling with on the Bioshock Infinite project, since the buildings float around a bit so they had to develop some new method of lighting.