On the camera

[EnderWiggin]

Bigger FOV would be a very nice thing, but AFAIK it'd put too much strain on the server to be feasible (the more you see, the more data needs to be sent).

Does it load depending on where your camera looks or what your character position is? Because if it's the latter then I think changing the FOV wouldn't do a thing when it comes to the amount of data sent.

Objects are loaded in a square around player, so no additional strain due to larger FOV.

[Procne]

Actually larger FOV would allow you to see further on the edges which would either look bad with appearing / disappearing objects (or even terrain) or would require more objeccts being sent from the server.

[Potjeh]

I thought larger FOV implies a larger loaded area, so things don't just pop up mid-screen.

[Sevenless]

I thought larger FOV implies a larger loaded area, so things don't just pop up mid-screen.

Right now we load 9 minimaps of tile data, and then the objects within 1 minimap distance of ourselves. The amount loaded is set so that using a regular client you'll never see out to the edges where unloaded information is. Increasing the FoV without increasing what's loaded lets you see the edges of information your client is being sent, but stuff that wouldn't be visible usually because seeing it would break the immersion as you'd also see unloaded areas.

Ender's modifications to the camera do exactly that. It looks unprofessional, but as I've pointed out in a permadeath pvp game professionalism of a game <<< being dead.

The other option is to increase the loaded area and the vision field. This wouldn't break immersion, but it would put more strain on the server. Tiles however are already done, so it wouldn't be a complete increase in server load.