Sectional terrain editing

• US 10,245,512 B2
• Filed: 06/13/2016
• Issued: 04/02/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 06/13/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Karolewics, Stephen Vincent, Bethel, Zachary Colton
• Primary Examiner(s): Myhr, Justin
• Application Number:
  US15/180,640
• Publication Number:
  US 20170354890A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,023 Days
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/63 by the player, e.g. authoring using a level editor
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/65 automatically by game devices or servers from real world data, e.g. measurement in live racing competition
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/70 Game security or game management aspects
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/825 Fostering virtual characters
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04847 Interaction techniques to control parameter settings, e.g. interaction with sliders or dials
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/33 Intelligent editors

Abstract

Techniques for sectional terrain editing are described herein. In some examples, terrain associated with at least part of a virtual area of a video game may be sectioned into a plurality of terrain sections. Each of the terrain sections may have one or more associated data collections that store terrain data related to the sections with which they are associated. This may enable multiple different users to simultaneously edit different portions of terrain with the expectation and confidence that their edits will be successfully saved and will not conflict with edits made by other users. In some examples, each terrain section may have multiple different associated data collections, for example associated with different types of terrain editing operations. This may provide further efficiency by allowing multiple different users to check out and acquire locks on different terrain data for the same terrain section at the same time.

Claims

1. A computing system for sectional terrain editing comprising:

one or more processors; and

one or more memories having stored therein instructions that, upon execution by the one or more processors, cause the computing system perform operations comprising;

sectioning terrain of at least part of a virtual area associated with a video game into a plurality of terrain sections;

maintaining a plurality of terrain data collections associated with the plurality of terrain sections, each of the plurality of terrain sections having at least one associated terrain data collection of the plurality of terrain data collections;

checking out, to a first user, a first terrain data collection of the plurality of terrain data collections associated with a first terrain section of the plurality of terrain sections for editing terrain of the first terrain section in a terrain editing interface;

checking in, from the first user, the first terrain data collection; and

saving, to the first data collection, data associated with one or more edits to the first data collection made by the first user during a time that the first data collection is checked out to the first user,

wherein, during at least part of the time that the first terrain data collection is checked out to the first user, a second terrain data collection of the plurality of terrain data collections associated with a second terrain section of the plurality of terrain sections is made available to be checked out to a second user.

2. The computing system of claim 1, wherein a first group of terrain data collections of the plurality of terrain data collections are associated with the first terrain section, the first group of terrain data collections associated with a plurality of types of terrain editing operations.

3. The computing system of claim 2, wherein the first group of terrain data collections are made available to be concurrently checked out to different users.

4. The computing system of claim 2, wherein the first group of terrain data collections comprises a terrain data collection associated with terrain height data, a terrain data collection associated with terrain vegetation data, a terrain data collection associated with terrain texture data, and a terrain data collection associated with terrain layer data.

5. A method for sectional terrain editing comprising:

maintaining a plurality of terrain data collections associated with a plurality of terrain sections for terrain of at least part of a virtual area associated with a content item, each of the plurality of terrain sections having at least one associated terrain data collection of the plurality of terrain data collections;

checking out, to a first user, a first terrain data collection of the plurality of terrain data collections associated with a first terrain section of the plurality of terrain sections for editing terrain of the first terrain section;

checking in, from the first user, the first terrain data collection; and

saving, to the first data collection, data corresponding to one or more edits associated with the first data collection made by the first user during a time that the first data collection is checked out to the first user,

wherein, during at least part of the time that the first terrain data collection is checked out to the first user, a second terrain data collection of the plurality of terrain data collections associated with a second terrain section of the plurality of terrain sections is made available to be checked out to a second user.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein a first group of terrain data collections of the plurality of terrain data collections are associated with the first terrain section, the first group of terrain data collections associated with a plurality of types of terrain editing operations.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the first group of terrain data collections are made available to be concurrently checked out to different users.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the first group of terrain data collections comprises a terrain data collection associated with terrain height data, a terrain data collection associated with terrain vegetation data, a terrain data collection associated with terrain texture data, and a terrain data collection associated with terrain layer data.

9. The method of claim 5, further comprising providing, to the first user, one or more indications of whether a terrain section has at least one associated terrain data collection that is at least one of checked out by the first user, writable by the first user, or read only accessible by the first user.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the one or more indications comprise one or more color coded terrain section borders.

11. The method of claim 5, further comprising providing, to the first user, one or more indications that a terrain section is locked or partially locked.

12. The method of claim 5, further comprising unloading, from memory, terrain data associated with a terrain section to which the first user has read only access.

13. The method of claim 5, further comprising providing displaying a graphical representation of at least part of the terrain of the first terrain section.

14. The method of claim 5, further comprising sectioning the terrain of at least part of the virtual area associated with the content item into the plurality of terrain sections.

15. The method of claim 5, wherein the content item comprises a video game.

16. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media having stored thereon instructions that, upon execution by one or more computing devices, cause the one or more compute nodes to perform operations comprising:

maintaining a plurality of terrain data collections associated with a plurality of terrain sections for terrain of at least part of a virtual area associated with a content item, wherein a first terrain section of the plurality of terrain sections has an associated first group of terrain data collections of the plurality of terrain data collections;

checking out, to a first user, a first terrain data collection of the first group of terrain data collections associated with the first terrain section for editing terrain of the first terrain section;

checking in, from the first user, the first terrain data collection; and

saving, to the first data collection, data corresponding to one or more edits associated with the first data collection made by the first user during a time that the first data collection is checked out to the first user,

wherein, during at least part of the time that the first terrain data collection is checked out to the first user, a second terrain data collection of the first group of terrain data collections associated with the first terrain section is made available to be checked out to a second user.

17. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 16, wherein the first group of terrain data collections is associated with a plurality of types of terrain editing operations.

18. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 16, wherein during at least part of the time that the first terrain data collection is checked out to the first user, a third terrain data collection of the plurality of terrain data collections associated with a second terrain section of the plurality of terrain sections is made available to be checked out to the second user.

19. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 16, wherein the first group of terrain data collections comprises a terrain data collection associated with terrain height data, a terrain data collection associated with terrain vegetation data, a terrain data collection associated with terrain texture data, and a terrain data collection associated with terrain layer data.

20. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 16, wherein the operations further comprise providing, to the first user, one or more indications of whether a terrain section has at least one associated terrain data collection that is at least one of checked out by the first user, writable by the first user, or read only accessible by the first user.