I learned the existence of this game some days ago while surfing on the net. Naturally, as a sci-fi fan the game looks great and has a lot of potential. All this "procedurally-generated universe" thing look great but I wonder how will it look like when you have spent a ridiculous amount of time in a single game? I know some basics about programmation so I can't help but wonder how the game engine will react. I mean the "save file" will probably be oversized! Not to mention all the interaction that will happen a the same time with a big amount of solar systems interacting with each other. And if there is a sort of "map view", thats going to be a pain in the butt for any machine to display a large amount of systems/objects.

Maybe someone already ask on the forum but I tried the search engine and could not find the kind of answer i was looking for

P.S. Im so mad I missed the kickstarter campaign

Basically, a "sphere of influence" is modeled and saved.
If you are present in a huge amount of space, just get a new HDD.

If your "bubble" moves on, things behind you get kind of fuzzy. Instead of individual ships, local fleet strengths are saved. Planetary conditions are summed up as faction conditions, and so on.
Since procedural generation will create the same ships from the same rules when you go back there at a later time, it's impossible to tell if this was a saved ship or a newly created replacement.

If I recal correctly:

The map only shows where you have been.

The save files have a short a long term memory of sorts,
if you haven't been in a sysyem for a very long time it slowly,
stop tracking the fine details of that system, and only rembers general stuff.

I imagine generation will be in a manner similar to ... hm.. minecraft. Basically, "blocks" or "chunks" of the world are generated when the player first interacts with that region of space, and only those blocks are actually saved / play a role in the universe. LT seems to also want to implement some sort of cleaning procedure to remove details for "obsolete" blocks.

jimhsu wrote: LT seems to also want to implement some sort of cleaning procedure to remove details for "obsolete" blocks.

It pretty much needs to because... space is big.
You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. - THGTTG

This thread has, in turn, links to several other threads, as well as a response from Josh about the subject.

Thanks for the link. Guess that will do.

@jimhsu But the fun fact about minecraft is that the world is not infinite due to java limitations. See http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Far_lands

Thats why I was wondering.

Swordmania wrote:Thanks for the link. Guess that will do.

@jimhsu But the fun fact about minecraft is that the world is not infinite due to java limitations. See http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Far_lands

Thats why I was wondering.

As I understand it, something "far lands"-like will happen when you travel a large distance away from the centre of a region.

not sure if anybody has read the idea I posted on an earlier thread, but the topic was mentioned here so I'll go for it!

Anyhow, in terms of maps I was thinking of (and I'll edit my previous idea since previously I suggested purchasing them and this would be ridiculous but that's just my opinion, so please say otherwise if you feel so.) possibly having like.. little map microchips and each chip would hold a square of x by x of meters or km or so have you. and I've never played the computer Minecraft but I hear that their maps are similar to this idea but instead you have pieces of paper of course and it'll show a small square of the entire world. but ya, was just thinking that that could fit in well since, imo, it would be insane to try and create a star map of the entire universe as you explore it, imagine if you go in one direction for the whole game. eventually that area of sight is going to become a thin little line on the map, and the only counter I can think of is maybe a zoom in feature for the map.

P.S. although I'm sort of against it, I wonder about the possibility of having the map chips being available to buy as well.

I don't think the game will store every single cubic meter you visited. That would become very impractical very fast.
it will, of course, store interesting things you came across. Stations, planets, asteroids, comets (?), large wrecks (?), probably even nebulae etc.

Josh's idea is that the player will be able to buy and sell information from and to NPCs.

Well, think of it like this. When it comes to minecraft, it is storing every bit of information about a block in each chunk. Minecraft's chunks are 16x16x256. Minecraft is storing volumetric information. It has to since it needs to remember the minerals in each chunk and the like.

In LT, since it doesn't have chunks the same way minecraft does, can still store the position and information of pretty much each object in space and still be smaller than minecraft's saves.

Even if it takes, say 50kb data to store one object in LT, having a save of around 50mb (1,000 separate objects) is reasonable. I doubt it takes as much as 50kb to save a single object, and I know I don't mind if my saves end up being a lot bigger. 100mb? 200mb? Not an issue for me at least.

DWMagus wrote:Well, think of it like this. When it comes to minecraft, it is storing every bit of information about a block in each chunk. Minecraft's chunks are 16x16x256. Minecraft is storing volumetric information. It has to since it needs to remember the minerals in each chunk and the like.

Well, they could do what Josh is doing... Generate the chunk and apply the differences. This is what Starbound is doing too.

DWMagus wrote: In LT, since it doesn't have chunks the same way minecraft does, can still store the position and information of pretty much each object in space and still be smaller than minecraft's saves.

That, and everything gets generated from a seed, so the game doesn't have to remember things it can recalculate.

DWMagus wrote: Even if it takes, say 50kb data to store one object in LT, having a save of around 50mb (1,000 separate objects) is reasonable. I doubt it takes as much as 50kb to save a single object, and I know I don't mind if my saves end up being a lot bigger. 100mb? 200mb? Not an issue for me at least.

LT would probably save everything that it can't regenerate from the seed. That, combined with details getting forgotten over time will reduce savegame sizes considerably. Josh even mentioned that the game would save something you wrote with lasers on an asteroid.

To give an idea, I have a heavily modded X3 universe, probably with many thousands of objects. 15mb.

Minecraft chunks are stored 32x32 chunks (512x512x256 = 67 million blocks if I can do math right) in region files, which take up anywhere from 44KB to 4MB (home base). My current savegame has 20 such regions that take up 50MB total (and is a pretty long running game).

So no, I don't think savegame sizes are a problem.

jimhsu wrote:To give an idea, I have a heavily modded X3 universe, probably with many thousands of objects. 15mb.

Minecraft chunks are stored 32x32 chunks (512x512x128 if I can do math right) in region files, which take up anywhere from 44KB to 4MB (home base). My current savegame has 20 such chunks that take up 50MB total (and is a pretty long running game).

So no, I don't think savegame sizes are a problem.

Actually, Minecraft chunks are 16x256x16. Air blocks aren't saved though.
A pre-generated world of 10k x 10k takes up about 3-4GB on the hard drive.

Edit: I probably misunderstood. You're right that in a region file there are 32x32 chunks saved.

Yea, corrected it.