Game Discussions Bethesda Softworks Starfield Space RPG

Comandante

Comandante
[VR] Merkir said:
Knowing this is a Bethesda RPG, I really don't care.

However, with my procgen enthusiast hat on, I have to ask, have you got evidence for these statements? I'm very curious, as it would be unlike almost every other game design when procgen is used to generate terrain/levels/whatever. And of course it contradicts what Bethesda have said. Any links to actual evidence?
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There's a grey area (for me; YMMV) between what Bethesda have said and what's being 'reported' by people who currently have access to the game. They've (Bethesda) described how planet tiling and wrapping works but they didn't explicitly state that it was a 100% persistence universe WRT planet surfaces. Others might have done this (ED; SC; not sure about NMS) but it appears that Bethesda have not gone down the route of completely persisted planetary surfaces, except for POIs and your last n (is it 3?) locations visited.

The majority of this is in leaks posted (and re-posted in the last several pages). There's nothing to say that it's not true since it's coming from several (possibly dozens) of sources that all hint at the same thing. The tell-tale 'smoking gun' (for myself) is the dialog that pops up when you reach the 'limit' of a tile. It's not an issue for me though.

It appears to me that the procgen used isn't in the same vein as games like ED and SC; rather, the procgen element is used to generate scenery for a given area that matches the planet - it's rock types, biome details etc.. So it's not persistent generation of entities/geography, rather to generate data for the planet on a per-tile/location basis, outside of POIs that are already generated/persistent for a planet. It's still procgen just done in a different way.

Not 100% sure why they went down this route since it's (procgen) not exactly a hidden science. But that's the route they went down. Still 101% excited for the other areas of the game and can forgive such 'details' in the face of what the other elements of the game will provide.

Procgen has many different faces...
 

varonica

varonica
[VR] Merkir said:
My expectations of both games are completely different, because the publishers of both games describe their games completely differently. I would never compare Bethesda 's Starfield RPG, which they describe as "a role-playing game set amongst the stars", to Frontier's Elite Dangerous, which they described as "a full galactic and technological simulation based on real scientific principles" (the description they gave when I purchased it). 🤷‍♂️

Now to directly answer your question, Frontier actually did something similar to this in Odyssey. There were many threads complaining about the changes to terrain generation at the time. Again, I quote Frontier, this time on their new terrain generation: "we're talking up 100km worth of terrain for example, which are now generated offline into terrain shapes that we know are formed."
So every landable planet you see in Odyssey actually uses repeating terrain tiles, generated offline.
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Exactly, from the very first few videos it appeared that SF was not going to be a game anything like Elite Dangerous, specially once I realised you can't actually land your ship and it was all basically cut scenes, in fact it appeared that it was going to be exactly what it was described as, a Single Player RPG, not an Open World MMO. That doesn't make it a bad game, but it does make it a game that I probably won't play. There's certainly no need to get annoyed about it, and the fact there's some confusion over how planets is probably understandable since it hasn't been released yet and they probably don't want to give a complete walk through. Once released, look at it both from the devs and players perspective and decide whether or not you actually want it.
 

[VR] Merkir

[VR] Merkir
Star Wanderer said:
You could try to hide behind the titels, but it won't change the fact that a Planet is still a Planet and Space Exploration exists in both games. In ED Space Exploation consist of landing on Planets ( among other things), in Starfield it will be about landing on tiles. It's a huge immersion breaker.
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All good. I really don't feel like I need to hide behind titles because I think my expectations are realistic and align well with what the publishers have said. What I expect in Starfield is similar to what I got with Skyrim and Fallout - a very entertaining CRPG. For elite dangerous I'm an explorer 60,000 Ly from Earth, doing all those cool explorer-y things. :)

In short, I expect the two games to scratch two completely different itches.
 

Comandante

Comandante
I think that's the great thing about SF coming out is that it adds to the relatively small list of space-based games, open world, sandbox, RPG or whatever they are. I really must get round to watching some X4 walk-throughs as I saw an advert for it recently and it does look cool.
 

Mole HD

Mole HD
Star Wanderer said:
You could try to hide behind the titels, but it won't change the fact that a Planet is still a Planet and Space Exploration exists in both games. In ED Space Exploation consist of landing on Planets ( among other things), in Starfield it will be about landing on tiles. It's a huge immersion breaker.
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For you maybe...for those of us who've played and enjoyed a variety of Bethesda RPG's for many years...maybe not so much :)
 

Cosmo

Cosmo
Screenshots: Akila city, pet and ship

Akila city screenshots

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Alien pet
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Late game ship with glass windows

8l4653.jpeg
 
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Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
Cosmo said:
This is what Todd said during an interview with Lex Fridman (at 59:40 minutes) on 29 November 2022:


On August 21, 2023 @JeffThreat (Synthwave Lord) asked:
"Ummm @bethesda @DCDeacon @StarfieldGame when I land on a planet.. will I be able to explore that whole entire planet? "

Pete Hines replied "Yup, if you want. Walk on, brave explorer. 6:51 AM · Aug 22, 2023."

These statements by Howard and Hines are inaccurate and misleading. We cannot explore the whole planet, because:
  1. The landing areas do not match the geography that we see from space.
  2. Each landing area is randomly generated, self-contained with some handcrafted stuff.
  3. A landing area is deleted if it's more than 4 per planet.
  4. If you return to the same location of a deleted landing area to revisit it, the game generates a different area.
  5. We can see the adjacent areas at the boundary, but we cannot visit these areas with the same topography.
  6. It takes ~10 minutes of sprinting in a straight line from the center of a landing area to the boundary. This is quite small for a space game, hence they didn't add ground vehicles.
Maybe Hines didn't fully understand the planetary tech, but it's inconsistent, smoke and mirrors. Perhaps this will be fixed in a future update or mod. I'm not bashing the game, that's just how it works right now. There's plenty of other features in SF that are good though.
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If landing zones were random there would be no base building but there is base building.
The procgen is seeded, then, with same outcome every time.
 

varonica

varonica
Navigare Necesse Est said:
If landing zones were random there would be no base building but there is base building.
The procgen is seeded, then, with same outcome every time.
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Unless according to recent info the seed is saved, it's been put out that you can have up to 4 different random location on the planet marked, and once you make a 5th one the first one will disappear, so assuming the 4 seeds are saved, maybe the base location seed is saved permanently for the player so it always appears the same. One of the points with the saved locations being a max of 4 is that from orbit once one of those points vanishes the chances of you selecting the exact same location is probably zero if you are just pointing at the surface. If they were say 40klms per side, what are the chances of you selecting that exact same square from orbit once it's vanished? Well unless they let you choose by lat/long, the chances landing in the same place twice is probably zero, so if that were the case the seeds may as well be random. Still a game of wait and see I guess.
 

Dooguk

D
varonica said:
Unless according to recent info the seed is saved, it's been put out that you can have up to 4 different random location on the planet marked, and once you make a 5th one the first one will disappear, so assuming the 4 seeds are saved, maybe the base location seed is saved permanently for the player so it always appears the same. One of the points with the saved locations being a max of 4 is that from orbit once one of those points vanishes the chances of you selecting the exact same location is probably zero if you are just pointing at the surface. If they were say 40klms per side, what are the chances of you selecting that exact same square from orbit once it's vanished? Well unless they let you choose by lat/long, the chances landing in the same place twice is probably zero, so if that were the case the seeds may as well be random. Still a game of wait and see I guess.
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I am probably wrong but, isn't the progen seed used for making the planet and it's topography, makeup etc, this is then covered in tiles?
 

Ed02349

E
Cosmo said:
  • When you land for the first time in a location, there is a sizeable loading screen. From then on, when you come back to that same location, it's almost instantaneous.*
  • From the way he's showing how it works, he hinted that if you land in X location on planet Y, place a Z item on the ground, and leave there and then return to that location, the Z item will remain there.*
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Just me thinking out loud. The first point sounds like the game generates the tile when you create a landing zone. Would explain why differnt players will get different experience as no two games would create the same tile at the same location if I'm correct. The second point is really nice, but I'm guessing on xbox once the fifth landing zone deletes one of the earlier on the stored data is gone too and creating a new LZ would be a new map? Might be immersion breaking if POI on the landing zone changes the second time you create LZ at that spot.

I can be an Attack Helicopter in Starfield YAY!

Not long now until I can watch it on youtube.
 

Dooguk

D
Navigare Necesse Est said:
Yes. But one pixel apart and you get different outcome. You have to enter the exact same coordinate. How different depends pn the algo.
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All I'm trying to say is, everyone gets the same planet seed in every playthrough. The planet terrain is the same for everyone. Everyone gets the same crucial POI's. But the tiles are different for everyone on each playthrough. As the example in the video showed, what was once a dome became a crystal outcrop in the next playthrough. Clear as mud?
 

Cosmo

Cosmo
Transit system in New Atlantis:

I would've preferred a little cinematic while it loads the next location.


Mirrors for videos that were removed:

streamable.com

Streamable Video

Watch this video on Streamable.
streamable.com streamable.com
streamable.com

Streamable Video

Watch this video on Streamable.
streamable.com streamable.com
streamable.com

Streamable Video

Watch this video on Streamable.
streamable.com streamable.com

Navigare Necesse Est said:
If landing zones were random there would be no base building but there is base building.
The procgen is seeded, then, with same outcome every time.
Click to expand...

Afaik, when you build a base that's a condition to permanently save that landing area. However, we can't build bases everywhere to save all the tiles.
 
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