400 billion starssystems...is that 399.99bn too many?

[Altissimus]

From an intellectual point of view, it's great that "every star in the night sky" is there in the game. I love it.

But I can't help thinking that "Frontier" (Elite 2) would've been a better game if it hadn't tried to do so much.

What's the resources (people, time, money) cost of reproducing the Milky Way into the game, vs the percentage of players who will actually be influenced by this? Is anyone saying they *wouldn't* buy the game if it just had a fictional universe?

There comes a cost from trying to do too much. People spending their time updating every exoplanet that is theorised to exist into the game, just so that they say they have, are people who aren't working on developments and bugs.

Also, I love the exploration thing, but seriously...in the near-infinite vastness of a cosmos with 400 billion stars, if you take a straight line from Lave and keep going, and going, and going, what are the actual chances of then running into another player? How many players would it take to populate a galaxy? More, I think, then may exist in the current gaming industry. Would it not make more sense to limit the borders of space?

Just some thoughts.

A.

 

[Commander_Tin]

These stars are procedurally generated. Four hundred or four hundred billion takes just as much or little work from the developers to put in. It's an automatic process.

 

[Altissimus]

These stars are procedurally generated. Four hundred or four hundred billion takes just as much or little work from the developers to put in. It's an automatic process.

No, it's procedurally generated past a certain point.

Either way, still too many. How many are you, personally, intending to explore? 1 billion? 2?

If you visit 1,000,000 star systems, you've visited 0.00025% of the star systems in the game. Also, you've never played any other game, ever.

 

[Tinman]

No, it's procedurally generated past a certain point.

Either way, still too many. How many are you, personally, intending to explore? 1 billion? 2?

If you visit 1,000,000 star systems, you've visited 0.00025% of the star systems in the game. Also, you've never played any other game, ever.

The point is to simulate our galaxy. Our galaxy contains 400 Billion stars. Therefore it's not "too many"...it is that number because that's how our galaxy looks like.

 

[usernametaken]

Much of the real data, stars position, spectral type, etc, will be pulled from ( I would assume) a fairly well formatted library (or collection of). If you put in the effort to parse one star in that library then you should have put in the effort to parse them all automatically.

This is something I'd looked into for a project of my own.

I'd found some pretty well formatted library stuff but I was only looking at one small section.

 

[Gibbonici]

Also, I love the exploration thing, but seriously...in the near-infinite vastness of a cosmos with 400 billion stars, if you take a straight line from Lave and keep going, and going, and going, what are the actual chances of then running into another player?

Slim to none.

There's always been a kind of orthodoxy in multiplayer games that players must be forced together, which has always denied the possibility of true exploration in them. After all, it's not really exploring if thousands of people have been there before you.

I can't think of a single game that has gone against this orthodoxy, yet I've never come across a solid argument for it. If players want to be around other players, then they'll play around other players without being forced.

As for the overhead that these 400 billion stars present, it is considerably lower than adding more voiced-over mission/quest content in other games. Gotta love procedural generation

 

[prasak]

If there was only 1 million of systems, there would be a day in a future, where each system was already explored, which would mean exploration has no sense anymore. I doubt that at least 1% of all systems will ever be visited in the whole lifetime of this game, but there will be allways this excitement which will drive all the explorers to explore more and think which way to go, to find some interesting constellations, new stations, trading possibilities, conflicts ...

 

[Kris]

No, it's procedurally generated past a certain point.

No, you are wrong. You are talking about Milky Way, up to 400 billion stars. That is 100% procedurally generated and doesn´t take much extra development time (only procedural algrotims + "building blocks" which are needed for fictional systems anyway).

 

[Thx1137]

No, it's procedurally generated past a certain point.

Either way, still too many. How many are you, personally, intending to explore? 1 billion? 2?

If you visit 1,000,000 star systems, you've visited 0.00025% of the star systems in the game. Also, you've never played any other game, ever.

Ok. So, um you want to limit the size of the galaxy because it is too big thereby constrain the systems everyone else can visit.

That none of us will visit a small percentage is obvious but is not the point. Why place an artificial limit on it unless there is a reason for doing so. A reason other than "it's too big!".

I am interested to know how you know for a fact that the "cost" is so large it will make a significant impact on the schedule.

 

[Havoc]

No, you are wrong. You are talking about Milky Way, up to 400 billion stars. That is 100% procedurally generated and doesn´t take much extra development time (only procedural algrotims + "building blocks" which are needed for fictional systems anyway).

Let's say 99.99% procedurally generated because theres those 150k or so systems that are handcrafted.

 

[Tacheel]

No, it's procedurally generated past a certain point.

Either way, still too many. How many are you, personally, intending to explore? 1 billion? 2?

If you visit 1,000,000 star systems, you've visited 0.00025% of the star systems in the game. Also, you've never played any other game, ever.

The point is i can pick ANY system i can see in the night sky, and i can pick any of the billions of unknown ones simulated. This makes it feel like i'm out in a real galaxy (even if the procedural ones are maintaining the illusion).

It's the freedom of choice and scope and opportunity for discovery in a realistic galaxy that appeals to me playing this.

 

[Bobbydylan]

I actually like the idea of a miss-jump sending me waaaay out of known space, and having to make my way back by scooping fuel.

 

[RickDangerous]

If you visit a new star system every 15 minutes for the next 50 years you will have visited ~1.7M stars. Just to put things into perspective.

 

[Slawkenbergius]

Is anyone saying they *wouldn't* buy the game if it just had a fictional universe?

I wouldn't have backed to the level I did, and would have been very disappointed by the regression.

 

[Kris]

Let's say 99.99% procedurally generated because theres those 150k or so systems that are handcrafted.

What i meant was that they are generated. Just not procedurally.

They are not handcrafted. Just number data (stars, planets, orbits etc) that is placed in the galaxy.

 

[Helios]

These stars are procedurally generated. Four hundred or four hundred billion takes just as much or little work from the developers to put in. It's an automatic process.

Indeed!

Also I'd like to add: If it did not have that "near-infinite vastness", as you call it Altissimus, at least for me it really would not be the game it's going to be.

In fact looking back at Elite 2 and 3 that very feeling of being in the midst of that endless (for all intents and purposes) galaxy is what really defines those games for me and elevates them, even now, over all other titles in the genre. Be it the X series (which I also liked), Privateer 1 and 2 (which I really liked as well), Freelancer (which strangely enough didn't captivate me yet, but is still on my to play list) many others and also Evochron, which I consider to be one of the best games in the genre.

Likely that's why I feel the lack of a living recreation of an entire galaxy the most in Evochron. Other games, like the X series, are different enough to offer a totally different experience from the Elite games. Privateer 2 had the cool story. Freelancer AFAIK as well. Evochron however gets so close to the feeling of Elite, even offering planetary landings. This IMHO makes the lack of that "near-infinite vastness" a real flaw. Whereas in games like the X series and Privateer it can clearly be seen as viable design decision - in games in the Elite series and those that strive to get as close as possible to the Elite games it IMHO is not a viable design decision but merely a shortcoming.

Well, as stated by Commander Tin: It's procedurally generated. I do disagree with Tin, that it's not important whether 400 or 400 billion stars are procedurally generated. If it were just 400 a much less sophisticated procedural generation would suffice. For 400 billion systems it has to be much more complex and much, much more assets (planet textures etc.) must be created so the necessary variety can be achieved. Also the objective of matching our real galaxy as closely as possible likely makes it necessary to fine-tune the procedural generation until it achieves its goal. And then there is the fact that roughly 100.000 stars that real data already exists about where input. (if not entirely manually it still would require a lot of manual work)
It's true however, that it takes significant less time than manually creating the content. When you have all the assets manually creating 800 systems would likely take only slightly less than twice the time needed to create 400 systems, but that's not true for procedural generation. Once they have created a procedural generation mechanism that can generate vast numbers of systems with enough variety the increase in needed effort on the developer side will likely severely diminish.
What however just crossed my mind while typing this: What is the chance, that the procedural generation mechanism glitches terribly? There will likely be failsafes in place, but in case of unexpected outcomes I guess we might see them in the game one day.
(Unless they have trainees that they can force to look over every single system between gamma and release just to make sure that there is no system that spawns 100 suns or is flooded with asteroids pops up in the final product. Let's think this through. Assuming Frontier has 100 faithful trainees that work for free 16 hours per day ignoring weekends and holidays and looking at 80 days of gamma. That would still be more than 800 systems per second each trainee would have to check. OMG the size of this game... It's going to be awesome! )

 

[Björn Robèrt]

I don't see how 400 billion star systems in itself could be a problem? The problem is if there's so little to do that the number becomes just a marketing ploy.

If FD manages to make it worthwhile to travel and explore the depths of space by using procedurally generated content and some clever simulations (of markets, missions, exploration, factions etc), 400 billion stars makes for a lot of fun! If not, there's just going to be a whole load of stars that's not worth the visit and players will concentrate on the "managed" core systems. Either way, there is no reason not to include all the stars in our galaxy..

 

[Altissimus]

I don't see how 400 billion star systems in itself could be a problem? The problem is if there's so little to do that the number becomes just a marketing ploy.

If FD manages to make it worthwhile to travel and explore the depths of space by using procedurally generated content and some clever simulations (of markets, missions, exploration, factions etc), 400 billion stars makes for a lot of fun! If not, there's just going to be a whole load of stars that's not worth the visit and players will concentrate on the "managed" core systems. Either way, there is no reason not to include all the stars in our galaxy..

This.

Interesting feedback from others too though....just so long as the redundant 399.99bn stars don't detract from anything else, then cool

 

[Dante80]

The size of the playing field is not a problem. FD want to simulate our Milky Way galaxy, so going for the number of star systems and celestial objects needed to do so is just a requirement for them.

Also, it gives a glorious canvas that can be used by the developers to enrichen and add mechanics, lore, places of interest and complexity for years and years to come (at least, that is the plan).

In this game, I want to be a space scientist. A xenogeologist, biologist, a seeker of beauty and wonder. The game will give us the opportunity to go where no man has gone before. I really cannot understand why having the option to do so would be a disadvantage.

After all, its Elite man! Anything less would be sacrilege really.

 

[Andrew Sayers]

What's the resources (people, time, money) cost of reproducing the Milky Way into the game, vs the percentage of players who will actually be influenced by this?

Here's an interesting way to look at it: if Frontier paid two hundred people to create stars all day for two years straight, they would have to produce a million stars per person per year to create the galaxy that exists in the current beta. Therefore we can assume they have either a very low-cost mechanism for creating stars, or some incredibly good typists

The value of 400 billion stars is that it speaks to the vastness of the universe. A big part of Elite is about capturing that moment of wonder when you first looked up at the night sky, which means constantly reinforcing how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big space is.