Do FD staff have "God Mode"?

[Nerwan]

The procedural data for every system and planetary body is already in game, it is not made up on the fly.

Do you have a source for that because given that commanders have only explored < 1% of the galaxy it would make a lot of sense to only store what they needed to.. Cloud storage costs money and it'd make sense to only generate topographies for all those planets (presumably the largest thing to store) if someone actually visited..

- - - Updated - - -

They use COBRA their in house engine.

Sure, but COBRA will be written in a language.. Probably C/C++ since it's been around a while... and I get the impression FDev are old skool.

 

[Nagual]

Do you have a source for that because given that commanders have only explored < 1% of the galaxy it would make a lot of sense to only store what they needed to.. Cloud storage costs money and it'd make sense to only generate topographies for all those planets (presumably the largest thing to store) if someone actually visited..

Thats not the way procedural generations works. Basically they can work out from a sequence of numbers and very complicated algorithms the position, composition, and all other details. The game doesn't store details about every system and planet in a list, as that would be insanely huge.

A old and simple explanation can be found here, by David Braben [video=youtube;iTBvpd3_Vqk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTBvpd3_Vqk[/video]

 

[Nerwan]

Thats not the way procedural generations works. Basically they can work out from a sequence of numbers and very complicated algorithms the position, composition, and all other details. The game doesn't store details about every system and planet in a list, as that would be insanely huge.

Ah yes, that makes a load of sense. They probably just have to store a kind of seed number for each system which then pops out the same way each time when you run the generation algorithm for it. It's probably only 8 bytes per system or some such..

- - - Updated - - -

The procedural data for every system and planetary body is already in game, it is not made up on the fly.

- - - Updated - - -



They use COBRA their in house engine.

They have used 'god mode' for streams as I've mentioned above, of special note is the Canonn ones where Unknown Artifacts, and Probes were magically in Eds hold. They have also used it to move to different systems during one stream (Not live build if I remember right)

So, COBRA is C++ and some LUA apparently:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6372

"What programming languages are used for Elite: Dangerous?

Almost exclusively C++. On other projects we’ve used a lot of Lua as well which we may also include in ED - that’s an open debate.
We use a much wider variety of languages for tools: often C++ or C#, but scattered around the company there’s some Python, Ruby, Java and others."

 

[Spacecat]

Ah yes, that makes a load of sense. They probably just have to store a kind of seed number for each system which then pops out the same way each time when you run the generation algorithm for it. It's probably only 8 bytes per system or some such..

Which is why I call hogwash on the myth that FD needs additional revenue from $5 paint jobs to keep the servers running. I'm guessing the servers that run CNN or almost any major media site are way more bandwidth intensive.

 

[Hooplah]

It sure is, and I'd bet that FD use C++ (although not sure of course). C# is increasingly popular these days in games development, I believe most PS4 games are C# now.. I spend 80% of my time doing C++ (the remaining 20% being C)

EDIT: C++ has actually had a bit of a resurgence in recent years due to some big improvements in the language with the advent of C++11, C++14 and the upcoming C++17 which has greatly increased safety and made some of the old gotcha's a thing of the past. Native programming is suddenly a bit cool again.. (a relative term in programming of course )

Thanks for the heads up! I don't feel so old now. Still I would think that the compilers and editors are light years ahead of what once was making the process a lot more intuitive and understandable. Then again with global changes using just a few keystrokes the situation to correct a bug without totally understanding the cause and effect could be worse!

 

[Lobstris]

So, COBRA is C++ and some LUA apparently:

LUA? That's interesting. Had fun playing with the STALKER games AI with LUA.

As to God mode? Well the less said about that to certain backers, the better. <whistles innocently>

We did occasionally get snippets of fact from database queries in the newsletters occasionally (% of visited systems, distribution of ship ownership etc. etc.) - I'd like to see some of those snippets return (in newsletter or GalNet), on the off chance staff have a few spare minutes to generate the queries.

 

[Mr_Foxhound]

Its just data in a database, ofcourse they can see it...

why do you bother to comment when your hostile and condescending to members of the community asking questions ?

 

[DocPossible]

I assumed they'd generated the seed for each system and that's the only thing they need to store - you pass that to the client when you jump into the system and it generates everything from that - bodies, surface features etc. At least that's what I though procedural generation meant

 

[bubbabenali]

I don't think a newly and undiscovered system will be procedurally created on being entered the first time - that could get quitte expensive on the database.

 

[OfftheRails]

Anyone who's had Support monkey with their save has seen the God mode in action. So yeah, they can move from system to system without jumping, insta-kill hostiles, go invincible on yo and all the usual tricks. Presumably it's not just a matter of up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, but who knows.

idspispopd.

 

[Strangepork]

The entire galaxy is procedurally generated, and FD hold the source code. So, can someone at FD just click on a system map that has never been visited by a player and see everything there?

Or

Is it the act of scanning and uploading by players that makes system contents visible?

Thanks

For testing and science.

 

[Krieger]

I don't think a newly and undiscovered system will be procedurally created on being entered the first time - that could get quitte expensive on the database.

Your local ED client generates every system that you enter on the fly. And it does that again everytime you return to that system. Below is a link to the site of a guy who worked out how the procedural generation of the galaxy in Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters worked. I think ED's Stellar Forge works very similar but has more facilities to manually override/adjust the generation process. That's how data for existing star maps or a manually designed area like Colonia are included in the galaxy. Some of this data could be in a database (=flexible) but most of it is probably in static tables that are part of the ED installation on your computer.
http://www.jongware.com/galaxy1.html

--edit: Thinking about it some more I think areas like Colonia and the Bubble can also be generated. It's all a matter of designing clever algorithms.

 

[bubbabenali]

Your local ED client generates every system that you enter on the fly. And it does that again everytime you return to that system. Below is a link to the site of a guy who worked out how the procedural generation of the galaxy in Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters worked.
http://www.jongware.com/galaxy1.html

Yeah, but you won't trigger a server command that will then generate a seed for the system and record it in the server_db.

Yeah, I knda shortened to much in my 1st statement, but hey it's late^^

 

[Krieger]

Yeah, but you won't trigger a server command that will then generate a seed for the system and record it in the server_db.

Yeah, I knda shortened to much in my 1st statement, but hey it's late^^

I think the seeds are part of the local ED installation too. In FE2/FFE the seed for the whole galaxy was a 128x128 pixel image.

 

[EUS]

Of course they can see systems.
How else would FD be able to add tourist locations from suggestions given?

 

[nanite2000]

I have been told, I have not experienced it, that they hve God mode, Very reliable peep's here on the forum, have told me that the Mod's and Dev's often use God mode if the is a Cmdr being very annoying, rowdy, drunk or otherwise causing minor irritancies, they then employ God mode and send hordes of invincible Foes against you, redirect your missions, let your FSD fail, apply empty mission boards. Although, peeps say, it is rarely used, it is often in use late friday afternoons and FD headquarters should get , well rather elevated then..
Of course this is nothing I have seen, but "sources" in the Know, tell me it is so...

That would explain all those "NPCs cheat!" threads.

 

[Brett C]

I have been told, I have not experienced it, that they hve God mode, Very reliable peep's here on the forum, have told me that the Mod's and Dev's often use God mode if the is a Cmdr being very annoying, rowdy, drunk or otherwise causing minor irritancies, they then employ God mode and send hordes of invincible Foes against you, redirect your missions, let your FSD fail, apply empty mission boards. Although, peeps say, it is rarely used, it is often in use late friday afternoons and FD headquarters should get , well rather elevated then..
Of course this is nothing I have seen, but "sources" in the Know, tell me it is so...

Moderators on the forums do not have god-like / god mode powers in the game. I'd be shocked to learn otherwise!

Only Frontier employees have access to such a thing in the game, and even then... i wouldn't even call it god mode. Any ingame 'god-mode' based actions will generally originate from Customer Support. e.g., moving commanders around due to game crash outs, credit reimbursement, being punished for an EULA\Rule violation from the game in the game.

LUA? That's interesting. Had fun playing with the STALKER games AI with LUA.

As to God mode? Well the less said about that to certain backers, the better. <whistles innocently>

We did occasionally get snippets of fact from database queries in the newsletters occasionally (% of visited systems, distribution of ship ownership etc. etc.) - I'd like to see some of those snippets return (in newsletter or GalNet), on the off chance staff have a few spare minutes to generate the queries.

Elite is written in C++ and i do believe a bit of LUA scripting.

 

[[VR] Goooost]

Its just data in a database, ofcourse they can see it...

I don't think so. The point of procedural generation is that you don't have to save that data. It's a set of rules and a seed. I suppose they could run a script to save the details of every system, I'm not sure if that would be a massive undertaking or not. When the creators of NMS were looking for things in their own galaxy, they would send AI probes to search for them. I find the thought that the developers have to probe their own game for its secrets fascinating.

 

[Michael Brookes]

Could be easily automated I think

Set some criteria, say 1 tidally locked planet with one very close moon, in a certain area of space and have the procgen iterate through system names till it finds some matches.

Or alternatively pick a system and handcraft it. They have an override mechanism for customisation.

We have means for interrogating systems for specific criteria. It's not something you'd want to run on the entire galaxy though

Michael

 

[Michael Brookes]

I would not be surprised if FDev staff have a 'God Mode' for testing the game properly. However, I would also not be surprised if the staff who also PLAY the game will play in a standard Player mode, to get the full experience.

We have separate development, testing and public servers - playing on public is generally on a normal account. I always use my normal account for that, but I have different accounts for the other servers as needed.

Michael