New Planet Tech is KILLER of Exploration (all terrain is tiling/repeating/not procedural/random)

CMDR Fnool

CMDR Fnool
M_72 said:
Identical terrain features on two different worlds, apparently.

I don't want to believe it. Would love frontier to say something about this. Is it true?

Source



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I have been for a while now under the impression that this indeed is what happens, it's truly terrible compared to the randomised planets of Horizons, a real butchery of something that was previously much better. There was an official video not long ago on Youtube where their spokesperson Harry/Arthur (please forgive me as i cannot remember the correct name right now), said something along the lines of, we hear the fans about planet tech but we're still looking to see how the reaction from the players goes, before we change it because it would be such a massive undertaking, In other words, if there's a big enough hoo-ha about it we may change it, but if we can just let things be we'd prefer that'.

That's what i took from his comment at least, and i have a feeling a few despairing explorers like us on this thread won't be enough. Frankly, the excitement David Braben had for his project in the early years, well i cannot see it anywhere, because the old David would never have thought this new tech was an improvement on the Horizons system of finding truly new topography every time. I'm still in a state of sort of disbelief, because this was a very big feather in Elite's hat, that appears to have been plucked out and and thrown away.
 
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BlackMaze

BlackMaze
Honestly I've been waiting for someone to post this. Beyond tiling terrain features on a single planet.... This is the next step. We now have copies all throughout the galaxy. Maybe with a different terrain texture pattern or a different rock scatter or noise pattern overlayn. Maybe another terrain feature gets mixed in but in essence... It very much still is the same, non-unique feature that you'll find... all over...

This is the death of exploration should this not get fixed.
 

CMDR Fnool

CMDR Fnool
BlackMaze said:
Honestly I've been waiting for someone to post this. Beyond tiling terrain features on a single planet.... This is the next step. We now have copies all throughout the galaxy. Maybe with a different terrain texture pattern or a different rock scatter or noise pattern overlayn. Maybe another terrain feature gets mixed in but in essence... It very much still is the same, non-unique feature that you'll find... all over...

This is the death of exploration should this not get fixed.
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I may be completely wrong but, in my mind the only reason i can think of to get rid of truly randomised planets, is because of those damned bases that need to be everywhere for the FPS that nobody asked for. They need a method where the bases aren't randomly swallowed up by the ground or left hanging in mid-air, and that possibly gave rise to this new inferior way of planet creation. That's my theory at least.
 

Erei

Erei
I mean, I already posted that, but :
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That's mine. Stopped after a while. And yesterday on reddit :
planet4.jpg
Notice something similar ? This one is very obvious, but you can already see it's copy pasted on many, many planets, and sometimes on the same planet.
I saw others features of this kind, but they are harder to pinpoint and take a picture. More a "I've seen that already" thing.

I let you guess how many other stuff are copy pasted the same. They might be more difficult to notice and take note, but your subconscious or whatever will, and tell you "hey, it's repetitive".

I don't see how they can get away without rebuilding the planet, again.
 

CMDR Fnool

CMDR Fnool
jojon said:
Wait... Was it not obvious to everybody that the limited library of topographic prefabs would be a global thing? Was anybody only believing it strictly per-planet?
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It's been obvious to me yes, and to just about anyone that was complaining about this from the start. The waters have been muddied however by people who don't care repeating the mantra, 'but look how shiny and pretty X screenshot is' and 'it will improve', when the method itself means it can't ever produce truly random landscapes.
 

Helvellyn

Helvellyn
CMDR Fnool said:
I may be completely wrong but, in my mind the only reason i can think of to get rid of truly randomised planets, is because of those damned bases that need to be everywhere for the FPS that nobody asked for. They need a method where the bases aren't randomly swallowed up by the ground or left hanging in mid-air, and that possibly gave rise to this new inferior way of planet creation. That's my theory at least.
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Should be easy enough for the algorithm to flatten things for the base and blend its terrain in; that's what it has to do for these pre-fabs anyway.

My guess is that it's to try to get some features in that they couldn't randomly generate very well (such as networks of boulder-filled valleys running down hillsides) so used this approach instead. Quite a disappointment; they'd need thousands of pre-defined features to really get away with it.
 

Just

Just
jojon said:
Wait... Was it not obvious to everybody that the limited library of topographic prefabs would be a global thing? Was anybody only believing it strictly per-planet?
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There was no direct confirmation until now that those "stamps" are "prefabs" .

They could have been generated for a specific planet from a seed what would actually explain repetition on single planet (no time / computing power to generate unique ones).

This solution: "prefabs" repeated on single AND multiple planets does not make any sense - it's not like FD had no time / resources to prepare enough number of "stamps" to avoid repetition at least on a single planet and exposing this right on start.

EDIT: actually I have pasted some "zig-zag" stamp from two different planets "many pages ago", but it did not attract too too much attention.
 
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M_72

M_72
CMDR Fnool said:
It's been obvious to me yes, and to just about anyone that was complaining about this from the start. The waters have been muddied however by people who don't care saying, 'but look how shiny and pretty X screenshot is'
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As someone mentioned in another thread, people have been too busy looking at the pretty sunsets and skies and praising frontier for a job well done, while all the while they've ignored the copy & pasted landscapes they're standing on!
 

Amy Pendergast

Amy Pendergast
Just said:
There was no direct confirmation until now that those "stamps" are "prefabs" .

They could have been generated for a specific planet from a seed what would actually explain repetition on single planet (no time / computing power to generate unique ones).

This solution: "prefabs" repeated on single AND multiple planets does not make any sense - it's not like FD had no time / resources to prepare enough number of "stamps" to avoid repetition at least on a single planet and exposing this right on start.
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That's not really correct. The impact crater prefab was known from the beginning of this thread. There literally is exactly only one of that stamped all over the galaxy sometimes even more than once per planet.

The ridge we have now is new, yes.
 

CMDR Fnool

CMDR Fnool
Helvellyn said:
Should be easy enough for the algorithm to flatten things for the base and blend its terrain in; that's what it has to do for these pre-fabs anyway.

My guess is that it's to try to get some features in that they couldn't randomly generate very well (such as networks of boulder-filled valleys running down hillsides) so used this approach instead. Quite a disappointment; they'd need thousands of pre-defined features to really get away with it.
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Yeah, sounds like a better explanation
 

Just

Just
[VR] Amy Pendergast said:
That's not really correct. The impact crater prefab was known from the beginning of this thread. There literally is exactly only one of that stamped all over the galaxy sometimes even more than once per planet.

The ridge we have now is new, yes.
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Well, crater is not something that anyone would expect to be completely generated.
 

Erei

Erei
[VR] Amy Pendergast said:
That's not really correct. The impact crater prefab was known from the beginning of this thread. There literally is exactly only one of that stamped all over the galaxy sometimes even more than once per planet.

The ridge we have now is new, yes.
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It's new because it's harder to see. The crater is massive and very obvious, everyone can see it. Ramps are smaller and usually hidden better in their surrounding.

When EDO dropped, I had this "repetitive" feeling from watching planets. The crater jumped to me, but I'm sure there was a lot of others copy paste that my brain could see but not I, and thus the "feeling", which is basically your brain raising an alarm (repetition in nature is either a predator or a prey, 3millions years of evolution have made it important).
Just said:
Well, crater is not something that anyone would expect to be completely generated.
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Why not ? Many games can already do that. It's not super complicated.
 
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