It became apparent at Lavecon that a lot of players are still under the misconception that there's some kind of database of discovered systems and worlds on a Frontier server somewhere and that when another player goes to visit these places the game client downloads this information so they see the same system, planets and surface details as the first player.
I was 99% certain this was wrong but took the opportunity to just double check my understanding with Dav Stott. It is indeed completely wrong.
There is NO database where the physical layout of discovered systems, planets and surface details is stored.
Note: for the purposes of this discussion I'm ignoring all the star systems which have been manually inserted into the game from known astronomical data. These are not generated by Stellar Forge.
Stellar Forge is software which exists in every player's game client (it's not a software service based on some central Frontier server that we have to consult).
Every time we jump into a system (discovered or otherwise) Stellar Forge runs in our game client to generate the layout of that system (its arrangement of stars, planets and moons).
Every time we visit a planet (and as we descend or travel to areas of that planet) it's running to generate the landscape we see right down to the placement of individual rocks (see later).
The question people always come up with at this point is how come we all see the same thing? This is the beauty of procedural generation and its use of a seeded pseudo random number generator.
For those unfamiliar with this stuff, most digital random number generators use a pseudo random number generation algorithm.
On a linux system, each time you echo the $RANDOM variable it spits out a new, seemingly random number:
So, imagine the seed is your current galactic coordinates. You jump into a system at coordinates 56.65625 / 82.09375 / 3.09375. Some unique value derived from those numbers is fed into our pseudo random number generator as the starting seed and an infinite sequence of seemingly random (but entirely reproducible) numbers comes out the other end. These numbers are then passed as parameters to the Stellar Forge algorithm which uses them (along with information about our general location in the galaxy to bias things like mass distribution and star type to what astro-physics predicts is appropriate for that area) to generate the system we know as Pomeche.
(note: this isn't actually Pomeche)
If someone else visits that system they will get EXACTLY the same result.
There's no need for Stellar Forge to look anything up on a Frontier server to do this, all it needs are the coordinates.
Oh, and in case you didn't realise quite how far this went or quite how miraculous it (seemingly) is, take a look at the following screenshots.
I have dozens and dozens of these. They're start line screenshots from people's submissions for the Pomeche Ridge Challenge (a standing SRV time trial race which starts at coordinates 13,-60 on Pomeche 2C). Everyone who goes down there and lines up for this race sees that same little group of rocks just ahead of their SRV's front wheels.
So Stellar Forge is using procedural generation to create everything in the game's natural galaxy from the stars down to the rocks and it does it all from little more than the system's coordinates.
It's amazing and one of my favourite things about the game.
For more information on some of the inner workings of Stellar Forge check out the very first episode of Discovery Scanner in which Dr Anthony Ross talked about creating a galaxy.
I was 99% certain this was wrong but took the opportunity to just double check my understanding with Dav Stott. It is indeed completely wrong.
There is NO database where the physical layout of discovered systems, planets and surface details is stored.
Note: for the purposes of this discussion I'm ignoring all the star systems which have been manually inserted into the game from known astronomical data. These are not generated by Stellar Forge.
Stellar Forge is software which exists in every player's game client (it's not a software service based on some central Frontier server that we have to consult).
Every time we jump into a system (discovered or otherwise) Stellar Forge runs in our game client to generate the layout of that system (its arrangement of stars, planets and moons).
Every time we visit a planet (and as we descend or travel to areas of that planet) it's running to generate the landscape we see right down to the placement of individual rocks (see later).
The question people always come up with at this point is how come we all see the same thing? This is the beauty of procedural generation and its use of a seeded pseudo random number generator.
For those unfamiliar with this stuff, most digital random number generators use a pseudo random number generation algorithm.
On a linux system, each time you echo the $RANDOM variable it spits out a new, seemingly random number:
RANDOM=7864 (I'll come on to this in a minute)
echo $RANDOM
16904
echo $RANDOM
8002
echo $RANDOM
16686
echo $RANDOM
14406
echo $RANDOM
12749
echo $RANDOM
13945
echo $RANDOM
31921
echo $RANDOM
1898
echo $RANDOM
26373
echo $RANDOM
14862
However, these are actually just numbers in an infinite but fixed sequence of "randomly distributed" numbers whose starting point is called the "seed". Reset the seed and you get the same sequence: RANDOM=7864
echo $RANDOM
16904
echo $RANDOM
8002
echo $RANDOM
16686
echo $RANDOM
14406
echo $RANDOM
12749
echo $RANDOM
13945
echo $RANDOM
31921
echo $RANDOM
1898
echo $RANDOM
26373
echo $RANDOM
14862
Note: there are services which use things like the movement of particles in our atmosphere to produce truly random numbers but for procedural generation we actually exploit the pseudo behaviour to give us our repeatability.So, imagine the seed is your current galactic coordinates. You jump into a system at coordinates 56.65625 / 82.09375 / 3.09375. Some unique value derived from those numbers is fed into our pseudo random number generator as the starting seed and an infinite sequence of seemingly random (but entirely reproducible) numbers comes out the other end. These numbers are then passed as parameters to the Stellar Forge algorithm which uses them (along with information about our general location in the galaxy to bias things like mass distribution and star type to what astro-physics predicts is appropriate for that area) to generate the system we know as Pomeche.
(note: this isn't actually Pomeche)
If someone else visits that system they will get EXACTLY the same result.
There's no need for Stellar Forge to look anything up on a Frontier server to do this, all it needs are the coordinates.
Oh, and in case you didn't realise quite how far this went or quite how miraculous it (seemingly) is, take a look at the following screenshots.
I have dozens and dozens of these. They're start line screenshots from people's submissions for the Pomeche Ridge Challenge (a standing SRV time trial race which starts at coordinates 13,-60 on Pomeche 2C). Everyone who goes down there and lines up for this race sees that same little group of rocks just ahead of their SRV's front wheels.
So Stellar Forge is using procedural generation to create everything in the game's natural galaxy from the stars down to the rocks and it does it all from little more than the system's coordinates.
It's amazing and one of my favourite things about the game.
For more information on some of the inner workings of Stellar Forge check out the very first episode of Discovery Scanner in which Dr Anthony Ross talked about creating a galaxy.
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