Our own seed, or one fixed seed? Elite and Procedural Generation.

Tinman

Tinman
drew said:
Excellent news... Though it may be an ongoing job keeping that up to date!

Cheers,

Drew.
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I don't really think the plan is to keep it up to date. Whatever is in the game when it launches will be what we get. Any new discoveries or updated information about previously know planets after this point will just be disregarded. They need to lock down the galaxy at that point. Except of course for the hidden areas they are reserving for future expansions/updates. ;)
 

W4rSkuLL

W4rSkuLL
It sounds logical that the galaxy released when game launches is a set and finished galaxy which all can play in. As everyone will take part in the changes done to it. But I guess a patch update offcourse can change things like graphics, incorporate new stations and events. And also set of disasters and stuff. But I guess most of these things will be done with the game engine. Its a living breathing galaxy out there :p I guess the placement of discovered solar systems will be fixed positions. Which cant be changed as player interaction will occure here. And evetually people will want to recognize that starsystem for its
look and feel. Make it their favorite system for trade or pirating for some players.
We all have different taste and favorites :)
 

Susimetsa

Susimetsa
Tinman said:
I don't really think the plan is to keep it up to date.
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It would be great to have the galaxy represent even future discoveries, imho, but admittedly it would be a lot of work and could not really be done very gracefully if it was a well populated system.
 

W4rSkuLL

W4rSkuLL
Tinman said:
I don't really think the plan is to keep it up to date. Whatever is in the game when it launches will be what we get. Any new discoveries or updated information about previously know planets after this point will just be disregarded. They need to lock down the galaxy at that point. Except of course for the hidden areas they are reserving for future expansions/updates. ;)
Click to expand...

Yes I agree.
 

W4rSkuLL

W4rSkuLL
Tinman said:
I don't really think the plan is to keep it up to date. Whatever is in the game when it launches will be what we get. Any new discoveries or updated information about previously know planets after this point will just be disregarded. They need to lock down the galaxy at that point. Except of course for the hidden areas they are reserving for future expansions/updates. ;)
Click to expand...

Yes I agree. Although, the suns coordinates should be set in the galaxy. There can be supernova maybe. But very rare though. But events inside a solar system can change spacestations. Events on planets. Planets can be terraformed or dry out because of pollution. Well possibilities are endless inside a solarsystem. Maybe a new rule inside a solarsystem changes its name. Or a new ruler.
 

Tinman

Tinman
W4rSkuLL said:
Yes I agree. Although, the suns coordinates should be set in the galaxy. There can be supernova maybe. But very rare though. But events inside a solar system can change spacestations. Events on planets. Planets can be terraformed or dry out because of pollution. Well possibilities are endless inside a solarsystem. Maybe a new rule inside a solarsystem changes its name. Or a new ruler.
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Sure! All of this is probably planned to some extent as part of the evolving galaxy.
 

Thargon

Thargon
I for one would be really interested to know more about how the procedural generation works. Is there an "equation of Elite" or some way a Dev-Blog/Article could be written that goes into depth on how this works?

A seed technically, afaik is just a random number or generator that describes the initial state of any generation algorithm. When I read "seed" in computer science it's generally just random number that feeds into whatever algorithm describes the universe.

However, specifics would be really interesting I think, and worthy of an extended page on the front page.
 

Belisarius

Belisarius
Thargon said:
I for one would be really interested to know more about how the procedural generation works. Is there an "equation of Elite" or some way a Dev-Blog/Article could be written that goes into depth on how this works?

A seed technically, afaik is just a random number or generator that describes the initial state of any generation algorithm. When I read "seed" in computer science it's generally just random number that feeds into whatever algorithm describes the universe.

However, specifics would be really interesting I think, and worthy of an extended page on the front page.
Click to expand...

With regards to seed and RNG:
Well, to be more exactly ...
the seed you feed into an RNG determines all of the "random numbers" chosen by the RNG, as these are just huge lists of numbers and not really random numbers like you would get when throwing dices.

With other words, if you put the same seed into a RNG, you always get the same sequence of pseudo-random numbers (or., in terms of world generation ... putting the same seed into the RNG will allow you to recreate the same world/universe again)
 

Jack Schitt

Jack Schitt
Michael Brookes said:
We've taken a list of the confirmed exoplanets so far and will include them in the overrides.
Click to expand...
That's a really high bar you've set yourselves there. I hope you realise that if humanity makes first contact with an actual extraterrestrial civilisation tomorrow, the Frontier Developments team will have to pull extra shifts coding all of the aliens' knowledge and activities into the game. We are Elite fans and we will accept nothing less than perfection in our simulated galaxy.
 

Slawkenbergius

Slawkenbergius
I imagine there are quite a few non-random elements that feed into the galaxy creation. For instance, in Igor's newsletter piece he talked about a density distribution map, which presumably is basically a crude bitmap of the galaxy. So every time you ran the simulation, no matter what seed you put in, it would still create a spiral galaxy with the same density distribution.
 

Keeval

Keeval
Thargon said:
I for one would be really interested to know more about how the procedural generation works. Is there an "equation of Elite" or some way a Dev-Blog/Article could be written that goes into depth on how this works?

A seed technically, afaik is just a random number or generator that describes the initial state of any generation algorithm. When I read "seed" in computer science it's generally just random number that feeds into whatever algorithm describes the universe.

However, specifics would be really interesting I think, and worthy of an extended page on the front page.
Click to expand...

If you've not already seen this it is worth watching: David Braben explains procedural generation
 

Andrew Sayers

A
Thargon said:
I for one would be really interested to know more about how the procedural generation works. Is there an "equation of Elite" or some way a Dev-Blog/Article could be written that goes into depth on how this works?
Click to expand...

Michael went into some detail about the galaxy generator in Fiction Diary #5. From his description, the process sounds very similar to galaxy generation in FFE. The latter article is an exceedingly thorough deconstruction from a fan.
 
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