A little perspective on the size of Starbound

If you are accidentally remembering and entering 16-digit seeds consistently, well, good for you, I guess? If you're doing it on purpose, though, that's no one's fault but your own. Assuming you're not started on the exact same planet every time (I seem to recall the phrase "random low level planet" being used?) there is no way (with statistically non-negligible probability) you could have any sort of reasonable chance of seeing the same bits of each sector.

 

you just forgot you use fuel to go around, and by the looks of it, the game is large enough for you to not be able to go to most of the coords without several stops to get more fuel...

if you need to waste half a hour or even one hour to get to a seed, it's way faster and easier to just explore the planets near you...
even more so since loot is random.

 

While the game's size is indeed impressive, it's still of some concern how I can share the coordinates of a planet I've located to a friend of mine and apparently they can find the exact same planet...

It kinda makes me wonder if the universe is not randomly generated at all...

I mean, it's still a fantabulously impressive game and I'm still going to play it regardless, but I'm just confused about whether or not the planets are randomly generated or already decided.

 

Err that's pretty amazing. And at the same time a huge downer D;.

What if an epic generated item was in a random chest in some random coordinate. And you visit the planet (0,1) next to that.

 

It isn't random. It's procedural. Which is essentially the same thing for all practical purposes, except that it's repeatable.

 

Not random? Do you really think they have the time to hand design that many planets

 

I wondering how much a space a save file will use. I know it was speculated on another page but the worlds in terraria (I know this is not terraria) the huges ones was 500mb+

With all the variations in planets with the data for the world such as blocks, storage (non character) etc im guessing it's gonna get big when you start getting planets discovered.

 

Only the changes you make to the planet are saved. So pretty small.

 

"He"

 

I really don't understand the concern here. If you're sharing the seed with your friend, you're giving their copy of the game all it needs to generate the exact same planet. It's almost functionally identical as just sharing your save file with them (minus any changes you made to the planet of course). If you don't want your friend to have the same planet as you, don't share the seed. It's statistically improbable that they would ever find it on their own.

And I see this idea a lot about the Starbound "universe". The Starbound universe isn't generated at all. It is the set of ALL possible planets that are capable of being made by the planet generator.

Here's an example: You can go to the phone book and look up a random number. Just flip the pages and choose one at random. This is like choosing a planet in starbound. You just open up the travel menu, hit random and go. Or type in your birthday. Or whatever. The universe then is like if you had a phone book containing every possible phone number. You have them all. It can't be random because it contains every possible number.

And for the concept of random planets, think of seeds like the DNA of a planet. If you're handing out the DNA of a planet, your basically allowing your friend to "clone" it. This ability to clone planets is a feature. The devs want you to be able to find Volcano Planet of Doom and share it with your friends. If you don't want to share, no one is forcing you too. But the rest of us, I think, will enjoy the option.

 

Being real, a majority of planets will be very similar in terms of looks and function

 

I am sure if loot locations get out of hand, the Dev's will be able to think of a patch to fix it. I for one am not worried because if your plopped down in the middle of the universe randomly, your going to be limited to where you can travel via the fuel system. If there is a way to have unlimited fuel, it won't be till the end game.

The only way loot location will be highly exploitable is if the randomly generated items are far superior to the crafted ones. IMO I feel like the crafted weapons are going to have a bit of randomness in there creation anyways(bad design to not do it this way, think Diablo style crafted weapons). That leads me to believe that top tier crafted and top tier RNG weapons will be comparable stats wise to each other. So it would be almost counter intuitive(and frankly a waste of time/boring/tedious) to farm an easily accessible chest that drops a potential good piece of loot at the end game, when you can just hop on any high level planet and find a random chest that has the potential to drop the same things. If loot is static(in the sense that the same weapons appear in the chest with random stats) there will be massive out rage in the community and it will get changed to random(eventually) but I highly doubt it will be static in anyway be sides in the main story line quests as rewards.

In other words, trust the Dev's, they know what they want to achieve with their game.

 

Since the galaxy is so huge (but still the same for everybody) - will everyone start at a random location anywhere in it?

If so, how are we supposed to meet up with friends when they're probably scattered all across the map? I'm pretty sure flying to another planet uses fuel, so unless fuel is dirt cheap I doubt you'll be able get across the map fast...

Or will everybody start relatively close together? Like there's a few homeworlds per race and all players of that race start somewhere in their vicinity?

 

You underestimate the power of unemployed bored student!

 

... is it really that difficult to understand my concern? Okay, uh... let's see...

Let's say I tell my buddy "Hey! I found this awesome tentacle planet at X14 Y18". Yeah I know that's not enough numbers, but just go with it okay?

So, they visit X14-Y18 and find the planet I was talking about. I didn't send them a file, they went to the location and HAPPENED TO FIND A PLANET SIMILAR TO WHAT I DESCRIBED.

My concern is that this can only mean THE PLANET WAS ALREADY IN HIS GAME AND HAPPENED TO BE EXACTLY THE SAME.

So what's to say that all the planets in our games are NOT exactly the same? What's to say we just tell each other "Let's go to X42 Y19 to see what's there", and we both arrive and describe to each other the planet we found and discovered it was exactly the same again?

Do you understand my concern now? My concern is that all the planets in everyone's game are the exact same planets unless there's some sort of wierd filesharing system involved.

 

Yeah, like I said. The scale of the game is so huge that it really doesn't matter if the planets are the same. Not to mention that of course you can terraform worlds to change them.

 

It isn't difficult to understand. Your concern is about a situation that would only come up if you deliberately choose for it to do so. No one understands why that's a problem because it isn't one.

 

There is no file of course. There's a generator. If you give your friend the same input you gave your game, of course they're going to get the same output. As I mentioned before, the "universe" of starbound is every possible planet ever. Of course everyone's copy of the game includes the same thing. Because it contains all 422 quadrillion possible planets.

Lets say the planet generator is this formula: 2x + 3y = planet. In your case your planet of X:14 and Y18 would equal 82. Your friends game uses the same formula (it's the same game, remember?) so he also gets 82. The "universe" of starbound is EVERY possible number that you could put into that formula. This will be the same for everyone.

There is no "happened to be the same" here. You gave him the values, his computer ran the same exact formula on those values that your computer did and ended up with the same result. 2 + 2 will ALWAYS equal 4. What Starbound is giving you is the formula (aka generator). As long as your on the same version, that formula will always spit out the same thing no matter what computer you're on.

I really don't know how to explain this a different way.

As an aside, I love how the devs managed to place a wrapper around the world generator and make it part of the game world. It certainly seems to confuse a lot of people (like above), but it's also very immersive. Maybe a bit too immersive for some. Going back to a system like Minecraft or Cubeworld just seems so... pedestrian now.

 

I didn't say it was a problem. I was only expressing confusion because it was never specified whether or not planets would be randomly generated or there would be specific ones at each set of coordinates.

No worries. I think...

... that sums it up nicely.