Variety is really good, if the places feel different and the mobs fight different the exploring aspect gets improved a lot!
I've bumped into some of these in the nightlies. Lookin' good! Though what I'd like to see is a dungeon that contains a "micro-gate" that you can warp to from the surface, to make underground exploration a little less burdensome. The theme could either be Apex, or be in a style similar to the Outpost gates.
I hope these micro-dungeons are not just furniture and fancy blocks. They (if they are not already) should tie into something. They should all have quests or share something interesting about the race that made them. Them just having some loot and fancy furniture really is not very interesting. I trust that you guys are making sure they are interesting (not all 100 of them at first)
I really don't see why they ALL have to tie directly into some big uberplot. Why can't they just be some flavor, a little treasure horde, a little something to make people wonder? I wouldn't mind some of them having a weird shopkeeper or a micro-quest or whatever, but sometimes just finding an abandoned boneyard is enough.
Yea, finding NPCs underground for any reason would be kinda nice...extra points if they're a quest giver/shopkeeper like you said.
"SIR! There's a planet over there on our radar. Should we go check it out yet?" "No you silly navigator... That planet doesn't exist yet..." DUN DUN DUN!
Oh come on now I practically just explained why they're not and cannot be shielded on page 2! Okay, maybe that was a bit oddly worded of me. They will ofcourse properly, fully exist when you actually beam down.
Let me try... They "exist" merely as a set of coordinates and a script that says what they will be, but they have not been technically assembled yet as an interactive set of tiles and items complete with a .WORLD file and whatnot. This way, your computer isn't saving and storing eleventy godzillion .WORLD files right out of the gate. Once you land on a planet, all the tiles and items and NPCs and blarblar are properly placed and saved to a new .WORLD file, which then stores all the changes YOU will make to the world. Am I about right?
Cool, I am happy about the minidungeons. It makes the game feel more "dense" and exploring way more diverse. Well done!
That seems like a lot to happen at the point of beaming down. I thought that part of the reason why the hyperspace animation was as long as it was was to provide proper time for the planet to generate before you beam down to it. At least that's how I'd do it since I think it would be pretty rare for a player to jump to a planet and then NOT beam down to it. Exception would be for mission dungeons since you don't fly to them but simply beam to them. However, those dungeons are made by hand and not randomly generated so they can just be accessed from game data directly.
Nice. This way the the starting planet might not be quite so dull and annoying. Especially since I was told it'll now take even MORE time until one can finally leave it: Hopefully it'll feel the way - I mean of course I get why it is not exactly a piece of cake to make a planet interessting, even the little ones offer quite a bit of space to fill and in the end a lot of it will be more or less empty - but I'm not here to gripe. Unless it is about the software tests I'm currently writing. They never cease to amaze me with their... moodyness for lack of a better word.
I think the hypserspace is to look up the code; after all, there's eleventy godzillion planets to seek out. (Code-type folks, please correct me if I'm wrong here...) it doesn't build the whole planet when you beam down. The generation happens in "chunks" around you once you hit the surface. Notice how large squares are missing then appear as you explore? That's the planet generation in progress. We're just not supposed to be seeing that 'cuz they haven't done the full optimizing; that's supposed to happen when you're a little further away. Notice how that really only happens when it's a new world you're exploring? (Or when, like me, you've built something Zoddamn massive and with a billion different tiles and placed objects?) Again, I think they do it this way because they figured out a quick way to on-the-fly generate terrain, which means the save files are as small as possible until absolutely NEEDED to be expanded, thus sparing your hard drive.
