Can we have Universe Seeds?

I'm bumming around in Star Control 2: UrQuan Masters HD right now and there is only 1 non-random galaxy, and there are guides galore. I could easily google "rainbow planets" and basically win the game, but that wouldn't be FUN. The point of playing a game is to have fun, not necessarily to beat it ASAP or to compete with other people online, those are side priorities that are supposed to augment the fun. If either of those things get in the way of fun, you're doing it wrong.

 

I find it hard to believe that someone would go to all the trouble to write down all the coordinates to useful planets then 100+ hours later with another character go dig up those coordinates and use them to make their game experience worse. Even so, I think it will be of limited use. Loot should be randomized enough that you can't expect to automatically find some super amazing rocket launcher on a specific planet. If particular resources are rare enough that writing down planet coordinates is actually a good method of finding them, then it's a problem with the game.

 

we DO know this. you find t10 loot on t10 planets. but you're not going to find the same thing on the same planet again. it's the chests that get randomized locations, the loot in them is always random.

 

Just because you don't want to do any PvP, doesn't mean nobody can
Tiy has said he wants there to be a PvP aspect in the game, and I think it'll be amazing to go around raiding and looting others planets or defending my own from other space-pirates. Of course what would be the point of doing that if the wiki says there's much better stuff at (4603,254,23563)

 

i'm getting bored of this. you are obviously too stubborn to actually read what i have said countless times. the loot in chests is RANDOM. a planet of t10 will contain "better" (again, more of a sidegrade than upgrade, as confirmed by tiy's Q&A) than a t2. but odds are it's never going to be the same loot twice.

also, the point of raiding other players planets would be that their planet is easier to loot than a t10 planet. let them find the cool stuff and gather it in one place.

 

It would be way more fun to go there with them than to just tell them where it is

 

Dude there are quantillions of planets in one universe you wont go to the same planet you were before randomly. Another universe just seems pointless and would make sharing cool planets way more annoying.

 

I vote for not badgering the devs to implement this (and other unnecessary features) so the release date isn't delayed.

 

Hear Hear! This game will be awesome even if they reserve a lot of the amazing things for future updates.

 

I understand, I was just illustrating the problem that occurs should it not be randomized
And should a player on a PvP server have gotten to tier 10, I imagine he would be skilled enough to made it a challenge to steal from his planet, much more so than looking up a couple tier 10 planets that have a chest right at spawn

 

I don't know if anyone said this is the tread. What if the single player game has a set universe seed. That way all single player characters would be able to share cords for great planets to their hearts desire.

When a Multi-player Game is started it would have an option to generate a new seed or use the same seed from the single player game. That way a server operator would have the option to generate a complete different universe if they wanted.

While I will be slightly upset if the universe layout is static, I can live with it.

 

I'm just hoping for one big universe with millions of planets, or at least thousands.

 

I believe the actual number of possible planets that Starbound can generate is in the quintillions. Even with empty space taken into account we can expect at least billions of them to exist.

 

Someone said there will be a cap. I just hope they don't cap it too low. It'll probably be fine... I guess they wouldn't make it too low.

 

The PVP community in dark souls is nowhere near dead. No single item location, stat point, or damage number is randomized. With the exception of enemy drops, but enemy locations aren't randomized.

The reason your point is completely invalid is kind of clear: Even if all the equipment can be found, and sooner or later a source documents it, PvP really boils down to skill at higher levels of play. If it was that much of a problem, do you think Dark Souls would still be played this far after its release?

 

Well, all universes in every game (at generation) are the same.
If there was more than one universe across players' saves, then the planet coordinates wouldn't work.

 

The universe is NOT generated by a seed. The universe is simply a game environment. It's like saying world selection screen in Minecraft is generated by a seed. Both the Starbound "universe" and the Minecraft (or even Terraria) world selection menus serve the exact same purpose: to choose which world you want to play in next.

Now that that's out of the way... How limited of an amount of worlds are there? Well, assuming the coordinates (for example, (1234, 5678, 9012) ) are actually just a fancy way of displaying one large signed number (12345678912, in this case), we've got one seed per world (this seems most likely). Assuming they use a 32 bit random number generator to get this seed, that means the range of possible seeds is between -2.1 billion to 2.1 billion (approximately). That's a total of over 4.2 billion worlds.

Let's say you only spend one second on each world you visit until you visit a new one. (You get bored REALLY easy.) That means that in order to visit every single possible planet in the game, it would take you more than 130 years. And that doesn't include loading times.

I'm not a crazy good math wiz or anything, but I'm pretty sure that's enough content to explore without having to create universe seeds.

 

Universe seed is an interesting idea, but it is somewhat unnecessary because of the immense size of the default universe. But I still can see a purpose for universe "seeds" (mind the quotes, will explain later) feature added somewhere after release.

After quite some time, many "guides" or "secret compilations" or whatever else will be out there in the internet, containing information about cheapest and easiest ways to powergame quickly: "go to the planet X, it has weak mobs and lots of useful ore, also there is a good loot chest almost without guards in the temple". It is inevitable. Sure, it may be fine for many people — both for people who just won't read these spoiling guides and for people who will and do not mind to be guided to easier rewards.

But, after a while, it gets somewhat old. Many competent players will have their favorite cookie-cutter "exploration" sequence (yeah, quotes again, because it's not really an exploration if you do know what to expect and search for), and the game will become more predictable and less surprising for these experienced people. I am not saying that this is absolutely a bad thing, but... it may be, yes.

This predictability especially may hurt multiplayer experience. Example: a veteran starbound player got some friends who never tried the game before to try it on his new multiplayer server. They all are excited, never heard of the game before (unlikely, but bear with me, okay?), and start to explore and build crude newbish stuff. While veteran player already knows where to go and how to develop more efficiently. He knows *exactly* where to go and what to do. Now, he can either share his knowledge to everyone else, depriving them of this awesome newbie experience, or he can let them try to slowly develop on their own, while he skyrockets and quickly overlevels them.

And here where universe "seeds" could come in handy. You see, there could (and should in my opinion) be an option, randomizing universe completely. Here how it could work: every planet is randomized upon its' seed, we shall call it [planetary_seed]. So: planet = random([planetary_seed]). But it could go this way: planet = random([universe_seed]*[planetary_seed]), where [universe_seed] is just a random number. This number for "default" starbound universe = 1. And, in my opinion, it should be obscured from players, probably even directors and admins. Because that way it serves exactly what it is needed for: making the universe unique and making it impossible to share exact experience of other universes with this universe. Sure, there's been a point said that while in standard universe you need to share only planetary seed, in case of universe seed it will complicate sharing, et cetera. But see, it may be a good thing, because impossibility of sharing brings uniqueness to server-based universes.

Note that this feature probably will work best if added post release, after everyone will play enough in default universe. And more than that: access to it should not be designed like in Minecraft, for example, where it is completely normal to choose seed or leave blank for random. No, default mode always should remain equal to default universe, or "universe seed 1". And there could be a button somewhere in universe generation screen: "use random seed for universe". While pressed first time, it should give a warning about not being able to share your direct gaming experience to other players / use their knowledge of the universe, and if it is how player intends to play, then it's his choice.

 

I love this, it is very good.

 

The issue we're having here is kind of just a disconnect, I think.

There will be players who will play for the endgame PvP - Just as there are in any game where PvP is a thing, especially when it has as many random factors as starbound. This means people WILL optimize their gear, WILL "speedrun", and WILL make guides to get to the endgame quickly.

There will also be players who don't. There will be builders, crafters, explorers, and people who play to catalog all the monsters and pets. There's a disconnect there, sure.

But they'll both be there. Suggesting that something as big as another seed outside the already ridiculous amount (Seriously, the math ends up at 4.2billion+ planets for a 32 bit seed, and I think two or four times that for a 64 bit, which is 130 years in seconds) be added is kind of silly. That's my opinion on the matter.