Devs - How Many Aliens?

How many aliens will there be on an average world?
The answer to that question will have a huge impact on how long it takes to finish the game and how long the game will be fun to play.
I'm hoping for a game with a wide array of interesting aliens to find- some easy to spot, others much less.
It seems like for some game developers having a dozen monsters is enough, didn't Oblivion get boring after a while.
You always knew what you would see in a particular part of the world. For a game that centers around space exploration Starbound should have a huge variety of monsters, after all, it's a big galaxy.

 

Carl Sagan will be the space boss.


OT: It's random.. hence the term "Randomly Generated Worlds"

 

Randomly Generated Worlds, think about that phrase for a second. Keep thinking... thought long enough yet? Ok it means "Randomly... Generated... Worlds"

 

The worlds are randomly generated, yes, but the monsters have to be programmed one-at-a-time by the development team.
That's why there is a monster suggestion contest going on right now.

 

More than you can shake a stick at, probably.

 

You won't be able to pin down a number, because procedural generation means everything is random.
maybe there will be no aliens at all. maybe some worlds are inhabited by enemy humans.

the possibilities are literally endless with procedural generation.

 

Actually, I'm going to say that most of the time the only aliens on the average world you visit will be you and anyone you bring with you. The monsters and people are natives.

 

From a literal point of view you are correct.
You even made me chuckle

 

Tiy said something in the IRC a while after the site first opened about there being tons variations of sprites that are tinted in the games code,
so theoretically there could be... ten thousand or something! Mix that with a random name gen and you get so many variations of just one sprite!

...I'm pumped...

 

I love random name generators. The names they can produce can be hilarious!

 

Basically the more variants on a monster u add and make it random the more randomness and more number of possible combinations u might end up with so there is no fixed number, a better question might be how many monster classes. Hierachy type of approach

 

Will this even be possible?

 

Nope. Enough said.

 

Well yes there are randomly chosen sprites, but you are still gonna see penguins on every planet, that act the same, so far we have seen about 6-8 types, and a bunch of different variations, but variation is not enough, that would mean every planet is similar because the same basic types are there, they just look different.

 

Games like Dwarf Fortress confirm this.

 

There will be tons infinite, everything is randomly generated, even the names. They're not working on the monster one at a time.

 

You make a good point, but it is still possible that enemies that share a sprite can fight differently. The enemies can follow a simple level system in which if the generated enemy is a certain level, it unlocks new moves. If this is the case, one planet could have a penguin that attacks by trying to peck the players eyes out (okay, that's probably not how it will look ingame, but it's probably how it would go down) while another penguin on another planet tosses a barrage of snowballs at a player. Even though the enemies would look similar, how you fight them will be different.

 

I might be wrong, but I have a feeling there will be infinite amount of monster on a planet. Meaning they will be keep spawning as you keep exploring the planet or keep coming back to it. As others already pointed out, there will be very large amount of visual differences too. So basically it will take sometime to see majority of variations and get bored from the game.

 

I always found that just making various colors of the same thing was a cheap gimmic game developers used.
It never added value to the game for me. That it was not done in Terraria was one of the things I liked about it.