How do you think new tiers will be handled?

The reason I ask is because in a game like Minecraft, when new ores are added to world generation, you have to start completely over in order to obtain the newly added things.

For Terraria, your character was saved, but you would still have to create a new world to experience new stuff.

I wonder if Starbound will be able to somehow add in the new ores without anything having to be redone, since they are only saving changes made to the worlds.
Or maybe it will be as simple as going to a new planet.

If not I wonder if it will be done Terraria style or much worse Minecraft style.

 

I would have to guess that it would probably update the unexplored planets.

 

Beat the crud out of tier boss, unclock upgrade for the ship, travel to higher tier planets with harder and more rewarding content...

 

What he said......once you have beaten the lowest tier stuff there will probably nothing left for you to do on that current world other than to gather some supplies to take with you to the next planet to make setting up a lot easier.

But once you have conquered your first planet you will probably be able to call it your new home world so you have a base of operations to work from.

 

Sad thing was minecraft could add new ore to old worlds but you had to travel beyond what had previously been render and the change cause noticeable seams in the world and flat hill sides.

I do think this is correct for how the game might handle it:

 

If i rember correctly, bartwe said something about the planets being saved in a sort of chunk based manner, that'd only "save" them if you'd changed them. Thusly, if you only built on/mined a bit of your planet, chances are the rest would update using the same "seed", but with the added content.

 

It certainly seems like the op writer is asking about how new content well be integrated into the game rather than how the tiers will be handled. It seems that the most likely method would be to allow added ores etc to be generated anywhere not previously seen by the player. So unvisited planets would get them and undiscovered portions of visited worlds might get them. Requiring a player to start all over because a new type of ore gets added to the game would simply not work in a game like Starbound.

 

possibly, higher level planets will be highly difficult if not the correct tier, but have better materials.

 

I agree with some of the posts, I think new content would be integrated in a way that it affects undiscovered planets and undiscovered "chunks", and I do like what Walross said about chunks saving only when they're changed, meaning that possibly even initial chunks of an "explored but untouched" planet could change.

 

I truly hope they follow the system you mentioned, because it would be so annoying otherwise.

Off-topic: What does OP stand for? My guess is Original Poster, but I'm not sure. And no, I'm not talking about Overpowered.

 

I am assuming it will involve ones and zeroes.

 

and hands too, Serenity. Can't handle something without hands. Gotta clickety clack dem keyboards to put in them one's and zero's.

 

This is correct.

 

Ok

 

This case seems to be the most likely, a player just needs to got to discover worlds in which he hasnt explored yet.

 

The only reason I used the term tiers was because I was under the assumption that new tiers would include stuff like better ores for upgrading weapons, and the only ways to get better ores would be to mine them. This would lead to planets needing to be populated with these ores.
I theorize that if they are in fact handling the saves by only storing the changes you make, then even worlds you have full explored will gain these new ores. They will just appear in stone that you have already dug through.
The reason is because everything else will be generated every time you load up your game, it will be stored for the session, but when you quit playing, nothing will be saved that wasn't changed. So there will be no way for the game to know what to put there except to go through the generation process again, which would include the new ores this time. I think this would be nice because you wouldn't even have to search for a new planet. This could pose a problem though if they change generation techniques to include different geographical features.
Going back to the Minecraft example. If you have ever played on a world and updated the game, then when you go to the edge of where you previously explored, you will notice a distinct difference between what is new and what is old. There will be mountains that are cut in half right in the middle of the ocean. This is because the new generation determined that the entire area was supposed to be a mountain but you already explored some that was saved so they couldn't build the whole thing.
In the only-saving-changes-technique, the ocean wouldn't exist anymore, and would be converted to a fully complete mountain.

The reason why this would be a problem is if you build a house on a planet, and they change the world generation, then the next time you visit your house, it could be stuck in the middle of a mountain.

So maybe I should have called this post, "How are they going to handle world generation and saving."

 

I don't know why anyone is worried about how updates will be handled. Even in beta it seems as though all the ores will be implemented in the game. Unless the update is particularly big there shouldn't be any concerns about world changes. Updates could include new random quests, crafting recipes, and bosses for providing additional content without a need to change the worlds. Another possibility is adding completely new biomes which would appear as completely new worlds with new generation rules so there wouldn't be a need to update old ones anyway.

The core game though is being made with the 10 tiers in mind. Everything that is needed for them in their relevant biomes will probably be done for beta/release. Maybe all of the crafting recipes and other unique features won't be but I wouldn't expect they'll need to change world gen.

 

My personal theory regarding that is that the devteam may leave older versions of the world generator in the game code specifically for making sure that when you land on a planet that was generated in an older version of the game that it's always regenerated in the same way.

e.g. with the hypothetical future version Starbound v1.3 in a galaxy that was created by v1.1:

You explore a new planet. The game makes a record that you visited this planet in 1.3, and forevermore uses 1.3's planet generator to rebuild it on each of your future visits.
You go back to an older planet you found in v1.2 to get some stuff you left behind. Since you visited it in 1.2 the game remembers this, and loads 1.2's planet generator instead of the current one. The planet does NOT retroactively get any of the new 1.3 features.
Your home planet was created in v1.1. Whenever you go here, the game uses 1.1's planet generator to recreate it for you, the world misses out on the new planet features of 1.2 and 1.3.
Any worlds you newly visit in 1.3 are also tagged as such, and so when there's a 1.4 down the road, planets you visited in 1.3 still spawn the same way they did in 1.3.

 

It is precisely these complications that make me think they will finalize world gen prior to beta/release. If something like this happens down the line it will be for a particularly large update. I still think it more likely that they would add new biomes rather than change world gen for old ones when they want to add content. It is just much smoother in the code and a far safer route this way.

 

You have to keep in mind that Minecraft has a different set of rules. For instance, when you add things to minecraft, there's only one other 'dimension' and that is the 'hell' (i forget what its called.. whatever you take the portal too)

But starbound has the entirety of space and time to work with. The idea of using wormholes, or FTL, or inter-dimensional/time travel to go to new places and therefore new tiers is entirely plausible. And because of this, I think it will be easy for Tiy and his crew to implement end-game content. And if they struggle, the modders will find a way.

P.S. anyone who wants to work with me to create a wormhole mod, lets do it