How many planets?

Hmmm... Now that I think about it, yes, the variation 0000.0 0000.0 0000.0 will be possible.
Because in a graph with the values 0,0,0 do exist. I'm just silly... Always failing at maths due a simple mistake

Anyway, let's remember that this is not a graph, in the navigator is just is the code for a planet's seed.

 

Well lets say its 30,000 planets. I believe what some people say.
1. Create a character
2. Create a universe with random seed or a seed you type in yourself. Example: 12345
3. Visit all the 30,000 planets.
4. Exit and generate a new universe. Example: 54321
5. Your exploring journey begin again!

I don't know if this is true but do we actually generate a universe first and then play or do everyone have the same universe? Because if we all had the same universe we could simply write down all the nice planets and just make new characters and revisit them. In my opinion the best system would be to first generate your own universe for your server or singleplayer, then if you want a friend too play within the same universe, ask them to use the seed you used, example: 12345. But this is 100% speculations.
Do any of you have any information on universe generation before entering the map?
Number of planets within universes actually doesn't matter in my opinion if you actually can create new universes.

 

From Starbound wiki:
The seed for the procedural generation of a planet is based on its coordinates. This means that two players exploring the same coordinates will encounter the same environment. Many coordinates, however, will not yield a planet, simulating the emptiness of space in reality.


Okay... Practically we simply can't calculate this thing.

 

There are three variables, you can't calculate them as one single number of fifteen digits.
I think (and it's been years since I've done maths sooo forgive me if I'm mistaken), that if they are actually used as coordinates, and not a "code", that it would be the max number elevated by the X,Y,Z, therefore 9999.9 elevated by 3, and that is saying if EVERY coordinate had a planet, and that seems waaaay too crowded for me. So, let's just stop hurting our brains here, and stop trying to figure out the possibilities hehehe

 

If you want to be able to share coordinates (seeds) with other players, they obviously have to be within the same "universe", otherwise a single seed wouldn't work for everybody and anybody. Think of it as the way minecraft seeds work, with the exception of having numbers only, rather than numbers AND letters.

With the addition of having some coordinates be empty space, there is no real way to determine exactly (or even roughly, considering we don't know the odds of a specific coordinate being empty space) how many planets there will be. But based on Alanzer-DNA's math, it's easy to see that there is potential for having far too many planets for one person to really explore. If 'being bored by running out of planets' is a concern, I can assure you that won't ever be the case, unless you're that one person who reads this and spends the rest of their life playing starbound, exploring EVERY SINGLE NOOK AND CRANNY OF EVERY SINGLE PLANET, MOON, ASTEROID, ETC and then proceeds to find me and say "I'm bored," just to spite me.

And to whomever that person may be, I hate you.

 

To stop the speculation and just in case no one has posted this...

http://community.playstarbound.com/...amount-of-planets-generated.8237/#post-197006

Edit: This probably belongs in the FAQ, but that probably answered the question.

 

that is absolutely absurd
but in a good way.

 

Just to clarify one thing, the universes are always "the same". They will all share the same entity per coordinate as long as no mod changes that.
So just start a game and all you have to do is sharing the coordinage, thats it

I guess commenting on the amount of visitable planets/moons/etc makes no sense since a few high numbers including their possibility to increase even further has been stated already.

 

are you certain of this? has it been stated somewhere? it would help me clear up a lot of speculation if you could clarify where you got the information from.

 

The List states:

As always, caveat, this is not 100% set in stone.

 

that that's what confuses me, if the world is created procedurally, then it shouldnt be the same. unless of course what it is saying is that your specific univerese will have the world procedurally generated and then you can share that universe with other people. That or it is simply that worlds will always be in the same spots but could have varying things that are procedurally generated such as planet size, biome, number of satellites, etc etc...

 

The statement is indeed vague. In my interpretation, what it means is that the procedural generation system used in the creation of sectors, systems, and worlds, doesn't actually take a pseudo-random seed like most games out there (for example, from the system clock), but uses as its seed the actual coordinates of the system; since these coordinates have a fixed range, a given set of coordinates (the same "seed") will always produce the same world. To what extent the world will be the same, only the devs know. It could be limited to biomes, presence of certain structures and threat level, or it could be exactly the same world down to a single tile; it depends on the procedural generator.
Is this clear enough? I struggled a bit with the words back there.

 

Right now that's what the big question is I think, becauseif we take the statment. "(Worlds will be) Created procedurally based on coordinates. Coordinates will always create the same world, so you can share with friends." verbatum, then there is no world that is truely "random" because every planet, will spawn the exact same way in every single universe. I posted about this in another topic, I think it's called Star Navigation, here's my tidbit on how I believe this is going to work.

As for the "every set of co-ords creates a certain seed." Well this I can sort of agree with. (Not that the statment is untrue mind you, but how the game goes about that.) What I'm really hoping for here, is that let's say planet
-X: 128.9 Y: 197.3 Z 181.7 is in your game, Biome: Mountains Size: Large Gravity: 1.0 Atmosphere: Ideal Temperature: Normal Threat Level: 42 -A Large Robot Base is detected, - Huge Iron Deposits-

Now this same planet on another person would look like this.
-X: 128.9 Y: 197.3 Z 181.7 is in your game, Biome: Mountains Size: Large Gravity: 1.0 Atmosphere: Ideal Temperature: Normal Threat Level: 42 -A small Avian base is detected, - Small Gold, & Iron Deposits-

This is somewhat doubted because then to much is left to speculation, because "sharing"t he planet with a buddy, will mean he/she gets the same general tiles/blocks of a world, but all of the monsters and it's contents are different past that. I'd like official word from the devs on how it works, but to be honest I think they are still tweaking it trying to figure that out themselves.

Edit: I herped when I should have derped with the words, and the typing, fixed to make myself clearerer

 

My thoughts exactly, bro. All speculation is equally valid until the devs speak.

It all depends on the procedural generator. To actually "share" a world, as I understand it, it should be identical. This isn't really a novel idea, you could share seeds in Minecraft and each one generated the exact same world all the time (within a given version). And you're right, it isn't really random, but nothing in computing ever is, because as far as I know there is no "true" random number generator; everything needs an initial, very certain value. Depending on where you take it from, and how much you play with it afterwards, you can come pretty close to randomness (close enough from the user's point of view; two adjacent seeds can result in completely unrelated worlds), but it will always be pseudo-random at the core.
In any case, the Starbound universe seems to be big enough that this apparent lack of randomness won't really matter; unless there is a very large number of variables per world, you're bound to find two that are very similar to each other if you look hard (or long) enough.

 

ALL THE PLANETS!

 

Thank you for explaining that, I was completely lost with the letter thing. I have a hard time believing this though as I haven't seen any information that suggests the systems are named based on sectors they are located in or that there's a limit based on the number of letters in the alphabet on the number of sectors or stars. The game will probably just have a large library of words to use for names that get plugged in according to the procedural generator rather than by arbitrary sectors.

I don't believe this sort of variation is feasible. How would the game determine which version of the planet to use other than the coordinate system? Chucklefish has made it a goal that we will be able to share planets with people based purely on coordinates and if there's any major changes between computers like a different type of village or dungeon, that would destroy the portability of the coordinates.

 

Well, let me try to explain it a bit better I guess? Using the same example for simplicities sake.

So, the game will do this (Theory not fact of course.) It will see that (For the sake of this experiemtn the above mentioned planet is called Earth yaaaay) earth, has to be spawned as a large planet, with gravity at a 1.0 ratio. It then looks at the data given for this "world" and sees the temperature has to be ideal as well. It puts that in, then grabs the biome, makes it so that the planet in and of itself has alot of mountains. It then reads (Via co-ords or whathave you.) That the ground will be bllue sand, the hard rock will be green rocks. And the trees will be pink with orange leaves. It then takes the same co-ords and says. This planet will have a Threat Level of 42. Done.

Now, we'll set up a few examples of how I'd personally make it work, and how I think it may. We'll say Earth, Mars and Pluto for the example assume the previous setup (Gravity, tiles used- green rocks etc- temperature, and threat level etc are all exactly the same for the following three planets.) And all three planets, will be on the same co-ordinates. (And thus named the same, but for the sake of the example we're changing names.)

Earth- Is home to many Humans, it has alot of iron deposits in it, a bit of gold. And when you beam down, over to the left there's this really bitchin set of mountains oyu'd love to set up a base on. But you don't quite like how this area over here looks, you think it's a bit to barren and flat.
Mars- So you went to earth, saw the bitchin mountains, and told your buddy about this planet, gave him the co-ordinates he went to this planet, and since the game (I'm assuming) randomly generates everything, he doesn't have those mountains. Mars here is filled with robots, there's awesome mountains everywhere, and everything is full of life, there's no barren land on it that he can see. His planet though, has no iron, just a ton of coal on it.
Pluto- So, earth and mars seemed cool enough, and despite the differences, the planet was still decent for resources, so these two tell a third friend. She proceeds to go to the same co-ordinates, well this sucks, her planet is inhabited by very angry, very hostile Florans, damn. The mountains are covered in dense trees and there's foilage everywhere! It also has massive deposits of gold and silver, so she doesn't mind so much.

Now, in all three of these examples, the planet is "the same" in the sense, that they all have mountains, they all have breathable air, they are all rich in one mineral or another, the ground is made up of blue sand, there are some hard green rocks under that. The trees are always pink with bright orange leaves. This means that this set of co-ordinates will always spawn a certain number of non-random things. (That being biome, types of block used, atmosphere, temperature etc.) but it also randomizes some things, inhabitants, the types of ore that spawn on each, and the actual layout of the land. How would the game determine which version to give what character? Well, it seems simple, at least to me.

The Co-ordinates set up the world type, it's biomes, trees, blocks used, gravity etc. Then, the game takes this base line for the planet, and runs an engine on it that checks the random lists. (For example it checks to see what race(s) will live on a planet with mountains.) It rolls on that list, picks a race, plops them down. Then it rolls another die, checks to see how large that settlement will be, and based on your race if it's hostile or not etc etc. It then says. This planet is large, has mountains and is rich in resources. It rolls yet again to pick the resource it is richest in, adds that in, once it has all of the variables it needs to know. It then generates the actual world itself. And you can add alot of and/ors into coding, this way it won't spawn the village right where you beam in etc.

This however, doesn't aid the "share it with friends" idealogy though, because it will be different for each, personally I'd prefer it, because then every character you run around with, will have a different world etc. Does that make better sense? ^_^

 

I'm 99% sure that's not how it would work, and I would honestly be kind of upset if that was the. In order for "share with friends" to work, there is no doubt that every planet would be identical. Otherwise, what's the point of sharing coordinates? People have been referencing to the way "random" seeds in minecraft work, and I'm fairly certain it will be the same way. The terms "random" and "proceduraly generated" I think might be taken a bit too literally. By "random", I infer the meaning to be that the developers of the game have a generator that "randomly" creates all of the possible planets in the forms of seeds. They don't handcraft all of the planets one by one, so they can't say for certain EXACTLY what any given planet would be based on it's coordinates. Therefore the terms "random" and "proceduraly generated" can apply to the system. It's "random", because a program put together all of the planets before hand, with random attributes/inhabitants within reason.

 

That seems much more likely, as I said I was speculating and trying to clear my line of thinking up a bit. We don't know for sure until the game comes out though, or the Devs weigh in on it. ^_^

 

That's part of the suspense, and a major reason I just want the game to come out already. T_T