It's my understanding that each planet's coordinates will be like its seed. I take that to mean that in every game the same coordinates will yield the same planet. I was talking with a few people and wondering if that will lead to a bit of a limited feeling to the scope of the game. Once a lot of neat seeds are out there and I've played the game a while I can see starting to feel like I've seen it all. We've probably all had that feeling in Terraria and Minecraft. Sure, its a brand new world but you sorta know what to expect. Assuming my assumptions are correct a possible solution to this would be to randomize the player's *starting* coordinates and require some kind of resource expenditure to travel to planets. That way the amazing magma-vapor world with the topless yetis may be right next door or all the way across the galaxy (in which case you'd better start saving your duckets). Thoughts?
It'd be nice to have a world, which is already generated, except you are far far away from anywhere someone else has explored.
My thought is that the planet would be in the same place but your home base would be different in each game and it would take different amounts of fuel to get to the planets. So that amazing world you know about from the internet or your last game might be right next door or it might be all the way across the galaxy.
I don't see why the planet generation can't take into account a second seed, which is tied to the game session and can be either randomly or manually set. Sort of like dimensional coordinates? And then on top of that, the homeworld's location would be randomized. That way, if you really wanted to have the same set of planets again, or a set you heard of on the internet, you could. Personally, I don't like the idea of a (admittedly absurdly large) defined set of planets that's constant for everyone. Kind of ruins the illusion of discovery for me, which was one of the things I was most looking forward to in this game. ...Then again, we don't really know how the planets are going to be placed. Maybe the game will randomly decide "There'll be a planet HERE and HERE" etc and there will be a way to "move to" or "create" a planet on specific coordinates so as to get a specific world. Who knows?
So, similar to the travel mechanic in Space Age Spore? You only are able to travel a set distance until you acquire an upgrade for your ship or fuel which will expand the distance you may travel. And you always begin on a different planet? I hope it's not always the same planet, but it may conflict with the story, as there will be hand-crafted planets for the quests. Starting far away from these planets would make it a hassle and a half to get to them, and a player may not even be capable of getting to them. I like the idea, but there are some things that *may* conflict with it.
maybe make so you can only travel a certain distance away from any planet that you have some sort of beacon on or an npc stationed at it. i guess like a fuel system. since there is going to be infinite planets coords -infinity,-infinity to infinity,infinity maybe make the start point random between -1000,-1000 and 1000,1000 or somthing, as for quest planets in the story line, maybe an npc can just send you there rather than having to find it
I was thinking about this as well, and yeah, I think it would be a good idea if there were some sort of system that required resources for travelling and exploring so it added some challenge instead of being able to just get a list of good planets from the net and flying to them one by one.
This could be good as a preventing somebody finding a world with a ton of valuable resources to be easily travelled to. This is an excellent idea.
what im worried about is that, well we've spent hundreds of hours exploring terraria, now your giving us TONNES OF DIFFERENT WORLDS! so we're either going to spend tonnes of hundreds of hours exploring or skipping over each world. should definitely take a decent amount to get from world to world, so you actually have to explore each one to gain enough resources
I like the idea verbal processing has about this. It would require a lot more exploration on each planet, so you end up knowing your world quite a bit. For example, to get the mega-mech (bad name), you maybe need metal from one planet that you can go straight down for a while to get to, a coat of paint you unlock from a quest on another planet and blueprints from a chest, on the surface, to the right on another planet. You would need to do a bit of exploring before you instantaneously get a mega-mech. Still supporting!
Conceptually I like the idea of the second seed but part of what makes the universal "universe" seed concept so appealing is the way it ties the community together. Sharing the coordinates for an amazing planet that anybody can make it a goal to visit in their current game seems like it will be a lot of fun. My suggestion is about keeping the game re-playable, exciting and exploration driven while retaining the cool factor of the universal seed.
