Regarding "Seeds" and such.

I've seen a lot of posts about Planet Navigation and such. Now, I understand that there is a lot of confusion regarding these subjects and there are many conflicting statements made by many members. Now, having been following Starbound since the game's inception, I feel like I have a good grasp on this. I could be wrong, but as this game is in development, nobody's really ever 100% sure. No, I have seen many posts about there being "seeds" that you generate your "Universe" from, and every world with the same "seed: has the same planets at each coordinate. Now, this is sort of true, but mostly untrue. Every save file that will be made will have the exact same planets at the same coordinates, on my game, the coordinates: 100, 487, 1946 will generate the same planet as the coordinate 100, 487, 1946 on every other same file. Now, that doesn't mean there is no procedural generation. The way this works is, instead of the "seed" controlling how the UNIVERSE generates, it controls the planets. The "seed" is not a "seed" but instead the coordinates themselves. Take for example Minecraft. If you go and make a new world, and type in: "11345" it will plug those numbers into its generation algorithm and generate a world. If you put the seed: "11345" in ANY Minecraft game, the exact same world will generate, however, all buildings on that world will remain Client-side, unless you are in a Multiplayer game. Now, some people think that because every Universe is the same, there is no procedural generation. This is highly false. The procedural generation comes from the vast amount of coordinates there are, of which there will most likely be in the billions of coordinates. The game doesn't have the entire Universe mapped out, as you will most likely be able to go infinitely (or at least seemingly-infinitely) far out from the center. The way this works is sort of complicated, but I will try to do my best to explain it in a manner that makes it not very computer-tech-code-y. When you type in the coordinates into the interface and travel there, the world is commencing generation. Let's say you type in the coordinate: "42, 42, 42." Now, the game has a very complex and long algorithm deep inside of its code. This has three input numbers (Probably. I'm not TOO knowledgeable about this stuff, but I know enough.) The numbers of the coordinate go into here. Now, over a vast amount of calculations and advanced coding, the game essentially goes: "Well, 42, 42, 42. That means this biome will be a desert. Let's put some cacti here, and some sand. Let's make the sky purple and the sun red. The oceans on this planet will be green, and the trees will be pink with wavy trunks. Let's make ore *x* spawn here, and monsters *Q*, *W*, and *E* will spawn on this planet."

Note that the numbers surrounded by asterisks represent variables, so any miscellaneous thing belonging to that category would go there. Now, as I said before, I'm not incredibly knowledgeable about all of this. I actually dropped out of my Computer Science class towards the end of last school year, however, I can imagine it's something very similar to this.

As always,
~Lazer

 

Well, that's quite a bit of text you got there, and I do believe that you are correct (I think). Dialing in 6 digits of code only (probably) gives the world "general info" on what it should do. Although there are seeds for things, ores, plants and other random tidbits may not necessarily be placed in the exact same spots of other things, but generally should be placed within the "legal boundaries" of the code.

 

Of course there are other seeds for stuff like that, but I assume they are all derived from the coordinates in some way, shape, or form. But yeah I probably did get something wrong, but to hell with it. Close enough. xD

 

problem is people seem to confuse procedural with random. i guess this is because both can use seeds.
vegetation, ores and such do get taken out of the procedural generator afaik. the idea is so you can share cool places with your friends.

 

Yeah I don't know for sure about vegetation and ores. Although I would assume so, because you could be like: "Hey I found this awesome plant" or something, and considering the amount, if that wasn't directly the result of the coordinates, chances are, your friend will never see it in his save file.