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Fun Stuff => CLIKC => Topic started by: A. Smith on 27 Sep 2008, 22:42

Title: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: A. Smith on 27 Sep 2008, 22:42
Infinity (http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=26) is a space MMO, developed by a very small team (with only one guy doing the main coding), with the help of the community. It plans (as my title states) to have more then 200 billion stars, just like the in the real milky way. Best part? It's all procedurally generated (think spore creatures), so every planet, while being being different form all others, only needs a seed (several bytes worth of data). There's even a combat prototype out. It's only a sort of space-team-death-match in a sort of arena, and the planets and stars are just there for show, but it looks very promising. They plan to have an alpha sometimes next year.

Oh, and did I mention everything is to scale? Meaning planets really ARE huge, and you can actually go everywhere without loading screens? Yeah.

Video for the transition from the planet to an asteroid ring as well as the physics engine, here (http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&Itemid=93). The real interesting part starts at about 3/4 of the way through.

I'm psyched. This has awesome potential. Apparently there won't be level, classes, or skills, either... combat is twitch-based.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Chesire Cat on 27 Sep 2008, 23:12
Call me jaded, but Im just going to sit back and let a released product prove its worth, not the concept.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Melodic on 27 Sep 2008, 23:14
200 billion stars, with an average of 10 planets per star and 5 kilobytes per seed, is just over 9 petabytes of information. Somehow, I think his goal is a little on the lofty side.

That being said, it's nice that procedural generation is starting to catch on. Unfortunately, I didn't see anything of worth when cruising the website. A twitch-shooter MMO set in instances around planets sounds a little Huxley for my tastes.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Spluff on 27 Sep 2008, 23:18
200 billion stars, with an average of 10 planets per star and 5 kilobytes per seed, is just over 9 petabytes of information. Somehow, I think his goal is a little on the lofty side.

He said a few bytes per seed, not kilobytes, so it would end up being a few terabytes, not petabytes. Still quite large, however.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: McTaggart on 28 Sep 2008, 01:44
If you procedurally generate the seeds...
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: est on 28 Sep 2008, 06:54
I remember seeing this a while ago and thinking it looked alright.  I hope it goes well, but it's just not my kind of game I think.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: A. Smith on 28 Sep 2008, 11:21
If you procedurally generate the seeds...

You do, actually. From what I've read, every star has a seed, and that seed generates both the number of planets and the seeds for those planets. I wouldn't be surprised if they used seeds for entire regions of space.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Melodic on 28 Sep 2008, 14:41
Blargh, so my math sucks, but it's still a lofty goal all considered.

Anyways, I'm not impressed until I see something tangible.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Scandanavian War Machine on 28 Sep 2008, 14:54
sounds good.

whether or not it will actually be good is another story however.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Boro_Bandito on 29 Sep 2008, 20:47
if nothing else its a beautiful demo showing the promise of procedural animation, which only helps the potential of future projects. Though I'm a bit spaced out by this point, Spore was a damn good fix for me on that for a while. Now, take procedural animation to create a life-sized earth and create a decent game on that, like a real Empire Earth, or possibly a zombie apocalypse simulator? (Damn I just finished reading World War Z and treasured every word of it)
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Dimmukane on 29 Sep 2008, 20:55
Why aren't there books on these kinds of algorithms?  It's something I've been trying to learn, but there's almost zero literature.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Nodaisho on 29 Sep 2008, 21:48
If this works, it will, at the very least, be an amazing demonstration of how to build something huge, that looks good, with relatively little space.

And dammit, those graphics reminded me of planetside, now I am nostalgic.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Melodic on 29 Sep 2008, 21:49
Here (http://pcg.wikidot.com/) is a good place to start. Procedural generation is more on the math side of programming, which is why I've never been too keen on it.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Dimmukane on 29 Sep 2008, 22:05
I'm not to keen on math either, but I think it'd be useful to know, and I'm probably gonna reteach myself the math anyways.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: öde on 30 Sep 2008, 00:04
And dammit, those graphics reminded me of planetside, now I am nostalgic.

Oh now me too.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Boro_Bandito on 30 Sep 2008, 06:22
Guys, procedural generation used to make flight Sims that don't look like you're flying over a google map.
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Jepser on 05 Oct 2008, 06:53
Why aren't there books on these kinds of algorithms?  It's something I've been trying to learn, but there's almost zero literature.
Heck, I can't find books about algorithms at all at the library. xD
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Chesire Cat on 05 Oct 2008, 08:44
This (http://thinkexist.com/quotes/al_gore/) page has lots of Al Gore-isms
Title: Re: Infinity: the quest for earth (200 billion stars in the galaxy!)
Post by: Jepser on 06 Oct 2008, 02:35
Har har. Al Gore should go invent a plane on solar energy before he starts touring next time.