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[A. Smith]

Infinity 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. 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.

[Chesire Cat]

Call me jaded, but Im just going to sit back and let a released product prove its worth, not the concept.

[Melodic]

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.

[Spluff]

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.

[McTaggart]

If you procedurally generate the seeds...

[est]

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.

[A. Smith]

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.

[Melodic]

Blargh, so my math sucks, but it's still a lofty goal all considered.

Anyways, I'm not impressed until I see something tangible.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

sounds good.

whether or not it will actually be good is another story however.

[Boro_Bandito]

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)

[Dimmukane]

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.

[Nodaisho]

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.

[Melodic]

Here 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.

[Dimmukane]

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.

[öde]

And dammit, those graphics reminded me of planetside, now I am nostalgic.

Oh now me too.

[Boro_Bandito]

Guys, procedural generation used to make flight Sims that don't look like you're flying over a google map.

[Jepser]

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

[Chesire Cat]

This page has lots of Al Gore-isms

[Jepser]

Har har. Al Gore should go invent a plane on solar energy before he starts touring next time.