Saving Procedural Planets/Systems

I'll start this by saying this might not be within Uber's scope, but I figure it's worth exploring.

Basically we know maps will be Procedurally Generated, and we hope to have a wide selection of settings we can adjust when creating planets/systems(Anyone who played CnC Tiberium Sun knows what I mean) to help control what kind of playing fields we get.

What i'd like to see is the option to not only save the settings(so over time you could build up a series of presets) but also having the option of saving the resulting planet itself! I'd like to see this because even if the same settings, you'll end up with different planets, but maybe you really liked the one you just played on? Give an option to same the Planet(s)/system in the same way FA lets you save the replay.

Would be neat too if there was a out of game tool for managing you planet(s)/system(s), it could be in-game too.

Mike

If all planets are procedural, that would be cool, but I would like to see maps as in a specific solar system with unique planets. Basically what I am trying to say is procedural planets are all well and good but I would like to see existing maps already in the game. How do you think one would implement such a system for saving planets?

Basically with a system to save Random planets it's easy to ship the game with a few already saved. But handcrafting planets and systesm takes time and money, 2 things Uber won't have a lot off, its why there are procedurally generated planets to begin with.

No idea, only Uber knows anything about the engine so far.

Mike

Hmm may understanding may be wrong, but as far as I understand it will be like this:

They have some algorithm that will take as input a series of numbers, like X % of sea, Y % of mountains. It will create some world base on these numbers, using a random-number-generator to make the worlds vary between every execution of the algorithm.

If it works like this, it will be very easy to recreate any world on command. Just use X, Y and a specific seed for the random-number-generator and you will get the same results every time.

So you dont really need to save anything, only a few numbers. That will be not even 1kb.

Games like Anno do this, too.

Well yeah, the end result is you can save a particular planet or specific settings to generate a lot of planets that are similar yet different.

Mike

No they will be exactly the same.
The Algorithm will be deterministic. It will create the exact same world if given the same input. The only "random" influence should be a random-number-generator like this.
Such generators work by starting with some number, usually the current time since 1970 in ms and from there generate numbers, that are seem random. But if you start with the some number they will always create the same sequence of numbers.

So the maps will look the same, if given all needed input and that input will be just a few numbers.


EDIT:
I am talking like it is fact that they will do it like this, but as far as my understanding of this goes, they really should do it like this.

I wasn't talking about the seeds, I mean that if the input is something like;

10% Water
50% Mountain

You'd end up with a somewhat different planet every time, but if you saved a particular planet and generated a seed for it then yes, you should end up with the same planet every time.

Mike

AFAIK, they already confirmed saving generated maps?

This is confirmed on the Kickstarter page:

The first thing that comes to mind when I read this thread is Minecraft. For those of you who don't know, every time you start a new world in the game, it is generated at random, giving you a different experience every single time you start a new game.

However, every single generated world has a seed. If you play a seed you like and want to restart a new save on it, or find a nice world with something really cool in it online, you have the ability to input that seed when creating a new world, and you'll get the world you want.

This kind of system would be great to have in Planetary Commander, as well as an actual "map editor" (or some way to create maps) to allow us to remake our favourite maps from TA and SupCom.

Of course, we already know that saving maps is in, but something simple like MineCraft would also be nice on top of that.

I agree. If once you generated a world and the game told you what the seed ended up being, it would be awesome to be able to simply specify that world again by listing a series of parameters and the seed.