Earth seed

Hello, i am Anthony, a new guy on this forum, now i show my idea:

the earth seed...

A seed for the system manager, a seed that creates the earth !

Who is ok for add a "secret seed" on PA

not a bad idea! rounding it off w/ mercury, venus & mars would be cool too.

not sure if it would be worth trying to do saturn, jupiter, or uranus since they're gas giants and nothing could sit on the surface. also, they're enormous and wouldn't be even close to scale, prob not worth doing.

Well, later in game there will be gas giants for energy harvesting...

What do you mean with a seed that creates the earth? You mean a planet that looks exactly like the earth and it should be a hidden number, so people might find it by chance? Like a hidden easter egg?

This isn't possible to do with a seed. Hopefully some day somebody will create a map editor so we can get special planets like that.

Sure it is possible.

if (seed == magic_seed) {
} else {
// normal generator
}

Somebody just needs to have the fixed system data for an earth world.

This would be rather neat.

Uber should release the system file format (imo), to allow a traditional community map generator to be made. Such a map generator could be hideously complex, the bigger the headstart before release the better.

At the moment, the systems just store the data shown in the editor. Terrain is generated at runtime from the stored seeds, so editing maps is not currently possible.

If memory serves sometime during a stream around November the topic of custom arena planets for 1v1 that are balanced as you would see in a traditional RTS came up. They said that they plan to make custom maps and I think they went further and said that at some point the system maker will have a tool set to edit specific parts of planets by the community. So someone making a Earth map would not be too far a step.

The tricky part is that fully built maps can be gigabytes in size, so you need some way to store something that produces an Earth planet without fully representing an Earth planet. And it would need to scale to any radius.

I'd be interested in statements from Uber about large system file sizes if you have links. I know a game state can easily be large, but the map itself?

I know. Releasing a system file format and allowing a system to be loaded from a file (as another option) would be ideal, unless said system files are gigabytes in size.

Thanks for all your reponse, i have a question for galactic wars:
Kickstarter can make a secret solar system on the galaxy?
Its simple to make this, i think, more easier that my first idea ( i am french, i am still sorry for my english )

I didn't have any (it's more about personal experience), but since you asked, I went looking and found here:
"Before optimizations a single planet used multiple gigs of data just for the mesh data, not the textures."

I'm not sure why mesh data would be gigabytes... It doesn't look that bad in wireframe, even with the mountainous planets that seem to be the worst memory hogs of them all.

a hidden easter egg is the best idea, a mysterious hidden treasure, THE secret of the system editor

Thank you for the information. If a fully loaded system remains large (even in the hundreds of megabytes is too much for loading from a file client side), then we'd need a map generator that uses its own format, and a server side mod that can read the format, flesh out any details and create the system (aka another system generator).

At first glance, a basic functional map format could consist of:

• Initial mesh
• Set of brushes
• List of brush operations applied to mesh
• Metal point locations
• Basic stats where applicable like in current system editor
• Other things

Random and procedural elements could be built in if desired. No matter how you look at it this is a lot of work.

Who said a system as a file has to be gigabytes in size?
I've not read any validated information about that.
Just because it can fill a few gigabytes while loaded does not mean it has to be that big when stored in a compressed file.

for the "earth map" i found this:

in the kickstarter trailer it was said that the peak of humanity has been completed since centuries.. i have a "fake earth map", but we can imagine that the continents have changed position during his years. reasoning like that to possess the "earth" in the game without being forced to code lines....

Do you have any validated information that planets can be easily compressed at a ratio sufficient for an easter egg?

Generally I'd assume that some 3D models should not be gigabytes in size. But yeah unsure how much it really could be.

I've no idea what a seed is in this matter, but that's such a cool idea. I want that seed. I want it now.