How far can you go?

The question is simple: how far will we be able to go in space? Will we program a whole galaxy? Or will they live in a smaller star cluster, like a dwarf galaxy? How do we "cap" the technology to prevent them from developing the ability to go to other galaxies.

anything more then a galaxy i would assume would crash any home computer since who knows how many creatures are evolving, if we look at how many creatures are on are planet (a lot!) imagine that same number (more or less) on millions of other planets. it needs a very very very very very strong computer to do program all of that just on a galaxy.

So maybe make some impassable barrier?

And how big should the galaxy be, star wise?

Realistic size. Remember that we will only load the nearest planets around you, and the planets that are further will be represented as textures on an extremely low-poly sphere. Other stars will just be white dots in the distance.



How will we keep the player in a single galaxy? Well... allow them to venture out of the galaxy, and go as far as they want. Eventually they will realize that they will never reach another galaxy, and turn back.


Or we could use multiple galaxies, and just represent other galaxies as little textures in the distance that will slowly increase in detail as you get closer.


We could maybe pull it off without killing our computers.

Guys, you are really underestimating modern computers. Unless you want the galaxy shown all at once, computers will handle it. The problem is in coding time - everything we want to add to game takes this time, and if we will want too much, we might never see the game finished.

Multiple galaxies is a pointless addition. Players will not be able to discover most of a single galaxy in years of uninterrupted playing, let alone more galaxies. Coding that would only take our time, wich we need for more important things.

Commander Keen wrote:

Guys, you are really underestimating modern computers. Unless you want the galaxy shown all at once, computers will handle it. The problem is in coding time - everything we want to add to game takes this time, and if we will want too much, we might never see the game finished.

But we will need memory to remember how all the planets used to be, so unless you want the planets changing each time you arrive, it can't be that big.

A Computer can store a vast amount of memory. My computer, for example, has a maximum of 453 GB.

It will probably only take a KB of information to describe a Planet. There are probably 20 noteworthy astronomical features per star system which would probably equal 20KB. There are 400 Billion Stars in a Galaxy, that would equate to 8'000'000 GB of Memory. However, it would take an eternity to explore or even see all of these stars. Around 100-500 Thousand would probably be more than enough.

This is about 2-10 GB of memory space needed to store the Galaxy in-game. This is not including all of the Organisms and Societies which will store there own set-up on each planet.

GamerXA wrote:

A Computer can store a vast amount of memory. My computer, for example, has a maximum of 453 GB.

It will probably only take a KB of information to describe a Planet. There are probably 20 noteworthy astronomical features per star system which would probably equal 20KB. There are 400 Billion Stars in a Galaxy, that would equate to 8'000'000 GB of Memory. However, it would take an eternity to explore or even see all of these stars. Around 100-500 Thousand would probably be more than enough.

This is about 2-10 GB of memory space needed to store the Galaxy in-game. This is not including all of the Organisms and Societies which will store there own set-up on each planet.

We also need to take in account the computers of the future will have more memory and space stage will be one of the last things made as well. But still if a galaxy is 10gig that mean this is shaping up to be a large game indeed.

Falthron wrote:

GamerXA wrote:

A Computer can store a vast amount of memory. My computer, for example, has a maximum of 453 GB.

It will probably only take a KB of information to describe a Planet. There are probably 20 noteworthy astronomical features per star system which would probably equal 20KB. There are 400 Billion Stars in a Galaxy, that would equate to 8'000'000 GB of Memory. However, it would take an eternity to explore or even see all of these stars. Around 100-500 Thousand would probably be more than enough.

This is about 2-10 GB of memory space needed to store the Galaxy in-game. This is not including all of the Organisms and Societies which will store there own set-up on each planet.

We also need to take in account the computers of the future will have more memory and space stage will be one of the last things made as well. But still if a galaxy is 10gig that mean this is shaping up to be a large game indeed.

Jesus Christ... I need to go free up some harddrive space.

(Remember that I don't really expect multiple galaxies. I was just throwing it out there.

GamerXA wrote:

This is about 2-10 GB of memory space needed to store the Galaxy in-game. This is not including all of the Organisms and Societies which will store there own set-up on each planet.

So if you ad up the organisms and societies, how much memory would that be?

Probably a KB or more per Organism and about 500 or more creatures per world. Cities would be about 100 B, 100 or more cities per planet; equals 10'000 KB + 1'000'000 GB = 0.51 GB per planet and, conservatively, 50 habitable and terraformable planets in the galaxy. With addition of 'mineable' planets, say.., 200; That's (510'000 KB * 50) + (10'000 KB * 200) = 27.5 GB of storage space for everything else in the Galaxy, plus a bit more for various miscellaneous objects.

You still need to cache that on harddisk sometimes, you can't hold it in memory forever.

GamerXA wrote:

Probably a KB or more per Organism and about 500 or more creatures per world. Cities would be about 100 B, 100 or more cities per planet; equals 10'000 KB + 1'000'000 GB = 0.51 GB per planet and, conservatively, 50 habitable and terraformable planets in the galaxy. With addition of 'mineable' planets, say.., 200; That's (510'000 KB * 50) + (10'000 KB * 200) = 27.5 GB of storage space for everything else in the Galaxy, plus a bit more for various miscellaneous objects.

Well then... can we compress it!?

Ooh, I know how to stop them leaving the galaxy!

Maybe if you go far enough, you start seeing faint green lines making cubes outlines (imagine blackpaper with vertical and horizontal lines, making lots of squares on the paper. The same thing, but 3d with cubes), and as you progress into them, they get brighter. After going through 10 or more cubes of the big cube wall, the green reaches its most distinct. Now the black of space is begining to turn green, too. Your engine stutters, and stops. You float onwards. Eventually the whole of space becomes green, a cyber (computer) green, and all you can see is your ship, floating through a void of green. the green fades to white. The whole of space turns white, and your ship turns cyber green, and explodes into glistening fragments.

Once you respawn (or go to your closest living relative, or whatever we use), The game resumes as normal, but after about 30s, you see green wire meshes over a few objects (like a chair), suggesting it is a computer generated model. More and more things go like this over the course of a minute, until everything has this. Then the world shatters, and you see a message in green letters: SIMULATION TERMINATED. You go to the menu, and you see your save game planet is a green mesh. Load it, and you resume traveling out of the green mesh, towards the galaxy.

So yeah, that could happen when you try to leave.

Also, I am serious about thinking this is a reasonable idea. The programming could be a pain, but you'd come out of it thinking, "Wow! Cool! I'm not doing that again."

GamerXA wrote:

Probably a KB or more per Organism and about 500 or more creatures per world. Cities would be about 100 B, 100 or more cities per planet; equals 10'000 KB 1'000'000 GB = 0.51 GB per planet and, conservatively, 50 habitable and terraformable planets in the galaxy. With addition of 'mineable' planets, say.., 200; That's (510'000 KB * 50) (10'000 KB * 200) = 27.5 GB of storage space for everything else in the Galaxy, plus a bit more for various miscellaneous objects.

I fail to see the math in this post. If each creature is 1 kb, then having 500 creatures on planets is 0.5 mb. Each city also being 1 kb (100 bytes is quite too low I think), having 100 cities, it's 1.1 mb. Adding a global heightmap can be 10 mb in .raw, layermap (similar to this) can be another 10 mb, that's 21.1 mb. So, maximum planets can drain from your memory can be 21.1 megabytes, unless you see a moon on night sky. All planets will be cached and unloaded from memory as soon as you leave it, moving those informations to hardware, ready to be utilised in background loading as soon as you return to them.

Commander Keen wrote:

GamerXA wrote:

Probably a KB or more per Organism and about 500 or more creatures per world. Cities would be about 100 B, 100 or more cities per planet; equals 10'000 KB 1'000'000 GB = 0.51 GB per planet and, conservatively, 50 habitable and terraformable planets in the galaxy. With addition of 'mineable' planets, say.., 200; That's (510'000 KB * 50) (10'000 KB * 200) = 27.5 GB of storage space for everything else in the Galaxy, plus a bit more for various miscellaneous objects.

I fail to see the math in this post. If each creature is 1 kb, then having 500 creatures on planets is 0.5 mb. Each city also being 1 kb (100 bytes is quite too low I think), having 100 cities, it's 1.1 mb. Adding a global heightmap can be 10 mb in .raw, layermap (similar to this) can be another 10 mb, that's 21.1 mb. So, maximum planets can drain from your memory can be 21.1 megabytes, unless you see a moon on night sky. All planets will be cached and unloaded from memory as soon as you leave it, moving those informations to hardware, ready to be utilised in background loading as soon as you return to them.

That makes more sense to me. It's also a releif.

Oops, I made an error. 500 KB + 10 KB = 510 MB(, * 50) + (10 KB * 200) = 27.5 MB... That's doesn't seem right either.

It wouldn't take much to save a city, all you have to do is store the coördinates of the buildings and other objects in the city, what type of specific building they are, the population, and some other information about the society centers.

GamerXA wrote:

Oops, I made an error. 500 KB + 10 KB = 510 MB(, * 50) + (10 KB * 200) = 27.5 MB... That's doesn't seem right either.

It wouldn't take much to save a city, all you have to do is store the coördinates of the buildings and other objects in the city, what type of specific building they are, the population, and some other information about the society centers.

How much Gig do you think this game will take in total then?

Probably, non-conservatively, 10 GB in total, purely for Data Storage and not for the actual game itself. I don't think we have enough Information to calculate how much the Coding will take yet.

GamerXA wrote:

Probably, non-conservatively, 10 GB in total, purely for Data Storage and not for the actual game itself. I don't think we have enough Information to calculate how much the Coding will take yet.

Well then for Data efficiency We should limit the amount of galaxies we can have. Your gonna fill out your entire CPU if we allow infinite galaxies.

It has been decided that we'll use one galaxy, right?

Yes guys, we're using one galaxy. Really, it will be impossable for us to add a universe stage or even more than 1 galaxy. That's final. As someone said before, it would take years of uninterupted gameplay to explore fully experience all of the planets in our galaxy.

YourBreakfast wrote:

Yes guys, we're using one galaxy. Really, it will be impossable for us to add a universe stage or even more than 1 galaxy. That's final. As someone said before, it would take years of uninterupted gameplay to explore fully experience all of the planets in our galaxy.

I mean one galaxy period, making another planet goes to the same galaxy.

Falthron wrote:

YourBreakfast wrote:

Yes guys, we're using one galaxy. Really, it will be impossable for us to add a universe stage or even more than 1 galaxy. That's final. As someone said before, it would take years of uninterupted gameplay to explore fully experience all of the planets in our galaxy.

I mean one galaxy period, making another planet goes to the same galaxy.

Yes, I know. I was only reassuring what Invader said.
I'm not so sure we should estimate our game size at this point. There really is no way of knowing. Space is a far way off boys, we should be counting our blessing an Auto-Evo system and Creature stages are on their way.

I suggest we lock this for now.

10 Gig is Gigantic for a game. I think for simplicity's sake we need to simplify planets until they are explored thoroughly. We want to save as much on space as possible.