[azile0]

Looks like an awesome game. A MMOG that is based in space, and apparently, is like an upgraded Freelancer. You can land and interact with planets (mine, trade, etc) and then zip back up to space.

The game is all randomly generated, so some systems will never be explored by players.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_the_quest_for_earth
www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity

[Ashrak]

ooh theyv updated the website

[Mefustae]

Yeah, been a while since I checked the status of Infinity. Damn, I think I was the first one to post about it on here way back when.

[Rodo]

it's not being updated that much, I guess most of the action happens in the forums.

[Phoenova]

I dont think thats true, I just think that IA doesnt have that much time or desire to post his progress unless its something big.  On the other hand, I try to ignore the project as much as possible so Ill be surprised when something happens

[Nuke]

Looks like an awesome game. A MMOG that is based in space, and apparently, is like an upgraded frontier: elite 2. You can land and interact with planets (mine, trade, etc) and then zip back up to space.

The game is all randomly generated, so some systems will never be explored by players.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_the_quest_for_earth
www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity

fixed

[redsniper]

The game is all randomly generated

No it isn't.

[Dark RevenantX]

The vast majority of systems and planets apparently are.  I don't care how compressed it is - 200 billion planets is going to take up several hundred terabytes of info at the least.  Procedural generation (with the same seed for every player to keep continuity) is the only way.

[Davros]

how many planets did elite have ?

[Ransom]

The vast majority of systems and planets apparently are.  I don't care how compressed it is - 200 billion planets is going to take up several hundred terabytes of info at the least.  Procedural generation (with the same seed for every player to keep continuity) is the only way.

Fairly sure that's what redsniper was referring to. Procedural isn't the same as random.

[Ghostavo]

how many planets did elite have ?

Elite had 8 galaxies, each with 256 planets. However the 8 galaxies limit was artificial, because the developers thought that more than 8 galaxies was ridiculous (it could be increased to 256) and the 256 limit on planets was due to the capabilities of 8 bit computers at that time (an 8 bit word max being 2^8=256).
 
So it could easily have 65536 planets. Occupying very little space might I add.

[redsniper]

Fairly sure that's what redsniper was referring to. Procedural isn't the same as random.

Yeah. If it were randomly generated, everyone would be playing in a different galaxy.

[blackhole]

The beauty of procedural generation is that you can build up solar systems on-the-fly, so all you have to save are the changes made to that solar system, which can be massively reduced via clever algorithms (which I'm sure infinityadmin is full of). The only thing that takes space are the (in infinity's case) 6 base planet textures, the asteroid textures, the ship models, the base buildings for the cities (Which are also procedurally generated), the space stations, among a few other things. Nebulae and a large amount of background prettiness is all procedurally generated. Spore has nothing on this game.

EDIT: not counting music, sound effects, GUI images, and the like.

[Nuke]

it really doesnt take much data to define an orbit. given a list of orbital parameters its possible to calculate the position of a planet or other drifting object as a function of time. were talking a handful of variables. probibly only a few bytes long per object. orbiter defines an orbit with 18 floats, thats it. thats only 2 floats more than a transform matrix. youd probibly also need axis normals for sun planets and moons, (anything that can have stuff orbiting it). with that data and game time you can compute position, orientation, velocity vector, ect.

some stuff id do at random, like asteroids. if a player enters a region with asteroids his comp generates some procedural data and sends it to the server. if anyone else enters the same area they are sent the same data from the server, and their computer generates the scene in the exact same way.

[NGTM-1R]

The game is all randomly generated, so some systems will never be explored by players.

You could more or less say the same thing about EVE without needing random generation, until someone came along with a Cheetah and the goal to visit every system.

[Bobboau]

200 billion systems means it can not be done.

I had forgotten about this game, I was working on a freighter for at one point
http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=75&topic=903.0
got to the point where I would start textureing and got distracted and then forgot about it.