| Infinity: The Quest for Earth |
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| Procedural planetary surface with moons visible through atmosphere |
| Developer: | Ysaneya |
| Modes: | Massively multiplayer |
| Perspective: | {$perspective} |
| Website: | www.infinity-universe.com |
| PCG Types: | dynamic-world-generation, instancing-of-in-game-entities, ontogenetic |
Description
Space MMO set in a realistically-scaled galaxy.
Use of Procedural Content Generation Methods
The galaxy is a random distribution of several hundred billion stars shaped by density functions to give it features such as an overall disc shape, a central spherical bulge, dispersed globular clusters, dust lanes/nebula, etc. Players may visit the solar system of any star in the galaxy, and can encounter any buildings, ships or artifacts left there by other players.
Because the game is an MMO, it's critical that every player see the same stars in the same places with the same solar systems around them. As such, the galaxy is generated from a seed that is picked ahead of time and shared with all the players, rather than generated at random. From this seed the stars in any portion of the galaxy octree can be regenerated reliably, and from the generated seeds for each star the layout of its solar system can be generated, including a seed for each of the features of that solar system (astroid belts, planets, etc). From those seeds the fine details of planetary surfaces and the locations of any of the trillions of asteroids in a system can be recreated. As such, the procedural content generation obviates the need for the server or clients to store any significant fraction of the universe in memory at any given time, or to send any of these details over the network.
External Links
Infinity - Videos - Video gallery with previews of the more interesting features
Infinity: The Quest for Earth - Wikipedia entry for Infinity: The Quest for Earth.
Journal of Ysaneya - Blog for developer of Infinity: The Quest for Earth.
