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Names of planets and stars
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| gpaw5765 | Date: Friday, 02.09.2011, 16:38 | Message # 1 |
 Astronaut
Group: Users
Spain
Messages: 40
Status: Offline
| I've been thinking about the way the program mixes real astronomic data with procedurally generated planets and stars and I've come with an idea for improving future gameplay.
I've seen that stars on distant galaxies have automatically generated names like "RSC-6963-430-0-0-149" and similar hard-to-memorize names. Instead of giving every star on every galaxy an automatically-generated name, my idea is to give them all a default name like "uncharted" and allow the player to give them a proper name for future reference once they discover them.
Besides allowing for having more descriptive names for stars and planets, this would allow the player to identify which parts of the universe correspond to real-world data and which ones were generated by the game. This would improve the sense of discovery if you look for new stars in the Milky Way, or when you look for unknown galaxies after they are generated to fill the gaps in the current catalogs. It would also make easier to remember places.
The problem I see is that you wouldn't have an easy way to find an uncharted star you've never been before, but the way to solve this would be to add the possibility of using galactic coordinates to specify any place in the universe. I'm sure that internally the game already has some coordinate system in place, so allowing the player to use galactic coordinates shouldn't be difficult to implement.
What do you think, Vova?
Check my Space Flight Simulator for Android!
Edited by gpaw5765 - Friday, 02.09.2011, 16:40 |
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| Robbie | Date: Saturday, 03.09.2011, 08:18 | Message # 2 |
 Pioneer
Group: Global Moderators
United Kingdom
Messages: 590
Status: Offline
| Nice idea. SE needs to be more alien in this regard, everything uncharted would give a better sense of mystery to our galactic adventures.
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| SpaceEngineer | Date: Saturday, 03.09.2011, 08:42 | Message # 3 |
 Author of Space Engine
Group: Administrators
Russian Federation
Messages: 4800
Status: Offline
| I can't implement this right now. I must set-up a server first, then set-up a database for it, then implement a naming system for the game. Naming and sharing objects is one of the main gameplay feature for the up-coming game. So we must wait a while until this is done.
The plan is to have a server database that will save the stars' system ID together with the discoverer's ID (player name) and the discovery date. When player-1 discovers a new system he can choose to name or not name the whole system, any sun, planet, moon or asteroid of it. If he gives it a decent name (its tag-name), then this name will go to the server database. Any bad names may require a moderation or a vote from other players if it's found to be offensive or stupid in anyway. If player-1 decides not to name his newly discovered system or celestial body, then the engine will still keep that procedural name/id stored on the server database, and other players can still see that it was explored by player-1. When player-2 later enters player-1's discovered system, the server will send the system's ID to the client and notify player-2 of player-1's discovery. The client's engine must generate exactly the same system that player-1 had discovered using only system's ID: this is a feature of the procedural generation algorithm. If player-1 left some celestial bodies unnamed, then player-2 can choose a name for them; he can also vote or propose a new name for celestial bodies that had been named by player-1.
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| Robbie | Date: Saturday, 03.09.2011, 09:23 | Message # 4 |
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Pioneer
Group: Global Moderators
United Kingdom
Messages: 590
Status: Offline
| I would expect uncharted stars/planets to have their own SE auto-generated number anyway, but those numbers should only be seen after a player chooses not to name a discovered object, leaving numbers attached to an object will let other explorers know someone else had explored the object first.
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| SpaceEngineer | Date: Saturday, 03.09.2011, 09:29 | Message # 5 |
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Author of Space Engine
Group: Administrators
Russian Federation
Messages: 4800
Status: Offline
| If a player visits a system that has already been explored by another player, then new player will get information downloaded from server anyway.
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