Given that procedural planets are generated from a seed, if we go down to a planet and mine a location and it becomes depleted what happens after we leave? Is the planet permanently altered or would that location regenerate creating an area that we can constantly go back to and exploit?asked by Daz
TL;DRPlanets come from a shared seed so all players see the same thing, and mining would likely change a separate object on top, which probably won't regenerate in place but would reappear elsewhere, with design controlling the economy.
Well this is an awesome question. First things first, I just wanted to explain, I tend to end up answering a lot of questions related to the procedural planet stuff. The big brains that are really working on the procedural planet technology are all within Frankfurt. Guys like Marco Corbetta, Carsten Wensel, Sascha Hoba, Pascal Müller. They're all working pretty much full time on the procedural planets.We get a lot of oversight on them, we gotta blend them into the game where they're working on the tech. Just consider that when I answer any questions regarding it, is that yeah I'm trying to represent as best as I can.
Yeah. We just get to play with it, right?
Pretty much.
But they're driving all the tech.
That's right. They're driving everything that it goes through. To get to the actual question, it's a really good question because, yes, the planets are generated from a seed but consider that our game is multiplayer. We can't generate a different seed for every single player that goes down to the planet. Me and Forrest can't be flying toward a planet. He sees a mountain. I don't see a mountain. I end up flying through it...
Right. Yeah.
Or whatever. That's going to already be kind of set in stone. So when we generate this planet originally, as a developer, yes we will have a seed. Once you seed as a player, you're always going to see the same thing. Now when it comes down to actually permanently altering the surface of it... what's likely to happen is that when we do mining, it's going to be another object on top of the planet.
Right.
It's not going to be the planet itself. No, you probably won't alter the actual planet geometry itself, or any of the seeds related to it. You'll alter a different object that's placed on top of the planet. Just to give a really out there example, you've got a big block of ice, right? That big block of ice is sitting there on the planet. You fly down. You're mining water out of the ice, let's say. That ice disappears.Now the question is, will that ice then regenerate? Well it's a design question. It's going to be up to the designers. There's no technical reason why it can't, but likely what's gonna be happening is that we've got an area of ice, right?
Right.
So it's gonna be a certain number of minerals within a certain, pretty large, area. You're not gonna get the exact same ice block in the exact same position.
I think that's where the seed kicks in, right?
Sure.
You get the initial planet generated, but then the objects on the planet that you're mining and stuff maybe they'll have multiple seeds. So when it regenerates itself, if it regenerates itself, which I don't see why not.
Exactly.
That would be... random.
And that's something that we want to control. It's really important that we control the commodities within our world, so that the economy...
Right. Which affects the economics of the whole thing.
Exactly. That's kind of a long answer to whether it regenerates or not. I would say no, it doesn't actually regenerate, but it will be somewhere else. The seeds are all shared, so everybody will see the same thing.
Exactly. Awesome.