[MUD-Dev] Wilderness

[Matt Owen]

Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com <Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com> wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Koster, Raph [mailto:rkoster at verant.com]
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Brian Hook
  
>>> When I have the time I want to get around to writing a massive
>>> space exploration game.
   
>>> The ultimate goal, at least for planetary content creation, is
>>> that there are worlds based off a set of random number seeds
>>> which determine the details of that world (at least in terms of
>>> topography, climate, etc.).  These worlds will have never
>>> existed completely on anyone's systems -- they're just random
>>> number seeds -- and the first explorers will be, literally, the
>>> first people to ever see them.  Even the game developers have
>>> never seen them.  Those first few player maps will be the real
>>> maps.
 
>> That was Privateer Online.
 
> Perhaps, but thats how Elite did all of its planets too!
 
> Ok so you couldn't explore them, but all the socio-economic info,
> locations and names were seeded. On computers with 32k memory, it
> was a necessity of course. Sometimes I wish computers evolved less
> quickly so that people would have a chance to display some of the
> ingenuity bred of pushing an environment beyond expectations. I
> guess thats solely the domain of consoles now though.
 
> I miss my Amiga.

This is where the relatively new arena of Pocket PC gaming comes
in. Now that these devices sport colour displays and fast
processors, expansive Elite type games become possible. I have
actually spent the last few days musing over a 'Space trading game'
for the Pocket PC, and have started roughly working out the seeding
system for a huge universe of Elite style planets, using exactly the
same methods that Elite used. Because Pocket PCs are still lacking
in memory space compared to their speed and visual output, I can
foresee the 'old' techniques of data squeezing making a comeback.

- Jaruzel.
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