Given that the game is just an idea and a plan right now, I can't say a whole lot about it will or won't be. Like most of the things I build, it will probably start out as something simple that gets expanded over time.
What I have settled on is a flat, two dimensional universe, with players starting roughly in the center near coordinates 0,0 and the edges being at around coordinates plus or minus two billion. I'm going to be keeping with the idea that one coordinate unit is about a light year, to make things easy. I've got code to create a handful of different types of galaxies, which will be scattered at random about the grid. Players will start about 3/4 of the way out on a 100k light year spiral galaxy, similar to where we sit in the milky way in real life. All this talk of galaxies is probably pointless, since as a player you're never likely to even leave the starting galaxy, but if we want to expand into them, we can. Even just the starting galaxy will have between 100 million and a billion star systems in it, depending on what I set the density factors for. To create the star systems and planets, I have a very detailed generator that has been lounging in my codebase for a long time. Things like the graphics for the planet surface are probably not needed for this project, which makes things a bit easier. Here's a list of some other stuff that I'm pretty sure will be in the final version: - a couple different nebula types, which may or may not have interesting effects on ships - naming star systems if you're the first one in it - submitting habitable planets as colonization candidates - interstellar wormholes scattered about that allow fast travel between regions Because of the way the star systems are constructed, I'll have to think about the best way to handle mining. I'd also like to add random alien generation as well, but I may simply have to just go with building them manually at the creator level. This said, talk is cheap. I'll let you know more as I progress on it, but there's a lot of other things in the way first, and I have to make sure I stay on top of Alter Aeon. Dennis Towne Alter Aeon MUD http://www.alteraeon.com --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
