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[CheapDevotion]

First of all, let me make a quick introduction. My name is Jacob Williams, and I am a 25 year old freelance application developer. As a freelancer, I have been quite successfully, but I have recently started work on my own project. I hear that this forum is the "place to be" for indie game devs.

So on to my question...

Without diving into too much about the game and the gameplay, the game is essentially a planet exploration game. Upon starting the game, a "solar system" is procedurally generated with a random number of planets (more than 10, no more than 30). At anytime while in space, the player can choose to go to a new solar system, which will be generated anew.  Each planet has different things that can be found, some far more rare than others. In addition, the planets with the most rare items will be more difficult in terms of combat. Upon death or leaving a planet, I have two options, both with different pros and cons.

Option 1: Cache the generated planet, and allow for return.
This option allows for player to return to a planet, but in order to allow that, I will have to save a planet's procedural configuration to a file, and load the planet the next time a player arrives. Even with Unity, this would be a lot of work. (3D Terrain, Detail Items, Aliens, etc).

Also, the game will have a living and breathing economy, and I don't want that abused by a player finding a rare item and returning to that place many times to retrieve it. The benefit of this option, however, is more realistic gameplay.

Option 2: Allow only one visit to each planet before moving on to a new solar system.
This option would prevent the player from abusing the economy and would save me from writing really complex save game code, but is not very... realistic. How can I tie something like this into the story? As you gather items from a planet, the local wildlife will start attacking you - maybe the planet can be put on "alert".


So I guess my question is, which route should I take? Obviously I don't want to write complex save code if I don't have to, but the economy is also a very delicate thing - how can I keep it from being abused.

[Christoffer]

Sounds like you would rather avoid having to save every planet so I would suggest generating a new solar system on death. It would be like a more tame version of permadeath in rougelikes. Say you had to progress through the solar system and only the easier (with less rare items) planets are playable at first. At death players would have to restart from easier planets.

All you have to do is come up with a reason why the player would lose the coordinates to that solar system on death.

[JasonPickering]

Worm Holes!! your ship can punch a whole in the very fabric of the universe, but you never know where you will end up and you can never go back. Maybe your next leap will be the leap home. (couldn't resist that last part.)

[Nix]

Worm Holes!! your ship can punch a whole in the very fabric of the universe, but you never know where you will end up and you can never go back. Maybe your next leap will be the leap home. (couldn't resist that last part.)

This is a brilliant design solution

[zovirl]

How long does it take to generate a planet? Can you just regenerate it from scratch using the same random seed(s) instead of saving it? Then you only have to save the changes the player makes to the base planet.

Alternately, you could completely regenerate the surface of the planet between visits, and just tell the player that planets are big and they land somewhere different each time they visit: "Last time you landed in England, this time you landed in Brazil. Of course it looks different!"

[baconman]

How long does it take to generate a planet? Can you just regenerate it from scratch using the same random seed(s) instead of saving it? Then you only have to save the changes the player makes to the base planet.

That's what I was gonna suggest, or perhaps just making 2-5 of these solar systems and then allowing the player to toggle between them, but these are all fine "explanations" for disposable levels. Or you could just have each gameplay take place in just one unique solar system, and leave it at that, too. You'll have some high-risk, high-reward games, and some low-risk, low-reward games.

Perhaps another solution is a "New Game +" style option that pits a surviving character from an older game into a second, decisively more brutal solar system. So the game's plot is actually about completing the SECOND solar system, but doesn't always require beating the first in any way. Except maybe the first time, to enable that option.

[1982]

Im not sure how it was done in Noctis, but you should check that out for reference.

I would not like the idea of not being able to revisit planets and places. That sort of restrictions always kills it for me, no matter how good story behind it. You can still always see through a story when something follows forced path only because technical restrictions, or incapable devs.

[CheapDevotion]

How long does it take to generate a planet? Can you just regenerate it from scratch using the same random seed(s) instead of saving it? Then you only have to save the changes the player makes to the base planet.

This is the route I ended up going. I had to rewrite my heightmap generator to accept random seeds, but it wasn't too bad. While a lot of the ideas above were good, they didn't really address leaving a planet, which is something that will probably happen more than dying. Saving the terrain would have been the hard part, so the rest will be manageable now. Thanks for the help guys!

[Nix]

Im not sure how it was done in Noctis, but you should check that out for reference.

Noctis is just a big huge procedural universe with (I assume) consistent seeds that keep it the same. You can share coordinates with other people and they can go visit the same places you did.