As game designers, we often find ourselves walking a tightrope between creating complex, immersive worlds and ensuring these digital realms run smoothly on players’ devices. Our latest venture, a mammoth mobile space game boasting over 16 million star systems, presented a classic case of this dilemma. Initially, the thought of generating and keeping track of each star, planet, moon, and asteroid in a database seemed like the straightforward route. However, when we did the math, we realized that this path led to a database of astronomical size, measured in terabytes. The challenges tied to data storage, retrieval, and fidelity were about as welcome as a meteor shower on a spacewalk.
No Man’s Sky, a game many of us admire, provided a glimmer of hope. Its use of deterministic seeding to procedurally generate its expansive universe struck a chord with us. So, we decided to adopt a similar approach. Instead of creating a fixed database, we used a seed value – a unique identifier – for each star system. This seed, when run through our algorithms, determines everything within a star system: the type of star, the number and type of planets, moons, asteroids, and even their colors. It’s fascinating how a simple seed can blossom into a vibrant star system, providing a unique canvas for players to explore. And since it’s a deterministic seed, every player sees the exact same star system, ensuring a consistent experience.
What’s exciting about this approach is the sheer scale of database size reduction we achieved. We managed to bring it down from terrifying terabytes to manageable megabytes – a whopping 1,000,000 fold difference! Now, our database only needs to keep track of the seed value and a few custom variables associated with a star system, like player-owned structures or star system ownership. This isn’t just a win in terms of data management; it’s a victory for our players too. They get to explore a seamless, expansive universe without any lag, all thanks to the magic of procedural generation.
As we’ve delved into procedural generation, it’s become clear that this technique is a game-changer, literally. It reminds us a bit of Asimov’s tales, where complex, self-organizing systems unfold from simple rules. Yet, instead of psychohistory, we have a seed value and algorithms crafting the narrative. It’s the blend of predictability and surprise that keeps our exploratory journey through game development exhilarating.
We may not have robots or faster-than-light spaceships, but with procedural generation, we have crafted a universe that’s ripe for exploration, adventure, and storytelling. And while the database size reduction is a technical achievement we’re proud of, what really gets our rockets firing is the thought of players forging their own paths among the stars, crafting unique narratives in a universe birthed from a blend of code and creativity. Through procedural generation, we’ve not only streamlined our game’s backend but have laid the foundation for endless explorations in a universe that continues to unfold with every play.
