Make maps practically infinite, but still finite

I would like ME maps to be really big (as in you cant ever explore the entire world even if its a year-running dedicated server with 100 people)

But I would also like them to not be infinite. Procedurally generated, sure. But at a very high level, there should be a high level 'map' for the world, with limits (as in 'this world is a 10 000 km radius island').

Why?

Because if the world is truly infinite (by infinite I mean as big as your implementation allows), I feel any cool thing I find is insignificant when the world itself is infinite.

If the world is finite, every cool thing I find is special. There are only a limited amount of 'cool things'. This is one of them. The bigger the cool thing, the easier it is to find, and the more special it is. A massive mountain, desert, or forest? It might be the only one around.

If I find a 'snow biome', I want it to be THE snow biome, not one of billions churned out by the procedural algorithms as I travel further.

The same applies to worlds. If each world is infinite, no world is really special. It might be cool around the spawn, but walk around a bit and its just as boring as any other. If each world is finite, each world is unique and has a finite set of unique features that define it.

So, there are two things, really:
1. Limit the world size even if the limit is irrelevant since youll never explore everything.
2. Use a 'top down' procedural generation algorithm that at a high level (major geographical features, water bodies like rivers, biomes...) uses complicated carefully designed algorithms, and at a lower level (where to place trees, where there are bumps in terrain...) uses simpler procedural generation based on the higher level features.

One reason I want finite world is that with an infinite world, its difficult to generate the world top down (since its infinite!), which easily makes the world feel like there is absolutely no high level structure to it (with top down generation, you can have a volcano on one side of the world affect what its like on the other side of the world, with 'dumb' procedural generation youre just plotting random terrain features everywhere)
So essentially, complex features that are affected and affect the environment at a large scale (rivers!) are really difficult to do without top down generation (which is difficult with infinite worlds)

This top down generation would of course only apply to high level features for performance reasons (not having to store the details is why procedural generation is often used...)

TL;DR:
Generate a high level overview of what the world should look like (geography, rivers, mountains, big biomes etc.) when the world is created. Generate details (tree placement, random bumps in terrain, exact shape of rivers, animals...) based on this high level overview procedurally. The world should therefore be finite, to allow for this, and because infinite worlds and their contents dont feel unique.

 

They said maps will be procedurally generated like SE they said that is the reason why SE is procedurally generated in fact.

 

I know but thats not what im suggesting, I mean not to go for minecraft like procedural generation, where you just make chunk after chunk with almost no high level features (apart from some very local biomes and geography), but instead start from a very very high level (think an entire continent or massive island) and pregenerate all the high level features and have the procedural generation do the details based on that high level plan.

And also im suggesting making the world finite (although very very big) because infinity doesnt feel special (and it works better with having a high level 'plan'/map for the world).

 

Its a very interesting idea. I like it.

 

I understand where you coming form but as for "smart" generation there is no reason you couldn't program the procedural generation to take into account the fact that there is a volcano near where you spawned and that the cliffs to the left of your castle create great plains to the south of you. It would basically be the same thing except it would just generate the chunks as you got close enough to them. This would be a whole new level as procedural generations and I would love how it would make the map features feel more purposeful and not just, big hill here and swamp over here. You could always have it generate a set amount of "Wold Class" Features which would affect how every part around it was generated and then if you got far enough it would generate another one, probably still very far away from your current location but it would still influence how the terrain was generated from wherever it was.

As for the whole special feel if these "World Class" features were truly fantastical it would make them feel a whole lot more special than even some cool terrain, even in a 10,000km square world there is probable only 1 volcano, 1 grand canyon or some other massive terrain feature for you to build your castle around.


Either way I think it also sounds pretty cool if you get your roughly x km^2 island and the rest is an ocean with maybe occasional small islands dotted around. I'm sure if keen doesn't give up a bunch of different world types it would only be a matter of changing the worldgen to include something that decreased the Z value of generated voxel heightmaps as distance from the origin point increases.

 

If you want the map to seem infinite, they could always make the map loop realistically. A proper globe is always nice. What would be even neater is if the same seed for the worldmap was used to generated a miniature globe that's accurate to your world.

 

I suppose if we assume that the map is really just a giant asteroid in SE with some form of gravity if it was big enough and had spherical gravity it would be possible to just walk all the way around it, also probably possible to tunnel through and get stuck in the center

 

That would be cool, if the suggested ships get implemented, i'd love to be able to explore and map out continents etc. It will be fun to have large distances between players in pvp to force supply chains and advance forts.

One of the dev videos does say the world in the vids so far is one giant asteroid,

 

You COULD still make the world infinite and have high level world generation work, but again, theres also the uniqueness reason for not having worlds be infinite, and high level world generation is easier to do if its just a fixed size square or such.

 

Yeah I'd rather have a big globe /asteroid with say a few hundred or Thousand kilometer circumference so we can realistically explore as a planet, but not unlimited. It would be cool to walk west and eventually come up on your own land from the east (big enough to feel real for exploration, but not ridiculously big)

I'm hoping they go the way of Spherical planets as maps since they mentioned the terrain in the Intro vid is "Just a giant Asteroid"

 

Wait, if the world is just one big asteroid can we get donut planets in ME?

 

that does sound amazing I made a topic here in the general discussion about all the cool types of planets that could be created.

 

because game engine support "circular gravity" (we already have circular gravity generator in SE), so i think, globe worlds with center of gravity in center may be good choice

so XXXXXXX km globe procedurally generated (until you visit whole planet)