2 replies to this topic

[rranft]

I am trying to decide which approach to take - one open universe or "sectored." Freelancer worked well enough with jumpgates allowing transport between size limited sectors, but the infinite universe idea is so appealing.

Obviously I'd have to come up with a paging system in order to implement the open universe scheme. I guess I could store it in an octree, and subdivide each page into smaller octrees for collision detection, etc....

Just thinking out loud. Any opinions?

[Reedbeta]

If you want to render planetary systems with a realistic scale, this article is a good one to check out.

The thing about realistically scaled space sims is that space is really big. You don't want to have players have to spend hours travelling through the boringly empty space between one planet and another, so you'll need to have some kind of gameplay mechanism to skip the travelling - jump gates, hyperspace, warp drive, whatever. And if you're going to do that, does it even make sense to spend the extra time to implement an open-universe system? I'm not sure it does.

[rranft]

Yeah, that's where I'm at, really - I like the idea of a totally free universe, but sectors are just simpler and make more sense... Guess I could make each sector very large to allow for some cool exploration without the huge vastness of space bit.