Limit Theory

[Leshma]

New kid on the block. David Braben should be worried because this young man is doing the exact thing he was doing 30 years ago.

Kickstarter

[TheAppleSauceMan]

Looks awesome. Could possibly be my dream space game (X games with better combat and better UI that's easier to get into). Now if only it was multiplayer...

[CrazyCracka420]

Space games...cmon now...

EVE online sounds like a great MMO rule set, but space?  WTF...give me a medieval game with those rule sets (aka not carebear friendly), or give me a wild west MMO with those hard core rule sets.

But all we get are noob friendly MMO's that cater to 12 year olds.  FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

[Leshma]

He said no multi, he can't make it on his own in a year with everything else he has in mind.

Yes, this is one man project and that's why goal is set at 50000$. What you see in that video he created for the past three months. He's  planning to work 14 more months on it, full time.

[bilwit]

More laser beams.

[Kafein]

Making a space generator is not that hard. Making a spaceship generator however, that's immensely cool.

[Leshma]

[Leshma]

Brian: Now, there’s been much touting of the procedural generated universes, missions, AI and so on. That’s a lot of moving parts for a fully AI driven single player universe. Could you give us some insight as to how your procedural generation works, what it can generate, how detailed it is and so on?

Josh: The procedural generation works differently for each class of content that the game generates. For example, there is a specific algorithm for generating system backgrounds, a specific algorithm for generating asteroids, and so on. The amount of detail that the procedural generation can produce is totally a factor of how much time I spend working on the algorithm. I’ve probably spent the most time on system backgrounds so far, and I would say that they’re quite detailed. On the other hand, ships are still in an early stage, so you can probably tell that the geometric detail of the ships is not quite at the same level.

However, in general, there is not a limit to the level of detail that an algorithm can produce. In fact, one of the nice things about procedural generation is that the level of content detail does not necessarily scale with the time it takes for a developer to produce the content. For example, the algorithm that generates system backgrounds can just as easily generate a super-high-resolution version as it can a really low-resolution version (although the former will take your graphics card quite a bit longer to accomplish). Part of the beauty of this scheme is that it is inherently scalable to any level of detail.

Naturally, a huge chunk of my development time will be spent perfecting the procedural generation, so content will continue to get better and better as time goes on. One of the many great benefits of the procedural workflow is that, when I make an improvement to the code, it ends up affecting all assets of that type…so if, for example, I figure out how to make better ships, then, instantly, every ship in the universe just ‘magically’ looks better! It’s not like I have to go back and redesign every single model, as an artist-driven workflow would require.

Honestly, I could ramble on forever about how incredible and powerful the procedural workflow is. It’s the future of video games, I’ve got no doubt about that. But I’ll leave it there and spare you! :)

http://www.spacegamejunkie.com/featured/limit-theory-qa-limitless-procedural-good-timiness/

[Leshma]

Early prototype of ship editor. According to Josh, took him 4 hours to code this:

The procedurally generated components will be much more diverse than the simple cylindrical things that you saw in this demo.
You'll be able to load and save your favorite components.
You'll be able to change materials/texture.
The controls for scaling will be sleeker.
There will be more transformations than just scaling.  You'll be able to do nonlinear transformations to make curved pieces, for example.
You'll be able to toggle snapping so that you can easily create well-aligned designs.

Main music theme: http://soundcloud.com/josh-parnell/surpassing-the-limit

[Leshma]

[Kafein]

It is saddening that no game I know has yet represented asteroid fields in a realistic way. That is, rocks with maximal diagonals exceeding the hundred of kilometers and spaced at more than thousand of kilometers from each other. Admittedly, that would be very boring.

I'm not saying your-usual-tighly-clustered-asteroid-field is not impossible, it is just statistically very uncommon because that is an extremely unstable situation.

[Leshma]

[Leshma]

[Tibe]

I kinda agree. Space games......eeeeeehhhh. When I played Freelancer during the early 2000s for the first time I was kinda sure that it wont get any better than that. And I quess i was kinda right. It didnt and probably wont. There really isnt much you can do with space games that have you fly around in fighter planes. Im kinda hoping for a spacegame where you manage a crew of players, who aid you in piloting and commanding a single ship, that has a proper interior and game has you boarding and such. Fighter planes are lame and space is generally very boring.

[Goldor]

I kinda agree. Space games......eeeeeehhhh. When I played Freelancer during the early 2000s for the first time I was kinda sure that it wont get any better than that. And I quess i was kinda right. It didnt and probably wont. There really isnt much you can do with space games that have you fly around in fighter planes. Im kinda hoping for a spacegame where you manage a crew of players, who aid you in piloting and commanding a single ship, that has a proper interior and game has you boarding and such. Fighter planes are lame and space is generally very boring.

Sounds like you might eventually want to take a good look at Star Citizen later on.