The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/

Dunno if this has been mentioned, search turns up nothing.

Its an Elite inspired space MMO in development, using procedral algorithms to generate the universe.

It will have 100 billion star systems, real time celestial mechanics and it is all to actual scale.
If you were to walk around an Earth like planet, it would take months in real life, maybe longer.
A person couldn't visit every planet in their entire lifetime if they spent less than a second at each one.

The engine streams data so there are no loading screens in game, flying from a valley on a barren planet to a string of moons you can see overhead is seamless and in real time. If you can see it, you can fly to it. Players can even explore the upper layers of gas giants.

Exploration, combat, trade are all possible, with the initial quest being to find Earth. Players can own planets and conceivably whole star systems. The game physics are newtonian and flight is twitch based, so you can be behind the wheel throughout the entire time as you accelerate to faster than light speeds.

Screenshots:

http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_tex_new_118.jpg
http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_tex_new_113.jpg
http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/shawn_station_28.jpg
http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/shawn_station_35.jpg
http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_tex_new_62.jpg
http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_tex_new_30.jpg
http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_tex_new_56.jpg
http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_tex_new_57.jpg

Oh, I saw a video from this... the seamless space to planetary flight was impressive. I think it was posted on the Vega Strike forums as an example for what we'd like to eventually have.

It looks like a very interesting project. Are you involved with it?

Wow, that is amazing. I have added the site to my favorites list. Thank you for sharing.

I hope the single player mode makes it into the final game. It looks like the project may be non-commercial. If it is freeware, it could really raise the bar for a lot of other projects (unless they release the source.)

The game looks pretty good. Sounds like these people have a good base for a
game. I hope they do get around to a release on schedule.

woah.

now *THIS* is how planet landing should be implemented in UQM!.. or, SC3 (may it be announced soon)!

it could be really neat :D

here's a direct link:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8426566575107987989

It's very pretty and the seamless transitioning appeals to me strongly as a coder, but what sort of gameplay does this support (OK, the eye-candy factor is almost enough to make it worth it even without gameplay)?

I can imagine this integrating nicely with trying to track down stuff on the surface, dodging incoming missiles or intercept craft, avoiding bad weather, looking for good landing sites and lots more, so I doubt getting good gameplay out of this will be a problem, but I'd be interested in hearing what ideas you all have.

Something more in the realm of starflight/starcontrol style planetary exploration, and not elite/privateer style go-into-a-bar-or-check-mission-computer style (actually, I've not yet played elite so it might be different.) That style of game is definitely fun to play, but it feels more ordinary than what I would expect to find in the vast expanse of the unknown. Also this style of limited planet exploration has been done be most every space game. So have planets more vacant, vast and mysterious, and less populated, everyday, or cartoonish- more like Alien, less like Star Wars.

So to be specific, I would like to see something like a really advanced version of Starflight's procedural lifeform generation, and Starflight 2's idea of also having a few (not many, perhaps one every few hundred or thousand star systems) sentient races (at various different stages of technological development) wandering around on foot, in vehicles, and having small cities and settlements. These civilizations would interact with each other (alliances, wars, etc.) and with themselves (different factions of the same species unite, or a splinter faction trys or succeeds at breaking away from its former brethren.)

I think Spore is going down this route, but in a very stylized, small scale way, compared to what Infinity appears to be doing.

And of course, you need to have great ruins and technologies lying around on some worlds, left behind by a thought-to-be-dead Krell/Ancient/Precursor/Forunner/Xel'Naga sort of race. To make it less formula, you could have a half dozen (instead of just one) of these powerful nearly dead civs, somewhat spread out in your billion or so procedural star systems.

It is important to maintain that feeling of cold emptiness and loneliness in most places, punctuated by areas of life or even civilization. Having civilizations everywhere and/or having them run by the same or very similar species (Star Trek, on both counts) is not as good.

Barren Worlds > Worlds with Life > Worlds with Planetbound Sentients > Homeworlds of Space Empire Level Sentients.

All I can think of after seeing that video is "Wow! Holy shhhhooot."
Nice fly-by of the space station.

While Infinity does certainly look awesome and great (and the guy that made the video pretty much has the same system as I do. Woo yay!) I fear it's too much graphics and too little gameplay as of yet. With that I mean that I don't really know wether the gameplay would be nice or not...

Noctis IV (http://anywherebb.com/postline/index.php?l=D4JeGEdhacS6Srr6NfweDCUh&r=lYUhcug3l3hh9gr6Rtv1flhhT4s6Spx5), however, is pretty much the other way around: very solid gameplay (although it's insanely freeform and there isn't a goal in it whatsoever) but the graphics are, well, not that great... ;) Singleplayer yet it has "multiplayer" in the form of sharing names of objects and comments on those objects. Finished game. Solely based on exploration. No battles or weapons. Just flying around and walking on planet surfaces. Can't wait for Noctis V. :)

There's also Entropy (http://www.binstar.com/index.php?page=entropy)  (unfinished as of yet) which is more like Infinity than Noctis is but again it has a bit worse graphics. Gameplay seems to be going to be pretty solid.

I really want to like noctis... it's beautiful for a DOS game at any rate. But every time I play for more that a couple of minutes, I get inexplicable motion sickness. It's bizzare, I've never had that happen in any other game.

As for gameplay, considering it's an MMO, I would imagine that the requirements for good gameplay would differ from that of a singleplayer game. To some extent, the gameplay should emerge from the actions of the players, if they are given the proper tools to interact in multiple fashions. (Fight, trade, ally, etc.) At least, they seem to have the noctis-like exploration factor down.

At the moment not much more than contributing to community discussions and spreading the word to fine communities such as this. Maybe one day I'll actually get around to helping out with the modelling or texturing.

I want this game... it looks like fun...

It looks great... cept the fact that it's going to be a MMO. I'm not going to get into MMOs cause they're money vacuums. I don't think my computer can handle it anyway.   :(
 I wish someone would do something like this for a console game, though... or at least a PC game that's not a MMO. It could turn out great and you wouldn't have to deal with jackasses and hackers. Video game companies need to follow the example set by this game!

WAIT!


Yay! Too bad the fact stands that my computer won't be able to handle it. -_-

Damn looks like a nice game :) I think I'll buy a NEW pc to run it :D

Wow!
If anyone ever makes a Frontier First Encounters ('Elite 3') remake, he/she/they should use this engine in it!

Now, this game looks amazing and all, but I wanna see stuff blow up more. :P I've neven been an MMO fan anyway.

Wow, this looks pretty good. You've probably heard me complaining about my old macintosh computer elsewhere, but I think sometime this year I'm going to switch to an online school which gives you your own Dell computer! Maybe it will work.