My 3yr old made an interesting point today

[Montoya]

I think you forget that you wont be able to look in EVERY building, some of them will be backdrop around the fleshed out areas.

Obviously, but one of the earliest selling points in the very first demo was that we could see inside the Bengal carrier.

It does not seem like too much of a big deal now in 2018, but we were all impressed back in 2012 :D

 

[Bambooza]

Sure uninhabitable lifeless rocks are sort of easy but the diversity on earth (even now with so many humans killing everything else) is there any chance of it not looking procedural?

Will be a mix of the two. They want to use procedural tech to create the planets and city-capes then use artists to create diversity and flush it out. Which is the plan for everything from the lifeless rocks to outposts, wrecks and large mega cities like arc corp.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9RUWxsVmws

Why can't we look inside a building?

We know the answer, its just the game design. No sense in rendering building interiors from the outside, its just not important, right?

Indeed game design due to limited polygon budgets, time and monetary budgets. Why spend resources on something that does not enhance the primary gaming experience. While some attempt to get around this with procedural tech it just ends up feeling dull and repetitive in its own way like no mans sky. And honestly we run a similar risk with Star Citizen where the procedural tech creates skyscraper landing pads and apartments but they all sort of take on the same general look and feel which gets boring and repetitive so no one bothers after the initial checkout. So then the question is was it honest the best use of limited development resources?

 

[Radegast74]

Since the game is becoming less about space and more about planets (or truck stops) I do wonder if planet tech has any chance to make different solo systems diverse. Sure uninhabitable lifeless rocks are sort of easy but the diversity on earth (even now with so many humans killing everything else) is there any chance of it not looking procedural?

So, the original plan was to target about ? 120? systems and have artists, lore writers, etc., really individualize and polish these selected planets, moons, etc., and then use procedural generation to ensure stuff is all over the universe (but not as highly individualized as the 120 systems mentioned above).

The latest innovations with the procedural tech has been to make the procedural stuff even more different & interesting / less cookie cutter. For example, last CitizenCon, during the 8 minute quantum jump to Hurston, Sean Tracy explained the procedural interiors for the procedural cities of ArcCorp, and how they were trying to make the insides of the buildings somewhat different, so you could land almost anywhere, find a Casaba or other store, go in, and it wouldn't be like *every* other Casaba. There would be some flipping around of interiors or some such.

EDIT: ha, I was ninja'd by @Bambooza , who actually went and provided sources for the info! +10 internets for him!

 

[Grimm_Reaper]

While the future gamer might enjoy randomly generated floors in buildings, still seems a way of that you can simply enter any building and explore especially in Star citizen cities. The tech is still maybe 10 years out. Can probably be done server side but would not be worth the effort to have 2 million populated city which is fully explorable.

PS. Its your fault for not starting him of on an atari. Back in my day..... we played outside

 

[SullyQuindarius]

IKR? That always annoyed the crap out of me in games. Still does in SC when I look around station areas where you can't go inside like the platforms near the SPK gun turrets.

Why can't we kill NPCs after boarding their ships?