You’re not wrong, but also the space that they would need on your hard drive to make the game really non-repetitive visually would be out of this world (pardon the pun). Also not so sure how that would work out on the consoles.
Actually, there’s a couple popular mods with an overhauled algorithm. No space required (That wouldn’t make sense anyway). Back when I played through this I wouldn’t touch it without it.
TLDR > A lot of the repetitiveness isn’t a problem of “Lack of disk space”, it’s just a matter of not making good use of procedural generation. Seeing “the same building blocks in a different configuration” is better than seeing “the same thing”.
the space that they would need on your hard drive to make the game really non-repetitive visually would be out of this world
Not necessarily. You can procedurally generate textures, sounds and geometry, but that becomes a huge CPU hog in a game that already blows CPU usage. But most of the repetitiveness can be “fixed” (read: reduced) without adding more than ~20MB of new textures and geometry.
One of the problems is that there’s no variation within a planet. Every grassy planet is the same mechanically. Sure, one might have bubbles in the air, another might have yellow grass instead of red, but they’re mechanically identical. It’s the only planet type to find starbulbs and minerals with parafinum. No grassy planet has an ice cap, or a desert patch, or a volcano. If you ever need to find cactus and pyrite, you have to go to a desert planet. If you need uranium and gamma weed, radioactive planet. Then you have the caves, which are completely identical in every planet.
Some planets may have bio luminescent plants, which are gorgeous to look at, but because there’s no variation within a planet, you see them everywhere. There’s never a point where you think “This is the spot on this planet”. Because everywhere is “the spot”, so it’s just “the planet”, which can also be found on the next star system.
Save for airless planets, if I’m not mistaken, every planet has the same 3 “trap” plants (man eater, whip, spores in a cave). There’s not even a color change depending on the planet. Same damn plant, same damn damage, same oxygen amount on death, whether on ice or on a volcano.
Another thing that compounds on the lack of planetary variation is the same sin that Starfield did, of every point of interest being the same everywhere. Every market is the same, every small settlement is the same, every infested facility is the same. This one is easy to give more variation, just create some building blocks and chain them together, like how rooms are generated in ARPG games like Diablo or Torchlight. You know how each star system has a different market rating? Use that to calculate the maximum size any one POI can reach, or as a weight to the POI that can appear (small settlements become more common in 1 star system, markets more common in 3 star, etc).
They do the above in a limited capacity with derelict freighters, so it’s not like there’s “no way” to do it or “they don’t know how”.
Yet another thing that breaks the immersion and “want” of exploration: the vast majority of the galaxy is “settled”. Star systems without any alien presence are the exception. What the hell are you even exploring if there’s already someone there with a working teleporter in space, plus several POI dotting every planet?
You can procedurally generate textures, sounds and geometry
Does any game do that today? I’m not aware of any. ??
Another thing that compounds on the lack of planetary variation
That’s the same problem again, you need hard drive space for all that 3D variation.
As far as I know all the 3D stuff is what takes up the most space on the hard drive, and that stuff is never procedurally created. /shrug Maybe someday with AI??
Today? No, I don’t think any game does it.
.kkrieger did that. Not a “real game”, it’s a demo (of a demoscene), a “proof of concept” or a “proof of skill”. Nostalgia Nerd has a very interesting video about it on youtube.
3D models tend to occupy less disk space than textures, as these usually come in at least 2 files: one for the actual colors, one or two more for light mapping (bump map, emission, normals, etc). I don’t know which format NMS uses, but a .obj 3D model with 62k triangles will take around 4.5MB of disk space.
For comparison, this Damaged Helmet in gltf format (which you can see on your browser here) has 15k triangles, a .bin file (the actual 3D geometry) of 545kb and roughly 3MB of textures - The Default_albedo.jpg is the “actual color” and it alone is larger than the .bin + .gltf, at 914kb.
That’s the same problem again, you need hard drive space for all that 3D variation.
Not really. Again, they just need to be smart with what they have. Grassy planet where one third is green grass, another is red grass, another is yellow. No need for any extra stuff to be made, they already have the building blocks. Better yet, mostly grassy planet with patches of radioactive terrain surrounded by desert.
For buildings, just think about player made bases. You can make effectively “infinite” interiors and exteriors with all the stuff players can use to make a base. Write coordinates of “premade” rooms, write some extra lines of code to join specific rooms together and bam, all you needed was less than 10kb of extra text to increase variety.
