No mans sky is like 18GB or so on my PS4, yet there are 256 galaxies and literally around 18 quintillion planets. It can be played completely offline too, so it isnt coming from some server somewhere
I understand they’re procedurally generated, so they dont even exist until you pass through that area, but even after playing for countless hours and crossing thousands of miles of landmass, the save file is still extremely small
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In No Man’s Sky’s example, random generation is based off of something called a “Seed”.
The “Seed” is a small value. Based upon this value, *everything* else that is generated using this seed is ‘created’ the same way. It will generate the same ‘random numbers’ each time, based upon this seed.
No Man’s Sky builds upon this (presumably). A Solar System in No Man’s Sky might generate with a seed of, say, 99. When the game goes to generate this solar system for you (or anyone else), the same code on your machine runs on everyone else’s, using a shared seed that is saved and replicated to everyone. Your computer doesn’t have to download the data for all the planets in a solar system, it just downloads the seed (or it may already be on your computer), in this instance: 99
Their program uses this seed to create a planet, and everything on it. That’s how they can have quadrillion of stars and solar systems, and have them generate exactly the same across everyone viewing them, they Just a small number and it blossoms from there, hence the term “Seed”.
If a game has a new update that adds more to their generation algorithm, or changes it in any way, depending on how they do it, it can actually result in radically different planets after an update than before. It’s why in Minecraft most people start a new world when a new major update comes out, otherwise if they enter an area that is newly generated that borders and older generated area, the difference could be drastic.
An example might be half a mountain, and then a glacier biome cutting through it: In an older version, the ‘seed’ used to generate that tile would generate a Mountain, but the NEW version of the generator comes up with the glacier biome instead, even using the same number.
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