How do games like Minecraft and No Man’s Sky have seemingly “infinite” world expansion, yet their files are not only tangible but quite small?

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I was playing Minecraft the other day and went very, very far from my spawn point and eventually returned home. When I retraced my way back, I couldn’t wrap my head around how the game not only generates the environment but remembers the placement of everything as I return to the same places I had already been. With that in mind, wouldn’t the game be required to remember… an absurd amount of information as the user explores their world? How are the file sizes of these worlds not crazily big?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Honestly no man’s sky’s worlds are nowhere near as diverse as other games like minecraft. Most planets are just one biome and there’s not a whole lot of mineable area. It’s just a bunch of set pieces and semi random animal / plant configurations. Most of the specifically detailed content is player created. I run into basically identical stuff on different planets all the time.

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