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?

Question

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?

In: 12

Answer 1

In Minecraft, the world is only generated in parts as players approach that individual part for the first time. The result will always be the same for that same location given the same seed and program version, but there’s no need to generate it before it’s approached.