cormenthor

This looks like a good time to throw my 2 cents worth in to help to explain why such things as "randomly generated" universes are far from coming to pass here or anywhere else and EnB is one of the prime examples that comes to mind. First let me preface this by saying that in many places in the forums here, many ideas and thoughts of what should be added etc. have been thrown around haphazardly. To fully understand why many of these may not be implemented or even possible it needs to be understood what it took to get even to the point that we are at now. I myself was a player of EnB from day 2 of the initial beta testing, yes I was one of the chosen few and was darn proud to be a part of it. Now bear in mind I speak of the "First" initial beta testing of the game by WestWood and EA in the days when this was done by submitting a 15 page disertation of why they should even consider you worthy to be a part of their testing group. With my background in computer hardware, software, etc. and being a hardcore gaming addict (and a few creds from other games I was a tester for) I got very lucky and got in. I say all this because I feel the pain of those that were involved with ST1 and ST2 and what they went through, my hats off to you guys. That being said it needs to be understood that what we have now is in fact a recreation of what was the favorite game of many people, it is not in fact the actual EnB game that we all knew and loved. A damn good recreation and I give props to the wonderfull work of the Devs in getting it this far. To that end let me say that the "live" or "retail" version of EnB was not ever a simple client/server MMORPG. If it had been it would not have taken over 5 years to see it reborn. No, it was a programming work of art created with a plethora of tools that were written by and used by the very same people that created the game. No standard off the shelf programs were used in the creation of EnB. Every single tool they used they created in-house and was propriatry to the max. I know this for many reasons, some of which I can not relate here. But the very day that the sunset of EnB was announced attempts were made to use packet sniffing methods to get enough info to start the rebuilding process. Let me tell you that they failed miserably. First thing that was discovered is that all data packets were not only scrambled but heavily encrypted to boot. It took over 2 years to break that encryption and get even the first looks into the data streams between the server and client sides of the game. What it appears that had been distilled from all the early work is that the bulk of the important files have been recovered, rebuilt, or remade entirely so that we now have a working replica of our favorite game of all time. I understand just how much time, work and effort has gone into getting it to the point that it is at now. Again I give a big hats off to the Dev team of EnB-emulator for their fantastic work. But in the case of a randomly generated universe I'll be the fist to say that it's very unlikely to ever happen. The amount of data required for even 1 planetary sector is huge, in order to "randomly" generate even that 1 planetary sector would be immense to say the least. Not to mention that just the "variables" tables for planets, pathways, mobs, annomolies, "fixtures" (the "pretty" stuff that has no other pourpose then to dress up the area would be beyond gigantic (think several tera bytes) let alone for say 40 - 100 planetary sectors. Not to mention the rest of the programming nightmares that come about with collision barriers terrain etc. Well wnough rambeling for now. (Tips hat and walks away quietly)