Re: Star Maps

At 04:58 PM 9/9/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Kyle Klingler writes:
>
>@:) I bought a copy of the computer game Frontier: Elite II because
>@:) the star maps impressed me....  At the time it seemed impressive.
>@:) That and the fact it had over 2000 star systems mapped out (not
>@:) sure if all of the stars were real).
>
>  I would expect you could visit them all if that's what you mean.
>Whether they were stars that are actually in the sky - I dunno.  I
>haven't played this but I was a big fan of the original Elite and it
>sounds like they turned that game's radar system into a starmap -
>interesting idea.  I still think Elite's 3D combat system was better
>than that found in most modern video games.  Maybe they patented the
>stuff or something - can't think why else no one would have used it
>since.
>
>-joachim

Actually, Elite had an infinite star system.  What they did is set the
computer's random number seed to a predetermined number (I think it was
based on X/Y coordinates of the sector or something like that), rather
than
using the system clock like most programs do.  Then, it simply generated
the universe based on those values.   Provided that you re-use the same
seed, the computer will always "randomly" generate the exact same
universe,
on the fly, and without taking up a ton of storage space.  It's really a
pretty elegant way to do things, from a programming standpoint.

Take care,

Tre