StarMade 0.072: Infinite Universe

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Hello and welcome to StarMade,
This is a very special update, as for the first time the player can now explore an infinite universe.


The Universe
The player can now fly out and visit different systems and locations. A universe location (Star System, Nebula, Asteroid field, etc...) will be called "Sector" in the game. These sectors are randomly generated. As of now, there are three types of varying sectors available:

• 
  The home system: Your starting sector will look as it did in previous versions.
• 
  Asteroid field: this is the most common type of sectors as of now. Some asteroid fields will also have a shop.
• 
  Space Station sector: with a probability of 9% a new explored sector will be containing a space station. These stations all look the same for now, but they will soon be randomly generated and containing loot and other stuff to explore.

The sector system is build for performance and memory usage. Sectors where currently no player is will be written to disk, so the memory won't fill up as you go. There are still some tiny lags or jumps when changing a sector, but that will be fixed in future versions.


StarMade - Infinite Universe Timelapse - Indie DB

What comes next
Now I'm trying to fix as many bugs as possible, and performing some stress tests with the infinite universe in multiplayer. Furthermore, I'll focus on different types of asteroids and space stations, as well as enemy AI that will be randomly guarding sectors (or spawn in sectors). Also, I'll try to implement shop economies: shops will vary their prices based of their stock and their demand.