The Great Journey Continues - Part Two

Rather than copy/paste this time, I thought I'd knock up some more pre-amble...

http://dominium.maksw.com/2016/10/15/the-great-journey-part-two/

It's quite interesting to see the impact of things that have been left by the wayside for some considerable time, as they aren't really 'important techwise'... such as the names of things. I remember a Designer friend telling me to generate names for stars and planets in the last Kickstarter campaign, but I was reluctant as it meant 'doing things right' and producing an algorithm of meaningful and consistent / pronounceable names. I didn't want to 'name that thing' so early, as chances are things will change, move around the cluster, and so on. The Cluster isn't final - at the moment it's a 10,000 star globular cluster, and the aim is to get to 200,000 stars for the final. Different civilisations name things differently, and so on.

But, that said, the plan all along was to deterministically generate the cluster and then patch in 'known systems' on top. Book One of When Stars Fall (Insurmountable Odds) sets out quite a chunk of the Cluster with names and locations, and they need to be honoured in the game as well.

Simply naming the (small) set of commodities has grounded that aspect of the game, trading has taken on 'form' now that I can buy 12t of Bio-tech, instead of 12t of 'Commodity-04'

Looks like I'll be naming those 'known systems' sooner rather than later ;)