Dual Universe by Novaquark (Sandbox MMO)

Seems like there is another procedural space game in development, “Dual Universe” by the french company Novaquark.
They’ve chosen a sandbox MMO setting, so something that Infinity: TQFE could have been.
As expected they’re procedurally generating the planets, and promise seamless movement through the universe and planets.

http://www.dualthegame.com/

Screenshots and concepts look interesting. One thing I personally noticed is that the planets shown in the screenshots look partially too small compared to the surface (hills height). And a video is still missing unfortunately that shows e.g. the transition between space and planet. Anyhow I think it could be interesting to where this develops. They’ve switched from Unreal Engine 4 to Unigine 2 lately (e.g. due to double precision).

From the FAQ:
What is Dual Universe?
Dual Universe is a gigantic multi-planet universe where players are free to invent their collective destiny: player-driven events will shape the course of History, civilizations will rise and fall, everything that happens matters in a persistent single-shard universe. We are pushing the limits of what is technically possible today to open the door to what we believe is the next generation of MMO games.

How big is the Dual Universe?
Thanks to procedural generation algorithms, there is no limit to the number of planets and star systems we can generate. As the game grows, so will the Universe, players will discover planets gradually as their spaceships take them further and further from the Arkships. So to answer the question: the Dual Universe is as big as far as you can travel.
Planets may range from a few hundred to thousands of kilometer in radius, so even exploring the surface of just one planet is a big task and would takle a long time to circumnavigate without the right equipment.






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.Keith, forest on pictures, you understand what I mean.

mini planets ^^

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Sign me on although the planets do look small - maybe due to photo? But the forest is absolutely brilliant! We are definitely heading into a new era of computer gaming technology.

They say the radius will be in the 100s to thousands of km but they look slightly out of proportion to the mountains on it. Perhaps they meant diameter? Maybe the mountains are HUGE 0_o

That forest shot is definitely giving me some Yavin IV vibes. Exciting. :smiley:

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Well, better than survival genre

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How the hell do they have so many trees and we only get a few scattered here and there?

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More funding, more devs, and they don’t use their own engine (far less code to do).

Woah I just noticed those are PEOPLE standing on the ground there :open_mouth:

EDIT: Did a little digging around on their site.
They are using Unigine which looks impressive.

Now I just want a procedural flight sim game SO BAD D:

Wow! Now that would be impressive. But of course so little is known but definitely peeked my interest.

After closer inspection, I’m not impressed at all, actually.

Everything looks slapped together and cheap.

And as for Unigine, they offer nothing new or better than what’s already possible in existing, cheaper game-engines IMO.

also noticed

So, which “cheaper game-engines” are providing full 64bit double precision coordinates support (including support for non-depth fighting)? Maybe I am missing something that could make my life easier?

Space-engineers has had 64bit double precision coordinates support for a while now (since 2014):

The engine is called VRAGE by Keen Software House:

(Full souce-code link on above site).

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Interesting, I wasn’t aware that Space-Engineers switched to an improved (but still in development?) engine, didnt follow it for quite a while. Well but there probably were many topics they looked at while choosing Unigine (stability & marketreadiness, technical support, number of features etc). I can understand they didnt choose an engine where DP is supported since only a few months.
And anyhow, I still think double precision is a unique feature only a very few available engines support (and the majority of typical game engines don’t do that). That feature is unfortunately far from being widely supported so that you could choose the engine of your likes.

But thanks for hinting at Space-Engineers, I should have another look at it in the steam library.

I’m shivering at the thought that there are indie engines just popping out with more features than INS, they don’t seem to be at the same level of gfx fidelity yet, but it’s not inconceivable that they will be in a year or two…

I hate to be that guy but it’s spelled piqued. The more you know!

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Yeah…I was wondering who was going to pick that one up first. Congrats.

Interesting video at E3 they showed, I never knew about the game but it looks like battlescape has some competition.

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I was hoping Battlescape would take this exact same approach but still a great engine with even greater possibilities than DU, so I am happy to support Infinity. Besides, Battlescape actually has an Engine that is accessible as where DU isn’t even close yet. Who knows, it may end up like Star Never Going To Finish Citizen.