Empyrion Pre-Alpha Update 3.0.0 Adds Procedural Planets

It's sometimes easy to forget that Empyrion's planets were all hand-designed before now. They're so incredibly vast—and have deformable terrain, at that—that you don't really think about it much. Pre-Alpha Update 3.0.0 changes that, however, and you probably will notice the difference.

This update marks the first pass at procedurally generated planets. You can generate a planet from a seed, which can then be used later in order to play on the same planet. You can even play on the hand-designed planet that the game used before this update, as developers have provided its seed.

With procedural generation in place, the developers are setting their sights on procedurally generated solar systems for Pre-Alpha Update 4.0.0. They want players to be able to explore a variety of planets in the same game. The new solar system implementation will set planets much farther apart and will require players to use their capital ship to travel between them.