Chris Roberts was interviewed regarding Star Citizen. He talked about how the game will use procedural generation.
Chris compared Star Citizen to No Man’s Sky and Elite, explaining that all these games utilize both procedural generation and individually coding to build their game worlds. Cloud Imperium Games intends to use procedural generation tech as a tool to build up their world.
They will not be using the tech to build ships or enemies. Instead, it will be used to build planets and stars. They are also thinking of using it to deploy entire star systems. Players can often consume content faster than they are developed, and this is why Chris is using this technology.
As of right now, Cloud Imperium Games is still in the research and development phase for procedural generation. The first milestone is being used for creating asteroids. Up next, they are looking at voxel mining.
Cloud Imperium Games looks at procedural generation as a long term endeavor. They are spacing out the modules for Star Citizen carefully and slowly. Ultimately, they are developing the game in such a way that they can avoid what’s been commonly dubbed program creep.
Cloud Imperium currently has a staff of 271 people, including contractors. Their procedural generation team includes some veterans, although Chris did not share nay names.
The first Star Citizen modules are estimated to be released in 2015, for Windows and Linux.