Planets: "Random" Generation

[MichaelMcQuirk]

The universe is a big, big, big place, with far to many planets to create by hand. Furthermore, at later stages (as we get more players) we don't want to have to keep on sending entire regions of the galaxy (info on what planets there are, what they are made of, what their names are, etc) to players whenever they go exploring.

The method you chose to generate these planets is up too you, but ideally we would like the following to save of future bandwidth and processing time:

• The use of a seed for either the entire galaxy or for just sections of it (multiple seeds). The seed can be any length you want 10 - 200,000 characters long.
• Based on this seed, the client would be able to generate (every-time the exact same):
  • Unique planetary names (inc moons and suns).
  • Planetary composition (how much iron, food, water etc the planet has: talk to Luke about what resources we will be using and how they are generated/acquired)
  • Planetary Classification (gas giant, arid, wet,... etc)
  • Technological progress and population size (preferably a formula, so that we don't have to contentiously update planets that haven't even been explored by anyone)

[MichaelMcQuirk]

NOTE: Moved to version 0.2