Planets

Every player owns at least one planet. They can use it as their own personal sandbox, or create gameplay for others to explore.

Initially, planet is generated procedurally. From there, you can change parameters affecting the heightmap, or parameters affecting colorization of the landscape.

Once generated, plants and vegetation is distributed automatically across the planet.

You will most likely tweak and change the weather and lighting next, and color and shine of water surface.

All of these parameters are compressed into an encoded string, which can be used (copy/paste) for safe keeping, or to share with friends.

Player created planet in Traverse
digging in Traverse

Digging

After initial planet is generated, you will start digging, creating caves and cave systems, build overhanging cliffs and paint the landscape wherever you like.

You can add, move or delete plants and trees that are in the way.

Terrain alteration can be done either by digging or filling with soil, smoothing the area, or painting the area. Voxel based terrain system allows for any imaginable feature.

Water, Mud and Lava

Water is physically simulated, so it flows from higher elevations down to lower elevations. Terrain constraints the flow, so you can easily have a lake on top of the mountain.

Use water to enrich the gameplay on your planet, create underwater passages and caves, or create large lakes spanning large areas.

Everyone who is on the same planet can see the water flow, while it is being simulated.

In addition to water, Mud is similar but very slow to move, with its own look and feel. Lava is a special case of Mud that adds damaging properties and destroys everything in the way.

Water simulation in Traverse

Ownership

Only you own your planet. But you can choose what level of access you give other people.

Close friends can be allowed to edit and alter planet, or just to move and place objects. Others can be invited to explore, fight and do quests. Alternatively, you can make your planet public, for everyone to explore, or you can leave it as private, only for you to explore.

When visitors play and explore your planet, you automatically earn proportion of experience and loot that they win.

Popular planets will earn their owner significant amount of rewards.

To prevent overcrowding, planets may be instanced into multiple copies, when number of visitors starts growing over the limit.

Mining

You can choose to allow visitors to mine on your planet. Spawn of the mining loot is random, and your visitors wouldn’t be taking any goods from you -- everything will respawn.

Although mining holes may be deep, they are small in size, and the planet heals back to normal state, some time after mining. Mining is not a way for visitors to build caves, but rather a way of harvesting goods for crafting.

Lumberjacking

Similar to mining, visitors can cut specifically spawned trees. These trees are randomly spawned and respawned.

Mobs

Mob placement and respawn is system generated. As a planet owner, you can select certain areas and prevent spawning there -- in case you are building a town, for example. You can place certain friendly NPCs that visitors can’t attack, but can be used as quest givers, or to enrich the feel of your village.

In some cases, a rare mob can spawn on your planet, and if you are lucky enough you may even be in a possession of a rare mob egg. When you use an egg on your planet, you don’t control where in the landscape this mob spawns.

Other players can search for planets with rare mobs, and this can be a good way of attracting more visitors to your planet.

Gameplay

As the owner of the planet, you choose if gameplay is PVE or PVP or a Mini Game. Mini Game in particular, has a defined set of rules as to when it starts, when it ends, and what are win/lose conditions. Combat is not required part of the mini game planet.

You can place quest NPCs and write your own quests. You’ll then define completion conditions and the game will ensure that appropriate mobs and loot is being spawned. Quest reward is automatically generated based on the difficulty and time required to complete the quest.

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