Infinity: the Quest for Earth

[Bullet Magnet]

I thought I'd mentioned this here before, but I couldn't find anything, so here it is. It's old news, but not everyone is aware.

Infinity is a space MMORPG being produced by a small team of developers in their own time. You will have a great deal of freedom as far as what you do in the Milky Way, of which the whole galaxy is available for exploration. Purchase and upgrade your ships, set up deep-space and orbital satellites, trade, fight, form alliances, scheme, purchase planets and moons for your secret base or honest shipyard... etc. However, there is an overall plot about a mysterious fertility disease, and the search for the cure that is suspected to reside on the planet Earth, whose location has been carelessly forgotten.

Development has come along nicely, and combat prototypes have been pre-released for download.

What really sets this game apart, though, it its sheer scope. Although artificial entities such as ship designed have been designed, the natural galaxy, from nebulae to planets, are procedurally generated, yet will be the same for everyone who visits them every time. Astonishingly, upon arrival in a new solar system you can point your ship towards a planet and fly towards it, until such time as you have to pull up to avoid crashing into the beautifully rendered terrain. Space and planetary environments are joined seamlessly, mainly because there is no seam: just continuous universe.

And investigating those smooth rings, only to discover an asteroid field dominated by real-time Newtonian physics, is a joy to behold.

Infinity website

Wikipedia article

Official YouTube videos.

[Nate]

Hmmm... interesting, though I'm not typically an MMO player.

I thought at first that this was by the same guys who did Weird Worlds: Return To Infinite Space. I sniff a trademark lawsuit!

[Strike Witch]

Quest for earth...

So the currency is jars of dirt?

[Nate]

Just like in Waterworld.

[mudling]

Saw a thread like this before, I'm very interested in this, expecially if this is for free, price is a huge boundary, and if it was free, alot more people would become attracted to it.
Realy, imagine, going through this galaxy with millions around you, dogfighting, ambushing, doing smuggling runs.
However, it will only work if there is a huge audiance, played the pre-alpha thing, and it kind of sucks being by yourself, which sounds like what will happen with such a vast universe.
I also wonder if there will be wildlife like birds, etc. it would realy add to the atmosphere, and wouldn't make the worlds seem so barren.

[Bullet Magnet]

You'd probably only ever see them when they hit your windscreen.