"Space is big, really BIG."

Space is very similar to the Infinite Maze with the primary difference of there being no walls between locations.  This means you can see forever, which causes it's own problems.  If there was a star in one in a million locations this would still leave 79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543 stars to explore. Or to put it another way you are never going to visit more then a tiny fraction.  It also means that if this were a multi-user game your chances of meeting someone else are nil.  Even if you assume ten million players it is still nil.  You could start everyone in the same place, say the centre of space and let them migrate out.

Distorting and Warping Space

It would be a trivial problem to distort the distribution of stars with in Space universe.  For example: the closer a location is to the centre the more likely it is to contain a solar system.  This would produce a pattern of stars like a globular galaxy, a spherical ball of stars.  This would make the outer reaches of the universe pointless in exploring (although someone will).  So what happens when you reach the edge of the universe?  One: You simply give the illusion of going on forever. 

The second choice is to wrap the universe around on itself so if you go off the eastern edge you simply enter from the western edge.  This can be imagined like this:  Take a cube and stretch it along one axis, now bend the stretch cube so that the faces at the end of the long axis are joined together to form a ring.  Of course it would be necessary to do this ton the other two axis at the same time.  Warning: I take no responsibility for any mental trauma caused by people trying to visualise this.  A more acceptable visualisation might be to consider that this universe infinitely repeats itself, so flying of the northern edge of the universe take you into the southern edge of an exact copy of the universe.  If the distribution of stars is even with Space then this type of wrapping will create the illusion of a truly infinite universe.

It would be possible to create flat spiral type galaxies by waiting the distribution of stars.  Making the galaxy rotate would be very difficult.

The physics of this sort of universe might be fun to work out!

War and Peace Axis

Not only would it be possible to distribute the stars within this universe, you could make up and distribute new laws of physics.  For example: you could have one end of the universe totally peaceful i.e. no weapons would work and at the other end the most violent weapons would be available.  Speed of travel could vary.  If the maximum speed of travel decreased to zero as you approached the edge of the universe you would never be able to go over the edge.  You could vary the the way wealth or possession where accumulated, etc etc.

Looking Ahead

If stars are distributed at a rate of one per million locations then fining a star become a slow process.  Turning a spaceship to point in a different direction would cause the program to scan tens or even hundreds of million of locations to find stars.  This would be a slow process.  You could make up a spurious excuse, the universe is dusty and it takes the sensors time to find the few photons that get through.  Or you could look ahead.

A lot of the time a computer sits idling, waiting for user input.  You could use these wasted cycles to scan space for stars, saving the locations.  Then when the user wanted to view Space most of the number crunching will have been done.

This technique could be used with other implementations like the Infinite Maze, although you would not need to look so far or save as many.  Once the initial 'scan' has been stored the work load decreases substantially.  This is because when a user move all that need to be done is to discard the data furthest away and behind the user and it is only necessary to calculate the data furthest away for the user and in front.

This technique could be used to pre-fetch items from a remote database so that there are there as soon as the player arrives.

Every location is a solar system?

It occurred to me in June 2003 that a different approach to this problem is possible.  In the same way as the walls in the Infinite Maze can be corridors the non-existence walls between the locations in space could be very long distances.  Then every location could have a solar system. 

My first reaction to this was that if these very long distances were random in length, as they must be, then travelling north the east to get to a star may be a different distance to travelling east then north.  This makes it impossible to calculate the distance to a star.

Then it occurs to me that if the very long distances are applied in two dimensional planes then these distances are going to be the same whatever route or angle you take.  Also if these very long distances are applied as a 2D plane then the third dimension coordinate can be used to calculate the thickness.  Interesting.