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Do you enjoy games that send you to the far reaches of Space?  Does the idea of space exploration in a seamless universe of wonderfully rendered graphics sound like the best game ever? Infinity, a space MMO game in development will provide the thrill of space exploration to all intrepid space MMO gamers.

Infinity is the brainchild of its games programmer – Flavien Brebion. He has assembled a group of talented game developers through the internet using a community site. External contributions are encouraged from talented game designers and the infinity site has attracted some fine talent as can be seen from the example artwork displayed.

“In my view, the attraction of space is that it is the last truly unexplored wilderness,” says Rich Woods, the Infinity Community manager.  Infinity will launch gamers into an exciting digital universe that will look as real as Space itself. Exploration will take place in an infinite universe of possibilities that emulates the vastness of space alongside a developing storyline. Though, the player is free to follow his or her own path.

“The player has no obligation to play along this story we provide for them, they can simply ignore it and do their own thing, trading, piracy, forming a team with other players, anything they like,” Rich Woods explained.

Current development news and all the latest screenshots and game engine development can be followed at the Infinity site. There is an active community where a plethora of staggering artwork can be viewed, as well as an active forum capturing discussions on all aspects of the game development. The developers promise a fluid experience for players who will be able to transit through space discovering star systems and new planets, tackle planet atmospheres, land and explore.

The game uses procedural programming which generates planets and other celestial bodies on the fly. You can view a video showing the procedural model on YouTube. 3D asset model design such as ships and stations will be in the hands of the development team. This powerful approach allows Infinity to contain billions of star systems for the avid space cowboy to explore.  This will wet the appetite of the curious space gamer and satisfy the thirst for adventure as the game reveals the wonders of the cosmos.

“The problem with most current space games is that even with quite large maps they soon become fully explored by the player base,” explains Rich Woods, “Players know that they will never really be going somewhere that nobody else has ever been to.  The edge that Infinity has is that with a few hundred billion star systems, most having full scale planets around them, there will always be new places for our players to explore.”

Playability will present a low learning curve by removing the old style tedious space travelling maneuvers such as docking on stations and planet landing. The ship navigation computer will engage and allow you to sit back and enjoy the ride. These games have come a long way since Elite many years ago with its almost infuriating docking procedures where it seemed you needed NASA training just to play the game.

How will Infinity compare to current space MMOs such as EVE and Jumpgate?  Well, that of course remains to be seen; even at the current stage of development, Infinity has an edge on the Space MMO simulation race.  Certainly, landing on planets and allowing for true space exploration are prominent facets. Infinity will allow players to just explore and embark on challenging missions or spend countless hours building a space empire. There is a demo to download, but don’t expect a full playable game yet.

Is Infinity set to be free to play with premium content options or a subscription based game? On the choice of payment plans for the game, Rich Woods says, “The game is still in development and we’ll be using the beta phase of the project to help us gauge what our costs will be for infrastructure such as servers and bandwidth.  It isn’t until we have those figures that we’ll be able to decide just what we’ll be able to give to people and for what price.”

As the game develops, we can expect to see a groundbreaker in the field of Space MMOs that may result in players cancelling sleep or their social lives in favor of exploring the vastness of the cosmos. Space exploration will be a reality like never before.