Raph Koster Details Physics and Terraforming Systems in MMO Stars Reach

Veteran game designer Raph Koster recently showcased his upcoming massively multiplayer online game, Stars Reach, running on a PC. Koster is known as the former lead developer on Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. During a hands-on demonstration, players controlled a character armed with a terraforming beam to interact with planetary surfaces.

According to Koster, the game features over a dozen kinds of soil with different pH levels, along with roughly 200 types of materials and minerals that behave physically correctly. Players can tunnel through rock formations that can subsequently cave in. The system also allows players to liquify rock into lava using a laser, which then flows before cooling and congealing.

Stars Reach incorporates a tool called a chronophaser, which lets players advance a rock's geological time to rapidly erode it or turn back the clock to liquify it. Koster explained that eroding materials sequentially transforms them from marble into limestone, chalk, and sand, which can subsequently be melted into glass.