Skyrim's Trash Planet Existed; Mystery Explained After 11 Years
One of the original developers of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has shared with the world the story of a bug that caused a huge ball of thrash to levitate over the map.
When developing video games, especially elaborate ones, it is impossible to avoid mistakes at the early stage. According to one of the original developers of the fifth installment of The Elder Scrolls, Skyrim was no exception. A unique loophole in the system was said to have led to the spontaneous creation of a thrash planet.
A mysterious planet made of garbage
Two days ago, Nate Purkeypile, responsible for lighting in Skyrim, tweeted an interesting anecdote about the development process of the iconic game. This was not his first time, as he already reported on the mysterious incidents last year in an interview with Digital Trends.
His story concerns a massive sphere, formed from various game components, which floated above the tundra. Due to its sheer size and composition, it was labeled as trash planet.
The origin of the sphere as a lesson in game development
The developer revealed that in the game engine, individual workers were given access only to small parts of the world, with no possibility of editing beyond their borders. However, it happened that specific elements accidentally or completely intentionally ended up outside the editing field.
When this happened, the objects seemed to disappear, leading much of the team to believe that they were being removed. However, this was far from the truth.
It turns out that all elements that crossed the closed zones were moved to grid position 0,0,0 - to the central point of the map, over time creating a flying clump of rejected materials.
This correlation was discovered relatively late, however, as Nate says the mysterious planet was removed multiple times throughout the game development process.
"From time to time, someone removed this heap of junk. Nevertheless, it reappeared each time. Why weren't people allowed to move objects outside the loaded areas? Why were they moved to the central point of the map?
Who knows. Making games is hard, you always find new problems to fix. This case didn't ruin the game in any way, it was just fun. Removing it was much easier than making changes to the game code.
We fought a battle against a slowly growing thrash planet and won it."
Eventually, the anomaly was removed before the game was released. However, as you can see, it remained in the hearts of those involved in the development of Skyrim as a positive lesson.
