Mathematical question: procedural generation of a galaxy
I'm going to make a space/trading/combat game that is completely procedurally generated. But, I know that storing all of the details of the whole galaxy in memory is unfeasable. As a result, I've been think that I can use a seed to generate a solar system, and from that solar system, you can use jumpgates to travel to other solar systems. The problem is that if I jump to another solar system from the starting one, I need to be able to get back to the exact same starting solar system with the exact the same features (planets, asteroids, etc.).
Essentially, I need to be able to generate a whole galaxy from one number. And from that one number, which generates one solar system, I need to be able to generate all of the other solar systems that link from the first one and all of the solar systems that link from those, and so on. And each solar system has to stay exactly the same feature-wise, if I return to them. Also, the number of links from each solar system can be either random, or fixed, your choice. Random would be better though.
Answer
If you're feeling brave, you could do worse than look at how Ian Bell did it for the original version of Elite