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[Buzzman]

Yeah no I'm having a really hard time believing in "planet-sized planets".
I'd be impressed with a game having a single real life sized planet.

 

[Five]

Well I suppose animal creation will be all randomized with rules saying what it can do and what it can't.

For example there will be mammals, and its legs must be connected to its body, but it could be anywhere, then they pick a color, a random height, random weight, random facial feature placement, random behaviours.... there can be many possibilities. So when people say they are worried about procedural generation. while behaviours may be limited because that's based on what the creator puts in, the look of the creature could have many many different possibilities.

I apologize if some of the problems I proposed came across as if I were saying they had no solution. There definitely is a solution for each of them, but it often means much more work. For example, setting up the animations for a rhinoceros is only moderately different from those of a brontosaur, but hugely different from an arachnid or an ape. So something like that is not as easy as having a slider that says 2 limbs, 3 limbs, 4 limbs, 5 limbs, and on.

Well said.

When I wrote "detail" in my previous post I probably mean detail with lots of variation. Sorry for my bad expressing ability.

Okay, I'm glad we're on the same page!

Yeah no I'm having a really hard time believing in "planet-sized planets".
I'd be impressed with a game having a single real life sized planet.

Coming up with a planet full of content is trivial. If you take a single tree model and spam it across the whole planet, ta-da! You now have a forest planet. None of the planets are hand-crafted, so the computer does all the work in filling in the details. It doesn't fill them all in at the same time; only enough around you to maintain the relevant gameplay and visuals. The hard part is supplying the code with enough different rules to make all of the areas you can access interesting, not merely making something planet-sized.

 

[boxfresh]

I'm still unsure what I'm able to go about doing in this game.
I understand that I can travel through the universe and have pew pew space wars but what is it going to be like on foot?
Am I only able to walk around and document what I discover?
Or am I able to take things from one planet and see if they survive on another?
Can I make weaponry of different varieties?
Or invent other modes of travel on land? Hoverboard yo?

 

[Prototype Viktor]

Perhaps a better way of looking at this is trying to figure out how many planets you'll visit. It's more sobering that way.

18 Quintillion planets, sure, but they've already mentioned that it'd take billions of years to visit each planet if you only visited them for a second each. So you're not going to visit them all. This much is obvious.

Now, let's say you play for a day straight doing nothing but traveling from one planet to another. Some people will play more than twenty-four hours, sure, but let's just start with that. In the E3 video, it takes about a minute to go from one planet to another. Let's be generous and assume that's the average. If there are (24x60) 1440 minutes in a day, then you get to see roughly that many planets in that time. Divide this by 100 (10% of 10%) and we find out that you're only going to see ~14 planets with sophisticated life on them.


In other words, the appeal of the huge number of planets isn't to any one player. It's to the guarantee that what you see will not be what anyone else sees. What you see will still be very much limited by your attention span. And, if your attention span is short and only stimulated by planets with animals on them, then 1/100 is not going to keep you there.

So hopefully there's other stuff that's compelling in the game.

also you'd have to spend time refueling/mining for more fuel if you didn't just buy it all, so you'd probably only see 10 of those planets a day and not explore them b/c you keep moving on to the next

 

[Haunted]

They keep saying that people keep underestimating the size of their planets and the size of their universe. That's because it's unfathomably large, just like our real universe. Not as large, but it doesn't need to be. There's a point at which human imagination simply can't keep up with the scope of reality. The same thing is happening here and it's pretty fun to watch.

I've read some comments akin to "I want to play co-op, so I'm going to find my friends who also play this game and we'll meet up in the first couple hours before we really start playing the game."

No. No, you won't.

 

[spekkeh]

Game starts to read too much like a simulation imo. Good games are abstractions. They have meaning, or a point. This everything and the kitchen sink approach conversely seems like you'll be doing nothing of interest for long swathes of time. If you put thousands of monkeys on a typewriter, eventually one will recreate Shakespeare, or reach the galactic center, but I don't really want to be that monkey that just ends up with garbled nonsense.

In any case, will still buy it to see what it ended up as, but in the meantime time I hope they don't get carried away too much with the possibility and I have my expectations in check.

 

[Haunted]

Yeah no I'm having a really hard time believing in "planet-sized planets".
I'd be impressed with a game having a single real life sized planet.

Ancel's new game is the size of Europe and that should be considered a great achievement.

I mean, in the realm of videogames, it's all relative depending on movement speed and relative sizes, but still: what Hello Games are claiming to do, at that scope, at that fidelity, will be nothing short of revolutionary. We've never seen something like this before.

 

[EGOMON]

I want to believe but a small indie dev don't have the resources to make the game they are describing here.
I honestly wished that Sony would fund the shit out of this project to make it AAA game and provide them with man power.

 

[Fushichou187]

Cool. Still tho, that kinda breaks the immersion a bit if you know what I mean, that somebody could build a spacecraft with his bare hands if he had the resources. For some reason I never had a problem with this in Terraria.

Spoiler

I know I know its a freaking video game.

Something to consider is that you aren't really building a ship from scratch. You've got a ship to start out with and are either upgrading it or getting another one wholesale from a starbase/vendor; you're not building anything with your bare hands; maybe you've got some sort of replicator/tech on board that can synthesize the parts as long as you feed it the raw materials. You won't need even to break a nail

As an aside, Star Trek exists in a universe where a number of planets (or those in the Federation?) don't even use money as currency, but still they have trade. You've got to imagine that they trade with other resources (which, isn't that money anyway? :\ ). I imagine something similar is what we'll find in NMS.

I want to believe but a small indie dev don't have the resources to make the game they are describing here.
I honestly wished that Sony would fund the shit out of this project to make it AAA game and provide them with man power.

What is it that you think a team of 10 or so people are incapable of doing when it comes to devising the "engine" ( the algorithm that generates the galaxy)-- which, by the way, is done-- and art assets to throw into the mixer to get mashed up and spit out into umpteen variations? I understand the game is more than that but I don't understand what the problem is many people have with the size of the development team.

 

[Fushichou187]

.

 

[BenouKat]

First of all, 10% of all planets have some sort of life. Not lush forests full of different kinds of animals (that's the 1%), but something. And even the ones which don't won't be "empty". There will still be landmarks to discover, cave systems to explore, resources to mine, maybe strange artifacts, lore hidden away, etc. The general philosophy here seems to be that if there's no life on a planet that planet is useless, but that doesn't have to be the case at all.

Yeah sure, this will be very interesting to explore, I don't see the point why I'm forced to do this alone.

Minecraft is exactly the same kind of experience in term of dicovering, every world are different, every mines, you collect materials... But once you finish your home "dick form" or build a giant pacman on a landscape, you start to get bored.
BUT there's multiplayer, at least play with a friend or two, and when you do this, the fun and the exploration feeling is multiplied by .... i don't know, like a million percent ?

I'm afraid No Man's Sky pretty shot itself if there's no way to join friend on an other way than spent a entire week to reach his point. I think I will not buy this game until the "classic multiplayer" will be out.

I really hope i'm wrong, and I really hope the experience will not be boring, but if he starts to take example of Journey for meeting people, he might forget that Journey is a 2 hour long game in closed level and his game is an entire galaxy with infinite timeplay.

 

[kyser73]

Sooo...the same auld shite on an NMS thread.

A few pointers for those wondering about how the fauna, flora and ships are generated.

Kotaku's articles on the game, including the excellent series by Tina Amini

And some gaf threads on the matter:

No Man's Sky preview and hands on at The Verge

The Incredible Story of No Man's Sky in which this and this post have many answers to the endlessly repeated questions in NMS threads.

On the 'It can't be done!' and 'There's no longevity! No Story!'...well I'm old enough to have played the original Elite.

Braben and Bell managed to get:

2000 planets, each with a decently varied set of characteristics, spread over 8 galaxies
A whole range of ship classes
A competent trading system with actual updates depending on how you were trading
No story, no goal other than to trade, mine and fight your way to becoming Elite...with (IIRC) 4 story 'missions' to complete on the way.

into 32K on a C15 cassette tape, running on this:

and it's still one of the most engrossing games ever written.

So don't be telling me that Hello Games and No Man's Sky - which for me is more a spiritual successor to Elite than Dangerous - can't deliver with the power available in modern consoles & PCs, or that not having a story can't fire the imagination of the player into a great sense of being in the game.

/rant

 

[King Tubby]

The 10% of planets having life thing will not be an issue.

I recall seeing in a video that the planet you see from space is really a very low detail version of what the actual planet is. Therefore, if you're looking for planets with life on them, wouldn't you just look for planets with oceans? You wouldn't even need to waste time landing on a barren rock.

This is the impression I've gotten, but I may be wrong.

 

[E92 M3]

The 10% of planets having life thing will not be an issue.

I recall seeing in a video that the planet you see from space is really a very low detail version of what the actual planet is. Therefore, if you're looking for planets with life on them, wouldn't you just look for planets with oceans? You wouldn't even need to waste time landing on a barren rock.

This is the impression I've gotten, but I may be wrong.

The barren rock planets will still have resources of some kind.

--

I hope they show more of this game at TGS.

 

[ichtyander]

The 10% of planets having life thing will not be an issue.

I recall seeing in a video that the planet you see from space is really a very low detail version of what the actual planet is. Therefore, if you're looking for planets with life on them, wouldn't you just look for planets with oceans? You wouldn't even need to waste time landing on a barren rock.

This is the impression I've gotten, but I may be wrong.

Thing is, this isn't exactly a game about specifically finding planets with life. For all we know, the barren rocky wastes or scorching deserts might be the most interesting planets in the game if, for example, such environments are frequently accompanied by lava filled underground caves, cryptic obelisks, robot defense drones and are abundantly rich with valuable minerals. Hell, if they define that some of the mostly "dead" planets are rich with certain kinds of rare resources (which makes sense btw) they'll be the most sought out planet types by the players because they'll be like gold mines. And we don't really know what else will be important for progressing through the game.

And then there's this:

"In every solar system there is one core thing that you can do which is of great significance to that solar system. And that is shared among everyone, and fundamentally changes that solar system, and people can choose whether or not to do that. And there are a number of mechanisms like that, which create emergent gameplay."

Now I'm completely making this up but it might be something like this: You and all of the players are heralds of The Atlas (the pulsating thing from the logo), kind of like what the Silver Surfer is to Galactus. Your goal is of galactic importance, to catalog the universe, discover life, monuments of civilizations past, gather information and store it for safekeeping. However, there's the Malevolent Force that's occupying the galaxy at an alarming pace so for those heralds brave enough, they may attempt to reach the center of the galaxy and together defeat the evil that is spreading on every planet. So after you clear, say, 70% of the points of interest on all planets in the solar system, you are given the choice of defining its purpose: to preserve the life on it and make it a sort of safe haven, a zoo of untouched alien life or to destroy the solar system and the enemies in it since it has been mostly corrupted by them already. It doesn't have to be that drastic, it might just be something like classifying the solar system in one particular color that defines it as rich with "information", "resources" or "life". Then these three classifications might serve as "resources" for the meta game so the actions of all of the players will define what kind of universe they'll have in the end, when they reach the center of the galaxy. As I said, I'm just pulling this out of my ass, but there is certainly a lot of room for making the game extremely interesting, even if 100% of the planets look like barren rocks. They're all just very big procedural dungeons in a survival exploration game.

I can understand that for some people scanning for life forms will be a big thing but just because a planet doesn't have life doesn't mean it's not full of gameplay possibilities.

And as for knowing if there's life on a planet just by seeing oceans and an atmosphere, that might make more sense if it were a very realistic game, but since we've at least seen an inhospitable desert planet with a giant worm or an orange rocky, almost Mars like planet with herds of stegosaurus, it might prove to be a lot more difficult to discern which of the planets has life. But as I've said, in the overall game experience, that shouldn't be that important at all. Planets abundant with life will be like special random dungeons with lots of items or spells that you run into every once in a while like in rougelikes.

 

[E92 M3]

Thing is, this isn't exactly a game about specifically finding planets with life. For all we know, the barren rocky wastes or scorching deserts might be the most interesting planets in the game if, for example, such environments are frequently accompanied by lava filled underground caves, cryptic obelisks, robot defense drones and are abundantly rich with valuable minerals. Hell, if they define that some of the mostly "dead" planets are rich with certain kinds of rare resources (which makes sense btw) they'll be the most sought out planet types by the players because they'll be like gold mines. And we don't really know what else will be important for progressing through the game.

And then there's this:


Now I'm completely making this up but it might be something like this: You and all of the players are heralds of The Atlas (the pulsating thing from the logo), kind of like what the Silver Surfer is to Galactus. Your goal is of galactic importance, to catalog the universe, discover life, monuments of civilizations past, gather information and store it for safekeeping. However, there's the Malevolent Force that's occupying the galaxy at an alarming pace so for those heralds brave enough, they may attempt to reach the center of the galaxy and together defeat the evil that is spreading on every planet. So after you clear, say, 70% of the points of interest on all planets in the solar system, you are given the choice of defining its purpose: to preserve the life on it and make it a sort of safe haven, a zoo of untouched alien life or to destroy the solar system and the enemies in it since it has been mostly corrupted by them already. It doesn't have to be that drastic, it might just be something like classifying the solar system in one particular color that defines it as rich with "information", "resources" or "life". Then these three classifications might serve as "resources" for the meta game so the actions of all of the players will define what kind of universe they'll have in the end, when they reach the center of the galaxy. As I said, I'm just pulling this out of my ass, but there is certainly a lot of room for making the game extremely interesting, even if 100% of the planets look like barren rocks. They're all just very big procedural dungeons in a survival exploration game.

I can understand that for some people scanning for life forms will be a big thing but just because a planet doesn't have life doesn't mean it's not full of gameplay possibilities.

And as for knowing if there's life on a planet just by seeing oceans and an atmosphere, that might make more sense if it were a very realistic game, but since we've at least seen an inhospitable desert planet with a giant worm or an orange rocky, almost Mars like planet with herds of stegosaurus, it might prove to be a lot more difficult to discern which of the planets has life. But as I've said, in the overall game experience, that shouldn't be that important at all. Planets abundant with life will be like special random dungeons with lots of items or spells that you run into every once in a while like in rougelikes.

Stuff like that is why I will be playing solo. I don't want anyone having an impact on my game except me.

Also, I truly hope there will be snow planets.

 

[Noisepurge]

Almost everything is Procedurally Generated. Ships, Plants, Animals, Planets etc.

There will be a narrative, with a reason for the player’s presence and their activities, and details of various races that preceded you. You won’t be told the narrative, it’s up to you to explore and piece it all together and come up with your own interpretations

The Atlas will be an important part of the lore

Don’t expect cutscenes, dialogues or much text within the game.

Can be affiliated with different factions, however you’ll never have indications of this.

There won’t be any quests or missions to go on. It’ll be up to you to decide what you want to do. The hope is that your natural curiosity and the richness of the worlds presented will be enough to keep you interested - this is a game about exploration

It’s basically up to you how you play. The universe is a living breathing place that just works.

Not an MMO. Everyone will be very far away from each other. But you will feel the impact of other players

There will be a compelling reason to head towards the centre of the galaxy, as well as an ending that will provide you with a sense of closure. But there will be a reason to continue playing after that ending

You don't have an inventory, but you do have a sort of bank account.

There will be ancient artefacts for you to find which could reveal the secrets of the universe.

Everyone starts in their own solar system, so people will be very far away from one another to begin with.

The planets within the universe will have a 10% chance of having life on them, with 90% of them having no life on at all. Of the 10% that does have life, 90% of that will be primitive and boring. So the lush garden worlds with more evolved life forms on will be rare
There will be lots of barren planets, but they can still have valuable resources on
Planets will generally only have one type of resource on them

These sound pretty bad, i hope it makes more sense when i get to finally play the game...

No plot, but some sort of a plot and ending anyways? No text or quests, so you can only fool around like Minecraft?

 

[Fushichou187]

These sound pretty bad, i hope it makes more sense when i get to finally play the game...

No plot, but some sort of a plot and ending anyways? No text or quests, so you can only fool around like Minecraft?

There are plenty of games-- even modern ones-- that don't rely on walls of text or quest-givers in order to give the player a sense of purpose or an objective. NMS seems to be aimed more at those whose natural sense of curiosity about "what's around the next corner?" gets magnified into "I wonder what's orbiting around that next star?".

 

[Hawaii Jeff]

Not being able to save your game is a huge bummer .

That's just incredibly disappointing for me.

 

[ichtyander]

Stuff like that is why I will be playing solo. I don't want anyone having an impact on my game except me.

Also, I truly hope there will be snow planets.

Yeah, I completely get that and it's great that they're putting in an offline solo mode. As for snowy planets, if we're to believe the screenshots and trailers, yup, it looks like they're in the game.

 

[E92 M3]

Yeah, I completely get that and it's great that they're putting in an offline solo mode. As for snowy planets, if we're to believe the screenshots and trailers, yup, it looks like they're in the game.

Thanks, for some reason I never noticed those screens before!

 

[Fushichou187]

Not being able to save your game is a huge bummer .

But your game is saved. You just don't have to micro-manage it. The idea of losing one's progress (i.e. amassed resources, etc..) because of a miscalculation does seem a tad daunting but I feel fits in rather well with the idea that "life is fragile" in NMS; a point that Mr. Murray continues to point out. Additionally, I am surprised-- pleasantly so-- that instead of flinging you back to the far corner of the galaxy if you end up dying, that you start out fresh from relatively the same position which makes sense if what they're making is truly vast; They want to keep that feeling of exploring the unknown ever-present, which is always going to be in front of you, on the frontier. It's a good way to keep you focused on where you'd like to go as opposed to where you've been already.

 

[Synless]

Wait, you can't save? Why the hell not?

 

[androvsky]

The 10% of planets having life thing will not be an issue.

I recall seeing in a video that the planet you see from space is really a very low detail version of what the actual planet is. Therefore, if you're looking for planets with life on them, wouldn't you just look for planets with oceans? You wouldn't even need to waste time landing on a barren rock.

This is the impression I've gotten, but I may be wrong.

The first trailer had a Dune-style giant sandworm. Besides, oceans don't necessarily mean water or life, Titan has large lakes of liquid methane.

 

[OneUh8]

Wait, you can't save? Why the hell not?

It's a persistent world. Pretty sure you can't save in a game like Day Z either. Same concept

 

[Camp Lo]

Regarding a proceduraly generated universe, impossible scale and planet sized planets, everyone that has not tried Space Engine should give it a go, it's free.

Wow, this is amazing. Thanks for the links. Really puts this game into a more feasible perspective.

 

[ichtyander]

Wait, you can't save? Why the hell not?

I suppose it would be more accurate to say that you can't save manually, there's no "pause -> save game" action. The game saves automatically, probably after every more important event like discovering an important location, scanning something, mining, docking on space stations, arriving at a new planet or solar system and of course after exiting the game. That kind of stuff.

EDIT:

Wow, this is amazing. Thanks for the links. Really puts this game into a more feasible perspective.

Glad to spread the word. And btw, Space Engine is the work of just one man.

 

[Camp Lo]

Glad to spread the word. And btw, Space Engine is the work of just one man.

 

[LogicStep]

This game sounds so interesting. Day 1

 

[Fattony12000]

"Everyone's dicks are getting big."

 

[thehillissilent]

Sooo...the same auld shite on an NMS thread.

A few pointers for those wondering about how the fauna, flora and ships are generated.

Kotaku's articles on the game, including the excellent series by Tina Amini

And some gaf threads on the matter:

No Man's Sky preview and hands on at The Verge

The Incredible Story of No Man's Sky in which this and this post have many answers to the endlessly repeated questions in NMS threads.

On the 'It can't be done!' and 'There's no longevity! No Story!'...well I'm old enough to have played the original Elite.

Braben and Bell managed to get:

2000 planets, each with a decently varied set of characteristics, spread over 8 galaxies
A whole range of ship classes
A competent trading system with actual updates depending on how you were trading
No story, no goal other than to trade, mine and fight your way to becoming Elite...with (IIRC) 4 story 'missions' to complete on the way.

into 32K on a C15 cassette tape, running on this:

and it's still one of the most engrossing games ever written.

So don't be telling me that Hello Games and No Man's Sky - which for me is more a spiritual successor to Elite than Dangerous - can't deliver with the power available in modern consoles & PCs, or that not having a story can't fire the imagination of the player into a great sense of being in the game.

/rant

Yes, this is why I wrote the OP the way I did. This type of game is not new. The genre originated on PC. Hello Games is bringing it to consoles.
EDIT: Elite: Dangerous is the true successor to Elite, not NMS. The only issue is that you have to wait for the expansion for planetary landing and exploration.

Regarding a proceduraly generated universe, impossible scale and planet sized planets, everyone that has not tried Space Engine should give it a go, it's free.

Glad to spread the word. And btw, Space Engine is the work of just one man.

This is amazing. I read all of the work he is planning to put into it past the free observatory stage. This guy deserves money. I'm going to be downloading that now.

 

[Tigress]

Game starts to read too much like a simulation imo. Good games are abstractions. They have meaning, or a point. This everything and the kitchen sink approach conversely seems like you'll be doing nothing of interest for long swathes of time. If you put thousands of monkeys on a typewriter, eventually one will recreate Shakespeare, or reach the galactic center, but I don't really want to be that monkey that just ends up with garbled nonsense.

In any case, will still buy it to see what it ended up as, but in the meantime time I hope they don't get carried away too much with the possibility and I have my expectations in check.

Good games for you maybe.

There are plenty of people who enjoy games such as Flight Simulator or SimCity (Which can have a point if you wish but many people just like to build their cities) or even Minecraft.

Not every game needs to have a specific point and quests. Sometimes it's just fun to have your own goals and obstacles the game throws at you to make it harder to reach those (Which this sounds like it has). There is a goal, explore. Reach the center if you wish. Fight whatever is at the center. Or just explore. But you'll have to build up your defenses or get a sneaky ship cause not everything is friendly. And you'll have to find stuff to do that with. And trade to get better ships so you can explore better. And things will get tougher if you head towards the center so you better really build up well for going in. But you'll probably also find more about the story of this universe as you get to the center (they said in this that there are story bits thrown around). So there is motivation to find out backstory as well.

I don't see why that sounds so "boring". Hell, Flight SImulator has way less of a goal than that and it has (had, MS ruined it following that microtransaction money) a huge following. Not everyone likes that type of game, but that doesn't make it a bad game. It just makes it not a game for you.

 

[harrypmgaga]

I want to believe but a small indie dev don't have the resources to make the game they are describing here.
I honestly wished that Sony would fund the shit out of this project to make it AAA game and provide them with man power.

Clearly you've never made a game. It's not impossible for a 10-man team to achieve this. It's not like every single planet is hand-crafted, it's all smartly-crafted algorithms.

 

[thehillissilent]

Good games for you maybe.

There are plenty of people who enjoy games such as Flight Simulator or SimCity (Which can have a point if you wish but many people just like to build their cities) or even Minecraft.

Not every game needs to have a specific point and quests. Sometimes it's just fun to have your own goals and obstacles the game throws at you to make it harder to reach those (Which this sounds like it has). There is a goal, explore. Reach the center if you wish. Fight whatever is at the center. Or just explore. But you'll have to build up your defenses or get a sneaky ship cause not everything is friendly. And you'll have to find stuff to do that with. And trade to get better ships so you can explore better. And things will get tougher if you head towards the center so you better really build up well for going in. But you'll probably also find more about the story of this universe as you get to the center (they said in this that there are story bits thrown around). So there is motivation to find out backstory as well.

I don't see why that sounds so "boring". Hell, Flight SImulator has way less of a goal than that and it has (had, MS ruined it following that microtransaction money) a huge following. Not everyone likes that type of game, but that doesn't make it a bad game. It just makes it not a game for you.

This game is not for people who favor a more directed experience. This is why you see the "boring" comments. This game is for people who like "sandbox and emergent" gameplay. This type of game isn't for everybody.

 

[mnannola]

So don't be telling me that Hello Games and No Man's Sky - which for me is more a spiritual successor to Elite than Dangerous...

/rant

Why do you think this? To me it looks like what Dangerous promises to be is an exact sequel to the earlier games. Absolutely massive in scope, and I believe it will have much more to actually do than this game will.

 

[thehillissilent]

Why do you think this? To me it looks like what Dangerous promises to be is an exact sequel to the earlier games. Absolutely massive in scope, and I believe it will have much more to actually do than this game will.

I have to agree. As much as I'm excited for NMS, Eliteangerous is looking really good right now. Although I can't wait for the expansions so that we can get planetary landing and exploration. I have a lot of faith in David Braben.

You also point out the difference in marketing. David and co. are very straightforward with what Eliteangerous is and will be. This is little to no confusion on what you are there to do. Hello Games is purposefully vague in order to generate hype and discussion.

 

[Auto-Reply]

....

This is amazing. I read all of the work he is planning to put into it past the free observatory stage. This guy deserves money. I'm going to be downloading that now.

Be aware of potential incompatibilities (graphical glitches and stuffs not working) at the moment, I ran into them very recently because of driver probs
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=127860716&postcount=9835
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=128013317&postcount=9864

 

[thehillissilent]

Be aware of potential incompatibilities (graphical glitches and stuffs not working) at the moment, I ran into them very recently because of driver probs
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=127860716&postcount=9835
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=128013317&postcount=9864

Thanks for the heads up. I just installed it and ran into some issues and I'm running with an Nvidia card.

 

[Ainsz]

Some tips for you lot, when out, in the universe.

I hope they continue to expand the game after release, I want to go find one of these mad bastards.

 

[cripterion]

What does that mean?

Means one area per planet

 

[E92 M3]

I downloaded space engine, and it seems to be having problems running on my work comp. Concept is cool as shit though.

 

[RoadHazard]

The more I read, the slightly more skeptical I become of this game, because of how it sets out gameplay rules. For example, if players don't meet very often, what is the point of having fighter ships? Is there going to be alien AI that try to kill me? Also am I part of a race and I'm the only one remaining? So I mine stuff and make money? Who's turning the money into ships and things if I'm stranded on a distant planet.

I know i'm supposed to just try and have fun with the game, but some of the things make it seem not as well thought out as it could be.

I wish people would actually watch some trailers and interviews and read up on the game before coming in here being all worried and skeptical about a game they don't even know very much about. There's a lot of info out there.

Yes, there are AI factions. Space stations, trade fleets, escort ships for those fleets, pirates attacking them, drones on the planets, etc. Those are all controlled by AI, and will help you or attack you depending on how you act.

Cool. Still tho, that kinda breaks the immersion a bit if you know what I mean, that somebody could build a spacecraft with his bare hands if he had the resources. For some reason I never had a problem with this in Terraria.

No, you don't build ships with your own hands. You mine resources or get money in other ways (there are many things you can do that will net you monetary rewards), and then you go to a space station where you can use that to buy new ships, upgrade your suit and weapon/multitool, etc.

Yes but the OP notes confused me a bit when they said that human players would be very far away. I take it that there are computer AI races out there then that have ships too and I could be engaged in battles with the computer. (That also leads me to another point which is, will I be facing them by myself or will I have allies.)

You can get AI allies, yes, by helping that side out. Help a group of space pirates to take down a trade fleet, and they might be available as allies next time you're in a combat situation. Again, this is all in the trailers and interviews (and even in the OP of this very thread).

Yeah no I'm having a really hard time believing in "planet-sized planets".
I'd be impressed with a game having a single real life sized planet.

You just don't understand how this procedural generation stuff works. Size and scale simple isn't an issue, beyond what the numbers used in the calculations limit you to (the number of planets is limited by the fact that each of them has a 2^64 seed, leading to the 18 quintillion number). You only ever calculate the values for the area immediately surrounding you, stuff further away effectively doesn't exist until you get there. So if you could do this on a planet 1/10 the size of Earth, why not one much larger?

What variation you'll see across these massive planners is another issue, and that depends on how solid their algorithms are. This remains to be seen. But there's no technical reason to doubt the claims of planet-sized planets.

Game starts to read too much like a simulation imo. Good games are abstractions. They have meaning, or a point. This everything and the kitchen sink approach conversely seems like you'll be doing nothing of interest for long swathes of time.

There is meaning, there is a point, and it involves getting to the center of the galaxy. We don't know exactly why yet, but that will be revealed through the lore in the game. I'm fine with them not explaining everything about the main conflict and malevolent force right now. So, everything you do will take you a bit closer to reaching that goal. Unless you don't want to, of course. But they've said that they expect most players to undertake this journey.

I want to believe but a small indie dev don't have the resources to make the game they are describing here.
I honestly wished that Sony would fund the shit out of this project to make it AAA game and provide them with man power.

Being a small team has no effect on the scale they're able to achieve as long as their algorithms are solid. What they do need is enough varied base assets to make things stay interesting. Again, this remains to be seen.

Stuff like that is why I will be playing solo. I don't want anyone having an impact on my game except me.

Also, I truly hope there will be snow planets.

You mean offline? That's a bit silly, IMO. Even if you play online there are still going to billions and billions of planets just for you. Even if 10 million people were to play this game (which I think is rather generous), that would give each player about 180,000,000,000 (that's 180 billion) planets to discover and explore all by themselves. That's how damn massive this thing is. Finding planets no other player has seen won't be an issue.

And yes, we've seen snowy environments.

These sound pretty bad, i hope it makes more sense when i get to finally play the game...

No plot, but some sort of a plot and ending anyways? No text or quests, so you can only fool around like Minecraft?

There will be in-game lore that explains what's going on and why you want to get to the center of the galaxy. So yes, in that sense there will be a plot of sorts. It just won't be told through cutscenes, quests, etc.

Not being able to save your game is a huge bummer .

That's just incredibly disappointing for me.

What do your mean? Your game will be saved all the time, as soon as you do something. Are you talking about the fact that everything is generated from scratch every time you get there? That's true, but the game will still keep track of changes you've caused and implement those changes the next time you get there. If you've cleared a cave of minerals the game will remember that and have it cleared the next time you get there as well (even though the generation algorithms say there should be minerals there). Don't know where you got this "no saving" thing. But no, you won't be able to quicksave and load that save up if you do something stupid, if that's what you mean.

 

[GodofWine]

My kids have exposed me to the cartoon "Wander over Yander", where a little guy and his 'horse-like' animal start each episode on a randon planet with random things on it...and all the while the evil forces are lurking around the galaxy.

Its a really funny cartoon, one of those 'for kids but adults will laugh" ones.

when i read NMS stuff, i just picture Wander on some weird random planet

 

[The Hermit]

I am a sucker for exploration games ( played for over 150hr on endless ocean 1,2 and xenoblade each).

This game will be my Minecraft.

 

[dalin80]

It's what I am waiting for to pull the trigger on a PS4, looking forward to cruising around and exploring, here's hoping it has a great music selection or the ability to play mp3's from hdd.

I love exploration games with thousands of hours spent across a selection, I still have a early version of Terraria from when it was about sperlunking before the updates made it an awful combat grindfest.

 

[btags]

Regarding a proceduraly generated universe, impossible scale and planet sized planets, everyone that has not tried Space Engine should give it a go, it's free.

Never heard of this, but will definitely check it out. Thanks.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

Do we know if this will get a same day physical release? Also will the offline mode be in day one as well?

 

[scytheavatar]

I don't see why that sounds so "boring". Hell, Flight SImulator has way less of a goal than that and it has (had, MS ruined it following that microtransaction money) a huge following. Not everyone likes that type of game, but that doesn't make it a bad game. It just makes it not a game for you.

It's boring for the simple reason that No Man's Sky will be first and foremost a console game, and you aren't going to get flight simulator level of complexity in it.

 

[Gusy]

My main concerns/requests are:

- Interesting / Varied Terrain: I would love to see interesting geography from planet to planet. I hope it goes beyond differences in color and elevation, not just from planet to planet but within each planet itself.

- LOD handling: They have to be very smart with draw distances and LOD management. It's a big challenge when you can view the terrain from basically any height. I can imagine at least 6 levels of detail depending on how close you are to the ground. I hope this transition from one to the other is as smooth as possible.

- Proper sense of scale: So far in the trailers, planets seem to be incredibly close to one another. I hope they manage to convey how massive the distances are while making your ship fast enough to the point this doesn't become a hassle. I also hope they stay true to the ¨No skybox mantra¨. It would be amazing if every single bright dot you see while flying in space is actually a real discoverable object.

- 1st Person Camera: I understand the aproach, but I would love to have a third person view for the spaceship. This would have incredible photo mode potential. Also, landings would be easier on irregular terrain.

Bonus request: I would love to see big, explorable asteroids, moons, nebula, comets, etc.

If Hello Games deliver on half of what they are promising, It could still be a groundbreaking SciFi game. I really can't wait.

 

[Fushichou187]

It's boring for the simple reason that No Man's Sky will be first and foremost a console game, and you aren't going to get flight simulator level of complexity in it.

Good lord. Get out of here with that elitist crap. Just because you're obsessed with Elite: Dangerous doesn't mean you've got to go into other space sim threads and shit on them.