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No Man's Sky went gold
- Thread starter Nibel
- Start date
MADGAME
Member
I'd love to visit a galaxy or even solar system full of planets like this.
eyeball_kid
Member
Thanks for posting this. It'd been a long time and I'd forgotten some of this.
The galaxy/universe debate is pretty clearly solved in the first question. The glowy light is the center of the galaxy we start in, but there's more than one, so our ultimate goal might be the center of the universe.
Was disappointed to hear that we can't orbit planets because he wanted to make things easy for people. He said we can drift through space, so I guess there's some Newtonian physics involved with the ships, but I doubt we'll be able to do BSG-style 180-degree spins during combat. I think the goal of the ship travel was to feel more like Star Wars.
Yeah - I haven't really been following this game very closely up until now - still been looking forward to it, but not poring over it like some.
Generally I get the impression the game is deliberately not going for realism. The gameplay (the thing that most seems to confound people) seems to be the focus. It's all about moving on to the next planet - seeing some cool stuff, surviving whatever world you've ended up on until you've managed to gather enough stuff to move on and then repeating. It seems that it's mostly about the variety of gameplay challenge that you'll encounter each time in each world.
In terms of the 'gameplay loop' it seems more reminiscent of a roguelike than something like Elite.
OmegaDL50
Member
Roguelike allusions only work in the sense of dying and starting all over from the very beginning. For No Man's Sky however this doesn't seem to be the case. It's more reminiscent of a survival / resource management game.
At the core beyond the exploration is the survival aspects. Your ship requires fuel, your boltcaster requires ammo, your suit has it's own layers of protection that also needs to be recharged.
Then there is the crafting to gather resources to improve your suit, ship, and weapon.
The IGN guy in the video who spent time playing the game even name drops Don't Starve as example. You can see that here - https://youtu.be/it_9pUYO2AY?t=139 best to watch the whole video from the begining though as it gives a fuller explaination on crafting and upgrading.
I don't think you need to start from the very beginning for it to be roguelike. Diablo is often described as roguelike for instance.
It's not a perfect analogy, but 'roguelike' was a term used when they started talking about the game and I think it makes sense in gameplay terms. I mean if you can envisage a game where you go down procedurally generated dungeons to collect loot, to buy more equipment, to delve further into dungeons, to get more loot - then you can map that onto the planets/resources of NMS. Surviving planets, collecting resources, upgrading your equipment so you can explore the next (harder) planet and do the same.
I mean it's a little reductive, there are more gameplay options in NMS, and it's about research and mining and stuff, not hitting skeletons with axes - but the overarching form of the game is essentially roguelike. "You start on the outside of the universe, and everyone does, and for a lot of people that roguelike structure will be trying to get to the center of the universe." https://www.engadget.com/2013/12/09/no-mans-sky-is-a-sci-fi-exploration-roguelike-in-a-consistent-u/
To me this seems a solid and fun structure to hang this sort of game on. People spend hours working through much simpler, less spectacular games like Rogue Legacy and FTL - get the balance right and it can be really compelling. With everything else the game offers it sounds like the sort of thing that could really swallow you up.
eyeball_kid
Member
I don't think so. A new trailer came out a week ago, and there will be three more (focusing on Combat, Trading, and Survival) released before launch. But we don't know if that footage is based on the final build. It's looking pretty good though.
somme
Member
Yeah I already thought it looked good. (Didn't mind the pop-in myself, dealt with far worse over game issues in my life.) But it seems to look amazing now.
eyeball_kid
Member
Yeah, given the scale of what they're doing I'm not going to flip out if there's still some LOD pop-in. I think it only really happens when you're flying over a planet anyway.
p.s. nice Polly Jean avatar
somme
Member
Haha thank you. You're the first one to have ever mentioned it/her (over several forums)
And back to the pop-in: it seems to have gotten a lot less over recent trailers and when watching the gameplay videos I realised that when I was actually focused on what the player was doing, as I would be when playing, I didn't notice it at all. I was too focused on the immediate surroundings.
Flying might be different but for an almost infinite playground of almost limitless variety, I can put up with a little pop-in!
metareferential
Member
Flying might be different but for an almost infinite playground of almost limitless variety, I can put up with a little pop-in!
Even if the game was going be just two planets, pop-in would still be there; as I understand, it's just the way the tech works (on a pretty slow cpu?) since everything is procedurally generated on the fly (pun not only intended but inevitable).
Still, I'll gladly take a game with this tech and size with a little pop-in rather than a conventional one without it.
OmegaDL50
Member
Yep.
Even Minecraft has "pop-in" on a high end PC.
It's just the nature of how terrain is loaded in a procedurally generated game.
Haha thank you. You're the first one to have ever mentioned it/her (over several forums)
And back to the pop-in: it seems to have gotten a lot less over recent trailers and when watching the gameplay videos I realised that when I was actually focused on what the player was doing, as I would be when playing, I didn't notice it at all. I was too focused on the immediate surroundings.
Flying might be different but for an almost infinite playground of almost limitless variety, I can put up with a little pop-in!
The pop in is very apparent even when walking around. Entire hills 25 meters away will suddenly shift and appear. At least on PS4.
I'm hoping the PC version will improve the distance at least so it's not so incredibly distracting.