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[eyeball_kid]

Personally I don't think the difference between PC and PS4 is going to be as dramatic some people are suggesting. The art style isn't something realism-focused like Uncharted 4 or even Dark Souls where a beefier GPU would make it look a magnitude better because these are stylized art assets.

I do wonder if they can run their terrain generators on the GPU though - that would help a lot compared to being stuck with the jaguar cores.

Innes (neé Hazel) answered that in that nucl.ai talk:
"At the moment we do all the PCG calculations on the CPU [...] If we had to move something onto GPU it would be polygonization because that's quite general code, rather than something we edit a lot like generation code. The generator has to be something the team can look at and work with and make sense of..."

Basically they could, but they've kept the proc gen code on the CPU because they wanted to keep it in a language that the team can understand and edit easily.

p.s. while looking for that talk I stumbled on a different Hazel proc gen talk from 2014 which I hadn't seen before. It's very developer-focused, but it's pretty interesting. She does talk about NMS some, but more about concepts and techniques they use in their generation. (warning, audio is a bit shit and gets *really* loud for a few secs about 1:40 in) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJRXNesI9f4

 

[WadeitOut]

The art style doesn't change the fact that the resolution and frame rate is locked on Ps4 though.

 

[Odrion]

it's 100% wishes. what's at the center of it all has never been even hinted, also, Sean has always discouraged thoughts of multiplayer. it could be as GribbleGrunger says or it could be a box full of fluffy bunnies swimming in chocolate. but I would pick GribbleGrunger's version over the fluffy bunnies, I must say.

i hope it's a FMV peter molyneux at the center

 

[eyeball_kid]

The art style doesn't change the fact that the resolution and frame rate is locked on Ps4 though.

Yes of course, the resolution will be much better. But I don't think it's going to look significantly better unless they've got some crazy hi-res texture generation we haven't seen yet. But bottom line this game is going to look great on both PS4 and PC, and run at a smooth 60fps.

 

[draliko]

Where do you guys got your pc version? Any place to buy a bit cheaper than 50€?? Thanks... It s the forst time i found a game for ps4 cheaper than for pc

 

[OmegaDL50]

I am also getting a 1070 GTX myself eventually.

But this sort of game seems much more CPU bound then GPU, simply due to the nature of the procedural generation which needs to continuously load terrain from the seed.

Minecraft is similar in this regard in which it's not a very demanding game visually but with the draw distance cranked up to the max can slow down a machine due to amount of stuff being generated at the highest settings.

In the video that explains the tech behind the game. The one video Game Informer interviewing Sean Murray on it, he goes on to state one of the reasons why the tech behind No Man's Sky works is because of the multi-threaded CPUs that exist in the consoles.

https://youtu.be/h-kifCYToAU?t=568

Even going on to say it scales with stronger hardware which makes less work for them. So I'd guess NMS isn't so much GPU bound but just more of a CPU bound and as you throw more power at the game, it would just let it keep up even more and generate more detail in terms of the LOD and objects being polygonized that much quicker.

I think the only time when more GPU grunt and high amounts of VRAM may needed is in the case of modding when higher resolution textures are involved (such as Minecraft's 2K and even 4K texture packs), the same principle applies to replacing the textures in a game such as Skyrim with higher res ones instead)

Although strangely enough one would think this might be a problem on the PS4 due to it's biggest setback as it's using a notebook based APU, which has relatively low clocks, I'd say it makes up for it by distributing the demand by spreading it across the available threads making NMS more a highly threaded solution.

This makes me wonder how NMS would run on something like an 8-Core i7 6900K.

 

[Raybunny]

After all the past posts, wondering if I will go with PS4 or PC.

 

[Muzicfreq]

I am also getting a 1070 GTX myself eventually.

But this sort of game seems much more CPU bound then GPU, simply due to the nature of the procedural generation which needs to continuously load terrain from the seed.

Minecraft is similar in this regard in which it's not a very demanding game visually but with the draw distance cranked up to the max can slow down a machine due to amount of stuff being generated at the highest settings.

In the video that explains the tech behind the game. The one video Game Informer interviewing Sean Murray on it, he goes on to state one of the reasons why the tech behind No Man's Sky works is because of the multi-threaded CPUs that exist in the consoles.

https://youtu.be/h-kifCYToAU?t=568

Even going on to say it scales with stronger hardware which makes less work for them. So I'd guess NMS isn't so much GPU bound but just more of a CPU bound and as you throw more power at the game, it would just let it keep up even more and generate more detail in terms of the LOD and objects being polygonized that much quicker.

I think the only time when more GPU grunt and high amounts of VRAM may needed is in the case of modding when higher resolution textures are involved (such as Minecraft's 2K and even 4K texture packs), the same principle applies to replacing the textures in a game such as Skyrim with higher res ones instead)

Although strangely enough one would think this might be a problem on the PS4 due to it's biggest setback as it's using a notebook based APU, which has relatively low clocks, I'd say it makes up for it by distributing the demand by spreading it across the available threads making NMS more a highly threaded solution.

This makes me wonder how NMS would run on something like an 8-Core i7 6900K.

In all seriousness I think it's mainly run on CPU side so those people claiming that it would be perfect for their 1070 and 1080 cards might be in for a surprise on just how little it takes to run for GPU.

In a way I would love to run this on PC but I still have issues with only having an i3 and do alot of web browsing and chatting more on it than gaming.

 

[SomTervo]

|OT| We already have an OT Title lined up.

|OT| The game will probably get more than one OT; your move

Hello Games is a British studio, so it would need to be MATHS EFFECT.

p.s. Edge magazine already used that as the title of their 2014 NMS article.
p.p.s. PS UK magazine used "Hello, Worlds" as the title of their NMS article a few months ago. I prefer the comma.
(don't want to link to the scans but they're out there)

Jesus I didn't realise any of this

And I'm from the UK!

'Mathematic Effect'

 

[SomTervo]

goddamn DPing, sorry

 

[Cheeseman Battitude]

I wonder how many gaffers are going PC vs PS4...

PS4 in case of a PSVR update. PC VR is too expensive but I'll probably get the PC version at some point for teh graffiks!

 

[Gruso]

Hello Games is a British studio, so it would need to be MATHS EFFECT.

I'm Aussie, therefore aligned with the objectively correct British mother tongue. But I think wordplay trumps semantics in this case, and Math Effect would be the perfect OT2 title.

 

[Santiako]

We've got to do a thread where everyone shares the planet they start on.

 

[soqquatto]

We've got to do a thread where everyone shares the planet they start on.

that's a very neat idea. +1 for you

 

[sirap]

Will get this on the PS4 for the sake of my sanity. If I got the Steam version, i'd be installing this on every PC and laptop I own...

 

[c0Zm1c]

We've got to do a thread where everyone shares the planet they start on.

Been thinking actually that the first thing I'll do is take screenshots of my first planet.

 

[Wrynnax]

I hope there's results for mixing plutonium with unknown new chemicals! I'm gonna get my mad scientist thing going on!

 

[RoadHazard]

GPU-wise this game doesn't look too demanding, the PS4 shouldn't have much of an issue running it at a stable 60. What's more demanding is the procedural generation constantly running, and if they had run that on the same CPU thread as the main gameplay logic that would've probably ruled out 60fps on the PS4. But thankfully, as that quote explains, they're smart enough to run the generation logic on a separate thread (or threads), which means that the gameplay can keep running smoothly even when the generation becomes more demanding. The latter will just keep chugging along on a background thread until it's done, and only then will you see the results. That will mean more obvious pop-in in some situations as the generation struggles to keep up, but it won't affect the fluidity of the gameplay.

 

[diaspora]

I'll probably be getting this on GOG for myself and picking up a Steam Link. I don't hate myself enough to play this gimped =/

 

[mrklaw]

How much faster is an average I5 CPU vs however many jaguar cores a dev gets access to on PS4?

 

[diaspora]

How much faster is an average I5 CPU vs however many jaguar cores a dev gets access to on PS4?

The average i3 beats it by a ridiculous margin.

 

[SomTervo]

We've got to do a thread where everyone shares the planet they start on.

Yes.

How much faster is an average I5 CPU vs however many jaguar cores a dev gets access to on PS4?

It's really, really unfortunate how poor the PS4 CPU is

I'm expecting the PC version of NMS to be a really polished and powerful experience while on PS4 it will be great obviously but with very unpleasant pop-in

I don't know anything about any review embargo for this game, considering how much press information is available on the game, playable previews back in May and whatnot, generally seems like Hello Games doesn't really care about information being withheld from this game, so an embargo of sorts doesn't seem likely.

That's the opposite of what it seems like! They've kept apparently a ton of information incredibly close to their chests! The May press previews were limited to half an hour of gameplay which is barely enough time to scrape fuel together and leave one single planet. It was just a taster session.

Specs seem pretty low

MINIMUM:
OS: Windows 7
Processor: Intel Core i3
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: nVidia GTX 480
Storage: 10 GB available space

8GB RAM is surprisingly high, espesh for the minimum spec. The only game I can think of that had RAM spec that high recently was Mirror's Edge, which is a total guzzler.

 

[SparkTR]

How much faster is an average I5 CPU vs however many jaguar cores a dev gets access to on PS4?

A large amount. That's the main reason why I'm getting it on PC, the major difference between PC and console games this generation (other than resolution and FPS) has been the LoD settings and often pop-in, not textures or effects or whatever else, and I imagine that's CPU related. You can see it with pretty much every open-ish multiplatform game, distant objects are more numerous, can be seen way further out and have way better detail on PC. Given the expansiveness and large view distance of this game I'd want to crank that up as far as it goes so I don't have to put up with any eyesores.

 

[OmegaDL50]

Things could be much worse. The PS4 version of NMS could have been very well limited very much how Minecraft on consoles world size is capped, rather than the near-limitless generation allowed with the PC version.

Seeing as most procedurally generated games are far more CPU bound rather than GPU bound, on the visual end of things there won't be a significant gap. The biggest difference however will how world is created. This will undoubtedly be more efficient on PC over the PS4. However, one doesn't need to hate themselves to play the PS4 version I feel some folks are overstating how significant the differences will be for No Man's Sky.

That's the opposite of what it seems like! They've kept apparently a ton of information incredibly close to their chests! The May press previews were limited to half an hour of gameplay which is barely enough time to scrape fuel together and leave one single planet. It was just a taster session..

Read quote chain. Hello Games have been far more forthcoming and honest on what we are expected to get with this game, rather than make false promises and gross exaggerations.

I don't think reviews for this game are going be embargoed release day unlike some companies that do this that act like they something to hide.

Hello Games seems like of one of the very last companies to intentionally withhold information in regards to the game back all for the sake of a review score.

 

[SomTervo]

Regarding the broader 'is it a galaxy or is it a universe' discussion:

It's pretty clear from the videos that it's a universe. Not a realistic one - it's a universe with a hot core, like a galaxy. It's a stylised universe. Of 18 quintillion planets. IIRC no galaxies have that many planets.

Watching the footage of Sean zooming around the map, it's pretty clear that what we would call 'galaxies' aren't in the game - it's all one gargantual spectrum of star systems, all the way to the center of the universe.

Then of course there are the points below:

Just watched this again, as well as the one released a week later with Anthony Carboni, and I just realized something I never paid attention to before.

Sean says the bright light is the center of the UNIVERSE, in BOTH videos. What are the odds that he accidentally said universe when he meant galaxy, twice?

I was sure it was the center of the galaxy we all start in, until now...

edit: This game needs to be out, right now.

1. 18 quintillion planets is bigger than any galaxy

2. The 'galaxy' thing was apparently a joke they forgot to rectify/follow through with, and it stuck

16 quintillion planets... there's gotta be a planet similar to earth

Yeah I mean... Statistically Earth (atmo, continents and all) probably will be rendered in there somewhere

 

[lcap]

Also from that video

Just looking at the thumbnails, the planets seem varied

I love the fact that they have to create these tools to have a better look on the procedurally generated planets, meaning even the dev don't have full control over the 'creation'.

The only 'gripe' I have on the procedural generation of the creatures is that I feel there is an extra layer of textures/details missing, the creatures end looking a bit like the characters from Evolva.

 

[tusken77]

Has this been posted before?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcEA41eBOGs

Super interesting. Thanks.

 

[barit]

Hello Games is a British studio, so it would need to be MATHS EFFECT.

p.s. Edge magazine already used that as the title of their 2014 NMS article.
p.p.s. PS UK magazine used "Hello, Worlds" as the title of their NMS article a few months ago. I prefer the comma.
(don't want to link to the scans but they're out there)

Great. So both of the best OT suggestions are already used. Hope Legacyofzero finds a new one ;P

Spoiler

or whoever makes the OT for this game

 

[Alienous]

Great. So both of the best OT suggestions are already used. Hope Legacyofzero finds a new one ;P

Spoiler

or whoever makes the OT for this game

Panic mode.

Uh.

No Man's Sky |OT| Yes Woman's Ground.

 

[Gattsu25]

that's a very neat idea. +1 for you

I have a cool idea for the start of the name of the thread:
No Man's Sky |OT|

 

[irrotational]

Quite a few topics rolling around:-

On earth existing (probabilistically) - it all depends on how varied the "space" is that planets can be simulated from. For example if you restricted them to all have Air, blue water and greenish land then you might need much less than 18 quintillion to get something pretty close to earth. If you let them take all colours of the spectrum, vary by size, etc etc you might be able to have enough variation to not generate an earth after 18 quintillion.

Universe versus galaxy - IMHO it only matters if they can make galaxies different from each other in fundamental ways...ways that are more fundamental than they can make different systems. I think the only way they can do that would be to turn some very fundamental rules on and off (e.g. not every system has a star). I think within the galaxy they HAVE said that there is progression towards the core. Therefore whatever seeds they are using in the starting galactic map, they have ordered them in space, somehow, to give a sense of that progression.

CPU versus draw distance - Sean has showed a debug video where the player cam can move faster than the PS4 CPU could generate terrain - he went off into a white mist. The game seemed very robust in this situation and didn't seem bothered that nothing existed to look at.

I think it's very likely that the inverse is true and the CPU will generate "things" as soon as it can and tell the GPU to render them. So IMHO pop in should be less on PC. Unless they have hardcoded it or something strange.

 

[SomTervo]

|OT| You Can't Take The Sky From Me
|OT| It's Full Of Stars

Beaten on both, I'm afraid

Spoiler

The first one was by me at least

Quite a few topics rolling around:-

On earth existing (probabilistically) - it all depends on how varied the "space" is that planets can be simulated from. For example if you restricted them to all have Air, blue water and greenish land then you might need much less than 18 quintillion to get something pretty close to earth. If you let them take all colours of the spectrum, vary by size, etc etc you might be able to have enough variation to not generate an earth after 18 quintillion.

IDK, man, 18 quintillion planets is how many planets there are in thousands of galaxies in our real universe - and we already know there are some near-Earth planets in the Milky Way alone. I think the chances are high an Earth-analog will exist.

The chances of finding it, though? Pfft.

Universe versus galaxy - IMHO it only matters if they can make galaxies different from each other in fundamental ways

IMO, you don't even need to get this far in your thinking. There's only one map - or there only needs to be.

1. From everything shown it is one giant map. Not multiple little maps, i.e. galaxies. Unless we enter other seeds once we hit the universe's core... Which would be fucking insane.

2. There will be plenty variation on the base map:

We know that the closer you get to the universe's centre, the more the game's algorithms warp and generate more far-out results. Near the core, atmos will be weirder and more extreme, planet shapes will be weirder, animal life will be weirder, etc etc.

 

[ichtyander]

Took a shot at making PS4 box covers, here's a couple:

A few more here. Imgur refuses to upload the higher res versions (these are half the size) so I'll upload them somewhere later.

EDIT:
Here are the higher res images.

 

[diaspora]

Sweet Christmas

 

[soqquatto]

Took a shot at making PS4 box covers, here's a couple:


A few more here. Imgur refuses to upload the higher res versions (these are half the size) so I'll upload them somewhere later.

is that from chris foss? it's a bit like cheating... I love that

 

[Karspankey]

Took a shot at making PS4 box covers, here's a couple:


A few more here. Imgur refuses to upload the higher res versions (these are half the size) so I'll upload them somewhere later.

Damn, those are amazing!

 

[dalin80]

I think there are multiple galaxies, my guess is when you get to the centre of the 'prime' galaxy you are teleported to another where your username is used as the seed.

Essentially a galaxy you created and are kind of its God.

 

[somme]

From what we've seen, it isn't much, of the galactic map it seems as though the whole mess of stars are just in one giant galaxy/universe. Rather than spread out into specific smaller galaxies.

Hope they are small galaxies though. You'd have to make sure you had enough resources to make the jump from one galaxy to the next.

Would give it a great SGU vibe.

 

[OmegaDL50]

Took a shot at making PS4 box covers, here's a couple:


A few more here. Imgur refuses to upload the higher res versions (these are half the size) so I'll upload them somewhere later.

I had to share this with the Hello Game's team. really awesome quality stuff.

https://twitter.com/OmegaDL50/status/752842133351137280

I need to credit you for the work somehow though.

 

[ichtyander]

Sweet Christmas

Damn, those are amazing!

is that from chris foss? it's a bit like cheating... I love that

Thanks! Hahah, yeah, I mixed them up a little to see how Chris Foss art would work with that layout.

I had to share this with the Hello Game's team. really awesome quality stuff.

https://twitter.com/OmegaDL50/status/752842133351137280

I need to credit you for the work somehow though.

Thank you very much, I was planning on posting one myself later, so it's all good.

 

[daveo42]

Any word on if they'll ship this out to reviewers? I'd assume Sony would be pushing hard to get more press on this game on its run up to launch.

I wonder how many gaffers are going PC vs PS4...

I could probably play on PC based on the min spec, but I've got it pre-ordered on PS4 and will mostly play it there. Might rebuy on PC later once I've upgraded and/or when it's on sale.

 

[Danlord]

We've got to do a thread where everyone shares the planet they start on.

Me and my friend both agreed to do that too, great minds eh. I'll share both of our first ever moment in no man's sky in the appropriate thread. No doubt there'll be a Photo Mode thread. The game is too beautiful and has an option to hide ui so perfect got screenshots

 

[SomTervo]

I think there are multiple galaxies, my guess is when you get to the centre of the 'prime' galaxy you are teleported to another where your username is used as the seed.

Essentially a galaxy you created and are kind of its God.

fffuuuuuuuck

 

[OmegaDL50]

I wonder how they programming the crash mechanics for the space ship.

I mean some of the staff are former Burnout devs right?

I remember reading something like trying to land in water would crash the ship.

There are other things like accidently hitting a Asteroid or doing a failed landing.

 

[SomTervo]

I wonder how they programming the crash mechanics for the space ship.

I mean some of the staff are former Burnout devs right?

I remember reading something like trying to land in water would crash the ship.

There are other things like accidently hitting a Asteroid or doing a failed landing.

I'm pretty sure they also said there are upgrades to get your ship underwater.

Also I'm pretty sure it's impossible to 'fail' a landing - you hit the button to land or... You don't land and you just bump into stuff

 

[ogbg]

Yes of course, the resolution will be much better. But I don't think it's going to look significantly better unless they've got some crazy hi-res texture generation we haven't seen yet. But bottom line this game is going to look great on both PS4 and PC, and run at a smooth 60fps.

Going higher res isn't about textures, it's about AA

 

[Onemic]

Will NMS support HOTAS?

 

[JP]

Definitely the PS4 version for me.

Not really related to this but I do hope that Hello Games are using measures in the PC version that minimise the chances of PC gamers cheating their way to the centre of the universe. I know it'd be a tiny minority of people but there will surely be people out there who have completed that journey almost instantly and spoil a lot of the surprises of the game.

I do hope that if it does happen that people don't post things on here.

Does anybody know if Hello Games have talked about this? It was the only real concern that I had when it was announced as a PC game also.

 

[SomTervo]

Will NMS support HOTAS?

Really doubtful IMO, although possibly moddable on PC. Murray is on-record saying he fully supports the modding community and would rather give them all the freedom to do what they want.

If it supports HOTAS out the box I'll be insanely happy - just got a Thrustmaster 4 the other week.

 

[Danlord]

Welp, here's a quick and dirty book cover attempt, looked through some old sci-fi book covers and basically most of them have these thick, large fonts for the title, so I decided to use a font that's a bit more reminiscent of the time, instead of the original thin NMS logo font.

EDIT:
BTW, not my intention to hijack the thread or anything, was simply inspired by something More_Badass said so I wanted to try what an NMS book cover might look like, that's all.

Sean Murray has commented on your cover, he likes it