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No Man's Sky gets released like, soon, I guess ¯\_()_/¯

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I'm sorry to be a dumbass, but where did we land on the whole "pc version delayed 3 days in the US"?

No updates. I maintain that this is nonsense panic over someone's mistake when updating the page to include the worldwide release date. As it is written currently, it would suggest a delay on PC, and no PS4 release in the rest of the world, which is clearly inaccurate.
 
No updates. I maintain that this is nonsense panic over someone's mistake when updating the page to include the worldwide release date. As it is written currently, it would suggest a delay on PC, and no PS4 release in the rest of the world, which is clearly inaccurate.

I'm sure dozens if not hundreds of people have tweeted asking, there have been articles, reddit threads, this thread... ugh, why won't they just clear up the confusion.
 
I assume you people are watching the original god-tier Cosmos as well, not just the modern one? Some of the science is a tad out of date, but Sagan's poetry and the dreamy synth presentation is timeless.
 
I assume you people are watching the original god-tier Cosmos as well, not just the modern one? Some of the science is a tad out of date, but Sagan's poetry and the dreamy synth presentation is timeless.

This is the correct Cosmos. Sagan is genius level, and highly under-recognized IMO.
 
I just noticed the faceplate is coming out in 2 days!
71H6ekgSUAL.jpg
 
Watching Brian Cox docs always makes me feel like I'm on an awkward date with him and he's trying to impress me so I'll go up to his place and "see his etchings" later.

Haha it's not for everyone for sure. But his enthusiasm and his analogies I really like. Gets me super inspired. But I understand he's a bit like marmite. You either love him or hate him xD


On topic I've just been paid and dropped my money on psn version as well as pc version now. Got myself a physical copy from simply games who have sent copies to me early before. In the vain hope I might get it a few days earlier.
 
I'm very curious about staying on my starter planet for at least a full day and night cycle to see if anything crazy comes out at night.

Has anything been said about how long a cycle takes? Since we can see it from orbit I'm guessing we will have realtime transitions, but as everything will continue to rotate whilst not playing we should be able to jump in and experience various times that way?

Might even have planets with multiple suns so it never gets dark. Hype
 
i'm curious to see if there are moon phases.

right now we only saw "full moons", but it will be cool if there will be moon phases and eclipses too

I would imagine almost certainly. When you look at planets and moons in the video, they're lit according to their positions in relation to their sun. We know there are day/night cycles because of how bodies rotate. I'm sure you can see different phases in screenshots.

The real question though is: will planets and moons orbit? Orbit actually changes how the light will look on one body from another or from deep space, which would determine its "phase." Do we even know if planets and moons can be tidally locked in NMS? In any case, I imagine most people probably won't remain on planets long enough to actually see them orbit by a significant degree.
 
Has anything been said about how long a cycle takes? Since we can see it from orbit I'm guessing we will have realtime transitions, but as everything will continue to rotate whilst not playing we should be able to jump in and experience various times that way?

Might even have planets with multiple suns so it never gets dark. Hype

I don't think Sean has said anything more about how long the cycles take, but he did say that the planets orbit around their stars. I imagine that depending on the distance between the planet and the star will determine how long the day/night cycle takes. What I'm curious about is how fast they've timed the orbits. Will it be on a sped up time like a lot of open world games with day/night cycles (where you can go through a cycle in about 24 real time minutes, for example), or will it be longer cycles, where could literally take hours or more of real time for a planet to make a complete cycle.

One of the things I'm also looking forward to doing, and that has to do with the leaked video posted earlier in the thread, is flying from the day side of the planet to the night side of the planet. You could see the dark side of the planet as he was flying towards it, and he chose to land on the day side, but closer to late day, so the sun was in a really nice position, and that caused the atmosphere to have a really nice affect on it.
 
Maybe i missed it in the deluge of info so far, but do planets/oceans have tides that change do we know?
Would be quite cool to have tidal areas only accessible at certain lunar times.. hah.. Maybe thats asking a bit much?
 
I don't think Sean has said anything more about how long the cycles take, but he did say that the planets orbit around their stars. I imagine that depending on the distance between the planet and the star will determine how long the day/night cycle takes. What I'm curious about is how fast they've timed the orbits. Will it be on a sped up time like a lot of open world games with day/night cycles (where you can go through a cycle in about 24 real time minutes, for example), or will it be longer cycles, where could literally take hours or more of real time for a planet to make a complete cycle.

Yeah, that's a good question. I think if they had very accelerated day/night cycles we might see that visibly from space in the demo footage – on a 24-minute rotation for instance, the planet would have to rotate 15 degrees per minute to make a full revolution.

If we look at this IGN video (about 12:10 in), we can see Sean heading straight for a planet for about 30 seconds. In that time it didn't seem to rotate at all. That doesn't really tell us a lot, but I don't think the day/night cycles are as short as most open world games at least.

I hope they are realistic. But it sounds like the Art Director has had heavy influence in how the universe operates, and so although it seems like Sean would rather make everything more realistic, they have made many compromises for aesthetics and gameplay. So I'm personally trying to keep my expectations in check about how extensively they've simulated things.
 
Help me Gaf... I'm honestly super conflicted about refunding my GOG copy and getting this for PS4.

My computer is high end, and i'm a pretty big performance whore when it comes to games. Like Witcher 3. I bought it for PS4 because the footage looked fine from it beforehand, but the performance was abysmal at launch. I watched my brother play on his PC with a medium end build and it just ran so much better. I traded in my PS4 copy and got for PC. No regrets as it looks insane on PC.

For this game though, its not this crazy graphic heavy game with extra physic based performance. All the footage thus far has shown Sean playing it with a PS4 controller. Sony is backing this hard as we all know so I'll assume they are having him use their console as the demo machine for it all. (hoping anyway) Game looks incredible and i'm super excited for it from the footage. 1080p60fps confirmed for PS4 makes me all giddy and being able to play it on my system without having to move my computer around is another huge bonus.

I hardly ever play my PS4, and i'm basically only keeping it around for FF XV at this point. Ive played like 4 games on it ever and I bought it on the day it came out because it was the first time in my life ive been able afford a day 1 purchase of something like that.

The big thing is controlling a ship. The game seems half shooter half driving (flying) game. KB&M is by far better for first person, but that seems to be such a minor thing in this game as it is, and a controller would be much better for the driving aspect of the game. If I keep my PC version i'll most likely keep my PS4 plugged into it and just switch between the two depending on what I am doing.

Should I just instead get it for PS4 now, then once I finally realize what a masterpiece this game is, buy it again on PC for the modding capabilities :D

TL;DR - Convince me to refund my PC pre-order and go pre-order for PS4 today :D
 
I have been hyped for this game for years. But, there is one thing that really bothers me is the whole no multiple biomes (desert, forest, grassland, tundra, etc) on the same planet issue. My reason for this is because although you have a massive planet to explore, if everything generally looks the same where I'm standing as it does 500 miles from there, why do a lot of exploring?

Now the standard response to this is "the game has millions of planets, you aren't meant to hang around on one for a very long time.". Okay, fair enough, and that's fine BUT I believe we've been told that 1 out of every 10 planets will have simple life (a few plants) and 1 out of 100 will have complex life (animals, etc) that means that only 1% of the planets you find will be full of life. So it would be much cooler to have a compelling reason to actually explore a lot of a world full of life once you finally find one.

Anyone else feel this way? I certainly don't want to spend hours until I find my first full of life planet only to feel that I've seen it all in a few minutes and it's time to move on.

I kind of agree with this. With planets having one dominant look and weather type, I'm not sure it's really necessary to explore a planet for very long.

Granted, you may want to search to find minerals, or ruins, but unfortunately the appearance of the planet you are on may not vary much during the exploration.

Which overall is fine with me I guess, since I will probably not want to spend much time on each planet. I plan to get what is needed and quickly move on.
 
I kind of agree with this. With planets having one dominant look and weather type, I'm not sure it's really necessary to explore a planet for very long.
Which is by design for that very reason. Sean has said single biomes and weather, along with the lack of base building, are all meant to encourage players to keep moving rather than sticking around on one planet
 
TL;DR - Convince me to refund my PC pre-order and go pre-order for PS4 today :D

I'm not seeing many reasons in your post to switch TBH.

PC will likely have improved resolution (4K), frame rate (120fps) and mods likely being the main differentiators.

So it really depends on how much that means VS the console experience. (Controller, faster to get into game from boot, trophies, taking pics/videos easy, couch etc)
 
I'm not seeing many reasons in your post to switch TBH.

PC will likely have improved resolution (4K), frame rate (120fps) and mods likely being the main differentiators.

So it really depends on how much that means VS the console experience. (Controller, faster to get into game from boot, trophies, taking pics/videos easy, couch etc)

Let's go 21:9!

I vote you stay on PC!
 
I'm not seeing many reasons in your post to switch TBH.

PC will likely have improved resolution (4K), frame rate (120fps) and mods likely being the main differentiators.

So it really depends on how much that means VS the console experience. (Controller, faster to get into game from boot, trophies, taking pics/videos easy, couch etc)

4k seems like a given, but I'm not so sure ultra wide or high refresh rates will be supported out of the box. This is a small dev team with not a lot of PC-focused development experience, working on a game that uses a very unique approach to rendering the world that seems highly-performance dependent. I could easily see NMS releasing locked to 60fps and no ultrawide at release. Though ultrawide should be a trivial enough fix (either officially or unofficially). It'd be great if they supported a whole bunch of tweaking day 1, but I'm not really expecting a whole lot.
 
I wonder if people will try to mod in a pseudo multiplayer for PC, kind of like JC2 or San Andreas Multiplayer. Would be quite impressive and I have a feeling someone is.
 
I notice that if you preorder you get a few starting 'boosts':
Upgraded Alpha Vector Ship
Your ship is your transport to the stars. Begin your epic voyage with this Alpha Vector attack ship. It’s upgraded with lasers for protection and a hyperdrive that allows you to jump to the nearest solar systems right from the very beginning.

10,000 unit starting boost
Your journey will be filled with danger but 10,000 units will give you a head start in your race to the center of the universe. Use your units to buy faster ships and better weapons, or purchase exotic resources.

Anyone else like me never use these things? They really upset the balance of the early game. Often with games such as this its the slow progression, starting with nothing, that is the appeal - not about reaching the end goal. Seems strange to cheat through the early stages of the game.
I'd be quite happy for it to take an hour or two before you can launch into space from the first planet!
 
I notice that if you preorder you get a few starting 'boosts':


Anyone else like me never use these things? They really upset the balance of the early game. Often with games such as this its the slow progression, starting with nothing, that is the appeal - not about reaching the end goal. Seems strange to cheat through the early stages of the game.
I'd be quite happy for it to take an hour or two before you can launch into space from the first planet!

Totally agree, I went out of my way to avoid those bonuses.
 
I notice that if you preorder you get a few starting 'boosts':


Anyone else like me never use these things? They really upset the balance of the early game. Often with games such as this its the slow progression, starting with nothing, that is the appeal - not about reaching the end goal. Seems strange to cheat through the early stages of the game.
I'd be quite happy for it to take an hour or two before you can launch into space from the first planet!

Kinda depends on how much of work it is to upgrade the default starting ships lasers and shields to same power level and how long it takes to earn 10k units at the beginning. It could be somewhere between "hey cool" and "I lost the entire early game" as we really don't know anything about the game.
 
I noticed two things no one is talking about, one in the latest trailer and one that's been in every trailer:

1: In the latest trailer we see the player enter a room on the spacestation. On entering, the save location is automatically activated when in all other trailers you have to approach it and activate it yourself. Why would that happen? If you take a close look at it and pause it, you'll see something materialising. Could that be another player? Are those save points also fast travels for a particular solar system?

2: When exiting the solar system map an oblong icon appears in the top left of the screen. This isn't there when you're in the solar system. What's more, only one of the two lights are lit. This is only speculation but I believe it indicates that this galactic mad is only one level of the map. I think that when we get to the centre of the galaxy we are give the option to travel to other galaxies. We're then given another map (two lights) that is the map of the universe and then each of those dots of light become a galaxy rather than a solar system.
 
1-i think it's just an animation, not a autosave

2- i can't really find out where to look.is it still in trade trailer?

I'm still convinced the save stations are fast travel locations too. It's just impractically too big for a save station and the fact it's tubular and human sized suggests you can enter it for some reason.

Those icons appear on the top left every time you enter the galactic map. One light comes on but there's room for two lights, which suggests to me there's another layer of the map, and we know it's not the solar system map because it doesn't show up there.

Is there a really hassle free site I can join that allows me to upload screen grabs, and what's the best app for grabbing screenshots?
 
thanks.

i've watched 3 or 4 videos but this is the only one with that

I'm trying to imagine how that universe map would look. At first I thought it would just be points of light like the galactic mad but now I'm inclined to believe it could be formations of stars with less of them on the map:

This when one is lit up:

And this when both are lit up. Only accessible once you get to the centre of the galaxy:

 
Kinda feel like if there's any game that's really going to take advantage of my home projector/surround sound then it's this one, i just really hope it's not going to be a let down
 
Which is by design for that very reason. Sean has said single biomes and weather, along with the lack of base building, are all meant to encourage players to keep moving rather than sticking around on one planet

Which is why I am glad this is implemented. I know me, I would stick around far longer than I should, and/or feel I would have missed something if I left.

Base building should be left for your ship, and whatever goes with you.
 
Top left, oblong shaped with one light on the right hand side and room for another on the left:

https://youtu.be/D-uMFHoF8VA?t=20m44s

If you look closely frame by frame, the first circle turns into kind of a rotating crosshair/broken circle, kinda like a loading indicator, but it looks kinda like the selection lines that appear around the selected star.


There have been mentions that the galaxy map has three levels of zoom (completely zoomed out where you see the entire galaxy, middle zoom where you see the stars (what we've been seeing in all previews) and a star system zoom where you can see the individual planets you've explored in that system). So I'm thinking the first circle either shows up/changes shape depending on the zoom mode, maybe it's a loading indicator, or it shows it's in "selection mode", and another pretty simple explanation might be that the the entire oblong shape is a collapsed UI element, and all that second dot represents is a "visual pin" that indicates you can expand it. Maybe that shows the galactic minimap, or even more detailed information depending on what's selected and what's the current zoom mode.

EDIT:
BTW, regarding your software question, on PC I generally use Lightshot for taking screenshots (Shift+PrtScrn automatically takes a fullscreen screenshot and saves a file, and PrtScrn activates an overlay where you choose a screen region, some additional options, so you can copy or save the selected region etc. Once I save or copy to clipboard (just Ctrl+C) the image I want, I usually go to imgur and either drag & drop the image file or just Ctrl+V to paste the copied image from the clipboard.
 
If you look closely frame by frame, the first circle turns into kind of a rotating crosshair/broken circle, kinda like a loading indicator, but it looks kinda like the selection lines that appear around the selected star.



There have been mentions that the galaxy map has three levels of zoom (completely zoomed out where you see the entire galaxy, middle zoom where you see the stars (what we've been seeing in all previews) and a star system zoom where you can see the individual planets you've explored in that system). So I'm thinking the first circle either shows up/changes shape depending on the zoom mode, maybe it's a loading indicator, or it shows it's in "selection mode", and another pretty simple explanation might be that the the entire oblong shape is a collapsed UI element, and all that second dot represents is a "visual pin" that indicates you can expand it. Maybe that shows the galactic minimap, or even more detailed information depending on what's selected and what's the current zoom mode.

EDIT:
BTW, regarding your software question, on PC I generally use Lightshot for taking screenshots (Shift+PrtScrn automatically takes a fullscreen screenshot and saves a file, and PrtScrn activates an overlay where you choose a screen region, some additional options, so you can copy or save the selected region etc. Once I save or copy to clipboard (just Ctrl+C) the image I want, I usually go to imgur and either drag & drop the image file or just Ctrl+V to paste the copied image from the clipboard.

Mmmm ... this seems to be a far more compelling theory than mine so for now I'm going to have to consider this the likely answer.

And thanks for the screenshot advice.
 
Help me Gaf... I'm honestly super conflicted about refunding my GOG copy and getting this for PS4.
TL;DR - Convince me to refund my PC pre-order and go pre-order for PS4 today :D

You're missing a very important factor.

Draw distance.

In procedural games, the majority of the loading and asset handling takes place on the CPU. It needs thousands of clicks to read the procedural generation algorithm and handle each 'voxel' that the algorithm defines.

That's why draw distance (or LoD rather) has been so choppy in previous videos. Flying over a planet it's clear where things are materialising into existence. The reason it's choppy is that the PS4 has a pretty weak (and awkward to use) CPU. It's the console's worst bottleneck in terms of performance.

Play on PC and, chances are, you'll be able to boost draw distance in the menu, because your CPU (even if it's mediocre) is probably significantly better than the PS4 one. PC should, in theory, be able to draw the planets and gameworlds faster and up to a significantly greater distance than the PS4 version.
 
You're missing a very important factor.

Draw distance.

In procedural games, the majority of the loading and asset handling takes place on the CPU. It needs thousands of clicks to read the procedural generation algorithm and handle each 'voxel' that the algorithm defines.

That's why draw distance (or LoD rather) has been so choppy in previous videos. Flying over a planet it's clear where things are materialising into existence. The reason it's choppy is that the PS4 has a pretty weak (and awkward to use) CPU. It's the console's worst bottleneck in terms of performance.

Play on PC and, chances are, you'll be able to boost draw distance in the menu, because your CPU (even if it's mediocre) is probably significantly better than the PS4 one. PC should, in theory, be able to draw the planets and gameworlds faster and up to a significantly greater distance than the PS4 version.

All of this hinges on the engine not having limitations of its own. I'm not saying don't expect better draw distance but if some of the footage we've seen before was running off a PC build, then definitely don't expect it to be drawn practically out of sight. I expect rather hideous draw in on my 4790k personally going by the footage we've been shown before.
 
I noticed two things no one is talking about, one in the latest trailer and one that's been in every trailer:

1: In the latest trailer we see the player enter a room on the spacestation. On entering, the save location is automatically activated when in all other trailers you have to approach it and activate it yourself. Why would that happen? If you take a close look at it and pause it, you'll see something materialising. Could that be another player? Are those save points also fast travels for a particular solar system?

2: When exiting the solar system map an oblong icon appears in the top left of the screen. This isn't there when you're in the solar system. What's more, only one of the two lights are lit. This is only speculation but I believe it indicates that this galactic mad is only one level of the map. I think that when we get to the centre of the galaxy we are give the option to travel to other galaxies. We're then given another map (two lights) that is the map of the universe and then each of those dots of light become a galaxy rather than a solar system.

to 1.:
Its either just an Animation that plays once you get near it OR, and this addresses the general shape of it, what if, when you die, you don't just "respawn" but simply get "reconstructed" from say, a DNA profile you saved at this station before?
 
I watched the first 2 mins if I understand correctly the guy was judging the game just by the size of the game on the disc ?

Kind of reminds of a time years ago folks had no concept of data storage or compression when Skyrim first came out, and assumed because the base game with none of the expansion content was a mere 6GB the world was somehow smaller.

It's the same nonsense some folks assumed years ago during the PSX and PS2 era that because a game was on two discs rather than one thought the game world was larger and had a complete disregard that large fmv and texture assets were the reason why the game required multiple physical media to store the game and not because of the world size.
 
to 1.:
Its either just an Animation that plays once you get near it OR, and this addresses the general shape of it, what if, when you die, you don't just "respawn" but simply get "reconstructed" from say, a DNA profile you saved at this station before?

What would be the point if it was 'just an animation'? And you have to actually activate it for it to save, as seen in the IGN footage. It's obviously there for a reason.

He walked into the room so it's clearly not him materialising after he'd died. We've been told it's a save point and clearly what we're seeing isn't him saving because he's not even close to it. Something else is going on there and I think it's the reason the save point is stupidly big for its needs. I think it's fast travel and what you're seeing there is either another player materialising or another faction member materialising.
 
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