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No Man's Sky went gold
- Thread starter Nibel
- Start date
Yeah, 128 meters is still deep. It's just the fact that, in theory, with a whole procedurally generated planet, you could blow a hole right through it and fly out the other side. One of the boons of using procedural generation is that you can simulate really huge objects.
Sort of takes the wind out my sails knowing it's not really a huge planet, it's just a big flat spherical crust.
Sangetsu-II
Member
Probably because your gun isn't strong enough to break bedrock I guess. Otherwise if you broke through the core of the planet it would implode.
I hope it doesn't mean that oceans can only be 128m deep, but maybe oceans/ water are considered to be "on top" of the crust anyway.
Imagine... near Abyssal depths, and a cavern -under it- if you dig.
Mmmh.
Not sure that would work, or how...
More_Badass
Member
If I understand it correctly, in Minecraft, 1 block equals 1 meter. Each level of blocks is a layer, and the world is 128 layers, with sealevel at 64 and bedrock at 0. According to the wiki, ravine walls tend to be 30-60 blocks/meters high
So a depth of 128 meters is no joke. Imagine how massive a ravine or deep a cave can be in NMS
There's generally a pretty good reason why you should only drill so far into the core of a planet, right?
Yeah, the lizard/mole people don't take kindly to intruders.
Now why you had to go and tell me that?
Now all I can think if is large flying crusts.
I think I may have to refund my GOG order and get this on Steam via Hello Games. I have different computers I want to play this game on at different times. Hello Games has said many times that they will keep a record of discoveries on their servers, but have they ever gone into how that's accomplished?
Are the universes on PSN and PC different? This would seem unlikely as the scale is unprecedented. We will all be required to create a Hello Games account if we want to upload our discoveries? Will there be stored ship and character information on their servers or is that 100% local?
I basically am wondering if I create a ship on one computer, what do I need to do to continue that journey on another computer. Simple matter of copying a save file, or will some login suffice.
I'm guessing local save file due to being able to play 100% offline if necessary.
If I missed this being discussed elsewhere I apologize, but I find that unlikely as my hype train is nearing maximum velocity right now....
Are the universes on PSN and PC different? This would seem unlikely as the scale is unprecedented. We will all be required to create a Hello Games account if we want to upload our discoveries? Will there be stored ship and character information on their servers or is that 100% local?
I basically am wondering if I create a ship on one computer, what do I need to do to continue that journey on another computer. Simple matter of copying a save file, or will some login suffice.
I'm guessing local save file due to being able to play 100% offline if necessary.
If I missed this being discussed elsewhere I apologize, but I find that unlikely as my hype train is nearing maximum velocity right now....
If you're logged in to steam on your account on any computer, the save file should upload to the "cloud" which can be accessed on any computer as long as you're signed in to steam. I'm assuming this is how it works.
semiconscious
Gold Member
seriously: if something like that can actually take the wind out of your sails, you might be best off just rowing from now on
...ThirdNostril
Banned
eyeball_kid
Member
I think the bolded is just speculation at this point. In fact we've heard many times about how the proc gen algorithms for a particular part take into account the environment around it, whether that be planetary formation based on its star, the form of a model based on the environment, the type of creature skin based on closeness to a star, etc. NMS is not just randomization of compatible parts.
More broadly, I just want to get a lot of the geeky scientific data about planets and stars and are probably pulling strings behind the scenes but we don't get access to. I'd like to see more than a star's class, or a planet's temperature. When there's no real narrative, grounding players in the universe becomes more important for immersion so that they feel like they're making their own stories.
Does the depth limitation mean it has that same height limitation as well? As people have mentioned, does each planet only have a "band" of 128 meters?
That would be a serious bummer. I was hoping for the potential of real mountains and Grand Canyon sized drops, or (again, as people have mentioned) majorly deep ravines in the ocean.
Or, best case scenario, you are limited to 128 meters of deformable terrain from the surface, regardless of its original level.
What started as a one off question for me may actually be the first bad news for me about the game....
That would be a serious bummer. I was hoping for the potential of real mountains and Grand Canyon sized drops, or (again, as people have mentioned) majorly deep ravines in the ocean.
Or, best case scenario, you are limited to 128 meters of deformable terrain from the surface, regardless of its original level.
What started as a one off question for me may actually be the first bad news for me about the game....
If I purchased it from Steam and the game files were local. Is this confirmed? I know its likely the case, still not sure though.
Lets say on PS4 then. Is it linked to a PSN account? Do you have to PS+ to upload your discoveries?
I should note that I would much prefer to buy from GOG as I love their stance in the current market and try to support them as much as I can, hence why I pre-purchased from them months ago.
I've decided not to use the DLC ship at the beginning of No Man's Sky.
Because in a interview with Sean that was posted in here several pages ago, he said that it would be hard to leave the planet, and even harder to leave the star system.
And i don't want to rob myself of that experience.
Because in a interview with Sean that was posted in here several pages ago, he said that it would be hard to leave the planet, and even harder to leave the star system.
And i don't want to rob myself of that experience.
Bah. Thanks, though.
There will definitely be exploits and bugs. The team is small for such a vast game, so there's always stuff that could break.
If you, me and other players will use these exploits, that's up to each one of us.
Hello loot cave!
The discoveries go to the NMS servers unless you're playing completely offline. They're stored on their servers because that's how I can see what you named a planet.
Though, I don't know if you need PS+ to play online. I'm not sure is Sony considers NMS as an "online" game or not.
This is how it works
On PSN you need to have PS+ in order to play multiplayer games online (and even upload saves to the cloud).
However, some games are exempt from needing PS+ to play online, usually the Free-To-Play ones like War Thunder.
I'm not sure at this moment if NMS requires PS+ in order to upload your discoveries to their servers or not. Most likely not, but you never know.
exmachina64
Banned
You have to know that it's not possible to simulate that currently, right? You didn't actually think they were actively simulating the entire structure of 18 QUINTILLION PLANETS, did you?
The only problem with that is. I pre-ordered it on GOG, so i'm a bit worried about that.Yeah I'm the same. Hopefully you have to redeem it via a code and it's not just given to you without your consent.
Felipe Simao
Member
The worrysome part about not being able to dig very deep is the fact that this means that oceans will probably be very shallow. In the trailers we onlt seen small oceans with islands everywhere. I know there are planets that are only made of water but I doubt we will find something like earth, where we have these gigantic masses of land surrounded by huge and deep oceans. Other thing that concerns me is the sense of scale in the game. I mean, I haven't played xenoblade but those huge draw distances and very tall structures give the player a feeling that he is very small compared to the world. I'm not seeing this on no man's sky. I already bought the game but I would like to see very tall mountains and vast, deep oceans
Also, do you guys think we will be able to get close to the suns?
Also, do you guys think we will be able to get close to the suns?
somme
Member
Really? You've seen the galactic map right? And the size of the planets?
Felipe Simao
Member
Yeah, i've seen it all. The sense of scale in space is pretty incredible. Planets are huge and space stations look awesome. The galatic map is also great.
My only concern is the sence of scale within a planet. I just wish I could get on the edge of a super tall cliff and look at the rest of the planet spreading miles and miles ahead. I guess draw distance would be an issue tho. Maybe the "wanderers" mini movie spoiled me too much.
But aside from that is looking pretty great. Very much looking foward to it.
So question about the game:
Can you build bases on planets? Like one thing I could easily see myself losing thousands of hours in is a Fallout 4 settlement like system where you build bases on the planets.
(I'm pre-ordering either way, just occurred to me that this would make me lose a good chunk of my gaming time haha)
EDIT: Nevermind, I'm dumb. Soon as I posted this I actually found an answer on it. Unfortunately doesn't seem like it's a thing in the game, but that's cool.
Can you build bases on planets? Like one thing I could easily see myself losing thousands of hours in is a Fallout 4 settlement like system where you build bases on the planets.
(I'm pre-ordering either way, just occurred to me that this would make me lose a good chunk of my gaming time haha)
EDIT: Nevermind, I'm dumb. Soon as I posted this I actually found an answer on it. Unfortunately doesn't seem like it's a thing in the game, but that's cool.
You're right - the size of a two-story house alone is usually like 6-7 meters, so 128 is actually a lot more than it sounds.
In honesty it probably wont be noticable. I just miss the idea of pointing my ship straight at the ground and blowing a huge hole into/through the planet.
I did. Why not? How about 9 quintillion planets with proper rendering throughout? Equally impossible? It's honestly not a leap when you're dealing with numbers like 18 quintillion.
And with procedural generation it's just maths. The centre of the planet wouldn't be rendered until you got near it. Just like the rest of the universe.
That was part of the entire appeal. The "these are entire planets" narrative.
Probably for performance reasons, also this seems to be 2x as deep as Minecraft so that's quite deep (although meassurements between the two games might be different of course)
Besides, on PC I'm sure somebody will mess with the code to allow for much deeper if itsn't hardcoded.
GribbleGrunger
Dreams in Digital
AFAIK that was never on the table in the first place. Blowing a huge hole through a planet with the approximate mass of any celestial planetary body is... insane.
Again, it wouldnt be rendered until the player draws near it. Performance isn't an issue. It's about how complex the algorithm is.
You're right about modding, though. That's a nice thought.
Oh not at all, i'm spitballing that
I've never been potholing but I'm still impressed with Earth
Let's find out how deep the earth is rendered
More_Badass
Member
Put it this way. From the lowest level of Minecraft all the way to highest altitude is how deep the landscape in No Man's Sky goes. 128 meters deep. Minecraft is 128 meters from underground to sky
Yeah so minecraft is 64 deep and NMS is 128?
More_Badass
Member
If you can dig down 128 meters, that's the sense I'm getting. Of course Minecraft could be on a different scale, but it works as a rough metric estimate
Whiteblade999
Member
Edit: Nevermind, thread on front page answered my question.
Judging from some photos and such, 128 meters is like the height of a huge hill or small mountain, or the depth of a large ravine. Though we're still not sure if 128 meters actually means the limit from the top of the "atmosphere" all the way to the bedrock.
Space Engine and the small, airless planets in Elite Dangerous though already allow for realistically-sized features. I haven't played ED Horizons but I consistently see this to good effect in Space Engine. It's not good at rendering rivers, but you can get real-sized mountains and Gran Canyon-sized canyons. Oceans are as deep as real oceans. The oceans on water worlds can actually be many times as deep as Earth's oceans. The downside in Space Engine is horrendous pop-in that's only tolerable because it isn't really a game but a virtual planetarium, much worse than the pop-in we currently see in NMS. You have to sit there and wait like a good 15 seconds for the mountains to render in the background once you stop moving the camera.
PCs, much less consoles, just might not currently have the compute power to render realistically-sized Earth features and have them be traversible at playable framerates with respectable graphics. It'll be interesting to see when/if Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen tackle this problem when they get to it for large celestial bodies.
Space Engine and the small, airless planets in Elite Dangerous though already allow for realistically-sized features. I haven't played ED Horizons but I consistently see this to good effect in Space Engine. It's not good at rendering rivers, but you can get real-sized mountains and Gran Canyon-sized canyons. Oceans are as deep as real oceans. The oceans on water worlds can actually be many times as deep as Earth's oceans. The downside in Space Engine is horrendous pop-in that's only tolerable because it isn't really a game but a virtual planetarium, much worse than the pop-in we currently see in NMS. You have to sit there and wait like a good 15 seconds for the mountains to render in the background once you stop moving the camera.
PCs, much less consoles, just might not currently have the compute power to render realistically-sized Earth features and have them be traversible at playable framerates with respectable graphics. It'll be interesting to see when/if Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen tackle this problem when they get to it for large celestial bodies.
vix
Member
I personally think the reason we can't dig all the way to the core is that it would likely take quite some time to do considering the planets are plant sized. Also, I think someone else mentioned it, but it would probably be difficult to generate a different style core for every planet. I would think anyways.
eyeball_kid
Member
The dig limitation is only relevant when you're digging. Has nothing to do with terrain generation. For instance, Sean said he found an ocean with a discovery marker in it, but its location was so deep that he couldn't reach it.
Oh, and your second question... there was one shot in the 65 Days of Static concert footage that looked like a planet very close to its star.
If you had a ship that could make a hole through the core of a planet, you probably wouldn't have a problem one-shotting any enemy ship or station in the universe.
I don't really know the technical reason for a digging limit, but it might have to do with your local save file, as every change you make to every planet is saved. But I don't know, maybe it was just a creative decision.
The number of planets don't really have anything to do with it.
You understand that they don't simulate those 18 quintillion planets, right?
Like, there isn't a computer there with all the planets in memory or on disk.
What they have are seeds, it's pretty much parameters to their procedural generation engine so that when you arrive at a planet, the game knows how to generate its structure, and since it's a deterministic process, any other player who arrive to that planet should see the same things.
Now, it is may very well be that they don't allow you to dig below 128 meter because of performance issues, I really don't know, but those would be performance issues with running a single planet, not 18 quintillion of them, which no computer would have been able to handle at the same time even if they were StarCon 2 level of details.
Nothing you change in a planet is "saved". The moment you leave the planet and come back, the game regenerates it again.
People seem to confuse procedural with persistent I've noticed.
metareferential
Member
Everything is saved.
If it's something big (like levelling a mountain) it will be saved to the server and shared.
If it's something minor, it's saved locally on your system. I'm quoting Sean directly here.
Thats really, really nice to know. I thought it would just "forget" everything you did on the planet and just remake it from the code when you came back since it isnt "stored" anywhere on the disk and stuff. Impressive tech indeed.
Irishonion
Member
Man i really want the limited edition. I waited too long thinking it wouldnt be sold out.