No Man's Sky

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there's a frog in my snake oil
It had to be done...



Feel free to place any pleasing pre-launch teasing here, and hopefully your post-launch glee too
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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here



there's a frog in my snake oil
Here are some recent musings and trufflings...

Annoying-IGN-guy back with some apparently randomly-selected worlds in NMS...



Liking the simple payoffs of dangerous-non-earthlike worlds having higher rewards (rare items etc), the idea of scattered items/sites if they're done well, and the 'potential danger around the corner' seems a must. IE cave-diving, just passably fun if it's pretty with perilous drops etc. Cave diving, while wondering if the baby crabs you've seen have a big brother... and what it night sound like... much more fun

Good sound design will def help with that kinda stuff. Really hope you can hear a wide array of animal calls etc across the worlds (with each animal having a range of sounds for diff scenarios - snuffling through bushes, calling out to herd, raging at a threat etc).

We'll see how the 'GTA wanted stars' pan out. Could be fun in theory, especially if they included decent jump-pack downtime and a line-of-sight dynamics. (IE having to scurry from hiding spot to hiding spot once you're being hunted. Perhaps even burrowing a new exit from a cave? But with the risk that all your actions also cause noise...)

---EDIT---

Some nice lil tidbits buried in this vid from E3...



Day/night cycles def all operable (IE planetary rotation is all linked up, if you leave a station, land on a planet, wait, and then launch up again you won't find it nearby etc - so I'm guessing they're not in geostationary orbit), cloaking devices for ships, wanted stars including space pursuit at the highest level. And it seems you definitely can permanently affect the procedural world (vid), but only at key junctures like trading platforms it seems. (IE blown up rocks won't be recorded, but damage the trading post and that will be noted).

---EDIT 2---

Arg, dammit. Think my fear that the procedural stuff is going to be CPU-heavy might be true, going by this old vid. He definitely suggests it's the multi-core modern computing power that's made it possible. Hope my creaky old AMD counts as modern
More NMS's teasings...



Animal sounds will be procedural too apparently. Looking at the seemingly two-toned sexes on this world I'm wondering if they're gonna go all Iain M Banks and add bizarre triple sex scenarios too, or weird symbiotic species down the line. Would be cool if species and groups can interact in more than just the traditional earthly ways. Intelligent life too maybe? Little dinosaurs riding big mammals?

*EDIT* There's a nice bit on animal generation in the older 'behind the scenes' vid actually. They def have more outlandish / less-earthly builds ready. And different behaviours for smaller/larger animals etc. And they've also been emailed by excited exobiologists with fun info, which has influenced the game a touch

(It's also cool that the 'infinite' ship variants he touches on there apparently all handle slightly differently. [That's also the kinda thing that makes me worry that it can't possibly work, or be tested thoroughly, but I guess they could cap known instability parameters etc])

I'm still liking this voxel excavating thing. (As much as I shouldn't like the casino-ish response to getting occasional random rewards from digging, it will be interesting if we can drill down fairly far and find cave systems / mineral seams etc). Some of the textures look a bit meh at the angles but that's to be expected I guess.

Also some fun Reddit musings (img) on what procedural continents might look like towards the freaky alien core.

*EDIT* Oh god, I may have to start another thread



there's a frog in my snake oil
Currently enjoying this talk by the Art Director on learning to work with procedural techniques. Gets good from about 20 mins...



Lots of fun little glimpses of various biomes & creatures etc, and the ways they're trying to make it cohesive. (Mainly by grouping things by 'blobbyness', 'glowyness' & 'teethyness' it seems )

Cool to see their little 'drone gifs' of sample worlds too



I hope the game lives up to what they are promising.



there's a frog in my snake oil
So long as we go in expecting an indie lone-explorerer experience I don't reckon we'll be too disappointed

They've started to show glimpses of the more 'alien' iterations out there, and the idea of things getting increasingly mutated as you head to the core might be a good motivator for me I reckon.



There's a fun wee 6-legged-beasty in this vid, that looks perfectly believable. Will be interesting to see how far they push it. 50ft-tall preying mantis elephants? 50-ft tall snails? (I'd say giant beasts would be unlikely, if we hadn't seen the dinos in the original trailers ).

Also fun to see him playing with the rules to reinterpret the world he's on later in the vid. There's been a pleasing spread of styles for the lifebearing worlds we've seen so far (which will be rare apparently, and kinda sensibly placed - in ideal orbits, or where water exists - despite the slightly cartoon-ised universe).

I think a big question is: Will the procedural variations change how you play, or how the game mechanics are expressed? Will dense wet worlds require you to sneak around and hide in the undergrowth? Will arid or poisonous worlds require some specific forms of survivalism etc? Those kinds of forethought and game design could really add legs, and help them dodge the 'procedural worlds always end up samey & empty' pitfall. (On the visual side at least, I'm thinking they've done a lot to win out over the sameyness side thankfully )



there's a frog in my snake oil
It's so funny to see long-read write-ups in prestigious titles like The Atlantic & The New Yorker on NMS. There's a great lil Reddit post that's compiled some of the discussion of procedural sound...

Even though these sounds aren't exceptional in their own right, it's pretty cool that they were made via artificial airflow, larynx and mouth! (And so they can not just populate their universe with varied sounds, factor in the physical form of the creature etc to make them quite fitting, potentially)

Hopefully this gives them to the tools to give each creature a really wide range of potential sounds too. That'd definitely be another hurdle jumped! (I've heard it said that the repetitive sounds of the various creations is what drove many people out of Spore )



there's a frog in my snake oil
Ok phew, going by this truffling Redditor, it looks like NMS will lean on the GPU plenty for terrain generation. Hopefully I will still be able to run it on full pretty

*EDIT*

Nothing too in-depth in the latest IGN, but some cool looking spore trees




there's a frog in my snake oil
So those scrappy scamps have got over the line



Should see summat on Aug 12th as promised. I've celebrated sedately by listening to this talk on the audio. Nice to hear a little more on how the procedural animal sounds work (26mins on) and to hear it in action, and the tonal music mash-ups at the end.



Even with them selecting 'seeds' of ideal combinations, and chucking some machine learning at it by the sound, I suspect some of it will still sound like a cacophany at points tho



Saw someone on Twitter say they hope all the discs look like that.

Cool stuff. I'm still overflowing with game options (I just started XCOM 2!), so I'm sitting at "if the reviews are really good, I'll buy it early." Otherwise I'll read some opinions, watch some streams, and maybe buy it on sale. But it's still intriguing enough that I'll take the dive if it really sounds like they did a good job with it.



there's a frog in my snake oil
If there was a pre-order saving I could see myself biting, I'm into the concepts and style enough. But this is hype-fuelled, no price concessions. Makes sense to wait for some lengthy reviews (pure procedural stuff is so hard to test, so easy to make wonky...)

Hopefully I'll stay sensible



Yeah, I fully expect it to be good fun at first (if it's not even that, it's beyond doomed), so you're right: the most useful reviews are the ones that wait and play it for a bit, and/or cram a lot in quick (though that still might not be representative).

There's definitely got to be a point where it starts to feel samey, the question is whether it's 10 hours in or 100.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Oo, missed this. First time I've seen someone actually try and troll its limits a bit [5m10s]



All the core functions seem pretty robust. Also important that you can melee crabs

After the the strenuous realism & scale of Elite, there is something delicious about the 'accessibility' of the space sections too. Just zipping straight out and seeing the trade routes and the buzz of nearby activity [10m5s]. Flight model all looks pretty simple natch, but I'm up for some boom-n-zoom with added loot vacuum, works for me. (Radar looks super skimpy on detail, but there seems to be some kind of lock on which turrets your weapons, which is nice. Would love it if they'd snuck in a toggle-able 'Newtonian' mode for fly-boys too).

Still hankering to see some confirmed PC footage. They've def said it's best played with a controller, which is fine by me. Will be interesting if they support some of the more swanky stuff like headlook.

And luckily no self-control required this time. Didn't realise the UK launch of the 12th is behind other regions, so should have a fair few reviews to mull . The way reviewers throw themselves at games with a min-max vengeance should reveal repetitions and weaknesses hopefully, although I'm guessing this game is best played at a laconic pace.

Fuggin awful edit on the first run-up trailer, but some fun views in the mix:




there's a frog in my snake oil
Ok, some animals will be daft. It's official...




To delve at full geek speed into what this little team's been doing, I watched a talk by the animation dev (which provided that gif).


^click for vid^

Ok so I skipped over some of the maths, but the stuff about only having 6 animations, the cost/quality balance of getting footfall right, and actual balance, all that was intriguing.

---


Also, as simple as some of the behaviours sound, I'm glad that stuff like this will be in there...

Artistic director Grant Duncan recalled roaming an alien planet once shooting at birds out of boredom. “I hit one and it fell into the ocean,” he recalled. “It was floating there on the waves when suddenly, a shark came up and ate it. The first time it happened, it totally blew me away.”



there's a frog in my snake oil
Niiice, the trade vid is actually swish



Loving the combo of grassy surface and long shadows on the first landing. Surfaces seem to be snazzier than earlier builds, at least looking like that. (Hopefully PC will be all sliders-to-the-max on grasses, which'll probably look better than the bare surface textures).

Liking the oddity of that tubular ship too. The idea of 'procedural' ship variation appeals.



Lots of UI stuff to pore over. My biggest worry comes when I see things like this though...



Mainly because I've just seen it done badly in Elite (where they've neglected to give you a meaningful way to track down rare resources, and have got the spawn rate far too low). ED are rebalancing now, but I just hope Hello Games have QAed the hell out of this aspect.

*EDIT*

Oh, as a bonus plus point, Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy style silliness detected



*EDITEDIT*

Aha, there's some kind of breadcrumb trail, although it seems pretty limited. Carbon "found in planetary trees, plants and vegetation" (ok so hopefully everywhere with plantlife), and Heridium "found in planetary terrain" / "often highlighted by holographic cubes after scan".

Both of those are 'common' though. Think the big test for this sort of system is how much skill is involved in finding the rares. Can you do anything to at least up your odds or target your searches etc.



there's a frog in my snake oil
The advantage of having deliberately ignored NMS for ages, for my sanity's sake, is that I've missed out on loads of fun sneak peaks. I had no idea about 'The Blob'...





I actually worked out I've been waiting for this to drop for 2 yrs and 5 months. Kinda makes the last few weeks of waiting a lot easier



there's a frog in my snake oil
So I couldn't resist flicking through some leaked footage...



The 'downed pilot survives on lush Lost Planet' vibe is pretty delicious. Gonna hold off on spoiling anything else and just wait on longer-term reviews and the pc port now, but it's looking like a nailed on purchase unless the latter is a horror story. (I can live with PS4-lock-step, just so long as it works! )

The player is suggesting he's been pretty spoiler-free, but that there's some decent surprises. Sounds like there might be some shape-n-story in there

FWIW - just had my official first ****-your-pants cool moment. At least for me.

They weren't kidding with secrets in this, some of this **** is sick guys. Avoid big spoilers you won't regret it.
Gonna be reading his promised spoiler-free review with interest



“Sugar is the most important thing in my life…”
What is the release date where you live Golgo?



there's a frog in my snake oil
For me on PC it'll be the 12th on. Just need to know it runs and I'll be pouncing



there's a frog in my snake oil
Gah I just looked his latest 'daily' picture, and although ambiguous, it feels a spoiler too far - something you'd rather stumble onto yourself. I'm on lockdown. Someone lock me down



there's a frog in my snake oil
PC confirmed as a global release on the 12th then



FWIW the earliest player rates the game as 'awesome' despite pre-patch bugs, general bugs, and some exploitable mechanics.

I am ready