No Man's Sky

[Living in Death]

I'm so excited for this game. 

An entire universe that would take more time to explore than it would take our actual Sun to burn out. Crazy what people can do with technology these days. 

No Man's Sky article



Just a brief matter of description; 

- The game is full of fully sized, fully explorable and procedurally generated planets.

- The game generates it's own life forms, of which you can discover and rename. 

- The game has actual day / night cycles (by which I mean, you can land on the dark side of a planet and see it become day in real time if you have the patience to do so). 

- You don't have to land on any planet if you choose to do so; just fly around, be a space pirate, a trader or just a general explorer of the skies. 

- The game has it's own element system; all fictional, but they appear to be very fun to play around with. This comes attached to a crafting system akin to Minecraft. 

- Each planet has it's own environment, primarily based upon positioning relative to it's star. 

- I've noticed many strange, cryptic little secrets in the trailers but I have no idea what they could be specifically. I sincerely hope this crypticism is carried into the full game. 


Yeah, I'm really excited about all this. The only issue is that it's procedurally generated. It may get boring quickly, and you could very easily lose interest after landing on a planet that just looks like a varied colouration of another planet you were just on. There's also the problem of competition; Star Citizen and Elite; Dangerous are both strong contenders for this genre of space exploration game. Either way, let's see what Hello Games can conjure up. 

[bennyboy]

Yeah, this is pretty fantastic. It promises to change the face of computer gaming forever. However, I've seen Everquest Landmark, which was pretty neat, but you can see that "random" isn't really random: it means that pre-programmed zones are distributed through worlds randomly, but there's not enough variation to really compel a sense of overwhelming variety.

[Living in Death]

Yeah, this is pretty fantastic.  It promises to change the face of computer gaming forever.  However, I've seen Everquest Landmark, which was pretty neat, but you can see that "random" isn't really random: it means that pre-programmed zones are distributed through worlds randomly, but there's not enough variation to really compel a sense of overwhelming variety.

That's very true. It isn't going to be nearly as varied as people will make it out to be, but I still really have my fingers crossed for what may come of it regardless.

[bennyboy]

Yeah, this is pretty fantastic.  It promises to change the face of computer gaming forever.  However, I've seen Everquest Landmark, which was pretty neat, but you can see that "random" isn't really random: it means that pre-programmed zones are distributed through worlds randomly, but there's not enough variation to really compel a sense of overwhelming variety.

That's very true. It isn't going to be nearly as varied as people will make it out to be, but I still really have my fingers crossed for what may come of it regardless.

In the case of Landmark, the massive worlds gave individuals the ability to mold their own environment-- that game has a pretty advanced modeling toolkit for structuring your own buildings.  I think any procedurally-generated universe will be much the same.  People will claim it and mold it, and the unique flavors will be an expression of their personalities.  I don't know if No Man's Sky will have base-building and stuff like that-- but it really needs to give people an advanced toolkit for molding randomness into meaning, or it will probably get tiring pretty fast.

[Living in Death]

In the case of Landmark, the massive worlds gave individuals the ability to mold their own environment-- that game has a pretty advanced modeling toolkit for structuring your own buildings.  I think any procedurally-generated universe will be much the same.  People will claim it and mold it, and the unique flavors will be an expression of their personalities.  I don't know if No Man's Sky will have base-building and stuff like that-- but it really needs to give people an advanced toolkit for molding randomness into meaning, or it will probably get tiring pretty fast.

As far as I'm aware, it's mostly just consisting of planets which can be mined with a mining laser (multitool, actually). I also heard mention of cave systems, so it could take on a similar feel to Minecraft's procedurally generated worlds. 

So, as far as molding your world goes, it really just comes down to obliterating rock to your heart's content. No base building though, unfortunately.