No Man's Sky

Mickeroo

Zillah wrote: »

I am not a console player: what on earth does it mean that they have a version being released on bluray? Surely it can't be storage space for better textures or something - the visual quality is capped by the machine's hardware I'm sure.

I find it hard to believe you don't understand how physical media works.

SolvableKnave

Mickeroo wrote: »

I find it hard to believe you don't understand how physical media works.

This should be good.

Zillah

I already told you I am not a console gamer and I haven't use physical media since Steam was invented. I do understand what a bluray is but I don't understand what extra content could be provided for a console game.

I have one guess, though, now that I think of it: are they delivering modern console games on multiple DVDs and the Bluray allows it to be on one disc? I haven't had to use multiple discs since I installed Shogun 1 in the year 2000.

Or do they not even use DVDs and it's bluray or download??? I don't know what you console peasants have to deal with.

SolvableKnave

Zillah wrote: »

I already told you I am not a console gamer and I haven't use physical media since Steam was invented. I do understand what a bluray is but I don't understand what extra content could be provided for a console game.

I have one guess, though, now that I think of it: are they delivering modern console games on multiple DVDs and the Bluray allows it to be on one disc? I haven't had to use multiple discs since I installed Shogun 1 in the year 2000.

Or do they not even use DVDs and it's bluray or download??? I don't know what you console peasants have to deal with.

And there we have it.

SolvableKnave

Believe it or not, but us console peasants get to enjoy our games on a single disc. Shocking I know. I also prefer to have a physical copy of my PC games too. Shock Horror.

Mickeroo

Zillah wrote: »

I already told you I am not a console gamer and I haven't use physical media since Steam was invented. I do understand what a bluray is but I don't understand what extra content could be provided for a console game.

I have one guess, though, now that I think of it: are they delivering modern console games on multiple DVDs and the Bluray allows it to be on one disc? I haven't had to use multiple discs since I installed Shogun 1 in the year 2000.

Or do they not even use DVDs and it's bluray or download??? I don't know what you console peasants have to deal with.

So you are pretending then.

Zillah

You're managing to take an amazing amount of personal offence from my ignorance of how console games are delivered. So they don't do DVDs at all any more?

Mickeroo wrote: »

So you are pretending then.

Jesus. I'm gonna duck out before I manage to get a mob after me.

johnny_ultimate

Please read the charter re: comments such as 'console peasants', not permitted in this forum. Thanks.

Xenji

Eurogamer sums up what the game is pretty well.

No Man's Sky is, in the most basic possible terms, a survival role-playing game, in which your ultimate aim is to reach the centre of the universe. You start off on the outer edges, short of the means that will get you to your goal, so you go about gathering what's required to help push you further into the stars.

Taylor365

SolvableKnave wrote: »

Believe it or not, but us console peasants get to enjoy our games on a single disc. Shocking I know. I also prefer to have a physical copy of my PC games too. Shock Horror.

Really?

Even Shadow of Mordor for PC was 4-5 discs.

CiDeRmAn

I have been playing Elite Dangerous in prep for No Man's Sky and I'm looking forward to seeing how the game interprets galactic exploration compared to that excellent title.

2Mad2BeMad

I read that this game is going to be 59.99

thought it was going to be like 30e max

oh well
will have to wait for steam sale

Wright

Mickeroo wrote: »

I find it hard to believe you don't understand how physical media works.

He's not a console player, gotta simplify this stuff for people like that

I would buy physical, especially a steelbook, but I'm unsure what platform to buy for. The PC will likely launch horrendously broken, and is there any word on whether the PSVR will support this game? It'll be the only cost effective VR solution for a long time methinks. Is the PC version getting Workshop support?

dreamers75

Steam says SP only, is that correct?

Read a few PC gamer articles and no mention of MP.

Was hoping for a game like Elite but with some to actually do.

johnny_ultimate

Selling this game without multiplayer would be equivalent to selling Threes! without the number three.

Don't mind Steam placeholder text, it'll be the full version.

Wright

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Selling this game without multiplayer would be equivalent to selling Threes! without the number three.

Actually had to check I was in the thread I thought I was in.

...what? Game's fine as an SP.

tok9

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiXjh4oUak0

It is one really pretty game.

Taylor365

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Selling this game without multiplayer would be equivalent to selling Threes! without the number three.

Don't mind Steam placeholder text, it'll be the full version.

Couldn't give a rats about MP.

It all boils down to the same kill or be killed $hite in the end...

Zillah

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Selling this game without multiplayer would be equivalent to selling Threes! without the number three.

It's a game designed around a lone explorer discovering planets and cataloging life. Multiplayer is the last thing I would think of.

I suspect, based on their insistence that players will never find each other, that it might end up being that players actually can't see each other. If it's possible to shoot, or ram, or help each other, they suddenly need to worry about actively syncing with a online server, with all of the necessary netcode, latency issues, etc. It's a hell of a lot of resources for something that the developer keeps insisting won't happen.

If my wifi goes down do I get kicked out of the game? Can I launch the game without an internet connection? I bet our only connection is sharing our discoveries.

johnny_ultimate

Isn't the whole point of the game a shared universe though? That everybody is exploring the same massive, sprawling space and making their own mark on it? Like to me a huge part of the appeal of this game is stepping foot on a planet nobody has reached before, or indeed stumbling across somewhere that somebody else has found and named - or, even more excitingly, meeting somebody else on your travels.

Obviously most of the game will be spent alone exploring this universe. But the interconnectedness of it all, the persistent, shared universe... That as far as I've read and heard is an integral part of the experience, and that's what I mean by multiplayer rather than just PVP dogfights or whatever. It's playable offline AFAIK, but again players can still share data and coordinates through this shared world. I don't know, I just think the presence and existence of other players is a major part of what they're aiming for here and something for me anyway would definitely be lost if you're playing completely solo without the existence of others doing the same thing. I'd feel the same way about Dark Souls or something like that played offline - a predominantly single player experience that nonetheless finds much of its identity in the echoes of other players you encounter.

Edit: actually think this is an interesting read from Sean Murray on the subject. Perhaps 'multiplayer' is not the ideal word, but certainly the comparisons between Journey and Dark Souls are really intriguing, because those two are IMO the two games that really brought something new and imaginative to online gaming and er... Multiple players beyond mere deathmatches and giant MMOs. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2014/12/10/stop-thinking-of-no-man-s-sky-as-a-multiplayer-game.aspx

Icyseanfitz

Imagine exploring a planet/planets for days and all of sudden another player flies overhead/crashes near you, it would be so rare that it would be awesome, id presume that if it was that rare most people wouldn't instantly kill each other either.

Andrew76

tok9 wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiXjh4oUak0

It is one really pretty game.

It does look gorgeous. Apologies if I'm being a pedantic git (I've been out of touch with the game for a bit) but it's a galaxy we're trying to get to the centre of yes? She keeps saying centre of the universe. So presumably we all start out on the galactic edge and there'll be some sort of indication you're heading in the right direction.

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Isn't the whole point of the game a shared universe though? That everybody is exploring the same massive, sprawling space and making their own mark on it? Like to me a huge part of the appeal of this game is stepping foot on a planet nobody has reached before, or indeed stumbling across somewhere that somebody else has found and named - or, even more excitingly, meeting somebody else on your travels.

Obviously most of the game will be spent alone exploring this universe. But the interconnectedness of it all, the persistent, shared universe... That as far as I've read and heard is an integral part of the experience, and that's what I mean by multiplayer rather than just PVP dogfights or whatever. It's playable offline AFAIK, but again players can still share data and coordinates through this shared world. I don't know, I just think the presence and existence of other players is a major part of what they're aiming for here and something for me anyway would definitely be lost if you're playing completely solo without the existence of others doing the same thing. I'd feel the same way about Dark Souls or something like that played offline - a predominantly single player experience that nonetheless finds much of its identity in the echoes of other players you encounter.

Edit: actually think this is an interesting read from Sean Murray on the subject. Perhaps 'multiplayer' is not the ideal word, but certainly the comparisons between Journey and Dark Souls are really intriguing, because those two are IMO the two games that really brought something new and imaginative to online gaming and er... Multiple players beyond mere deathmatches and giant MMOs. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2014/12/10/stop-thinking-of-no-man-s-sky-as-a-multiplayer-game.aspx

That article is going back to 2014 so maybe things have changed a lot since then? But from that it sounds like the shared experience might be like the online messaging part of Dark Souls rather than actually seeing any other players (even if you could tell them apart from NPCs).

One aspect I'm really interested in is to see how they handle conveying the vastness of space, without traversing it being boring as hell gameplay wise. Elite Dangerous did this very well I thought with it's Supercruise and Hyperspace systems. Any clip I've seen of No Man's Sky there always seems to be another planet/moon a few seconds travel away - or maybe they were only showing travel within a single star system.

Maximus Alexander

Andrew76 wrote: »

One aspect I'm really interested in is to see how they handle conveying the vastness of space, without traversing it being boring as hell gameplay wise. Elite Dangerous did this very well I thought with it's Supercruise and Hyperspace systems. Any clip I've seen of No Man's Sky there always seems to be another planet/moon a few seconds travel away - or maybe they were only showing travel within a single star system.

The videos make it look like they've gone with a very small scale, even within a solar system. The planets seem to be very close together and rather small, the atmospheres seem to be pretty shallow, maybe a kilometer between the surface and space?

Part of this may be for technical reasons, it's quite difficult to implement huge scales in video games due to the limits of data types. If your co-ordinate system is in single-precision floating point numbers (pretty common) then you start to lose precision pretty badly in a world more than 10 kilometers wide.

This means you have to start nesting co-ordinate systems, stacking cameras, using multiple models and generally increasing complexity by quite a bit. Games like Kerbal Space Program and Elite Dangerous do a fairly decent, if imperfect job of it, but it's not easy. It's the reason that if you point your ship at another star in E:D and leave the ship in supercruise for a month, you'll never actually get there.

The other side of it is the aesthetic and excitement. With the cartoonish aesthetic of this game they can get away with not having a particularly lifelike scale, and they may have decided that it's more interesting if you don't have to fly for ages between locations.

Taylor365

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

Imagine exploring a planet/planets for days and all of sudden another player flies overhead/crashes near you, it would be so rare that it would be awesome, id presume that if it was that rare most people wouldn't instantly kill each other either.

Never underestimate the human psyche....

I look forward to just exploring. Pick a random galaxy, random planet and just check it out. Once I've had my fill, rinse a repeat.

It's what i love about picking up new games. Discovering different aspects and the depth they go to. I remember the Minecrift alpha thinking ''holy ****, how far can i dig?!'' or Terraria wondering when does the world end. I'm going to try go in as blind as i can into this game. I'll only be keeping an ear out if any disasters happen.

I've been hyped since 2013 god damn it!

dreamers75

I seen the video where it says this planet/animal was 1st found by XXXX

I would like Elite squad type MP but really havent seen it mentioned that there is MP.

Captain Chaos

There will be no MP in this, it has been covered over and over. There may be a chance of bumping into someone at random and that's it. There won't be any co-op or lobby system.

Zillah

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Isn't the whole point of the game a shared universe though? That everybody is exploring the same massive, sprawling space and making their own mark on it? Like to me a huge part of the appeal of this game is stepping foot on a planet nobody has reached before, or indeed stumbling across somewhere that somebody else has found and named - or, even more excitingly, meeting somebody else on your travels.x

I agree completely, but I think they've sought to achieve this by allowing us to name planets and scan life and all contribute to a common database where all of the discoveries are stored. We all play in the same universe, but I think it's going to be individual iterations of the same universe with shared cataloging. They've avoided saying it directly, but Sean has very much been beating the drum saying "You won't find each other, and yes, even you, the person who says that doesn't apply to me and I'll work it you - no, you won't be exploring with your friends".

Maybe I'm wrong, and they hired someone to write, test and deploy multiplayer netcode for a game where they insist you'll never interact with another player, but I doubt it. They just don't want to state it that bluntly and ruin the illusion - because, as you articulate in your post, that's an important illusion to have.

Zillah

Andrew76 wrote: »

Apologies if I'm being a pedantic git (I've been out of touch with the game for a bit) but it's a galaxy we're trying to get to the centre of yes? She keeps saying centre of the universe. So presumably we all start out on the galactic edge and there'll be some sort of indication you're heading in the right direction.

If your universe consists of one galaxy, then it is both the centre of the universe and of the galaxy.

Captain Chaos

Zillah wrote: »

If your universe consists of one galaxy, then it is both the centre of the universe and of the galaxy.

You can't have a centre in an ever expanding universe:pac:

A centre of a galaxy is the super massive black hole at the centre of it. Not sure why the aim of the game is to get right next to it.:eek:

Maximus Alexander

Captain Chaos wrote: »

You can't have a centre in an ever expanding universe:pac:

A centre of a galaxy is the super massive black hole at the centre of it. Not sure why the aim of the game is to get right next to it.:eek:

The universe in the game is under no obligation to resemble ours, on either point.