No Man's Sky

[fragger]

The term "open world" is somewhat inadequate to describe this title ??? It's a whole galaxy of open worlds.

[Binnatics]

Yes indeed...

Have we already a clue what time means in this world.. err, universe? Is there fast travel, let's call it warp, and does it take time? Like; "Come back tomorrow around noon, then we will orbit around the planet of your choice, commander" :-D

[PZ]

Good thought, fragger - look how far we've come - from a "huge" open world of 50 square kilometers in FC2 to an almost limitless open universe in this new game.

[mandru]

I bounced around on some of the other YouTube videos for this game and this is indeed an interesting game.  With the combat involved I can see that there will be a real need for save points over being kicked back to the very beginning every time you die.  While I'm not so crazy about resource building and character development activities it's the various planetary life forms to be found that has its hook in me.


The thought of randomly generated ecosystems leads to a lot of possible speculation on the algorithms that would be used.  I guess first an environment would need to be established and then plants and animals that would live there.  One video said there were pure water worlds or maybe liquid covered might be a better choice of words as not all lifeforms mandatorily need be based on water or carbon for that matter.  Then there will be desert worlds too and ancient lifeless places with no life as the atmosphere has leached away into space  .


Do you create a set of various niche apex predators and project down the food chain for the lifeforms required to feed them or start from the other direction establishing a lush set of plants and microbes and from there generate each layer of the food chain that would feed on the previously set nutritional pockets of opportunity?

There's lots of fuel there for fanciful flights of imagination.  ^-^


How about a world where there is only one life form?  Something like a slime mold creature that goes through many dozens of various metamorphosing stages of life.  They could be born from spores released when an apex mature-stage member of its species reaches end of life.  With nutrition derived from photosynthesis and available environmental resources they start out floating in thick layers like algae on the surface of the bodies of 'let's say liquid' of their planet.  Even a puddle may suffice in some climates.

Once each spore has developed enough and stored the required nutrition to undergo metamorphosis it sinks to the bottom.  Depending on the depth of the body of 'liquid' or if deposited on a shoreline determines its next stage of development.  Wherever they end up there's a more mature of the species waiting to eat them.

Deep 'liquid" creatures may form something like coral reefs and develop into similes of the fauna that inhabit them.  Shoreline maturing creatures may heave themselves as far as possible onto land and go through several iterations of mimicking plant life until they become able to become motile and able to feed on non-moving creatures.

Possibly being eaten in every occasion isn't an end of life event.  In some situations where a portion of their stored nutrition is funneled off by a more mature creature simply forces them to regress to an earlier and possibly different line of maturation possibilities.  Which would also dictate stages of development in maturing creatures that they would only successfully transform into something that would be able to feed on the available in their immediate biosphere.

Some apex predators limited by their nutritional surroundings would be parasitic, then again maybe small and fast or possibly even very slow and very patient with lightening like reflexes to grab passing tidbits.  Then again in other richer climes there could be true monsters in size and voraciousness but in the end an apex creature sheds its spores on death where they and any nutritional value of their decaying bodies is carried by rain back into the rivers, lakes, and eventually the oceans for the following vigorous generations of the continuing cycle.

[Binnatics]

Sounds very cool Mandru :) :-X

I think the line along which the devs allow worlds to difer from one another is quite thin though. From what I've seen so far (and I haven't really looked deep into the material, or all the stuff they say about it) all worlds look more or less alike. What difers is the colours and forms of creatures. I'm pretty sure though, that all life that we will be able to meet is multi-tentacled, oxigen-breathing, other-life-forms-eating weirdoes in a funny variety of colours and appearances.

Thinking of an exploration game that is enough though to have a blast  ;)

Still... we might expect too much of this :-D

[mmosu]

I agree with Binn. It's very easy to let imagination run wild in the face of something so potentially vast, to the point you end up disappointed. Though I will say that the half dozen or so worlds we've seen so far are all supposedly near the rim of the galaxy. This is an important piece of information, as the devs have said that things will become more...I believe the word was "unsettling" ...as we journey toward the center.
That being said, an ecosystem like mandru described would be pretty cool  :-X

[Binnatics]

Indeed :)

This game is definitely on my wishlist ;)

[fragger]

Mine too :-X

[mmosu]

Thought this was a funny interview with creator Sean Murray.

https://youtu.be/VF2IGlk-Bdw

[nexor]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqmJ8k9uBB0

[PZ]

I'm liking this game more with each new snippet I watch.  :-X

[fragger]

It looks incredible. When Sean Murray mentioned naming a creature and that anyone coming along later would see that name, I'm assuming he was talking about MP. It's occurred to me that if a bunch of us get into this as single players (if there is a SP mode), none of us are going to have anything like the same experiences. In something like FC2 we could talk about the different ways we'd done, say, the barge mission or the dental clinic. But with this game, none of us are going to be even seeing the same planets. Might make for some interesting posts :)

RE that clip, when Murray handed the controller to the interviewer, I just knew that the first thing the guy would do was kill something. He seemed like that kind of dick ::)

[PZ]

Yeah, just the kind of gamer that keeps me from MP - a fool whose only purpose in playing is utter chaos without restraint of any kind.

Good thoughts about some of us playing in this universe - at times it seems like we would never get to see another player due to the sheer size of the universe, but at other times (if they expect you to see named animals), the probability seems high.

[Dweller_Benthos]

It would be cool if you could tag other players, and then either see what they are doing, or actually go to the same planet to see what they saw. The way I understand it, the single player game will still upload/download information about what planets you've been to, what you've named, etc, into a central database so that everyone else will see the same stuff if they happen to go to the same place. It might be possible to chart your course, then tell your friends, hey, go 130° this direction for 3 hours, then land on the third planet, northern hemisphere, big island with the volcano. That would be cool.

[Binnatics]

Wow, indeed D_B :) :-X

This game really stimulating imagination. I deffinitely going to get a copy as soon as possible ;)

[mmosu]

If players get really good at giving directions, then it should theoretically be possible to do a trail of breadcrumbs and meet up, although it will be very difficult. The difference in 30 degrees and 30.2 degrees traveled over a LONG distance could have you off by a long way, for example. A coordinate system of some kind would make it easier but apparently there isn't one and that's intentional on the part of the devs - they want us to wander the stars quite literally

[Art Blade]

in Space Engineers, you can easily create a GPS position with X, Y and Z coordinates and leave it as a waypoint for your own use but obviously you can tell those coordinates to someone else. I actually met up in space with TerrZor and it was fun watching his space ship homing in on my position.

[Dweller_Benthos]

OK, I've gone and done it, pre-ordered No Man's Sky. That's the first thing I've ever pre-ordered. Hope it's good after all this hype.

[PZ]

 :o

[Binnatics]

Nice!

Will follow in your footsteps as soon as I have the dough for it :-D

[Art Blade]

I'll wait for a special offer. Saves me some dough :-()

[mmosu]

I'm right there with you D_B, pre-order is locked and loaded  :-X
Just about a month to go  8)

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yep, which means Fallout will have some serious competition. The Far Harbor DLC comes out this week, plus I'm only about a third of the way through the main story, so......

[Art Blade]

meaning you're going to end up with say, 1,200 hours of gameplay before tossing it into the rubbish bin? :-D

[Dweller_Benthos]

Close to it, I think I've got 400-500 hours in right now, I'd have to check.