No Man's Sky - The Bear and Badger

Roujin

In terms of loading and saving, it'll work like minecraft works right now I guess.

Chunks of area are generated procedurally as a player enters an area. However once generated the chunk will be the same for anyone else who goes there. Only in the case of No Man's Sky there's an additional 'meta' level of procedural generation which works out the arrangement of solar systems as players enter them.

Memory-wise it'll just be like Minecraft, areas in your proximity are loaded in as you enter them, when you get far away they are unloaded.

djchump

Paul the sparky wrote:

djchump wrote:

b0r1s wrote:

Yeah, why haven't we had a great Elite type game on the last gen?

I guess cos there was a few on PC, but they never sold very well, so publishers just didn't see any money in it.

I had a real time space exploration itch to scratch following FTL, so I had a dabble with X3. Turns out games like that aren't for the casual dabbler. Let's hope they can set the entry bar low enough so that everyone can enjoy it but they keep the massive depth of the likes of Elite and X3 intact.

Aye yeah, the PC ones always intrigued me a bit cos I love space and stuff, but they always looked way too hardcore for my tastes - especially stuff like Eve Online; I just don't have the time or inclination for that kind of MMO thing.

A single-player or co-op/limited MP (i.e. not MMO) console space explore-em-up might be just the ticket.

Paul the sparky wrote:

I get procedural generation of worlds, but how is that going to work if everyone is playing in the same universe? If the first ten players each head off in a different direction, will the eleventh player have to load all that stuff in when they start the game? The dev talks about a sky filled with stars that you can visit as you wish, but how do they handle storing all those stars in terms if memory?

It depends on what the player(s) can do to the worlds - if they can build/destroy/edit in the same way as Minecraft then yeah, that's gonna be pretty memory/storage intensive.

If they go the easier route (which I'm kinda presuming they will given how small the team is) - then you might be able to destroy stuff but each time you leave then go back to the planet it will be restored as new.
In this case, you can get away with basing each planet on a very small bit of data - even down to a single randomly-generated number. As long as the procedrual generation rules are completely deterministic (i.e. you give the rules a single seed number and it will always generate exactly the same planet/asset) then you only have to store those seed numbers - so they could hand-pick the most interesting planets from a bunch they randomly generate, or they can let each player create their own completely random universe.

Like Roujin says though, if the game allows players to destroy/build in a permanent manner, then it'll have to work like Minecraft (and is gonna be pretty server-intensive - like Minecraft but with a galaxy of worlds and space stations instead of just one; which is what leads me to believe it won't support persistent player-creations on every visitable world - maybe they'll limit it to a homeworld or space station).

Roujin

But the only thing that would be big would be the world save file. It doesn't matter how big that gets (within reason) as you only ever visit a single part of a world or patch of space at a time.

Even with a whole planet, the planet is probably not completely generated when you first find it, I expect it works like Minecraft, it generates a chunk of the planet the first time someone enters it.

djchump

Sure, yeah, there's no point generating/loading all the assets for an entire world when someone arrives - just the visible area around them.

My point being, if they don't have permanent player building/editing of the planets, then they don't need to save the planet state at all and the game is a lot simpler and easier to scope for a small team. It all depends how big they're aiming with the game I guess - which already seems pretty huge!

Sasukekun

Still no formats announced. This piece by Donlan seems to suggest it's PC only though.

beano

Woot. What. Wow.

It's got all that and more.

Paul the sparky

Cheers for the replies gents.

Roujin wrote:

But the only thing that would be big would be the world save file. It doesn't matter how big that gets (within reason) as you only ever visit a single part of a world or patch of space at a time.

Even with a whole planet, the planet is probably not completely generated when you first find it, I expect it works like Minecraft, it generates a chunk of the planet the first time someone enters it.

That's how I see it working, as once something is discovered it stays discovered in everyone else's game, the landscape, wildlife resources etc. are all set on that first visit, so the 'universe map' will end up fucking huge as people expand into it. That's the bit where it's going to be memory intensive to my layman brain, even though each individual player is only seeing the universe in a small area around where they are at any given time, it all has to be stored in its entirety somewhere. I hope you can name planets and stuff when you discover them, as Badgertron has a homely ring to it.

Has the Minecraft style building and destruction been confirmed? I thought it was just about the exploration, resource gathering and trading and the odd space fracas.

djchump

I'm fairly convinced that minecraft style voxel building will *not* be involved, because if it is it has to be designed in from the very lowest level of the engine upwards, so I reckon they'd be showing it off right from the start - e.g. The way Everquest Next is promoting itself right now.
No doubt you can upgrade and customise your ship and space station or whathaveyou, but it's a hell of an undertaking to do a fully editable persistent world, let alone galaxy!

djchump

Somewhat timely: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-12-09-a-future-that-has-a-history-introducing-no-mans-sky

Shared galaxy/universe is pretty intriguing - gonna be costly for the back end servers etc. if they're really pitching for a space MMO; I'm guessing they're aiming at publisher interest for funding.

Yossarian

This does seem like something that Microsoft should be throwing wheelbarrows of cash at to promote the infinite power (or storage space) of the cloud.

mistercrayon

Yossarian wrote:

This does seem like something that Microsoft should be throwing wheelbarrows of cash at to promote the infinite power (or storage space) of the cloud.

the cloud seems like the perfect fit for this yes.

I would think if everyone had their own generated universe then that would be pretty shit.

Blocks100

mistercrayon wrote:

I would think if everyone had their own generated universe then that would be pretty shit.

Reads so much better when read in the voice of Stephen Hawkings.

djchump

Couple of RPS write ups here:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/12/09/first-look-no-mans-sky/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/12/10/interview-no-mans-sky-and-procedural-generation/

This comment was interesting:

No Man’s Sky isn’t a multiplayer game, in as much as you’ll never see another player. But the galaxy is the same between everyone and actions of “significance” will be shared. If you kill a single bird, that won’t be shared. If you make an entire species of bird extinct, then those creatures will blink out of existence for everyone.

So it's a lot more tightly scoped than "it's an Elite MMO!" - online-ness and the "shared galaxy" seems to be a shared asynchronous broadcast of large scale events and player info, but you still get your own galaxy to poodle around and won't get griefed by other players. This is a lot more achievable for a small team and won't need the kinds of huge server back end that an MMO would need - probably not even as much as async ios games like Clash of Clans.

Another comment about them being console devs and wanting it to be easy to pickup and thus not like Eve also gives me lots of hope :-)

Paul the sparky

Bit shit that some twat might wipe out entire species that I'll never get to see like. Although they're probably going to be colour changes and nothing else anyway.

Still sounds great to me.

Escape

Yossarian wrote:

throwing wheelbarrows of cash

You'd lose most of the cash during your launch rotation. I'd tip shots of gold on them instead. Or throw diamond javelins.

Escape

Bit far-fetched, really.

Diamante javelins. Joan Rivers' collection.

Yossarian

Silver bullets?

Escape

For sacred rings.

Vela

I'm quite interested in seeing how this game goes after just watching the reveal footage. Looks very promising, however...

Brooks wrote:

Feel like this is going to get old fast, which is to say all will collapse into the combat game when interactively empty if pretty planets lose their charm.

Like Just Cause for me. Big islands, lots to explore, nothing to give a fuck about.

RamSteelwood

amzing, went to click one of those links, the rockpapershotgun site is currently down, but it takes you to a fake text adventure type error page...check it out...
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/

[Deleted User]

Paul the sparky

Cheers Indigo. It's interesting that the map is already set out. So what exactly is being procedurally generated then?

I like the sound of the main goal, get to the centre of the universe. Nice and simple, endlessly replayable from different, uncharted starting points, and it's sure to be a challenge as you get closer.

pantyfire

Hhhmm.
It sounds like the universe is initially procedurally created by the devs (on a server I guess?). Then every element within it is the same for every user. Not that every time a planet is set foot on what you encounter is procedurally generated.

Paul the sparky

pantyfire wrote:

Hhhmm.
It sounds like the universe is initially procedurally created by the devs (on a server I guess?). Then every element within it is the same for every user. Not that every time a planet is set foot on what you encounter is procedurally generated.

Dunno man, I thought he was saying that the universe is mapped out, but the variables of each planet or whatever isn't defined until some fool stumbles across it. Then it's set and you can send a message out to everyone notifying them of what you've found, which will be marked on their map as opposed to "Uncharted location" or whatever they're going to use. I'm still hopeful you can name the bastards.

n0face

I got the impression it's based on whatever maths they've used so it's already set in a way but nobody knows what it is until it's been visited, or something along those lines.

Kernowgaz

Hopefully not too serious but the Hello Games building was flooded on Xmas eve !

http://www.polygon.com/2013/12/25/5243182/hello-games-studio-flooded-on-christmas-eve

Paul the sparky

Been worried that this strange fellow in all these videos might be doing a full Molyneux. Talking about how things are modelled down to an atomic level is all well and good, but I hope there's a game to play somewhere inside.

Webbins

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-02-christmas-storms-flood-no-mans-sky-dev-hello-games

Devs have had a bit of a mare with the festive weather... and the insurance won't cover. Hopefully they can keep their heads above water and development won't be too impacted.

beano

Just before xmas eve wasn't it. That neck of the wood always seemed a bit hilly to me.

superflyninja

Mutha fcuker that looks good

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