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No Man’s Sky

theguardian.com

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Re: No Man’s Sky

#41

Post by chasing »

misnome wrote: post #34
chasing wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on. It's a game, not a model of reality. The target audience is people who want to enjoy playing a game.

You could argue the same thing about having stars - I mean you can't land, so meh - why bother emulating reality and not just have something evenly lit? Or space between planets, that's a bit meh and needed in a model of reality, how about just a drop-down menu to select where to teleport your ship to next? I suspect the target audience is people who want to play an infinite universe space game, to whom little detail…

I'm sure there'll be a mode that makes it take decades or centuries to get from one star to another. For those who need a truly authentic experience.

Re: No Man’s Sky

#42

Post by striking »

fit2rule wrote: post #4
rasz_pl wrote: post #2

better known as 'no gameplay'

How do you know that - have you played it?

It may not be "no gameplay," but it adheres to a very loose interpretation of "gaming." Whatever rules exist in the game basically only serve to aid the sense of progression as people continue to explore. Losing happens only if you explore in a manner that isn't careful, and winning happens when you've explored (carefully) to the center of the universe. [1]

The game isn't supposed to be a game for game's sake, in other words; it's intended to just be an adventure. "Winning" and "losing" are a means towards that end.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man%27s_Sky#Gameplay

Re: No Man’s Sky

#43

Post by glxybstr »

vtsrh wrote: post #5

Till now, I have seen about 10 different planets, from various trailers and presentations. Clearly the game doesn't have 18*10^18 unique planets, since this is impossible. The problem this game has is, does it have enough variance in its planet generation, so that the average player will not notice a pattern. The planets I have seen all looked mostly the same, with slightly different color schemes and animals made fr…

this is the true problem with procedurally generated content in games. portrayed as infinite content, but you end up getting an infinite amount of the mostly-the-same content. would you rather play 10 different levels or one level 10 times?

Re: No Man’s Sky

#44

Post by lesingerouge »

While the technical achievements are impressive, I am not convinced how "playable" this game will be in the end. Almost all the games in existence have at least 2 core elements: story and character purpose. I have not seen evidence of either in this game (no, "space exploration" is not exactly a purpose). A great addition to this graphical engine would be a scripting engine that would allow independent writers to create their own quests and method to submit them to the players.

Re: No Man’s Sky

#46

Post by hacker_9 »

lesingerouge wrote: post #44

While the technical achievements are impressive, I am not convinced how "playable" this game will be in the end. Almost all the games in existence have at least 2 core elements: story and character purpose. I have not seen evidence of either in this game (no, "space exploration" is not exactly a purpose). A great addition to this graphical engine would be a scripting engine that would allow independent writers to cre…

The more I think about it the more impossible it seems that there could be ANY story in this game. Even if they managed to procedurally generate one planet + missions, the next generated planet would have to 'make sense' and fit into the story (if it's close by, then has it been taken over by the nearby planetary race? If they are a warrior race then do they use the planet as an outpost, with bases strategically placed around the planet? What does the planet add to the story mission-wise?)

And after all that, the 3rd generated planet would need to take into account the story of the other other 2 planets and so on and so on.. (even if the planets don't interact, the missions still need variety)

I agree with your scripting idea, to extend upon it: they release the game with an editor, then a designer would go in and use the editor to pre-generate a set of planets to their liking, and then they could layer story, missions, characters etc on top. Sort of like a build your own Mass Effect.

There could even be wormholes joining all the player created universes together! Oh the possibilities...

Re: No Man’s Sky

#47

Post by titanomachy »

vtsrh wrote: post #25
Osmium wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right; that's what I'm talking about too. They can have that many unique planets in principle which (due to lazy evaluation, you could say) they only need to 'assemble' a small number of them. But they can all be unique. I agree with you that it's a problem of how to make them seem sufficiently different to each other though.

If you are a computer then they are in-fact unique, since every hash has a different value. But that in not what is the definition of unique for humans. Since we are humans talking in English, then we have to agree on some definitions: Unique - 1. existing as the only one or as the sole example; single; solitary in type or characteristics: a unique copy of an ancient manuscript. 2. having no like or equal; unparallel…

I think both senses of unique are used in common parlance... for example, when people say "every snowflake is unique". Sure, they are similar... but not exactly the same, hence unique.

Re: No Man’s Sky

#48

Post by pavel_lishin »

hacker_9 wrote: post #30
joosters wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - the 2015 e3 demo video was a disappointment to me. The whole "Let's pick a random planet to fly to" sounds awesome, but then it's a big letdown when it looks remarkably similar to the ones in the other videos. The problem is you can have an unimaginably large number of unique planets but yet they still all end up looking the same. Sure, the coastlines might vary or the colouring may be mildly different, but…

Yeah I was thinking it would be something like Mass Effect with cities generated by overlaying algorithms. Something like: 1. Generate buildings 2. Generate transport links 3. Generate mission objectives 4. Refactor city layout to make objectives harder, and so on until a relatively stable (and fun to play!) environment is created. They could even import races from nearby planets that have already been generated if i…

There's no better way to spend a half hour online than to look at people's projects that generate cities. If they do a decent write-up along with some videos and demos, it really shows you just how difficult it can be for a simple fly-through 3D video. I can't imagine generating whole cities and cultures that you can interact with.

Re: No Man’s Sky

#50

Post by cousin_it »

vtsrh wrote: post #25
Osmium wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right; that's what I'm talking about too. They can have that many unique planets in principle which (due to lazy evaluation, you could say) they only need to 'assemble' a small number of them. But they can all be unique. I agree with you that it's a problem of how to make them seem sufficiently different to each other though.

If you are a computer then they are in-fact unique, since every hash has a different value. But that in not what is the definition of unique for humans. Since we are humans talking in English, then we have to agree on some definitions: Unique - 1. existing as the only one or as the sole example; single; solitary in type or characteristics: a unique copy of an ancient manuscript. 2. having no like or equal; unparallel…

Your comment has made me realize just how easy it is for people to misunderstand each other, due to attaching different meanings to words. Of course "unique" means "distinctive" to most people. I had just managed to completely forget about it, and assumed that everyone shared the computer science meaning of "unique".

I wonder how many arguments ultimately boil down to this kind of misunderstandings over words. And it doesn't help that marketers will happily use loaded words like "unique" to create hype.

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