Well we have new addition to genera
Its getting kinda crowded in this area don’t you guys think? 
http://galaxy4d.com/
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Refreshingly so, if you ask me.
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Pretty much with every new universe simulator demo reel that comes out, I grow increasingly impressed with the I-Novae Engine’s planet generator.
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I was promised four dimensions.
I feel cheated.
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Looks like a good effort indeed.
It is also starting to mean that INS have to step up their presentation game and sell it more than just the usual “Yo dog, check out this procedural galaxy thing I built.”
I know the quality and finess of the Inovae Engine is far greater, but you can’t just sit back and let it sell itself.
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Wouldn’t it be great if they came up with a gameplay concept that was awesome, pitched that, and never made a reference to the gorgeous graphics? It would be I-Novae Studio’s way of saying “Oh, yeah, we also do amazing virtual planetary systems. No big deal.” The media would snap that up in an instant, reporting on the graphics, feeling like they were revealing the hidden truth of the game. Of course, if the gameplay concept was terrible, INS would be focusing attention on a terrible gameplay concept.
No Man’s Sky went the exact opposite route. “Look, we’ve got 18 quintillion worlds!” Well so what? What am I going to do on 18 quintillion worlds? Shoot rocks?
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I did notice that Galaxy 4D is not to scale. It would be perfect for Spore 2 tho!
Many new entrants, but so very few actually released titles.
I’m pretty sure that people are burnt out on all these announcements of space sim games, not a great time to be announcing Infinity as well, but then again the longer they wait the more irrelevant they become.
Yes, so many of these “unlimited exploration” games don’t really tackle the core question people ask which is - “so…now what?”. Elite is making improvements by giving people reasons to play such as the faction mechanic and PvP Arena modes.
It’s not enough to just sit people in a sandbox and leave them to it IMO. There has to be some sort of background enticement to keep people engaged.
Oh, I think it is. A sandbox is an environment where there are so many possible play styles that players find something that immediately calls to them. It’s why they bought the game in the first place. Ultima Online called to me back in 1998, and I was all set to pursue my dreams. Dreams dashed on the rocks of PKers, as it turns out, but that’s another story.
My “so what?” comment was inspired by the fact that No Man’s Sky doesn’t seem to have any gameplay of note. Sure, lots and lots of planets, each different, but not of any apparent consequence to gameplay. When I visit this planet, I collect resources, shoot bad guys and upgrade my gear. When I visit that planet, I do the same thing. It’s a straight progression RPG with the game zones being replaced by planets.
If they do that ‘slow introduction of multiplayer’ that I talked about elsewhere, then they may have an interesting twist.
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agreed.
Without some shovels, buckets a such its boring sandbox
Also don’t forget to wet the sand…
…or we will make it wet ourselves… i dare you !
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I for one am pretty stoked about No Mans Sky, but probably because I am expecting to get not just what you mentioned (walk on planets blablabla), but also a robust trading system with traders from different factions and perhaps help in a war between those? Cause that is the kind of impression I got so far from that game, maybe I am wrong maybe I am right. It’s getting bought any way, so no hard feelings if my expectation turn out to have been too high.
This game (galaxy4d) seems neat, and if it is ‘just’ a multiplayer game not a massively multiplayer game, then I can actually dig it, as there aren’t many of those… So far I can think of one, which is Evochron Mercenary, which iirc doesn’t allow walking on planets.
Also, this game has crafting according to their site (yaaaaay … sighs).
I do like their asteroid ring. Transition from far to close was really good.
Hey guys, just noticed this thread about Galaxy4D
Here are two new videos of Pre-Alpha 5 uploaded this morning :
Graphics improvements : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NkviOzQmJE
Crafting (Building a spaceship) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyRUnu1rZtw
What do you think ?
Looking at the video I have doubts that they try to create everything at 1:1 scale.
Look at the light reflection of the player on the planet, and then how fast the horizon curve occours when he moves up. Looks like a much smaller scaled planet to me.
I like the visual effects, but if they really dont do 1:1 scale I think they skip the most interessting (and challenging for development) part of a space game. Because adding all this fancy visual stuff is far more easy and you can use 3rd party stuff out of the box (like lightning, fog, particle and mesh stuff) when working on small scales.
Would love to know what INovae’s opinions are here.
Yeah, the sense of scale is a bit off. I don’t know if it’s due to a technical limitation or simply because of the scenes they’re showing off, but you can easily see in the first video at 3:39, with the plants relative size versus the mountains, and later during the zoom-out the size of these mountains versus the planet’s. Even if these plants are meant to be trees, the size of the mountains is still completely off. If it was Mars, every single of these mountains would be like Olympus Mount. On Earth, Himalayan mountains look like this:
You pretty much can’t resolve the individual mountains.
The scenes still look beautiful, though.
Minecraft ships don’t do much for me, and I’d fear what shapes players would create with them in a multiplayer environment. I rather enjoyed the idea of having the ship exterior defined by the game, but then I get to lay out the interior in Minecraft-y fashion.
Here are some images that I threw together for the old forums when talking about this idea:
Raw interior blocks. The blocks are in a variety of sizes.
Some blocks allocated by the player (note the hangar module taking up a bunch of blocks and ‘wasting’ a lot of space around it)
The idea continued to the point of using the block allocation to feed sensor displays.
When viewing on sensors from a long distance, you might see this:
Then, closer
And so on until you get a detailed sensor view
I guess players could still lay out the interiors to make a point when other people viewed them on sensors, but at least it wouldn’t be in everyone’s faces all the time.
I didn’t know you suffered from medorthophobia.
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Galaxy4D supports 1:1 scales, however in the video the earth-like is 1/60th of earth.
It’s not a limitation but rather a gameplay decision but not a final one.
In any case modders will be able to reproduce our own solar system to scale.
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