I just want to inform you guys, “Hello Games” revealed their new procedural indie-game: No Man’s Sky on the VGX live-stream. Currently there is no video of it to share. I can say one thing, it’s made by only 4! people and it’s amazing!! The good thing for BS is: is does have very childish graphics which realy does not fit a futuristic space game. I think it has as much potential as your concept, but as long as they keep this graphic-style i will stick with your engine and support it with everything i got.
I guess after over 5 years of development it’s a bad idea to say: take your time But in the presented footage i could see lots of graphic imperfections. Maybe they have quantity, but you have quality. And quality is something current games often lack and players are missing…
still, i think it’d be best to stick with some apetizer image-food for the core community, keep the good stuff in the backpocket for later, make it even better and release it with a BANG when the right time comes. But, just my oppinion.
After everybody watching the VGX saw this, who is going to kickstart an unknown game promising nothing anywhere near as interesting as this? By having a trailer at VGX, these guys pretty much just won the indie space race without ever even looking at Kickstarter. If they do decide to have one, it will draw massive amounts of attention. All these space sims from the last year are in direct competition with one another, and these guys compensated for how late their announcement came by pushing it to more viewers than any of the other space games. You don’t have that luxury, and your announcement is going to be even later than theirs. Quite frankly you would have been better off putting a video out earlier this year, regardless of quality. Now you’re just going to look like a big “me-too” project to anybody who isn’t the 100 people actively following this game.
Also, “childish”? Really? I thought we all grew up and stopped calling things childish just because they had bright colors after Wind Waker came out.
We don’t know much about the technology behind No Man’s Sky, but Shralla’s comments do hint at another problem.
The market is starting to get saturated with new space-sim games all presenting something rather epic and procedurally generated is kinda turning into a buzz word. When new games come out and show these wonderful videos about vast procedurally generated planets and so forth, and make them look even half-way pretty, what they’re in-effect doing is raising the bar on the wow-factor. This means that while much of what Infinity had been doing would have ordinarily floored someone, its starting not to look too impressive compared to all the other things floating around out there.
If Infinity was going to rely on showing people a “Shiny” engine for the kickstarter, then its not going to impress people as much because they now have something to compare it to regardless of whether there is any substance or credible technology behind their games.
At this point, the game itself (content, purpose, gameplay, overall gaming experience) needs to standout as either interesting and different, or just plain well-done.
Well, maybe “childish” is not the right word here… what i mean is this extra non-realistic graphic style, like many bad 3D animated cartoons for kids have. Low polygons, low textures, over saturated, unrealistic light and colour and “worms-like” object style.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t feel impressed at all. The 2010 tech demo video is still the most impressive show of scale I’ve seen in any game, and it’s graphics still holds water today.
But as mentioned with all these new space sims saturating kickstarter it’s really important that Infinity brings something to the table that is both “unique” but also a lot better than what everyone else is offering. At least I still feel that Infinity has the best artistical direction of any game. Star Citizen is too corny, and No Man’s Sky looks too cartoonish for my taste.
Seems more like a concept, as they haven’t made any similar grand game, though they might have been working on it past 3 years, after releasing their ‘Joe danger’ game. But I am skeptical, maybe they got inspiration from @XeonXT_ (Limit theory).
But people funded Josh through Kickstarter, because he had been blogging about procedural generation for years, proving he is capable of making a space simulation game by himself alone. Hello Games have to prove that this isn’t just some concept video.
Well we’ll see what happens. The interesting part of the NMS video is that there is a lot they aren’t showing. For example nowhere in the video do they actually show a full planet. They also don’t actually show the transition to space as being seamless. They just show blue sky and clouds, the footage cuts away, and when it comes back that sky then fades into space but it isn’t seamless and they don’t show the rest of the planet - I highly doubt that’s a coincidence.
Personally I like their art style however, in terms of graphics, it’s a short cut. Toon shading is about a thousand times easier than what we’re doing but it’s going to let them get to market faster. We want a specific look and that’s why we’ve spent the time on a physical lighting pipeline but it’s definitely hurt our ability to launch our KS sooner rather than later.
Regardless we will continue undeterred and once our Kickstarter launches the market will speak.
We keep hearing of all these ‘new’ space sim games, but none of them appeal as much as Infinity. Star Citizen? Pass - not bothered with spending insane amounts of money on items and getting a PC that can run it… not to mention it has no seamless transitions, and you can only visit certain areas on planets. You know, despite the fact the raised over $20 million (?).
This game looks interesting - but not something to worry Infinity. The graphics style, the planets and even what little we’ve seen of the spacecraft’s in Infinity look how I’ve always pictured this kind of game should look like.
Definitely do need to get the word out though - can’t believe how few people know about Infinity.
While there are suddenly many space(/planetary) shooters on the market, there are differences between them. In particular, only Elite Dangerous and Rodina seem to have real-scale planets and seamless transitions, and the I-Novae Engine is probably more advanced than them.
And for gameplay’s sake, the closest thing there is seems to be Allegiance, and it’s more than a decade old (and yet, still played despite its Tarpeian difficulty cliff), as most of the space sims are single-player or multiplayer-sandbox. And the old ICP had some of the greatest feelings I ever got from space fighters, but I doubt this will be in the demo, alas. Newtonian physic + high-speed projectiles = win! And now I will cry over Shattered Horizon’s fate.
So, with a ‘playable’ demo showcasing a real-sized and believable-looking star system, I guess that there is still something to get Infinity stand out even in such a crowded market. True, it may have received, say, ten times more money before SC and ED (and LT), but it doesn’t mean its chances are gone, far from it.
All that said, I wish No Man’s Sky luck, it looks like it may become a pretty fun game if they do it right.
At the end of the day if we are successful in building a fun, compelling product people will buy it and enjoy it. It doesn’t matter how many other space games there are out there as long as we deliver a solid experience.
Elite will have real scale planets and seamless transitions ? What’s your source ? Last time I checked they weren’t planning to do it until muuuch later ( which if it is like Eve Online, means: never ).
Very impressive work. Above all else, I am certain that it will be a fun game. It’s also a step in the right direction - to see someone getting in the ballpark of that fully-procedural space game with planet surfaces include. Inspiring to be sure.
Obviously it’s not of the same visual quality as the other space sims (yet), but who cares? Graphics are easy It will be the gameplay that makes or breaks it…
Woops, I should have looked closer to the “much later” part, and not assume that since it was in the old Elite games, it would be in this one…
So, well, cut “Elite Dangerous” and replace by “Pioneer Space Sim”.
To be fair they have been pretty tight lipped about it (probably because they want to keep focus on the first release at the moment), but this can be read in one of their “Feature Request Updates” on their forums:
There are of course some updates that we have already announced will be coming. The most notable and anticipated of these is of course seamless planetary landings. Whilst it wouldn’t be sharing anything new with you to confirm this feature post-launch, I can confirm that we hope to implement it within a year of release, if possible:
Sandy: Definitely yes. Hopefully (barring issues) within the first year post-release Michael: Yes, we’ll be looking to add landings in updates after the game’s intial release. We’ll provide more details nearer the time.
The devs have also on several occasions in the forums said that the planets are indeed true to scale and with real orbits.
The procedural planets in the game look pretty nice too even if we can’t fly down to them in the first release. You can get a glimpse of them in this talk David Braben had at Tedx recently:
It will be the gameplay that makes or breaks it…