I very much doubt it will be everything anybody has hoped for. It seems to be quite a niche game where most of the gameplay is about discovering new places and lifeforms. The combat we’ve seen appears to be very arcadey and not up to the standard of current “in development” space sims.
I do think it looks very unique and certainly worthy of praise. I don’t feel sceptical about it probably because I don’t see it as being particularly overly hyped. All I see is articles commenting on a game that looks very interesting.
I really do appreciate the fact that they are showing the world a small fraction of the potential Procedural Generation.
But things I don’t like:
The short trip from planet surface to space, and the unrealistic orbiting distance from one planet to another.
The animals being “procedurally generated” is a halfway lie. You can see that all the animals are of a certain “archetype”, and thus not truly procedural. My guess is that the procedurally generated wildlife in NME is based on archetypes, and the procedural generation adds details to them to make them appear different.
You have a “Rhino” type animal, you have a antlered type animal… you have fish… etc.
I’m guessing they have archetypes of creatures, and add horns and skin features on them to make them appear more generated than they really are.
The real challenge of procedural wildlife is to have NO LIMIT to their limb structure or skin appearance. BUT as a conditional function: Before generating the new creature, consider the entire body with each limb’s ability of locomotion using a “Center of Gravity” test using procedural animation. Once you have such a system implemented, you could have silicon based life forms generated, without any similarities to the creatures on earth. You will need some form of modularity for the resource-gathering orifice (“mouth”) etc. I am fine with SOME modularity as long as most of the creature is procedurally generated. Otherwise, what’s the point? It appears NME will give us a variation of “Deer with horns in front of their brow”… or “deer with horns on their hooves”, or “deer with antlers on their ass” etc. This is too convenient and archetypical. Though it’s a highly speculative science, xenobiology is much more interesting than this.And it supplies us with many ways to think and create.
This is picture i got from a magazine NMS shared on their page. I think they are generated from a single deer model, and they look so different. And from what i’ve read, they already have hundreds of proto-model included trees and animals.
Still not convinced. In the trailer they obviously fake transitions between space and planets and traveling through solar systems, the distances between these elements look ridiculously odd… also this oversaturated childish world, I just can’t take this game seriously.
Still like the artstyle. The combination of high saturation, shifted colour pallet (cyan, purple, brown) and use of geometric forms are things often used in recent indy titles … I’ll list some here …
They always dive in and out very fast, why? I bet because the transition does not work properly yet. I am sure they will fix that some day, but I-Novae engine is capable of that already and looks much more realistic.
No, the transition works, it’s been shown in both directions at a normal pace, and I have no idea why you’re so intent on accusing it of being faked. Yeah the I-Novae engine is more capable, but this game looks like it could be a lot of fun, and you’d be much better off giving it a chance than professing that you’re too sophisticated for the childish art style.
I’m sure it will be a fun game. Just not what most people here want “exactly”. It’s good that Procedural generation starts to pop up. It is a vast and interesting concept. And monopolies in the game industrie have never benefited the player the most. Especially because they start to cater to a too broad audience (Call of Duty, The fall of “Battlefield” :’( )
Just the same ammount of criticism applied to this game as any other thing on this forum. Including the I-Novae engine and “Scientific” Experiments.
I’ll play all of them for sure … Elite:Dangerous, No Man’s Sky, Limit Theory and Battlescape!
I must say the animal variation they are achieving is very impressive. Thrive, the indie game that wanted to use to use I-Novae Engine to make a successor to Spore, tried the genetic/evolution way and didn’t even have a demonstration, that I know of.
Yes. Clearly there’s absolutely no reason not to buy and spend time on an intentionally delayed console port with an art style you dislike.
Oh and for just $60 you can now buy early access to my in-development game “cmd sim” which will feature features such as “mkdir”, “cp”, and even files! There’s absolutely no reason not to!
i) Procedural Variation in almost everything, from planets to animals to even sound effects and music.
ii) The game’s art style is quite interesting in terms of color combinations.
Things i dislike about No Mans sky
i) The transitions between lods are not smooth, there is too much immediate changes happening as the lod increases. The difference between one lod to the next lod is too much which is making popping more apparent.
but any game can be critiqued, no mans sky looks promising though, But what i am curious about is how the developers of no mans sky achieved this tech in a mere 2 years. I am a developer myself working on this procedural planet generation tech myself. So i know the effort that is required to develop something like this, i have been following Infinity development since 2010 and as soon as i saw the 2010 tech demo at that same moment i decided that i am going to do something like this and this is what i have achieved so far in a span of 5 years from a complete noob to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd6BX7nqZGo&feature=youtu.be, (you can also follow my development progress over the years on my channel), though i have also completed my bachelors and also developed several mobile games as well during this time alongwith life i was not doing the same thing continously for the past 5 years but it definitely took me this much amount of time to learn the technical knowledge required to do something like this, on my own though and i am still no where near the ultimate quality that i am looking for.
Now back to no mans sky, either the developers took a really smart approach to develop this game some how this 3 man developer team blended quite nicely and did this amazing work in such a short time, whatever development strategies they took just worked amazingly, or perhaps they are hiding something, they definitely have been working on this game for a quite longer period of time than what they are claiming to general public (they showed their first demo just after around 9 months to an year of development) and no genius is not the anwser, if carmack is considered genius, then it took him 4 years to develop doom 3 in a team. I would like the views from all the techie guys out there especially inovae team. Thanks.
What I have a hard time seeing is, what will be the gameplay like? The art style and engine look pretty good (apart from the transitions, but that can be forgiven if everything else is good), but at the end of the day, the important is what will be done with it. So far, I couldn’t find much about gameplay, am I missing it?
the title said “galaxy gameplay”. i’m sure all you can see above is the actual gameplay. except for the warping speed in the video, the dev said they cheated a bit.
I just love Procedural Generation. I’m happy so many talented individuals (Flavien Brebion, Josh Parnell, Hello Games, Frontier, etc) are working to bring to light the TRUE potential of procedural generation. “The People” (everyone else really) have been given very myopic vistas. Though many myopic vistas have been gorgeous in many games! The vistas have still been myopic and quite limited. I wonder, really, if not procedural generation could be taken to task with urban landscapes. Whether sci-fi, contemporary, renaissance, medieval etc. I’ve seen the “KKrieger 96k” demo on youtube, so I KNOW it’s possible to generate a city procedurally. Again, my irrational religiosity shines through: I really think procedural generation is the future of gaming. In all things. Galaxies with stars and planets… the planetary surfaces… the flora and fauna which may inhabit some planet… the urban landscape which may exist on a planet… and reaching further: being able to enter ANY door in said urban landscape! With rooms being procedurally generated with furniture placement, windows and all. In a city, there should be no doors you cannot enter, whether by force or by key.
I also see a path for Procedural Generation being useful in AI character development and character behavior. I even see procedural generation becoming the future in dialogue generation! Though I am are now speaking of something which is at the level of “AI” which requires the processing power used for IBM’s Watson. Imagine an RPG game whose programmers have made it so that the dialogue is generated on the fly, depending on the situation. Surely, procedural generation is the future of ALL aspects of gaming. It just differs at what rate we achieve these various goals. I think procedural dialogue (almost true AI) and voice synthesis to accompany this, is among the most difficult tasks to undertake. But I DO think they will be done by someone at some point in time!
Since I started working in 3dsmax back in 2000, I’ve been almost religious about my fixation on procedural generation. Though the procedural generation available to you in a 3d application is very limited (except if you script something manually, and of course there is Houdini).
That’s why I’m always in awe at the programmers who do this.
I don’t really mind the unrealistic nature of the planets and the “galaxy” of No Man’s Sky.
I take it for what it is: A game where you can travel through Chris Foss’ paintings! (concept artist on Jodorowsky’s Dune and Alien)
I am not a huge fan of the “fog” of view distance I’ve seen so far in NMS. I wonder if that is due to a limitation in hardware, or software. But then again: I-Novae and Space Engine never seemed to exhibit the same problems with view distance that I see in NMS.
Whatever the case, I applaud it, and wish it well. I’m certainly going to buy it once it reaches the PC market!
i was not doing the same thing continously for the past 5 years but it definitely took me this much amount of time to learn the technical knowledge required to do something like this, on my own though and i am still no where near the ultimate quality that i am looking for.