Author Topic: No Man's Sky  (Read 29182 times)

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Offline deathfun

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Since you asked
"No"

 
Sure, he never promised extensive multiplayer. But he did say, outright, that if you and another player ended up in the same place on the same planet you'd both be able to see each other, something which has been shown to be completely untrue.

It has shown to be untrue in that particular case, but that is not an indication of the feature being removed but only an indication that it doesn't work. There is a distinction between "Not working, as intended" and "Not working as intended" and people are doubling down on the former for ... why?

 
I'm sure it could just be a technical issue rather than a deliberate omission, but Murray's response to being asked about it was unbelievably evasive and definitely pushed people towards believing the latter.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline MikeRoz

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Sure, he never promised extensive multiplayer. But he did say, outright, that if you and another player ended up in the same place on the same planet you'd both be able to see each other, something which has been shown to be completely untrue.

It has shown to be untrue in that particular case, but that is not an indication of the feature being removed but only an indication that it doesn't work. There is a distinction between "Not working, as intended" and "Not working as intended" and people are doubling down on the former for ... why?

Agreed, but, it's possible to infer that multiplayer was removed from the features at the last minute from the fact that copies of the game ship with a sticker changing it from a multiplayer game to a single player game.
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The problem is that, from that same RPS article:
Quote
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that online play – or more specifically the ability to see other players – is cut content as some players assume. “Online play” could just as easily refer to the shared planet names, a feature that’s present in the game and allows you to see planets discovered by others and what names they’ve given to it and its creatures. Perhaps Hello Games later decided the icon was misleading and appealed PEGI’s decision in order to have it changed, or perhaps they printed the box with their best guess before getting a rating from PEGI. Or perhaps the ability to see other players is in the game and simply not working currently because of the server load, as implied.

(Also, woohoo for the profileration of RPS! :P)

 

Offline mjn.mixael

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Interesting. I'm curious what the dates on those interviews are. I'd more bet that the multiplayer was removed or cut during development... they did only have a team of like 10 people working on this game. Either way though, it's not like Sean and Hello Games is the new Peter Molyneux.

Aside from the multiplayer aspect, in my short time of being aware of the game, the trailers and stuff on IGN were pretty accurate to what I'm doing now in the game. Of course, it's also easier for me to overlook the multiplayer stuff because I just don't care for it. But I'm not also going to jump on the "Sean Murray is the worst liar who ever lived" bandwagon.

It also seems to be a bit ambiguous why the players didn't see each other still... so yeah, I'm not jumping on that bandwagon and being a part of the worst of the internet.

« Last Edit: August 15, 2016, 01:11:00 pm by mjn.mixael »
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Offline An4ximandros

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The problem with this game is that the developers went all "IT'S PROCEDURALY MADE" and failed to account for the million flaws such a system has. The code does not account for: Gravity, Environment, Predation, Diet, Evolution...

You never see a procedural video game even try to make animals look like they have a common ancestry from which they split into Phylium or division, subphylium, superclass, clade, family, species, etc.
Due to different mutations that adapted them to gravity (having six legs or a really strong tail and two legs), environment (ex: water sacs in their bodies or four stomachs), food (Carnivore, herbivore, omnivore...) and vestigial traits from their predecessors. Some animals develop better muscles to run away from predators, others develop claws to climb trees or cave ceilings where they are relatively safe... until a predator develops a counter-response.

There simply won't be a code-made game that accounts for that on the fly because the devs go for one thing: Make it cool and cheap. It's never made with love and care.

 
The problem with this game is that the developers went all "IT'S PROCEDURALY MADE" and failed to account for the million flaws such a system has. The code does not account for: Gravity, Environment, Predation, Diet, Evolution...

You never see a procedural video game even try to make animals look like they have a common ancestry from which they split into Phylium or division, subphylium, superclass, clade, family, species, etc.
Due to different mutations that adapted them to gravity (having six legs or a really strong tail and two legs), environment (ex: water sacs in their bodies or four stomachs), food (Carnivore, herbivore, omnivore...) and vestigial traits from their predecessors. Some animals develop better muscles to run away from predators, others develop claws to climb trees or cave ceilings where they are relatively safe... until a predator develops a counter-response.

There simply won't be a code-made game that accounts for that on the fly because the devs go for one thing: Make it cool and cheap. It's never made with love and care.

To be fair, from a programming standpoint, this would be immensely complex to implement, perhaps prohibitively. It's basically a simulated evolutionary biology engine, something that would be groundbreaking in its own right as a scientific tool. I wouldn't expect something like this to exist with any kind of accuracy within 5, maybe even 10 years.

It's one thing to even program it, but it also has to procedurally render the resulting creatures accurately according to the parameters that are calculated by the evolution algorithms. We know this is possible, but doing it well is a very different story. When designing a game, you do what you can with what you have first and foremost. Then you iterate and over time these more advanced aspirations become doable as tech and practice progresses.

Remember Spore? It originally had the lofty aim of doing almost exactly this, if not to as fine a detail level as you're probably thinking. Instead, it delivered Penis Creature Studio. And that wasn't even a game trying to also be a seamless space exploration sim (well, maybe in its very earliest rumors, but that died off quickly IIRC).

I haven't played No Man's Sky, but will probably check it out in several years when it's cheap, my system is more than capable of running it, and there are (hopefully) interesting mods for it. Most new games are relatively **** at release compared to how they mature with age if the support is good and they have modding accessibility.

 

Offline mjn.mixael

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If you're playing No Man's Sky for the creature variety alone, you're not going to be terribly thrilled. Sure, all the creatures are different than on some other planet, but the basic creatures exist pretty similarly throughout. There's usually some sort of multi-legged spider crab, several varieties of 4-legged mammals/reptiles (usually one that has taller legs in front than in back), a couple upright kangaroo/t-rex's depending on how they got put together by the algorithm.. etc. They may have different horns/spikes/colors/heads/legs/size, but their functionally the same thing as on the last planet.

The real fun is when the algorithm spits out a perfectly beautiful landscape, populated by just the right assembly of creatures, with nice weather, and plenty of upgrades to find. I've run across two of those planets so far and they were so fun to run around on. Here's a video of one of my first (long) play sessions. Skip to about 2:29:00. That's when I head to and land on one of my favorite planets I've found. I was on the planet for a while, so you may want to skip around. There's a stretch of lake exploration at about 3 hours.. an interesting creature at 3:34.. and a wonderful view of the pink and orange colored planet at about 3:56-58.


I know that one of the stars on my path is home to yet another great planet.. I just gotta get there! If every planet where like these, suddenly the game would be a lot less interesting to me. Rule of overabundance or something, I guess.

I don't think this game is for everyone.. but I do think a lot of the hate is a little unfounded. People should just sit back and enjoy the good parts of the game! Or.. if it's not worth the price of admission, then watch the good parts on YouTube! There's some real beauty here, regardless of whether or not the game has depth of mechanic or actual multiplayer.
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Offline deathfun

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Alternatively, throw in the 60$ and give it a test go. Sure, two hours isn't exactly a lot of time and this game is definitely one that'll require more to justify anything, but that's entirely an option on Steam to do

I equate NMS to being like Starbound LITE in the sense that there's a vast universe for you to explore and it's up to you to just explore it because you want to

Least, earlier editions of Starbound. Course, I explored planets to find civilizations I could PLUNDER AND DESTROY AND THROW INTO MY PIXEL PRINTER. Now I just scan things peacefully instead of outright, complete, utter annihilation.
"No"

 
The problem with this game is that the developers went all "IT'S PROCEDURALY MADE" and failed to account for the million flaws such a system has. The code does not account for: Gravity, Environment, Predation, Diet, Evolution...

You never see a procedural video game even try to make animals look like they have a common ancestry from which they split into Phylium or division, subphylium, superclass, clade, family, species, etc.
Due to different mutations that adapted them to gravity (having six legs or a really strong tail and two legs), environment (ex: water sacs in their bodies or four stomachs), food (Carnivore, herbivore, omnivore...) and vestigial traits from their predecessors. Some animals develop better muscles to run away from predators, others develop claws to climb trees or cave ceilings where they are relatively safe... until a predator develops a counter-response.

There simply won't be a code-made game that accounts for that on the fly because the devs go for one thing: Make it cool and cheap. It's never made with love and care.

People do try this a lot and there's a reason it doesn't work: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TynanSylvester/20130602/193462/The_Simulation_Dream.php
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Lorric

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Cute spiky armadillo backed lizard tailed web footed demon horned dog. :)

 
You can find alien dogs in it? Why did no one mention this?!

Now where's my credit card

 

Offline Kszyhu

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Warning, the second part is quite loud.

 

Offline MikeRoz

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Quote
The team programmed some of the physics for aesthetic reasons. For instance, Duncan insisted on permitting moons to orbit closer to their planets than Newtonian physics would allow. When he desired the possibility of green skies, the team had to redesign the periodic table to create atmospheric particles that would diffract light at just the right wavelength.

Source

How did we not see that this guy was making it all up? Chris Roberts wishes he could spin tall tales as well as this guy. Am I the only one that finds this hilariously implausible?

Go to this Reddit thread if you want to read about all the features that people have figured out are in the trailers that are still on the Steam page but are nowhere to be found in the game that shipped.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2016, 10:22:43 pm by MikeRoz »
Rave reviews of my previous posts:
"Wow.  Just wow.  Well, just about the whole post is devoid of reasonable technical merit and accuracy." -Enki
"Wow, he just wasted about an hour of his life." -MachManX
"There are 5 million things wrong with your post, of which many have already been pointed out..." -blackhole
"Grrr. Someone please monkey mike...He's causing more problems than he's solving" -terran_emperor
"You're not very bright, are you." - General Battuta

 

Offline mjn.mixael

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I read through that list earlier today. Some of it has a lot of credence but some of it is reeaaaaallly nitpicky. Take for example this one.

"Maintaining Wanted Level Indoors" - "Footage of a wanted level not being cleared by entering a structure."

That's such a minor thing and clearly something changed during development because Hello Games thought the game would be more fun this way... or perhaps at least more playable? At least 1/4 of the list on reddit is this kind of nitpicky thing that refuses to take actual game development into account. Same thing happens with movies and trailers... there are often scenes in trailers that don't make it into the final cut of the movie.

Another thing on the list is reflective cockpit glass. That's not a feature.. that's just eye candy.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2016, 11:34:12 pm by mjn.mixael »
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Offline MikeRoz

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Yeah, and then there are big, noticeable things like this:

Quote
"The physics of every other game—it’s faked,” the chief architect Sean Murray explained. “When you’re on a planet, you’re surrounded by a skybox—a cube that someone has painted stars or clouds onto. If there is a day to night cycle, it happens because they are slowly transitioning between a series of different boxes."

"With us,” Murray continued, “when you're on a planet, you can see as far as the curvature of that planet. If you walked for years, you could walk all the way around it, arriving back exactly where you started. Our day to night cycle is happening because the planet is rotating on its axis as it spins around the sun. There is real physics to that. We have people that will fly down from a space station onto a planet and when they fly back up, the station isn't there anymore; the planet has rotated. People have filed that as a bug.”

Source, again

Anyway, apparently new nVidia drivers are out, so I will have to give this game another chance - tomorrow.
Rave reviews of my previous posts:
"Wow.  Just wow.  Well, just about the whole post is devoid of reasonable technical merit and accuracy." -Enki
"Wow, he just wasted about an hour of his life." -MachManX
"There are 5 million things wrong with your post, of which many have already been pointed out..." -blackhole
"Grrr. Someone please monkey mike...He's causing more problems than he's solving" -terran_emperor
"You're not very bright, are you." - General Battuta

 

Offline deathfun

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Was just about to share that list actually, reading through it myself
Quote
That's such a minor thing and clearly something changed during development because Hello Games thought the game would be more fun this way... or perhaps at least more playable?

I don't know, being able to blast open a steel door and then just casually waltz inside with the robots going "Welp, he got away" is sorta weird. I mean, why even have robots defending the place if they give up the moment someone goes indoors?

It's a gameplay element change that doesn't make much sense

Course, I can't shoot inside either, so maybe that's something to do with it. Why can't I shoot inside buildings?

Sidenote: The flying IS JUST THE GOD DAMNED WORST. If I want to fly ten feet off the ground LET ME FLY TEN FEET OFF THE GROUND. If and when I crash, it'll be my fault! Stop imposing weird restrictions on me game!

However mjn, I thought of the least as being more comprehensive than it was nitpicky. Small changes are still changes (if you add enough of them up, it's cumulatively a large change) and still relevant to the discussion of what was pitched, and what we got
"No"

 
Sidenote: The flying IS JUST THE GOD DAMNED WORST. If I want to fly ten feet off the ground LET ME FLY TEN FEET OFF THE GROUND. If and when I crash, it'll be my fault! Stop imposing weird restrictions on me game!

This is the review I needed. Nothing else in this thread has made me decide to not purchase this game, at least until there's a fantastic sale, and even then maybe not...

 

Offline Kszyhu

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Another thing on the list is reflective cockpit glass. That's not a feature.. that's just eye candy.

Not reflective glass, but translucent. Cockpits were supposed to be visible from outside, but the canopy is opaque. By the way, the post was deleted for some reason, here's an archived version: https://archive.is/V5Zns