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[irrotational]

Well Destiny should probably credit Florence Nightingale...she widely popularised (if not invented) the use of pie charts as a graphical way to convey percentages.

All those filling circles in Destiny are pie charts...

 

[RedSwirl]

I haven't played Destiny since the beta, but from what I remember that game figured out how to make a lot of normally PC-oriented features, or the overall CRPG UI feeling, work on a controller. Actually it kinda did so by just doing a cursor but making the clickable icons really big.

The core of Minecraft is building: taking blocks from one place to put them in another place, making a dirt or stone house, etc.

You can't build in NMS. Yes, there is destructible terrain, but the devs have been really dodgy about whether or not the changes you make on a planet will even stick if you leave the area. I believe they said they won't, because there's no way they could save individual changes to quadrillions of planets. Planets and their surfaces are generated via algorithm as you approach them, they can't go "oh yeah and also this one mountain has been dug out and there's a big hole here" etc., because that's a lot of data on a per-planet basis.

So comparisons to Minecraft really fall flat - this game is really about exploring.

Actually I think the recent previews are indicating another change in this.

It seems that really insignificant changes, like killing one creature, might not be saved for anybody. Mid-level changes though, like digging big holes or dealing damage to a structure, might be saved locally -- only on your save file but not online. Only the really big things will be saved for everyone, like critically damaging a space station or hunting a species to extinction.

 

[Tumle]

It's all probability.

Planets with life will be a rarity, planets teeming with life will be even rarer.

With a sample size that spans the entire Galaxy, the permutations where both of these events will be enormous.

Yea I know that much .. But surely there must be a max number of species that a planet can have.. I'm sure it won't be as many different kinds like on earth

 

[Grief.exe]

PC or PS4? Is there a reason to go one way or the other yet?

Not really.

In the footage that I've seen so far, performance and pop in on PS4 hasn't been great. Most likely due to the game being CPU bound as it calculates your position and surroundings in the universe.

VR support hasn't been announced, but compatibility between the three major choices (PSVR/Vive/Rift) is likely a wash as support for one will likely support all three.

 

[Zom]

It's all procedurally generated so it's not taking up space on your HDD. The core assets are there for art, user interface and programming stuff for the game to work.

But as far as maps, it's all generated on the fly and calculated mathematically using the systems that NMS uses for terrain, creature, and world generation.

For example Minecraft is a very small game, only a couple hundred megs at best, but it's world sizes are near limitless compared to preset world assets in open world games like Skyrim, The Witcher 3, Fallout 4, and several others.

In fact there was an article that someone walked in a straight line in a Minecraft world for 3 straight years and only traveled apparently 700 or so kilometres. A Minecraft world you spawn at it's center from the center to one end it's roughly 12,000km. (At least in the version of Minecraft he played which is beta 1.7.2 which future versions this Far-End thing was patched out)

http://kotaku.com/a-man-has-spent-three-years-trying-to-walk-to-the-end-o-1509473657

Outside of static assets like music, art, textures, and game code. NMS won't take much space.

In short: World size has no bearing on how much disc space is used, especially in regards to procedural generation.

Nice explanation, thanks!

 

[OmegaDL50]

We know that No Man's Sky has been in the works before their studios was flooded in December of 2013, and it's first trailer footage with some of the UI elements was introduced in E3 2014 right? Before even the Alpha / Beta of Destiny in July of the same year (2014)

While Destiny was probably been in the works for several years, a point should be made that UI elements, I would think are one of the last things that get finalized.

A better question to ask is how long has Destiny been in development compared to it's release?

As far as I'm aware all UI elements of No Man's Sky have been consistent in back of it's initial trailers back in 2014 before even the Destiny Alpha hit.

So is this really a case of one simply copying off the other. It's seems more so that they are coincidentally similar, especially since both games were in development during the same time period for a few years.

 

[Alienous]

We know that No Man's Sky has been in the works before their studios was flooded in December of 2013, and it's first trailer footage with some of the UI elements was introduced in E3 2014 right? Before even the Alpha / Beta of Destiny in July of the same year (2014)

While Destiny was probably been in the works for several years, a point should be made that UI elements, I would think are one of the last things that get finalized.

A better question to ask is how long has Destiny been in development compared to it's release?

As far as I'm aware all UI elements of No Man's Sky have been consistent in back of it's initial trailers back in 2014 before even the Destiny Alpha hit.

So is this REALLY a case of one simply copying off the other. It's seems more so that they are coincidentally similar.

The UI we can see has changed significantly from the reveal.

 

[Raist]

I hope one of the trophies will be "land on every planet". Juts for a laugh.

 

[More_Badass]

We know that No Man's Sky has been in the works before their studios was flooded in December of 2013, and it's first trailer footage with some of the UI elements was introduced in E3 2014 right? Before even the Alpha / Beta of Destiny in July of the same year (2014)

While Destiny was probably been in the works for several years, a point should be made that UI elements, I would think are one of the last things that get finalized.

A better question to ask is how long has Destiny been in development compared to it's release?

As far as I'm aware all UI elements of No Man's Sky have been consistent in back of it's initial trailers back in 2014 before even the Destiny Alpha hit.

So is this really a case of one simply copying off the other. It's seems more so that they are coincidentally similar, especially since both games were in development during the same time period for a few years.

Destiny had been in development since 2010, but was only officially announced in 2013. Hello Games began development on NMS around 2011-2012, while working on Joe Danger 2

 

[OmegaDL50]

We'd probably all be playing No Man's Sky right now this very second if Hello Games Studio was never flooded to begin with. The flood had to have set them back back several months in terms of development considering all of the damaged equipment, lost computers, delays in trying to find a new work space and whatever else.

Considering most dev studios work 10+ hour days especially during deadline crunch, using the term "lazy" in most factors of game development is poor word choice to use in any stretch.

Looking at how small Hello Game's team is, and how large and ambitious this game is, it's forgone conclusion they definitely are not lazy.

 

[Alienous]

We'd probably all be playing No Man's Sky right now this very second if Hello Games Studio was never flooded to begin with. The flood had to have set them back back several months in terms of development considering all of the damage equipment, lost computers, delays in trying to find a new work space and whatever else.

Considering most dev studios work 10+ hour days especially during deadline crunch, using the term "lazy" in most factors of game development is poor word choice to use in any stretch.

I tend to think lazy works as a relative term. Calling, for instance, the UI design lazy is just a way of saying that it seems less effort was put into designing that than other parts of the game.

I'm not sure that anyone is using lazy as a blanket term to describe their overall efforts.

 

[More_Badass]

I tend to think lazy works as a relative term. Calling, for instance, the UI design lazy is just a way of saying that it seems less effort was put into designing that than other parts of the game.

I'm not sure that anyone is using lazy as a blanket term to describe their overall efforts.

I think it's kind of disingenuous to call it. Just because their menu looks reminiscent of Destiny doesn't indicate they put less effort into their UI. You don't know that.

 

[cLOUDo]

Besides a similar cursor and a clean minimalist design, it's not really a copy.

Both game's inventory screens

Even the cursor is different
Lmao

Edit: is like you says than resident evil 4's inventory is a copy of Diablo 2

 

[GribbleGrunger]

Earth should be an Easter Egg.

 

[OmegaDL50]

I tend to think lazy works as a relative term. Calling, for instance, the UI design lazy is just a way of saying that it seems less effort was put into designing that than other parts of the game.

I'm not sure that anyone is using lazy as a blanket term to describe their overall efforts.

I do need to consider the positive though because of the Flood.

They worked on the game for what? 5 years. So if we treat the Flood as a delay. Then wouldn't this also mean they had more time to think about their project on the downtime and means to improve it even further.

What if some feature they didn't pan out well before the flood just happen to still exist in the game, and because of the flood they could effectively "go back to the drawing table" go over what works and what did not work and go on from that and iron down the details.

That is just speculation on my behalf however. I think it's better to think the No Man's Sky we are getting in July of 2016 will be a better result them some theoretical 2015 release if the Flood never happened.

 

[Icyflamez96]

The Destiny-esque menus were first shown off in 2015, well after Destiny was already out. I doubt it was a coincidence. Sean played Destiny too IIRC.

 

[Felipe Simao]

It's all procedurally generated so it's not taking up space on your HDD. The core assets are there for art, user interface and programming stuff for the game to work.

But as far as maps, it's all generated on the fly and calculated mathematically using the systems that NMS uses for terrain, creature, and world generation.

For example Minecraft is a very small game, only a couple hundred megs at best, but it's world sizes are near limitless compared to preset world assets in open world games like Skyrim, The Witcher 3, Fallout 4, and several others.

In fact there was an article that someone walked in a straight line in a Minecraft world for 3 straight years and only traveled apparently 700 or so kilometres. A Minecraft world you spawn at it's center from the center to one end it's roughly 12,000km. (At least in the version of Minecraft he played which is beta 1.7.2 which future versions this Far-End thing was patched out)

http://kotaku.com/a-man-has-spent-three-years-trying-to-walk-to-the-end-o-1509473657

Outside of static assets like music, art, textures, and game code. NMS won't take much space.

In short: World size has no bearing on how much disc space is used, especially in regards to procedural generation.

There are no maps in the game. Sean said they removed because you don't have a map of a place you've never been to.

 

[OmegaDL50]

There are no mpas in the game. Sean said they removed because you don't have a map of a place you've never been to.

When I'm talking about maps. I'm referring to the actual generated terrain that is loaded within the game. Not a UI that shows you places and locations.

As in a 3D model.

Basically objects such as mountains, fields, is all generated in a 3D game uses something called a "terrain map"

That is what I was referring to in my usage of the word map.

 

[GreyOcelot]

Besides a similar cursor and a clean minimalist design, it's not really a copy.

Both game's inventory screens

are we looking at the same pictures?

 

[Thor Molecules]

The UI we can see has changed significantly from the reveal.

I prefer how it looked before, when it was first revealed

 

[Zom]

I hope one of the trophies will be "land on every planet". Juts for a laugh.

you monster

Earth should be an Easter Egg.

I would be surpised if there isnt one, full earth 1:1 with digital versions of our self, waiting for the same game.

 

[Felipe Simao]

When I'm talking about maps. I'm referring to the actual generated terrain that is loaded within the game. Not a UI that shows you places and locations.

As in a 3D model.

Basically objects such as mountains, fields, is all generated in a 3D game uses something called a "terrain map"

That is what I was referring to in my usage of the word map.

Ahh. Got you. Thats correct.

 

[OmegaDL50]

I hope one of the trophies will be "land on every planet". Juts for a laugh.

Considering exploration is one of the games central focuses, I bet there will be milestone based trophies to keep the player moving onward and beyond.

Here's a couple of trophy ideas!

Find, Land on, and explore 5, 10, 25, 50 planets (each level being it's own trophy)

Land on and Explore the first planet discovered by Hello Game's Sean.

Discover a planet and claim it (PSN ID) before anyone else

Discover a alien creature and claim it (PSN ID) before anyone else

Find every item that completes the Periodic Table

Raise Your Wanted Level to 5 and survive an encounter with a Sentinel

Learn 5 / 10 / 25 / 50 / 100% of an Alien Language

Successfully Communicate with a Intelligent Alien Species

Make a successful trade with an Intelligent Alien Species

Make it to the center of the galaxy and discover the big secret.



I hope some of these make it into the game.

 

[Raist]

The wanted meter thing is straight out of GTA.
Lazy devs ololz.

 

[RedSwirl]

HD space-wise, we already know No Man's Sky is going to be around 10GB max. The HDD requirements are already on the Steam and GOG pages. Elite Dangerous in comparison is actually only around 8GB.

The wanted meter thing is straight out of GTA.
Lazy devs ololz.

Another nice tidbit of info: No Man's Sky is part of the same sort of family/tradition of British sandbox game design Grand Theft Auto came out of. NMS taking heavy inspiration from Elite is well-known, but GTA was also influenced by Elite. The whole emphasis on doing what you want to do in a big world with a lot of systems going on (police, pedestrians, vehicles, other enemies, etc.) grew out of the British 80's computer gaming scene, of which Elite was one of the landmark games. There were other games that evolved from that in different directions, GTA was just the most famous after GTA III. NMS in some ways could be considered "Grand Theft Space Ship."

 

[z3phon]

Wish the game had proper multiplayer elements. Would be amazing to play and explore the galaxy with friends.

 

[The Argus]

Wish the game had proper multiplayer elements. Would be amazing to play and explore the galaxy with friends.

Me too. I like the whole massive universe hard to find other players aspect, but it sure would be fun to co-op with a friend. Since everyone starts out somewhere different why not just allow the host to play as their SP character and who ever joins will simply become a clone of their main character. Maybe even sync whatever items/XP found back to the SP player after the mode is closed.

 

[unknownstranger]

Going to be fun in the OT for people to try to find each other when they find something really cool.

 

[AncientDiety]

Me too. I like the whole massive universe hard to find other players aspect, but it sure would be fun to co-op with a friend. Since everyone starts out somewhere different why not just allow the host to play as their SP character and who ever joins will simply become a clone of their main character. Maybe even sync whatever items/XP found back to the SP player after the mode is closed.

I dunno, not every game needs MP/co-op. Sometimes there is beauty in feeling alone and isolated in a game like this, that's part of the appeal. There are lots of games that serve the co-op / MP crowd already,

 

[Seiniyta]

No Man's Sky is kind my dream game being realized ever since I started playing Spore 8 years ago. I loved the space phase despite knowing how shallow it was. I loved roaming around, discovering new species and such.

But I always wished for the space phase in particular in spore:

- Being in direct control of your spaceship and seeing things more at a grande level instead of zoomed out.

- Actually being able to walk around on the planets and explore them. Spore had the awful hologram projection of your creation but it was super slow and again more top down.



Speaking of Spore, anyone else finds the galaxy of Spore giving a better sense of scale then how they showed it in No Man's sky (so far) where you never really know where you are in the galaxy/universe?

The way you zoom out from your planet and see all the stars and see them all being explorable until you see the entire galaxy was quite something. one of the few things Spore really nailed imo.

 

[Pif]

I would like a crowd trophy:

"Discover every planet".

But crowd trophies don't exist for whatever reason.

 

[GribbleGrunger]

That last line is so frigin' apt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-wDlhNldnE

So don't ask again.

 

[B.K.]

Do we know if there will be planets with cities and advanced civilizations? It would suck if the only planets in the game only have plants and animals.

 

[Deleted member 80556]

I wonder if they're going full-Interstellar with the black holes. Only other game I know of that did is Out There

I certainly hope so! I remember Sean saying he had altered the game's algorithms after watching the film, to replicate the symmetry of Mann's ice planet.

I tend to think lazy works as a relative term. Calling, for instance, the UI design lazy is just a way of saying that it seems less effort was put into designing that than other parts of the game.

I'm not sure that anyone is using lazy as a blanket term to describe their overall efforts.

I was hoping people were stopping the use of the term 'lazy' in game development.

 

[Icyflamez96]

I would like a crowd trophy:

"Discover every planet".

But crowd trophies don't exist for whatever reason.

Do you realize that would be just as hopeless as a normal trophy

 

[More_Badass]

I certainly hope so! I remember Sean saying he had altered the game's algorithms after watching the film, to replicate the symmetry of Mann's ice planet.

Oh really? That's very exciting.

I just really want to see how weird the planets and wildlife get. Sean has said they've tweaked the algorithms for demos and showings so none of the crazy super weird life and planets that appears as you get closer to the center is generated and the underwater life is instantly recognized as aquatic fish species and more dino species appeared.

 

[GhaleonEB]

I think using a UI similar to Destiny is just fine. The games have similar needs, and the cursor/icon/tab system has the added advantage of being one that will work with both consoles and PC, so Hello can use the same on both platforms without issues on either. I think it's a good thing to be inspired by something that works well and is appropriate for your game (IMO, Destiny has one of the best/most efficient UI's out there, so I say borrow from the best).

 

[More_Badass]

This is a really interesting interview. I didn't know Sean got to privately chat with Elon Musk
http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/03/no-mans-sky-joe-danger-sean-murray-interview/

It's crazy how close this game came to never existing

Hello Games' first project was Joe Danger, a cartoonish, 3D side-scroller about a lovable dirt-bike daredevil. For months, Hello Games happily worked on Joe Danger and tried to secure a publisher. Emphasis on tried.

"Everyone turned us down," Murray says. "Sony turned us down, and Microsoft and so many places."

Murray attempted to find a publisher for nine months, until the studio ran out of money.

"We actually decided to quit," Murray says. Resigned to giving up their independent dreams, the Hello Games team went out for drinks. It was the end of an era and a strange kind of celebration -- indie development was hard work, and after nearly a year in that world, they were done with it. Now, they would get "normal" jobs and move on with their lives

And then Murray, Duncan, Doyle and Ream got drunk.

"We came up with this stupid idea," Murray says. "I had a house, and so I sold my house to pay for the rest of development."

From that, to making the first full-priced indie game ever on an insane scale unlike anything beforehand that is selling like crazy on all the retail sites

 

[AncientDiety]

This is a really interesting interview. I didn't know Sean got to privately chat with Elon Musk
http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/03/no-mans-sky-joe-danger-sean-murray-interview/

It's crazy how close this game came to never existing


From that, to making the first full-priced indie game ever on an insane scale unlike anything beforehand that is selling like crazy on all the retail sites

How was Joe Danger saved then? Who ended up picking it up?

 

[More_Badass]

How was Joe Danger saved then? Who ended up picking it up?

Sony. From Wiki:

The developers announced in March 2010 that they would be releasing the game only on Sony's PlayStation 3.This decision enabled Hello to make use of Sony's "Publishing Fund", a scheme which offered advantageous financial terms in exchange for exclusivity.

 

[AncientDiety]

Sony. From Wiki:

Ah yes never thought to google. doh. Good guy Sony.

 

[SolidSnakex]

That last line is so frigin' apt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-wDlhNldnE

So don't ask again.

This makes me wonder about potential marketing plans Sony may have for the game. There's a lot of interesting thing that they could do. Perhaps get Neil deGrasse Tyson involved in some trailers/commercials?

 

[eyeball_kid]

No, but the criticism is that NMS has guns but they aren't implemented very well.

The guns seem pretty well thought-out to me, very customizable. The only problem I've had with NMS since the beginning is the explosions and impacts. Nothing has weight to it. For example, in the newest footage we see a player shooting the cargo pods of a freighter, and the "explosion" if you can call it that looks like My First Particle Effect. The ships blowing up, and even the weapons fire just seems lackluster and don't match up with the rest of the game's art design. I used to think this stuff was placeholder, but 3 months out, I guess that's the look they're going for. :/ I wish the battles looked more like Homeworld, which really captured that '70s sci-fi space battles feel.

Am I the only one who gets the feeling this game won't live up to the hype?

Hype created by whom? I see people trying to imagine features that Hello has never said would be in the game. So yes, by that metric that kind of hype can't be lived up to. But to the hype around what Hello has promised? Based on the previews so far, the majority of press seem to think the hype is justified.

Just to play devil's advocate, I think the difference here would be that those are all mechanics, and a UI is more of an art design. If the numerous lawsuits from Apple against Samsung are any indication, UI design is not something you should just 'copy'.

If UI was protected by law, Apple wouldn't have lost the lawsuit against Microsoft in the '90s for taking the Macintosh GUI and creating Windows from it. UI mechanics can be patented (I believe for instance Maya patented their spoke-wheel UI), but not the design elements themselves.

Looking at the two, there's obviously some influence, but there's tons of design influence everywhere. Destiny has a clean design, with a thin-weight font, uses a grid design for items, and has a gradient background. Those elements are not exactly unique to modern design and especially not to design trying to represent a futuristic vibe.

 

[Deleted member 80556]

The guns seem pretty well thought-out to me, very customizable. The only problem I've had with NMS since the beginning is the explosions and impacts. Nothing has weight to it. For example, in the newest footage we see a player shooting the cargo pods of a freighter, and the "explosion" if you can call it that looks like My First Particle Effect. The ships blowing up, and even the weapons fire just seems lackluster and don't match up with the rest of the game's art design. I used to think this stuff was placeholder, but 3 months out, I guess that's the look they're going for. :/ I wish the battles looked more like Homeworld, which really captured that '70s sci-fi space battles feel.

Yeah, this is my problem as well. I was expecting more spectacular space explosions, since these are giant ships, but they seem incredibly arcadey.

 

[ChouGoku]

Oh really? That's very exciting.

I just really want to see how weird the planets and wildlife get. Sean has said they've tweaked the algorithms for demos and showings so none of the crazy super weird life and planets that appears as you get closer to the center is generated and the underwater life is instantly recognized as aquatic fish species and more dino species appeared.

Same, IIRC Sean has said during interviews that they are holding things back. Idk why people think they have shown the best of the best and the game is not going to have much more than what they shown me

 

[OmegaDL50]

Same, IIRC Sean has said during interviews that they are holding things back. Idk why people think they have shown the best of the best and the game is not going to have much more than what they shown me

Yeah. Didn't they intentionally made the playable previews only 30 minutes long to withhold some secrets and not have every single divulged before the game releases.

I mean it's reasonable to expect Hello Games not reveal all of their eggs in the basket before at least prior the retail release or official reviews come about when gaming pubs get their hands on the finished product and can unload all of the details.

 

[enzo_gt]

Besides a similar cursor and a clean minimalist design, it's not really a copy.

Both game's inventory screens

Are we arguing more differences than similarities here? Seems like a pretty objectively losing argument. Right down to how it displays progress circularly with a faded icon and the thin line going across the bottom of the header.

Copy seems about right.

c'mon son

 

[Grief.exe]

Is there a breakdown for multiplayer support?

 

[xxracerxx]

Is there a breakdown for multiplayer support?

Haha...no.

 

[Trouble]

Is there a breakdown for multiplayer support?

We have no actual details. Sean has cited Journey and Dark Souls as the MP inspiration. Take that as you will.