New trailer for No Mans Sky..

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Tinman

Tinman
Armour said:
I've probably read the same articles as you, possibly even a few more! I can see what they are doing with NMS quite clearly. They have actually done it, though. Score one to those guys.

Incidentally, NMS creature generation seems less advanced than Spore, again only based upon available evidence.

Spore coped with arbitrary skeletal configurations, arbitrary positions/numbers of extremities, and had to generate appropriate skins, movement cycles, attack forms, etc. I haven't seen a whole lot to suggest anyone else has a procedural approach that achieves a similar level of complexity. Not surprising, considering that Will Wright recruited some of the smartest procgen talents in the demoscene to work on Spore. (Google "Farbrausch" for more details on those guys.)

NMS does manage to generate a fantastic amount of variation within it's own boundaries, and the devs can just throw as many templates as needed at the problem without having to do a whole lot of extra work. The grammar by which different types of templates (quadripedal vertebrates, for example) are described could easily be fodder for procgen algorithms itself.

One of HG's staff gave a talk recently in which they talked about creating PG inputs from the outputs of other PG algorithms, so it's not beyond the realms of possibility that they get a lot more variation out of their code than you or I have thus far given them credit for.

Have you seen any evidence that equivalent work has been carried out at FD, or heard any staff pronouncements to that effect? Has anyone? I haven't. I know that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but given their propensity for showing off very alpha stuff with the main game, it seems odd not to have seen procedurally generated hide nor hair of any of this stuff.

The fact is, these other gamedevs are doing this stuff, and are at a stage where they are showing some very good results off to the public. The art style and the types of shaders they happen to be using to render their results is largely irrelevant.

I am disappointed that Frontier has made nary a passing mention of such progress.

As for ships, there's no reason a ship can't be put together procedurally, even with a navigable interior.

Once it is decided what modules need to be closest to the hull boundaries and what bits don't, placing them appropriately (and with appropriate connectivity) isn't so hard.

Max dimensions are already defined by docking ports and bays.

Symmetries are desireable (or maybe not, who knows - the Millenium Falcon isn't symmetrical, and that still seems to be a popular aesthetic).

This is all the relevant data required to generate an interior.

Now, doing all that in a timely fashion is probably not easy, but that's why clever people get paid to code up this kind of stuff.

Given that generating highly complex interconnected, inhabited areas like cities is apparently in the expansion roadmap (ha ha), generating some ship interiors that "work" should be relatively simple in comparison...

As for hulls: Well, convex hull algorithms are numerous and commonplace, and could offer a decent base for supplementary work. Logically it follows that, if the rules describing a given hull style can be formally defined for the benefit of a human artist, then they can almost certainly be defined in a formal grammar.

Those rules can then be used as a template by an algorithm to generate an infinite variety of hulls that fit the style criteria.

If such rules can be formalised in that manner, then they can be generalised into "meta-rules" themselves, and an infinite variety of style rules can be generated procedurally from the meta-rules.

(I suppose it's harder to sell paint jobs without keeping the variety of ships low, though...)
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No we haven't seen these things from FD recently when it comes to animals and planetside "stuff", but that's simply because they haven't focused their attention on that yet while trying to get the first release done. They did show the PG cloud tech prototype early in the KS though and it wouldn't surprise me if they have quite a bit more prototype tech like this behind the scenes though. As far as I understand "The Outsider" had the city layout generated with PG for example (with overrides for special areas I guess...don't really have a rock solid source for this though). If you haven't noticed they often keep their cards quite close to their chest. ;) I'm not the slightest bit worried though because these things aren't even close to be as revolutionary as some people claim. To do it well "just" requires lots and lots of assets for the algorithms to pick from when generating content. FD also have lots (if not the most amount) of experience in the industry when it comes to making animals (Kinectanimals, Zoo Tycoon, Dogs life...). So making the worlds come alive with wildlife further down the line is right up their alley.

As for ships that is obviously a conscious choice they have made. Yes, it's not impossible to use PG when generating both exteriors and interiors of ships, but getting the PG to generate a similar level of quality here as handmade content is a very tall order. It's always going to get the feeling of "lego" to some extent and obviously they want each individual ship to have more character than that in ED. Interiors is another matter since this "lego-feeling" is pretty consistent with how rooms are laid out anyway. As I said I still expect there to be some modularity here since the different modules you can install (cargo racks, passenger cabins, shield generators...) will most likely be put into "slots" inside the ships. This is not PG though, but that's more because we as players want to be able to build the ship as we want it and not have it being automatically generated for us.
 

nexxo

N
PLF said:
Yeah, this stuff makes the old cobra engine look... old.
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To be fair, when you watch YouTube videos of people playing with/reviewing Space Engine, then you'll notice that the graphics don't look quite as polished as they appear in the demo. There are still some rough patches. And of course Space Engine and other procedural universe generators only have to do one thing: generate stars and planets, and make it look pretty. ED has to include a whole lot more.
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ED also already has a lot of stuff that we're not seeing because we cannot access it yet, but has been put in because it needs to be there later: ship interiors for instance. They are already largely in place. This is why it seems to be taking so long for them to add extra ships --they are not just creating pretty external shapes; they are designing the interiors as well.
 
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Lobstris

Lobstris
No Man's Sky looks fantastic, and as someone interested in Proc. Gen. it's a definite must buy for me, assuming it eventually wends its way onto PC. Even if the gameplay is shallow, as a worst case scenario, it looks like you could get a few 10s of hours out of the thing just ooh-ing and ahhh-ing over what you find. Limit Theory too looks very interesting as the real dark horse in the herd - assuming the gameplay can match the technology that has been displayed so far.
 

Cosmo Bozo

Cosmo Bozo
Granite said:
I'm will to bet that No Man's Sky won't be online only...
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I think it will, there's the whole "discovered by" thing, and they have said players will affect other players games, just as in elite, it's part of their design. I'll be surprised to see an offline mode.

Also, the flight and combat from what little we've seen doesn't look anything like as good as elite. That doesn't seem to be the main focus though and it does look like something to keep an eye on
 
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Nikita

N
Cosmo Bozo said:
I think it will, there's the whole "discovered by" thing, and they have said players will affect other players games, just as in elite, it's part of their design. I'll be surprised to see an offline mode.

Also, the flight and combat from what little we've seen doesn't look anything like as good as elite. That doesn't seem to be the main focus though and it does look like something to keep an eye on
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Yes I believe I saw an interview with Sean Murray where he mentioned this would be an online only game.
 

cptzipzap

C
i dont think space engine looks good

it looks worse than elite.

the planets have lower resolution

[video=youtube;UKduMpr8zYw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKduMpr8zYw[/video]
 
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Tinman

Tinman
Hello Games seem to be on a roll at the moment...another video just released. :)

[video=youtube_share;xpcoO7bTV48]http://youtu.be/xpcoO7bTV48[/video]
 

Alric

A
It looks nice.. I particularly like how the worlds have a feel to them.. vibrant and full of life or arid.
That said, it's easy to look good in a trailer. It's also a lot easier to see the gaps and issues when you're free to poke around. Looking at the videos with a critical eye, there are still far more questions than answers with NMS.

I have been quite critical at times of where Elite is in terms of depth, but one of the things you can say is that they have always put their product out there to be shot at. Real gameplay footage, real gameplay - warts and all. We know exactly where E : D needs work because we can pick over ever last detail ourselves. I have a tremendous amount of respect for people who do that whether it's in game development or anything else.

Also I don't know how good the procedural generation for planet surfaces in Elite will be when it comes. But I do think people are underestimating how much PG is going on in stellar forge.
 
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Toumal

Toumal
NMS looks like it could be a fun game, but it's obvious that they don't focus on scale at all. From those trailers it all feels like a toybox. And that's fine for a game like that. NMS is very different to most of the other games out there, which is both a good thing and makes people who say "NMS is better than <other game>" look really silly.

I hope the planetary transitions in Elite are going to be more realistic though. Doesn't have to be super-realistic (nobody wants to wait hours for deorbiting), but it should still have a sensible scale to it.
 

Oppenheimer

Banned
O
I hope the galactice core in NO Man's sky takes longer than a week to explore.
The fact that everyone sees who discovered what is also something I like.
Just imagine such tech being used to create stations and station interiors in Elite!
 

M Pat

M Pat
Well I think it looks astonishingly engaging. It has style and an undefinable something.

It makes me think of Avatar for some reason.

Where do I sign?
 

M Pat

M Pat
Toumal said:
NMS looks like it could be a fun game, but it's obvious that they don't focus on scale at all. From those trailers it all feels like a toybox. And that's fine for a game like that. NMS is very different to most of the other games out there, which is both a good thing and makes people who say "NMS is better than <other game>" look really silly.

I hope the planetary transitions in Elite are going to be more realistic though. Doesn't have to be super-realistic (nobody wants to wait hours for deorbiting), but it should still have a sensible scale to it.
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yes those orbiting rocks look about 1 km above the surface. Easy tweaks to get the balance right I suppose.
 

zhaith

Z
Hmm not sure looks too cartoony/arcade like it kinda makes me think of lego without the bobbly bits, i have to agree with the thickness of the atmosphere it should take at least a few miniutes to enter/exit the atmosphere. To me it just feels a bit too claustrophobic.
 

Tubit

Tubit
Memnoch said:
It looks amazing but my only complaint, as others have pointed out, is the atmosphere and how thin it seems.
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It might be proportional to the planet size. They are not very big. I don't think realism is very high up on the priority list.
 

JonnyC0mbat

JonnyC0mbat
It looks nice, but what is the game about? Combat? Exploration? Trading? All three? It does look like a very slimmed down version of ED mixed with Homeworld.
 
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