I see those flora behind you, I hope they're not an endemic species. Did you file the propper forms to the Environmental Protection Agency? Let me see your mining permit!It took me ages, but I finally found a location for my outpost were I could extract Aluminium and Iron at the same time. I got extra lucky and have access to Water and Tantalum as well (4(!) resources from a single outpost).
My character happily posing
I genuinely like that exploration in Starfield has a purpose. Unlike Elite, scanning flora (or fauna) shows me what type of resource I can get. Earlier today, I noticed that I need resource X to build Y, so I had to move out and find something that would yield X. I found it in a different biome on the same planet. Really cool
Game Discussions Bethesda Softworks Starfield Space RPG
- Thread starter Lngjohnsilver1
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Well, yesterday I completed my survey of Kreet by traveling to a third biome. Earned enough XP to skip level five entirely. Still wasn’t sure what I should spend any of those skill points on, so I kept them in reserve. Of course, I wanted to at least visit this biome’s POIs, and explore them as much as possible. Which is when I discovered three things:
Once I had arrived at Jamison, I discovered that I had a minor bounty on my head! I had accidentally stolen a couple items while exploring on Kreet (which I had dropped after discovering my mistake) and apparently I had been caught doing so! (Looks suspiciously at Vasco.) I decided to pay off my minor bounty (I had accumulated nearly 20,000 credits by this point, and the bounty was less than 500) so I spawned outside the UCSec... rather than at the top of the ramp of the Frontier.
As a result, I missed several encounters that would've triggered if I had gone straight to Jemison in the first place. I also took my sweet time traveling to the Lodge, choosing to do two side quests I had encountered along the way... the very essence of an Open World game! I also tried to leave the planet before visiting Lodge, but couldn't, which is how I triggered those encounters in the first place. I did get to play around with the game's ship builder, though I ultimately decided to keep things as I'd found them previously.
Finally, I stepped back onto the rails, and got the Lodge out of the way. Sarah and Vasco will be accompanying me, and hopefully they will allow me to take my sweet time going to the next plot point. I'd really like to explore more worlds.
I'm also tempted to go back to the beginning, and see what happens if I don't take Barrett's offer... decisions decisions.
- Pay attention to a target’s level and whether they have red bars under their health. I think I wasted most if my few gathered medi-packs, and nearly all the ammo for my fantastic laser rifle, before I made a tactical withdrawal… after two reloads due to death.
- Reloading a save before you get close enough to a POI can potentially change what type of encounter is there. My first bug (that I had noticed) required a reload, and the only one that was available was nearly ten minutes old, which changed what was an interesting encounter with scientists to another instance of zero-law rebellion, where once again robots had killed everyone to “save” them from hazardous jobs.
- I should consider building an outpost in every biome I land in. It seems there’s a relatively cheap module I can build that will double the range of my scanner.
Once I had arrived at Jamison, I discovered that I had a minor bounty on my head! I had accidentally stolen a couple items while exploring on Kreet (which I had dropped after discovering my mistake) and apparently I had been caught doing so! (Looks suspiciously at Vasco.) I decided to pay off my minor bounty (I had accumulated nearly 20,000 credits by this point, and the bounty was less than 500) so I spawned outside the UCSec... rather than at the top of the ramp of the Frontier.
As a result, I missed several encounters that would've triggered if I had gone straight to Jemison in the first place. I also took my sweet time traveling to the Lodge, choosing to do two side quests I had encountered along the way... the very essence of an Open World game! I also tried to leave the planet before visiting Lodge, but couldn't, which is how I triggered those encounters in the first place. I did get to play around with the game's ship builder, though I ultimately decided to keep things as I'd found them previously.
Finally, I stepped back onto the rails, and got the Lodge out of the way. Sarah and Vasco will be accompanying me, and hopefully they will allow me to take my sweet time going to the next plot point. I'd really like to explore more worlds.
I'm also tempted to go back to the beginning, and see what happens if I don't take Barrett's offer... decisions decisions.
This is a fundamental limitation of how worldspaces work in Creation Engine. The further you go from cell 0,0 (the origin), the more inaccurate floating point math gets. Go too far and you will end up in a glitchy mess. Skyrim's map size was already pushing the limits.
Bethesda being able to create dynamic worldspaces on the go every time you land (with your landed ship being in cell 0,0) is quite an achievement. The underlying database system keeping everything consistent and persistent must be insane. Easy way out would have been a certain number of determined landing spots at settlements and starports, each having a static worldspace the size of Skyrim around it.
Elite is an outlier in open world games, the 1:1 scale galaxy with 1:1 scale planets that you can land on and circumnavigate freely without loading screens is something no-one else has attempted. The closest is Orbiter, but planets there were smooth spheres with no topography (height maps were implemented very late, and IIRC collision with/landing on terrain was a huge hurdle there).
The Wikipedia article opens with:
In video games, an open world is a virtual world in which the player can approach objectives freely, as opposed to a world with more linear and structured gameplay.[1][2] Notable games in this category include The Legend of Zelda (1986), Grand Theft Auto III (2001) and Minecraft (2011).[3][4]
Games with open or free-roaming worlds typically lack level structures like walls and locked doors, or the invisible walls in more open areas that prevent the player from venturing beyond them; only at the bounds of an open-world game will players be limited by geographic features like vast oceans or impassable mountains. Players typically do not encounter loading screens common in linear level designs when moving about the game world, with the open-world game using strategic storage and memory techniques to load the game world in a dynamic and seamless manner. Open-world games still enforce many restrictions in the game environment, either because of absolute technical limitations or in-game limitations imposed by a game's linearity.[5]
While the openness of the game world is an important facet to games featuring open worlds, the main draw of open-world games is about providing the player with autonomy—not so much the freedom to do anything they want in the game (which is nearly impossible with current computing technology), but the ability to choose how to approach the game and its challenges in the order and manner as the player desires while still constrained by gameplay rules.[6] Examples of high level of autonomy in computer games can be found in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) or in single-player games adhering to the open-world concept such as the Fallout series. The main appeal of open-world gameplay is that it provides a simulated reality and allows players to develop their character and its behavior in the direction and pace of their own choosing. In these cases, there is often no concrete goal or end to the game, although there may be the main storyline, such as with games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Open world - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Again, it isn't ultimately about a lack of loading screens, or a contiguous map. It's about player autonomy. To leave the rails of the plot the developers want you to follow, and go do your own thing. Like this:
I know it's not really a game, but doesn't Space engine do this as well?
BTW is Starfield still using 32 bit precision? is that why the maps are limited? I believe ED and Star Citizen use 64 bit?
Just had an encounter with a Terrormorph, ugh, died only once though.
Those beasts are hideous.
Those beasts are hideous.
Would you guys classify NMS as open world? I guess it kinda is but somehow I feel procgenned content isn't sufficient to be a (good) open world.
What's with the repeating names like "Kreet". Can I assume this is a story-related place and has some "designed" world-building? Imo, you need a good skeleton of crafted world to even make it a true "world". I'm not so much about the "open" in the definition - it's the worldbuilding part that I care:
Basically none of that matters in NMS. The places are "beliebig" (arbitrary). In true worlds the places aren't - they matter (more or less).
Autonomy is important. But for me that is not the whole thing about open worlds.
What's with the repeating names like "Kreet". Can I assume this is a story-related place and has some "designed" world-building? Imo, you need a good skeleton of crafted world to even make it a true "world". I'm not so much about the "open" in the definition - it's the worldbuilding part that I care:
- Are the places decently paced in distance and travel modes?
- Do the places refer to their surroundings. Do they make sense? What is their place in story and world?
- Do the places persist? Do they interact with other places?
- Do places fit into the environment?
Basically none of that matters in NMS. The places are "beliebig" (arbitrary). In true worlds the places aren't - they matter (more or less).
Autonomy is important. But for me that is not the whole thing about open worlds.
Is it? The Far Lands in Minecraft were due to the terrain generator taking increased inaccuracies into account making highly irregular shapes. I can only guess in Skyrim the errors mostly reside in positional errors?
Well, for me the witchspace sequence is a loading screen in Elite, and you could probably declare the orbital gliding phase transitions as such as well (albeit very short ones). For Odyssey, the fade-to-black-noise-in-the-background sequence is a loading screen as well, same goes for SRV animation.
Orbiter had topography since 2016, that's a bit too far in the past for it to be very late, but then it has no 1:1 galaxy and really is a different beast: a space flight simulator, not a space-sim game.
As for seemless, perhaps SpaceEngine really takes the cake, but then it is not really a game. Oh my, why can't they "just" merge their work?
Load screens are insignificant unless they take minutes or are too often. Coherency preserves through a loading screen just like coherence of a TV show preserves through the ad breaks.Well, for me the witchspace sequence is a loading screen in Elite, and you could probably declare the orbital gliding phase transitions as such as well (albeit very short ones). For Odyssey, the fade-to-black-noise-in-the-background sequence is a loading screen as well, same goes for SRV animation.
Orbiter had topography since 2016, that's a bit too far in the past for it to be very late, but then it has no 1:1 galaxy and really is a different beast: a space flight simulator, not a space-sim game.
As for seemless, perhaps SpaceEngine really takes the cake, but then it is not really a game. Oh my, why can't they "just" merge their work?
It wouldn't surprise me if they changed the open world exploration because that is where most of the crashes have traditionally happened in Bethesda games.
One thing to watch out for is the game crashng more, the more you do as well. That was a problem in their previous games. but it's probably too soon to know if that's still an issue.
One thing to watch out for is the game crashng more, the more you do as well. That was a problem in their previous games. but it's probably too soon to know if that's still an issue.
It wouldn't surprise me if they changed the open world exploration because that is where most of the crashes have traditionally happened in Bethesda games.
One thing to watch out for is the game crashng more, the more you do as well. That was a problem in their previous games. but it's probably too soon to know if that's still an issue.
One thing to watch out for is the game crashng more, the more you do as well. That was a problem in their previous games. but it's probably too soon to know if that's still an issue.
Length of loading is in my opinion no criteria for it being a loading screen. It is the state transition that matters. For example: in Orbiter, you have the same rules present for your physics throughout the solar-system, no matter if you are in deep space, in orbit, docked, landed, or flying in atmosphere. You can fly your space shuttle from KSC into Orbit, dock with ISS, undock, re-enter, glide, and land again in one single continous manner without any transition happening. You may expect a stutter of some milliseconds between 2 frames here and there, but that is like your ad break analogy: coherency preserved. In Elite, you transition between frameshift, normal space, orbital glide, planetary flight all the time. It is not just an ad break, it is a different flight mode with different physics applied. If you beam out of your cockpit... state transition. If you ingress again... state transition. If you get into SRV or SLF... state transition.
NMS' seemless system is closer to what Orbiter does than to what Elite does. But anyway, I'd still consider all these systems more seemless than Starfield. A different category, even.
Indeed, but i think all those state transitions are somehow related to the multiplayer part of the game - aka the instancing.
However, if you really want you can take off a planet in normal space travel to and land on another planet, still in normal space - actually this was the mode used by some smart-arxes to travel between HIP 22460 10 b and 10 a when one was permit locked and the other was not.
Supercruise is just a form of fast travel, one that IMO is not as detrimental as point-and-click fast travel also know as "teleportation", but i find the Supercruise-Glide-NormalSpace a really nice transition from fast travel to normal physics travel.
edit: typos
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No because you can do the same thing without glide at all if you want, just descend to the ground in normal space, there's no loading required, which is the definition of a loading screen, a transition where data/assets are loaded into memory/the game. The glide is just the way FDEV chose to represent the approach to the planet, but nothing loads during that process.
Indeed the jump between systems is a loading screen because it is loading data for the next system so you are correct there, without the witchcraft transition you can fly to the location of the other star, but will find no assets loaded on arrival.
Essentially when does a game become an Open World game? Is it a sudden change where you can say one is Open World and the other isn't, or is it a graduated thing, where games tend to be a combination of the two in the middle and with extremes at either end? I'm not of the opinion that there is a sharp divider, I would class ED as more to the extreme of Open World with SF somewhere in the middle because it has a story line that you follow which you can ignore but in the end it's designed to be followed to the end, whereas in ED you can just, well, ignore everything if you want to, I've never engaged a Thargoid in combat, or another player, never intend to either. BG3 yes it is linear because you can just run out of things to do, enemies to fight, there comes a time when it's pointless not to follow the storyline. The question is, does that happen in SF? Is there enough in the game you can just play forever (well years as many in ED have done) and never engage the main storyline or is there a point where it becomes, well, pointless?
a seamless world is important for simulations, where input and it's latency is important. You want to make sure your inputs are true and reliable. And you need all that parameters of flight be preserved. A load screen isn't very helpful with that.
In an RPG that isnt so much an issue, unlless you have vehicles.
That's interesting, didn't know that. Does this mean that permit locks on planets only work with the supercruise transition? I mean, if you can just descend to ground in normal space, how is a permit lock prohibiting my decent if I simply drop out in orbit, point downwards and throttle up for hours? I thought the gliding transition is kind of necessary to load in the terrain assets, otherwise the system couldn't do it fast enough due to the high speeds involved. But I can see how the (unrealistically) slow normal space speed gives ample time to stream those assets just fine.
Anyway, one more thing to try out, thanks for the info!
I think it's a masked loading screen. Normal travel doesn't require one because there is enough time to load the desired assets. And it doesn't really matter if it's a loading screen. It's a masked one and a plausible one and the game goes on as if it didnt happen.
It's the system that requires a permit rather than planets. IIRC there isn't a system you can access that has a planet that requires a permit