Game Discussions The No Man's Sky Thread
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There's a huge amount, and it's been used with a vast amount of ability and knowledge even if you don't appreciate it.
I strongly doubt SM would agree with you, he'd say they are just different games. You still have no idea how wide the variety in systems, stars, galactic structure, civilisation, planet or lifeform types will be - you're still just running on imagination and this close to launch would be wise to check expectations so you can be sure to be pleasantly surprised
It's neither.
It is that way to have a galaxy as scientifically accurate as possible while keeping things still entertainingly unusual.
Also, you can't comment on the extent of PG in ED before they implement planets with life and atmospheres, at least specify your comment 'as of now'. Volcanism is another thing which isn't switched on yet, which we know is coming soon.
We don't yet know how much NMS has going for it yet but by the looks of differences in attitude, I guess I will like and appreciate NMS more than you will too, even if your forum name is NMS. I'm in games to enjoy them, not to compare and judge them against other games or fantasies in my head. As frosty says, I'm often pleasantly surprised.
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As said in the two posts above there is a lot of PG in ED (the star systems, obviously ; planet surfaces ; starbases ; mission givers and many other more background aspects) and it is well used. However I'd agree with you that NMS does seem (we don't know yet for sure) to be using the technique to a greater degree. The fact that the game is going to fit into 6GB, and a lot of that will be audio, is testimony to this.
I've long argued that as masters of PG it's odd that FD have not used it more in their game, but there may be long-term plans to do just that.
I do not think it's possible to really know what level of PG NMS actually has at this point unless any of you lot have played it extensively. In the videos everything looks nominally the same. There are animals which presumably are the same skeletal animations with variable textures and body-parts, there are tree/plant things, some fairly low resolution ground (not much in the way of natural features) but some really impressive tunneling stuff. If it wasn't for the illusion of scalable "planets" I couldn't really tell if the actual PG stuff on offer is more/less impressive than other indie games such as Sir you are being hunted which just has open play areas and procedural variation of assets.
ED's PG is impressive to me because it triggers a scientifically based rule-set to spit out features. Sadly lost on most gamers. Similar to space engine. I think when some people here are talking about PG they are being fooled by some lovely assets and art styles. PG is (surely) about the generated effects based on rule-sets. Having atmosphere and giraffe head pigs is more an artistic thing and I doubt that those giraffe heads have been created purely by procedural mathematics (Hello games aren't doing ground-breaking scientific work to my knowledge), they will have designed the stock giraffe head and the procedural rule-set just infers the size, texture colour and what it's attached to.
Frontier's work on ED planets is entirely different. They have the concepts of craters, ridges and tectonic plates. Whether the artist gets involved I don't know. But the engine has to create an entire landscape based on rules that might generate a crater at the right time depending on all the scientific first principles that lead up to it.
ED's PG is impressive to me because it triggers a scientifically based rule-set to spit out features. Sadly lost on most gamers. Similar to space engine. I think when some people here are talking about PG they are being fooled by some lovely assets and art styles. PG is (surely) about the generated effects based on rule-sets. Having atmosphere and giraffe head pigs is more an artistic thing and I doubt that those giraffe heads have been created purely by procedural mathematics (Hello games aren't doing ground-breaking scientific work to my knowledge), they will have designed the stock giraffe head and the procedural rule-set just infers the size, texture colour and what it's attached to.
Frontier's work on ED planets is entirely different. They have the concepts of craters, ridges and tectonic plates. Whether the artist gets involved I don't know. But the engine has to create an entire landscape based on rules that might generate a crater at the right time depending on all the scientific first principles that lead up to it.
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NMS look incredible but at the moment ED is a more technical model. It would be great if ED and NMS could team up that would be incredible
The joy is that it's possible to own both!
I actually think a bonus for games like NMS is that they can choose to do a small amount of things in a very, very polished way.
What I find fascinating about NMS is that they seem to be using PG in so many areas, and using it quite extensively. Apart from graphics it is critical to the sound and music, and also to the seeding of everything in their biomes and in space. They may be going for less "realism", but that is allowing them to go further with PG than anyone else. Their planets may be much simpler looking than ED's, but they will have a lot more stuff to find and with which to interact.
In terms of its level of PG content and the context in which it is being delivered in 2016, I think NMS could well come to be seen as equally important and innovative as the original Elite was in its context in 1984.
Deformation and such isn't 'really' that hard once you have the PG up and going, Elite could probably get some eventually, caves and whatnot, since on the big scale it is just a negative map, that cuts the tunnels, so generation goes.
Procedural generation of terrain -> generate cave map -> add player destruction map -> add player creations.
Of course this is very wide strokes, could be a lot of more details under these steps, could be a cool thing added to Elite, once we can walk everywhere.
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Seems an odd statement, sure they could create unrealistic variations in terrain that couldn't happen irl, but there are an enormous amount of things that 'can' happen. But yes you are right because of the lack of realism they can always add more stuff 'to do' since it doesn't need to make sense.
I really don't know it's possible to measure how far they are going with PG from anything they have shown. It isn't exactly difficult or new to tie it in with the sound/music.
A basic example of PG would be the way CIV or Sim-City generates random maps. It has simple rules to ensure that rivers and continents are generated in a way that doesn't obstruct the player. It's really difficult to compare and contrast the complexity or success of PG generation beyond that. It doesn't matter where you use "PG", it might just be two lines of code. It's how the rule-set is branched out and how believable the variation is that counts.
I currently have no understand of where NMS uses it's PG rule-set beyond what they say and the fact that it can generate variations of assets in the planet play-field.
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Frontier have already shown this in Planet Coaster and I'm certainly impressed by what appears in the NMS videos when he tunnels into the ground. I don't think it really ties in with PG, but my memory of working with height fields back in the PS2 era would be that sort of thing was actually very problematic.
A basic example of PG would be the way CIV or Sim-City generates random maps. It has simple rules to ensure that rivers and continents are generated in a way that doesn't obstruct the player. It's really difficult to compare and contrast the complexity or success of PG generation beyond that. It doesn't matter where you use "PG", it might just be two lines of code. It's how the rule-set is branched out and how believable the variation is that counts.
I currently have no understand of where NMS uses it's PG rule-set beyond what they say and the fact that it can generate variations of assets in the planet play-field.
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Frontier have already shown this in Planet Coaster and I'm certainly impressed by what appears in the NMS videos when he tunnels into the ground. I don't think it really ties in with PG, but my memory of working with height fields back in the PS2 era would be that sort of thing was actually very problematic.
Sorta, Look at Red Faction, the original, sure it was a solid map with 'diggable' zones, but it worked, and people could join later and got the deformation fine.
But yeah, Frontier has proven to me they know what they are doing, but they are simply taking their time and plan things out for certain steps rather then rushing along.
Ah, that's not what I meant - maybe I didn't express it well.
What I meant is that in comparison to ED (and Space Engine and maybe SC) which are aiming for considerable fidelity to reality in their graphics, NMS is consciously adopting what might be called a "cartoonish" or stylized aesthetic which makes things simpler for them in many ways. It allows them to create shadings for colours and generate PG textures that do not have to mimic real life as we know or imagine it, and part of this process can include simple morphs of shade and form instead of complex textures on surfaces, and leaves or trees that must look "familiar" in order to be believable. Once you accept their aesthetic, suspension of belief becomes easier so they can use simpler forms and it still looks "realistic" within the context of the game. Look at their space stations in comparison to ED's. They are much less "realistic" than those in ED or SC, but they are faithful to the overall "look" of the game and can be produced using far less assets (if indeed any at all).
By "going further" I meant they will be using PG as a technique in more areas of the game than ED does, not that they will necessarily be trying to turn out outlandish and fanciful things (but maybe that too - who knows?).
I get the impression that a lot of folks conceive of PG as primarily a tool for making graphics, particularly landforms, whereas it can in fact be used for many other purposes, such as NPC, AI and language generation. My impression is that HG will be using PG in as many areas of the game as possible.
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Well, it's very understandable they are taking their time. They simply can afford to, NMS being something else entirely (clearly no direct competition) and SC isn't coming anytime soon. The only thing they need to worry about is to feature match or surpass SC when PU finally releases, which only needs walking off ships on top of already announced features coming this season (avatar creation and multicrew).
They have all the time in the world to perfect atmospheric effects, crowd mechanics (animal herd behavior as well as human populations) and other PG and AI needed to govern life on planets that have it.
It remains so - I CBA to do the digging to find you the references but NMS works on spherical non deformable planets with a voxel layer on top of a set thickness.
Now sometimes that's a low ground layer and taller features, sometimes that apparent ground level is high in the voxels already and there's a cave layer under it. Either way you can dig down only so far etc.
The real curiosity is persistence in landscape deformation - if you draw a massive frank and two veg on a planet will it still be there when you come back? Will all this information for billions of planets be shared and stored on everyone's computer? I think not.... which leaves us with the possibility everything you do will be undone and restored to fresh newness each time the area is regenerated by the PG engine. Very curious how they've handled that - the potential volume of data is terrifying.
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I'm not sure I agree with this. Yes NMS is quite different, but it appeals to a lot of the same people as Elite does. Specifically it appeals to those interested in a PvE game, which focuses on exploration and survival. Judging by the endless PvP vs PvE discussions in these forums there is a substantial part of the community that are only interested in PvE, and may in fact find NMS to be a better fit for their play style.
I can generally only muster up the interest for one RPG at a time, and if NMS is really good I will probably ditch Elite for the foreseeable future. The only MAJOR difference will be the lack of focus on ship flight, as NMS looks to have a very simplified flight model in place. If it doesn't support a HOTAS setup that would be a disappointment for me, but maybe not so important for others
That takes no account of the detail though - many of those people are here for missions and interaction with the BGS, others are there for visiting parts of our galaxy or seeing nebulae and amazing sights the galaxy brings forth
None of that is available in NMS. It's a fun cartoony romp through a sci-fi art homogenous galaxy with a story leading to the centre - there's no visiting Saggitarius A*, there's no going to the Pleiades, there's no huge economies or multiplayer story or deeper combat - heck there's only a tiny number of ships and very very simplistic displays/controls as indicated in every single video - I have no idea where anyone could imagine HOTAS level control.... but they do. The hopecasting will be it's biggest danger as I reckon it'll do what it does very well, it's just whether that faintly matches people's dreams and expectations now
None of that is available in NMS. It's a fun cartoony romp through a sci-fi art homogenous galaxy with a story leading to the centre - there's no visiting Saggitarius A*, there's no going to the Pleiades, there's no huge economies or multiplayer story or deeper combat - heck there's only a tiny number of ships and very very simplistic displays/controls as indicated in every single video - I have no idea where anyone could imagine HOTAS level control.... but they do. The hopecasting will be it's biggest danger as I reckon it'll do what it does very well, it's just whether that faintly matches people's dreams and expectations now
I see the customer discontent once the hype fades as the biggest problem the devs with this game will have to face.
I very strongly suspect this is the cause of the delay and the number of life containing planets had to be vastly increased. They've shown virtually FA of the actual game as described by Sean, just a cornucopia of critters and colour and life - that is what people will be expecting.
Yeah, I’m sure that surface deformations won’t be saved from instance to instance, that would require far too much data storage to handle with everything being generated procedurally. This will be one of the game’s biggest drawbacks IMHO, but I think their idea is that you continually move from planet to planet so the resetting deformations will be less of an issue. We’ll see soon I guess.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Yes NMS is quite different, but it appeals to a lot of the same people as Elite does. Specifically it appeals to those interested in a PvE game, which focuses on exploration and survival. Judging by the endless PvP vs PvE discussions in these forums there is a substantial part of the community that are only interested in PvE, and may in fact find NMS to be a better fit for their play style.
I can generally only muster up the interest for one RPG at a time, and if NMS is really good I will probably ditch Elite for the foreseeable future. The only MAJOR difference will be the lack of focus on ship flight, as NMS looks to have a very simplified flight model in place. If it doesn't support a HOTAS setup that would be a disappointment for me, but maybe not so important for others
As an explorer primarily, NMS seems very appealing to me whereas Elite has done nothing to improve exploration since 1.0. If NMS is very good I could see myself skipping season 3 of Elite completely, seeing how the expansions and updates seem to completely ignore exploration (so far). If Elite ever finally adds some exploration content to the game I might reconsider. Again, we’ll see soon enough.
Out of curiosity... What kind of improvements do you think NMS will bring to us explorers? I'm having a slight deja vu here that NMS won't be so groundbreaking after a few visited planets.