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Arguably the most awaited game of summer ’16, No Man's Sky finally landed on our PCs and consoles this week. With its immense, unique worlds it brings to the table a new perspective to open-world games, game design… and to life itself.

The game's most likely feature to catch one’s attention is its immensity. This game is not merely open world but open universe. Boasting over 18 quintillion (1.8×10^19) life-sized planets teeming with their own fauna and flora, you can explore each and every one to your liking. Your only limiting factor is the range of the hyperspace jump engines of your current spacecraft and how much fuel the craft presently carries. No Man's Sky is so immense that Hello Games estimated that more than 99.9% of the planets would never be explored by players, The developers managed this feat by procedurally generating almost all elements of the game, allowing mathematical formula to create an exponential set of unique features rather than having the rather small developer team designing them individually. Following in the tracks of Minecraft, the game offers a paradigm shift regarding the possibilities in open-world games.

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However it wasn’t all roses for them. From the game’s secretive development debut, initial tension among the Hello Games team, losing most of their equipments in a flood, delaying the release date, death threats and day-one updates, they've had a lot to deal with. One might also wonder about the point in making a game so immense if all you'll experience is less than 1% of the whole game. But hey, it’s an indie game that offers an AAA experience. We have to appreciate that at the very least!

Moreover, their fundamentally different approach to game design challenges the conventional ways. “The physics of every other game—it’s faked,” the chief architect Sean Murray explained to The Atlantic. Their game on the other hand offers something else. Every star that you see in the sky is an actual place that you can go to and explore. And your exploration is even credited for being the first to discover a planet and other types of information. Within 24 hours of the game's official launch, Hello Games reported that more than 10 million distinct species were registered by players, exceeding the estimated 8.7 million species believed to exist on Earth. “It’s our universe, so we get to be Gods in a sense,” said Murray in the same article.

Speaking about Gods, over on YouTube Mike Rugnetta asks a simple yet pressing question: "If we are able to simulate universes of massive, life-like complexity within our universe, should we wonder or worry if our own is simulated?” No Man’s Sky might not emulate life as we know it but how far are we from creating such an emulation ourselves, how far are we from being our own Gods? Even prominent figures are leaning towards a simulated “reality”. Elon Musk recently fuelled this thought by stating that “the odds that we're in base reality is one in billions”. When confronted to the question, Sean Murray's answered that "even if it is a simulation, it’s a good simulation, so we shouldn’t question it.”

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So what do you all make of it? Should future open-world games be procedurally generated to allow for more randomness and exploration in games? How big is too big? And lastly, what does that signify about our own existence? Are we in a simulation or will we create one? Nevertheless, cogito ergo sum... right?

GBAtemp No Man's Sky Review

 

[XavyrrVaati]

I'm enjoying the hell out of NMS. It's actually better than I thought it would be.

A little tip, if you want to move around faster, do a melee attack (D) followed by a quick jump. Try it on high areas, it's pretty cool.

 

[Jonna]

I'm enjoying the hell out of NMS. It's actually better than I thought it would be.

A little tip, if you want to move around faster, do a melee attack (D) followed by a quick jump. Try it on high areas, it's pretty cool.

I found this out by one of my fellow indie developers and realized I could actually save two slots in my exosuit by exploiting this. I'm just worried when they'll eventually pull it out.

 

[Deleted User]

All the others? The majority of indie games are reasonably priced and often offer a much better price:quality ratio than AAA games.

I meant all the other hyped indie games. Not all indie games

 

[Sicklyboy]

Day 2 - realizing more and more how much of a pain in the ass life support/ship fuel/resource management is. Walking around is a pain in the ass. Getting in and out of my ship to fly everywhere is also a pain in the ass. Inconsistent frame rate, but I'm not surprised by that. The landscapes seem unfortunately barren. Nothing seems to be explained well at all.

But I'm still enjoying it. I'm really just trying to learn as much of the Vy'keen language as possible so I can figure out what the FUCK these things are saying to me.

 

[naddel81]

it takes more than a current i5 @ 4,5 GHz to make it run smoothly. What a waste. I can run Doom just fine, but NMS stutters? Insane!

 

[Xzi]

it takes more than a current i5 @ 4,5 GHz to make it run smoothly. What a waste. I can run Doom just fine, but NMS stutters? Insane!

Very little optimization was done for PC, clearly. Thankfully this is something that can be smoothed out over time, and the game seems to have had quite a bit of success regardless, so they'll have the resources to keep working on it.

 

[Traiver]

Works well on my iPhone 6s, lel...

 

[Traiver]

-snip-

 

[CitizenSnips]

I am liking No Man's Sky a lot, when I start playing I can't stop for like 5-6 hours lol

 

[Du'Islingr]

it takes more than a current i5 @ 4,5 GHz to make it run smoothly. What a waste. I can run Doom just fine, but NMS stutters? Insane!

I run AMD FX 8370 OC 4.5 GHz and game runs fine with R9 380X Gigabyte G1 Gaming GPU. no idea what ur issue is lol. i had to manually change settings though as auto detection seems to be pretty shit.

 

[grossaffe]

I run AMD FX 8370 OC 4.5 GHz and game runs fine with R9 380X Gigabyte G1 Gaming GPU. no idea what ur issue is lol. i had to manually change settings though as auto detection seems to be pretty shit.

from what I've read, it's pretty random as to what graphics card runs the game any good.

 

[naddel81]

I run AMD FX 8370 OC 4.5 GHz and game runs fine with R9 380X Gigabyte G1 Gaming GPU. no idea what ur issue is lol. i had to manually change settings though as auto detection seems to be pretty shit.

when you have no idea, you must have lived under a rock. the game is known to have bugs as hell and being a technical mess.
It does not have to do with the GPU. it is a very CPU intense game and my i5 4,5 GHz eats an amd fx for breakfast. I am not saying I haven't played it for hours yesterday. it runs OK, but nowhere near where it should be. it dips into the low FPS (again: it is possibly your max FPS) of 40 regularly.
playing on an INTEL 4,5 GHz CPU with an 980Ti. both heavily overclocked. doom is no match for this rig. but NMS is? lol.

EDIT: you don't have to believe me. just watch this:

 

[Du'Islingr]

when you have no idea, you must have lived under a rock. the game is known to have bugs as hell and being a technical mess.
It does not have to do with the GPU. it is a very CPU intense game and my i5 4,5 GHz eats an amd fx for breakfast. I am not saying I haven't played it for hours yesterday. it runs OK, but nowhere near where it should be. it dips into the low FPS (again: it is possibly your max FPS) of 40 regularly.
playing on an INTEL 4,5 GHz CPU with an 980Ti. both heavily overclocked. doom is no match for this rig. but NMS is? lol.

EDIT: you don't have to believe me. just watch this:

Where did I say that it was GPU intensive? You must be the one living under a rock if you seem to think I implied that anywhere. I stated my Specs. Said it runs completely fine and thats all.....

I'll add though 60 FPS solid with V-Sync all graphics settings maxed out. Same results with or without the experimental steam patch, though seems to be smoother with the experimental patch.

 

[naddel81]

was referring to that here:

"from what I've read, it's pretty random as to what graphics card runs the game any good."

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Where did I say that it was GPU intensive? You must be the one living under a rock if you seem to think I implied that anywhere. I stated my Specs. Said it runs completely fine and thats all.....

I'll add though 60 FPS solid with V-Sync all graphics settings maxed out. Same results with or without the experimental steam patch, though seems to be smoother with the experimental patch.

how can it be smoother when you already have the 60 fps experience that no other tester can reproduce?
so many guys in the internetZ claiming to have it all, supposedly. but in reality they just won't acknoledge they bought shit. I am so glad I didn't even buy it. and I won't until it is fixed.

btw: watch the video, man! vsync is confirmed to be broken (check the dev-forums) and that alone (Vsync ON) makes your statement a blatant lie.

 

[dimmidice]

I torrented it. I'm a big sci fi fan but this game doesn't really do it for me at all. If i'd liked it i would've bought it (when my GPU gets back from its RMA) but its just boring. It never gave me that feeling of exploration.

 

[SomecallmeBerto]

What is the point of creating 18 quintillion worlds when 99.9% of it "would never be explored by players"?

I rather have one world with enough interesting things to do than quintillion boring worlds.

THIS!!!! I thought this when I first saw it and the question kept popping up the more I saw it.

 

[Du'Islingr]

was referring to that here:

"from what I've read, it's pretty random as to what graphics card runs the game any good."

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------


how can it be smoother when you already have the 60 fps experience that no other tester can reproduce?
so many guys in the internetZ claiming to have it all, supposedly. but in reality they just won't acknoledge they bought shit. I am so glad I didn't even buy it. and I won't until it is fixed.

btw: watch the video, man! vsync is confirmed to be broken (check the dev-forums) and that alone (Vsync ON) makes your statement a blatant lie.

Do not sit there and tell me what I experience, because quite frankly I am not telling you what you should be experiencing and that you are a liar. I am saying it works as intended mostly(For me). It stutters a bit but overall i am indeed hitting 59/60 FPS Constant with V-Sync Enabled. You should rethink your life if all you are going to do is insult my intelligence and call me a liar. No I do not owe any kind of loyalty to the game. I didn't even buy it (yet), I happen to agree that the game is pretty bland and could use more content. I do not believe it is worth 60 dollars. I will w8 for it to either drop in price or go on sale for 20-30 dollars.

This is the end of the discussion because you are not worth my time considering you are just trying to force your shit experience on me, when that's not what I experience.

P.S. You will also notice that my CPU usage above is only sitting at 30%, and that is with other tasks running in the background. Just FYI

 

[petethepug]

Glad I didin't pre order this on Steam. This game had a lot of potential in my opinion,

I saw lets plays on the PS4, and saw little content (apart from exploration.) On YouTube, the game really focuses more on exploration rather than crafting mechanics (I haven't seen a lot of man made structures being built, and the ones actually built are pre made structures that were in the game already (That were not even built by players.)

 

[Jay Clay]

an overpriced indie game, overhyped by those sci-fi nerds, in my opinion a very repetitive game in an empty universe, boring in my opinion, in the other hand, game would not be that bad with a 19.99 dll launch price.

 

[Du'Islingr]

an overpriced indie game, overhyped by those sci-fi nerds, in my opinion a very repetitive game in an empty universe, boring in my opinion, in the other hand, game would not be that bad with a 19.99 dll launch price.

I agree. People over hyped this game by twisting words the developers said. Hype trains are very annoying and I don't even follow them for that reason. They delivered exactly what they said they would. They never made any promises from what I saw towards the hype train bs.