No Man's Sky

[Bjorn]

After all of the legitimate coverage i've absorbed (RPS, Polygon, Giant Bomb) I'm kind of not excited for this game any more.

Not that I expect it to be bad, in fact I still hope its amazing, but even if they manage to live up to their vision it doesn't seem like something i'm going to enjoy. I personally can never get attached to an open-experience game like this, minecraft, or even Skyrim. I guess I just enjoy purposeful direction (though Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 both are, for more complicated reasons, exempt from that rule).

I'll keep an eye on it regardless, as it seems like a fascinating GDC talk-to-come, but I'm kind of upset I won't be as excited as many gamers will be.

 

In a lot of ways, I agree, though the idea that you always have an ultimate goal (reach the center) could be a great hook to maintain interest with this.  Skyrim got boring very, very quickly for me.  Mostly because I just didn't feel very invested in the world or the main story.  But, what if Skyrim had simply said, "Make it across the continent, whatever it takes."  I would have dug that.  There would have been a constant sense of progression, instead of just constantly faffing about bouncing around the map. 

[Bjorn]

Silly double post. 

[eot]

Proc-gen can feel very soulless and expansively empty, so I'm usually really sceptical of it. This is beautiful enough already though that I just want to play around in it for a few hours, regardless of whether it's any good as a game.

Yeah, I've never thought procedual generation to be a good solution to the content generation problem. It's good for adding unpredictability to systems driven games or just replayable games in general. It works in those kinds of games because the randomness adds a twist to already interesting mechanics, it's there to support the game, not to be the game. Random content in itself is rarely interesting though, I don't want to look at random planets/animals/whatever and I don't really want to explore them either.

[Merus]

Well, procedural doesn't mean random - a lot of good procedural generation bakes making decisions about pacing and environmental cohesion into the generation.

[80's Bad Guy]

If half the games on greenlight (or in general for that matter) lived up to developer intention I'd have tons of amazing shit to play. And yet I do not! 

 

This is not a slight on No Man's Sky, just noting the fact I can't get hyped for anything in the preview cycle anymore. 

 

Wasn't it Dyack who said games shouldn't have previews at all, just come out? People thought he was nuts because hype is essential to building momentum, but for me that would be ideal. Especially for ambitious titles that may be severely compromised or limited come release day. 

 

Or I'm just pre-coffee grumpy. 

 

Also, I'm imagining a game like No Man's Sky in 100 years when our great-grandchildren are playing a procedurally generated MMO FPS RPG Tower Defense Survival Game across galaxies in a persistent universe...and I fucking hate them for it. We're just taking baby steps and paving the way for the really good games we'll never get to play. I hate life sometimes. 

[Twig]

 

Yeah, I've never thought procedual generation to be a good solution to the content generation problem. It's good for adding unpredictability to systems driven games or just replayable games in general. It works in those kinds of games because the randomness adds a twist to already interesting mechanics, it's there to support the game, not to be the game. Random content in itself is rarely interesting though, I don't want to look at random planets/animals/whatever and I don't really want to explore them either.

Oh come on! ):

I really appreciate that he took the time to specifically talk about procedural generation and what it is, because it seems like most people don't really know. They just think it means "oh everything's random". Procedural generation is the raddest thing.

 

[eot]

You're right that "random" and "procedurally generated" mean different things and I did read the interview so that was a bit sloppy of me, it's just so long to type each time :-P. I still stand by the point though. Dwarf Fortress has fantastic procedural world generation that not only covers geology and climate, but also people and history. Still, that's just a small supplement to the game. I'm wary of procedural generation being the pitch because I don't think it's enough to sustain a game. That's just me though, I'm sure some people who have more time to play love the idea.

[Erkki]

I recently started reading Christopher Alexander ("Notes on the Synthesis of Form", "Timeless Way of Building"; "Pattern Language" is up next) and his words are making me think that procedural generation could be much more amazing that what we've seen so far, He talks about the way that humans can design and build stuff so that it approaches nature and becomes "alive". His first writings (Notes on Synthesis of Form) also tried to go into mathematically modelling the process of design, but I think he gave up on that at some point. I don't know how well his ideas translate to programs, but I think there is some potential to explore that. But maybe that has been done more than I think, I know Will Wright has cited him as an influence,

 

Timeless Way of Building is mostly about how patterns of various scale relate to each other and to people, forming a language that generates designs, Much like English generates sentences. He also goes into how listening to how patterns make you feel is an important part of recognizing good patterns, but we know computers can't really feel... So I don't know, maybe "big data" and statistics or AI can replace the feeling part, but probably not all the way.

[Twig]

I'm a firm believer in procedural generation being [part of]* the future for video games. That's not exactly a revolutionary stance to take, but whatever. I think we're a long way off from building a game from the ground up entirely programmatically (obviously!), but it can and will be done in the future. This game is a massive step forward in that line of thinking, I think. Here's hoping it delivers.

 

*I don't think it will (and don't want it to!) replace traditional game development. But there's definitely a ton of room for procedurally generated games to exist.

 

I might look into those books, Erkki. This kind of thing fascinates me.

[darthbator]

I can certainly see a future where procedurally generated objects and elements are present in basically every game created. We're totally headed there. Even if you're creating an intricate single player experience there are still tons of benefits to be reaped from the use of dynamic content generation systems throughout your hand crafted level design. Just another tool in the box.

[SecretAsianMan]

The offices of Hello Games was hit by a Christmas flood and they lost a lot of equipment, including PCs.  Hopefully it won't impact development too much.

[elmuerte]

that sounds like a horrible present

[Professor Video Games]

Looks like Santa deemed them extra naughty.

 

Seriously though that sucks and I hope they had some sort of off site backup going. Equipment can be replaced but if I worked there and my code got washed away in a flood, I'd probably have a mental breakdown.

[Erkki]

They tweeted about loss of PCs, but not about loss of data, so hopefully they'll be ok. Unless they just didn't want to make everyone sad, but I assume they have off-site backups or actually keep the code and assets in my butt.

[Nachimir]

It sounds like they have off site backups: https://twitter.com/GrantDuncan/status/415822331093995521

 

Born Ready Games are next door and were also affected, but not as badly.

[Roderick]

Wow, christmas krampus is really upping his game there.

[Trip Hazard]

Derek Yu is probably quite excited for No Man's Sky after watching this. I know I am.

 

http://www.tigsource.com/2014/06/09/e3-2014-no-mans-sky/

[melmer]

No mans guy talking about no mans sky, this popped up on twitter, i haven't actually watched it yet

 

[Boris Stoke]

I'm really disappointed that his twitter account isn't "@nomansguy."  Great interview though.  He is a jedi master like Miyamoto.  He does a good job of explaining a lot without actually explaining anything.

[thorn]

It vaguely disappoints/bothers me that he talks about how there's a massive variety in animals, such that even he will be surprised by what's out there... and then all the animals look like generic dinosaurs, fish, and land mammals. Compare and contrast to Spore, where the early trailers were all about what wierd and wonderful animals could exist in the game.

 

Basically, I'm still worried this game won't live up to its hype.

[Trip Hazard]

I am too

 

We need to see a huge variety of wildlife to keep things fresh, but I also feel that if there are going to be animals out there, I want them to be believable and fit into their environment, and really inhabit their environment. He talks a lot about ecology, but I worry that that will simply boil down to seeing one big animal killing a smaller prey animal once in a while. What about populations, what about feeding, nesting, nurturing? Will there be cutesy ikkle baby critters? 

 

(I'd also really like to see a camera that we can use to catalogue new species, like in BG&E. I want that in every game)

 

Argh, I'm asking for way too much, but I have a lot of questions and it all seems so ambitious for a small team. Too often I've seen procedural content that simply doesn't work properly and produces weird anomalies or throws up endless bugs, or which is simply boring. 

[allenibrahim]

The most fascinating thing about this game to me is how we're all filling in the blanks of what it will actually be. Even after seeing the devs on Giant Bomb's E3 show, I still feel like I only have a vague grasp of it, but I'm weirdly dying to play it. I think it's just refreshing to not know exactly what a game is from trailers for once. If it can really recreate that sense of exploration from games like Skyrim without being repetitive, I'm already sold.

[Trip Hazard]

I showed that E3 vid to some mates tonight and it got a round of applause! Granted, none of them are gamers and it was massively ironic (on their part), but I'm counting that as a win. They'll be blasting about the cosmos soon enough, you mark my words

[Winnipeg Fats]

All I know is I saw a ship fly from the surface of the world out into space without a loading screen and that the front page to the official website makes the graphic designer in me fucking cry it's so goddamn perfect.

[Cordeos]

The multi-player component confused me, i don't understand what the point of it is. If you aren't really supposed to interact with other players why bother? my main concern is that there will be annoying connectivity requirements. I would be fine if the did Spore like multi-player, where connectivity is background and not needed, but that doesn't seem like what they are doing.