Reach for the Stars: No Man’s Sky News
Platform: PS4 and PC
Developer: Hello Games
Publisher: Hello Games
Release date: TBA
Author: K.D.
Since the beginning of time, humans have often wondered: “Are we the only ‘life’ in the universe?” The “we” there, of course is inclusive of everything on Earth. Well, No Man’s Sky is looking to help us fuel this musings with a simulated universe. A universe that offers a plethora of planets (over 18 quintillion, 18 x 1018 or 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 for non-math-y people) with unique flora and fauna. This game is one of the most ambitious cooperative games to hit Sony’s E3 stage.
The beauty here is just one of many.
The concept behind this game is a collaborative exploration of the universe. There is a unique database called The Atlas (essentially, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the eponymous encyclopedia in the Douglas Adams series) which stores information from different players about the planets and their specific conditions, if there is wildlife, particular plants with medicinal properties, and so forth. As players document further into the universe, Atlas will be able to help chart navigation courses to places of interest.
This is a place of interest to me…
So what exactly is this game? That’s yet to be seen, but current information indicates that it will be a first-person, open universe survival adventure. What that means is that there will be tons of exploration, collaboration, and a race to discovery. As with any sort of competition, there will be hostility. You may find yourself heading towards a resource center (as there will be one in every planetary system) to refuel and trade after a successful harvesting on a planet. You may happen across a faction that either wants you dead because your faction is too awesome, or maybe there were some bad deals in the past and they want revenge! Either way, their fleet is floating between you and your resource station. You can either try to GTFO or sweet-talk your way through, bartering information or resources. And the extent of your travels are limited to your spaceship’s capacities.
I think it’s time to throw down.
This game works off of procedural generation where data is broken into different sections and an engine is provided for each of them. They each have their own unique “seed number” or starting value so that everyone sees the same thing initially. When a new number is added to the engine, it modifies whatever it is in charge of, then that new value becomes the seed number. Basically, there’s a planet engine that determines shape, size, colour, etc. Each planet has a unique starting number that passes through each criteria with a predetermined sequence based on what the number is. This procedural generation is used for planets, flora and fauna on planets, details of flora and fauna, and even for the music!
If you’re interested in this game, check out The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on October 2nd, 2015 for a guest talk with one of the game directors, and co-founder of Hello Games, Sean Murray and a demonstration with YouTube’s own PewDiePie! Maybe He’ll finally announce the release date! Though many people speculate that it will be released around the same time as Morpheus, we just don’t know.
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