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Polygon: No Man's Sky- the developers built space probes to explore it for them

Amir0x

Banned
You know what would make me feel more confident in believing in the complexity of the algorithm's and designs in this game?

If there were more than four people making it.

I mean, seriously, they've got a guy doing sound, a programmer, an artist, and a modeller. If they had 100 artists, all of whom were spending day in and day out designing things for the game, designing new 'seeds', looking at the designs which were being borne out of the seeds and working on concepts to make them more visually appealing, I'd be a fan. Let's get 10 guys making the organic stuff, sure. But how about another 10 making buildings and vehicles. Another 10 working on building lighting + weather + effects + systems which are gonna make that scene in 2001 look normal. Another 10 working on lifeforms. And another 20 working on the physics engine, so that some planets have crazy gravity or make you move in slow motion or mess around with mass/momentum. Make it so that you don't know what the fuck is gonna be on the next planet, it could be a funky hell disco or it could be a giant ballpark or a futuristic megapolis or a prison world or an iceworld with a train that just goes round and round and round. As it is, every planet is a barren lifeless moon.

I mean that's a more substantive expansion on your pessimism surrounding the game. I can accept that, that's fine. I'm just saying that we definitely are all clear on what the game is, and the concept itself is not some insanely ambitious thing when you get down to the code (relatively speaking). But they need artists to feed the algorithm viable concepts, and so you're going to need a wide range of bases for the computer to fool around with to start creating a truly expansive and unique ecosystem for each planet you encounter. I mean it's hard to argue with the concern, it's valid. I know Hello Games are very competent developers and they make good games. I know what they've talked about in interviews has so far been backed up in the gameplay videos they've shown. I know that each of them has looked distinctive and colorful and very alluring. But, when you make a trailer you always try to show the audience the best of the best, so who knows what the actual moment-to-moment feel and flow of the game will be like.

I'm just trying to move past the notion that we don't know what this game is all about or that they've promised the sky or something like that. They've stated their clear goals, none of them are particularly outrageous and the only concern is in their ability to execute a compelling randomizing algorithm for the variation and exploration and some sort of guided track for those who want a more hand tailored experience. So I'm on the side that believes it'll all come together in the end, but there's no doubt I could be wrong.
 

todahawk

Member

androvsky

Member
I am still hyped about this game but the more I hear about it the more it sounds like this:

How is it people are simultaneously complaining that the developers haven't told us anything about what we do in the game and complaining that they're telling us we can do anything? So far all they've promised is a simplified, but good looking, Elite. Which is a game that exists, and indeed existed, in the 1980's, and was made by a small team, and as far as I know lived up to promises. Yet somehow it's morphed into this bizarre quantum monster that has promised nothing, but also has promised everything.
 
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