This looks incredible. Was listening to the devs chat to Giant Bomb and they come across really well too, really smart guys.
It doesn't really sound like players can meet each other anyway.
The server just records events, it doesn't sound like a multiplayer game where you are sending your actions or positional data constantly to the server, just when you complete certain events in game, they will be uploaded to the server for others to see.
From EDGE magazine (Jan 2014):
Edge: How does information sharing work?
Sean: You’re all in the same universe, and when you you can upload what you found to what is effectively a star map and an encyclopaedia of knowledge. And people would then be able to find those things much more quickly and progress forward.
It seems to be an MMO, yes, but you're just not playing with people! Regardless of that, there were tons of ships though.. Coming and going from everywhere. Plenty of them looked scripted, or on rails, in the E3 video, but it just looked damn impressive anyway - NPC or not. Are you able to set up civilisations and/or harvest planets, rather than just explore them? Setting up your own space-colony on a planet, and building an army/civilisation seems like any boys dream come true; it seems well within the scope of 'infinite possibility' anyway.
I think the whole exploration part will pay dividends; humans are naturally inquisitive, so exploring is in our nature. It will be cool to fly down to an uncharted planet and get your flag stamped down. I also thought it was pretty cool that even the species were unknown; meaning they're procedural also?
I like the route they're taking to generate these planets. They're created depending on the atmospheric make-up that the game has decided to go with (Every atom is procedural). I just hope the team behind it have some serious number crunching servers to generate these worlds - Unless they're generated locally, and everyone sees a different planet - But the planet just has your name against it? - Think Worms on the PC/Mega Drive.
One part of the E3 video that particularly tickled my pickle was when an entire squadron of battleships, fighters, et. al. warped in, and the player (and his wingmen) started blasting away. Just seems like mayhem overall. Can't wait!
The keyword is procedural. The Universe is spawned using a key and procedurally constructed with this key as the base.
That means that everyone using this key would receive the exact same universe as there are no random elements involved, the universe is being built on a set of fixed rules. With this kind of setup, they do not need a massively powerful server, as the universe can be generated on the client with no input from the server.
The problem for multiplayer, is that procedurally generating the universe, means that it is very difficult to maintain permanent changes, as the client is being relied on to generate the local content and if the server had to maintain the infinite universe and all the changes and positional data of the players, then it would be too taxing. Hence the smoke and mirrors about players not meeting each other due to the sizes involved. Really it currently seems that the game is singleplayer, with some metadata from the server shared between all players (place names, alien fleets etc.).
It just seems that they are trying to cover that up a little, rather than just point blank saying you cannot play together. It could be that they are working on a mode, where a few players can join a session together and use one client as the server for positional data. That would make a lot more sense.
How No Man's Sky stole the show at E3 • Eurogamer.net
Quite a long article, but worth a read.
Every time I hear 'No Man's Sky' being whispered on the winds I get a little flutter of excitement wash through me. This game just looks incredible . I can't believe people at EA would shoot him down, "At EA, where I used to work, not that anyone would greenlight it but if you would pitch the game one of the biggest things people would say is with our 200 people team we couldn't do this."
Now, a team originally starting off as 4 has over doubled in size and become 10, to deliver this incredible game. It just goes to show that you don't need a team of 200 drones to deliver an exceptionally new & fresh IP - Look at Watch_Dogs, Aiden Pierce has about as much character/personality as an unpainted fence. How couldn't the team at Ubi generate a decent character, with a decent storyline? His niece died, and his sister is more over it than him? Why not make it his daughter that way it would have made more sense?
Were they trying to recapture the emotion of The Last of Us? (Aiden as a surrogate-father?) They didn't quite get there.
But I digress...
Talent such as his would be wasted at EA; as above, they kill creativity. EA are the ambition killers, they're the game-domain equivalent of an abortion clinic for fresh-new developers. Yet they're complete, unfaltering, undeniable experts in recycling, but the only issue is, they're not doing the planet any favours by doing so.
EA is the kind of place a washed up, brainless-droning husk of a developer should work. Whom has nothing more creative to offer than an extra freckle on Suarez's face in Fifa 16 and an extra crease on Fat Ronaldo's chin in the World XI team.
Although, I'm glad EA did decline his title (if he did pitch it to his bosses) and have zero input on this game. Else it would be released already, with more bugs than a Chinese takeaway in Hull.
Now that is a post that came from the heart.data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
It does look pretty special and I'll be keeping an eye on this one. I wish them every success.
The Next Big Game - No Man's Sky - GameSpot
Interesting videos giving a bit more detail about the game. It looks incredible.
looks interesting.Will keep an eye on the progress of this
Those are from dwhite's post! ;-)
It would have been better for him to post the YouTube links, since the Gamespot website is fairly rubbish!