No Man's Sky

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macstat
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by macstat »

Hold your horses .... is game engine tied to framerate ? I was playing around with graphic options since some users recommended turning off v-sync and framerate lock (framerate to max) to ease stuttering a little bit and game actually runs faster. Not smoother, but faster. Can someone else on PC check this and see if this is just my eyes playing tricks on me ?
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ratsoalbion
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by ratsoalbion »

Flabyo wrote:I never run my consoles in rest mode, so it's not that...
Try running it in rest mode?
;) :P
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Stanshall
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by Stanshall »

An interesting find about system diversity, and the correlation with system name and colour:

If you go into free roam on the galaxy map, you'll notice that the majority of stars are yellow and start with F or G (this seems to vary per player). These are your bog standard systems, with some variety and resources but extremes are more rare. By choosing the fastest path to the centre, you will probably pass through these common systems 90% of the time, maybe even more. Having completed a certain questline, I noticed that as I started pushing straight for the centre, that I was seeing less diversity, and now I have some understanding of why.

So, back to the galactic map, you'll also see there are red, green and blue (bright white) systems. Typically, you'll need to go into free roam to plot a course to them. Now, more than that, even if you can cover the distance, you still won't be able to access these systems without one of three warp drive upgrades. Now, in general terms, these systems contain greater variety and abundance of life, and resources, and have more extreme conditions and geological variety. This is a pretty significant finding, I think. And sure enough, there is already some discussion of it online, but nobody has really cracked it yet. That's the basic point, anyway.

So why am I seeing less diversity now than I was five or ten hours ago? Well, I had a small ship with two extra warp drives for hours 10-30, I reckon, and then bought a bigger ship with only the basic warp, for hours 30-35 or so and that's when I felt I was seeing less variety. A couple of hours ago I stumbled across a broken down ship with three drives (not had that before) and saw more again. I can also now access every type of system. Now, it's not quite as simple as more colour is always better, because you also see that each system has a number, followed by f, p or nothing. I'm still trying to figure this out. Generally, though, it seems true that the non-yellow systems are more extreme in some way.

I also read something which stuck with me in some review, that basically the enjoyment of exploration is 'a good find', which rang true. That's a big part of the reward and motivation, it makes the mundane easily forgotten.

Also, this is the buggiest, most crashingest game I've ever experienced on PS4. I'd say it's crashed comfortably one hundred times since I've got it, which is barmy. I think I've only ever had one or two crashes on anything in the year or two I've had it.
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Flabyo
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by Flabyo »

The procedural generation does throw up some comedy sometimes.

Like the ship I had for a while this afternoon where firing the guns damages my own shield because they're positioned POINTING AT THE HULL.

That was an expensive waste of time :)
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Stanshall
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by Stanshall »

Hehe that's awesome. I've finally started seeing some big creatures, too, which I'm happy about. At least I was until I saw this wibble its way over the horizon:

http://imgur.com/ONSPBaa

I got the fear.
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by hazeredmist »

Sad to say nothing I've read or heard about this game allays my fears it simply isn't for me. Great to hear people are enjoying it though!
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Sean
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by Sean »

It makes me really sad that the game has so many technical issues. I jinxed myself earlier when I said I hadn't run into any issues because it's been crashing here and there ever since.

Regardless, I still can't stop playing it. I'm finding it to be a pretty special experience as a whole.
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ratsoalbion
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by ratsoalbion »

Stanshall wrote:Hehe that's awesome. I've finally started seeing some big creatures, too, which I'm happy about. At least I was until I saw this wibble its way over the horizon:

http://imgur.com/ONSPBaa

I got the fear.
Very pleased to see that Cthulhu-esque creatures are a possibility, rather than endless variations on antelope and suchlike!
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ratsoalbion
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by ratsoalbion »

Here is the currently rather less than optimal PC build running at 60 fps and 4K (so it can be done):


Patches are still in the works...


NB: If you are still having issues with the PC version, you can now download an 'experimental beta' patch (at your own risk), which may improve performance somewhat:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/275850/d ... 897578119/
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macstat
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by macstat »

Ive been playing a little bit on experimental. While it havent fixed my issues it made them less frequent, so that's good
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ratsoalbion
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by ratsoalbion »

Latest experimental patch (plus new GeForce drivers) and - performance-wise - things are looking way better with a smooth 60 fps on all maximum settings achieved.

The only fly in the ointment is the rather unsightly fade in of certain ground textures when up high.
This is a massive improvement overall though.
:)
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Flabyo
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by Flabyo »

I'm starting to feel like I may have exhausted all the fun out of this one.

I'll spoiler this, even though it's not really a spoiler, but I don't want to colour anyone else judgement before they've even played it...
Spoiler: show
Once you get into it's rhythm you realise pretty quickly that there isn't as much content as you think. I stopped getting new blueprints hours ago, everything now is a duplicate of something I already have. The upgrade path, in terms of how it decides which ships and multi-tools will be available to you has no link to how far you've explored. The flora and fauna isn't anywhere near as diverse as it could be. I'm very tired of seeing the same number puzzles over and over (literally the same ones, not 'of the same type' but 'the exact same one you've solved dozens of times already')

Many of the systems in the game feel like they're there so someone can say 'this is in the game!', but they're all incredibly shallow and not fleshed out. There's just not a lot of depth to the game. One of the major traps you can fall into in game development is confusing 'this is a really fun game to make' with 'this is a really fun game to play'. I've done it. Better designers than me have done it. The trick is to catch it in time.

It's a great technical achievement, and deserves to be experienced, but it's a loooong way from touching the best games of the year so far for me.
It'll be interesting to see what they add to it once they get out of firefighting the PC build.
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Stanshall
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by Stanshall »

After sixty hours, I couldn't agree more. I can't complain because it's been a unique experience, and one which I really enjoyed for much of that time, and found very compelling even when it wasn't fun but I certainly hit a wall, or at least a plateau.

Without being too fickle, I also found that 'cut content' post on reddit quite dispiriting. There is so much missing, even from the build shown in July. I'm pleased to hear that there will apparently be two patches in the next two weeks but they clearly just weren't ready for release. Initially, I brushed off the crashes on the PS4 but it's ultimately dampened my interest, knowing that I'll have to restart every five to ten minutes. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that they do continue to support the game as they said they would, and that we have a deeper experience in six months time.

Despite all this, at its best, it's been remarkable and I've loved the freedom and loneliness and beauty of it. Aesthetically, atmospherically, I think they nailed it. It's just the rest of it which has been stripped to the essentials.
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ratsoalbion
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by ratsoalbion »

After five hours of play I accidentally discovered that you can actually run in this game, by clicking in the right stick.
:o :oops: :lol:
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by MagicianArcana »

I finally got to play this on PC for a couple of hours last night. It runs ok on medium settings on my PC. There are some framerate drops but it's very playable.

So far I'm enjoying it. I think it's about what I expected. I'm digging the atmosphere and the feeling of solitude. The music is pretty nice too. I do enjoy the gameplay loop of visiting a planet, naming my discoveries, and then exploring the planet while mining resources. But I can see how that might get old after visiting a few dozen planets. There doesn't seem to be too much variety, but what is there is pretty cool I think.
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macstat
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by macstat »

Sean tweeted today about new PC patch being out (and PS4 patch on its way). Im wondering is it same thing we gon in experimental version, just pushed to live. Tweeted him with that question, still waiting ofr answer (probably im not important enough :( ). Also i actually dont have any updates in steam. I switched back to normal version, and again back to experimental to no avail.

link to tweet https://twitter.com/NoMansSky/status/766235997709402112
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Flabyo
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by Flabyo »

There's already a 1.04 patch live on PS4 today. I'm assuming just bug fixes.

I'm currently strip mining planets to get enough money to leap to a massive ship. My current planet is like some weird Mario world hallucination. Every species on the planet is some sort of bouncing mushroom... thing. One of them has a face like a Pikachu stung by a bee.

One thing for trophy hunters, I don't think this one is going to be very hard to Platinum. The hardest part will be maxing the 'find all species on lots of planets' one. I thought the cash one would be tricky, but I've got all those just by saving about 2 million, which is less than a quarter of what I need for the ships I have my eye on.
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Alex79
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by Alex79 »

Thanks to a successful game swap with Flabyo, I've now got this game - I can't wait to get home and play it! What I'm most looking forward to though, is it being my 'bedtime' game to remote play on the Vita before I go to sleep. The Witness was my last one, which was perfect, and I can see this being even better. All of the negative press I've read about the game only makes me look forward to it more - explore aimlessly through space with an ambient/post rock soundtrack. Yes please! Sounds just the ticket! I've not been this excited to start a game since I was driving back from town with my day 1 copy of Dark Souls 2 on the passenger chair :D
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Flabyo
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by Flabyo »

Make sure you let it pull down the updates before you start, or you'll have to start again.
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Suits
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Re: No Man's Sky

Post by Suits »

I think I've burnt my last warp cell on this one now.

I'm about 35 hours in I think and generally I feel like I'm just going through the motions. I keep hoping that my next jump will land me at the centre, so basically I'm wishing the game away.

I'll probably put it away and keep an eye on the patch's for something.........anything.

Did anyone ever play an iOS game called "Out There !!", this is basically that but in first person.
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