No Man's Sky

[Fide]

Just read about the update.  I think I'll be deleting my save...!  Any idea when the patch is going live?

 

Update 1.03

Sean Murray | August 7, 2016

Update 1.03

When we went gold five or six week ago, we posted on twitter, and literally every reply was like “hope you are going on a nice holiday!”. Some of us have, but I didn’t want to, not yet. I pictured myself somewhere staring out the window thinking about this game I’ve been working on for five years.

We’re under a pretty intense spotlight right now, and hopefully it’s easy to imagine how hard it would be to switch off from that, or how deeply we care about people’s first impression of the game.

In fact most of us were back here the day after we went gold, working on this update. We’re already proud of what we put on a disk, but if we had time, why not continue to update it?

 

Hello Games will continually update No Man’s Sky this way. This is the first of many.

 

It will be available on Monday for press for review once it exits submission, and on launch for public on PC and PS4. We expect future updates like these to continue to be free.

 

For 99.9% of people, all you have to do is install the update before you begin to play. 

If you had an early copy somehow, your save game will technically work post update, but you will miss out on new content and experiences if you don’t delete your save before updating (should be obvious why from notes below). We highly recommend deleting your save if you have played before updating your game (we won’t do this in future, but it’s a day zero update).

 

Servers will be wiped on Sunday and again Monday in the lead up to launch.

 

Beware these notes contain some spoilers. Here are some things our little team has been up to over the last four or five weeks:

• The Three Paths – there are now new, unique “paths” you can follow throughout the game. You must start the game on a fresh save, with the patch, as early choices have significant impact on what you see later in the game, and the overall experience.
• The Universe – we changed the rules of the universe generation algorithm. Planets have moved. Environments have changed biomes. Galaxies have altered shape. All to create greater variety earlier. Galaxies are now up to 10x larger.
• Diversity – Creatures are now more diverse in terms of ecology and densities on planets.
• Planets – we’ve added dead moons, low atmosphere and extreme hazardous planets. Extreme hazards include blizzards and dust storms.
• Atmosphere – space, night time and day skies are now 4x more varied due to new atmospheric system, which refracts light more accurately to allow for more intense sunsets.
• Planet rotation – play testing has made it obvious people are struggling to adjust to this during play so it’s effects have been reduced further…
• Terrain generation – caves up to 128m tall are now possible. Geometric anomalies have been added. Underwater erosion now leads to more interesting sea beds.
• Ship diversity – a wider variety of ships appear per star system, and are available to purchase. Cargo and installed technology now vary more, and ships have more unique attributes.
• Inventory – ship inventories now store 5 times more resources per slot. Suit inventories now store 2.5 times more per slot. This encourages exploration and gives freedom from the beginning. We’re probably going to increase this even further in the next update, for people in the latter game phases, and will allow greater trading potential.
• Trading – trading is deeper. Star systems and planets each have their own wants and needs, based off a galactic economy. Observing these is the key to successful trading. We still working on adjusting this based on how everyone plays, but all trading values have been rebalanced across the galaxy, giving a greater depth. A bunch of trade exploits were uncovered and have been removed
• Feeding – creatures now have their own diet, based on planet and climate. Feeding them correctly will yield different results per species, such as mining for you, protecting the player, becoming pets, alerting you to rare loot or pooping valuable resources.
• Survival – recharging hazard protection requires rare resources, making shielding shards useful again. Storms can be deadly. Hazard protection and suit upgrades have been added. Liquids are often more dangerous
• Graphical effects – Lighting and texture resolution have been improved. Shadow quality has doubled. Temporal AA didn’t make it in time, but it’s so close
• Balancing – several hundred upgrades have had stat changes (mainly exo-suit and ship, but also weapon), new upgrades have been added.
• Combat – Auto Aim and weapon aim has been completely rewritten to feel more gentle in general, but stickier when you need it. Sentinels now alert each other, if they haven’t been dealt with quickly. Quad and Walker AI is now much more challenging, even I struggle with them without a powered up weapon.
• Space Combat – advanced techniques have been introduced, like brake drifting and critical hits. Bounty missions and larger battles now occur. Pirate frequency has been increased, as well as difficulty depending on your cargo.
• Exploits – infinite warp cell exploit and rare goods trading exploit among other removed. People using these cheats were ruining the game for themselves, but people are weird and can’t stop themselves ¯\_(シ)_/¯
• Stability – foundations for buildings on super large planets. Resolved several low repro crashes, in particular when player warped further than 256 light years in one session (was only possible due to warp cell exploit above).
• Space Stations – interiors are now more varied, bars, trade rooms and hydroponic labs have been added
• Networking – Ability to scan star systems other players have discovered on the Galactic Map, increasing the chance of collision. Star systems discovered by other players appear during Galactic Map flight
• Ship scanning – scanning for points of interest from your ship is now possible. Buildings generate earlier and show up in ship scans
• Flying over terrain – pop-in and shadow artefacts have been reduced. Generation speed has been increased two fold (planets with large bodies of water will be targeted in next update)
• Writing – The Atlas path has been rewritten by James Swallow (writer on Deus Ex) and me.  I think it speaks to the over-arching theme of player freedom more clearly now. Early mission text has been rewritten to allow for multiple endings.

 

I grew up reading Carmack’s .plan files for Quake, so it’s fun to be writing one of my own

 

Next up we’re adding the ability to build bases and own giant space freighters. Temporal AA and my new cloud rendering tech should be coming soon too. It will really change the game again, and enhance it visually.

 

This universe we’ve built is a pretty large canvas, we’ve got a lot of ideas. This is the type of game we want to be.

 

Love,

Sean

[bunglebonce]

Sometime tomorrow I think.

[t1t3h]

Decided to pre order it tonight. What's the deal with it downloading? Will it start downloading at midnight on the release date or will it do so beforehand so I can play it straight away?

[Fide]

4 hours ago, t1t3h said:

Decided to pre order it tonight. What's the deal with it downloading? Will it start downloading at midnight on the release date or will it do so beforehand so I can play it straight away?

When i played my disc on Saturday there was no download, just straight into it.  Not sure what the situation will be, but the day 1 patch is around 800mb.

[t1t3h]

When i played my disc on Saturday there was no download, just straight into it.  Not sure what the situation will be, but the day 1 patch is around 800mb.

There's two items waiting to be downloaded on my ps4, some pre order pack and the actual game. The games only 13gb which I found quite surprising tbf considering some games are well over 30gb. Can't wait to play this now.

[forameus]

1 minute ago, t1t3h said:

 

 

There's two items waiting to be downloaded on my ps4, some pre order pack and the actual game. The games only 13gb which I found quite surprising tbf considering some games are well over 30gb. Can't wait to play this now.

 

 

That's down to the procedural generation.  No need for loads of textures to model a huge world when most of it is just done with formulae.  

It's certainly sounding more positive than I expected, although I'm sure the hype train will crash for some of the less balanced in their community soon.  

Tempted to order this now...

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

I think the new Doom game has broken the old rule that no review copies = shit game.

[forameus]

1 hour ago, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

I think the new Doom game has broken the old rule that no review copies = shit game.

It's more like an exception to the rule.  Have there been any other examples where it has?  There's been some pretty high-profile games where they've been desperate to embargo the shit out of everyone so their game doesn't get seen for the turd it is.  

Not saying that's the case here, at least not entirely.  I imagine it'll come into every developers mind in some way - why would you let reviews out early if you can get away with it?  One thing that annoyed me about it, they said they wanted the review to be of day 1 code, because there was going to be a day 1 patch.  Why not just make sure beta testing happens early enough so that there doesn't need to be a day 1 patch?  They're by no means alone in this, in fact every game now has that.  

[Alex_14]

Yep, because of the lack of reviews i'm going to hold off buying this for a couple of days.

[Fide]

20 minutes ago, forameus said:

It's more like an exception to the rule.  Have there been any other examples where it has?  There's been some pretty high-profile games where they've been desperate to embargo the shit out of everyone so their game doesn't get seen for the turd it is.  

Not saying that's the case here, at least not entirely.  I imagine it'll come into every developers mind in some way - why would you let reviews out early if you can get away with it?  One thing that annoyed me about it, they said they wanted the review to be of day 1 code, because there was going to be a day 1 patch.  Why not just make sure beta testing happens early enough so that there doesn't need to be a day 1 patch?  They're by no means alone in this, in fact every game now has that.  

I think it's clear that the day one patch will have such a major impact on the game that pre patched games won't be suitable for review.

I genuinely don't think there's anything underhand at play.

[bunglebonce]

Patch is live btw.

[forameus]

23 minutes ago, Fide said:

I think it's clear that the day one patch will have such a major impact on the game that pre patched games won't be suitable for review.

I genuinely don't think there's anything underhand at play.

I don't think there is either, I was more meaning generally with day 1 patches.  Given the possibility that said patch can still have issues, why not just start the whole process earlier so you can have that day 1 patch in place in the weeks before release?  Especially with this one, as the update appears to be adding a sizeable amount to the game rather than just bug fixes.

The game will probably be pretty well reviewed - probably not exemplary, but pretty solid.  Most will be pretty happy with it, and some will absolutely bomb it.  As is the way with games and the hype train they travel on.  I'll see what the early reviews are like on Wednesday/Thursday, then maybe pick it up in the days after if it's all positive.

[Fide]

2 hours ago, bunglebonce said:

Patch is live btw.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS! I'm restarting my adventure tonight!

[NorthernLights]

I gave in tonight and pre-ordered it on Steam.  I know how I'll be spending my Friday night now.

[XIII]

Pc delay until Friday

[banana]

4 hours ago, XIII said:

Pc delay until Friday

Wankers.

[Fide]

Having spent about 3 - 4 hours on the patched version last night, I'm sold.

I will say it's not going to be to everyone's taste.  For those that need some immediacy in their gaming, it probably won't suit them.  For those who are patient and like a well crafted, well thought out, immersive, almost RPG like game, it's one of those that's going to give you back what you put into it.

So far, out of the 7 or 8 planets I've visited, I've seen forests, arctic planets, radioactive planets, boiling hot planets, caves with fluorescent stalagmites, storms, blizzards, animals that hunt out resources when you feed them, dead planets, underwater caves and a whole lot more.  I've also had dogfights in space, visited death star like space stations and shot asteroids for resources.

There is a plot, it seems.  You don't have to follow it, but you get gentle nudges and it's as intriguing as f**k.

Early days, but it's like nothing I've played before and I'm in.

[Boostin' Kev]

What are you doing on all these planets Fide?

[forameus]

47 minutes ago, Fide said:

Having spent about 3 - 4 hours on the patched version last night, I'm sold.

I will say it's not going to be to everyone's taste.  For those that need some immediacy in their gaming, it probably won't suit them.  For those who are patient and like a well crafted, well thought out, immersive, almost RPG like game, it's one of those that's going to give you back what you put into it.

So far, out of the 7 or 8 planets I've visited, I've seen forests, arctic planets, radioactive planets, boiling hot planets, caves with fluorescent stalagmites, storms, blizzards, animals that hunt out resources when you feed them, dead planets, underwater caves and a whole lot more.  I've also had dogfights in space, visited death star like space stations and shot asteroids for resources.

There is a plot, it seems.  You don't have to follow it, but you get gentle nudges and it's as intriguing as f**k.

Early days, but it's like nothing I've played before and I'm in.

Sounds incredibly on the edge of me loving it or hating it.  Even the Witcher 3, which I ended up thinking was the best game ever made, I almost gave up on early on because it didn't engage me.  One of my favourite parts of Skyrim, Fallout, games like that was always the exploration of new areas, so could well be my sort of game.

At the moment my home internet's been dead since Friday night (fucking Openreach) so wouldn't be much point ordering it now.  Think I'll get it Thursday or Friday though, have it for the weekend.  Unless I see something horrendous coming out in the reviews, which seems unlikely at the moment.

[Fide]

22 minutes ago, Pete Rockwell said:

What are you doing on all these planets Fide?

Collecting resources is a big thing. 

Depending on what the planet you're on is like, your thermal protection on your exosuit needs to be recharged, so you'll need to mine minerals for that.  That's a thing you;ll need to do constantly, but it's manageable. You'll also mine for your ship's propulsion system, warp drive etc.

You can catalogue and name flora and fauna, visit colonial outposts, processing plants, look for shelter, seek out ancient alien monoliths, feed animals, that sort of thing.