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No Man's Sky is an upcoming adventure survival video game developed and published by British studio Hello Games. Players are free to explore the entirety of a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, which includes over 18 quintillion (10) planets each with their own set of flora and fauna. By exploring, players will gain information about the planets that they can submit to The Atlas, a universal database that can be shared with other players of the game. Players also gain materials and blueprints to upgrade their character's equipment and purchase a variety of starships, allowing them to travel deeper into the center of the galaxy, or trade with other ships. Some activities will draw the attention of Sentinels which will attempt to kill the player-character for killing too many lifeforms or draining too many resources from these planets. Players participate in a shared universe, with the ability to exchange planet coordinates with friends, though the game will also be fully playable offline; this is enabled by the procedural generation system that assures players will find the same planet with the same features, lifeforms, and other aspects once given the planet coordinates, requiring no further data to be stored or retrieved from game servers.

No Man's Sky represents a vision of a broad, attention-getting game that Hello Games has had in place since the formation of the company, set aside while they secured their financial wellbeing through other, less risky titles such as the Joe Danger games. The game's original prototype was worked on by Hello Games' Sean Murray, and then expanded into a small 5-man team prior to its first teaser in December 2013. Since then, more of Hello Games' staff have since worked on the game and it was formally announced at Sony's press conference during the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014, the first independently-developed game to be presented at the Expo's centerpiece events.

The game will be released simultaneously for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows, though no release date has yet been announced.

Gameplay

No Man's Sky is a procedurally generated open universe game. Players take the role of a planetary explorer with a spacecraft, allowing them to explore the surface of numerous planets and interact with the flora and fauna, and take to space, engaging in combat with hostile forces and travel to other planets and stars within a virtual galaxy. Stars, planets and other features of this galaxy are procedurally generated through deterministic algorithms; though initially built based on a 32-bit number processor, the final game will use a 64-bit seeding key, with the developers stating that this allows for more than 18 quintillion possible planets. The procedural generation of stars, its planet, and planetary features like flora, and fauna are based on using the planet's coordinates within the universe as the numerical random number seed, which will not change; as a result, no planet data is saved to disk, but assures that the planet will retain the same features every time any player visits it. The game will have online features that allow players to share details of planets they have visited with other online players, and will allow players to visit these planets through a large galactic map once they have upgraded their ship for hyperdrive capabilities. In August 2014, the developers confirmed that the game would be playable offline, enabled by the procedural generation process.

The game will feature planetary exploration, deep oceans, space-based battles, resource gathering, and potential predators on the various procedurally-generated worlds. Each world has its own ecosystem with potentially unforgiving weather conditions, such as desert worlds with large carnivorous worms, as well as day-and-night cycles that will exhibit different creature behavior. The amount of life on planets will be factored based on their distance from their local sun, with planets far out from the sun typically being barren of life. Not all stars will have habitable planets to explore but will still offer potential opportunities for resources to the player. Internal game time will also play a factor, as creatures on planets will evolve, and effects of erosion will occur as the game progresses.

Players are initially given an uncharted universe to explore, where information about any planet's characteristics and lifeforms may be shared and updated with others through "The Atlas", an intergalactic database that is accessed through Beacons that can be found on the planets, and which is pictured in the game's logo. Each new planet added to the Atlas will be credited to the player that uploads the information, and the player can also include notes about the planet, such as it being a toxic or radioactive environment.

There will exist numerous features in the space between planets, including ships and fleets belonging to various factions and space stations where players can buy and sell equipment with rotating stock, or perform trade. The behavior of these factions will be based on another procedural generation system as well as player's past actions towards that faction; for example by helping a faction win a space battle against a rival one earlier, they may in turn help protect the players from a different faction later. The player-character may die by numerous means, including becoming a target of a hostile faction and being destroyed during space combat, or encountering dangerous creatures or Sentinels that patrol some planets and turn against explorers that drain a planet of too many of its resources or kill off too many of its flora or fauna. When the player respawns after death, they will lose all collected information that has not yet been uploaded to the Atlas. The game includes a crafting system in which the player may use blueprints and resources to upgrade their suit, "multitool", and ship, which will allow the player to explore harsher environments, mine better resources, do more damage during ground-combat, and modify their ship.

There is no main story in the game, though the game will have lore associated with the virtual galaxy that the player will learn as they explore. No Man's Sky's overarching goal is to reach the center of the galaxy; players will start at a random planet at the edge of this galaxy and are incentivized toward this goal by the greater availability of resources closer to the center of the galaxy. Players must collect, sell, and trade resources in order to acquire better ships and more fuel, allowing them to explore areas of the galaxy closer to its center. As the player moves towards the galaxy's center, the features of the planets including lifeforms will become-less Earth-like and more alien. Hello Games' co-founder Sean Murray stated that a player could reach the center of the galaxy with forty to a hundred hours of gameplay, not including any additional exploration; but he hopes players also find themselves involved in other activities enabled by the open nature of the game, such as managing trade routes or studying the universe's flora and fauna.

Development

The onset of development for No Man's Sky arose from Hello Games' co-founder Sean Murray sometime during the development of Joe Danger 2. Murray, a former developer at Criterion Games for the Burnout series, worried the studio would be falling into a rut of producing sequel after sequel as was the case at Criterion. When Hello Games had problems with an American publisher, Murray realized they had an opportunity to create a completely new title based on a concept he had since he was a child, when he had aspirations of being an astronaut. Murray was also inspired by science fiction including works by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein, as well as the covers of these works published during the 1970s and 1980s, which typically were done by freelance artists and bore little connection to the story within but made for visually alluring scenes.

The game was a concept that the studio had since inception. Murray described that in bringing on board Dave Ream, the team's creative director, that Murray described how there are skyscrapers in the world that are well visible but built on standard designs, and then there are smaller, minimalistic architectural designs, which is the direction that Murray wanted to take the studio. Ream agreed, but insisted that the studio at some point would make the game equivalent of a skyscraper, a game they could develop without any limitations. This proverbial game, "Project Skyscraper" was kept in mind as the studio began to expand and acquire the necessary finances to pursue other titles besides Joe Danger.

With the success of Joe Danger and its sequels, Murray was able to spend a few days each week for about a year to develop the core engine of No Man's Sky in secret from the rest of the team. Once the engine was completed, Murray brought in a small four-person team to work on the game directly, while Joe Danger 2 was being developed by the rest of the company. They worked in a spare room, lining the walls with science fiction imagery to help inspire them. Their work was kept in secrecy from the rest of the development team, leading to some tension within the offices, though Murray had done this specifically after seeing how small exploratory groups did not work well at Criterion Games. Further, Murray was concerned about describing the game too much, and fears that even teasing about the title would lead to misconceptions about the scope and nature of the game. Ultimately, Murray was given the opportunity to premiere the title at the 2013 VGX awards, and in preparation, created the short teaser which they shared with the rest of studio days before the awards show. As development continued, more of the team was brought on board to help complete the game, with the final team being composed of thirteen members. This VGX teaser brought much attention to the title from the gaming press. A flood wiped out most of their Guildford office and equipment on Christmas Eve 2014, but they were able to recover work they had done already and resumed development shortly thereafter.

Just prior to the VGX showing, Murray had shown the title around to various publishers, and Sony expressed strong interest in having the title for the PlayStation 4. Murray stated that he did not ask Sony for funding support, but only their commitment to help market the game, including having the game formally introduced at Sony's main media event during the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014; until that point, no independently-developed game has been demonstrated during these center-stage events. Hello Games prepared a six-planet demonstration that would be used for the E3 event and subsequently used to showcase the game for the media while the full version - nearly always in a constant state of flux during to the procedural generation approach - was being developed. The game was announced at E3 2014 with plans for a timed exclusive release on the PlayStation 4, and would have later been brought to Microsoft Windows. However, speaking to the media at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2015, Murray stated that they now plan to release the title simultaneously for both platforms, though did not specify a release date.

Procedural generation system

Most of the universe in No Man's Sky is procedurally-generated, including solar systems, planets, weather systems, flora and fauna on these planets, the behavior of these creatures, and artificial structures like buildings and spacecraft. The generation system is based primarily on providing a single seed number to their deterministic engine which would create all the features of the universe exactly the same way every time this process is run with the same seed using the repeatability of pseudorandom number generators. One generator is used to create the universe, plotting the position of the stars, using the phone number of one of the Hello Games' developers as the founding seed. Pseudorandom numbers generated from the position of each star is used to define the planetary system the star has, the planet's position is used as a seed to define the planetary features, and so on. This approach, used in early days of computer games to avoid high memory or disk use, avoided the need to craft every planet and store this information on a server; this also assured that players can always revisit the same planets, and share that planet with other players which would find the same features. The planet terrain generation code, for example, is only 1,400 lines of code; as described by Murray, the code was tweaked as to make sure that planets generated visually interesting but navigable terrain, as some early builds would produced wildly-stunning planets but that were impossible to traverse, while other fixes made planets look flat and dull. The approach also allows Hello Games to optimize the rendering of the game, as what is visible to the player can be determined directly through these generation algorithms. This did create some difficulty with features like rivers, which in most virtual environments are built by using a physics engine to track the flow of water down a slope. Murray and his team developed a brute force solution to include rivers and similar features without having to render out a large-enough section of landscape to perform the same calculation.

The development team built the planetary feature generation system atop this where they would first hand-create core structures and the art associated with those - such as a basic skeleton and skin for a creature - and then allow the algorithm to make randomized changes to that, as to make a wide variety of creatures, mimicking the diversity of species resulting from evolution on Earth. They made sure the elements of this generation process reflected the setting - creatures and plants inhabiting a planet that contained blue-colored minerals would be tinted blue as well. To assure that the procedural generation worked well, the development team created the in-game equivalent of automated probes to visit the various planets and take images to review; this allowed for some tweaks to be made by human developers. Other features came from looking at work done in the fields of biology and geology that attempt to describe natural patterns with mathematics; for example, their code includes the Superformula devised by biologist Johan Gielis that is able to describe many shapes of biological entities with a few adjustable parameters. The game also uses L-systems, fractal equations developed by Aristid Lindenmayer in 1968 that can create structures that resemble many algae and plant lifeforms.

Marketing

Sony has expressed interest in publishing a companion work of fiction for the game. Murray has engaged with comic writer, artist, and editor Dave Gibbons about the possibility of helping to edit this work.

Soundtrack

No Man's Sky features a soundtrack by post-rock band 65daysofstatic as well as procedurally generated ambient music composed by Paul Weir. The game uses a generative music system called Pulse developed by Weir, using a large library of loops, textures and melodies created by the band 65daysofstatic to randomly create music to accompany the gameplay, reacting to the changeable terrain and becoming more or less menacing depending on whether a character is in danger. Weir is also working with Hello Games to create the animal calls, using another procedural generation system called VocAlien.

Reception

Pre-release reception

Dave Lee of BBC News felt that the game "stole the show" at the E3 2014 conference. The title won the show's "Best Original Game" and "Best Independent Game" by a panel of game critics, as well as receiving the "Special Commendation for Innovation" title.

See also

• Noctis
• Elite: Dangerous
• Eve Online
• Infinity
• Outerra
• SpaceEngine
• Starbound
• Star Citizen
• Starflight
• StarMade

References

1. ^ Hiranand, Ravi (18 June 2015). "18 quintillion planets: The video game that imagines an entire galaxy". CNN. Retrieved 21 August 2015.
2. "No Man's Sky - The Story, Gameplay, and Multiplayer Explained". YouTube. IGN. 10 June 2014. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
3. Higgins, Chris (18 August 2014). "No Man's Sky would take 5 billion years to explore". Wired UK. Retrieved 19 August 2014.
4. ^ Wiltshire, Alex (3 August 2015). "41 Amazing Things About No Man's Sky". PlayStation Blog. Retrieved 3 August 2015.
5. Cork, Jeff (8 December 2014). "Galactic Map Puts Scale Of No Man's Sky In Perspective". Game Informer. Retrieved 8 December 2014.
6. Good, Owen (8 December 2013). "Wow. No Man's Sky Just Stole The Show At The VGX". Kotaku. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
7. Jackson, Mike (8 December 2013). "Hello Games reveal 'next-gen' sci-fi epic, No Man's Sky". Computer and Video Games. Archived from the original on 29 December 2014. Retrieved 9 December 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
8. ^ Newhouse, Alex (31 July 2015). "No Man's Sky Gets New Details About Stars, Natural Disasters, and Factions". Gamespot. Retrieved 22 August 2015.
9. ^ Parkin, Simon (22 July 2014). "No Man's Sky: A Vast Game Crafted by Algorithms". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 5 August 2015.
10. Carboni, Anthony (10 December 2013). "NO MAN'S SKY: Procedurally Generating Science Fiction for the Next-Generation - First Look Interview". Revision3. Retrieved 18 December 2013.
11. ^ Sullivan, Meghan (17 June 2015). "10 THINGS WE LEARNED ABOUT NO MAN'S SKY". IGN. Retrieved 21 June 2015.
12. Amani, Tina (19 June 2014). "What No Man's Sky Is". Kotaku UK. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
13. Cork, Jeff (15 December 2014). "The Path To No Man's Sky's 'End Game'". Game Informer. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
14. ^ Cork, Jeff (19 December 2014). "The Secret Story Behind No Man's Sky". Game Informer. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
15. ^ Khatchadourian, Raffi (18 May 2015). "World without end : creating a full-scale digital cosmos". Annals of Games. The New Yorker. Vol. 91, no. 13. pp. 48–57. Retrieved 5 August 2015. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |authormask= (help)
16. Gatson, Martin (7 December 2013). "Space adventure No Man's Sky is one of next-gen's most ambitious titles". GameSpot. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
17. Meer, Alec (8 December 2013). "Whatever You Do, Watch This: Hello Games' No Man's Sky". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
18. Silva, Marty (7 December 2013). "Joe Danger Dev Announces No Man's Sky". IGN. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
19. "New 'No Man's Sky' Footage Leaves Us Thinking, 'That Escalated Quickly'". VICE.
20. ^ Lee, Dave (12 June 2014). "E3: How No Man's Sky took on the games industry - and won". BBC News. Retrieved 12 June 2014.
21. Dunning, Jason (9 June 2014). "No Man's Sky Console Debut is First on PS4, New Gameplay Video Revealed". PlayStation Lifestyle. Retrieved 12 June 2014.
22. Evans-Thirwell, Edwin (20 June 2014). "News: Hello Games isn't "currently talking" about No Man's Sky on Xbox One". OXM. Retrieved 22 June 2014.
23. Corriea, Alexa Ray (1 August 2014). "No Man's Sky will come to PC, is a PS4 timed exclusive". Polygon. Retrieved 11 May 2015.
24. Campbell, Colin (16 June 2015). "No Man's Sky launching simultaneously for PC and PS4". Polygon. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
25. Tach, Dave (3 March 2015). "No Man's Sky is so big, the developers built space probes to explore it for them". Polygon. Retrieved 3 March 2015.
26. Wilson (16 July 2015). "How 4 Designers Built A Game With 18.4 Quintillion Unique Planets". Fast Company. Retrieved 9 August 2015.
27. Diver, Mike (18 February 2015). "'No Man's Sky' Sounds Amazing, Literally". Vice. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
28. ^ Broomhall, John (5 August 2015). "The sound of No Man's Sky". Develop. Retrieved 5 August 2015.
29. Mumford, Gwilym (23 June 2015). "No Man's Sky: how a cult band created the game's endless musical universe". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 July 2015.
30. Campbell, Colin (1 July 2014). "Evolve takes top E3 2014 critics awards". Polygon. Retrieved 1 July 2014.

External links

• Official website

• Upcoming video games
• PlayStation 4 games
• Science fiction video games
• Open world video games
• Video games developed in the United Kingdom
• Video games with procedurally generated levels
• Windows games
• Survival video games
• Games about extraterrestrial life
• Faster-than-light travel in fiction