I wonder how many trillions of floors Diablo 1 had if they had used this weird way of marketing No Man's Sky uses.
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2025
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Why is trillions in quotes? Did they add them or not?
I write a planet generator. All of the planets are the same to begin with, so realistically I can only generate "1" planet. Then I add one toggle which is random, if it's on the planet will be completely water. I now have "2" planets. Now I add another toggle for one huge mountain, I can now generate "4" planets (dry,water,dry-mountain,water-mountain). Keep adding toggles, sliders and parameters until you have "trillions" of possible planets and you're done.
The funny thing is that the changes are cumulative, so if I release a game that can generate X planets and I add a binary toggle I can now claim I added X planets to the game. If I add a slider from 0-9 then I added 10X planets. So since No Man's Sky already had a giant number of planets, adding trillions of them could mean something as stupid as they added a new resource to the game so now every planet can have that resource in different amounts.
I thought I'd check which 2^N gets you to a trillion, it's N=40. So you can have 40 parameters per planet and add one more, then suddenly you've created an extra trillion planets.
And that's assuming just toggles, if each parameter has 10 levels you only need 12, then add one toggle and you get trillions. Heck, I can name 12 parameters that have at least 10 different values off the top of my head:
- Amount of water overall (oceans and lakes)
- Amount of mountains
- Amount of Forrest on the land
- Amount of life forms
- Temperature
- Amount of moons/rings
- Size
- Amount of rivers
- Whether the landmass is one big continent or multiple small islands
- Amount of volcanoes
- Amount of caves
- Amount of iron (or any other resource)
Congrats, if you now add a does the planet rotate toggle you've created trillions of planets.
It’s a procedurally generated universe(s). These systems haven’t all been pre-generated, but will rather be generated to explore when a player visits a system for the first time.
Right, but that still counts. Although I guess it's kind of an "if a tree falls in the forest" question. If the world doesn't exist unless you find it, was it really there before?
The point is rather how meaningful this statement is. It doesn't really matter if your algorithm can come up with trillions of ways to place trees, if it's the same handful of trees it's still gonna feel samey after the third time.
Hmm, true
I'd trade that update for one that fixed the jank combat. I will continue to complain about the gun being auto-holstered after 2 seconds without firing as one of the worst parts of combat, so "line your shot" is a terrible strategy because by the time it's lined, you'll miss due to the animation creating a 1s lag between click and shot.
The almost random targeting of what you'll interact with when holding E is another big annoyance.
Capital ships are a total letdown, too. All they do is sit around motionless in space. Can't destroy anything bigger than a fighter.
When they say “trillions of new planets” they mean one new biome with the plants and rocks in a trillion different places.
Just more procedurally generated and boring as fuck “new planets”
I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum, as the review scores keep improving so obviously folks are liking it, but you’re not alone if it still doesn’t click. They keep polishing it and piling on more stuff, but the base game is still rather disjointed and in my opinion, easy to burn out on. Procedural generation doesn’t mean any of the procedurally generated things are going to be interesting.
I like to pop in every time they drop an expedition. Those let you speedrun the game and get reacquainted with it with not much effort. You also get introduced to whatever new thing they added. It's a bit like playing ARK on a 20x resources 20x taming server so you can just play the game without so much grind.
True, i put something between 100 - 200 hours into it and while they repeatedly add "special stuff" i cant really motivate myself to go back, exploring feels boring after some time and the pve is ok but not good enough to be a motivation in it self, but to be fair im also not the collector type of guy and there may be a dedicated fanbase who enjoys this.
On the other hand not every game has to life for ever and if the average player has 50-100 hour of fun and than never again touches the game than that is also totally fine.
Yep, I had my fun on it, but without true PVE it's just another exploration/building game.
You mean PVP? It's got Playter vs Environment in spades.
No PvE. This being a coop game, it's missing real challenge for pve.
Which is? Admittedly I've only played the game for a couple of hours, but I remember there being PvE, so you're going to have to be more specific into what is it that you think is missing.
Did you forget that single-player and perma-death are things?
That said, the real problem with what you're looking for vs this game is down to the premise: Interstellar travel without tech that feels like cheeting isn't a pew pew space-ship game. Generation-or-cryosleep-ship-simulator-gone-wrong isn't out ... yet.
Huh? No, I'm literally talking about coop PvE. It would be nice to have a challenge when I am in space or when I'm trying to build a base.
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Isn't the game's universe randomly generated and had nearly infinite worlds since launch? 🤨
Close, proceduraly generated so psuedo-randomly to ensure that no planets are exactly alike. If you spend enough time in game it does begin to feel a bit like more of the same. Within 24 hours of this update I had already found a few things I had never seen anything similar to in the game.
Were they interesting? Or at least enough of a change to make them significant? Or are we talking random rock model here?
It adds more complexity and distinction between planets, at least.
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Well that's good, I was just getting close to running out of the old planets.
Can anyone recommend a decent space sim? I’ve talked myself in and out of buying No Man’s Sky a dozen times, and all this shade will probably remove it from my wishlist.
I fucking love No Man's Sky. I play video games to relax. Most of the time I ignore objectives and find my own way around. I used to follow people and creatures around Skyrim. I had been playing a ton of Red Dead Redemption 2 just to go ride hourses and look at stuff. My friend Trudi had me play 20 minutes or so on her computer and I bought my copy that day. I have been playing it off and on for a few years now.
Just play NMS. Get it on sale if the price is a concern. It's neat.
I'm enjoying x4. I also liked Elite Dangerous but that one was more limited in what you could do. They have added more in the years since I've played it though
There’s a lot of different types of space sims. What kind of gameplay are you looking for?
Depends on what you want out of the game. Freelancer is old, but it's still one of the best experiences you can get. If you really want to feel like a nobody pilot going from rags to riches, X4 or Elite: Dangerous can scratch itch, but both have considerable learning curves, with X4 allowing you to own space stations and pilot anything from fighters to frigates.
I put so much time into Freelancer. The multiplayer was really fun if you had a friend to fly with.
Rebel Galaxy feels a lot like it, but it's focused on capital(ish) ship combat (broadsides, etc) instead of fighters.
I need to get back on Rebel Galaxy, I think I got some 2 or 3 missions past reuniting with your aunt. The sound track is fucking amazing, though the gameplay being essentially naval battles in space really let me down at first, as I personally prefer 6 degrees of freedom, but the game does all things well.
Yeah, the soundtrack is perfect for the vibe the game is going for.
Where can you get Freelancer these days...?
Only in yo ho ho seas 🏴☠️
It's annoying that it isn't at least on GOG, it's such a prime candidate.
True. It's been number one requested game, but its copyright hell is among EA and Microsoft :(
Not really a sim, but def a fan of space games. Void Crew has been great.
Depending on what you want, Freespace 2 and all its mods/updates are still excellent. Wing Commander Saga is a standalone game based on it of remarkable quality.
Kind of wild they keep going.
if all it takes to keep a developer improving their game is to hype it to the moon and then turn it into a meme when it releases then maybe we should do that more often /s
forreal forreal though these game devs are the shit and I'm grateful for all the work they keep putting into this
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