How No Man's Sky Creates A Universe! | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
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- Опубликовано: 13 июл 2015
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No Man's Sky Never Ends!
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With a similar open-ended design as Minecraft, No Man's Sky is the biggest game in history…literally. With 18,446,744,073,709,551,616+ worlds you would never be able to explore the entirety of it's universe even if you tried. But this does beg one question: If we can't see the whole game, how was it all made? Join Jamin on this week's episode of Game/Show as he uncovers the science, mathematical algorithms, and AI support behind building such a massive world. Check it out!
Check out Earth Primer!
www.earthprimer.com/
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ASSET LINKS:
2:28
Beautiful parametric L-systems
• Beautiful parametric L...
2:44
Lima Bean Time Lapse
• Lima Bean Time Lapse
3:13
How Minecraft Generates Such HUGE Worlds
• How Minecraft Generate...
3:19
GDC 15 How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love PROCEDURAL ART
www.gdcvault.com/play/1021805/...
5:29
Math for Game Developers - Procedural Generation (White and Blue Noise)
• Math for Game Develope...
5:35
Funny Dog and Baby in Dinosaur Costumes
• Funny Dog and Baby in ...
5:36
No Man's Sky -- The Story of Hello Games
• No Man's Sky -- The St...
6:34
Experimental Gameplay Workshop 2015: Earth Primer
• Experimental Gameplay ...
Additional No Man's Sky Gameplay Videos:
No Man's Sky: 18 Minute Gameplay Demo
• No Man's Sky: 18 Minut...
How Does No Man's Sky Actually Work? - Reality Check
• How Does No Man's Sky ...
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MUSIC:
"Oh Damn!" by CJVSO
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"Digital Sonar" by Brink
"Mindphuck" by Known To Be Lethal
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"Alice y Bob" by Javier Rubio and Parsec
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"Sleet" by Kubbi
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"Patriotic Songs of America" by New York Military Band and the American Quartet
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"Run" by Outsider
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"Fame" by Statue of Diveo
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"Freedom Weekends" by Statue of Diveo
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Hosted by Jamin Warren (@jaminwar)
See more on games and culture on his site: www.killscreendaily.com
Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com)
This game scares me. I feel like it is too good to be true. I hope it isn't over-hyped.
Skip6235 you should read or listen to Ready Player One. The VR game in that book is pretty crazy
Skip6235 If it sounds too good to be true usually it is too good to be true.
***** Alas also completely fictional as @Skip6235 fears the dreams of No Man's Sky may prove to be.
Skip6235 I don't think this game would be good.... not for me, at least. "Explore": after you visit 5 planets... all planets will feel the same (imo).
It's a shame this video doesn't cover the application of the superformula within the engine that makes every planet and the life on it unique to that location. So no matter how many planets you explore, 50, 100, 1 million, there will always be a completely new planet with new life.
So far i like the idea of what No Man's Sky is trying to do. What i fail to see is the appeal of the little to no gameplay aside from exploration.
Rum Dreg But isn't that gameplay? What if that was it? For what it's worth, exploration was humankind's chief ambition looooong before videogames.
But exploration will not appeal to everyone and might get stale after a while. And remember that exploration most of the time was for economic reasons. So unless it adds more to the package, it will not stand by its mere technical feats.
Also, i didn't said that exploration is not gameplay, thats why i used "aside".
Rum Dreg I think they should add a building system so that you could colonize other planets and stuff. This is the first time I've heard about this game so in depth. I would think that RUclipsrs would jump on this game to be played. Unless it's not out yet?
PBS Game/Show I think you have to be careful of ignoring the motivation for exploration. There are those who enjoy exploring just to discover something different. However, as Rum Dreg pointed out, most people (and players) are driven to explore by the possibility of uncovering a different type of reward.
The reward can and should vary to motivate different people; you can motivate those who crave more story, those who seek power, distinction, or completion. (Historically exploration was driven by the reward of obtaining resources, and the fame(distinction) of discovery.)
If No Man's Sky hopes to appeal to a large audience it needs game-play mechanics which motivate and reward exploration for more than explorations sake.
Just imagine an integrated economic system to online gameplay
i wonder if no man's sky will end up being used in science/geology classes like minecraft is used in some schools
CrossHarry Would be cool!
PBS Game/Show very few got your last episode and ended up discussing things that were besides the point (like kali)
There is one potential pitfall that the devs have yet to clear up: They're obviously using procedural generation for all the planets and whatnot... unless they make a really dandy algorithm for that, then a lot of those planets are going to feel generic and boring. Ok, so their algorithm has maybe 20 different basic plant, mineral and animal shapes, and its good at randomizing shapes, sizes and colors... there's still room for repeating patterns. Especially from a studio this small, since there will be limits to how many variable shapes and sizes they can put into the game.
I have yet to see any example of gameplay footage and whatnot to show that that's not going to be the case.
This game basically looks like what Spore looked like before it was released. Its the "Sim-Everything" - but then when Spore came we got... less... and I fear the same here.
I want this game to be great, but they have not shown that it wont be disappointing yet...
webkilla Have you seen IGN's recent demo? It's still not the final game, but it's not scripted and it looks damn good!
As for the repeating patterns, it all depends on how many things depend on a template. Let's say you have 20 basic animal skeletons (bipedal, tripedal, quadrupedal, flying, swimming, etc.), then you randomize the size, type and length of each body part. Even if you keep some symmetry and assign biome spawn (so you don't end up with a potato with one wing and one fish tail living underground). You still have most of Earth's species covered.
Now add a few variables. Let's say "extra features" that add stuff like horns, ears, antennae, "scaliness" that determines if a coat is rather like fur, like feathers or like scales and "coat lenght" that makes your crawlies go from bald to woolly mammoth. Good, now behaviours. A few variables including food gathering, reproductive behaviours, aggressivity, sleeping behaviours. Randomize all that again. You already have species that don't exist on earth btw at that point. Finally, let's add some colour. Let's say that they generally take colors from their environment plus a bit of randomization.
After all that, you end up with gagillions of possibilities from a mosquito size carnivorous fish to six-legged antelope with thick coat of palm sized scales. And all you did was come up with about a dozen variables and randomize all of that. Of course the tough part is to set randomization limits to avoid stuff that doesn't make sense and to figure out how these animals will exist in their environment. But with enough math you get... well you get the universe!
Spore was pretty good at letting you do whatever with your own creatures, but it had gameplay limits because you had to interact with the creatures in game. For instance, the other civilization creatures had to be about as big as yours or the little villages they made would've been nonsensical. The other creatures had to be terrestrial because the action happened on land. They needed to have, as much as possible, a face and limbs so that the various humanoid animations would made sense. No Man's Sky can get away with much more variety because the gameplay is less restricting.
webkilla They wrote about the algorithm in the NYT article. It convinced me that repetition will not be too much of a problem. Also, even just one artist should be able to come up with waaay more than 20 basic plant, mineral, and animal shapes. The game has been in the making since 2012.
Lars Løhre They said the same thing about spore - and it had a much bigger team working on it
webkilla They may have had the same things said about them, and had a bigger team, but looking at the No Man's Sky demo you can see that it is already many orders of magnitude more diverse [and pretty] than Spore, so it isn't a good comparison.
I imagine that the restrictive narrative and clear goals of Spore also restricted what they could do in terms of diversity. NMS is *about* diversity, whereas in Spore diversity seems tangential to what you're doing. Not that I have played Spore, nor have I played No Man's Sky, so even I must take my opinion with a grain of salt.
webkilla How was spore btw? I remember hearing about the game before its release but never followed up on it....
No Man's Sky + Google's deep dreaming + Occulus Rift = zomg!
No mans sky
Plus nerve gear from Sao
Consider me busy forever
Bruno Castro How do I copy myself into a game?
Bruno Castro As a game developer.
Nerve gear period.
Consider me busy forever.
Reality works like this too. Physics binds us all. Our universe is procedurally generated. The rules are unimaginably complex combinations of very simple rules, and the exact shape of these rules will likely never be completely uncovered, however they almost certainly exist. We exist solely because of these rules and we are compelled to follow them.
I wasn't really interested in no mans sky because random world generation is nothing new but this video and the general scope of the game has definitely peaked my interest
parker friend dope!
parker friend Maybe that's why you weren't interested, you have it wrong. The world is not randomly generated its procedural generation which is _very_ different.
InMaTeofDeath I know I just use the terms randomly generated and procedurally generated interchangeably because it's easier that way
parker friend *Piqued* your interest.
parker friend That's like saying that dogs and cats are the same. There are similarities yes but what makes them different still remain.
This is an interesting concept that could open the door to generating large scale worlds easily. What's more surprising (and really impressive) is how this team is really stress testing this concept to it's ultimate limits. Before this game, I could wrap my head around an engine that could produce a map area, a game world, maybe a planet, but to generate an entire cosmos of all those things perceptibly to scale is mind-blowing.
The next question is could they integrate this level of generation with city plans and building layouts?
The OASIS is coming!
shadowscribe Sunset actually does this for its city-building.
If they pull off No Man's Sky with the size and scope they have led us to believe and with each type of animal having distinct behavioral patterns, it really should make us question our own reality. If we can make an infinitely complex and infinitely diverse universe simulated in a PS 4, then what is stopping this universe from being a simulation that exists inside some sort of fourth dimensional console? Something like Star Ocean for the PS2.
Those moments when you feel like someone is looking over your shoulder?
That's a player using remote view.
One thing that wasn't mentioned is that the procedural generation has a fixed end point. The algorithms in No Man's Sky can create worlds that are indefinitely unique, but because the game is multiplayer, once a world is created, it exists in the same form for anyone who travels there. It would be a mess if two people traveled to the same planet and got two wildly different results.
It's the same with Minecraft. You get a procedurally generated world, but that world is the same for different users. The possibilities are immense, but the actual outcome forms a cohesive game that everyone can experience together.
Michael Heller The universe is seeded, and the released game will have a single seed so everyone experiences the same universe. I'm not sure if PS4 and PC will share the same seed but I'm assuming they will. The only real random part is the starting position of the players, we will each start on our own planet near the edge of a galaxy.
Michael Heller that is impossible since its not random. Its based on math so every time you go to a certain planet, the math for that planet is always the same thus it will always generate the same based on the equation they are using.
I absolutely think this game and the technology to create it have huge potential in games and other applications, this is really genius
I so love that the developers have to use their art drones to see what's going on on random planets because the game is so huge that they the creators don't even know what's in it. ^_^
The thing I worry about is how diverse will the creatures spanning these worlds be? I feel like after playing for a while, we'll be seeing dinosaur dogs on every other planet, with only very slight changes.
***** Thats my worry. Many games in the past claimed you would rarely see things that are almost if not the same. Such as Spore. And yet after you hit the space stage you notice everything starts to look the same really. From ships to animals to planets. The only time to I got there to be no repeat animals was when I downloaded like 1,000 new ones. But then it ruins the fun of being random and seeing something new.
Another example is Borderlands. "A bazillion guns!". When it was really just a few with parts that after awhile made them all look the same. I have high hopes for this game but I won't buy it right away because I want to see how long it is before players say "It feels all the same at this point!".
***** I'm with you, but also think that game players, including myself, create unrealistic expectations for something and then don't appreciate what it is when it's released, you know?
PBS Game/Show Yeah, setting high expectations for a game is a lose/lose situation. Either it meets those expectations or it doesn't, and both situations don't really give you much excitement when you finally play the game. Although exploration gameplay is fun, I'm more interested in how No Man's Sky space combat plays.
Thats true. As games progress and we see more "leaps and bounds" taking place we tend to have higher and higher expectations that can be unrealistic.
I am happy that the human experience is expanding and a person living a "normal" life can experience the excitement of pioneering an unexplored world. I have always given some merit to gaming experiences and I think that merit is enhanced when it is not directly scripted.
That said, I should probably go outside and walk around the forest too.
For me it seams like a huge artwork, and I think this is amazing. You don't have to create any creatures, you just do your maths and things can be create that you never had imagined. This game is very inspiring and I hope more games will be like this.
This afternoon, I was wondering what would game look like in 20 years and I thought that truly open world would probably have arrived by then. And now I hear that it is already here !!!
I'm sure this would look awesome with Occulus Rift
MayuriKurotsuchi Toooootally.
MayuriKurotsuchi Oh God yes so much YES YEEEEES
I think this is very much like how the Atari game "Pitfall" encoded 2x128 screen in a single byte of memory.
Man, the more I think about this game and how it was made, it boggles the mind. And seeing how they had to actually invent things like probes that goes to look at other planets because they can't really go look at them themselves is just really... really brilliant. Like, that is totally thinking outside of the box to come up with a solution like that.
And dinosaur doggies.
Procedural generation is awesome, nearly all my favorite games use it.
Other than just how cool it is, it also makes the game install a lot small. Ever notice the linear blockbusters are like 60 gigs, yet something like Minecraft which is infinitely bigger is hardly a gig?
No Man's Sky is an important stepping stone into the future of gaming as we know it, even though its basic idea is close to that of Minecraft, and other games that use procedural generation like Shovel Knight (I think? Pretty sure I read all levels are generated uniquely.), Hello Games has taken it to the next level, and eventually this could lead to huge, real world sized game maps. Take say GTA V, now add procedural generation with cities, county sides, deserts, mountains, towns, military bases, lakes, rivers, oceans, countries, continents...Next thing you know, GTA 6 is "GTA World" with its own unique take on Earth, with infinitely unique pedestrians instead of "general cookie cutter" ones we get now. Thats just one way it can be tweeked, just to make 1 expansive and detailed world. There are many other things this can build upon that I, someone who isn't a game designer, can't even mentally grasp. Would love to hear your thoughts on this possible future...
Jacobi Sparks Nah Shovel Knights levels are handmade by humans like they did back then in the 90ies.
I think all these comments about No Man's Sky becoming it's own AI are hilarious...
Because really, guys, this tech has existed for a while now. If you watched the video, you'd understand that the world isn't all happening at once. The ps4 doesn't process 18 quintillion star systems at the same time, obviously. It does 1. Hell, less than 1. It does the space around your player, and that's it. It's just a pretty game with a lot of math behind it.
And no, this is not a hate post. Because I'm planning on playing the hell out of this game when it's released. I'm just pointing out that No Man's Sky won't just become an AI somehow.
"Should these techniques be sued to create more games?" Yea! I mean, why not? More tools are good, generally.
If I'm not mistaken, this isn't the first time a game has used procedural generation to create a universe. Eleat, one of the grand daddies of space flight sims did it back in the 80's. Though it was just space, no planet walking, and didn't have anywhere near the graphic fidelity.
Also, big thanks for putting a link to the GCD talk in the description! So many times, even when people say the link is in the description, it just isn't.
So, asking Mike Rugnetta's question from a PBS Idea Channel episode, "is the universe a computer?" It also makes me think of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Ship In A Bottle", where Moriarty is trapped in a constructed universe that sits inside a computer box, and it makes the Enterprise crew wonder if they themselves are part of a constructed universe that sits inside a computer box. Also, given how miraculously few the programming team was behind this game, it makes you wonder if God Himself is just a very advanced computer programmer with the best hands-on tools for creating a universe.
"(...) each biome is home to a huge variety of plant and animal species"
You make it sound like all planets will have lush life. That is far from the truth. I quote the lead developer Sean Murray:
“Ninety percent of the planets that you visit should be barren, because that’s how it would be in our universe and anything else would feel fake. And then 10-percent of them should have some life, but that life 90-percent of the time should just be some grass and some shrubbery or whatever, you know, some insignificant life. But 10-percent of the time - 10-percent of the 10-percent - it should be real life. But maybe just birds, fish, and things like that, smaller creatures, 90-percent of the time. And 10-percent of the time it should be something a bit more interesting, like four-legged creatures. But that four-legged creature 90-percent of the time should be super boring.”
And so on. “People always talk about us being the game with space dinosaurs in it or whatever, right?” Murray continued. “Even those, they will be one in a million-like genuinely one in a million, like 10-percent of 10-percent of 10-percent of 10-percent of 10-percent, right? But even then, even though they’re one in a million, 90-percent of the time they should be a boring version of that. And we save the crazy interesting creatures for not one in a million, but one in a hundred million.”
Source: www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/no-mans-sky-gives-players-small-chance-discover-something-incredible/
True, but considering that there are several quintillion planets, one in a million is still several million planets with space dinosaurs!!!
bennemann I don't see why a game needs to replicate the actual universe. The developers should go for maximum excitement, not realism, and it looks like that is what they are doing. So, yay - life! Even if there is complex life on every planet, the game won't "feel" more fake than any other game that disregards aspects of reality [which is every game I can think of].
That said, I do hope there are barren planets as well, not because I want the game to be similar to the actual universe, but because that is even more diversity.
Crick1952 What does it matter how many planets in total have dinousaurs? The only thing that matters is how many more planets than that DON'T have them, because that will affect your chances of ever finding one of those planets. If one 1 in 100 million planets have the cream of the crop cool stuff, that's 184 billion planets with cream of the crop cool stuff. But you will still have only 1 in 100 million chance of finding one of them, which means you could visit a planet per second for 5 years and still not visit a cream of the crop one!
Lars Løhre The developer clearly stated that 90% of the planets will be barren...
bennemann Not actually true, statistically he confirmed only 1% of the planets have lush environment with complex life. Reddit did the math and it comes out to out of 20 planets discovered 1 planet will be lush with complex life. I find it to be more realistic. But on top of this say you came across a barren planet with nothing but rocks on the surface and no life? Thing is, you still have massive cave systems that could hold life, oceans that could hold life and all sorts of stuff that won't be on the surface.
It actually comes out to be fairly good in my opinion. It makes it special, instead of being spoon fed amazing things all the time, it takes an hour or two before you find something really cool and unique and you'll appreciate it that much more.
You know a game like this makes the theory of our universe being a simulation sound plausible. I bet as time goes on, we will only see this genre evolve to become more complex in scope and mathematics. Eventually we will have games simulating the world on atomic levels! that would definitely be interesting, while posing a big existential question to all of us.
Great piece
actually mind blowing. Can't wait to play!
What if No Man's Sky is the beginning to the creation of a functioning universe within a computer where eventually the programming gives way to an intelligent life that starts to wonder weather they in a computer generated reality?
Thanks for the video. I found it very interesting.. Looking forward to play the game. Looks cool. :)
Found this video on a random jaunt through Google and absolutely love it. I've been following this game for a long while and this is the best summation of the games universal generation that I've seen. *thumbs up and sub down* Rock on guys.
Definitely one of the most *interesting* video games to come out in recent years.
Looking forward to playing _No Man's Sky_ :)
(Glad there's a PC version!)
I personally think the method being used to produce this game will eventually become the common place. Not only because it take less work but because it's much more easily accessed. I believe Sean Murray, the lead of the team, actually said that this game will actually be relatively small in terms of storage usage. So it can be easily downloaded and handled with less nuisance.
I understand enough about our own universe to gather that they used math, sophisticated math to enable a diverse procedural generation. Nice to see this reflected in a more informed source.
Like the video describes, they probably have random variables applied to a blueprint, resulting in diversity. These are interact with other products, like atmosphere, and that leads to natural selection!
As complicated as No Man's Sky seems, it's cool to see how it also simplifies the truths of our universe.
I would not be surprised to see a rise of individual engine companies that just make these various procedural generated environments and assets similar to like how havoc is provided to game companies for a fee.
Love this topic!!
Ahh, math, beautiful math. I'd like to see Game/Show make more of this kind of video.
My short, up-front question is: how are *limits* placed upon procedural generation within a game and how do designers keep the number of required limits from multiplying indefinitely?
Fleshing out the question now: As I'm sure countless people have noted, there are strong similarities between how procedural generation works (creating practically countless varieties out of basic anatomic building blocks) and how natural selection operates in the real world. This is what one sees in basic structural homology: a standard set of pieces can be stretched, twisted, and transformed into many different types of body-types. The bones of the human arm, wrist, and hand, for example, are found (in different forms and sizes) in the whale flipper, the horse leg, the mole claw, the bat or bird wing, etc.
However, in real life -- in real evolution by natural selection -- are are environmental pressures *pushing back*. Multiple body plans and variations are generated (through small steps), but very few survive and propagate. The body variation may be possible -- but most on;y survive and reproduce because they WORK. The world, the environment, the psychical laws of the universe -- all these push back on the variety and drive it unconsciously in certain directions. But it can't just grow off in any old way.
How does this work in procedural generation? What are the limits that are places on creatures, plants, and environments -- and how many of these have to be created? What keep the four legs of the "dog" body -- at least in some worlds and iterations -- from growing 20 feet tall and 2 inches thick? What keeps bird from having disproportionately huge tails, or small bodies? What keeps trees from occasionally growing always weighted in one direction, eventually spiraling in on themselves? What keeps the game from making plants that always collapse or tip over?
It seems that there must be "rules" put in place that are pushing back against the generation -- saying, in essence, "this far but no farther, unless..." or "if this gets big, that this must get big too...." (You talk about such rules in the Minecraft video: "The sky is always above the land.") But it seems that the designers would have to take steps to keep such rules under control and manageable -- otherwise, they'd have to come up with new rules all the time as the procedure keep (over infinite space) find new and weird ways of making things.
So what "rules" and pressures push back? And how many are there? Have they figured out a way that the generated environment as a whole can push back on the individual pieces, without oversight?
I think the concept of using procederal generation to create nearly EVERYTHING in the game is very unique and interesting. So, potentually, this is going to be a never-ending game where you can find new stuff EVERY time you play it. Thats just insane, it has never been done before in this huge scale and great detail.
There is also the "goal" of getting to the center of the universe, so that will keep you playing aswell... so far it sounds really great. I can't wait to play it. =)
This is amazing and makes me feel like life is a simulation.
its pretty amazing that they make so many things and all of it is believable. the same goes for minecraft. i've started like 20 some odd worlds on minecraft and i've come across a few out of place things, like floating islands and lava on the surface for seemingly no reason, but those arent extremely common.
everything else i've seen is completely believable. and that positively astounds me.
i cant wait to get my hands on no mans sky. i'm going to have a blast just flying around exploring.
Actually the best we can guess so far is that the NMS 'planets' have a diameter of about 10km, giving a surface area of 314square-km, tiny compared to Elder scrolls 2's 161,600square-km world. They keep saying 'planet sized planets' but nothing they have shown comes anywhere that.
No man sky seems so cool! I am so excited to see it!
5:32 -- what program is that?
No Man's Sky is basically doing what TES II: Daggerfall did, but 20 years later. Daggerfall also had an algorithm which created most of the world, because it's much less work that way.
It is the beginning of the end of gaming. With time I see this technique being used to build complete games, tailored to what you want based on questionnaire before hand.
So excited to play this game!!
OMG I didn't realise no man's sky was so technologically amazing.
Just imagine this game crossbreed with Just Cause: where you get to hijack a spaceship in mid-combat and you can base jump from that ship into another planet in real-time like you're goddammned Felix Baumgartner
The thing that keeps popping in my head every time I hear about how vast No mans Sky is...oddly enough the Ian Malcom proposal. "You were so obsessed with the fact you could, you never stopped to ask if you should." Obviously this won't result in ancient (if Scientifically inaccurate) dinosaurs reclaiming the land, but It may result in most players, and possibly the developers themselves, becoming too overwhelmed with all the space they have to explore and work in.
Another important factor comes in how easy it is to make and create in this world...err universe. What made Minecraft so fun was the simplicity and the idea that you could create great works of art within the confines of the world with minimal trouble. All it took was a little time and the effort to place the blocks down.
Im not saying Im not impressed with the fatc No Mans sky is literally creating a universe, but I can't say that it gets me hyped up when thats all they are boasting about. Without an idea of what the gameplay is going to be, what the goals are, if any, or how the dynamics of PVP or PVE interactions are going to work within the universe itself I am only left with is asking why it has to be this vast and expansive.
gives a different meaning to the phrase "formulaic AAA game"
This and Limit Theory really excite me. Procedural generation is a harsh mistress... but oh the possibilities.
There is NO other way to create an MMO one-realm experience based around real exploration
Jamin I think you missed one of the, if not the most important aspect of No Man's Sky: It is an entire universe created and ruled by math, just as our own universe is entirely ruled by math. Of course the math of our "real" universe (If you know the theories that our universe may be a simulation or a hologram you'll know why the quotation marks) is vastly intricated and complex compared to the math of NMS, but nevertheless, it'll be an interesting and complex universe, and the responsible for that beautiful complexity is math.
This is the type of game I want to make in my future game career
Push forward 30 years someone creates a game like this which allows you to fully immerse yourself with muti-sensual hardware (vision, taste, smell, hearing, touch etc) and they have made a formula which allows for AI humans within the game to respond to the player and the environment in a life-like manner - including speech. Just imagine that...
awesome cannot wait to play NMS
This video blew my mind!
Way more games should be made this way.
I gonna play until I die and ask my son or grandson to continue playing and pass it down to generation by generation . I believe someday , someone will finished this game called no man's sky .
Here is the thing... just because a game is infinite, that doesn't mean there's an infinite amount of things to see, right? Like mine craft is technically an infinite world, but it doesn't take billions of years to see everything the game has to offer. I hope someone could shed some light on the likeliness that the game will be massive in content as well as scale.
Very cool
I feel like this formulaic development is something really exciting and whilst 'No Man's Sky' is interesting I think the real potential of this technology is in augmenting the types of game design already widely used. Imagine an open world game set in a rainforest, instead of artists having to place all the plant elements individually, the plants would be random, everybody's experience of the game would be somewhat unique and the randomness of the plant life would make the world created seem more real. Even first person zombie shooters could make good use of this. The zombies could all be distinct, generated in the same way NMS generates dinosaurs. This system could offer an alternative to monotonous design, whilst maintaining the gameplay styles and narrative driven games that are already popular.
Cool ! off course yes ! random generations are amazing !
This is just so sick........ Imagine if this sort of system is made for action-rpg games such as Skyrim or Dragon Age, they can make TONS of different worlds, alternate universes, etc.
Although math formulas for NPCs, enemies and stories might be difficult it would amazing to play a Mass Effect like game in hundreds of different worlds, 18 quintillion is overkill but even 10 different worlds would be paradise for me......
I'm really excited to play this game.That;s some insane tech going in to have so many diverse worlds. I hope that programming didn't sacrifice gameplay. Who needs a billion worlds if there's nothing to do.
Doc Rhino Oh totally.
Honestly this process could be used to generate NPCs, that's a thing that I always had issues with very huge games, you end up seeing 5 or 6 generic NPCs throughout a sandbox that allegedly has 5 million different people, plus I imagine this would save development costs a lot on this sort of issue.
The only problem I can see with this sort of world generation is that after a while playing, we will start to pick up on the patterns used to create these worlds. For instance if I flew to a planet with blue grass and lots of hills and a bunch of lizards and then the next planet also has blue grass and lots of hills then I could probably expect similar lizards. It's the same with minecraft, once you play it for so long you realise where there are going to be massive cliff formations and where there will be deep water so we become desensitised to the 'wow' factor
I'm, uh..not 100% convinced that _procedurally generated_ video games will ever be as "beautiful" as normal, manually made games. There's just *something missing* when playing in a game world that was randomly cobbled together.
_No Man's Sky_ might just convince me otherwise, though.
Paradox Acres Kinda funny, some people would say the exact opposite. "Video games will never be as beautiful as nature because they are man-made and true beauty requires an element of chaos".
When you think about it, Nature is procedurally generated, yet it can be incredibly beautiful. Hard to tell if our petty human-made procedural generation can compare to Nature's. :P
Paradox Acres Pixar procedurally generated much of the scenery in Brave and that movie is gorgeous. I believe they go over it in one of the dvd/blu ray extras. very interesting stuff if you want to check it out.
Selestrielle ....you're kinda moving the goal posts, there, as _everything_ in a procedurally generated video game IS man-made.
(Edit: Those people who feel Nature is Most Beautiful probably wouldn't like animated movies or paintings, either, so it's not like they can contribute much to the discussion.)
Paradox Acres Alright, let me rephrase then.
What I mean is that some people will say that something man-made cannot be as beautiful as nature because humans are too ordered and like to control everything.
With procedural generation, you can set rules, but the end result will be processed by the computers, not by a human brain. So maybe it's, in a way, closer to the chaos of nature?
Imho, the argument totally falls apart when you realize that a) nature is governed by a set of rules way more complex and interconnected than a computer can every hope to be, and b) humans are part of nature so whatever we create is nature's by extension.
My comment was more of a thought exploration than an argument to be honest.
Selestrielle Ah, I see.
OK, that totally makes sense. Thanks for sharing :)
"From one, comes many."
I really do think this technology and method should be used in games. I can even see a very practical use of a randomly generated map/world. Games where one team is facing another, or several, there could be a game mode that has a randomly generated map. This would create an entirely different type of gameplay as there would be no two maps alike, so when a team is facing another team there is no prior knowledge of the map, thus no advantage.
I think that procedural generation is the future in games... Just imagine if you were dropped in a unique battlefield each time in war games like halo, call of duty, battlefield, etc.
To reply to your reply to a comment, just because there are fewer who worship the Aesir or the Olympians (actually, i don't know if there is anybody left who worship the Greek Gods) doesn't mean that we should be any more respectful of Kali than of Zeus, or that it's some kind of insult to put them together
Hey are you going to do the thing that pbsidea channel does where they make second video for the coments?
To a lesser extent, Minecraft also works that way, which many of us think was the key of it's success. If Hello Games deliver what they promise, it is sbvious They will hit a HUGE jackpot.
I bet the 18 quintillion estimate is just because they use an algorithm with 2^64 different possibilities - their random number generator accepts 64 bit numbers and every planet is basically contained in just one of those numbers.
I have really been wondering about this.
You should all check out the game _Species ALRE_ (Artificial Life Real Evolution).
It's an evolution simulator that responds to the changes you cause the environment by letting certain creatures die, while others live to procreate, based on what random mutations they were born with. This can create really quite advanced life forms if you leave it long enough.
Philip Johansson if you can leave it long enough. last time I downloaded this it would always error out after an hour or so. It is an interesting idea but very buggy atm and last I checked I think they stopped updating it.
You missed the point in the last area, you didnt mention that she was naked in the mythos, they covered her up more than the original reprentation was covered.
"Should these simulation techniques be used to create more games?"
I am a bit nervous with this game. It's probably going to b good, but I am a bit weirded out by how this is going to be optimized. Even Minecraft had the Farlands, so who knows what making an even more expansive game universe could do. This is also acknowledging the fact that there was only so far you could go in terms of height and depth in Minecraft.
Excellent video
elcamel1216 Thanks!
As you mentioned in your thought episode about the Minecraft sotry mode there is the formal approach to game design called MDA (mechanic dynamic aesthetic). You said in that episode that "Mechanics is a good way of keeping people, but a terrible way of attracting people, and aesthetic are a great way of attracting people, but a terrible way of keeping people" I'm really hyped about No Man's Sky, but i'm afraid that it's just the aesthetics talking to me. I'm worried that No Man's Sky is going to fall flat when it comes to mechanics, and ways to keep the player in the game. That being said I think they have created a breath taking piece of art, and hoepfully a cornerstone for future games with a lot of content for the player to do, and not only see. I could esspecially imagine this kind og game to be good wih RPG's.
I really want to see images of the math creating really wrong looking wild life.
Jason Garden Penis and boob monsters yeap!
Brent Kullrich We must go on a quest to find boob and penis monsters now!
(Also wanna find a system thatq looks like ours. I wonder if they will have gas giants in this game...)
RiokuTheSlayer Shall we slay them all? I also think we will find similar looking planets, I kinda think youtube might crashing with everyone uploading their exploration diaries!
soooo this game is a first person starbound where you can control the ship? COUNT ME IN!
very cool
Not a universe, but a galaxy. Still, biggest game world so far.
To all those that are complaining about the game being more focused on exploration:
"We explore because we are human, and we long to know." Stephen Hawking.
Even of the game is not as you want it to turn out to be, it will definitely be a beautiful one and might start a new perspective on open-world games, which others might pickup and develop on.
M
I'm always exited about games that challenge the traditional mindset, even though they might not deliver what promised, at least the were creative and innovative!
I never knew about the AI photo drones. Now I'm genuinely scared.
These games are simply a continuation of the Rogue-Like games (in that they are procedurally generated) from the early days of Video Gaming. I'd bet they have used some cool functional or functional-like programming language to do it here though. I'd hate to do it in C++!
"Should these kinds of simulation techniques be used to make more games?"
How about we see how No Man's Sky goes, and we'll make our decision from there? I mean, it looks cool, but we'll see how it plays when it releases.
I love the ideas behind this type of game design and the potential for making sandbox games that are essentially limitless in size. However, I'm worried that the "variety" or "diversity" between worlds isn't going to be striking enough to make me want to spend the hours required to make it to the center of the universe (which I believe is going to be the "goal" of the game). Regardless, I'm still very curious and intrigued. I love the concept and ambition.
Wonder what the download size is
[Walks around] .....What...I can walk without bumping into air?!
[Flies in space ship to another planet] what?! no loading screen?!?!
Ahh...has the day finally come where Adventure games will be rid of the two *biggest buzz kills*?
...using the lowest view distance
Damn your consoles, holding back the view distance xD
Oh look,we've got a PC elitist!
I know exactly how to repel it. Watch and learn.
**ahem**...Arkham Knight PC port.
TheIrishninjas Console port *COUGH COUGH, blood on napkin*
+TheIrishjinjas
Argh! It burns so bad.
*turns to dust*
LuftWaffle3 We don't know anything about the PC version yet, except that it will come out simultaneously with the PS4 version. So thats good. But i also hope that the view distance on PC will be higher, or even better, adjustable.
miffmaff There's no reason for it not to be adjustable. Even if they don't put that option in the game, it is going to be in the .ini files somewhere.
Also, consoles DO hold back the gaming industry, no matter how elitist he (and maybe even I) may sound, it's true. Consoles used to have their place, but that time is long gone, today consoles are underpowered PC with less features and less freedom.
Interesting :)
So No Man's Sky's blueprint system is like Schrodinger's Box, but without the binary state. Until you open the box, the cat could exist in a million different states
The End, Again I feel that way about most comments AMIRITE HUH HUH HUH. [please don't go]
Here's a question, If you have a game with an infinite universe and procedural generation that perfectly mimics real life in every way, how would people react to that game? Would it be used in science? Would it even be good?
I feel though that if you play the game long enough that it would eventually crash because of too much data. But I guess that depends on how the game itself is handled. If all of it is done server side then it probably wont be an issue. What measures are put it place to prevent it from becoming the next Skynet?
BifordusMaximus There's probably a seed code for every planet so it'd appear the same. Therefore it'd be the same universe for every copy of the game, so you can revisit planets without having to have it saved in it's entirety to your system, and thatr means you could share coordinates with your friends so they can visit cool planets you find too
BifordusMaximus the game will never have too much data. Lets say you see a star and travel to it. that solar system is not generated until you go to it. Once you do on the fly it generates based on the math equation they are using or seed. Once you leave that solar system is no longer there until you go back to it, then it will generate again exactly how you left it.
I kinda feel the great scale of automation used in No man's Sky could actually become a problem for the artistic director of a game. While it makes many processes vastly easier it can also lead to a loss of control from the artist on his work. And what's an artist work if not the intricate relationship between the author and a painting, a movie, a game?
Such a brilliant concept. Here's hoping the plot is as engaging as the worlds. :/