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disappearing into the aether of No Man's Sky
2020-Dec-20, Sunday 10:55 pmA while back, a 4-year-old game went on sale on Steam, so I bought it just for the sake of curiosity. The original reviews for the game were awful, and I remember deliberately avoiding it back then, even after subscribing to their development newsletter in 2014. Years of development effort have finally been rewarded, though, and the game is now approaching (YouTube review (note the magnetized ferrets)) the promise that it originally offered long ago.
It's called "No Man's Sky", and it's a procedurally-generated game that you explore. Rather than custom building worlds manually, the game randomly mixes details to generate entire galaxies, planets, animals, plants, minerals, spaceships, and tools. There are 255 galaxies, and I've gained access to at least 3 of them so far, after playing for about 200 hours. Each galaxy has 16^8 - 7^8 = 4.2892 billion regions in it, and each region has thousands of star systems. So even though it's a multiplayer game in theory, you can explore a galaxy all alone until you specifically try to meet other people. The universe is simply that vast.
There are a few ways to play together. One of them is to use a special portal in the game that uses a 16-character alphabet of alien glyphs to build an address, so you can portal directly to that system. People share these addresses for places where they find interesting spaceships, tools, animals, and landscapes. Or they share addresses for planets where they've built their custom bases. Some people also meet at a unique space station called the Anomaly, where people can also join up for daily multiplayer quests. Unfortunately, because I'm playing on Linux with a compatibility layer, the multiplayer portion isn't working for me, so I can't join other live players... yet.
I found the main storyline interesting too. It's very much a story that questions if this reality is the true reality, or if we're just another computer program running some vast simulation. It's an appropriate story for a procedurally generated game universe.
Anyway, I've been playing it full time for almost 2 months. I've been so engrossed that I completely ignored my email for weeks. I missed my "call back" opportunity with Starlink to sign up for their new satellite internet service. Their email was good for a week, and I missed it. Oops. No worries. I signed up again, so I'll wait for their next invitation.
Now, back to roaming the planets of No Man's Sky. My game screenshots are available on Steam, if you're curious what it looks like. I'm currently searching for the "perfect" star system (as I interpret it). Let me know if you play, and I'd be happy to share the glyph address with you when I have it.
It's called "No Man's Sky", and it's a procedurally-generated game that you explore. Rather than custom building worlds manually, the game randomly mixes details to generate entire galaxies, planets, animals, plants, minerals, spaceships, and tools. There are 255 galaxies, and I've gained access to at least 3 of them so far, after playing for about 200 hours. Each galaxy has 16^8 - 7^8 = 4.2892 billion regions in it, and each region has thousands of star systems. So even though it's a multiplayer game in theory, you can explore a galaxy all alone until you specifically try to meet other people. The universe is simply that vast.
There are a few ways to play together. One of them is to use a special portal in the game that uses a 16-character alphabet of alien glyphs to build an address, so you can portal directly to that system. People share these addresses for places where they find interesting spaceships, tools, animals, and landscapes. Or they share addresses for planets where they've built their custom bases. Some people also meet at a unique space station called the Anomaly, where people can also join up for daily multiplayer quests. Unfortunately, because I'm playing on Linux with a compatibility layer, the multiplayer portion isn't working for me, so I can't join other live players... yet.
I found the main storyline interesting too. It's very much a story that questions if this reality is the true reality, or if we're just another computer program running some vast simulation. It's an appropriate story for a procedurally generated game universe.
Anyway, I've been playing it full time for almost 2 months. I've been so engrossed that I completely ignored my email for weeks. I missed my "call back" opportunity with Starlink to sign up for their new satellite internet service. Their email was good for a week, and I missed it. Oops. No worries. I signed up again, so I'll wait for their next invitation.
Now, back to roaming the planets of No Man's Sky. My game screenshots are available on Steam, if you're curious what it looks like. I'm currently searching for the "perfect" star system (as I interpret it). Let me know if you play, and I'd be happy to share the glyph address with you when I have it.