You’re not wrong, but also the space that they would need on your hard drive to make the game really non-repetitive visually would be out of this world (pardon the pun). Also not so sure how that would work out on the consoles.
Comment on No Man's Sky Orbital Update brings full ship customisation and a complete space station overhaul
ICastFist@programming.dev 7 months agoAll breadth and no depth, still the same. Some 12 different planet types, a number of neat looking anomaly planets that exist only for sightseeing (one of my favorites was a planet where everything is covered in a metallic hexagonal mesh). As I said in another comment in this thread, the game is very repetitive with some activities being needlessly padded out to make you waste as much time as possible (learning alien words, going into derelict freighters to get upgrades)
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 7 months ago
ICastFist@programming.dev 7 months ago
TLDR > A lot of the repetitiveness isn’t a problem of “Lack of disk space”, it’s just a matter of not making good use of procedural generation. Seeing “the same building blocks in a different configuration” is better than seeing “the same thing”.
the space that they would need on your hard drive to make the game really non-repetitive visually would be out of this world
Not necessarily. You can procedurally generate textures, sounds and geometry, but that becomes a huge CPU hog in a game that already blows CPU usage. But most of the repetitiveness can be “fixed” (read: reduced) without adding more than ~20MB of new textures and geometry.
One of the problems is that there’s no variation within a planet. Every grassy planet is the same mechanically. Sure, one might have bubbles in the air, another might have yellow grass instead of red, but they’re mechanically identical. It’s the only planet type to find starbulbs and minerals with parafinum. No grassy planet has an ice cap, or a desert patch, or a volcano. If you ever need to find cactus and pyrite, you have to go to a desert planet. If you need uranium and gamma weed, radioactive planet. Then you have the caves, which are completely identical in every planet.
Some planets may have bio luminescent plants, which are gorgeous to look at, but because there’s no variation within a planet, you see them everywhere. There’s never a point where you think “This is the spot on this planet”. Because everywhere is “the spot”, so it’s just “the planet”, which can also be found on the next star system.
Save for airless planets, if I’m not mistaken, every planet has the same 3 “trap” plants (man eater, whip, spores in a cave). There’s not even a color change depending on the planet. Same damn plant, same damn damage, same oxygen amount on death, whether on ice or on a volcano.
Another thing that compounds on the lack of planetary variation is the same sin that Starfield did, of every point of interest being the same everywhere. Every market is the same, every small settlement is the same, every infested facility is the same. This one is easy to give more variation, just create some building blocks and chain them together, like how rooms are generated in ARPG games like Diablo or Torchlight. You know how each star system has a different market rating? Use that to calculate the maximum size any one POI can reach, or as a weight to the POI that can appear (small settlements become more common in 1 star system, markets more common in 3 star, etc).
They do the above in a limited capacity with derelict freighters, so it’s not like there’s “no way” to do it or “they don’t know how”.
Yet another thing that breaks the immersion and “want” of exploration: the vast majority of the galaxy is “settled”. Star systems without any alien presence are the exception. What the hell are you even exploring if there’s already someone there with a working teleporter in space, plus several POI dotting every planet?
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 7 months ago
You can procedurally generate textures, sounds and geometry
Does any game do that today? I’m not aware of any. ?
As far as I know all the 3D stuff is what takes up the most space on the hard drive, and that stuff is never procedurally created. /shrug
ICastFist@programming.dev 7 months ago
Today? No, I don’t think any game does it.
.kkrieger did that. Not a “real game”, it’s a demo (of a demoscene), a “proof of concept” or a “proof of skill”. Nostalgia Nerd has a very interesting video about it on youtube.
3D models tend to occupy less disk space than textures, as these usually come in at least 2 files: one for the actual colors, one or two more for light mapping (bump map, emission, normals, etc). I don’t know which format NMS uses, but a .obj 3D model with 62k triangles will take around 4.5MB of disk space.
For comparison, this Damaged Helmet in gltf format (which you can see on your browser here) has 15k triangles, a .bin file (the actual 3D geometry) of 545kb and roughly 3MB of textures - The
Default_albedo.jpgis the “actual color” and it alone is larger than the .bin + .gltf, at 914kb.
Simon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Actually, there’s a couple popular mods with an overhauled algorithm. No space required (That wouldn’t make sense anyway). Back when I played through this I wouldn’t touch it without it.
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’m speaking about the 3D models and meshes. Variety of planets and areas on planets is very poor just because of the amount of hard drive space needed for all of the models and meshes.
Simon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
The beauty of all these issues is you can mod them out.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I have yet to find any mods that improve the game in the way I’d like… Or that will even work with the latest version of the game.
Sylvartas@lemmy.world 7 months ago
And now I remember why I stopped playing the last time. All the things I wanted to do (mostly, getting cooler/better ships and capital ships, and getting better weapons) required grinding insane amounts of money. Plus getting the exact ship you wanted was extremely random (and grindy, because good luck finding the ship with the looks you want and a good rating) but it looks like this update addresses this at least…
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Getting money is pretty easy if you set up mines of rare resources. Give it some time and you’ll have all the money you need.
ICastFist@programming.dev 7 months ago
If you mean mining Active Indium, they nerfed the price hard some updates ago. Using Oxygen + Chlorine for infinite multiplication still works. Another easy-ish way to get money is with a huge plantation of cactus. There’s a recipe that turns 200 into a gel that sells for 50k each.
Sylvartas@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Hah, I think I figured out the cactus thing by myself right before I stopped playing. But I didn’t have the motivation to make a big enough farm to really start racking up the big bucks
Sylvartas@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Oh yeah I think I remember reading about that and going “that’s a thing ?” And promptly realizing that none of my bases were on a planet where the profits would be worth the time investment
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 7 months ago
The planets with big money kinda suck to make bases. They are usually the most hazardous ones. I basically only leave a landing pad and a portal besides the mining stuff to collect and take it to my main base from time to time.