The scale of AAA games development is starting to reach obscene levels of craft. While our computers and consoles have become capable of rendering much larger environments, we've also become more demanding of the detail within those worlds. This is why there are hundreds of people working on the Assassins's Creed franchise. Because we demand that each door is painted uniquely and each civilian is wearing something different.
Content is expensive in games development so the team at Hello Games have had to come up with an entirely new way of creating it. And that method lies in a vast set of interconnected algorithms which are responsible for creating the universe of No Man's Sky. Today we present a special episode of Cameron Robinson's science show Reality Check, where he visits Hello Games to uncover the tools and math that built an entire universe.
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I hate videos that don't have an accompanying article. I don't want to watch videos, I want to read text (especially at work) and there is less and less text every day on this site...
It actually isn't that hard to do, it just seems that where few games use it. Procedural generation can make millions and millions of unique planets without having someone manually create them. Vegetation, colors, bodies of water, atmospheric properties, animal inhabitant, world layout, etc. can all can have randomly generated values to create interesting and unique worlds. Spore had something similar to this I believe.
The procedural generation sounds like a very interesting idea. But the fact that changes are not recorded is a big design flaw. Players want an impact on the world they play in. This doesn't seem to be the case. They'll have to revisit that to make this successful.
<< LINK REMOVED >><< LINK REMOVED >> Exactly. As I remember, he said it depended on significance. If you shoot an animal, it won't be recorded. If you find a new planet it will be recorded. Stuff like that. It depends on the scale on if it will be saved.
the only question i have is if it is possible to change the world. He was talking about the tree on the mountain that would be there whenever you or anyone else went there, but what would happen if you cut down that tree? would it just be re-created wen you came back, or would it stay destroyed? Or can you even cut the tree down (I would assume so, but maybe they made things like that indestructible so as to solve this problem?)
This game has much potential. It takes me back to a few months ago when I was playing around with Google Earth. The Google Earth app has a hidden flight simulator built into the code that allows you to literally (virtually) fly around the entire planet. It took me a full 3 and half hours to fly from the Pyramids in Egypt to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It's not the most exciting game/simulator I've ever played, but it was so cool being able to fly anywhere on the planet in real time. Most of the map (and by map I mean Earth) is flat, but most major citites, famous landmarks, and mountain ranges are full 3D. I thought to myself as I was flying around my hometown (Ann Arbor, Michigan - home of the Wolverines!) how cool it would be if the entire planet was fully 3D and I could land my fighter jet, and get out, and explore and interact with the people, places, and things of Earth. Sadly you're restricted to the cockpit of your aircraft. This game however ... they mentioned in one of these videos that there will be all types of planets to explore in the universe -- from tiny King Kai sized planets to actual Earth sized planets and possibly bigger. Even if all I can do in this game is fly my spaceship, fight other ships, shoot lazers at robots, and catalog new planets and the stuff on those planets (and I'm sure there will be tons more to do that they haven't disclosed) -- the idea of exploring an actual Earth sized planet (let alone an entire Universe) excites me tremendously. I can't help but think of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, when he's Space Man Spiff and he's exploring planets and encountering alien lifeforms.
It worries me that a game that is supposed to be so vast and unique only has about 15 gameplay clips that all seem to be pretty much the same. I really hope this game achieves what Hello Games wants it to, but I will say that there currently is some doubt on my end.
Loved this series, hope Gamespot keeps doing features like this in the future. That being said, there was not one minute of new gameplay footage in this entire series, and I'm sure that's more a result of Hello Games not wanting to overexpose their game or let out too much before release, but I'm thirsty. Slake our thirst!
Well, I've played the Destiny Alpha and was decidedly underwhelmed. It lacks mystery and stifles exploration and self-directed discovery and the challenges that come to define you. Activision's Advance Warfare will probably make them more money than Destiny.
@<< LINK REMOVED >> eh, I don't think so. Destiny has a lot of potential. I played the alpha and I'm playing the Beta, I love it so far and I think this game is going to be a masterpiece. I'm not saying this because, yeah I'm a CoD hater (maybe Advance Warfare is going to change my mind about the CoD serie since Modern Warefare), but anyway, I like the way they added the aspect of MMO+FPS with a kinda Borderlands/Halo style in the game. Anyways this is just my opinion but I think the game have a lot of potential and will be a masterpiece. And also, there is a way to explore the level/map you are in, you can rush to your story mission or just run around and explore and find some chests, loot, events, new hardcore monster to kill, etc.
<< LINK REMOVED >> i think they payed them to show it at E3 at sonys conference ...but im not going to get too hyped about this game, i think most people will admirer the game as a work of art and computer programing... but as a game i can see people getting bored of just flying around a galaxy/universe??
Well if we're to go by what's been shown, sure that would probably get pretty boring. But the fact is that we don't really know a whole lot about what you'll actually be doing in the game. They mentioned a few things you might do, they mentioned that there is an "end goal", and that there is some form of antagonist -- but as far as all the different things you'll be doing, that's a mystery, probably even a bit of a mystery for the devs. Hopefully, like their procedurally generated universe, the options and tools they give you will be endless and allow you to play the game as you want.
<< LINK REMOVED >><< LINK REMOVED >><< LINK REMOVED >> they are cool guy that make this game i hope the game goes well for them and if you make a cool game i wish they make a tone of cash
It might keep a record of stuff like that on just your HDD. You'd probably have to destroy a spacestation for the game's central server to persistently change its simulation of the local trading economy for every connected player.
Wow these concepts are exactly Why I question whether their is a god the way most people imagine one. I've always thought god to be a possible Scientist or even a computer programmer and we all just live in that simulated universe. Like if you were able to create a True AI.. And you put that AI into a simulated world like this game. You would in Essence have become god that AI would be like the first Adam/Eve learning about that world around it. This is a HUGE idea with so many possibilities! It could really push the way for forward for VR. This game simply MUST support the Occulus.
Make it too real and it won't be accessible or fun. Want to race a car? Well have you earned the money in VR to pay for it? What about petrol and insurance? Ok, so you steal one that doesn't have an engine immobiliser, there must be a few classic racing cars you could hot-wire? Don't know how to hot-wire? Assume you do, or can figure it out through trial and error before the track days staff capture you and hold you until the police arrive, can you drive stick? If... you manage to steal it and race off in it what about the risk of permadeath, you can't just keep respawning into a shared reality with a bunch of other connected Rifters as your sudden appearances would need to be explained. Having crashed the racing car on your first attempt it would be permanently gone where you to go back to steal it again. There could be no checkpoints to revert your experience to as it would desynchronise you from everyone else's coherent spatiotemporal reality.
As it is I'm expected to kill AI NPCs in games, then feel bad about it because the character I'm role playing is feeling sorry with themselves, but when in VR do I want to be me, or my alter ego, or some defined adoptive role? If I were to get rewarded for staying 'in character' by being given a choice of 'better roles' at the end of this initial 'dramatic arc' would this feel like an intrusive metagame that made me feel like a stuntman, or actor, in a movie, rather than the hero they sought to portray?
I've been working on an adventure game for 22 years. So far I have just been engaged in extensive research and development of the tools that I need to be able to sufficiently boost my productivity (through such things as procedural generation and a forge community capable of creating episodic campaigns as well as techniques for using simulated dramatis personae and empathetic NPC player entanglements to funnel you from an ambivalent open world into some kind of compelling coauthored narrative which periodically asserts its underlying theme as well as being able to contrive a climactic synthetic conclusion), using a multiparadigm programming language that is almost the complete opposite of C++ that is commonly used within the industry to develop AAA games - as well as determining how to fuse multiple genres together without sacrificing much of their articulacy of expression despite having to work through a unified gamepad control scheme (I've analysed the essential fun dynamics of over twenty titles to arrive at a subset of each of their mechanics which intersect with my universal design, without forcing the player to break their immersion by expecting them to pause their experience to remap the control scheme to be more appropriate to their current in-game activities), all in service to a grand vision of an intergalactic MMORTSFPSRPG set in a multiverse of parallel universes. I haven't decided on a name for it yet and I don't have a development blog as I am not seeking to promote it until I have made further progress implementing the tools. I expect it to take me at least five years to be at a stage where I might put up a YouTube video of example gameplay. I don't own a VR headset, but there is no reason, in principle, why one couldn't be supported at some point in the future. I expect it to be such a large project, that (like Minecraft), others continue working on it after I have retired, or died. Inevitable upgrades to its Physics, AI and Graphics will be made easier for any modders when I come to Open Source its toolset, once the language has substantially matured through my own use of it, I intend to make that available also, so it can be thought of as a VR construction kit.
I've no idea whether any of this is what you are after, but I thought as a result of your comment that I would speak up and reassure you that someone is trying to make this happen.
<< LINK REMOVED >><< LINK REMOVED >><< LINK REMOVED >> Reading your comment made me feel good inside. And not just about your (admittedly ambitious) game, either. I was unaware that people commenting on the internet were literate.
<< LINK REMOVED >><< LINK REMOVED >> I'm writing a book about it at the moment, it's essentially set in 15-20 year future and is about a game like No Man's Sky (or its future version) that has been explored and charted and split by humans and where there's also tons of AI ''bots'' to help or even rule over some parts of this universe... Since many people are permanently living in that world in VR and earning money (crypto-currencies) and the game is distributed across all the players and many countries, it's too big to shut it down. It all starts with disappearance of some of the top leaders of one of factions of the game and a simple guy starts investigating what's happening and discovers that all these guys have been killed in real life. He teams up with 40 sth police detective and they both start investigating this in VR, as it seems like what are totally random killings in real world, are kills ordered from VR.... What they discover is actually that some algorithms have produced much more intelligent ''bots'' which are still unaware that they are living in a simulation, but more aggressive and smart and waging an interstellar war now. Also VR has advanced to a point when people are taking some substances to make time spent in VR seem longer than reality and the substances sort of distort the ability to differentiate between VR and real world, so there's also this sub text of dependency on VR and simulation over the real world,
I hope I can write it all down in glorious detail.
<< LINK REMOVED >><< LINK REMOVED >><< LINK REMOVED >> I've always waited for the day aliens would finally reveal themselves to us, then show us how our ancestors were created from simian DNA fragments.
Just o watch the religious people all either have to realize how stupid they've been and finally join reality, or off themselves out of despair. Either result would be a boon to society as a whole.
<< LINK REMOVED >> It's a year off still so that's no surprise. You're right, though, this is way too early to be pre-ordering. There are still huge unknowns.
if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, it makes no noise. theres a bone in your ear that creates the sound from the waves of the fallen tree. no ear, no sound. The sound is made by your own physical form and not the tree falling
@ronan32 actually when the atoms in the tree move towards the center of gravity (the ground) the atoms around them (the air atoms) get pushed away and when the atoms of the tree collide with the atoms of the ground an amount of energy is released in many forms (also the air is pushed away creating some pressure difference) all the atoms in the event zone will gain energy and we can sense this as sound and vibrations :P (ground tumbles and air rushes on ur face...etc)
so yes "hearing" or "seeing" is IRRELEVANT the energy transference and transformation will happen regardless
One thing I'm curious about, that might be answered somewhere, is the impact you have on the universe. If I cut down a tree or mine some minerals, will it be cut down when I come back? Can I return to mine those minerals again?.
If I mine iron on a world will it store that I have mined it on my computer but if someone else goes there will it be there again? And if so, only for them?
I also didn't hear anything about the world evolving. Assume that they do save some things. What if I kill all the predators on that planet (or at least most), will the herbivores increase in number? What if I kill all the prey for predators, will they run out of food?
None of this is gamebreaking, but I'm still curious.
<< LINK REMOVED >> Only major things will be remembered, just like Minecraft. After a distance it will not render it, then when you come back it will remember major things, like changes in the terrain or minerals mined. But things like animals will respawn.
I think your assumptions are probably correct. That is how I would do it.
Temporarily save all changes the player has made to an ecosystem, but allow it to regain its balance over time, for trees to grow back their branches over time, etc. Eventually, you could run out of room on your HDD to store all that you had done so it would have to forget about all but your most significant changes and retain only those that had been recently observed, forcing you to keep backtracking to make it think that the burn marks you had left with your laser on a cliff spelling out your name were worth keeping around.
That is not to say another visitor would see that you had written your name there, but then there it does allow you to name the planet's you discover, although this would probably be limited unless there was a slot ready for player id and chosen name for every planet in the galaxy ready to be filled in on their central server.
I would have thought it would be impossible to kill all the sharks, just lower their incidence expressed as a probability of occurrence within a volume of water, so a mating pair could take advantage of the burgeoning population of prey and reproduce in greater numbers until it hit homeostasis again and the game recognised its convergence with the values it held for both at which point it could throw all that state away and go back to its clockwork model of the ecosystem.
