No Man’s Sky is a game about photography... it just doesn’t know it

Rewarding players for good shots should be a core gameplay mechanic.

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[ToiletDuck]

The first Dead Rising game had a pretty cool photography mechanic, which would award points for "action" in shots and properly centered zombies.

 

[ChrisSD]

J.King[/url]":ufzkwj9f]
Has there been a good Star Trek game actually about exploration? If so, I would like to know what it's called.

If you don't mind older games then there's Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Star Trek: Judgment Rites. They're true to the show in that the focus is on diplomacy and exploration (albeit exploration that is on rails) with some combat thrown in.

 

[monoelectron]

adammtlx[/url]":2i6w44hw]I also think they probably should have ditched the trading aspect and the alien race aspects. What they should have done is dropped the player into an unexplored, "empty" galaxy and focused on the survival and exploration aspects. Your ship should be upgradeable by your own crafting efforts and occasionally switched out for improved ships you find drifting in space or crashed on a planet.

some great ideas here.

hopefully its not completely out of the question at this stage. they could have all the currently discovered planets stay the same but have any new planets and systems be completely undiscovered. no sentinels or aliens at all.

its definitely a shame about the combat as well yea. there are a million other games out there already for people who like shooting things but its boring af and just lazy throwing it into your game just to attract a few more sales.

 

[jonnan001]

So basically what I'm hearing is that 'One Man's Sky' is a more advanced version of Noctis.

Which is fine, except I've played Noctis and found I didn't have the patience required. That said, if you like Noctis you'll probably enjoy this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis

http://anynowhere.com/

Jonnan

 

[Azhrarn]

vartec[/url]":37vbbgve]

Note that the one used heavily to promote the game has sea. Have you actually found any planet with water? Sea full of underwater plants and fish as they've claimed a year ago? They've been even putting underwater screenshots just a year ago:

I don't have the game myself, but I've seen Youtuber Quill18 explore a world with quite a lively ocean on one of his Twitch streams.

The worlds colours were quite dark (deep blues and purples mostly), but there was plenty of plant life and even a few small schools of fish on the ocean floor.

The world also had a fair number of bugs it seems, as outposts that spawned too close to the ocean floor appeared to disappear through it as you came close to them, but the deep sea monolith he found was quite cool.

 

[fryhole]

The other photo system would involve uploading your favorite shots to an online clearinghouse, where other players and even non-playing lookie-loos would be encouraged to rank their favorites (with more votes translating to more in-game currency for each photo). Photo sharing systems integrated into the PS4 and Steam already allow players to do something like this, but integrating quasi-competitive photo-sharing and voting into the game would lead to an explosion of beautiful in-game images flooding the Internet.

Or it would lead to abuse and gaming of the system where you'd get a shit ton of craptastic photos upvoted over better shots because some player is more well known or loved or hated than others.

(and probably creating more sales and new players in the process). Yes, there's the possibility of trolling and vote-brigading vaulting undeserving photos to the top of the photoboards, but careful moderation (possibly per-player vote limits) could limit this.

LMAO -- Moderation on an opinion based system. You do know that a "good" photo is more based on personal opinion than anything else ? Point is -- if enough people upvote some actual crappy "photo" who's to say some "moderator" is qualified to remove said photo from the collection simply because they feel it's bullshit ? Sorry but I've come across too many "moderators" thru the years that don't know what the fuck they're doing.

 

[JimmiG]

The concept reminds me of Mojoworld Generator:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MojoWorld_Generator

 

[lost]

Integrating photography into gameplay is very good idea.

But it is still possible to make game that is both great looking and with great gameplay. Good example is Witcher 3 , game where I find myself often wishing to make picture so I can show it later to friends, especially in "Blood and Wine" DLC where they use more pastel colors. Guess I'm not only one, based on Witcher 3 Google images.

 

[J.King]

ChrisSD[/url]":gbbwdyrg]

J.King[/url]":gbbwdyrg]
Has there been a good Star Trek game actually about exploration? If so, I would like to know what it's called.

If you don't mind older games then there's Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Star Trek: Judgment Rites. They're true to the show in that the focus is on diplomacy and exploration (albeit exploration that is on rails) with some combat thrown in.

I've played both. Judgment Rites was better than 25th Anniversary, as it didn't have nearly as many buggy puzzles as its predecessor, but I wouldn't really say either of them is about exploration so much as puzzle-solving. Still, I agree they are good, but they are also twenty years old plus. Trek so rarely results in good games, for some reason.

 

[Elrabin]

lost[/url]":3jh87oej]Integrating photography into gameplay is very good idea.

But it is still possible to make game that is both great looking and with great gameplay. Good example is Witcher 3 , game where I find myself often wishing to make picture so I can show it later to friends, especially in "Blood and Wine" DLC where they use more pastel colors. Guess I'm not only one, based on Witcher 3 Google images.

If you have Witcher 3 and an Nvidia GPU, there was an update today that allows you to hit Alt+F2 to enter "Ansel Photography Mode" and change everything from resolution to camera lens to flare, etc.

You can shoot gigapixel images with it.

You just need update 1.24 and the latest Nvidia driver

 

[visikord]

Here's one low-hanging-fruit change I'd add to the photo idea: every time you visit a planet its "DNA" is cloned along with the generic formulas that generate a planet from the DNA. When you enter the alien base on the planet, you access the newly cloned planet's DNA and the formulas. Then, you change them! You modify the params and expand on the formulas which define the planet and the creatures, watching on the in-base monitor how the local world transitions from one state to the next as you type. You can venture out and see the results of your creation up close, then go back and change some more.

When you're done, your change is uploaded to the server and made permanent. Anyone else who visits that planet -- and there should be ways to more easily travel to planets visited by others -- will see your creation, maybe be able to download its blueprint to upload on another planet, maybe be able to change it directly, depending on the trading mechanics.

If anyone remembers the Milkdrop music visualizer, that's how Milkdrop presets worked. You take the default preset or a preset made by someone else, then modify the preset parameters and scripts to get often completely unexpected and gorgeous results. If Hello Games made the planet formulas accessible as scripts (Python?) that might even create interest in non-programmers to pick up coding.

 

[adammtlx]

Following up to my last post where I was pretty harsh to NMS.

The more I play the game and the less I demand from it the more I've found myself enjoying it. It's definitely a "let the game come to you" kind of experience, where if you simply take it on its merits instead of expecting something that isn't there you'll probably get more out of it.

After several same-y planets in a row I came across a beautiful planet with snaking, natural-looking river valleys cutting through the landscape that had me stopping to take screenshots every few minutes. Loved it.

Then it was on to a harsh, bleak, wintry planet where extreme night temperatures and a sudden storm forced me to scramble for shelter in a nearby cave to wait out the bad weather because I'd gotten absorbed gathering a rare resource I stumbled across. That was an interesting time.

Next, after warping to a system right into the middle of an ongoing space battle, I sought to escape it by flying down to a dark, almost-completely dead world unlike anything I'd seen before with strange egg-pods dotting the landscape that held valuable items but triggered sentinel attacks when harvested.

It's a testament to the power of HG's technology that they could attach such a poorly-designed game to it and still have me coming back for more every night and thinking about it throughout the day.

 

[Quiet Desperation]

salamanderjuice[/url]":12o38u6l]

Quiet Desperation[/url]":12o38u6l]PS4 has the share button, but the design of the controller makes it very easy to hit the track pad instead.

Seriously, the design and placement of the share and option buttons on the PS4 controller deserves
some place on a bad design list somewhere.

What's up with big images messing up the whole comment section width?

That stupid share button and trackpad are what make me hate the DS4. That whole area feels tacked on at the last minute. I've hit share way too many times when I don't want to. Does anyone even know of a game that makes GOOD use of the trackpad? Most just seem to use it as a glorified button or two.

I wend and look for third party controllers that did it better but only found one.

I guess that track pad is preventing many third party solutions? Meanwhile there's a zillion XB1 controllers with glowy bits and blinken lights and whatnot.

 

[Quiet Desperation]

adammtlx[/url]":22xt3raa]Following up to my last post where I was pretty harsh to NMS.

The more I play the game and the less I demand from it the more I've found myself enjoying it. It's definitely a "let the game come to you" kind of experience, where if you simply take it on its merits instead of expecting something that isn't there you'll probably get more out of it.

After several same-y planets in a row I came across a beautiful planet with snaking, natural-looking river valleys cutting through the landscape that had me stopping to take screenshots every few minutes. Loved it.

Then it was on to a harsh, bleak, wintry planet where extreme night temperatures and a sudden storm forced me to scramble for shelter in a nearby cave to wait out the bad weather because I'd gotten absorbed gathering a rare resource I stumbled across. That was an interesting time.

Next, after warping to a system right into the middle of an ongoing space battle, I sought to escape it by flying down to a dark, almost-completely dead world unlike anything I'd seen before with strange egg-pods dotting the landscape that held valuable items but triggered sentinel attacks when harvested.

It's a testament to the power of HG's technology that they could attach such a poorly-designed game to it and still have me coming back for more every night and thinking about it throughout the day.

I was suprised when I tried to head down to the planet to escape pirates, and they followed.

It's a good tactic. They're not as good in the atmosphere for whatever reason.

 

[taraba]

Smorkian[/url]":2bos38ud]

vartec[/url]":2bos38ud]

Note that the one used heavily to promote the game has sea. Have you actually found any planet with water? Sea full of underwater plants and fish as they've claimed a year ago? They've been even putting underwater screenshots just a year ago:

Not only have I found planets with lots of oceans, I've been attacked by an alien shark!

I've also found planets with a lot of water. I've heard people say "every animal runs away" and I've found one planet that had docile creatures that don't run away. One had a pack of flying creatures. It's probably wrong to say that this game's planets don't have something just because you haven't seen it on the 20 planets you've gone to so far.

 

[TheDarkOn3]

It's one thing to read read Kyle's comparison of No Man's Sky to Pokemon Snap and it's another to see it lovingly brought to life:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CnODq638sk


(I can't get enough of that Dong Dong)

 

[TMC_Sherpa]

adammtlx[/url]":1jsgoojm]Following up to my last post where I was pretty harsh to NMS.

...

It's a testament to the power of HG's technology that they could attach such a poorly-designed game to it and still have me coming back for more every night and thinking about it throughout the day.

You aren't the first person to point out "Its better once you don't have to play the 'game' part part of the game" and that makes me kinda sad.

Was this the game they wanted to make or the game they felt they had to make?

 

[Splynn]

adammtlx[/url]":1iq0g4c1]It seems to me that Hello Games suffered a crisis of confidence with their original vision of the game somewhere along the way, and instead of continuing with that vision of creating an exploration game for explorer types, they allocated their precious, limited resources to falling back on more familiar gameplay mechanics in an effort to appeal to a broader base of gamers, but instead of providing a rich, satisfying experience it just ended up making everything, including the exploration aspects, more shallow.

I suspect perhaps this had something to do with Sony stepping in and offering to do their marketing in exchange for a pseudo-exclusive PS4 release.

NMS never should have incorporated combat. No combat at all. If you get attacked by a creature you run away or die. If you get attacked in space you run away or you die. That might have pissed some people off but this isn't a combat game and if you can't do it right then don't fucking do it at all. Dedicate your resources to creating a better, more focused game.

I also think they probably should have ditched the trading aspect and the alien race aspects. What they should have done is dropped the player into an unexplored, "empty" galaxy and focused on the survival and exploration aspects. Your ship should be upgradeable by your own crafting efforts and occasionally switched out for improved ships you find drifting in space or crashed on a planet.

Should've focused on incorporating some basic ecosystem, geographical and evolutionary simulation to lend more depth to the exploration. Should've made planets and creatures have more sensible qualities based on their unique elemental makeup, distance from other planets and star, etc, etc, and surfaced these qualities to the player in some meaningful, gameplay-impactful way.

They just tried to do too much and instead of doing a couple things really well they ended up doing several things poorly. As it stands it's only worth $60 if you're a diehard sci-fi-space-explorer type. To the typical gamer it's worth at best half that in its current state.

Awesome tech, poor game attached.

Conceptually, this makes me think "minecraft in space" and maybe Hello Games could have drawn from how Minecraft has evolved. The tech sounds amazing as a starting point. They could have focused on making this first version fun then added ground combat, space combat, discoverable story elements, new things to build, etc all at later times by reinvesting profits.
Or allowing mods to be written so a community could build these things might have helped.
But based on the reviews, this game will just wither instead.

 

[adammtlx]

Splynn[/url]":1xah81kh]Conceptually, this makes me think "minecraft in space" and maybe Hello Games could have drawn from how Minecraft has evolved. The tech sounds amazing as a starting point. They could have focused on making this first version fun then added ground combat, space combat, discoverable story elements, new things to build, etc all at later times by reinvesting profits.
Or allowing mods to be written so a community could build these things might have helped.
But based on the reviews, this game will just wither instead.

If NMS is updated and sufficiently opened to modding then it will provide a truly amazing platform for a wide variety of fun and interesting experiences.

Hello Games' problem is that they simply tried to do too much with too little. They didn't have the cachet to create the kind of game they wanted to so they tried to plop a different game on top without the time or resources to actually do it right.

I think NMS will be looked back on at worst as a qualified success. After all, they sold a ton of copies and for a particular segment of people provided a really fun, if flawed, experience. Reviews aren't great but this game is not a typical game and doesn't fit in the typical review process very well. It's a challenging game for a number of reasons. It doesn't hold your hand, which is cool, but also doesn't have the competence to really do that right, leaving stuff unexplained or to chance that simply shouldn't be and will ruin lots of peoples' fun because they simply won't (and can't really be expected to) read stuff online or invest 30 hours to figure it out for themselves. It also doesn't spoonfeed you its core entertainment value (finding cool/unique/weird/beautiful planets). You have to dig that up yourself. You have to "earn" it in a sense. There are planet types that some people might never see unless they play the game for a hundred hours or more, meanwhile someone else might start on such a planet. How do you properly "rate" such an experience?

In addition, adding to the ire of gamers, there's a gigantic list of stuff that was presented to us and was supposed to be in the game that got cut. I don't think they lied. I think they simply painted themselves into a corner and realized they needed at least another year or two to deliver what they wanted but simply couldn't wait any longer to release.

But to your point, NMS is actually a masterpiece in some senses. The technology that drives it is remarkable. What they need to do now is keep updating it to fill in the gaps and provide the tools to modders to do the rest. If they do that, NMS will not be seen as a failure at all, just a rocky start to something really awesome.

 

[lost]

lost[/url]":1rbptg3z]Integrating photography into gameplay is very good idea.

But it is still possible to make game that is both great looking and with great gameplay. Good example is Witcher 3 , game where I find myself often wishing to make picture so I can show it later to friends, especially in "Blood and Wine" DLC where they use more pastel colors. Guess I'm not only one, based on Witcher 3 Google images.

If you have Witcher 3 and an Nvidia GPU, there was an update today that allows you to hit Alt+F2 to enter "Ansel Photography Mode" and change everything from resolution to camera lens to flare, etc.

You can shoot gigapixel images with it.

You just need update 1.24 and the latest Nvidia driver

Yes, Ansel is great idea for photography, I tried looking at premade Witcher 3 "pictures", but did not try yet to make my own.

But Ansel is much more than just tool to add effects like camera lens or flare. It saves not a "picture" but complete 3D scene. So it is possible, as you mentioned, to change resolution but not by cropping or stretching - instead you can render completely detailed 10kx10k picture.

Even more significant difference to normal "pictures" is that you should be able to change your position within scene, so you can look at scene from behind or from above etc ... and I guess they can make "players" for those pictures that allows you to walk around scene.

In short, what Ansel is saving is new "360 degree 3D scene" format with much more potential than just "picture". Downside is that, in order to save that scene, game developer need to add support in game, unlike steam standard picture capture which work on any DX game. As far as I understood, Witcher 3 is one of just few games to support it.

 

[Nostromo21]

The whole game is a massive exercise in smoke & mirrors marketing I say. They claim 18 *trillion* star systems you can visit (procedurally generated of course). Even if you only need 1KB storage for each star system (once generated), you would need 16+ *petabytes* of space to store the galaxy/universe. Good luck with even a miniscule fraction of that, on any cloud storage provider, much less someone's home PC lol!

 

[aggri1]

Nostromo21[/url]":1bt9g2ym]The whole game is a massive exercise in smoke & mirrors marketing I say. They claim 18 *trillion* star systems you can visit (procedurally generated of course). Even if you only need 1KB storage for each star system (once generated), you would need 16+ *petabytes* of space to store the galaxy/universe. Good luck with even a miniscule fraction of that, on any cloud storage provider, much less someone's home PC lol!

But they're not storing all of those star systems. So what's your point? Not that I'm defending the whole game, it's just that your argument is based on a flawed assumption.