Awaiting the arrival of No Man's Sky
No Man's Sky logo
A brief introduction
Published by Hello Games, the upcoming No Man's Sky is an MMORPG that promises to be a one of a kind adventure-survival game. The PS4 release is announced by Sony to be during the month of June, 2016.
A universe that is procedurally generated with an uncountable number of planets and flora and fauna in each of them which is more unique than the previous is open for all players to explore.
You are given the role of a space explorer with a ship and set of weaponry and it is your job to discover this vast space of the above mentioned universe and fight your way to survival in each planet. If you discover a new planet which no other player has, you can create your own name for it and even discover rare elements and plants and animals in each of them.
It is a wide expanse of discovery.
A whole new world to explore
Every player is a space explorer in an uncharted galaxy. You need to collect information about each planet that you visit by flying to it in your space ship and store it in The Atlas.
Players are given a survival space suit with a jet pack and a set of 'multitools' that they can use to scan and mine resources as well as use them for defending themselves against other creatures.
For each information that you collect, you are paid for in 'units' which is the in-game currency. Units can be used to buy improvised weaponry and space ships so that you can explore more hostile environments later on.
The game can supposedly be played offline as well. But while you're online, you can share the coordinates of the planets that you have discovered with your friend and they will find the same kind of flora and fauna and resources you would have told them about.
You get to engage in first person shooter combat with other entities on the planet and have to fight to survive. It is also possible to combat other space ships with your own.
What is Procedural Generation?
Procedural Generation is the art of creating data algorithmically rather than manually.
It can be used to lessen the file sizes and to create a randomness, in the way elements created using it, is born. While images or rather graphics are the ones that are procedurally generated, it is not unknown of even sound being created by this method.
A single seed number is used to create this using mathematical computation. No Man's Sky makes use of a 64-bit seed number which basically means, by some great math mumbo-jumbo, there are about 18 quintillion planets in the game to discover in the game.
Nothing is stored in the game-server's memory. As you log in to play, the whole world is created in front of you at the client side and as soon as you log out, the whole thing is erased.
Almost everything in No Man's Sky is created by procedural generation whether it be the planets or the flora and fauna, the behavior of animals, the building structures on the planet, etc.
Procedural Generation
Will the game be a success?
Now that is hard to say without having played the game in reality.
They say the game has resemblance to the game Spore by Maxis and Spore was actually not received that well.
No Man's Sky seems to me to be like a combination of Halo and Freelancer and both are interesting games to play. But as they say, too many cooks spoil the broth is it difficult to make out whether a combination of multiple games may spoil this one.
Hopefully not.
But everyone, including me have high expectations and are eagerly waiting for the game to release.
