Ah hell, here we go again. Hello Games just released another massive free update to No Man's Sky with Worlds Part I out now. No Man's Sky is rated Steam Deck Verified and works great on desktop Linux with Proton.
This looks like probably one of the best updates yet, which I'm sure I've said before, but it's been true almost every time. Giving planets a really fresh feel some have big floating islands and you might even get a few waterfalls coming down from them which looks amazing. Flying around a planet is even more interesting with their new volumetric clouds with a mixture of wispy cirrus clouds and dark, rain-laden nimbus clouds. There's much more detailed shadows, high definition dynamic water with realistic wave formations and foam generation, lots of strange new creatures across various planets, full wind simulation, more dramatic storms, frozen worlds were given a big overhaul with ice-laden trees and glittering glacial rocks, new sky colours and the list just keeps on going and going.
What I've noted there is but the tip of the iceberg. There's walking buildings, aquatic landing jets, a new mech, more water colour variety, walker battles got more interesting, new base parts, richer atmospheric effects and then lots of random quality of life features.
On top of that there's also a brand new expedition that sees you go on an alien bug hunt. Oh, and you can finally rename your discoveries any time now too.
Main update trailer below:
Direct Link
Hello Games also mentioned how they refined input for touch screen interfaces with the Steam Deck and Switch being mentioned directly, along with fixing various input bugs there. Nice to see!
Check out their deep-dive video on it below:
Direct Link
Clearly, Hello Games are doing some fantastic work and it seems a fair bit of this is coming over from their world-generation for their upcoming game Light No Fire. Full update notes on their website.
You can buy it on:
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: AnzaWell, in general, yes, you are of course correct; all game engines are by definition Potemkin villages. And yes, game engines - in general - do cheat all the time... Mainly to save the CPU+GPU power for other intensive tasks.Quoting: BoldosBut what drove me away was the fact that majority of the game was a perfect example of a so called Potemkin village game mechanics:Games are pretty much Potempkin villages. They lie and cheat, especially when you're not looking. Best ones can give illusion that the world continues to exist even when you're not around.
But you are talking about different level of Potemkin villages than what I meant, when comparing NMS to X4 Foundations universes.
The idea of comparing those two universes - the Potemkin village-universe of NMS vs. simulated universe of X4 Foundations - was that NMS is not >>really<< simulating the whole universe when you're not looking (or rather - it seems to be simulating only your immediate surroundings, where you, as s player, are now present, and looking) whereas the X4 Foundations >>really is simulating<< the rest of the universe on the background, regardless of you - as a player - looking...
Economies of all factions, movement of goods on ships, movement of ships, building stations and new ships using appropriate resourcing, battles and wars, destroying ships and stations... In X4 (almost) everything is fuly simulated (and universe-wide persistent) in the background for the whole universe you are in.
In X4 it is as if you were in the online, always developing, almost fully persistent, universe. (With the exception, that the whole game runs offline on your machine). Hence, there might be e.g. a big simulated war raging on on the other side of the X4 universe, without you really knowing about it. Nevertheless, you will usually feel&see the results of the war in the simulated X4 universe around you after some time ...
Last edited by Boldos on 21 July 2024 at 11:18 am UTC
Quoting: BoldosQuoting: AnzaWell, in general, yes, you are of course correct; all game engines are by definition Potemkin villages. And yes, game engines - in general - do cheat all the time... Mainly to save the CPU+GPU power for other intensive tasks.Quoting: BoldosBut what drove me away was the fact that majority of the game was a perfect example of a so called Potemkin village game mechanics:Games are pretty much Potempkin villages. They lie and cheat, especially when you're not looking. Best ones can give illusion that the world continues to exist even when you're not around.
But you are talking about different level of Potemkin villages than what I meant, when comparing NMS to X4 Foundations universes.
Sorry, I didn't tackle your answer entirely. NMS has been built around procedural generation in order to even be able to have the huge galaxy size. The size itself makes dynamic living galaxy something that starts to be technically infeasible. One player is able to discover only tiny part of the whole galaxy. Even travelling from one end of the galaxy to the other will take practically forever if you just jump from star system to star system.
NMS could be do better on the local level though, but let's keep on grander scale for now.
What Egosoft is doing with X series is cool, but I think they have had dream of persistence quite early on in the series. Probably won't be able to remember where player dropped a wrench in some random planet two hours ago (which NMS is also unable to do), but that don't think it has never been their aim. If you are trying to do absolutely everything, you probably end up in same situation than Star Citizen.
sneakeyboard Jul 28
Quoting: tfkI've never played it. Is it good?
Others have already answered the question. I always like to have a basis to track changes in the game. At its core, the game hasn't changed that much but the content they've been adding has definitely helped with keeping the game refreshing. I like to go back to this video explaining the main issues with game; keep in mind this review came out around release but some of these points are what I referred to as "core game architecture."
NMS - Review
There's definitely been a ton of new content and there's a lot of more interactions with the game itself but this only just briefly expanded on some of the activities that you can do, or as others already commented, the game is now wider. Some improvements have fixed the issues mentioned but in my mind you will get most of what the game offers within a couple weeks.
Quoting: JarmerI've never been able to shake the filth off this game in my mind since release, which is just really bad on my part I know, but I just can't seem to do it. I know I should absolutely give it another try and see what it's like after dozens of massive free updates, but .............. I think it's just a lost cause.
You aren't alone in this line of thinking; most people just moved on after their initial response. I have gone back to the game even after a decent amount of updates were out but the feeling of "just clicking textboxes" is still there. This isn't to discredit all the hard work they've put into the updates but all these activities still feel empty. It's almost as if every interaction was isolated from itself and interactions (even being chased by sentinels) are self-contained.
I'd say their next step could be to allow modding to some scale similar to that new Fallout mod. Imagine a story along the lines of "humans evolved into the 4 distinct alien races...blah blah..." but then again, that's a different type of game and this is a sandbox.
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