‘No Man’s Sky’ is all about surprises with each run as dev explains how planets are generated
Hello Games’ upcoming space exploration title “No Man’s Sky” packs a lot of things and more into its concept. But for all that the developer has revealed about the game, there is still a lot of surprises left in store.
Due to its procedural generation of the universe, what happens in the game is not exactly predictable, especially since the player will be going through a universe with roughly 18 quintillion planets.
In an interview with Redbull, the developer shared a new insight in the creation of the debugging process using drones for its many planets. According to Hello Games’ Sean Murray, the process was actually brought on by a disaster that had struck the developer’s office. While the event had wrecked a lot of art concepts and materials, it put the team and the game in perspective in the battle to progress development.
One of the ways to do this was to ensure that the game will ensure few bugs as possible and that the worlds that are close to each other will still have variety.
“Since all of our 18 quintillion-and-a-couple planets are procedurally generated, we need to make sure that worlds that are somewhat close to each other offer a little bit of variety, and obviously as few bugs as possible. So we’ve programmed drones,” said Murray to Redbull.
Murray also shared how the planets are generated. According to him, the team has resources dropped into the worlds, after which the kind of habitants are then determined. They even use an algorithm that can scan the different animal structures that then combines the different parts to create species.’
Even the background stories of the races are profoundly different. And it is up to the player of “No Man’s Sky” to determine how they want to progress in the game. Polygon reported that the game is based on four pillars of progression.
And while “No Man’s Sky” does not prescribe to the usual treatment of role-playing games, it does provide the different angles on which the players can go through the worlds. These pillars include exploration, survival, combat and trading.
Murray confirmed that, in “No Man’s Sky,” players can choose to engage in just one or all of these pillars. Some can just devote themselves to being explorers of the different planets. Others can try to survive in just one planet and see how they will survive and thrive in it. But the most natural would be to do a little bit of everything, especially when both the entire universe and a single planet have much to offer individually.
It’s not surprising that “No Man’s Sky” is one of the most hyped and anticipated titles of the year. It will come out on the PS4 and PC on June 21.
