Hello Games, the developers behind No Man’s Sky, an upcoming open universe space exploration title, have gone to the media to reveal a little bit more on how the extensive procedurally generated world of the game will work as a multiplayer environment.
No Man’s Sky became the one to watch at this year’s E3 expo, when crowds were astonished by the sheer versatility and creativeness of the title. The adventure just goes on and on with No Man’s Sky – the entire 3D world is generated infinitely.
The game features, bright, inviting visuals and gives players the mouth-wateringly tempting prospect of exploring the unknown – thanks to the mathematical algorithms behind the generation of new space and content, not even the game’s developers can predict what’s out there.
Promising discoveries in their thousands, where each planet, species of animal, and other natural phenomenon is watermarked with the player’s name who first discovered it, the developers of the game were keen to outline how multiplayer would work on such a massive game world, in a recent interview with highly respected magazine Game Informer.
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The first realisation from the interview, with Hello Games’s Managing director Sean Murray, was that a fully integrated multiplayer experience where each and every player could inhabit the same space at once just isn’t the way it’ll happen.
“If we were to make a game where we synchronized every player, what they were doing with every other player, then that would be impossible and no one has ever done that.” Said Murray.
The solution to the problem might be using portable online lobbies, effectively allowing players to join in with another player’s game as they enter the same space, creating an incredibly surreal experience where other players can join the session unseen, fly past, and, according to Murray, easily be mistaken for AI characters.
The sense of solitude in a world full of other players is also extended to the way players will communicate in-game. Small messages and Tweet-style text records can be left behind by players for others to find, created on events such as a player’s death in the game. This was explained in depth by Murray in the interview.
“When you die, you leave a gravestone. It says a Quake-style thing like, “Sean got hit with an ax. Sean fell down a big hole.” That kind of thing. That’s what they say. But when they bring that up when you die, the cursor is there and you can actually just delete it and write in whatever text you want. It sounds like a small thing, but it’s so amazing. You walk around this world and then you’ve got all of these like silly stories that people have left. “
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No Man’s Sky is incoming for the PC and Playstation 4, and looks to be one of those titles that really messes with established norms in gaming. The way friends can, or as it were, cannot, communicate and link up with each other through the game, being separated by thousands of light years and then needing to be tracked down on a planet the size of Earth, is a daunting and mysterious prospect. It’s just so intriguing.
As far as multiplayer open worlds games go, the title is certainly an instant classic, although right now No Man’s Sky is a gem that still needs that final stage of polishing to achieve a superior shine. We’ll stay in flight with this unique and interesting title that everyone’s talking about, as more news comes in.
Source: Game Informer
Source: Hello Games