No Man's Sky NEXT

I actually like this game. I definitely play it for what it is, and not what was promised etc etc. Never followed the hype and I got it for about 20 bucks a year ago on gog.
The new update is good. If like to install some mods and restart a game but will probably wait a few months.

The UI is so fucking nonsensical and stupid though.

Just 1 example out of many; why do you have a general inventory - where tech can be installed (and where some of the default tech is installed so most likely you will continue there - which isnt a smart thing to do..) and also a separate thing (not an inventory) called Tech where it can be installed as well? It's idiotic and just makes it more messy. "Overview" is most likely a term which the team is not very familiar with.

Unstretched HUD for 21:9 monitors:

https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/686

vurt said:

Unstretched HUD for 21:9 monitors:

https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/686

Click to expand...

Nice! Thanks for the heads up

Just can't play a game with a stupid UI; wake me up when they fix that and I might bite.

you said:

Just can't play a game with a stupid UI; wake me up when they fix that and I might bite.

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While I firmly detest the ui (especially once you get a significant amount of upgrades to recipes and suit) I am still very much enjoying this game again. I wish they added a stronger survival element for sure but the mix of exploration and crafting is great for me.

I wish some brilliant modder would make a PC UI mod that us intuitive, mouse/keyboard friendly and customizable. Detest consolized UIs.

Yeah the UI is terrible when you're new to this game, i hated it so much. Once you can work in it quickly though it's not bad. This is often the case in games, i mean the inventory in the early Gothic games was laughably bad, but once you get the hang of it its not bad (well its still bad, but if you can use it fast/efficiently then you stop caring).

I'm gonna wait until the next time i play it.. most likely a few months up to a year, if they continue like this the game will have progressed really nicely by then.

I tried to get into this, but this proved to me, once and for all, space is terrible setting for exploration.
First few times you land your ship it feels awesome, but then it just turns..boring. It's simply too big, procedural generation cannot substitute handcrafted content here, especially on something with this scale.
( Though I could see it as sort of relaxing experience)
I think Mass Effect 1 had the right idea for space exploration, even with really poor execution.

I don't think the setting of space is the problem, really.

The problem is that they're not doing ANY handcrafted content - which means you'll never experience anything that hasn't been put together by an algorithm.

There are several ways to do better, but it's naturally not an easy thing to accomplish - and certainly not if you intend to deliver an entire galaxy to explore.

Star Citizen is going for a mix between bespoke content with an absurd level of fidelity - and a very sophisticated way of delivering procedural content. Quite the challenge, and I'm very curious if they can provide the sort of quality that Roberts is known for.

Still, I find No Man's Sky NEXT much more appealing than, say, Elite Dangerous - because ED had absolutely nothing to offer in terms of meaningful exploration.

NMS, at least, provides some variation and neat things to see for a few hours - and it's sometimes suprisingly successful at giving the illusion of distinct content.

I expect Starfield will try for a much more handcrafted approach. I wonder how they're planning to manage it, though.

Certainly, I'm not going to write off space as a compelling exploration experience.

Eventually, we'll have AI sophisticated enough to emulate the minds of a designer - and, at that point, providing distinct content should be trivial, even if it's procedural at heart.

Of course, that won't happen for 10+ years, but I have no doubt we'll get there.

Darth Tagnan said:

we'll have AI sophisticated enough to emulate the minds of a designer

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You know when will that happen? Never.
Sure there will be so called AI that's supposedly successful in design process of some sort, but results will be abominable yet accepted by mainstream as it'll be trendy to follow unnatural rubbish.

Do the homework. Read the ancient Andersen's supershort gem you've obviously missed: Swineherd.
Yes, that story was written hundreds of years before "smart"phones appeared. The man was genius.

joxer said:

You know when will that happen? Never.
Sure there will be so called AI that's supposedly successful in design process of some sort, but results will be abominable yet accepted by mainstream as it'll be trendy to follow unnatural rubbish.

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I donth think so. There's no good reason why AI's cant become good at design processes. Worst case, you simply need the computing power for a complete simulation of the human brain. Of course, that would not be a narrow AI that is only solving a specific task.

There are few reasons why. Some (not all) of those are:
- AI cannot have children nor emotions related to (not necessarily it's own) children
- AI cannot ever experience nature and rephrase it into something like Vivaldi's seasons
- AI doesn't have collective subconsciousness nor soul (yea, brains are not isolated)
- AI will never comprehend defiance nor will be able to express it through art
- mathematically precise and perfect constructs are not nor can ever be art

Now please, return to Anderson's story I linked in my previous post and read it. Are you the prince or the princess in that story? I bet Dart is the latter, not sure about you.

joxer said:

There are few reasons why. Some (not all) of those are:
- AI cannot have children nor emotions related to (not necessarily it's own) children
- AI cannot ever experience nature and rephrase it into something like Vivaldi's seasons
- AI doesn't have collective subconsciousness nor soul (yea, brains are not isolated)
- AI will never comprehend defiance nor will be able to express it through art
- mathematically precise and perfect constructs are not nor can ever be art

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- AI's might create other AI's.
- There's no reason to keep AI's in sensory deprivation.
- I can't (or dont want to) comment on the soul part, but I do not see any reason to rule out subconsciousness. You could argue that many early attempts at AI will have nothing but subconsciousness, since they will not actually self-aware.
- There is no reason for an AI to be mathematically precise and perfect. If it is a simulation of human intelligence, it will automatically have to inherit its non-determinism.

joxer said:

Now please, return to Anderson's story I linked in my previous post and read it. Are you the prince or the princess in that story? I bet Dart is the latter, not sure about you.

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I am an artificial intelligence who despises human aristocracy. Why should one meatbag be better than another?

PS: Viva La Robolution!

Oh, I think we're much closer to AIs emulating partial human behavior than people think.

You don't need to simulate an actual human being to emulate the design process - you just have to define a sufficiently elaborate set of parameters that meet our demands for what's interesting and what's not.

Given the availability and accessibility of combined human knowledge and existing art - it shouldn't be that hard to imagine what an efficient algorithm could do with such a source - under the right circumstances.

Also, I think people sometimes forget that we're talking about something that's going to evolve exponentially - on a level we can't even imagine - once we breach a certain threshold. One might say we only need the very first real step towards true AI - and AI itself will pretty much take care of the rest.

Eventually, the challenge won't be to invent it - but to curtail it and keep it relevant in terms of practical use.

I used to think it wouldn't happen in my lifetime - but these past 4-5 years have certainly given me reason to doubt it.

10-20 years is by no means an unrealistic estimate for an "AI level designer" algorithm, I don't think.

With all that said, human beings adapt - and so will our preferences. So, we will of course be ever more demanding as we get more and more diversity. But that's where the nature of true AI comes in handy, as it should evolve much, much faster than we could ever do as human beings.

joxer said:

You know when will that happen? Never.
Sure there will be so called AI that's supposedly successful in design process of some sort, but results will be abominable yet accepted by mainstream as it'll be trendy to follow unnatural rubbish.

Do the homework. Read the ancient Andersen's supershort gem you've obviously missed: Swineherd.
Yes, that story was written hundreds of years before "smart"phones appeared. The man was genius.

Click to expand...

I read the story and enjoyed it. But clearly my brain is slow today. Could you maybe elucidate a little how the story relates to the AI discussion?

My current guess (and admittedly my lunch break at work ran out 13 minutes ago so have not had much time to think about it) is that the AI is the princess - wants things artificial. The Prince is the human, honest and real. But not exactly clear beyond that.

In regards to the topic - seen many images for the game on Flickr from friends but admittedly doesn't interest me. I am not big on auto-generated content. Used very sparingly I can see it being okay but I much prefer the human touch, with all its warts, quirks, and bugs even. I am perhaps old fashioned anyhow but I also prefer dealing with humans on the phone and email in most cases (outside very basic stuff).

Consequently not a big fan of the game although I won't put it down either. If people are enjoying it then that is all that matters in the end. Something for everyone.

So is the problem exploration of space; or this game's implementation/design of such exploration ?

BoboTheMighty said:

I tried to get into this, but this proved to me, once and for all, space is terrible setting for exploration.
First few times you land your ship it feels awesome, but then it just turns..boring. It's simply too big, procedural generation cannot substitute handcrafted content here, especially on something with this scale.
( Though I could see it as sort of relaxing experience)
I think Mass Effect 1 had the right idea for space exploration, even with really poor execution.

Click to expand...

The first community event has started.

joxer said:

There are few reasons why. Some (not all) of those are:
- AI cannot have children nor emotions related to (not necessarily it's own) children
- AI cannot ever experience nature and rephrase it into something like Vivaldi's seasons
- AI doesn't have collective subconsciousness nor soul (yea, brains are not isolated)
- AI will never comprehend defiance nor will be able to express it through art

Click to expand...

Same can be said for nature, which can be seen as a analog computer.

- mathematically precise and perfect constructs are not nor can ever be art

Click to expand...

It absolutely can, i love for example fractal art (fractals are a part of nature, too).

I would actually prefer computers doing advanced calculations for e.g natural environments and landscapes over humans who put emotions into it. Emotions has nothing to do with how nature appears.

So far there's no game who has done this well enough imo, but its because the process is still too "humanized". In NMS it's very simplistic. It places stuff (or decides to NOT place things) based on e.g height and slopes. It needs to be much, much more advanced to get really good.

What i really like with the idea of a computer calculated landscape is that it replicates actual exploring much better. The environment will be something totally unknown to anyone, before it has been explored. This feeling alone is absolutely awesome. It gets rid of the feeling "oh i see what the designer did here, he placed this fallen tree over the river so i can walk over safely.." etc. It's boring, it's more similar to visiting a theme park than exploring nature.