
No Man's Sky: Update 1.03 - kevlar1818
http://www.no-mans-sky.com/2016/08/update-1-03/
======
danso
If you haven't been paying much attention to the drama, No Man's Sky had been
struggling to contain fears that it wouldn't live up to the hype. Then last
week someone managed to score an erroneously sold copy for $2000 [1] and
livestreamed his completion of the game. His impressions seemed to throw cold
water on NMS's promises, but this patch makes so many additions that it sounds
like a totally different game. Pretty amazing for a first-day patch.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4v8pnp/guy_who_got_n...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4v8pnp/guy_who_got_no_mans_sky_early_is_posting_some/)

~~~
wmf
It does sound kind of weird that the three paths (whatever that means) were
added after the game went gold.

~~~
cdr
[http://ramiismail.com/2016/08/patch-the-
process/](http://ramiismail.com/2016/08/patch-the-process/)

Not weird at all, "big day 1 patch" is very common for anything being
distributed on consoles.

~~~
wmf
Is it common for the day 1 patch to rewrite the story?

~~~
cdr
Depends on the game, I guess. When it's an indie studio crunching to meet a
publishing deadline, it's probably happened before.

------
panic
Apparently these massive day-one patches are a way to work around consoles'
certification programs: [http://ramiismail.com/2016/08/patch-the-
process/](http://ramiismail.com/2016/08/patch-the-process/)

~~~
grogenaut
It's not a way "around it". It's how you keep working right up to ship. Cert
usually starts 2-4 weeks before launch, eg when it is required to be "done"
for disk printing. This matters less for online games but disk non-network
games have to "work" when printed to disk. It's also partially a way to let
developers have a bit of slack in a system that is modernizing. Before you
react and say "well it should modernize", relalize that the console holders
(sony/ms) are protecting the sizable percentage of console owners who don't
have what you'd call broadband from launch day issues. This process at least
makes the devs think about the patching process.

Source: I sheparded 3 AAA games through cert for playstation.

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shmerl
I tired to reach developers with question whether they plan Linux release or
not, but got no response. So not really looking forward to it.

Everspace on the other hand looks quite promising:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HvpLe-2ijk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HvpLe-2ijk)

~~~
pduan
I never understood why people on Linux always fight to have games on the
platform. From the dev perspective, Linux is probably a sub 5% market share so
it's never worth the effort compared to releasing new features/content.

Why fight this losing trend when you could easily dual boot or even have a
dedicated gaming rig?

~~~
mpd
Because as a developer, it's often easier to develop for Linux than other
major platforms. You often get Linux compatability for "free". It's worth
asking for for this reason.

~~~
yladiz
That's not exactly true. With some newer tools, it's possible to export to an
OpenGL Linux executable, but in other tools, especially older ones, it's still
so specialized for DirectX that's it's not always possible especially with AAA
games, and companies don't have much incentive to make Linux versions because
the market share is significantly lower than Windows. The only reason that
it's more easily possible with game platforms like Sony and Nintendo's
hardware offerings (MS uses a special flavor DirectX for Xbox) is that the two
aforementioned companies plus a lot of other game dev companies pour a lot of
money into developer resources that Linux distros doesn't have.

~~~
shmerl
You mean to say they put resources into lock-in to tax cross platform
development. Those who care about the progress of the industry put resources
into shared technologies like Vulkan, which makes cross platform development
more affordable.

~~~
yladiz
Yes, some do development in OpenGL, but why would a big company put resources
in the development of something unless it has tangible benefits for the
company? E.g. why would a big AAA company like EA put effort into changing
their tooling to support OpenGL when they make millions from consoles and PC?
It would only make sense to develop for non-DirectX or change tooling if the
cost of changing is outweighed by the benefit. It's the same reason why a team
like Github took 2 years to change from Rails 2.3 to 3 even though 4 had
already been released for a while by that point.

I'm not saying it's right, and I wouldn't mind seeing better gaming support on
Linux and Mac, but I'm saying it's reality.

~~~
shmerl
Asking common sense questions about practices of legacy publishers is a futile
endeavor. I stopped asking such questions for a while already. Those who want
to innovate, do it, and find it useful for them. Size of the budget has
nothing to do with interest to release for Linux and have wider cross platform
reach. If anything, big publishers have more resources to do it. At the same
time, innovators happen to be smaller studios, who actually are expanding
Linux gaming market, while legacy publishers don't pay attention.

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Negative1
It's funny how he cites Carmack's plan/finger updates as a source of
inspiration since these kind of changes went in over the course of the games
development, not on a day 1 patch! If you consider the game on 'disc' as the
finished product, there is no way you could consider this game complete given
the incredible number of changes in this patch. A while back reviewers tried
to pull this 'on disc review only' thing and I don't think that's even
possible anymore due to DRM like Steam requiring a patch before the game can
start.

Even so, bravo to the team for the extra effort to make sure the experience is
as good as it can be.

(Oh, and atmospheric refraction? Surely he means improved mie/raleigh
atmospheric light scattering)

~~~
Fuzzwah
You do remember the development of QuakeWorld right?

[http://fabiensanglard.net/quakeSource/johnc-
log.aug.htm](http://fabiensanglard.net/quakeSource/johnc-log.aug.htm)

~~~
Negative1
I fondly remember QuakeWorld's release and I don't think that's a fair
comparison at all. For instance, QuakeWorld was not a day 1 patch. Rather, it
was a well planned update to the multiplayer parts of Quake that effectively
ushered in the age of internet gaming (as opposed to LAN gaming which was
really the best way to play deathmatch prior to QW).

Carmack wasn't trying to complete an unfinished game; he was trying to remedy
all the complaints people had about it after the game had been out for a
while.

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jarekrzdbk
I wish it had multiplayer, hope they will add it.

