
Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms - Libertatea
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/529136/no-mans-sky-a-vast-game-crafted-by-algorithms/
======
DanAndersen
The issue with a lot of procedurally-generated content is that overall things
become same-y. Lots of breadth, little depth. When you have a set number of
variable sliders, you don't have to see all the possible worlds to get a sense
of how many sliders there are and what their ranges are. The problem only gets
worse when moving away from planet/landscape generation (dumb matter) and
getting into simulations of history or society.

I'd be really interested in learning about any work in the "interestingness"
of procedural content. Is it possible to quantify that sort of emergent
complexity that happens in life, or in a work or story with artistic direction
that takes on a life of its own? Can a system make a billion compelling and
unique stories without solving the issue of Strong AI and just making a
superintelligent DM?

~~~
lifeformed
I've been working on combating this problem for a few years now. I'm working
on a game called Spire
([http://hitboxteam.tumblr.com/](http://hitboxteam.tumblr.com/)), which is a
mix of Quake and Roguelikes. Every procedural dungeon creator I've seen so far
seems to just use pre-made rooms or chunks of rooms, and shuffles them around.
It never feels like you're in a new world each time, it just feels like you're
in the same world jumbled up.

For the past few years, I've been working on an alternate system, which is to
use a goal-oriented design based around the player experience. Each element in
the world is placed purposefully, instead of randomly. I do this by emulating
the traditional level design process. I think about every action and intention
that goes in creating a level manually, and reduce it to rules for my system.
The goal is that the end result feels crafted to guide the player through an
experience, rather than to rely on the player to create a experience for
themselves.

Examples of the generation behavior:

\- Lights are placed in areas to guide the players attention towards the
primary path, or treasures and dangers.

\- Geometric features are generated based on spatial aesthetic rules (eg. a
pleasing amount of symmetry and repetition), as well as gameplay rules (eg.
jump distances based on player capabilities, corridor widths based on desired
feeling of claustrophobia and combat difficulty).

\- Unique color palette for each seed.

\- Parameters of room construction have emotional analogues (high density ->
claustrophobia; harsh angles -> tension; high symmetry -> order; sweeping
vistas -> a moment to take a break; gradually lowering elevation -> an
unsettling descent).

\- The curve of emotional parameters over time have varying mathematical
relationships to other parameters' curves, so every seed feels like there is a
unique consistency to it.

~~~
taurath
The "emotional analogues" sound actually very interesting. I wonder how well
that will hold up in practice - it seems like if it were possible to generate
a compelling story from variables we'd be able to do it by now - we would be
able to consistently put out compelling stories in book form at the very
least. Its frequently not the structure or even the overall plot that's the
point, but the little details that matter. I've heard it said of movies that
the point is not what happens, but how it happens (probably a paraphrase of
Roger Ebert). It feels like we're a very long way off from having any machine
generate that.

~~~
lifeformed
It's certainly an experimental method, so I'm not quite sure how it'll turn
out (but it's getting there). I agree about the details - although of course
it's important to have a proper structure to the world and narrative, as it
gives context to the details. My aim to build a thematic structure, and then
to bring it alive through the details. Things like light placement, color,
room shape, prop placement, and the overall mood of each section should all
work to build an interesting world.

We even have generators that make tiny little stories out of the props - a
campfire might have candles and tomes next to it (signs of a ritual), or maybe
utensils and dishes (signs of a traveler's meal). Not to mention, the actual
gameplay of movement and combat is intended to be its own world of intricacy
(the other guys are working on that).

I'm not aiming to explicitly generate narratives of characters and dialogue
and words. Rather, the system generates the feeling of narratives. Rising
action, conflicts, an interesting flow of emotions, pacing the intensity, etc.
The player can fill in the details themselves, as they (not their character)
are the protagonist, exploring the world and going on a journey of discovery
and mastery.

My thinking is that what it lacks in human touch, it makes up for in mystery.
Knowing that it's a unique world that no human has ever set foot upon before
is genuinely exciting, and gives a real desire to explore. It's like that
feeling you got the first time you played Minecraft, and found some amazing
outdoor environments and knew your eyes were the first to see it - but then as
you played over and over you saw the patterns and it lost the magic. My goal
is to capture the first feeling, and to hide the second effect with not
patterns but processes, generating things based on a thematic goal in mind.

------
gavanwoolery
Looks like it could be a good game either way, but I'm questioning their use
of words when they say "every atom" is procedurally-generated, as in their
first reveal trailer. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6fCn8oB-
sg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6fCn8oB-sg)

From what they have demoed, they have not proven that anything actually is
being generated. My best guess is that they randomly vary colors and textures
(and generate the atmospheres, as they say), and randomly place models about
the planet, which is a far cry from actually generating all of the models and
animation for everything. A lot of it just looks modeled by an artist (and
they do have an artist on their team). Anyhow, I don't think this will
necessarily detract from the game, just a nitpick on choice of words...

An additional concern is how quickly this game came out of nowhere (I think?).
The Inovae (formerly Infinity) engine took many years to develop - it was one
of the first of its sort to allow seamless planet to space transitions with
tons of terrain detail. If you look in close detail at the differences between
the two, you can tell that No Man's sky does not have a very good sense of
scale when flying into a planet (unless the planet were incredibly tiny).
Also, note the angle of the fly-in is straight on; its much harder to prevent
detail popping when flying in tangentially to the planet and I wonder if they
have yet addressed this. Again, just another nitpick. :)

No Man's Sky (2:00 in for the planet fly in):
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLtmEjqzg7M](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLtmEjqzg7M)

Inovae/Infinity: [http://www.inovaestudios.com](http://www.inovaestudios.com)
and
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6a69dMLb_k](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6a69dMLb_k)

~~~
devindotcom
They haven't gotten into the specifics, but they are pretty adamant that this
isn't just reskinning and randomly putting stuff on prefab environments. Their
interviews with Eurogamer and the like from E3 are illuminating in this
regard. I understand the skepticism, but I personally would rather be excited
that this might in fact be something very new. The proof (or lack thereof)
will be the game itself, so we'll just have to wait.

~~~
gavanwoolery
I'd be happy either way. :) But really, for the sake of their own credibility,
they should demo these things to the public (regardless of how broken anything
is, it would go a long way to reinforce what they are saying). I definitely
would not say they are "lying" about anything, just that until they show their
tools, we have no idea how in-depth the generation is.

------
protonpopsicle
None of these articles on No Man's Sky ever mention Noctis, which is really
strange. That's clearly a precedent here worthy of mention.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis)

~~~
JetSpiegel
Not even Spore.

~~~
dsuth
We don't talk about Spore.

------
fisher-lebo
I get the gist of how Minecraft is constructed: just a bunch of blocks with
algorithms which hide certain blocks when they aren't in the player's view.

Are there any articles about how an engine like _this_ is built? It is an
extreme level of procedural generation (apparently), but the graphics aren't
blocky and as abstract, but rather pretty impressive.

In a similar vein is Eskil Steenberg's Love [1], but this is on another level
entirely.

[1]
[http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/index.html](http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/index.html)

~~~
gavanwoolery
I am working on a full procedural generation engine (not like minecraft, but
it does use voxels at a much higher resolution). Wrote up an overview of how
it works, if you are interested: [http://www.voxelquest.com/news/how-does-it-
work](http://www.voxelquest.com/news/how-does-it-work)

~~~
fisher-lebo
Thank you. Your work is impressive and it is good to see someone putting forth
a technical explanation like that. Much appreciated.

~~~
gavanwoolery
Thanks! Any questions just let me know :)

------
jimmcslim
"The tens of millions of planets that comprise the universe are all unique."

We will probably never know, but I wonder if the reality of our own universe
is that any life on other habitable planets will look remarkably similar to
that here on Earth; given the parameters within which a sustainable biosphere
are possible quite narrow. There might be some local variation but nothing
that would be particularly mind-boggling to biologists (e.g. non-carbon
lifeforms).

I think Brian Greene suggested that in a sufficiently large (i.e. approaching
infinite) universe, if you travel far enough you will eventually encounter a
multitude of 'Earths' that are the same as our own but subtly different in
various ways.

In which case, if its a criticism of procedurally-generated worlds that they
tend to have a lot of repetition, then the models are probably quite accurate!

~~~
abroz
There are several kinds of infinite. The kind where assuming the universe can
be arbitrarily large would eventually allow you to encounter a parallel or
subtly divergent Earth, with a historic Napoleon and where people speak Hindi,
probably isn't the kind of universe we inhabit.

------
ChuckMcM
I'm having a partial flashback here and its killing me. Back in the 90's there
was a guy who was building this exact same vision "Space Galaxy" or something
where every planet was unique, every alien race unique, every solar system,
full planet to planet seamlessness. Derek somebody? Generally considered
impossible and derided by the PC gaming press corps.

I agree with most that you need a certain dimensionality to the generation in
order to get something credible. Definitely going to check this one out when
it comes out.

~~~
JetSpiegel
Derek Smart! Never forget!

~~~
jimmcslim
Battlecruiser 3000AD!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser_3000AD](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser_3000AD)

~~~
JetSpiegel
65% on Metacritic. If that doesn't show what that site it, what does?

------
mladenkovacevic
Another space game coming out this year that will heavily use procedural
generation to re-create the milky way galaxy is Elite: Dangerous. I'm in the
beta and it already looks great despite many features not yet being activated
for the beta players.

~~~
McP
You can't land on planets :(

~~~
mladenkovacevic
This is coming out as an expansion after the initial release of the game. Or
at least that's what the developers are promising if the initial launch goes
well.

Indeed planetary landings (and walking within a space station) requires as
much work, if not more than, the space-flight stuff, so it's understandable
that they don't want to just tack it on.

Frontier and First Encounters games all had seamless planetary landings so the
goal has always been to include them in Elite: Dangerous as well. Everything
the developers have promised so far has been realized (although some things a
little later than initially scheduled), so thus far it's a good bet that they
are not overselling their capabilities.

------
lotsofmangos
To be honest, I thought our sun would be around a lot longer.

 _“If you were to visit one virtual planet every second,” he says, “then our
own sun will have died before you’d have seen them all.”_

...

 _" The tens of millions of planets that comprise the universe are all
unique."_

~~~
aetherson
That's pretty funny. Though what I think they're saying is that the total size
of the result-space for their planet generating algorithm is, whatever,
hundreds of quadrillions or quintillions or whatever it is that makes that
work out, but that a given instance of the universe comprises tens of millions
of planets.

------
thisjepisje
Now what would be really interesting is to have some sort of rudimentary
evolution in a game like this. Star systems, planet geology, flora, fauna,
everything.

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
No, what would be interesting is everything that you said with the addition of
relativistic-speed travel. Take round trips near (or over, depending on your
reference) the speed of light and watch how things evolve.

~~~
JetSpiegel
My god, the Loading times would be unbearable.

~~~
scarmig
Easy solution to that. Build a computer in-game that runs the game, and then
do your relativistic flight while it calculates the time evolution of the
game.

------
shmerl
PS4 only, really? Why can't developers release cross platform games these
days? Releasing it for one platform prevents a significant amount of potential
users from even trying the game.

I'd play it when they'll release a Linux version.

~~~
danschuller
Independent developers need money to fund the development, being exclusive to
a platform gives you those funds, as well as marketing and various other forms
of secondary support.

The alternatives are a publisher (historical a pretty mixed bag, gaining
control of your IP, changing the focus or name - see Divine Divinty) or crowd-
funding (usually not enough to fund the entire project, unless you're Star
Citizen :)).

~~~
shmerl
_> Independent developers need money to fund the development, being exclusive
to a platform gives you those funds_

How exactly? You can say that releasing for a single platform reduces costs.
But how can it give you more funds? Marketing isn't really bound to limiting
platforms (only expenses wise, same as development). However covering more
platforms gives games more exposure, so more potential sales.

Cross platform tools are quite good these days (SDL2, etc.) so overhead of
cross platform releases while still present is going down. A lot of the
independent games of interest that come out these days are cross platform to
my knowledge.

~~~
zhemao
Console makers will sign deals giving you advance funding if you promise to
make the game exclusive to their platform.

~~~
shmerl
I see. That stinks, but I can understand why some developers can fall for
this. Crowdfunding is a good alternative to prevent such kind of lock-in.

------
coldcode
I was excited to read about it until I saw it's only for a console. I've
wanted to build a unique "park" world with similar ideas for a long time, but
never had the time or resources. I guess you have to start somewhere, but
doing this for a single console (P4) is not what I would want to work with.
Outerra is the engine that has taken real world geometry combined with
procedural geometry in the direction I wanted to go and is built for PC/Mac
when it's complete.

~~~
Ogre
It's likely coming to PC as well. It was announced last year without any
console attached. At E3, it was at Sony's keynote, but it wasn't announced as
an exclusive. On the other hand, they haven't explicitly said it will be on PC
either, it's just an educated guess.

------
djent
Disappointing article. There's no discussion of the algorithms the game uses
to generate content.

~~~
DanAndersen
Without trying to be too critical, it's strange hearing the term "algorithm"
get a lot of use nowadays. Example: this BBC article fom 2011 about "When
algorithms control the world", with phrases like
[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-14306146](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-14306146)

I suppose it's the natural evolution after "programs" and "apps" became
mundane things and data science became more prominent, but the way these
articles talk about them with no detail makes me think that they might as well
describe algorithms as some mysterious fairy-like substance that causes
magical things to happen.

~~~
CodeCube
Hopefully this isn't too spoilerish, but this reminds me of the scene in
Transformers 4 where that one guy screams, "Algorithms! ... Math!" :P

------
tiglionabbit
I'm very impressed that you can fly from the surface of one planet to another
seamlessly. Sure the science of partitioning space and changing levels of
detail based on distance isn't that difficult, but it is rarely implemented.

------
mratzloff
Holy shit, I guess I'm getting a PS4.

I suspect--or hope, at least--that they've built meshes that can be combined
in a myriad of ways, so by combining the hundreds or thousands of combinations
you can get millions of animal or plant types.

~~~
kelvin0
These are animated characters. So not only do you need to have the 'flesh'
made procedurally (meshes/polygons), but also the 'bones' onto which the
meshes are attached for animation. Procedurally creating static meshes is one
thing, doing the same for bones and animating it with a mesh so that it looks
credible is a whole other story ...

------
prawn
I read something on Reddit the other day which goes some way towards capturing
my expectation about NMS. It's not particularly succinct.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/28cddf/im_worrie...](http://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/28cddf/im_worried_about_no_mans_sky/)

That is, procedurally-generated worlds are one thing, but an engaging
environment (Minecraft) or story or purpose are other things entirely.

I have a flat game concept involving procedurally-generated concept but just
can't think of what might tip it over into super-engaging territory.

~~~
kizer
I think the key mechanic that makes games like Minecraft fun is simply the
creative element. Once players are given the opportunity to not only
experience a dynamic world, but also shape it, that's when they feel that it's
truly not static. Otherwise, the "procedurally generated" aspect is just eye-
candy, as the reddit post mentioned.

------
anigbrowl
I was impressed by the demo until I saw the very flat explosions that just
faded out quickly, which took me out of the illusion immediately. Perhaps
that's just a pre-production thing. Impressive product even if the article is
sort of gushy and breathless...when I was playing Elite back in the 1980s the
planets were just a circle with a smaller circle rotating on it for
perspective XD

~~~
mladenkovacevic
Did you know Elite is going to have a sequel end of this year?

Planets looks a little better this time around:

[http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140618220148/elite-
dang...](http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140618220148/elite-
dangerous/images/7/75/Earthlike_planet.jpg)

[http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140618220220/elite-
dang...](http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140618220220/elite-
dangerous/images/4/44/Earthlike_planet_02.jpg)

[http://i1242.photobucket.com/albums/gg522/frobitz/ed-
rings-8...](http://i1242.photobucket.com/albums/gg522/frobitz/ed-
rings-8_zps6b3b2dc8.png)

~~~
anigbrowl
I have been trying to resist the temptation to purchase the beta edition :)

~~~
scarygliders
I bought the Premium Beta a couple of weeks ago and have not regretted it one
bit ;)

Only about a week to go till the next update to the Beta and I'm looking
forward to it - oh and premium beta entitles me to lifetime expansions so I
reckon it's good value for money.

Go for it - you won't regret it ;)

------
MoistDinosaur
Can we please call this what it is. Spore: Galaxy

