No Man's Sky is an online video game designed by Hello Games that came out for PC and PlayStation 4 early last month. In it, the player controls a spaceship and traverses the galaxy, discovering quintillions--yes, literally quintillions--of randomly-generated planets covered in randomly-generated flora and fauna. If the player happens to be the first to reach a planet--and they often are, given the game's size--then they get to name it as well as the species they encounter on it. Pretty cool, huh?
Due to its potential for exploration, (who doesn't want to play Captain Kirk?) the game was highly-anticipated. I can personally remember watching promo videos for it on YouTube and reading about it in the gaming magazine Game Informer. People were really impressed by how big No Man's Sky would be, and perhaps moreso because the game was designed by a small group of less than twenty game designers.
No Man's Sky is such a humungous game that it'll take five billion years for players to discover every planet in it. No, seriously.
Now, obviously, so few people didn't take the time to design and program that many individual planets and species. So, how did they do it? They used an algorithm called procedural generation, in which the computer basically saves an designer an innumerable amount of time by creating art on its own.
Procedural generation isn't anything new in video games; in fact the much better-known Minecraft has been utilizing it for years already. No Man's Sky, however, trumps every other game in terms of sheer magnitude.
It's still got some issues, though. In fact, No Man's Sky hasn't received exactly a plethora of positive reviews, with players complaining that far too many of its planets look mostly similar. I guess this algorithm, however admirable, could still use a good bit of improvement.
P.S. I am very sorry about the title of this post.
Sources:
- No Man's Sky: A Vast Game Crafted by Algorithms--TechnologyReview.com
- 'No Man's Sky' Will Take 5 Billion Years to Fully Explore--Gamerant.com
- No Man's Sky Picture--GOG.com
Hey Hunter,
ReplyDeleteJust imagine doing this in real life. With the advances of technology, we can make remote controlled spaceships to discover planets beyond our solar system and galaxy. Who knows, maybe Computer Science is the bridge between humanity and extraterrestrial life.