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Discussion (61 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
[0] <https://nmsspot.com/2023/01/20/upgrading-the-gaming-pc/>
You should also look at the LG Dualup if this kinda thing interests you.
https://www.benq.com/en-us/monitor/programming/rd280u.html
https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-28mq780-b-dualup-monitor
Technically it's 8:9 so not a perfect square, 2560 x 2880
https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-28mq780-b-dualup-monitor
Unfortunately, even with all the updates - they never fixed my main gripe - each planet is just lifeless, and it's basically the same few square kilometres copy and pasted over the whole planet (I'm about 120h played).
I wished they somehow made it more exciting to explore.
That said,idk if I would like the fame at all now. Base building seems antithetical to the original nomad-like setting. And there's only loss to have adding identity to the protagonist after having played it as "yourself"
The real limitation is that virtual worlds get boring. It really doesn't matter how sophisticated they are. Generative AI can't help with that. It's not a problem of the structure, or needing some additional variety, or more sophisticated set of constraints. It's the simple fact that while you can day dream about endlessly flying around a galaxy, landing on planets, eventually it just becomes rote. It's a normal biological process of adaptation and normalization. Like how when you first move somewhere, everything is fresh and full of potential, and then 3 years on everything that was novel and cool has become just background noise.
Dwarf Fortress also does an excellent job of this
But, so far at least, it really doesn't work for first person games. You end up with a universe that's seemingly, but also endlessly boring.
Improving the quality of the proc-gen won't fix that.
This is a high-tech sci-fi setting! This gameplay space should have been the dev's oyster! Have resources which can be pinpointed with the scanner! Have ones that you have to triangulate the location of! Have clouds that you'd be collecting via ramscoop! Have drones following your ship! Set up a mining station! Mini-games for dealing with alien tech. More ruins and salvage opportunities than just that one species of aliens! Capture animals for questgivers! Have the actual experience of flying not be an on-rails theme park ride that's fun about twice.
I could go on and on.
This obviously costs money and time. But without it, you get a 'game' that's as wide as an ocean, and shallower than a puddle.
But yeah, super crappy launch.
the launch was beyond super crappy, and "turned it around" is underselling it.
"the engoodening of no mans sky" was a youtube video that came out ~5 years ago and covers the story of the launch up until the point the video was made. since then they've had several more really amazing (and compeltely free) updates.
Obviously it's not purely ego driven (if at all), so I wonder how the financial aspect plays into that narrative.
I suppose the fact that it sold so much throughout the years gave them enough runway to actually work on it with no worries? And I suppose that people would be skeptical of a new game launch by this studio, thus dooming them to work on NMS for eternity... we'll see how Light No Fire's launch will do.
Everyone says this and I really disagree. It's been a year or so since I last play but I have been playing off and on about every year.
Whenever I start a new game, it feels basically the same. Once I get into the universe, there are way more things to do but nome of them feel like they matter.
The game is a classic example of a mile wide and an inch deep. Every update just seems to bring a new system that feels, in itself, feels about as satisfying as the game did on launch.
Despite the valiant and admirable effort to continue updating the game (and for free), I still don't think it's come close to the game that was promised. It's still the launch game in my eyes; nothing seems to matter. I can just also build a base (or any of the other new features) that doesn't matter too.
It's a fun game for maybe 30 hours a year (300 hours!) and that's an accomplishment but I don't think it's come close to fulfilling it's original promise.
This. I really feel that the good will they burned up with the launch - and I'm not denying it was very poorly handled - they've made up for 10x over since then. Every expedition is like a whole new DLC, but they've released every single one of them for free.
I think maybe because there's just so many games being released every single day that this is a sufficiently competitive market. It's not like I'm deciding to never take the city bus again.
Still entirely fair to have been turned off by the experience. Plenty of developers or publishers I don't purchase from anymore due to similar shenanigans.
In contrast Star Citizen is far more ambitious but shows 0 sign of ever actually landing.
NMS is still a great fun space game to play, the lore / back story of each faction is quite bleak though and the lack of good individual characters does leave it feeling more like exploration sandbox than a really compelling world you care about.
This is an article for fans, with an audience of fans. Explaining the basics would be unnecessary for the vast majority of readers.
Now, maybe posting to HN requires you address your new audience as well, but I'm just pointing out the above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9RyEiEzMiU
That presentation was foundational for me personally wrt quite a few things.
As in deterministic circumstances + a historic noise + a formula for civilizational fungi.
Basically a recursive scenario-tree- with branches for capabilities- and regressions as loops to previous iterrations. The noise function is the index and the dice - and the tree modifies its branches depending on the iterration. You gain a panopticon- your chance of accidental nuclear war wither- the loop back to savagery reduces in likelihood. And so on and so forth.
https://emshort.blog/2016/09/21/bowls-of-oatmeal-and-text-ge...
I guess I will never try it, once you hit your 40s, games lose their appeal anyway.
you say this as if it is a law of nature, but into my 60s, i still quite enjoy relaxing with a good game. no mans sky is one of them!
Would be interesting in your observations on the other side of this, but to me it seems related to those studies showing the trough of happiness is on average the mid-30s to mid-50s.
Most studies ascribe this to being the overlap of peak career hustle, childrearing, taking care of aging parents, and personal health scares all hitting at once.
Putting aside the obvious emotional toll, to me it looks/feels like a dearth of free time. Personally I find it hard to find blocks of time to do anything "for myself" that are more than 30-60 minutes. Video games now, compared to my youth, seem to be much deeper and entail much longer time commitments.
but i never stopped playing entirely. in those 30-60 minutes where my wife would watch her weekly show, i would pick up where i left off in a game. i find most games today are pretty well-designed around being able to play in spurts, even if the game is long + deep.
for longer story games, though, i usually keep a notebook beside me to jot down some context to help me pick it back up if i know it will be a while (mainly because my memory isn't what it used to be).
https://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/
Its last major new content was released on May 27th of this year.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/275850/view/69538767...
A video from a gaming news channel on it... No Man's Sky Treated Players Right, Now It's Unstoppable https://youtu.be/jxxRXe1hRjQ
And the steam stats for it - https://steamdb.info/app/275850/charts/#6m
As I write this, there are 10,467 people playing it now. (The stats from 2017 where in the 1000 - 2000 players playing it).
Comparing it to Factorio (which is a great game) it has 19,103 players playing it now.
As a person on the far side of my 40s, No Man's Sky occasionally gets dusted off for some play.
Also works pretty well for racing games (like Forza MotorSport / Horizon) imo.
I get to play games maybe a few hours per week (mostly in the weekend), so the idea of starting a new Assassin's Creed and spending 80 hours (many months) on a singleplayer game is pretty unappealing. (TBH, I was never super into SP games, but the appeal now dropped to 0).
At the same time, I've been having a blast with "The Finals" since launch and it's pretty much the only game I play. Easy to pick up and play 1-2 rounds :)
What kind of games did you play before and how do you enjoy spending your time now?
If you're remotely considering it, join up. I hop on every month or two and it's a treat.