No Man's Sky - (2016 game)

2016-05-12
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DO NOT BUY. DO NOT TRY.

No Man's Sky icon

Entertainment > Games >

(on Wikipedia)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/
https://www.nomanssky.com/

Explore, survive, gather and trade while making your way to the galactic core.

Every single described goal of this game has failed. It is a bad flight-simulator, with bad crafting, bad technology, and bad survival mechanics. It is set on procedurally generated planets so vast that nothing matters, in a procedurally-generated universe so vast that nothing matters. What's worse is that it is so godawfully crowded with hand-holding that it becomes both easy and repetitive. Being ugly and with abysmal performance, it's not even an exploration time-waster.

Perhaps in some years they will change/fix many of its issues, but I believe it has a fundamental casualness to it that anchors its core gameplay problems. This is not a game made for gamers.

2017-05-07 update: I tried it again, and it just isn't worth it. If its graphics were the same as before (they're busted now) then maybe. I have another video card but I'm not going to swap things around or fiddle with installing an old version of my card's drivers. I just don't want to bother any more.



No Man's Sky tiny atlas No Man's Sky tiny atlas transparent No Man's Sky animated logo No Man's Sky tiny image
A review in a screenshot
A review in a screenshot

No Man's Sky logo mp4

There are negatively-worded steam curator reviews which are still somehow thumbs-up. This stinks of corruption to me.

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Table of Contents [hide]

No Man's Sky header

2020-02-13 - 2020-01-22 ∞

  • I don't know how to check the game's version number.

  • I want to be able to change the settings before beginning a new game.

  • When beginning a new game, after the stars, I have to press X to continue.

    1. Why?
    2. Why X and not A ?

  • well I dicked around for a good long while.. and it's just not fun. It's not even pretty or just atmospheric.

2017-05-07 - 1.24 ∞

Attempting to launch does nothing ∞

There was no error message.

Solution: I had to install vcredist from here:

D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\No Man's Sky\_CommonRedist\vcredist\2010\vcredist_x64.exe
D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\No Man's Sky\_CommonRedist\vcredist\2013\vcredist_x64

review ∞

  • The loading takes fucking forever.

  • Its "loading shaders" start screen was obscenely slow.

    • I checked, and it had somehow eaten all of my memory. Closing all other applications, it still showed 100% usage except NMS was taking under 300.

  • The opening intro cannot be skipped.

    • A bunch of things cannot be skipped. Ugh.

  • I cannot change options before starting a game.

graphics and performance issues ∞

  • Holy fuck, I have to start a new game and fucking go through the entire intro sequence to change the graphics settings only to be forced to set the window dimensions and restart again..

  • Trying 640x480 for performance shows the opening text as broken jagged garbage..

Within the NVIDIA control panel, edit the settings for nms.exe:

I disabled everything in the control panel, turned the game down to 1280/windowed or something, and the game played smoother but everything is ugly when entering into a planet, until I get inside a building or some such..

  • Delete the SHADERCACHE folder

    • For Steam, it is in steamapps\common\No Man's Sky\GAMEDATA\
    • Even with this set, the game re-generates that folder. Don't worry about it.

review, continued ∞

  • So I met an alien who speaks my language. Can't I hire him as an interpreter?

    • I would meet multiple aliens who can speak my language. What's the deal?

  • The menu

    • The various tabs in the menu are all the same.. with the current one not being indicated fully enough.
    • It takes too long to switch tabs.

Review ∞

For a game about exploration, it fails spectacularly at being beautiful. There is no awe to be found in this game. Even with max settings, it's ugly. Even if it were given the fundamental technologies to improve what it has, it's not starting from anywhere pretty. Just days after its release, users came up with mods to enhance or undo bad graphics engine decisions.

It's an un-optimized port from PS4 to PC, and it shows. It plays like a drunk driving a car in a monsoon. People with very expensive new computers are having issues. Streamers who have rigs built for max settings with every game are tearing their hair out.

This game is an example of how procedural generation can go horribly wrong. Every element of every thing becomes repetitive and forgettable. From landscape, plants and creatures, to buildings, NPCs and bases. For a game about vastness, it's damned thick with wreckage, ruins, and aliens.

Procedural generation cannot be paired with a large space unless the player can be constantly tempted to stay within regions they define. This is where Minecraft succeeds. While its world is vast, the player makes bases. They explore to do it again, or return to their main base. They are torn between braving dangers to explore for new and interesting things and staying safe and working with what they have for a little while longer. Even with its limited graphics, the player often gets a sense of awe.

No Man's Sky only has the temptation to press onward. This makes every discovery something which has to be left behind. There is nothing to help tempt the player to stay anywhere, and even if they want to return somewhere there is no mechanic to make that easy. It's "possible", in theory, but I've tried and tried to get back to my starting planet, and I could only make it back one single step of my four-step journey. With nothing to tie the player down, the player doesn't have that feeling of excitement when finally deciding to journey out again.

Every planet and every solar system becomes disposable when there is no way to rename discoveries, no way to get detailed information about places the player isn't currently at, and no reasonable way to return anywhere.

The player truly can call some place "home", but only if they never leave it!

This game could and should have gone for a universe which is largely lifeless and daunting. However, there is life everywhere. The air is practically thick with semi-sentient drones, who even materialize out of thin air if you gather resources; a core mechanic. There is wreckage everywhere, bases everywhere and aliens everywhere. Everywhere. Walk in a direction and you'll trip over things. It's supposed to have survival elements, but there are resources not just scattered everywhere but alongside those too-common signs of life.

For an early-access alpha written in the early 2000s, this is a fine game. Except it's released. It's $60. It's 2016. It's fucking $60. Holy shit I expected a proper engine.

There's no way in hell I'd recommend this "game". It's not ready for release. Even ignoring my bitchier comments, I've noted numerous huge and obvious problems.

I might tinker with this some more once they fix a ship-related bug where the game slows to a 2 frames-per-second crawl after an indeterminate amount of gameplay.

Yeah. That's the game-ender right there. I was pressing on through the blizzard of problems, wrapping myself in the thin warmth of a storyline, but this bug always happens. Always. Why play when I know it will always force me to stop on its own terms? Starting back up again is slow as fucking hell, so the interruption in gameplay really ruins any fun I might have been having.

Should I ever play again ∞

mods:

2016-08-20 - 1289496 ∞

1287169 was doing the slowdown thing after a couple of hours.. nomatter what I did. Drivers, settings, etc. I'm trying 1280x720 fullscreen, cranking my driver settings to automatic/quality, and this new patch. So far it's buttery-smooth and looks .. well it looks good enough. Better than it had looked before.

It did end up doing the shit-fps thing after a while, but it was otherwise great.

  • The circle being filled when performing actions is white-on-white. It should have a colour filling out a greyed ring.
  • How could Gek have a scent? I'm in a bio suit.
  • I really REALLY can't stand the game messing up the narrative perspective. "I" instead of "you". Eesh it's distracting at best, and generally confusing even if I catch it. Sometimes I just don't, and end up not realising the perspective/context.

  • I found a typo from one of the monolith orby thingies, but whatever..

    Memories imbued into the rock long ago by the ancient Gek hannel into my brain.
    I recoil, but I am compelled to somehow understand...

  • How come I can only upload the most recent waypoints? I see no previous/next like the creatures/objects section has.
  • How do people have extra slots in their multitool? I don't see a way to do that..
  • I'm glad I put the grenade launcher thingy on my multitool. It's so handy for blowing away rocks and trees, not to mention excavating non-resource dirt/rock.
  • I don't think this game has built-in screenshotting.
  • The pointer being so subtle, and there often being all kinds of icons all over the front area, I get confused as to what I'm aiming with. =(
  • The game pauses when I tab out. I guess this is a good idea, but there are times when I don't want that. =/
  • I hate having to quit by holding e and then also have a yes/no dialogue right after that, for which I have to hold e.

  • I do like that it sees when I'm using a gamepad so it corrects all the prompts. Some games wouldn't do this, leading to all kinds of confusion.

new ship ∞

I did some grinding for a 6.7M ship with 32 slots.

I wanted it because it's as big as a building. Literally. It flies so smooth, and it seems really easy to point "on target".. I'm really happy about the feel. It has some trouble landing sometimes, where it's slower than I'd expect, and its takeoff sometimes sends me a huge distance up, one time it almost sent me into the stratosphere! It's hilarious and quite handy! Its cockpit looks great, and when shooting it zooms right in until I can't see any of my cockpit.

The funny thing is that I almost immediately found a 31 slot ship after buying this one. I still like the style of what I have.

It drops me out the very front of the cockpit. Not the side. It's actually quite funny to be dropped from such a height.. I've actually been hurt. I reflexively jet a little bit to soften the blow. Yeah, it's really that big.

There are stories about their ship landing in caves. I don't land in stupid areas, but this ship does seem to pick safe spots.. except when it has its nose over terrain and kicks me off of a cliff. One time I was underneath an overhang, but taking off bounced me, spun me and sent me mostly into orbit.

I worry about my cargo being too valuable, and attracting pirates.. but I'm going to try putting my valuables in my suit instead, now that my suit has a silly amount of slots.

Some time later, I saw a 47 slot ship. Fourty fucking seven. The same model as mine, too! It was like 47M though.. so.. not gonna happen any day soon. This makes me think I'm going to hang around pretty close to this system so I can return to it when I'm fabulously wealthy. When.

Finally having some semblance of fun ∞

People were right about waiting x number of hours into the game. It does pick up. After getting reasonably comfortable with slot space and a good ship, a lot of the nuisance of the early game is quietened.

This is a big indication that the developers don't understand games.

More notes ∞

  • I hate that when I have no inventory slots, the thing I destroyed just goes to waste. It should leave the bits around for a little while. Or maybe even prevent my completely destroying something.
  • I noticed a while ago that when trading with a Gek they will reward carbon. So this means you can loop through and constantly learn words and earn carbon.. I was thinking of automating this, because it's so damned stupid, but I decided against it.
  • Why wouldn't trading for a word give you words out of the sentences they say when you interact with them? That would make sense.
  • Holy shit pirates are upsetting.. I need to figure out how to get a damned stealth ship. I hear they exist, and I'm going to make it my purpose to be the first to get one.
  • All space stations look the same on the inside. =/
  • The ship's main guns are better than mining lasers.
  • The ship's main guns don't actually run out of power.. presumably to be able to mine for the main fuel. The ship should just be stranded and have to request a tow. Possibly get attacked by pirates.
  • Is there some easy way to get to various planets? I see lines everywhere..
  • What the fuck, I can't rename things after the fact? God fucking dammit..
  • There are waypoints even in space, which is cluttered and generally obnoxious.

  • When renaming a planet, proper keyboard/computer functionality doesn't exist - cursoring left/right, highlighting, pasting..

    • I guess I shouldn't be surprised from a console port.
  • How do I get to planets? Is there some easier way? I see some lines, but I can't really figure out how to get to things when I can't actually see them.
  • Meteorites are really too fucking common. They're *everywhere*.
  • Meteorites don't move.

It's unreasonable to have a personal journey ∞

It's simply not feasible to retrace ones steps. Beginners will make the assumption that naming has value. Not only is there no significant income when doing so, identifying things isn't meaningful since the interface is too terrible:

  • Cannot retrace ones steps.

    • The last star visited should have its own special path, similar to the waypoint/galactic core paths.
  • The lines are nigh invisible.
  • It's twitchy as fuck.

  • It's too fast.

The interface constantly switches and rotates angles, wobbles, zooms in and out and all this shit all on its own. It's so fast and so perspective-shifting that I can't predictably view the nearby stars even with its terrible interface.

All of this is so damned aggravating.

What I want is a flat view of the neighbouring stars, each having their name and date of discovery.

I also want a simple list of the immediate-neighbouring stars.

As it is, I can't hope to return to where I recently was. Maybe this is intentional, but I doubt it. They simply don't play their own game.

The combination of these things means that it's fucking unreasonable to get anywhere intentionally.

So this means.. if you find somewhere nice, don't leave! This goes directly against the free exploration concept. Switching systems may land a player in the middle of a real shithole, making them regret travel in the first place.

More notes ∞

  • It's entirely unreasonable to have single-stacked items. What is this, Diablo?
  • When looking at a star, I should be able to easily see a list of its planets and their attributes.
  • This eventual frame rate issue is really pissing me off.
  • Oh god, it's happening in space too. That's way worse.
  • Waypoints stay, even in space. I can't ignore them.
  • I can't set ground waypoints, can I?
  • I'd like a proper minimap when on a planet.
  • Purple items stay purple, and are not greyed out until I get close.
  • With all resources basically available everywhere, there's no point in exploring a planet much, and no point in visiting all the planets in a system. Every place, be it a ground item or a system, has all the same stuff in all the same places.
  • I really really hope that things look different elsewhere. Right now, iridium always looks the same everywhere.. and all iron looks the same.. and there are clone plants everywhere.
  • With nearly-unlimited of anything, things become boring really fast.. for example, procedurally-generated animals might have sounded interesting to 8 year olds, but from planet to planet to planet they all look and act the same.
  • The whole unmoving single npc thing is really pathetic.
  • Can't open up the inventory screen when talking/trading with someone.
  • When mousing over an item, show how much I have in my inventory/ship/total. Sometimes I want to stock up on the things I don't have much of.
  • The reason holding a button down is stupid is that it's replacing a perfectly find mechanic. Move the mouse/d-pad, and the selected item changes.. the highlighted item is itself the confirmation bar. Double-clicking would be useful for many items, and confirmation with a default to no would be useful for other things. This makes the whole interface way the fuck faster.
  • The sound in caverns is annoying/wrong/stupid.
  • When in the start menu, move the mouse, then switch tabs with a bumper, then switch back to that tab.. and the mouse has moved back to the middle.
  • The ship has a scanner tab, but there are no upgrades for it. Is that something that happens later in the game.

  • Duplicate recipes should more clearly show they are duplicates. Just having the text there has confused me multiple times.

    • Additionally, making the player wait for the whole prompt before dismissing it is just obnoxious.
  • I've worked on holding the button down, then letting go as soon as it engages, and then tapping it. I get more height that way, and I suspect this mechanic also punches me into orbit sometimes.
  • I hear that space battles don't award anything particularly useful.. killing pirates gives some reputation, which is a meaningless stat.

  • Reputation seems to have three stages, and it's trivial, even unintentional, to max it out. Thereafter there is some sort of hidden reputation meter, so perhaps there could be some proper mechanic in the future.

2016-08-19 - 1287169 ∞

I used the GOG Galaxy feature to patch overtop of what I was experimenting with yesterday. This was a download over 1GB, perhaps to overwrite the changes I had made yesterday. Everything seems to run fine.

It started me over again. I was expecting this, as someone had written this would be the case.

  • Melee-jetpack truly is the only way to travel. It's obnoxious to just walk around.
  • A better first impression would be to put the player on a "safe" planet.
  • God damn, sentinels are fucking annoying. They really REALLY need to be removed from the game except for very specific circumstances. Holy shit, did the developers play their game?
  • Falling damage is horrible. From such a small height, often with a melee-jetpack with a bounce. Ugh.
  • It takes too long to switch tabs.
  • Cutscenes and big showy "achievements" really do interrupt the flow of the game.
  • Continually grinding interactions with an npc is slow and obnoxious.
  • Interacting with an npc and pressing the wrong button will abort the interaction and force you to pay again. I don't know if it refunds the initial interaction cost before the abort.
  • The game constantly refers to the player/character as "me". That's terrible.. TERRIBLE. It should always be "you", like with every other game in existence.
  • Interacting with menus by moving a pointer around is annoying as hell. It's better to just switch between options in a normal Super Famicom manner.
  • Being given a shield recharge reward is fucking stupid.

  • .. aaand it went to shit after a few hours of gameplay. Yes, this is not optimized at all. Hell, it's not fit for purpose.

    • Staring at the sky immediately fixed frame rate issues. Not that this matters too much. I suppose getting back to one's ship would be easier, but pitching down to interact with the ship, then get out of the ship again, will be slow as hell.

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  • It starts right into the game, not into a "press e" screen. So when I walk away for a while, giving it time to reload, I need to get back in soon if I was on a hazardous planet.

    • Although I think the game pauses when I tab out.
  • I can rename things after the fact.
  • On a station, ships clip through one another if they're on the same flight path.
  • Warping between stars makes my dash look like pixel art from the early 90s.
  • Is there no way to rename a solar system?

  • Units received units received units received units received units received units received units received units received units received units received units received units received units received

    • I just want to upload all the discovered things at once.
  • When looking at an inventory item I'm about to build/install, the bumpers should switch tabs.
  • An on-planet trade terminal claims I can sell from both my inventories. My ship is near, but it only lets me sell from my suit's inventory.

  • Landing is consistently a pain in the ass. Firstly the block describing the item gets tucked under my ship, but more importantly I can't actually see down there. I'm way too damned high off the ground.

    • I should at least have some sensors giving me a landscape under me. I mean, I have a wavy scanner thingy, and a powerful one on the ship!

I reproduced the slideshow effect. It happened after significant time, and then right when I did one of the wave area scan thingies. Looking at the sky let me use the game menus properly. Then in the game menu, when examining my discoveries (for upload) it would be very very slow. I would then have to wait for each texture for each creature to load. Only when they were all loaded did things return to normal again. So this appears to be a textures thing.

Neither trimming memory nor cooking my processor did not help.

On another pass, it was just when doing a suit upgrade. Sigh.

Within the NVIDIA control panel, edit the settings for nms.exe:

  • Triple buffering [On]
  • Shader Cache [Off]

  • Delete the SHADERCACHE folder

    • For GOG Galaxy, it is in C:\Program Files (x86)\GalaxyClient\Games\No Man's Sky\GAMEDATA\
    • For Steam, it is in steamapps\common\No Man's Sky\GAMEDATA\
    • Even with this set, the game re-generates that folder. Don't worry about it.

This didn't help. I fucked around a bit and nothing else helped. Another user said:

in game:

  • disable vsync

  • frame rate max

in control panel:

  • 16x AF
  • shader cache disable
  • vsync on

  • triple buffer on

I'll try that. Another user says to use the 369.00 driver.

additional details

369 was actually released before 372.54 as an experimental developer version which also included the new OpenGL profiles for NMS. 372.54 now has those profiles too hence probably why they removed 369. However while 372.54 delivers awesome fps on foot, it wrecks your fps when you enter a ship.

I'm going to use Display Driver Uninstaller the install those earlier drivers.

Additional mods I installed:

I don't know if settings or mods helped, but I was able to play at 1920x1280 "reasonably well", but it still has the drunken cursor.

tips:

  • Flashlight with D-pad-up
  • Press against a cliff and jet. You won't use fuel.
  • Melee then jet immediately to dash along the ground.
  • You can rebuild other crashed ships. The easiest way to find one is using one of the beacon things.
  • Pirates attack when you have valuable things. Make yourself less valuable by selling things.
  • You can buy ships from aliens.

  • R3 to sprint

    • Remap this!
  • You can buy resources from ships, and run them into a base and sell the ones they're looking for (gold star)

  • For more inventory slots

    • Get an atlas pass - you'll be given one at some point
    • Enter a space station and look for the hologram thingy. Pay it credits.
  • Feed creatures and see if they'll dig up something valuable. Depends on the creature.
  • Inventory can be shuffled around for bonuses.

  • You can scan the corpses of creatures. So you can kill angry or frightened ones and scan them after.

possible todo:

2016-08-19 - 1284085 + pirated patch ∞

  • Since GOG didn't update fast enough, I used an experimental patch.

    • This is just a (huge!) patch, not a full game. Besides, I don't feel bad about downloading bits of a game I paid good money for but can't play any other way.
  • The stars at the start really is a loading screen. I had to wait for a while before it gave me the e prompt.

  • It automatically detects a controller.

    • All the functionality seems just fine.
  • I have massive input lag. =(
  • Fast Intro Screen works.

  • I'm fiddling with the graphics settings to fix the cursor/input lag.

    • It worked well enough.

  • It's ugly, and pop-in is horrific.

    • For a AAA price, this engine is complete trash. "Future updates" would need a complete overhaul.. which I can't see happening any time soon.
  • Have to enter and exit a ship or find a waypoint to save. Odd.
  • Sentinels are populated as "normal" on my starting planet, and at normal they're a pain in the ass. I want to be pacifistic on my first world, but being careful around them forces me to be slow. This is not a good thing.
  • People complain about the ship controls. I think they're fine.
  • Changing the field of view for the ship to 130, then making the config file read-only, lets me see my cockpit nicely.

  • After a couple of hours it gets so slow I had to slow-motion walk to my ship, enter and exit to save, then alt-f4

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2016-08-12 - 1.03 GOG-2 ∞

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I attempted No Man's Sky SSE testing, but it didn't work, probably because I'm running Windows 10.

Other notes from someone else ∞

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Get hyperdrive upgrades, go to green/red/blue stars. Shit is way way wilder than the yellow stars. 100 ft tall animals, mountains bigger than real life, amazing forests, etc.

To see your past explorations - enter the galaxy map, press x and press x to cycle through nearby planets discovered by anyone.

For anyone with a decent graphics card I highly recommend using DSR to 1.2x resolution and forcing MFAA via nvidia control panel, makes the game look absolutely beautiful with minimal FPS loss.

hold F looking at any building. It marks a small WP that's visible while you're on the planet, or facing the planet from space.

You can already make waypoints. Use your camera and point on a building. Gives you a small dot on the UI. Cant figure out how to get rid of a waypoint tho :>

Footnotes

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