British studio Hello Games is set to let players conquer space with the upcoming release of its space exploration game "No Man's Sky." The game, set in a continually-expanding universe, is about discovery and survival, where players can visit planets seamlessly and venture into all sorts of environments, keeping up with the challenges of space exploration.
Talking in this year's Game Developers' Conference about how the game was set up, art director Grant Duncan told Polygon what they did to build this changing and limitless world. Their inspirations also came from an unlikely source.
Since it is said to be the biggest game in terms of scale, developers took a page out of NASA and built a probe to explore each of the 18 quintillion worlds, documenting its interstellar travels through videos and animated GIFs.
This probe is the basis on how the worlds for the title develop, as it is so massive that even a good-sized team of developers would not be able to handle it. The probe, comprised of algorithms and codes, is made up of the basic concepts of the developers — what Duncan calls the "seeds" — that will make each of the worlds in the game unique.
Also, he and his friends derived concepts for the different worlds via an entirely new blueprint system, outside of what is conceived as real. Beginning with handmade art, the math box in the system then randomly generates variations on the theme.
"I think that the truth is, we're actually all control freaks," Duncan said. "Artists are so used to having complete control of every single pixel. Especially now with digital artists. We can get Photoshop, we can zoom right in and obsess over something no one will ever care about."
To be released first on the PS4, "No Man's Sky" is expected to also be imported to PC but the release date is still undisclosed.
