The latest chunky update for No Man’s Sky [official site] added a lot of things that are probably Of Interest to other people and a brand new, totally overhauled and significantly fleshed-out photo mode which is of interest to me. The mode was created in collaboration with Duncan Harris, whose awesome screenshot art you might know from Dead End Thrills and thus is far more than just a free camera and a HUD removal option (although it does both of those things).

I’ve spent an obscene number of hours since the update landed (an entire season of Spooks on Netflix) skipping from planet to planet in search of pleasing landscapes so I figured I’d share the preliminary results in a gallery!

To navigate the gallery just use the arrow buttons near the images or the left and right arrow keys on the keyboard. Click on the images themselves to see larger versions.

I don’t have a fancy rig or anything so this is more about what’s possible and why the mode is interesting rather than some 4k-stravaganza… … [visit site to read more]

After trapping a galaxy inside a computer using maths, No Man’s Sky developers Hello Games are launching an initiative to fund and support other devs’ wild dreams of procedural worlds. With first-hand experience of risking running out of money while working on something they loved, they’d like to help other folks working with procedural generation and experimental games research. ‘Hello Labs’, as they call it, has already befriended one project and more may follow. For now, it’s all a bit mysterious. … [visit site to read more]

Oh blimey. Hello Games is releasing the Path Finder update for No Man’s Sky [official site] today. Alice? ALICE? ALIIIIIIIICE? Alice, there doesn’t seem to be a bicycle but there are a selection of planetary rover-type things called exocraft. No bells as far as I can tell, though. There’s also the potential to visit other people’s bases if popping over for a space visit is your bag, to own multiple ships if ships are your bag and permadeath if dying forever is your bag. You can do race track building and sharing and… *skims the rest of the list* A NEW PHOTO MODE created in collaboration with him off DeadEndThrills? Step aside, news article, I’m going in.

First the summary list of Path Finder jiggerypokery: … [visit site to read more]

A new vehicle will land in No Man’s Sky [official site] this week as part of the ‘Path Finder’ update, Hello Games have announced. They say this mysterious vehicle “will aid home planet exploration” and we’re adamant that it should be a bicycle. Space car? No thanks. Space hovercraft? Nuh uh. Please may we have a bicycle. Space bicycle? No. Earth bicycle. With a bell. Ring ring! … [visit site to read more]

Valve capped off 2016 by revealing the year’s 100 highest-grossing games on Steam, which is a pretty interesting list. If you’ve been following Alec’s prolonged breakdown over the weekly charts you’ll not be shocked by revelations that Grand Theft Auto V and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are near the top, but you might not expect them to be joined by the likes of No Man’s Sky or the free-to-play Dota 2.

When I asked Alec if he fancied writing up this chart too, he began hissing “The Venga Bus is coming the Venga Bus IS coming the Venga Bus is coming to take me away ho-ho hee-hee ha-haaa” so you get me and my GIFs instead. … [visit site to read more]

No Man’s Sky [official site] received its first major content update this past weekend, adding base building, farming and more to the maligned procedural space sim. Before that however there had been a bunch of smaller bugfixing patches release for the game – nine, I think? – and now it’s receiving yet another. The small patch is currently available on the game’s experimental branch and fixes a bunch of bugs that have been reported since the last update. Find the patch notes below.

… [visit site to read more]

Back in September, when I was deep in the throes of my obsessional relationship with the peculiar No Man’s Sky, I wrote a Supporter post describing my dream patch notes. Clearly, when so many people have chosen to invest their misplaced personal anguish into the game, the spluttered response would be, “Well, pffpffpffff, how about NOT [MAKE A GAME UNLIKE THE GAME I WAS EXPECTING],” or some such. But rather than trying to look outraged, I hoped to lay down the details big and small that I’d want in order to improve a game which – despite all it lacked – had me in its hooks. So, now there’s been a big update! How many of my wishes have been granted?

… [visit site to read more]

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has decided not to uphold the complaints against No Man’s Sky’s Steam page. The regulatory body announced they were investigating the complaints in September but after consultation with both Valve and developers Hello Games they’re satisfied that the trailers, screenshots and text desriptions on the game’s Steam page did not breach the advertising code. I am not entirely satisfied.

… [visit site to read more]

No Man’s Sky‘s [official site] Foundation update was released over the weekend bringing base-building, different game modes, farming, freighters (kind of mobile resource warehouses), new resources, UI tweaks and so on. It’s a massive update, both in terms of what it brings and also in the sense that it feels like it changes the nature of the game. Previously it was this nomadic planet roamer with bits of resource gathering and survival bolted on. Now it feels like it’s aiming more for exploration and colonisation in the manner of something like Subnautica, just with procedural generation instead of predefined landscapes. … [visit site to read more]

Hello Games have announced a major update for No Man’s Sky [official site], to be released this week. Called the Foundation Update perhaps for Asimovian reasons, but mainly because it adds “the foundations of base building, and also because this is putting in place a foundation for things to come”, it apparently won’t be the biggest update for the game, but it’ll certainly be the biggest one yet.

… [visit site to read more]