Hello Games has snuck out a pre-holiday update for No Man's Sky, letting you fill the normally fairly serene galaxy with your own loud musical creations. The ByteBeat is a synthesiser you can plonk down to turn even the dreariest desert world into the hottest festival spot in the system.  

The synth lets you access the game's new audio creation suite, and frankly it looks pretty damn intimidating. I listen to music and once used to bang on some drums, and that's about as far as my technical knowledge extends when it comes to music. Luckily, the ByteBeat handles the complicated stuff, procedurally generating presets for you to fiddle with to create your own tunes. 

If you're feeling bolder, you can take over from the AI and create music from scratch, starting with the maths used to create waveforms. Or you can be like me and let it generate something entirely random and hope for the best. For more complicated compositions, you can also build more devices, rows and rows of them, adding more tracks. 

Your music deserves an appropriate setting, and No Man's Sky already has a base editing tool that will help you make anything from a dance club to torture chamber that blasts dubstep into your victims' ears. You can sync the music to lights, too, letting you craft a light show to accompany the track. 

Along with the ByteBeat, the update includes a bunch of bug fixes and tweaks. Check out the patch notes here. 

Triangular base building parts were recently added to the free-flying sci-fi sim No Man's Sky as part of the big Synthesis Update. Compared to other new features, like starship upgrades and a new terrain editing system and a first-person exocraft, new floor tiles don't sound like a very big deal. But those three-sided bits are actually what enabled this very cool recreation of Doom's famed E1M1 map on a distant, dusty, radioactive world.

The map comes courtesy of JP LeBreton, a developer whose previous credits include BioShock, The Cave, Broken Age, and the OG Doom mod Mr. Friendly. Naturally, it's not an exact duplicate of the original: There are no explosive barrels, for instance, doors are kind of a compromise design that operate via separate switches connected to the power system, and the textures are obviously quite a bit different too, although the wall surfaces are a pretty good match overall. 

There are also no demons running around, waiting to be blown into Mephistophelian paste: There are a few creatures roaming around outside that you might want to stay away from, but otherwise this is strictly a sightseeing trip. There's no mistaking where you are, though. Even the planet is right: Red, radioactive, and rocky. 

If you'd like to see this No Man's E1M1 in action (and why wouldn't you?), enter the glyphs listed on LeBreton's NMS Bases page (he's made several) into a portal, then hop into your ship and fly to the marker—or just keep your eyes peeled for the big Doom logo carved into the hillside.

A few days ago Hello Games teased a new update for No Man's Sky, called Synthesis, without revealing what was in it or when it might arrive. Today we've got a few details, and they're pretty exciting. Not only is the Synthesis update arriving this week, on November 28, but it's making some pretty big and welcome changes to No Man's Sky.

Perhaps the coolest change is that players will be able to improve their starships by adding additional inventory slots. They'll even be able to upgrade their ship's class, which can increase various bonuses like maneuverability, warp distance, damage, and more, depending on what type of ship it is. These upgrades are done by spending nanites at the new starship outfitting terminals you'll find in space stations throughout the galaxy. This means if you find a ship you really love, you don't need to sideline it in the hangar just because you've found one with more cargo space. Nice! You'll also be able to salvage other ships you find for parts.

There are also some exciting changes to the terrain manipulator. Players will now have the ability to "make a permanent stamp on the world with your edits," according to the email sent to PC Gamer. That's a big deal. We're used to digging holes or transforming terrain, flying away, and returning to find the planet has 'forgotten' what we've done to it. It sounds like that will change with the Synthesis Update. Yes, that massive rock penis you carefully sculpted outside your base can apparently be locked into place and preserved. (Update: The Synthesis page reads "Terrain edits made within a base are now protected from regeneration." So your rock penis will need to be inside your base's borders.)

Jokes aside, being able to permanently alter terrain on a planet will be a huge boon to base-builders and will give our homes a more persistent feeling. Importantly, along with this change, an 'undo' feature has been added to the terrain manipulator, so you won't have to live with your mistakes.

And you'll no longer have to sell a beloved multitool when another one catches your eyes. "Players can own and customise multiple Multi-Tools," in Synthesis, says Hello Games. You'll also be able to "create multiple characters in the customiser to switch between," which sounds like you'll be able to save your character customization choices and quickly swap between the different looks you've created.

There are also some interesting changes that will let VR users and desktop players share some of the same features that are currently exclusive to each. First-person driving for planetary vehicles is being added for desktop players—until now, that was only available in VR—and VR users will be able to use the photomode and creature-riding features that desktop players enjoy.

There's more: a "whole new space map," a personal refinery you can use in your inventory for crafting, plus the addition of more base parts, and lots of bug fixes and other improvements. We'll post the complete patch notes when they arrive.