Hacker News Reader

Comment by Derbasti | Hacker News Reader

There is an incredible amount of negativity in this thread.

They said all the landscapes are procedurally generated. They did not say that there won't be any missions or tech trees or some other kind of hand-crafted progression system.

Many games like Minecraft or Terraria do very well with procedurally generated terrain and some kind of progression system.

I think that this might have huge potential. This could be an awesome game indeed, and so far I have not seen anything that hints to it being boring or repetitive--just unfinished.

View on HN

Check out "Elite: Dangerous" it has a scientifically accurate 1:1 scale, fully Seamless Milky Way galaxy using a mix of procedural generation with artist direction

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous_FAQ

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Procedural_Generation

I've been a fan of David Braben's since playing Elite and Virus as a kid. I'd never seen him speak and The Procedural Generation video gave me a whole new appreciation of his intellect. I hope he gets a knighthood for his work on Raspberry-Pi. Much greatness in him and I wonder what he would have achieved if he had started off in California rather than Essex and Cambridge.

"Much greatness in him and I wonder what he would have achieved if he had started off in California rather than Essex and Cambridge."

Maybe nothing great? Consider if Linus didn't have Finnish winters?

> Much greatness in him and I wonder what he would have achieved if he had started off in California rather than Essex and Cambridge.

Wow, that's more than a little bit self-important / arrogant. You do realize that Cambridge is home to several huge tech innovators, right (ARM?) And that the UK produces more than its fair share of huge video games (GTA?).

Applying your logic, who knows what that Tim Berners-Lee guy might have achieved if he'd started off in the valley rather than CERN...

Probably not so much. He'd probably have been hired by Atari and making a ton of cash, followed by disappearing into obscurity.

yeah, but lets be honest... that's never going to get finished. its not like they've already had 10-15 years of working on it and millions of pounds of investment that have already been wasted... long before the recent kickstart.

£2,140,164 raised.

That is nowhere near enough. The best case scenario is a static world with simplified stelar objects. So far the only released game that got even close to realistic distances was I-War 2:Edge of Chaos( awesome game btw ) which was static.

Frontier: Elite 2 from 1993 and Frontier: First Encounters (Elite 3) from 1995 did it way before I-War was even a thing, complete with full freeform seamless landing on planets with real celestial mechanics.

http://frontier.co.uk/games/older/frontier_elite_ii

http://frontier.co.uk/games/older/frontier_first_encounters

I took a look at some game play videos and I'm positively surprised. I seems today's developers mostly just don't care or don't have the required knowledge.

Also considering the lack of exposure and the amount of flack Elite: Dangerous is getting compared to the other space games it's also the gamers who sadly don't care.

Btw here is an interesting interview with David Braben somewhat before the time of Frontier: Elite 2's release.

http://amr.abime.net/review_38271

http://amr.abime.net/review_38231

http://amr.abime.net/review_15452

Here is a reddit AMA from a year ago.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15od2s/i_am_david_brab...

There is also an impressive universe simulator called Space Engine and they are planning on adding gameplay to it, but it will probably take a long time before it's ready.

http://en.spaceengine.org

There is also Pioneer Space Sim that started as a Frontier: Elite 2 remake, which is also still WIP.

http://pioneerspacesim.net

Also be sure to check out the Elite: Dangerous FAQ

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous_FAQ#W...

its in no way impossible - they just failed to deliver for long enough already imo - i have zero faith in the team delivering it.

The money raised from fans is only a fraction of their total budget.

http://www.directorstalk.com/video-edison-executive-intervie...

http://frontier.co.uk/investor_relations

i dont think its impossible or that they don't have enough money - just that they will fail to deliver based on their having been plenty of time and money for Elite 4 already... it already puts duke nukem forever to shame imo.

i would like to see it, but i don't think its realistic (i don't believe its technically impossible - especially with that kind of resource, i just have little faith in the people involved by this point - which is a shame)

There are plenty of finished space-exploration games with very similar scope.

The Frontier series, for instance, featured a life-scale galaxy with seamless planet landing, each one entirely unique. It was released in 1993, and we're much better at making games like these now.

Here are some other games that will "never be finished":

- StarBound - http://playstarbound.com

- Rodina - http://elliptic-games.com/

- Elite: Dangerous - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangero...

- Drifter - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/celsiusgs/drifter-a-spac...

- Star Citizen - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen

- Limit Theory - http://ltheory.com/

And there are still many more.

I saw the 1984, 1991, 1995 games on youtube and I am blown away how ahead of the pack it was. Pushing the envelope of hardware in those times and the amount of gameplay depth seems absolutely incredible.

I have my reservations about the new game however because if anything, there's plenty of space shooters out there. No Man's Sky is appealing because of the procedural nature, but the new gameplay videos looked quite good.

I'd want a game to feel like it's new everytime I play it online. I hate seeing the same corridor or encountering same situations. I agree that gameplay here will be the final gamebreaker for me.

I don't buy that procedural = sandbox effect = bored in 10 minutes. If anything I could never play GTA series entirely, I'd get distracted, pick up hookers, shoot a rival gang member in a drive by shooting, and commit suicide by jumping off the building while firing RPG launchers. This also tends to get old.

The other day, my younger brother and I spent 6 hours BASE jumping off various things in GTA 5. I'm terrible at games with too much freedom, and I get bored with that pretty rapidly :(

I so much like the positive response of Kris Piotrowski of Capy Gmaes (SUPERBROTHERS: SWORD & SWORCERY EP)

kris piotrowski:

No Man's Sky is the video game everyone on Earth wanted to make ever since they first hear the word "video game".

Downside: No Man's Sky just made every game maker feel inadequate and suicidal. Upside: We don't have to try to make No Man's Sky anymore.

The question "Will I ever get to make my Exploration Sim/Space Battle Magnum Opus?" can now be replaced with "When can I play No Man's Sky?"

One important takeaway from No Man's Sky: If you have a dream video game you want to make, you should probably go try to actually make it.

#Below is one of my dream video games.

https://twitter.com/krispiotrowski

The indie game dev community is incredibly hard to break into (you basically have to work on your game eating ramen for 18 months, and even then you're not sure you'll even succeed), but it's one of the industries with the most pleasant people I've ever met.

I'm not an indie dev, but a few friends from college are, and I get to meet a few of those guys here and there at GDC etc.- they're just delightful. Nerdy friendly guys who are incredibly smart, hard working, with an incredibly diverse set of talents (the skills needed to make a game are immense- programming, visual arts, music composing, game design, marketing- and a lot of those guys do all of it by themselves or with just 1 or 2 other people) and know to have fun.

Paradoxically, the gaming community is one of the most negative one ever (hordes of disappointed gamers will flood your blog and insult your whole family if you don't give them exactly what they want). That contrast is super weird.

Names you should check out if you're interested in knowing more: Kris Piotrowski, Derek Yu, Andy Hull, Phil Fish, Jon Blow, Richard Flannigan, Matthew Davis, Alec Holowka.

Producers vs. consumers. I think this segregation exists everywhere. As you described, it is so accentuated in the context of indie game scene, it's absurd. But it's not a specific situation to this scene.

I have programmer friends who don't ever use a computer outside of work, who haven't learned a new language (outside of work) in the last 10 years for instance. Learning new languages is not necessarily a creative endeavor. But what happens then is cargo culting and bike shedding much like the way gamers get so demanding about something they don't know how to make.

Maybe the answer is that only people who are already wealthy can become indie game devs? That would explain why they all seem nice (it's much easier to act that way when you're financially secure) and why the community around them hates them.

Nah. Some of them get comfortable financially after they ship their game, but almost none of them were wealthy while making the game. It's common for devs to live in their parent's basement during that time, or off of money that they saved in jobs for the years or decades prior.

I had a LOT of fun with a game with procedurally generated settings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight

"The group designed what they called a "fractal generator", which took six man-years to develop and allowed them to increase the number of planets in the game from 50 to 800"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com