'No Man's Sky': Sean Murray Reveals How Twitch, Chaos And Crisis Spawned Limitless Gameplay - INFYNITEX

SOURCE AND ALL CREDITS GOES TO : http://www.designntrend.com/articles/59397/20150822/no-mans-sky-sean-murray-reveals-twitch-limitless-gameplay.htm

'No Man's Sky': Sean Murray Reveals How Twitch, Chaos And Crisis Spawned Limitless Gameplay

(Photo : Hello Games) "No Man's Sky" is one of 2015's most anticipated games, but its concept didn't start that way. Excerpts from a new book reveal how crisis, randomness and Twitch spawned ideas for the project. "No Man's Sky" is scheduled to release later this year on PS4 and PC.

"No Man's Sky" is one of the 2015's most anticipated games, but that hype comes from humble beginnings. In a recently published book, its lead programmer, Sean Murray, described how Twitch, crisis and chaos spawned the title's emergent gameplay.

The news comes to Design & Trend via excerpts from a newly released nonfiction book titled "Death By Video Game" by Simon Parkin. Over the course of its 288 pages, a few of those are dedicated to "No Man's Sky's" early development process.

When trying to conceptualize a vision for his next game, the search for a viable product wasn't an easy task. After making four "Joe Danger" titles for seven different platforms, Murray experienced what he calls a "mid-life game-development crisis." With a finite amount of time to leave his mark on the world, he started to question what he was doing. "It changes your mindset when a single game's development represents a significant chunk of life," he said.

This need for change allowed his studio at Hello Games to return to its roots of living out childhood fantasies. Inspired by his extensive time roughing it in the Australian outback, Murray came up with the concept for "No Man's Sky." It would contain a world so massive that no gamer could ever truly know what it contains. For all intents and purposes, its explorative possibilities would be infinite. In the game's current build, its 18 quintillion planets suggest that our sun could literally burn out before the entire map is fully analyzed.

Especially in the Twitch-laden gaming industry landscape, this huge universe has lots of practical application. Murray admitted that he was driven to create such a realistic, sprawling model because it meant video streamers would be able to constantly discover new content alongside their viewers. While "No Man's Sky" doesn't support traditional multiplayer gameplay, let's play videos offer one way to enjoy the explorative journey with a friend.

When the concept began, the world was generated at random rather than with a realistic sense of order. "Only around 1 percent of the time it would create something that looked natural, interesting and pleasing to the eye." This pitfall pushed the studio to create an algorithm that the entire experience is now based on. When "No Man's Sky" arrives, the inner-working math behind its universe will be the same for every player. Every attribute down to water color, atmosphere and wildlife will be calculated on the fly.

"No Man's Sky" is scheduled to release later this year on PS4 and PC.

Are you excited for "No Man's Sky's" order and chaos gameplay? Will it be a live stream hit? Tell us what you think in the comments section!

'No Man's Sky' release date, gameplay: players will get lost in massive game - INFYNITEX

SOURCE (ALL CREDITS GOES TO) : http://www.christiantoday.com/article/no.mans.sky.so.massive.players.get.lost/62421.htm

"No Man's Sky" is being hyped to be one of the most anticipated games for the year, due to its "procedural worlds" and vast galaxies. Although no clear story and gameplay have been detailed for the upcoming title, developer Hello Games has already said it is a space exploration game, with players trying to solve the mysteries of the different worlds and racing to the center of the universe. 

Players will each have their own worlds, owning the resources and anything discovered in the planets. They can name the planets and the wildlife found on the lands and waters of their chosen worlds. In addition, they can also mine the resources in the planet, and build equipment and bases for expansion. 

The gameplay for "No Man's Sky" is also dynamic, and is as close to the real world as possible. For example, as resources and equipment can be built, they can also be destroyed or lost. 

In the latest issue of gamer magazine Edge, as reported by game industry website Games Radar, Sean Murray of Hello Games highlighted the chances that players will lose their resources while playing, particularly the space ships used for exploration and trading.

Murray stressed, "I have this [design] argument with the guys all the time, but if I hand someone the controller, the first thing they'll do is lose their ship... We don't have those predefined pathways." 

Murray added that since the universe of "No Man's Sky" is so vast, they expect players to get lost time and time again, especially in the early hours of their playing.

"It's really fun to watch, because people spend their first half hour with the game getting lost – hopefully in a good way." 

'No Man's Sky' release date, gameplay: players will get lost in massive game - INFYNITEX

SOURCE (ALL CREDITS GOES TO) : http://www.christiantoday.com/article/no.mans.sky.so.massive.players.get.lost/62421.htm

"No Man's Sky" is being hyped to be one of the most anticipated games for the year, due to its "procedural worlds" and vast galaxies. Although no clear story and gameplay have been detailed for the upcoming title, developer Hello Games has already said it is a space exploration game, with players trying to solve the mysteries of the different worlds and racing to the center of the universe. 

Players will each have their own worlds, owning the resources and anything discovered in the planets. They can name the planets and the wildlife found on the lands and waters of their chosen worlds. In addition, they can also mine the resources in the planet, and build equipment and bases for expansion. 

The gameplay for "No Man's Sky" is also dynamic, and is as close to the real world as possible. For example, as resources and equipment can be built, they can also be destroyed or lost. 

In the latest issue of gamer magazine Edge, as reported by game industry website Games Radar, Sean Murray of Hello Games highlighted the chances that players will lose their resources while playing, particularly the space ships used for exploration and trading.

Murray stressed, "I have this [design] argument with the guys all the time, but if I hand someone the controller, the first thing they'll do is lose their ship... We don't have those predefined pathways." 

Murray added that since the universe of "No Man's Sky" is so vast, they expect players to get lost time and time again, especially in the early hours of their playing.

"It's really fun to watch, because people spend their first half hour with the game getting lost – hopefully in a good way." 

‘No Man’s Sky’ PC Release Date Confirmed? Gameplay Trailer Revealed - INFYNITEX

SOURCE: http://www.youthhealthmag.com/articles/19774/20150722/no-mans-sky-pc-release-date.htm

(Photo : Courtesy/no-mans-sky.com)

"No Man's Sky" PC release date will also see the release of the game's PS4 version. "We were actually going to announce a release date at E3, but for reasons we can't," Hello Games' Sean Murray said. "We're going to announce a release date soon, and when we do, it will be for PC and PS4 at the same time."

In 2014, Murray revealed that "No Man's Sky" would initially debut on PS4, followed by its PC version. "We are not going to treat it any differently and we are going to put the full weight of PlayStation behind it," Murray said.

"If it all comes together as well as expected, it will be treated like a first-party release; it is not a self-published small indie title on the platform."

The trailer for "No Man's Sky" PC and PS4 has been released. It gave fans a glimpse of the open-world game and its multiple universes. It also showed the perspective from a spacecraft which will be used by players.

"Every planet procedural," the game's trailer stated. "Every planet unique. Every planet unexplored."

It was previously reported that "No Man's Sky" PC and PS4 will have a traversable cosmos of 18 quintillion life-size planets. The various worlds were created by algorithms. Everything is generated rather than drawn or shaped by hand.

In "No Man's Sky" PC and PS4, players take on the role of an astronaut. Each player will start the journey on an undiscovered planet where they are the only person in it. Afterwards, players can board their ship, take off, and begin to tour the galaxy.

The ultimate goal for players is to go to the center of the universe. While playing the game, players may not be able to meet each other easily. But, this common destination increases the likelihood that people will encounter one another on their journey.

Here’s how No Man’s Sky’s countless worlds are built - INFYNITEX

SOURCE: http://www.technobuffalo.com/2015/07/16/heres-how-no-mans-skys-countless-worlds-are-built/

No Man’s Sky is huge. That word doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s so big, though, that it would be impossible to manually run quality assurance on without involving everyone on earth. In this week’s episode of PBS Game/Show, host Jamin Warren takes a look at how the game is built and how we don’t end up with just one mess of a planet after another.

The whole game is built on formulas. Plants work basically this way, land masses form in that way, things like that. The system takes liberties with those formulas, putting variations on them to give us the variety we’ve seen in the videos so far.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KlmY7zxAp0

No Man’s Sky: the game where you can explore 18 quintillion planets - INFYNITEX

SOURCE: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/12/no-mans-sky-18-quintillion-planets-hello-games

Sean Murray is sweating in an Uber cab as it lurches to the staccato rhythm of Los Angeles traffic. The 34-year-old video game programmer is anxious. His meeting at SpaceX with Elon Musk, the American business magnate who hopes to put a human on Mars within the next two decades, overran and Murray and two of his colleagues are perilously late for their next appointment. It is, if not the most important meeting of his life, then almost certainly the most notable (and this in a week of notable meetings; before Musk, Murray met the rapper Kanye West). In five minutes Murray and his colleague, David Ream, are due to show No Man’s Sky, the video game he and a dozen or so friends are creating half a world away in Guildford, to the film director Steven Spielberg.

Like Murray, Spielberg is in town for E3, the video game industry’s largest annual gathering, held in boiling LA each June, where publishers show off their forthcoming titles to baying crowds of fans. The cab pulls up at the Los Angeles Convention Centre, where the event takes place over three days. The building is draped in advertising for next year’s blockbuster titles. Murray exits the car with a slam and begins to weave through the crowd, clustered around screens and fingerprint-smeared controllers. He arrives at one of Sony’s cool private meeting rooms, just as Spielberg and his entourage arrive. Inside, Murray, with an apologetic press of a button, loads up the universe.

No Man’s Sky will tick and function regardless of human interaction.

As early as 1984, a computer game called Elite, created by two Cambridge University students, David Braben and Ian Bell, allowed us to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy from the relative comfort of a desk chair. And yet No Man’s Sky is unprecedented. The game presents a traversable cosmos of unimaginable scale: 18 quintillion life-size planets by the studio’s latest count. Murray claims that, were you to visit the game’s virtual planets at a rate of one per second, our own sun would have died before you’d seen them all. These worlds were created, not by the hand of an artist or designer, but by algorithms. As in Minecraft, another gigantic video game world created by an improbably small team, every rock, flower, tree, creature and scene is generated rather than, as in most video games, drawn or shaped by hand.

 The No Man’s Sky trailer released in Feb 2015.

In No Man’s Sky, you play as an astronaut, piloting the kind of nimble craft that once flew on the covers of Isaac Asimov paperbacks. Like those airbrushed visions of space travel, the game offers a curiously nostalgic vision of the future. Every player will start their journey on an undiscovered planet; they will be the only person to have walked its surface. From there, you can board your ship, take off, break the atmosphere and begin to tour the galaxy (all without the interruption of a loading screen). The stars you see in the unfathomable distance aren’t a mere illusion, like fairy lights studded into a black curtain of a stage backdrop, but real orbs. Travel in their direction for long enough and you can touch them. “We are attempting to do things that have never been done before,” Murray told me, last year, when the project had only just been made public. “No game has made it possible to fly down to a planet, and for it to be planet-sized, and feature life, ecology, lakes, caves, waterfalls, and canyons, then seamlessly fly up through the stratosphere and take to space again.”

While you might expect a universe created by mathematical rules rather than an artist’s eye and imagination to be bland and samey, No Man’s Sky boasts tremendous depth and variety. One planet is carpeted by bright orange tall grass, through which antelope-esque creatures plod. The trunks of tall palm trees reach upwards into a green sky, before exploding into a splay of crimson fronds. Another planet is wet with mist; only the tips of a few conifers manage to break the murk. There is biodiversity then, but in this game only relatively few planets sustain life. The conditions will, as with Earth, need to be ideal.

For example, there is a specific distance from a star at which it is likely there will be moisture. From this information the game decides that there will be rivers, lakes, erosion and weather, and every aspect (including the sky’s hue) is dependent on the type of liquid that forms the atmosphere. Many planets will be deserted, some entirely barren. As new places are discovered, information such as whether they’re toxic or radioactive, or whether they contain life, will be uploaded to the game’s servers along with the name of the player who made the discovery. These intrepid names will be forever associated with the location, like a space-bound Christopher Columbus.

Unlike many video games, which are rigged to respond only to inputs and otherwise rest dormant, like a musical instrument awaiting a player, No Man’s Sky will tick and function regardless of human interaction. Animals have daily routines that they follow. They might drink in the lowland lakes during the daytime before retreating to the hills to graze. Heavy freighters will plod through space to their own timetable, following trade routes and visiting planets where smaller ships will peel off to gather resources. As with the game’s terrains and atmospheres, all of this behaviour is based on mathematics: fractal patterns that are followed with clockwork reliability.

The overarching goal for players is to head toward the centre of the universe. This common destination will increase the chance that people will encounter one another on their journey (even if the game sells millions of copies, when your playground consists of 18 quintillion planets, a single encounter is statistically unlikely). But it’s an optional objective. “We don’t know whether people will congregate or disperse,” said Murray. “I know that people don’t like to be told that we don’t know what will happen in our game, but that’s what is exciting to us.” Indeed, it’s entirely possible that a player will roam for years and never meet another soul. Others may never leave their home planet, instead choosing to chart its terrain, month by month. While it will be possible for players to mine, trade or fight with others, No Man’s Sky will also accommodate the lone, nomadic wolf.

For Murray, this kind of solitary existence defined his early childhood. His “eccentric” family travelled a great deal when he was a child. He was born in Ireland but, from the age of four, lived on a million-acre farm in the Australian outback. The family was responsible for its own electricity, water and survival. The farm was a 400-mile drive on a dust track from the nearest main road. “We were completely cut off,” Murray said. This remote existence had an impact that he carries, he says, through life. For one, it seeded in Murray a fascination with the galaxy. “At night you could see the vastness of space,” he said. Later, when his parents bought him a computer, he’d play Elite as a way to explore stars similar to those that he’d watch outside his window.

Murray’s interest in games blossomed into a career with the multinational video game publisher Electronic Arts. He formed Hello Games with three friends, each of whom also worked at major studios, in 2009. When the team began to discuss what kind of game they would like to make, Murray returned to those formative memories under the stars. “Those emotions started to surface, the feelings you had as a child but which are rarely displayed in video games,” he said. “We talked about wanting to explore the vocations that we wanted to be when we were kids.”

Hello Games’s first project, Joe Danger, explored the life of one such aspirational career of childhood: stuntman. The game was a major success (it made its money back within an hour of release) but it also locked the developers into a cycle of sequel-making that Murray and the others had formed the company to escape.

“We went on to make four games in the series across seven platforms,” he said. “Each time you sit down to embark on a new project you start to run the calculations: will this be the next five, seven, 10 years of my life working on this game? It changes your mindset when a single game’s development represents a significant chunk of life. You end up thinking: how many games do I have left?”

READ MORE FROM SOURCE!!!

The chief architect behind No Man’s Sky tells how the world’s most ambitious game came to be - INFYNITEX

SOURCE: http://www.news.com.au/technology/home-entertainment/the-chief-architect-behind-no-mans-sky-tells-how-the-worlds-most-ambitious-game-came-to-be/story-fnjwmb8a-1227357563447

One of the many worlds players can explore in the game. Source: NewsComAu

IF God created the universe, who is Sean Murray?

The chief architect behind No Man’s Sky, that’s who. Murray created a game about exploration and survival in an infinite procedurally-generated galaxy.

The highly-anticipated game is unrivalled in its design, which allows players to explore a galaxy containing 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 unique planets.

Creating a galaxy that met the internet’s anticipation for this ambitious game was never going to be easy, but Murray and his team were up for the challenge.

Bored of this planet? There are billions more to visit. Source: Supplied

Roll of the dice

It was a gamble that left the 34-year-old computer programmer working out of an old two-storey building in Guildford, southwest of central of London.

In 2006, Murray walked away from a secure position with Electronic Arts — one of the largest video game manufacturers in the world.

He had grown tired of corporate game development and felt working in a small team would be more beneficial.

Murray sold his house and enlisted the help of two coders named Ryan Doyle and David Ream and an artist named Grant Duncan, and together they created a tiny game development company called Hello Games.

It was in Murray’s living room that the four men created their debut game about a down-and-out stuntman whose primary skill is jumping over stuff with a motorcycle.

When it was time to release Joe Danger in June 2010, the company was near destitute and things were looking grim.

“I had sold off my PS3, we were down to the bare essentials,” he told the New Yorker.

On the eve of the release, the team purchased some cheap cider and waited to see if their gamble would pay off.

“We decided, we are going to drink cider, and it will come out and do what it will do,” Murray said.

The game was released at midnight. By 1am, the partners saw a return in their investment.

Every solar system, planet, ocean and cave is filled with danger, and you are vulnerable Source: Supplied

Frustrations lead to creations

It had been two years since Joe Danger had been released and Murray was caught in the corporate web he had tried to escape years earlier.

At breaking point from difficult negotiation with Microsoft over Joe Danger’ssequel, Murray headed into the studio to take out his frustrations.

“I was in the studio on my own, and I just started programming. I was furious, and I kept working until three in the morning,” he told the New Yorker.

“Looking back, I think I had the equivalent of a midlife career crisis.”

During his time spent in the lab, Murray created the basis for a game his team had often joked about.

The following day he approached his partners and flagged the idea of the ambitious game they had dubbed Project Skyscraper.

“We’re doing it,” he told his partners.

For the coming months, the team locked themselves behind closed doors and began working on No Man’s Sky.

“I had this feeling: I want to start a new company, like almost an alternate path for Hello Games,” he said.

Knowing making such an expansive and ambitious game would be difficult without a large team, Murray turned to procedural generation — the creation of digital environments by using equations.

By using a variety of algorithms, he was able to design eighteen quintillion unique planet flows out of only fourteen hundred lines of code.

These formulas meant the game would not need to render an aspect graphically until a player encountered it.

“It means I don’t need to calculate anything before or after that point,” he told the New Yorker.

“Does that planet exist before you visit it? Sort of not — until the maths create it.”

Every star can be explored. Source: Supplied

The bush and a trailer

For Murray, his early years were spent on a remote settlement in Queensland some four-hundred-miles off the beaten track.

With seven airstrips, a power generation system, an abandoned goldmine and a water pump all on the property, there was no lack of stimulation for a creative mind.

Murray’s fascination with sci-fi was fuelled during multi-day expeditions with his father, where he would spend endless hours gazing at the night sky.

These childhood experiences would play a vital role in the shaping the success of No Man’s Sky.

Murray had always been an ambassador of tapping into childhood memories as a source of inspiration and when he first put together the Hello Games team, he gave a speech to that effect.

“Think back to when you were a kid. What did you want to be? A cowboy, an astronaut, a stuntman, a fireman, a policeman, whatever,” he told his team.

Practising what he preached, Murray tapped into his early memories of the outback for a trailer he had built to promote the game on Spike TV.

When word spread about the trailer, fellow developers reached out to Murray with warnings because they had fears the game was too vague and unconventional for mainstream audiences.

Murray pushed ahead and released a trailer that showed gamers a number of different components of the development.

“It is a huge game,” he told Spike TV.

“I can’t really do it justice. We wanted to make a game about exploration, and we wanted to make something that was real.”

“Those are suns, and they have planets around them — and you can go and visit them.”

While he gave very little away about the game, critics were impressed with the meticulously detailed graphics.