How is No Man Sky so big

[Cenat]

Did they really think of 18 quintillion names and took the time to design 18 quintillion planets and sounds and creatures and landscape for each planet and stuff? Wouldn't that be impossible? I mean 6GB of storage and how is it possible you design 18 quintillion planets in a matter of years when it will take well over a billion weeks for a billion people to explore each planet individually???

[derp215]

The planets and the stuff on them are procedurally generated.

[Owlrrex]

derp is right, further additions: 

1. I'm pretty sure that 18 quintillion is the number of possible combinations, not the actualy number of generated planets/locations. Just a theoretical value
2. Recombination and reusage of assets gives you tons of options. Have the same model of a tree, just recolor the trunk and use different texture for leafs (checkered instead of striped) and you have a 'different tree'.
3. Not all locations are kept in memory, I guess. Only the parts of the world that are currently being observed are actually rendered. A player can discover hundreds of planets after each other, but not be close to any more than 3-4 during space travel, so no more than 3-4 need to be actually computed at a time. 
4. Storing data combinations is incredibly efficient. When you have good asset organisation, just having a list of "which object-id uses which texture-ids in what transformation (loc/rot/scale)" for a large area is just a matter of few MB, tops. 

[Cenat]

25 minutes ago, derp215 said:

The planets and the stuff on them are procedurally generated.

What does this mean?

[Cenat]

16 minutes ago, ArrexDrandko said:

derp is right, further additions: 

1. I'm pretty sure that 18 quintillion is the number of possible combinations, not the actualy number of generated planets/locations. Just a theoretical value
2. Recombination and reusage of assets gives you tons of options. Have the same model of a tree, just recolor the trunk and use different texture for leafs (checkered instead of striped) and you have a 'different tree'.
3. Not all locations are kept in memory, I guess. Only the parts of the world that are currently being observed are actually rendered. A player can discover hundreds of planets after each other, but not be close to any more than 3-4 during space travel, so no more than 3-4 need to be actually computed at a time. 
4. Storing data combinations is incredibly efficient. When you have good asset organisation, just having a list of "which object-id uses which texture-ids in what transformation (loc/rot/scale)" for a large area is just a matter of few MB, tops. 

Oh. Thanks. 

[Owlrrex]

1 minute ago, Cenat said:

What does this mean?

Let's explain it with a math example: 
If I want to tell you numbers, I can enumerate them: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and that takes a long time, and at some point, you'll want more numbers than I have prepared.
Or I tell you "All even numbers". That's a function, it describes how you generate your number (start at 1, add 2 for next number). So, whenever you need a number, we just use our generation function (add 2 to last number), to get a new one. We'll never reach an 'end' of our set of numbers. 
You can do this with all kinds of things, not only numbers. Planet's properties (atmosphere, temperature, color, wildlife) for example. That's procedural generation. 

[Cenat]

Just now, ArrexDrandko said:

Let's explain it with a math example: 
If I want to tell you numbers, I can enumerate them: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and that takes a long time, and at some point, you'll want more numbers than I have prepared.
Or I tell you "All even numbers". That's a function, it describes how you generate your number (start at 1, add 2 for next number). So, whenever you need a number, we just use our generation function (add 2 to last number), to get a new one. We'll never reach an 'end' of our set of numbers. 
You can do this with all kinds of things, not only numbers. Planet's properties (atmosphere, temperature, color, wildlife) for example. That's procedural generation. 

So basically at some point the planets are not really that unique?

 

Well that is sad, sounds like Minecraft now :C

[Owlrrex]

Minecraft was one of the earlier games using procedural generatoin, yes. 
But how good (or bad) it really is depends on the function used and the seed data set. If you generate something from a pool of 4 options, you'll see repetition quickly. If it's random from a pool of 4000 options, it might take a while. If you combine multiple options, you got multiplying numbers - that's how they reach the 18 quintillion different planets. If 6000 of those options are just different soil colors, and another 6000 sky colors, that have no affect on gameplay, you're already down to 5 billion remaining options that are maybe gameplay relevant.

It all depends on what features they combine. How different is the different monster's AI (if you have 300 different animals, but all use the same AI, they will feel bland after 2-3 mob types encountered), how many of the options actually have relevant gameplay effects. We can't now.