A path which is not completely lost.
No Man’s Sky was bust, according to a lot of gamers. They were right, we can say, because there were a lot of broken promises about the game and the price was very high, considering the content in our hands. However, in the past few months, Hello Games broke their silence with a big update, called “Foundation”. This showed us that they are working hard to correct their mistakes, that we should give a warm pat on the backs of all the people in the studio. Perhaps, we shouldn’t hate people for their overly-excited states. Hate is bad. Hello Games or Sean Murray doesn’t deserve all those discouragement, people. There are other things that we can channel our hate into –like massive corporations, politicians and petroleum refineries.
Anyhow, No Man’s Sky has a second big update (version 1.2) going live today. It is named “Path Finder” and it brings a lot of new gameplay improvements –stuff to keep us busy while discovering new planets. “It shows the path for the future”, the developers state. Let’s see what it offers.
Visual updates
Along with the PS4 Pro support, PC users get a couple of visual improvements including high and ultra resolution textures, high contrast lighting effects, improved post-processing with several filter options and HDR mode for compatible monitors and televisions. Here are some comparisons:
Online base sharing
You build bases, you put them on Steam Workshop, and other players explore & rate your base. Base building options are greatly increased. While we mourn for a true co-op mode, this could be the first step achieving it. Not only putting them on Workshop but exploring it with our friends would be fantastic.
Exocraft (New vehicle)
Now we can acquire a land vehicle called “Exocraft” if we invite a Vy’keen Technician to our base and completing a series of quests. There are three types of Exocrafts: Nomad, Roamer and Colossus. Nomad is a light vehicle that can slide on water, Roamer is the “normal” of all three, useful in most conditions; and Colossus is the big guy who can carry a lot of resources. You can race through checkpoints, and share these races with other users via Steam Workshop.
Other updates
You can now own multiple starships, and customize them with even more options. Also there is a “Permadeath” option while starting a new game. You die, game over. You can take cool and shiny pictures of your starship the “Photo Mode”, you can customize weapons and their firing modes and customize your multi tools. There are also new vendors and shops.
We’ll see if Hello Games will keep their promises about a “path to the future”. If you ask me, I am strangely optimistic about this game. A lower price tag would be good, of course.
Below are the full patch details. Stay tuned!
Patch Notes (1.2)
AUDIO
- 50% more generative soundscapes
- Additional game loading and game start music
- Added multi-room base ambiences
- More detailed rain system, including room dependent and indoor window rain
- Added indoor storm ambience
- Changes to reverb system
- Fix for a flood of sounds which could occur during the tutorial
SHIPS AND SPACE
- Improved ship landing code
- Fixed AI ships appearing in the air with landing gear deployed
- Ship weapons operate using a new multi-mode system
- Fix for being able to spawn freighters underground while you are jetpacking
- Prevent all docking points in stations, freighters and outposts being taken by AI ships
- Fixed issue where ships could occasionally become invisible
- Fixed an issue where spawning into a freighter in near-planet orbit would occasionally place the player underground
- Freighter containers now drop less Titanium, Thamium and Copper
- Freighter containers now have a chance to drop Nanite Clusters
- Traders can now drop Nanite Clusters
- Traders no longer drop Copper or Iron
- Reduced camera shake whilst taking hits in space combat
- Reduced pirate damage in survival mode
- Reduced damage on ship laser
- Tweaked ship exit animations to improve player placement
GAMEPLAY
- Added damage and resource numbers in combat and when mining, toggleable in the Options menu
- Allow multiple weapon types on the multitool
- Free weapons and ships now have broken slots
- Recruit NPCs have more descriptive names
- Fixed holes appearing in high detail terrain regions
- Made player respawn positioning more robust
- Introduced new growable plant type
- Fixed slow memory leak in material effects
- Removed several minor memory leaks on warp
- Boosted shield recharge rate whilst in caves slightly
- BoltCaster Rate of Fire and Laser Mining Speed upgrades are now known from start. Tweaked build requirements so that both are possible to build on player’s first planet
- Drones now drop small amount of zinc on destruction
- Reduced amount of platinum from depots
- Fixed Vy’Keen depots dropping titanium instead of platinum
- Improved balance of hazards on Scorched and Frozen planets
- Reworked NPC secondary interactions to give you standing in exchange for offerings
- Reduced the amount of tech given by NPCs. In most cases they will now reward tech fragments instead of blueprints
- Reduced the amount of tech available for NPC reward
- Fixed projectiles shooting through certain unmineable substances
- Adjusted space stations to minimise cases where NPCs intersect with the environment
- Fixed issue where the suit upgrade chamber would occasionally disappear
BASE BUILDING
- Fixed NPC terminals and ladders being removed from the central room of bases after the player leaves
- Moved snap points for the glass corridor to be correctly grid aligned
- Galactic Terminals now have consistent pricing, regardless of where in a base they are added
- Fixed plants not being removed after removing the planter below them
- Deleting a room now refunds not only the room itself, but also its contents
- Fixed some plants and rocks not being removed when placing down a base building part
- Fixed the colour of the base terminal light occasionally resetting to red
- Terminals no longer can be build over windows in the central room
- Fixed base building colours becoming corrupt under specific circumstances
- Fixed some NPC missions counting the number of parts in your base incorrectly
- Fixed landing pad not snapping correctly to some parts
- Fixed issues where resource harvester would fail to gather resources
- Left mouse button and right trigger can now be used to build
- Fixed various precision problems with building in freighters
- Fixed some cases where grenades would fail to edit the terrain
- Organised parts in the base building menu to be more intuitive
UI
- Added animation within the Quick Menu
- Changed the hyperdrive stat to be measured in Light Years
- Opening the menu will now return to the last page you viewed
- Added a new Tech stat section to the Tech info popup
- Improved mouse smoothing
- Improved mouse sensitivity
- Clearer and more detailed multitool, ship and freighter comparison screen
- Fixed flickering transition between Inventory and Options Menu pages
- Reduced number of menu options requiring a button to be held rather than pressed
- Improved responsiveness of button holding
- Fixed a bug in the options menu where the title bar would flicker
- Improvements to discovery timeline UI
- Added “Set Waypoint” option to the solar system pop-up
- Improved alignment at aspect ratios other than 16:9
- Prevented player notifications showing up during credits and redeem screen
- Fixed issue whether error messages would be shown for charging and repairing before the options had been selected
- Increased icon resolutions to support play at 4k resolutions
- Fullscreen effects are now correctly displayed when entering a hazard
- Disabled the quick menu while warping between systems
- Removed obsolete Generation Detail option in settings
- Updated display of new discoveries to be clearer and more readable
- Fixed some Japanese and Russian localisation issues and text overlap
- Made cinematic black bars less frequent and obtrusive
- Made is so cinematic black bars can be dismissed
- Race standing is now displayed on the journey milestone page
- Fixed various windows occasionally appearing partially offscreen
- New visuals and backgrounds on mode select, options and inventory screens
VISUALS
- Reduced banding artifacts on some metallic surfaces
- Fixed seam artifacts on some normal maps
- Fixed shadows being too black over water on certain planets
- Fixed very occasional errant black geometry in space
- Improved performance of water rendering
- Improved performance in forward rendering passes
- Improved performance in spotlight rendering
- Fixed some issues with flickering lights
- Correctly oriented IBL map, fixing several lighting issues
- Fixed issue where vertex displacement would glitch when walking between regions
PC
- Support for Intel HD Graphics 530, 540, 550, 580, 630, 640, 650
- Reduced banding artifacts in gamma correction on some GPUs
- Escape key now goes directly to the quit options page
- Improved and expanded Steam Controller mapping
PS4
- Support For PS4 Pro 4K Rendering
- Support For PS4 Pro Delta Colour Compression
- Support For PS4 Pro automatic Depth Buffer decompression