Update
The No Man’s Sky 1.10 Patch is now available for both PS4 and PC owners.
Original Story
Hello Games’ long-awaited Foundation Update for No Man’s Sky has been released – on PS4, at least – and fully detailed via a new blog post and video. The update in question weighs in at 2.7GB and may just be the shot in the arm the game needs.
In No Man’s Sky 1.10, returning explorers can now choose between a Normal Mode, Survival Mode, and Creative Mode. Normal is the original voyage you’ve come to expect, whereas Creation is a bit like a Minecraft-style mode where you can create without limits. You’re essentially immortal with unlimited resources, and can build anything for free.
Trophies are apparently disabled in the Creative Mode, though, and it seems as if you can only make a one-time choice per save which mode you’d like to tackle. However, there are now 3 different save slots with base building available for all.
Survival is an intense experience where you need to gather resources and build save points in the field with new equipment. Save points can be built from resources at any time using automated mining harvesters.
You can also set up Waypoints which can be colour coded to mark points of interest, making it easier for a traveller to know where to go for particular discoveries. There are also 13 new resource elements in the update, including biome specific resources.
It’s also now possible to travel to planets entirely devoid of life.
Communications Terminals can be set up to allow explorers to send messages to one another, and a Signal Scanner will help you find mineral desposits, uninhabited bases, and suit upgrades.
Products can also be stacked to allow for increased cargo size, and terrain algorithims create a better overall aesthetic for planets.
The big news, however, is that you can claim a home planet, develop base construction, and build an outpost at uninhabited bases found on the surface. You can farm plants which grow overtime and eventually farm them for resources. You can also recruit alien lifeforms to study technology, as well as help with farming and engineering.
Not to mention that there’s storage containers to stockpile resources and rare products. You can even easily dismantle a base if you find a better location somewhere else.
There’s sooo much more to talk about, but we’ll offer you the full changelog below.
- General Gameplay
- Fixed technology becoming instantly fully charged when repaired
- Fixed ship appearing on incorrect pad in space station after loading
- Added interactable objects that required certain tech to collect
- Added shootable objects that require certain tech to mine
- Rebalanced resource availability and technology charge requirements
- Fixed initial game flow – where travelling to space too quickly after visiting the monolith could prevent the first atlas station notification appearing
- Prevented player being prompted to scan for buildings before leaving the system after visiting the monolith
- Prevented laser and melee attacks while in space from attempting to edit terrain
- Improved calculation of resources received when mining terrain
- Renamed Signal Scanners to Signal Boosters
- Signal booster objects updated to search for playable bases, suit upgrade pods, and mineable resources
- Removed signal booster from being distributed on terrain, as player can now build them
- Improved accuracy of environment detection, fixing cases where it rained inside caves
- Fixed galactic waypoints not loading correctly across saves
- Removed atlas pass v1 requirement from doors in stations
- Suit upgrade pods are no longer spawned in stations
- Suit upgrade pods can now only be used once
- Fixed collision in anomaly that was causing issues when exiting larger ships
- Increased the number of different NPC character models generated per system
- Fixed the game always remaining in day time for players who began their save prior to patch 1.03
- Fixed a potential crash in foliage instance renderer
- Localisation
- Fixed stats page in asian languages
- Fixed multiple issues with asian language formatting
- Multiple improvements and fixes to localisation text in all languages
- UI
- Added new icons for specific types of primary resources
- Fixed health bars not appearing on some targets
- Added hazard and life support drain indicators
- Fixed mission messages not appearing in a timely fashion
- Beacons now notify the player that they will save the game
- Fixed crash when creature IK animations were updated under certain conditions on the discovery screen
- Improved navigation in discovery UI
- Massive speed improvements to browsing huge discovery lists
- Increased size of discovery storage
- Added option to load “Earliest” previous save in Options menu
- Fixed weapon naming
- Added icon to remind players of the reload button when weapon is empty
- Multiple fixes for viewing discoveries
- PS4
- Added photo mode
- Large optimisations to the engine to accommodate base building
- PC
- Added support for up to 8 mouse buttons
- Fixed better order position history for mouse smoothing
- Fixed bug where setting gamma to zero gave a fully bright rather than fully dark image
- Fixed hard-limiting on save sizes, with appropriate warning about free space on boot
- Player is now notified when shaders are being loaded
- Fixed occasional crash on exit
- Fixed performance of trail renderer for some AMD cards
- Large optimisations to the engine to accommodate base building
- Generation
- Added biome specific plants
- Adopted new method of distributing resource plants on terrain, for more lifelike clumps of plants
- Improved distribution of plant life across all terrain types
- Introduced visual differentiation of red, green and blue star systems
- Introduced new mineable terrain resources found only in red, green and blue star systems
- Reduced average building frequency
- Introduced planets with elevated building density
- Introduced planets with no buildings or sentient life
- Increased the proportion of lush and tropical planets
- Decreased the proportion of lifeless planets
- Fixed bug where multiple ships could appear, overlapping, at the player’s start scene
- Prevented certain building types being incorrectly placed underwater
- Prevented multiple buildings occasionally being placed in overlapping positions
- Prevented buildings occasionally being placed intersecting with the terrain
- Improved and altered per-planet terrain resource generation, improving gameplay and visuals
- Creatures
- Fixed elevation cache mismatches, causing errors in creature knowledge and pathing
- Fixed slow memory leak in creature role allocation
- Improved creature animation speeds
- Fixed issues where some creatures turns had the incorrect frame count
- Fixed occasional crash when interacting with creatures
- Atmospherics
- Increased proportion of vibrant blue skies
- Corrected cloud levels for clear skies
- Improved average cloud level settings
- Fixed cloud rendering while flying in your ship
- Improved atmosphere depth when transitioning to space
- Increased fidelity of atmosphere rendering on nearest planet
- Improved atmospheric fog as you fly to a planet
- Improved fog method for planets seen on the horizon
- Terrain
- Improved terrain generation algorithms
- Improved and extended blend areas between different terrain noise types
- Terrains now generate more open spaces
- Smaller features now appear at nearer lods to improve visuals in the distance
- Fixed objects being placed on incorrect terrain material types
- Improved resolution of distant planet terrain
- Decreased differences between planet as seen from space and actual planet terrain
- Fixed seams on planets when seen from space
- Improvements to terrain material selection and terrain material blending
- Terrain generation priority and cost calculation improvements
- Fixed terrain generation angle calculations, which would previously prevent nearest region being generated first
- We now generate caves on lower terrain lods to decrease visual differences in lower detail terrain
- Introduced more varied and vibrant colouring to terrain for each biome
- Decreased frequency of brown terrain colour selections
- Changed texture scales to improve transition between terrain lods
- Improved terrain colour combinations to add variety and better match terrain contouring
- Improved terrain texture blending method to better retain vibrant colours
- Improved settings for hue, saturation and value noise variation on terrain
- Fixed a number of issues causing holes to be seen in the planet terrain
- Fixed occasional crash when mining terrain
- Visuals
- Fixed colour of muzzle flashes on player weapons
- Added muzzle flashes to ship weapons
- Added cockpit lighting for damage and weapon firing
- Added debris to freighter explosion effect
- Improved freighter cargo explosions
- Improved photon cannon hit and space explosion effects
- Improved turret explosion effect
- Improved grass colour selection
- Improved grass colouring method to match underlying terrain colour
- Improved grass placement to match gradient of terrain, and rocky terrain slope patches
- Improved lighting on grass
- Improved alpha cutoffs and blending for grass in the distance
- Improved colouring method for on-planet buildings
- Fixed “pop” in lighting when flying between planets
- Fixed incorrect lighting seen in shadow areas
- Improved lighting method when rendering tree leaves
- Fixed procedural texturing on objects with multiple overlapping textures
- Fixed size of certain texture atlas normal maps
- Fixed texture scaling on asteroids
- Zinc plant is now more obvious when it has been gathered
- Fixed occasional rendering errors due to precision on cockpit during warp
- Fixed pulse lines not appearing when pulse driving out from planet atmosphere
- Fixed shadowing artefacts on imposters
- Space
- Improved asteroids to allow much denser fields
- Improved explosion effects
- Fixed scale of moons on the space map
- Added freighter groups to the space map
- Changed distribution of resources in asteroids
- AI ships will now clear asteroids in their path
- Planets are now scannable from space to see their resources
- Space Combat
- Fixed bounty targets warping out too soon
- Improved HUD indicators in space combat
- Added damaged ship effect on AI starships
- Added formation flying
- Improved locking on passive starships
- Improved AI combat flight patterns
- Added new ship weapon technology
- Holding brake whilst turning now activates drift for fast turns
- Improved AI ship freighter attacking
- Improved freighter targeting code when under attack by enemy ships
- Freighters
- Fixed pulse drive to prevent travel through freighters
- Improved docking code
- Added hangar to the lead freighter
- Added docking in freighters
- Added icon to accessible freighter hangars
- Added colouring to cargo drops to identify what is in them
- You can now only pick up cargo drops that will fit in your inventory
- Added auxiliary freight ships to freighter groups
- Added alert lights and alarm audio for when freighters are in combat
- Improved turret lights and explosions
- Improved muzzle flashes on freighter turrets
- Added indicator of cargo contents
- Freighter Commanders now give rewards for rescuing them from pirate attack
- Fixed collision on freighter cargo containers
- Audio
- Updated the lush ambience to make the wind sounds less noisy
- Ambient background fauna now checks for the presence of creatures
- Added rain on foliage
- Added rain on ship
- Added freighter specific footsteps
- When on a dead planet, no music will play
- Round table prop now plays an appropriate sound
- Added more music to the loading sequence and game start
- Added audio to new base building props
- Created sounds for new base building props
- Added audio to freighter doors and internal freighter ambiences
- Added freighter explosions
- Added freighter alarm
- Added ambient radio comms when approaching a freighter
- Fixed missing sounds when in a space station due to the mix settings
- Multi-tool upgrades now affect audio
- Lots of minor mix changes
- Changed some compression settings for PS4 audio to make the sub-channel audio play more reliably
This update might just go some way to redeeming the game in the eyes of its players, and as Sean Murray has illustrated is merely ‘the start of something’.
Early reports have been positive. Some people have said they’ve spotted 30 animals gathered together at once, something they never encountered before. This did, however, reduce the frame rate to 30FPS.
Some have bemoaned the photo mode, however, suggesting that the suits’ glasses are still on, and you can still see the shader at the top of the picture. You’ll also need to press a button 4 times to remove the HUD.
But very encouraging signs from Hello Games. Would you jump back into the game with this update? What would you like to see next from the Hello Games team?
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