In an interview with IGN at this year’s Gamescom on Friday, August 15, Sean Murray, the co-founder of Hello Games, the studio behind the anticipated No Man’s Sky , has taken a moment to explain just how vast the in-game procedurally-generated universe of the title will be.
According to Murray, during the early days of development for No Man’s Sky , Hello Games used a 32-bit number to generate all the planets in the game’s universe. With that kind of system, Murray explained that, “ with that 32-bit number, it would take you four or five thousand years to see every planet if you spent only a second on each one. ”
While that’s an exceptionally long time relative to the average human lifespan, Hello Games wasn’t happy to stay with an in-game universe of that size. So, the studio opted to use a 64-bit number to generate the universe.
This decision was made in part of receiving feedback saying that there was no way the in-game universe of No Man’s Sky could be infinite, because all technology has a limitation. However, with a 64-bit number, Murray told IGN that the game’s universe would take about five billion years to explore every planet if you spent one second on each.
To put it into perspective, a relative example would explain that our local star, the Sun, would die out before everything there is about No Man’s Sky will be explored (in about 4.6 billion years). As another batch of perspective, the Milky Way galaxy will collide with our neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, before all the things in No Man’s Sky are explored (in about 4 billion years).
It’s not infinite, but it might as well be relative to the human lifespan.
Though nothing new of No Man’s Sky was shown at this year’s Gamescom, Murray did tease that, “ we will have something big to show soon. ”
No Man’s Sky will debut on Sony’s PlayStation 4 at a yet-to-be-released date (although it’s said to release worldwide in 2015). A PC version has also been confirmed .
We’ve also established that No Man’s Sky may also be implemented with “ a more traditional multiplayer, ” which was teased during a recent interview with Murray.
We’ll bring you more news on this year’s Gamescom and No Man’s Sky should further information reach our ears.
[ IGN ]