No Man's Sky

[Binnatics]

Interesting thoughts indeed guys. I wonder what way of world design they use. Did they find a formula to freely vary life forms matching given certain circumstances and other formulas to predict or combine these circumstances?

I heard that our nowadays wiseguys came to the conclusion that life only is possible with a specific match of molecules available in a place, and of course matching temperatures and amount of light etc.

I think that idea is kind of limited; imagine a world very hot, filled with loads of different types of metal and other heavy materials. And another key element (or moleculair structure) that behaves like water in our world does.... imagine some sort of fluid metal. It would allow creatures to appear consisting mostly out of metals and minerals that we would call stones, that can behave comparable to the way we (and the animals and plants etc.) behave on our planet.
Maybe there's life inside the sun. Behaving in a way that goes beyond our imagination. Maybe the milky way is part of something that behaves as a creature, trying to catch and feed itself with other surrounding creatures.
Maybe life itself isn't that special... it's just the visual appearance of what is and what does. Or goes.  :-D

[mmosu]

I think it works much the same other procedural generation protocols do - there's a "bag-o-parts" to pick from and some rules to dictate how they're allowed to fit together. The rules must be fairly loose though, if the system has come up with some things that the people who created it didn't expect. I find this all very exciting - it has the potential to be a turning point in the gaming industry if it goes well. The around ten or so employees over at Hello Games are truly alone in uncharted waters  :-X

[PZ]

About dogs - I think mine might be a bit deaf, and blind.  But then again, what can you say about a dog that dresses like this and thinks she is fooling everyone.

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[mmosu]

Uh, ok, thought you were gonna post a picture of your dog . . .  ;)

[Art Blade]

nice one, mmosu :-D

[mmosu]

But seriously, what's Santa Clause got to do with this? I really thought he was putting up a dog pic! :-()

[Art Blade]

what worries me more is that mouse hanging from Santa's beard.

[mmosu]

Ha! I didn't even notice that!!

[Dweller_Benthos]

To get back on track, Santa trying to disguise himself as a dog notwithstanding....

I wonder what type of character creation will be available? I would imagine in a game where pretty much anything can happen, you should be able to go wild in creating your own character. Hopefully it's not just a couple variations on humans, and some really wild alien creatures can be created for the players to use as in game avatars.

[Art Blade]

that would be something new :-X

[mmosu]

To my knowledge there is no character creation. In fact, that's one of the big mysteries about the game - what does the player look like? It's one of the many reasons players are trying to think of ways to beat the odds and find each other within the game. There's even a joke going around about there being a mirror waiting for us at this "center" we're all trying to find.

[mandru]

The topic of types of creatures and their random generation holds a lot of interest for me.  The thought exercise of speculating about what widely possible environmental conditions there may be as in how hot or cold paired with the available elemental chemistry and as to whether there's even an atmosphere or not is quite intriguing.

As far as life thriving inside stars there was a science fiction novel I read almost twenty years ago that touched on non-hadron creatures (read that as matter not based on baryons with their 3 quarks or mesons with a quark and an anti-quark).  Unaffected by gravity they thrived on surfing photon pressure created in the star's core out to the outer corona and then basking in the varying attractive magnetic fields as they allowed themselves to slowly drift back into the core.  Living for many billions of years life was just one big beach for them and when one party star would finally pass beyond being a cool spot to hang out they would flit off to find their next groovy digs.

The whole how many variables for life are possible and what are the conditions that for those variables to become sustainably viable species generation after generation is mind boggling.  Which brings me to a comparison with snowflakes.

Through winters here where I live I spend a fair amount of time shoveling snow.  I find that my mind frequently falls to the old factoid that no two snowflakes are the same.  There's 39 types of solid precipitation with 35 of those being snowflakes and of the snow flakes there is a further 121 subtypes that those 35 types can be divided into.  We've all seen pictures of intricately lacy snowflakes that appear to the eye to be perfectly symmetrical though at the molecular level there's most likely nothing in the universe approaching perfect.

Of those symmetrical snowflakes almost of the undamaged ones I see are six sided.  It makes me wonder about the variables involved in their creation.  I know there's the obvious influences in snowflake formation.  Humidity, temperature, the air pressure and wind movement at the height the flakes are forming.  Even the flake's position within the cloud can affect its growth but the one thing that baffles me is how in a symmetrical 6 sided flake (six growing radial spars connected at the center set on a plane with a 60° spread from each other that the flake weaves itself upon) what is the factor of communication that takes place coordinating development so that radial sector 1 of a flake matches its opposite member (of the six sides) radial sector 4?  And so on 2 to 5 and 3 to sector 6?  It's also possible as a flake grows that the entire circumference of the outwardly expanding rim of the flake is added one entire layer at a time.  Since all sides are experiencing the same conditions they all form in near identical fashion as they adhere and are shaped by the previous layers of the ice rim.

That only leaves only one other factor possibly influencing flake symmetry and the individuality of each and every flake that I can think of.  For a snowflake to begin to form there has to be a seed particle of dust.  It makes me wonder if the flake's growth towards its final shape is set in motion by the shape and properties of the dust particle which then in its own turn leads my pondering mind to the question "Is it actually that there are no two identical dust particles?  If we were to seed a cloud with millions of laboratory created identical microscopic ball bearings of a hydrophilic (water attracting) material would we increase the chances of once and for all kicking that old "No Two The Same" bit of trivia's butt?  >:D


Sorry for that bit of divergence.  To bring this back to the diversity of species and conditions that can affect them I suspect it can often be the thing we least expect that will turn out to have the largest influence.

[mmosu]

I would guess it also has a lot to do with hydrogen and dipole bonding between water molecules- there are only so many ways they can line up against each other in a stable, low-energy state. The interaction between water molecules at different temperatures was always a fascinating topic for me in undergrad chemistry classes - the properties of water are THE reason that life as we know it can sustain on earth

[Art Blade]

nice post :)

[fragger]

Good posts, you guys :-X Very thought provoking.

Sorry to contribute to the side-tracking of the topic here but if I may be allowed one or two more little side-shoves before we get back into the groove:

Yesterday I found a large stick-insect hanging off the clothesline outside. It struck me (well actually, this sort of thing has been striking me for a long time now): How could something like that come to exist? A creature that looks so much like a twig that it would be almost impossible to detect among the branches of a tree if it wasn't moving. Same with creatures like Indian Leaf Bugs. Things like this are airily described as having "adapted to their environment" or having "developed camouflage as a protection against predators". OK, sure. HOW? The bugs themselves didn't decide to do this.

I know how the mutation process works in principle: Enzymes w@&k their way along a creature's "blueprint", its DNA molecule, within the nuclei of cells, chemically rearranging or pulling out bunches of atoms and replacing them with different bunches (a DNA has billions of atoms in it, but all those atoms are of only four types). By doing this, these enzymes, which are themselves nothing more than protein molecules, effectively reprogram the DNA to better adapt the resulting creature to the exterior environment.

So how does that environmental information get transmitted from the world at large to the enzymes in the cell nuclei, so that they "know" which atoms to remove and which ones to replace them with in order to reprogram the DNA, so that future generations of the creature will be correctly adapted? Of course it doesn't happen between one generation of creature and the next - it takes time. But it works. Brown bears that migrated long ago to colder, whiter climates eventually turned white and grew an extra layer of insulating fat to deal with lower external temperatures. Were mutation a random or chance process, with enzymes replacing atoms in a DNA willy-nilly, the fur of a polar bear would be just as likely to turn out yellow with purple polka-dots as it would an environmentally-adaptive white.

Things don't just spontaneously happen, and systems don't invent themselves. The process described above is a systematized one that follows rules and is reliant on external information being transmitted from a macro scale to a micro one. Somehow. Since the adaptation process is a process, the transferal of information from macro to micro must also be part of that process. Nobody knows how that part of the process works, since there is no measurable or evidentiary aspect to it.

I've long been a follower of cosmology, which in my mind is defined as an attempt to incorporate life sciences into an otherwise purely clinical study of the physical universe (i.e. astronomy). The fact that there is life on his world proves that said life has the ability to manifest itself, whatever the process is that brings it about and makes it w@&k.

Since life on Earth apparently strives to manifest itself wherever and whenever it possibly can, in some of the unlikeliest places such as the highest reaches of the stratosphere and around deep underwater volcanic vents, and since there is nothing particularly unique about the Earth from an astronomical point of view, then I believe it would follow that life would strive to manifest itself wherever and whenever it can in the rest of the universe. If there is the slightest chance at all that life can bring itself about somewhere, it will do so. One could argue that life is not some flukey by-product of stellar evolution but is in fact the final goal of the entire process. Stars form to make the atoms to make the molecules to make the living things and the worlds for those living things to live on.

So I believe that the question of "Is there life out there" is a foregone one. I think the universe is in all probability teeming with it. It's all just too far away for us to be able to detect.

[PZ]

Well said, fragger - to think that this planet among all the universe is the only location of life is the ultimate form of narcissism (or more likely, ignorance).

Unfortunately, that kind of ignorance will be the death of us eventually. Young parents are refusing their children immunized against whooping cough, polio, and others.  It will not be until one of their children dies that they will "learn" their lesson.  These are also the same people that think we should treat our criminals better than they treated their victims.

Combine that kind of stupid with the right to vote and you have set the scene where sharp politicians can lie through their teeth to the stupid population (who believe them), become elected officials or "representatives", and then further their personal agendas.

All I can say is that I fear the arrival of an extraterrestrial superior intelligence to this planet - they might think it better to wipe the slate clean of stupid.

[Art Blade]

I'd appreciate that.

I'd say: He who doesn't wake up anymore was stupid enough to die. He who still walks will shape a different world's future.

[mmosu]

Principles of microevolution dictate that changes in DNA (mutations) are indeed random. From there, it is the brutal, uncaring process of natural selection that decides whether or not said mutation will survive better than it's peers to ultimately contribute more individuals to the next generation of the effected organism.  From there, Darwinism maintains that this process, repeated millions of times over billions of years caused fish to sprout legs, crawl up on land, and eventually swing through the trees, build spears, discover electricity and land on the moon. The problem for Darwinian evolution is and always has been that this secondary process has never been directly observed (presumably because we don't live long enough to see it happening) nor has there been any irrefutable evidence found that it has happened. This is a sticking point that hardcore Darwinists are forced to awkwardly gloss over. Microevolution is an irrefutable scientific fact, Macroevolution/Darwinian evolution is full of holes and offers a dissatisfyingly incomplete explanation of the natural world. But good luck getting anyone with a degree in the biological sciences to be honest about that...

[Binnatics]

So I believe that the question of "Is there life out there" is a foregone one. I think the universe is in all probability teeming with it. It's all just too far away for us to be able to detect.

I think you hit at least something hamer-like on the nail of that life-thingy. I think the same. After doing a whole lot of research in phylosofical approaches of life and the human soul I sort of founded my own principle thoughts concerning that matter. I'd like life to see as either a power, that manifests itself in every possible position in space and time, or as an additional dimension, somehow entwined with space and time.

Speaking of dimensions, energy, mass (the provable and so-far-logical stuff in the universe) and life; there's got to be something even higher that bonds all of these together. I refuse to say something holy. But it definitely could be approached like that.

[Binnatics]

Well said, fragger - to think that this planet among all the universe is the only location of life is the ultimate form of narcissism (or more likely, ignorance).

Unfortunately, that kind of ignorance will be the death of us eventually. Young parents are refusing their children immunized against whooping cough, polio, and others.  It will not be until one of their children dies that they will "learn" their lesson.  These are also the same people that think we should treat our criminals better than they treated their victims.

Combine that kind of stupid with the right to vote and you have set the scene where sharp politicians can lie through their teeth to the stupid population (who believe them), become elected officials or "representatives", and then further their personal agendas.

All I can say is that I fear the arrival of an extraterrestrial superior intelligence to this planet - they might think it better to wipe the slate clean of stupid.

Let's not forget the humor in that fact about politics; they can call themselves "The Rulers Of The Stupid". Or even better; they can say "We Represent The Stupid".  :-() :-()

[mmosu]

Not to list lazily back on topic, but here's some new brief footage on the creative process behind a procedural universe, and some of the challenges and surprises inherent in the process- basically a lot of what had been discussed above:

http://youtu.be/-JT0LMobgWk

[mmosu]

24 hour time-lapse from the surface of a planet. This really highlights the fact that these are working virtual solar systems with actual rotating, orbiting planets and real day/night cycles rather than a "skybox" like most games have:

http://youtu.be/e18jOzi3fGw

[Dweller_Benthos]

This just keeps looking more interesting. The thing is, I can see this being an enormous time suck, it's bad enough, in a "limited" game like one of the Far Cry series, or Fallout or Skyrim, you might think there's a lot to see. But if they pull this off to where it plays the way it seems like it will, then I can see tons of free time disappearing down the black hole that is No Man's Sky. Even Minecraft, which is reasonably unlimited, and with mods can have an unlimited number of worlds to explore, doesn't seem to hold a candle to what they are trying to do with this game.

Free time? What's that? Just need to see the next planet, then explore it's entire surface? Oh boy....

[Binnatics]

Same thing is what I was thinking D_B... gaming sometimes just gets too damn good :-X :-D

[PZ]

Indeed a game changer, literally.  I find the current game worlds very large