professorhat

@hadlee73 aha that's good to know, I've been unlucky so far and got recipes for all sorts of things but no antimatter yet. I'll keep trying!

@AFCC yup, found a few giant reptile type things, though all herbivores and had big bug like eyes. I named one Larry.

@Greenlightracer deleted my comment as I didn't see your Facebook post and what it said, so realised quickly it wasn't right for me to comment on it

@hadlee73 I have the exact same issue, but I already jumped once. I'll let you know if I figure it out!

I'll never understand the internet and the need for so many people to attempt to force their own opinion on anyone who disagrees, especially when it's about something so unimportant as a video game. But apparently it's the world we live in. Sammy, I'm sure you don't need to hear it from me, but it's okay to disagree. Anyone who spits venom is someone who's opinion is probably worthless.

No Man's Sky is fantastic in my opinion, and definitely better than that other game that consumed hundreds of hours of my time (it begins with Destin and ends in y). But I can definitely see why some people dislike it. Personally, I think this sort of game is much better than the bland, try and please everyone approach games we see virtually everywhere else. The gaming industry needs some controversy, and that doesn't come from EA, Activision or Ubisoft any more. Love it or loathe it, No Man's Sky is a good thing for the gaming industry. Hopefully we can all agree on that!

I don't find the inventory system bad. It's limited to start, but part of the progression is to expand it. I've got 18 slots in my Exosuit and 24 in my ship now (and I've seen a ship with 35 I think) - I always find more than I can carry, but that would happen however many slots there were. It forces me to carry on moving and exploring rather than getting bogged down on one planet.

I wrote this elsewhere, but it seems more apt here:

I think for me it comes down to tapping into childhood dreams. When I was a kid, i loved space. I was lucky enough to go to Florida in 85, and they had a ride in the Epcot Center where you took off on a space rocket and saw the earth zoom away from detail of ground until it was a planet in the distance. It was magical for me!

Everytime I take off in No Man's Sky, it takes me back to a tiny extent to that experience. I'll never get tired of it. And just flying from planet to planet, taking a look around, analysing wild life, taking off, trading etc etc. Marvellous! I always read about this stuff in Asimov novels, and watched in Star Trek, and can finally be that person in this game.

I guess if you were never that interested in space, this would probably be quite a dull game. But this is the reason I think many of us are so captivated by it.

@Bad-MuthaAdebisi Ok, cheers matey, I'll keep plugging away hoping someone will sell me some soon. Fortunately there's five planets in this system, two with an abundance of life, so plenty for me to do while I wait

I bought a new ship with no hyper drive fuel and I'm stuck in a system as no recipe for antimatter, and no one seems to be selling it (spent a while in the space station). Any tips on most likely location to find the recipe?!

I think for me it comes down to tapping into childhood dreams. When I was a kid, i loved space. I was lucky enough to go to Florida in 85, and they had a ride in the Epcot Center where you took off on a space rocket and saw the earth zoom away from detail of ground until it was a planet in the distance. It was magical for me!

Everytime I take off in No Man's Sky, it takes me back to a tiny extent to that experience. I'll never get tired of it. And just flying from planet to planet, taking a look around, analysing wild life, taking off, trading etc etc. Marvellous! I always read about this stuff in Asimov novels, and watched in Star Trek, and can finally be that person in this game.

I guess if you were never that interested in space, this would probably be quite a dull game. But this is the reason I think many of us are so captivated by it.

@scubydo You get a choice at the beginning to follow the quest or just explore. I'm not sure what the difference is as I'm following the quest and there's nothing which is forcing me to do anything "quest like". I'm perfectly at liberty to roam and do what I want - in fact, I've had a hyper drive for a while yet, but I'm still pottering about my own system exploring. I'm sure when I do eventually hyper drive out, I'll pickup the next objective.

Oh my god, I fricking love this game...

Downloading now - haven't been this excited about a game since the morning my PS4 was due to arrive...

@Neolit I did! After watching 20 minutes of the 45 minute demo PS put on their channel I pressed the pre-order button. Downloading now. Also looking likely I can't make it into London tomorrow because of the train strike, so will have to dial-in - what a damn shame!

So this video convinced me I need this game. When you left the atmosphere, i went "ooooo". I can't wait!

Part of me knows I don't have time to play this at the moment, but another part of me just wants to hit that pre-order button and download it at midnight tonight so I can try it! I think the only thing stopping me is I have to be up at 5am tomorrow for work

Looking forward to the review, but just finally started Uncharted 4, so plenty of time 😉

I'm sure this was on the Commodore 64 first...

I was going to comment, but so many others have, I didn't have time to read them all, so I'm sure my point has already been said. Btw, i enjoyed Destiny, great value for money.

Played Destiny, played the Taken King, loved them. But I've moved on now. Still got to start UC4 for goodness sake! And then No Man's Sky. And then probably PS VR.... (where is the time... mutter mutter)

Size genuinely isn't everything folks. Unless you're talking Monster Trucks...

@get2sammyb What about Lewis Hamilton?!

@stevejcrow Well yes, obviously if the bandwidth has been increased to ensure speedy download of PS4 games, then music files will take advantage of that. But the point is, the bandwidth will have to been upgraded to ensure download of tens of gigabytes of data doesn't take days. A retailer only selling MP3s wouldn't need to lease anywhere near the same size pipe as one which is allowing the download of HD movies etc. Plus you're ignoring the storage - uncompressed CDs are 700 Mb max, a PS4 game is going to be 30 - 40GB. Storage isn't cheap when you need multiple redundant copies across the world - it won't be sitting on USB disks!

From what I've seen, HD movies are still generally more expensive than Blu-Rays to purchase. You also have to remember competition - there a lots of different places you can purchase digital music and films, and competition drives down prices. PS4 and Xbox One games can only be purchased digitally from their respective stores. Perhaps this is something that needs to be changed in future...

As I say again, one day this will change and digital copies will get cheaper, but we're not there yet.

@stevejcrow
(a) Digital music is a much more mature market - the fact you can stream pretty much anything for free now also means intense competition has lowered prices.
(b) the size of digital music files is tiny compared to that of an HD movie or a, PS4 game. A Blu-ray costs nigh on the same to produce and distribute as a CD, but a PS4 game is at least ten times the size of data, and more likely 30 to 40 times the size. All of that data has to be stored in highly available expensive data centres, with vast bandwidth available to ensure they can be distributed to millions of people across the Internet in a reasonable time frame.

Like I say, I'm sure one day, it will catch up and become cheaper than physical distributions (especially once more digital sales occur compared to physical sales, pushing up the cost of producing the physical copy). But that day is not here yet.

I agree, £35 is a good deal for this game digitally. People seem to assume a digital copy should cost less because it's not printed on a Blu-ray. Fact is Blu-ray cost literally peanuts when printing in this quantity, and the distribution of them is cheaper than the ludicrous amounts of compute, storage and networking equipment required to digitally transfer tens of gigabytes of data to all the purchasers across the Internet. At some point, yes, digital purchases should become cheaper. But I don't think we're there yet.

Not pre-ordered as I'm not 100% confident it's going to be an amazing game. I'm looking forward to it based on the potential of what it could be though.

Too much, but it's the way the world works. We at the bottom ain't gonna change it, unless by some miracle we vote in a party that will actually change things, rather than just keep everything pretty much the same as it's always been. (BTW, I'm certainly not implying UKIP are the party to change things. Anyone who thinks that is seriously deluded!)

As noted though, at least he's being rewarded for success, rather than driving a company into the ground, ruining countless people's livelihoods and pensions, and still receiving millions of pounds to boot.

Agreed, it needs the attention because it requires something that didn't come with PS4. And you can bet that there will still be loads of returns from people who say "Sure, it said it on the front, but I didn't realise it actually "needed" Playstation VR!"

A good point, it is nice to see a lady taking centre stage, and without the developers feeling the need to give her skimpy clothes and massive "assets".

I like the idea of Father's Day = an excuse to do some gaming. Might actually get in a few hours tomorrow instead of bits here and there!

Finished the Nathan Drake collection finally last week, so was hoping UC4 would arrive this morning. Alas, no, so I can at least start Batman Arkham Knight which I missed on release, so picked it up cheap a few weeks ago.

@TomKongPhooey knowing Murdoch, yes, absolutely. He'll be after their young hearts to make him immortal. Probably.

Hmmm, I'm not sold on this either. Whilst I'm sure it will be enjoyable, it didn't look like anything that special to me. At the moment, I get to play one game every month or so (at best), and I doubt this one is going to make the cut.

Pre-ordered months ago. Feel vindicated that I did now 😊

Really liked the first one, can't wait for the second one!

I must have really low expectations. I'm enjoying E3, but perhaps it's because I'm just hoping to see updates on new games that are coming out, rather than having my mind blown by everyone who even thinks to walk on the stage?

Poor old Watch Dogs 2. I really enjoyed the first one and the sequel looks like it's going to be a good upgrade on it - definitely one I'll be buying. But Red Dead 2 pips it is as my most wanted.

Argh. As a (relatively) new parent, my time for playing games has reduced down to a few hours a week once work, household chores, and, you know, parenting is all done. When will I fit in time to play this and Uncharted?! (still working through Nathan Drake collection!).

Seriously though, I frickin' love these games, and could be a very good Remote Play candidate on the Vita.

@themcnoisy there's two options with your proposal:

1. At the point of producing the gold code, forbid the development and optimisation of it from that point on. The product is good enough, so that's it. In the past, that was the only option, but given that the guys are still being paid and there is a perfect delivery system for patches now, I'd argue why? Does it hurt to allow development to continue beyond the gold date, and ship it to consumers through a patch? A line in the sand has to be drawn for shipping code to be pressed on a bluray, but that doesn't mean any more that development should stop on that date, so why not carry on?
2. Move the shipping date until no more meaningful development can be done. End result, people get pissed off due to constant delays, and I'm sure there are financial implications for constant delaying of the manufacturing of the physical discs. Not a good option.

Thing is, games now are upward of 20GB of code (and media obviously). That's huge!! When games could run in 512k (or even 64k!) of Ram, there wasn't so much of an excuse, but now, they're so complicated, I honestly think it's not unreasonable for developers to rely on patching to fix things and add extra features they just couldn't get done in time for release, so long as they're not releasing a buggy unworkable POS and then fixing it afterwards. That is taking the pee, and I think we'll all agree on that!

@themcnoisy let me ask you a question? Do you write code as a job or even as a hobby? If no, then I'm afraid you just have to accept that that isn't how the vast majority of developers work. Sorry, it's that simple. And if they therefore can make the code better in the ensuing weeks after the disc has gone gold, why the hell not release that optimised code / extra features as a day one patch?

If you do write code and you're able to do it as you say, then you're a very rare beast indeed sir. Take pride that project managers the world over love you 😊

Whether the PS4K "splits" the fan base or not is irrelevant in terms of ongoing success. The key is the perception of the public on what it does. Sony's marketing team have a hell of a job communicating that PS4K is compatible with PS4 and vice versa, whilst also driving sales of both. I think if they're wise, they'll concentrate on PS4 sales, and leave PS4K to the hardcore gamers, who know the difference. Whilst also every now and then mentioning VR!

Anyone who doesn't understand day one patches has clearly never written any kind of script or program. You meet a deadline with a working version, then you look at your code and go, "Ooo, could do that", and then "That would make it much more efficient". Within 2 days, you're sending out an updated version. It's just how these things work.

But I don't NEED an external hard drive. At all. I have plenty of space on my 2Tb internal drive. I would LIKE to tidy up my home screen though. Did you get my note about people having different priorities from yourself? It's crucial to understanding other people's opinions

@Majic12 Yes, I'm afraid I am seriously thinking that folders is more important and should be added before external HD support. I don't need to connect an external hard drive but I would like to tidy up my home screen. Shock news coming (brace yourself) - not everyone shares your priorities! Quick, sit down and I'll bring you a cuppa to soften the blow

Remote Play on PC / Mac and being able to appear offline is key for me (I hate playing online most of the time!).

Hmm, I'm not sure this is a good move, unless it's literally just to allow 4K support. I suspect this is what it will be, with the mainstream move to 4K TVs now underway, it makes sense that people can buy a console with 4K written on it, and marketing wise may well sway more to PS4 rather than Xbox One.

Any other changes in terms of better graphics even on standard HDTVs is a bad move I think, as it risks p*****g off an existing, currently very happy market, especially those who've only purchased recently. So given Sony's track record, it's a possibility, but I hope not!

Either way, they need to come out with a statement to stop the rumour mill!

I had a great time with Destiny and played it to death. And that's it, it's done now - moving on with my life! Hope others enjoy though!

I'm done with Destiny for the moment (after several hundred hours of fun, so great value for money). Whether I pickup Destiny 2 will depend on if I can convince my friends to get it. I only really played on my own, and this restricted a lot of what I could do. Tried a few times to play with others, but I'm just not into actually chatting with random strangers!

Need to get back into it - Destiny finally released its grasp on me a few weeks back, so now have some time to play everything else!

Fallout 4 - just need to find the time to play it next!