Settlements are a different case. They’re outdoors, - they have to maintain the same background scenery for all players, all the time. The NPCs can walk freely between buildings, and the layouts are procedurally generated. It would be very difficult to switch maps within a settlement.
Space stations, freighters, and the anomaly, are enclosed areas, with doors, rooms, and corridors. The NPCs are constrained within specific areas, and do not walk beyond them. Whilst exterior features can vary, the basic interior structures are built to a standard plan, and are not procedurally generated.
@GullyFourmyle is correct - I had forgotten about the derelict freighters. HG are already implementing map-switching in some structures. There’s no reason the same techniques couldn’t be used in regular freighters, frigates, space stations, the anomaly, or atlas interfaces. These structures could have as many rooms as you like, and it could actually put less demand on an underpowered computer, not more.
In many ways, map switching is the ideal solution for giving the illusion of limitless space on a device with limited resources - but it only really works in enclosed spaces.
I am not entirely sure what the problem with settlements is on the switch. If it’s simply geometry overkill, well, you don’t have the planetary terrain in a space station, so that would free up a lot of geometry. I mean, the switch has no issues with the Nexus, right?
As I said there are many ways they could do it. It’s a question of if they would create something overly complex that would at best be difficult to accomplish well on old consoles like the switch. The abandon Frieghters are very limited pathing. Thats why you have turrets and lazers. And floating blobs. There are no NPCs walking from room to room like your personal Freighter. Again not because they can’t.
Plus what they going to add 30 rooms with new shops that sell ??? and just procedural switch them around. Personally I think the stations are just fine. I can’t imagine any scenario where the stations are simply not filled with random decor to fill the space, resulting in tons of path issues and complex situations. We have npc that fall through the floor now.
Regardless. They wanna do it, my pc can handle it, lets go.
I doubt its the geometry. They allow base building…I think. I personally think its the complexities of pathing, numerous NPC, sentinel attacks, ship attacks and all the memory etc that goes into all of it combined.
Ah, well, whether they need more rooms is another discussion entirely. We were talking about whether they could add more rooms, and how technically difficult that might be.
For myself, I think one of the problems HG have created for themselves is that when you make a near-limitless universe, you then need to make near-limitless story and activities to fill it - otherwise, the whole exercise becomes a bit pointless.
As it is, we have billions of planets, and not much of any consequence to do on them. It’s hard to see how adding even more space would improve things.
That’s why personally I want to see existing systems expanded. Especially bases. I want way more “reasons” to build bases. Harsher environments, rarer resources. Utilities that harvest water, more plants, more rare materials…maybe with finite materials…reasons to want these materials. Massive projects that need resources, like terraforming, or planetary shields etc. Stuff that takes a long time and effort to do.
Correct. The switch has no issues with space stations or the nexus. They look really nice. It’s weakness is the resolution of building parts. Bases look hideous. I wonder if that is the real issue with settlements…?
Hmmm… it’s got 4 Gigs of RAM, and it can be assumed that it follows the console pattern of sharing the entire RAM between GPU and CPU. That could make texture resolution a problem. For complex bases and settlements, you probably need quite a few individual maps (though I would assume there’s a lot of sharing going on). And in settlements, you get the NPCs in addition, and you need additional memory for the bloody planet around it.
Sounds like a plausible hypothesis, though I have no idea how close to the mark it hits.
Settlements have a few extra challenges over the stations, freighters and derelicts. Their NPCs have uneven terrain and stairs. It looks like they are performing IK in the walk animations. The station NPCs are on rails, the freighters seem to be a bit more free, maybe a navigation map. ?? And the derelicts only have the monstrosities, which can walk on walls, but scurry and I can not see any IK going on–alignment to normals, probably a pre-computed path with branches. Settlements do some proximity checking between NPCs and between an NPC and the player. I doubt this cost a lot, but it is one more thing that they do. Settlements also seem to simulate at long distances, if I stand on a cliff, about 400u away I can still see the settlers moving about. They are paper dolls skating across the landscape but they are moving. Culling seems to be similar to the way bases are handled. At least frustum culling and some occlusion. (Plus LOD of course). I haven’t overloaded a settlement, but did place 5 bases in close proximity for the Jetson build. When walls would fail to build, or I moved far enough away for the thin wall to be culled, I could still see some interiors. Curiously it seemed that when a base became visible after being occluded by a tree, it had to be rebuilt as if they expunged the occluded parts. The prefabs from the derelicts would help here, no windows to worry about and simple to cull.
My settlement sits in a basin. Apparently that basin is not natural but the settlement stamped out the hole and settled into it. When I fly in from space, the basin and my settlement are covered over with land. As I approach, the land peels away, revealing the basin and my settlement.
I found Autophage devices out in the wild (not at a ruined space station core or a sentinel ship) and these ones had different lore messages than the others. They’re a string of numbers (not binary). Any idea what they could mean if they are some kind of code?
I don’t expect a message in this part. It’s just lists of primes or even numbers. If anyone sees a meaningful pattern, please share.
The first just calculates “the previous number times 2”, the second is the fibonacci sequence (add both previous numbers), the third just lists primes.
This one is just adding a regularly increasing sequence of numbers
+2 +4 +6 +8 +10 +12 +14 +16 +18 +20 +22 +24 +26 +28
UI_ROBO_HEAD_CORE_7 just adds even numbers +2 +4 +2 +4 +2 +6 +4 +6 +2 +4 +6 +6 +2 +12 +4, but I don’t see the pattern.
UI_ROBO_HEAD_CORE_10 just multiplies the previous value with some prime number? Don’t see any other pattern
*3 *2 *5 *2 *3 *7 *2 *11 *13 *2 *3 *5 *17
Each is some primes multiplied, and then plus one/minus one, in turn:
2 * 2 * 2 -1 = 7
2 * 3 * 7 +1 = 43
2 * 7 -1 =13
2 * 2 * 13 +1 = 53
2 * 3 -1 = 5
2 * 3 * 5 * 7 * 13 * 43 * 53 +1 = 6221671
2 * 2 * 11 * 23 * 107 * 107 * 3340919 -1 = 38709183810571
2 * 3 * 23 +1 =139
And from 2801 on, the intern’s calculator broke, and it just lists primes…!?
I haven’t looked at UI_ROBO_HEAD_CORE_9, 11, 12, 13 yet.
These are all standard number sequences known to mathematicians. I wish I could claim to be smart enough to have worked this out for myself, but I’m not, and I didn’t - I looked them up. I very much doubt that there’s a message in the numbers, since they are all standard sequences - but there could be a message coded in their names “prime Markov colossal weird magic” - it’s very tenuous - I don’t know.
1 - 2 - 4 - 8 - 16 is a standard geometric progression, the number doubles with every iteration.
To me it feels like these sequences are there to suggest a higher intelligence is behind everything. Is it the Atlas? The Void Mother? The Korvax themselves?
And autopage…can we discuss this? It is a process where normal cells ‘clean house’ and dispose of bad material. Did the nanites in the water trigger this response? What are we seeing here? The early Korvax when they cut open the sentinels and began to merge with the tech?
I have many questions.
Sheral Myst: I agree with the intelligence angle, it reminded me of Contact, where, to establish a common language with intelligent beings, the unknown aliens first send messages about maths, because its patterns can be detected without language.