Word has come down that developer Hello Games has stealth-delayed the PC release of No Man’s Sky by three days, from August 9, 2016 to August 12. The game is still scheduled to release on PlayStation 4 in North America on August 9 and in Europe on August 10. However, Hello Games has not commented on why they suddenly changed the PC worldwide date on their website.
The strange, sneaky post has made many question if the PlayStation 4 version will also be delayed, as well as, why is the PC release postponed by three days?
Fans are also concerned about recent allegations from a Dutch research company that claims Hello Games used their patented superformula to calculate how to procedurally generate the game’s vast universe for each player. Hello Games has staunchly denied it on Twitter, but geneticist Johan Gielis has gone as far as to say that Hello Games head Sean Murray admitted he did use this formula to The New Yorker.
And actually, if you read certain paragraphs from this interview, it does indeed sound like Sean Murray admitted to using Gielis’ formula:
“One of the hardest things for us to do is to create coherent shapes,” he told me as he worked. In order to produce varied landscapes, a formula must be able to cope with a wide range of random information without generating mathematical anomalies that cause glitches.
“This sounds ridiculous, but it is hard to find a formula that you can rely on,” he said. The Superformula appeared to be reliable. He pointed to a rocky overhang, which looked like desert geology sculpted by harsh erosion. “This is quite naturalistic,” he said. He added more noise to the formula, rotated the shapes it made, played with their scale, buried them beneath the planet surface. “This is effectively more turbulence entering the maths.”
He envisioned using the Superformula throughout the game, especially at the center of the galaxy, where landscapes would become more surreal. With only small shifts in its parameters, the equation was producing impressive variability. In one rendering, it produced rolling hills.
All of this is conjecture, and as Hello Games themselves has said, it could indeed be a non-story. However, with the numerous delays the game has already suffered, and now this sneaky PC delay, it has many wondering if this “non-story” has anything to do with the recent delay and if the PlayStation 4 will also be affected.
