No Man’s Sky is a very large game. For months now, a dedicated group of players has been working diligently to map an entire sector of space to carve out a home for wayward explorers.
The Galactic Hub Project kicked off earlier this year with dozens of No Man’s Sky players joining together to settle a small region of space to create a staging point for explorers on their way to other planets. It took over two months but they managed to plot an entire section of space.
“Many people, myself included, were dissuaded with the goal of reaching the [centre of the galaxy],” their project leader Conor said. “At the time, Pilgrim Star was the only “tourist destination” in No Man’s Sky.”
The project was announced last October but really took off once Hello Games tweeted about it twice in January. Members of the project, which now numbers at least 80 players, decided to settle a large area of space in the Euclid Galaxy that included at least two systems. After reaching the area, it was time to catalogue the world around them.
The Hub is home to the massive Caesarus, the largest recorded creature in the game.
Among some of the major discoveries was a planet with the largest known species in the game and space stations with some of the best exchange rates for goods. Last month, they managed to completely map a region of space called the Rentocniijik Expanse. It contains over 60 systems and nearly 200 planets/moons.
It’s an effort that has created detailed maps and a small recruitment campaign with tourism posters. One major tool that helped players connect was a pathfinding application that allows players to drop their current coordinates and find a path to the Hub or other destinations.
With the game’s new Pathfinder update adding the ability to share bases between players, there’s even more incentive to head to the Hub and see what’s been built. For players in the Hub, No Man’s Sky is as vibrant and exciting as ever.
“Being in the Hub, it really doesn’t feel like the NMS community has died down,” Conor said. “My personal experience feels more active and connected than ever before.”
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10 responses to “A Team Of No Man’s Sky Players Have Spent Months Mapping A Corner Of The Universe”
Now THAT’S what I’m talking about.
An infinite number of worlds blurs together into pointlessness and – ironically – uniformity. CONTEXT is what gives meaning to anything unique, and that context here is community. As a speck in the cosmos, you are nothing. As a member of a community, you are something.
This is what NMS’s endless barren two-tone worlds of limited-variety environmental hazards and randomly-scattered, meaningless pre-fab structures was missing.
There is no point to seeing, “What’s over there?” when the answer is, “Whatever the procedural generator decided to put there. Roll a 50 sided die.”
They should’ve hired you to do the marketing, seriously.
Which is where Elite gets it right – by being able to influence factions and fly with other commanders, you feel like you’re part of the universe, not a spectator.
Still, I’ll get back into NMS now there are new updates. 🙂
They did their own maps?! That is cool…
Theft is a strong word, If Anyone would like to have a intelligent calm conversation about the many similar game mechanics and design in general that Hello Games “Innovated” from a fellow indie title which is incredibly disheartening, I ‘m game. I apologize for the lack of articulation of my words. I have autism
Which game was that?
This sounds super awesome, might actually check it out with this new update. Makes the universe feel a little less.. lonely, you know?
How can you map something that is randomly generated? Wont it be different for every single player?
When you warp to a new system and look at its planets, they’re randomly generated for you, but then they’re saved to the online database, which is why NMS likes to check in online. Stuff generated randomly on discovery, once saved and uploaded, is then available for exploration by other players.
Randomness with a seed. So the universe is randomly the same for everyone. Like with minecraft how if you manually enter a seed it’ll be the same each time