Development Update – 1.59

Hello Everyone!
Thank you for your feedback and kind words after our last development blog post. We hope to continue sending these updates for a little while. It’s nice to be at a point in time where we can share information and updates with the community.

While some of us are also beginning to work on new features and content, the team continue to work hard making fixes. We listen intently to the community and appreciate the effort people go to in writing up bugs and feature requests.

 

Community Research Update
The response to our first community mission was great to see, and your feedback is being rolled into 1.59 and 1.6. It was also lovely to read all the messages left by explorers on the Community Research planet – so many notes sent from all across the world and broadcast all over the universe.

Specialist Polo continues their investigation into a strange new phase of galactic generation. The collective digging efforts of the last week have given them a vast store of Hex Cores on which to experiment, and they have several promising leads. What secret do these cores hold, what message are they bringing for the universe?

While they continue to investigate, Polo’s mind has turned to biology. Beginning on Thursday 6th September, they will reach out to all explorers and once again request their assistance in documenting the changes taking place in the fabric of reality.

This research project involves finding and feeding animals on a planet that shows signs of previous Hex Core contamination. Dedicated Travellers who explore the diets of the creatures on this world will be rewarded with Quicksilver to spend at Polo’s Synthesis Bot. Polo notes that explorers are free to carry out their own research or refinement projects on any animal byproducts produced during these encounters.

The Quicksilver Synthesis Bot has also developed some new items:

  • A range of new base building parts. Travellers may attempt to curry favour with the Gek or the Sentinels by constructing large metal statues around their home.
  • The sleek, stylised Blazing Orbit helmet, available as a fully-recolourable customisation option to the Anomaly suit.
  • A pair of touching decal portraits of Nada and Polo themselves.

A new laughing gesture, allowing Travellers to experience joy.

The Synthesis Bot is striving to please its masters by creating a diverse range of new items, tailored to their desires. Significant new developments will appear in the shop in the coming weeks, as well as new ways to discover Quicksilver while playing…

 

Community Spotlight

No Man’s Sky has always been a game that is built on the community and the stories that you generate. The beautiful screenshots, shared discoveries, fan art, stories, comics – these are incredibly inspiring to the team. It’s a privilege to work on a game with such a passionate community.

  • u/SinCity1886
  • u/IronZerg
  • u/Glarznak
  • u/PainfullyMinty

(Credit to u/SinCity1886, u/IronZerg, u/Glarznak & u/PainfullyMinty)

We also want to give a special shout out to reddit user u/AcoupleofIrishfolk, whose screenshots feature as the wallpaper on more than one computer or phone among the team.

 

Development Update – Current Patch and Future Plans

Patch 1.59 is live on all platforms today and has a number of critical fixes. It also introduces the new items to the Quicksilver Synthesis Bot.

While some members of the team have been working to make these fixes and to get them to you as soon as possible, the rest of the team have been hard at work on upcoming features and critical fixes, optimisations and Quality of Life improvements. Some of these will follow in the coming days.

We don’t normally do this, but here is a sneak peek, the team are also currently working on:

  • Fixing an issue that prevents shared bases from downloading while exploring.
  • Adding new attack behaviours to the Biological Horrors…
  • Enabling terrain tessellation on PS4 (base and Pro) and Xbox One X. New dynamic tessellation enables detailed terrain height maps without sacrificing performance.

  • New, custom options for body shape have been added to the appearance modifier. This gives players far greater control over how they appear in the universe, increasing the diversity and variety of characters for all races
  • Based on feedback from the community, we’ve added the ability for players on PC to set Hotkey Bindings to rapidly access options in the quick menu. This allows players to bind commonly used functions such as switching to third person, using their torch, or entering photo mode to number keys (or those mice that have loads of buttons).

As we continue development, more of the team will become free to work on new features. We want to involve the community in shaping these features, and hope to share some of this plan with you in the next few weeks.
Thank you for being here with us as we continue to develop No Man’s Sky NEXT, and we hope you enjoy all our improvements and expansions to the game.

Thank you so much,

Sean

 

Patch 1.59 Patch Notes

  • Added new items to Polo’s Quicksilver Synthesis Bot
  • Fixed an issue that could cause discoveries to stop saving.
  • Fixed an issue where players with a specific number of inventory slots would have some slots hidden by other UI elements.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause Community Research portals not to return players to the correct galaxy after mission completion.
  • Ensured that the first entry in the Space Station Teleport list will take players in the incorrect galaxy back to their home galaxy.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause portals to close and not lead players back to the correct planet.
  • Fixed an issue where players could become stuck on a black screen.
  • Fixed an issue where the starship was unable to land after changing missions while facing a mission marker.
  • Fixed an issue where players with corrupt saves would be recovered but have no ship (please note – this involves instances where the ship was the corrupt data, and so ships have been restored to default).