Beyond Development Update

August 23, 2019.

Hello Everyone!

It’s hard to believe that No Man’s Sky Beyond launched only a week ago. It has been a super intense and exciting time for us, but seeing the community begin to explore the new features, watching people gathering together in the Space Anomaly, building intricate contraptions, and obviously milking alien creatures has meant a lot to us. Adding big ambitious things, to something already big and ambitious is never easy, but witnessing more than two million people play in the first seven days was so humbling and overwhelming.

As always, we are listening intently, and focusing on the fixes and improvements that are most important to the community. The team have been working hard to safely resolve any critical issues, and we have now reached a point where we can begin to include improvements to functionality, gameplay and performance (as well as continuing to resolve more rare critical issues).

A complete list of all resolved issues is included at the bottom of this post, but we also wanted to take the time to acknowledge and say thank you for some of the lovely things we’ve seen from the player community.

 

Community Spotlight

The No Man’s Sky community is just the nicest and continues to amaze us with your creativity, enthusiasm, and generous hearts.

Earlier in the year, u/thegiftofgaming launched a campaign to set up a thank you billboard near the Hello Games office. The response from the community was so lovely. Not only is the billboard now installed, but the excess funds raised have gone towards providing games entertainment for sick kids at the Sydney Children’s Hospital.

Last weekend, a group of dedicated fans met up at the Three Pigeons in Guildford and took some wonderful photos of the event. (Credit to u/LPlaysGaming for the montage)

We managed to sneak a few edible treats and mementoes over to the pub as a surprise, but this small gesture was outshone by the incredibly touching gifts we received from the group: a box of handwritten postcards in a box decorated with beautiful pyrography, and a high-quality book filled with screenshots of some of their favourite locations in No Man’s Sky. Thank you so much, everyone who contributed, we don’t quite know how to process it!

The day before we launched Beyond, as the team were making all the final preparations for release, we were surprised by the arrival of this delicious treat. Thank you, @StripesbyNW, @Cloudrunner_TV, @kulver and @MarvelDCFan15!

We loved these No Man’s Sky inspired landscape pieces by u/burgercake and u/turtlesalad711:

Some of our favourite screenshots from Beyond so far, from u/sentient_cosmic_dust, u/Unleazhed1, u/kosmonaut_7, and u/AcoupleofIrishfolk

 

Development Update

The momentum of the team has not slowed since the launch of Beyond. We have released 13 patches in just over a week across Steam, GoG, PS4, XBox, PSVR and Steam VR. To make it easier to see all the post-Beyond patch notes in one place, a full list of fixes is below, and when I see it all in one place it’s pretty incredible for such a tiny team.

No doubt this momentum will continue for the foreseeable future, as we continue to improve, polish, and enhance this game that has grown beyond our original vision. Thank you for playing!

Thank you so much,

Sean

 

Patch Notes

  • Enabled mouse and keyboard rebinding on PC. Gamepad and other device rebinding can be performed via Steam.
  • Fixed an issue that caused starships to spin endlessly while attempting to dock in the Space Anomaly.
  • Fixed a situation where network connectivity issues could prevent players from speaking to NPCs aboard the Space Anomaly.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause players in ambient network games to lose ownership of their base or freighter.
  • Fixed an issue where buying technology upgrades with nanites could also remove quicksilver or units.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause players to fall out of the Space Station when approaching technology merchants.
  • Fixed an issue where players were charged too much when trading in their existing ship or Multi-Tool.
  • Fixed an issue where ships that were being added to a player’s fleet would be instead be traded in if purchased while the player’s current ship still had cargo aboard.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the Upgrade Modules popup to display too aggressively, and to experienced players who did not need to see it.
  • Improved handling of the camera in tight spaces.
  • Fixed an issue that caused tips about the Crystal Fragments to appear for players who had no Crystal Fragments.
  • Adjusted the speed of the scrolling text to make it more readable.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented rewards from being seen when handing in Mission Board missions, and instead held the game on a screen with no UI.
  • Fixed a number of issues that prevented hydroponic trays from working with base power.
  • Fixed an issue where pressure switches were not available in Creative Mode.
  • Fixed Health, Power and Shield stations not receiving power aboard freighters.
  • Fixed an issue that caused Batteries and Solar Panels not to attach correctly to building roofs.
  • Fixed an issue that caused animals not to drop mordite when killed.
  • Fixed an issue that prevent mordite being placed in the Nutrient Processor.
  • Made player-buildable sofas sittable.
  • Fixed an issue that caused dismissing notification boxes to also perform in-game actions like firing grenades.
  • Fixed an issue that caused overly dramatic camera shake in the Space Anomaly.
  • Fixed a number of issues with Steam VR in Linux.
  • Fixed a blocker in the Exocraft Technician quest chain, where the Technician could not be found aboard Space Stations.
  • Fixed an issue where storage containers could not be accessed aboard the freighter.
  • Fixed an issue that allowed VR players to punch other players aboard the Space Anomaly.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause player hands to become invisible.
  • Fixed an issue that could prevent players in multiplayer from speaking to NPCs on the Space Station.
  • Fixed an issue where players were asked to collect nanites from an unusable terminal during the Ghost in the Machine mission.
  • Fixed an issue in Creative Mode that would prevent the Overseer mission chain from starting.
  • Fixed an issue where some players were unable to summon the Space Anomaly after upgrading from NEXT.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause dismantling the Signal Booster to remove other building parts.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause black squares to appear when damage numbers were turned off.

 

  • Fixed a number of issues causing some players to experience low framerate after visiting the Space Anomaly.
  • Fixed a networking issue that could cause bad data to be synced between ambient players.
  • Fixed a rare issue where joining a full lobby causes an incorrect player ID.
  • Fixed an issue where players joining a group can be taken to the wrong system.
  • Fixed an issue that caused some network games not to appear in the Join game screen.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the loading progress value to appear in the wrong font in certain languages.
  • Fixed a number of very specific mission and dialog flow problems in multiplayer.
  • Adjusted the VR UI for the Fleet Terminal.
  • Updated the icon for the Noise Box.
  • Tweaked the UI for the Agricultural Robot.
  • Fixed an issue causing text clipping in notification boxes.
  • Fixed a number of LODding issues on specific plants.
  • Fixed a number of collision issues on the Space Anomaly.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause exotic ships to hide their wings when retracting landing gear.
  • Fixed an issue that caused ship cameras to intersect with the freighter hanger.
  • Fixed an issue that caused trade terminals on freighters to intersect the floor (fix will apply to new terminals, old terminals will need to be repositioned manually).
  • Fixed a number of graphical issues aboard the freighter.
  • Made a series of small geometry optimisations to the interior of the Space Anomaly.
  • Fixed a softlock in a specific interaction in planetary factories.

 

  • Added improved warnings for Vulkan driver support.
  • Added improved warnings for GPU issues.
  • Fix for incorrect fullscreen or max size on 4k/scaled displays.
  • Reduced render memory usage to improve stability in high watermark situations.
  • Fix cockpit screens and render targets from not rendering after precise Alt-Tab issue.
  • Increased rendering safety around alt-tab and windowing.
  • Automatically reduced texture quality if the current selection is causing an out of memory error.
  • Revert to the non-device-local heap in low memory situations.
  • Fixed a compatibility issue with a specific revision of nVidia drivers.
  • Fixed a Vulkan compatibility problem with a specific range of AMD drivers.
  • Adjusted GFX memory budgets to improve stability.
  • Adjusted base part data to improve performance in large bases.

 

  • Fixed a number of crashes occurring in the Space Anomaly.
  • Fixed several crashes in the rendering pipeline.
  • Fixed several memory-related crashes.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause a crash when manipulating inventory in close proximity to a high number of players.
  • Fixed a crash affecting VR with supersampling enabled.
  • Fixed a crash affecting unsupported VR hardware.
  • Fix for crash that could occur when spawning an incorrect number of freighters.
  • Fix for crash when disconnecting from Multiplayer in UI.
  • Fix for crash on controller remapping screen.
  • Fixes for performance issues within the Space Anomaly and Trading Posts.
  • Dynamically limit base building limits to allow some very large bases to load in more situations.
  • Fix crash for older chipsets without SSE support.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur during some factory interactions.
  • Fixed a number of crashes related to freighters and multiplayer.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when freighters were part of an invalid ship squad.
  • Fixed a crash when the game is shutting down on certain GFX cards.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred when failing to initialising graphics card on specific mix of card and driver.
  • Fixed a multithreading crash in the matchmaking system.
  • Fixed a crash caused by an invalid base index.
  • Fixed a crash caused by invalid customisation data.
  • Fixed a rare crash when summoning the Space Anomaly.
  • Fixed a rare crash when viewing parts in a networked base.
  • Fix for crash when ship pilot being interacted is removed unexpectedly.
  • Fixed a crash when displaying markers for other players.
  • Fixed a rare crash in base wiring.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur if an NPC tried to walk to an invalid location.
  • Fixed a crash in Sentinel Quad navigation.