No Man's Sky

So, No Man’s Sky released today on steam. So far, reviews have been mixed due to issues with performance and crashing. Personally, I’ve been running it fine and enjoying it so far.

If you’ve got the game on PC but are having performance issues, try following this reddit thread. They’ve already released one patch and will certainly be releasing more to fix specific issues over the coming days.

Once I’ve played it a bit more I’ll write a proper review, but my quick summary is that it’s pretty awesome, if you can get it to work.

Unfortunately my shitty-ass laptop with Intel Iris 6100 can only get to OpenGL4.4, and No Man’s Sky needs 4.5…

all that hype for nothing…

The game crashes for me after the intro, the stars move then it goes to a white screen, the game freezes and then crashes. I have a below the minimum requirement for a gpu which also runs opengl 4.4, I’m not exactly sure what the deal with it is but I’m hoping things get fixed soon. I’m expecting laggy gameplay anyway on my computer but not launching is ridiculous.

Asmo, intel graphics are not supported because they don’t have complete opengl support.

Ital, this is probably due to your CPU not supporting a specific technology needed. The devs said on the steam forums that they’re working on a patch to fix this.

If anyone else got it working, there is another change you can make: for some reason Gsync is enabled by default and can’t be disabled from graphics settings. Here’s how to disable it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/4xgw82/pc_users_incredible_fps_fix/

AMD users: Download the new beta drivers

Nvidia users: Download the OpenGL support drivers

Luckily im getting good fps in game at high settings, one of the lucky few…

But the game itself looks blurry as fuck, as if its rendering in 720p and up scaling to 1080. Its bugging me out.

People on the subreddit are reporting that the resolution settings are acting up on some configurations. They will probably want to work on making sure that everyone can launch the game first before working on fixing the in game issues.

Sean Murray said on twitter that a patch which includes:

• Shader Cache issue – means that framerate is initially stuttering on some cards. Whilst it resolves itself over time (~1 hour of play), we will fix this issue in a patch. • SSE 4 – for CPUs that do not support SSE 4, it is causing the game to crash on boot (some of these area technically below min spec, but we don’t want it to crash!) • Mouse controls jitter on foot – this caused by a combination of certain resolution and GFX card. A fix is in progress.

It seems that they didn’t test the game on enough configurations. It runs buttery smooth for some people, and like absolute shit for others. They’ve now brought in an external QA testing team that will hopefully resolve these issues.

Last few years many major PC game releases compared to the console releases are just bad releases… You’d think they’d start watching out for it but it keeps happening >,>

Honestly I think the problem is that every year each manufacturer increases their range of graphic cards and CPUs. Whilst it’s normal to expect some issues with people’s gfx/cpu combo, this is a bit ridiculous.

Just reviewed it on steam with my current progress:

[b]This review is based on my current experience with the game, I will change it if it gets boring too quickly [/b] There are many issues right now, but I could get my game working. So far, it has been fun. There's been huge variation in the planets so far, and the species of creatures are obviously different. I think that a lot of the negative reviews where people aren't seeing much variation are honestly just due to bad luck, as some planets WILL be similar, although I've not come across similar planets yet.

There is a story, but it’s fairly minimalistic and you aren’t obliged to follow it. So far it’s been entertaining.

If you’re currently crashing or getting awful performance, please don’t just refund and walk away. The devs are working on patching it, and hopefully it will fix the issues because people are missing out on a fantastic game. It’s sad to see the game with “Mixed” reviews, and I do hope that if the developers iron things out, this game will get better reception, although I do thing the shoddy launch deserves all the criticism it’s getting.

I’m excited to see where this game goes in the future. There is a lot of potential in the game, and the devs have made it clear they will continue to update the game with extra content. As for it being repetitive, I can imagine the land/dig/explore/takeoff cycle getting a bit dull after a while, but this is an issue which most survival games suffer from and I hope that Hello Games can release enough new content to keep it entertaining.

An experimental branch is now live

Includes:

[ul][li]Improved support for AMD Phenom, however there will be issues with physics on these cpus[/li]
[li]Alt-tab should now work on all systems[/li]
[li]Shader fixes that should resolve stuttering[/li]
[li]Mouse jitter solved[/li]
[li]FPS Cap now actually works properly[/li]
[li]Improved performance with CPUs with 4 threads or fewer[/li]
[li]If you have an Intel GPU (cough @Asmodean_ ) it will now tell you rather than just crashing[/li]
[li]Gsync is now disabled by default, should reduce stuttering issues[/li][/ul]

Whilst it’s still a bit shitty that these issues were in the game on release, at least they’re actually fixing it and communicating (unlike WB with Arkham Knight, who took nearly a week).

If you do still have problems, contact NMS support.

But will it work? Or just tell me and then crash?

The game will now let you know if you are trying to run with an unsupported GPU. This will hopefully flag for some users that their high end GPU has not been selected.

So… no luck for you. The problem is that Intel graphics aren’t designed for gaming, so they don’t support many technologies needed because they’d increase the cost. Until Microsoft Excel requires OpenGL 4.5, you’re out of luck.

The good news is I found out what an eGPU is.

The bad news is since HP is almost as bad as Apple, the mPCIe slot is whitelisted and it can’t be un-whitelisted without fucking up the system.

I’m thinking of getting Elite: Dangerous but it says the minimum requirements are:
Graphic card: AMD Radeon 4870 / Nvidia GTX 260 (DirectX 10)
It doesn’t say anything about Intel Iris but given that I’ve got DirectX 12 would it still be ok?
(all the other stuff seems to be fine)