Just a brief post to give my appreciation to Hello Games for featuring my Amiga pixelart drawing in the Community Spotlight section of their latest Development Update. I posted about the drawing in question not long ago on this blog, and apparently, through some avenue, it landed in front of the Hello Games team and was met with fondness.
Yesterday, Sean Murray tweeted out the Development Updates page, and several Twitter followers were quick to alert me to the inclusion of my fan art in their release. It was a lovely thing to see, for me.
It’s always fun to paint on the 35-year-old Amiga 1000, but this sketch wasn’t the first No Man’s Sky project I’ve carried out on this, my favorite of vintage computers. About two years ago I transformed my favorite NMS travel photos to Amiga format images and created a slideshow that ran on this same Amiga. I made a blog post and video of the project and it seems Sean Murray was impressed.
Now all we need is an Amiga port of the game… Well, I’m not going to hold my breath on that one. 🙂
This past weekend saw No Man’s Sky Community Event #25. I participated in the early afternoon of Saturday the 18th and was pleased to see a good many other interlopers in the event system, laboring to assuage the hunger of the event planet which, it was revealed, required an offering of Vortex Cubes. This, it seems, was the disturbance detected by Nada and Polo and conveyed by Hesperus.
The event took place on a megaflora planet featuring forests of behemoth, leek-like life forms. Locating Vortex Cubes on this world meant descending into subterranean caves or boring through the very bedrock with the Terrain Manipulator. The task was simple enough and the cravings of the planet were satisfied in fairly short order. During such events, though, it’s seeing other members of the No Man’s Sky community running about the world and, also, visiting the bases that some of them leave behind, that provides the most enjoyment for me.
The accompanying event video shows some of the action during the event and highlights a few of the bases found on the event world and on others in the system that I happened to have visited. I hope readers enjoy the glimpse of the weekend’s activity.
During the summer leading up to the release of the Beyond update (No Man’s Sky 2.0) in August of 2019, I travelled to a small community hub known as Neo Wanderers (and later as The Masters Association). It is the third player community in the Euclid galaxy that I joined, after the Galactic Hub [ base photo ] and the Korvax Ascendancy [ base photo ]. What I didn’t realize before I set out was just how small a community it was — in fact, on my platform (PC), I was then and am now the only resident in the system.
No matter, however. After arriving at my destination, I explored the planets of the core system and, as I was flying over an orange and blue ocean world, I spotted a small pair of floating rock islands that struck me as the perfect place for a cozy little base. I touched down, wandered through the small patch of trees atop the main floating formation, and began construction of what has become perhaps my favorite of the bases I have created so far in the No Man’s Sky universe.
One of the hallmarks of the base is an extensive use of lighting — both inside and outside the cottage, on the ground, in the trees — extensive. Sadly, when Beyond arrived, the base went dark, and seeing its power and wiring requirements (which is a mechanic I’m glad Hello Games added, actually), I knew the aesthetic of the base would be destroyed if I were to wire it up. And, so, I left the base behind and moved on to other things.
Happily here, nine months later, the recent arrival of the Exo Mech update (No Man’s Sky 2.4) brought with it the Electrical Cloaking Unit that allows the wires that power various base components to be hidden! Noting that, I returned to my Sky Island Cottage, located and tapped into an Electromagnetic Power Hotspot, and went crazy crazy with the wires. And, a few hours later things were as good as new — better, in fact, with some tweaks and additions I’ve added along the way.
I made a walk-through video to have a record this base, in the event that the Beyond update reset the universe. (I didn’t see the wiring thing coming…) That video is shown here, along with a few photos, old and new. I hope you enjoy my build. If you’d like to visit, the base can be found in the Euclid galaxy on PC, in Normal play mode at coordinates 09DC:0082:0DDE:0079. Find a portal and stop in for a visit, why don’t you?
