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Inside a tiny home base on a fungal world

The Sun Never Sets on My Third “Tiny Home” Planetary Base

05/19/2020 blakespot Comments 1 comment

Last week I shared the second “tiny home” planetary base I’ve built since deciding it would be fun to create these cozy little dwellings all over the galaxy. Well, galaxies, I should say; my first two bases were located in the Eissentam galaxy, while this latest can be found in Euclid, on PC, in Normal mode.

For this base, I chose a rainy, rocky fungal world with low-slung mountains, carved deeply with caves and outcroppings, that stretch off into the horizon. The sentinels are frenzied and often come knocking for a visit… This world’s rock formations are so distinct and pronounced that it wasn’t hard to find an interesting spot to build, once I identified the general area where I wanted to build.

In doing so, I utilized a short guide by Redditor u/Cheater42, entitled “Banish The Sun: How to locate your base where the sun never sets,” which caught my interest a few days before this build. Following the guide, in about 25 minutes I had found the vicinity of one of the planets poles, and then set about looking around for a particularly interesting spot. In short order I had located two facing outcroppings of rock that allowed me to build my base in a sort-of “bridge” arrangement. The planetary coordinates of the base are +24.80, +107.85 (but I don’t feel that these correspond with the polar area of other planets).

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Continuing My “Tiny Home” Base Undertaking, I Present My Second Effort

05/11/2020 blakespot Comments 1 comment

Last weekend I shared the first in what I expect to be a long list of “tiny home” planetary base builds to come. After completing the last, I moved on from that lush and violent, purple world to a desert moon that I had visited several months earlier and saved in my records. It is tormented by frequent dust storms that cause the atmosphere to take on a particularly ominous aspect, which is what made the world stand out to me when I first discovered it. And the sentinels are on high alert.

Upon returning to this dusty moon, I spent some time flying over different parts of it in order to find a spot with a nice view of the orbital planet, as well as dense and varied flora. I think I did alright in this regard, in the end.

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A Look at My “Forever Starship,” Found Way Back in NMS 1.0

05/08/2020 blakespot Comments 1 comment

On Saturday, October 29, 2016 (at about 9:52am) I found my forever starship. It’s a fighter, of silver and red.

This was in the original release of the game, when crashed ships were everywhere and you could grab one, fly off, find another, and repeat — usually jumping up a notch in slot capacity every time. That dynamic ended a few weeks later, though, when the Foundation update landed.

I present this post as a pictorial of one of the very nicest looking ships I’ve encountered in the game in my nearly 2,500 hours in, but also as a sort-of bug post aid for Hello Games because, as you can see, with the release of Beyond, the wing nacelle color treatment has become anti-symmetric; the color of one wing engine evolved to not match the other over the course of a few updates. I have only seen this in fighters with this particular wing arrangement, known as Wing_K (and quite a few other than mine: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4). I’ve reported the issue to Hello Games via the ticket page, but it is, as yet, unaddressed. [Update: Skel#8634 (Discord) let me know that there is a mod that partially works around this issue, for PC users who want to give it a try.]

It is interesting (this issue aside) to see how the design of a ship’s features has evolved over the nearly four years since No Man’s Sky launched, especially the extraordinary details that have been added in recent updates. With the release of Beyond, the scale of the game’s ships increased significantly, a move necessitated by the addition of VR gameplay. This allowined for greatly more intricate details to be put in place. The ships, today, look incredible and far more refined than they did “at birth.”

▲ *No Man’s Sky* 1.0x – October 29, 2016

▲ *No Man’s Sky* 1.0x – November 6, 2016

▲ *No Man’s Sky Foundation* – January 15, 2017

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Community Event #27 : A Pearl of a Weekend Quicksilver Quest

05/06/2020 blakespot Comments 1 comment

No Man’s Sky Community Event #27 took place this past weekend on a lush world with skies and grass of blue. The event was centered at the site of a crashed starship. Upon arrival, players found the wrecked hull of the downed ship aglitter with a strange static energy. The sickly smell of scorched hair and flesh emanated through the waves of static. A demand was heard — and a threat. The hunt for Albumen Pearls commenced.

I participated in the event in the early afternoon of Sunday the 3rd and saw much activity on the ground and in the skies as other interlopers labored to quell the demands of the static anomaly. As well, a more than usual number of player bases had been constructed across the surface of the event planet, and other planets in the system. Some of those I visited were quite impressive in their design and construction. And some were well-stocked with a certain, particular type of flora that made things a little easier for those accepting the assistance… (And this weekend, that was me.)

The accompanying video shows some of the highlights of the weekend event, as I experienced it.

It’s great to rake in that Quicksilver, as a player who recently resurrected a two-year-running Eissentam galaxy save file that sat dormant since NEXT landed in 2018, and is trying to secure all the base adornments. But, the real fun of these events, for me, is seeing other players doing their thing, along with the wild bases they inevitably create within the event system.

Two-room tiny house on a purple, lush world with a mountain looming in the backgdrop

My First “Tiny Home” Base and a New Twist on Exploration

05/01/2020 blakespot Comments 10 comments

No Man’s Sky got base building as a play mechanic with the November 2016 release of the Foundation (1.1) update. While exploring the unknown is the thing I most enjoy doing in the game, I immediately took to base building, as it allowed you to inhabit one of the worlds you discovered — a world that really stood out, to you.

Basebuilding got even better with the arrival of the NEXT (1.5) update. NEXT provided a great many new building materials, allowing for completely new types of bases to be built, and it allowed players to build not just a single base, but many. I presently have around 15 bases between my Euclid and Eissentam galaxy saves. Some are pretty rough, some are quite nice. Some I’ve more or less abandoned.

I have shared several base walk-throughs on this blog — a few of the stand outs. But, here I am sharing the first of what I think will be many “tiny house” bases or encampments.

Oftentimes, I will discover a world that I find interesting and unique, but I’m unsure as to whether I want to put the time into actually building up a proper base on the world, though I might like to revisit it occasionally. When this happens, I usually end up jotting down a description and the coordinates in my NMS travel notebook, and moving on. (And, I rarely make it back.)

Well, a short while ago on the subreddit I noticed a post by u/TempTheTempster that really stood out to me. This user shared a few photos of his “Ultra Tiny Home” base that I found clever and very well done. Cozy. Seeing this, I recalled the recent efforts of another Redditor that I had been enjoying, u/NewGodOfWar84, who has been doing a sort of one-base-a-day build series and sharing them in the sub for the past few weeks. These two things came together in my mind and it occurred to me that it would be a lot of fun to (as always) explore and, upon finding one of the aforementioned worlds that has something about it that stands out to me, build a tiny base, varying them as I can along the way. This will actually serve as a driver for deeper exploration, I think.

The base I am sharing here is located in the on an extremely violent, lush, purple world in the Eissentam galaxy, in Normal mode on PC (coordinates can be seen in one of the photos). As is plain to see, I have borrowed the base design quite heavily from u/TempTheTempster in this first build, but it will be fun to work through finding my own particular approaches to so small a planetary dwelling. I am currently building my second tiny base and will share it, or one of the next few, as my effort progresses. I hope you enjoy.

UPDATE: See the other “tiny home” bases I have built during my travels.

Thrilled by the Nod From Hello Games in Their Latest Development Update

04/23/2020 blakespot Comments 1 comment

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.

No Man's Sky graphic shown rendered on an Amiga CRT on Hello Games' Community Spotlight website section

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. 🙂

Community Event #25: A Craving for Cubes

04/21/2020 blakespot Comments 0 Comment

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.

Screenshot of the Sky Island Cottage base

A Tour of My “Sky Island Cottage” Base

04/13/2020 blakespot Comments 1 comment

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.

The floating rock island on which sits the Sky Island Cottage

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?

Amiga 1000 displaying No Man's Sky pixel art

A Pixel Art Doodle on a 35 Year Old Graphics Machine

03/18/2020 blakespot Comments 4 comments

I am now into the second week of teleworking (I prefer “working from home”) in response to the pandemic sweeping the world, presently. As such, when work winds down I try to find something to engage in down in the basement Byte Cellar (so named due to the associated blog).

Yesterday, after work, I decided to fire up my Amiga 1000, which I often use for BBSing these days, and started to play around a bit in Deluxe Paint III. I spent hundreds of hours drawing pixel art in DPaint III in the late ’80s, and an initial scribble turned into a couple of hours of working on a No Man’s Sky space theme piece. I posted it to Reddit and it was rather well received, so I thought I would share it here. It’s certainly not my strongest work (well, “strong” isn’t the word for anything I’ve done in this arena, to be sure) but it’s the first thing I’ve drawn on the Amiga in many years.

Closeup of Amiga 1000 screen showing No Man's Sky pixel art drawing

I did an earlier No Man’s Sky thing on this Amiga a year or so ago and it also was well received. Sean liked it, at any rate. 🙂

keyboard OLED display with No Man's Sky text shown

The Keyboard With “No Man’s Sky” on Its Mind

03/10/2020 blakespot Comments 6 comments

I started playing No Man’s Sky on launch day on the PS4, and a few weeks later I decided to build a gaming PC in order to play at a higher resolution and framerate. Among the parts I ordered for the build was a Corsair keyboard with Cherry MX Red linear keyswitches. Cherry Reds are ideal for gaming, but make any sort of actual typing a rather unpleasant affair. For quite a while I had been wanting to switch over to a board with a somewhat more tactile feel.

The other day, I ran across a reddit post showing a keyboard with an uncommon feature: a small OLED display. The display works in conjunction with driver software to provide status information from supported apps, but it also can be used to display a static image or animated GIF*. The user that made the post is an Elite:Dangerous fan and showed an animated GIF of the wireframe Cobra Mark III ship from the 1984 original Elite on his keyboard display. I quickly realized it would be fun to use that display for some sort of No Man’s Sky image or animation. So, I finally replaced the PC’s keyboard with a Steelseries Apex 7 TKL board with Brown switches, providing a subtle tactile feel. (I am something of a keyboard hound, actually.)

The new keyboard has quite a nice feel and its little 128×40-pixel OLED display is a fun little feature.

After the board arrived, I sat down and made a little pixel-art No Man’s Sky-inspired scrolling GIF and loaded it onto the keyboard. It’s definitely fun to glance down from the screen and see my ever-scrolling homage to the game, there on the board’s little display. I’ll soon put a few other graphics together for the display, in time, to add to what’s already out there.

I felt readers might enjoy this little exercise. Download the animated GIF if you’re a Traveller with a Steelseries keyboard.

No Man's Sky animated GIF for Steelseries keyboard

* GIF is pronounced with a soft “g”.