The importance of getting it right the first time (Gaming)

by dogcow , Hiding from Bob, in the vent core., Wednesday, August 10, 2016, 13:24 (3027 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

I remember hearing something on Giant Bomb about how the galaxy itself is generated server side (makes sense... how else could everyone be playing in the same star map). I've only played for about an hour, but I suspect there is an initial connection/download when you boot up the game and or arrive at a new planet. I've lost connection a few times while exploring planets with no noticeable impact on the game, so it certainly isn't "always online" like Destiny. But I do believe the game is dependent on online connections from time to time.

Beware, geek speak/"well actually" follows. :)

So, an interesting thing about procedural content generation (aka random content). If the algorithm doesn't have any true randomness to it then it will always produce the same result, so every single PS4 out there would generate the exact same content, as long as they shared the same code and same random seed. In fact, I heard they used one of the developers phone #'s as the seed for the pseudorandom number generator. Anyway, the fact that random on a computer is actually 'pseudorandom' can cause major problems, especially with cryptography. True randomness on a computer is hard.

I don't know what/when/why NMS connects to the servers, but it seems to be perfectly fine without it. I suspect it's just for naming of locations/species/etc. and maybe achievements.