No Man's Sky: MultiVerse (Fan Project) -  IN DEVEOPMENT

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Cover photo by Stoiyan - https://twitter.com/flameblind

 About me:
Hi, it's Ray. I'm an avid fan of Hello Games and their No Man's Sky. I've anticipated the release of No Man's Sky since it's initial reveal in 2013. I have also enjoyed No Man's Sky since it's release on the Playstation 4 and on the PC.

As a lover of science fiction and art, and also as an explorer at heart... I've had a lot of inspiration from the various unique styles of this game throughout different Eras of HelloGames Man's Sky's development. I love seeing the different unique styles of this game across all builds.  I have also been consistently working on a fan project; a multi-build hybrid (with all complimentary attributes from all known and unknown No Man's Sky builds) ported to the modern game and also being revitalized.  Formerly, 'RaYRoD's Overhaul', RaYRoD's Multi-Verse is currently two years into development. Everything is a continuous work in progress, and I love sharing test versions with whoever may be interested (whenever I feel like I have something substantial for sharing on the latest version of the game).

The 'Multi-Verse' that's self-creating:

I developed self-creating environments that are consistent in quality. In fact, everything is self-creating. Not only environments. Not only do the individual environments get automated uniquely with consistency, they now (re-build themselves dynamically). 'RaYRoD's Multi-Verse' will create itself as you explore from planet to planet and follow the style of concept arts, fan arts, sci-fi book covers, real life locations, NASA imagery, a series of mysterious but revitalized/modernized pre-release builds that are all unique, painterly, and stylish in their own distinctive ways - in-between (various beta No Man's Sky builds, off the record leaked pre-release footages, off the record screenshots, reveal 2013, E3 2014, 2015, early IGN 2016, and PS4 RC1 builds that we've never experienced firsthand), all known released builds... in-between (mid 2016, Foundation, PathFinder, AtlasRises, and NEXT), real-world planetary environments recreated in-game (based off of photography), extremely rare, but unique concept art based worlds (places you wouldn't expect to ever see) - Like Namek for example (lots more to come), various other environments by a few friends incorporated with permission such as: Shaidak's Generation, Better Worlds by TemplarGFX, alongside 20,000 fully procedural but unique; handcrafted biomes by yours truly - that have now been pushed to what is essentially infinite through my code.

No planet will be the same in any attribute. Unique environments with distinctively unique styles.Unique sub-biomes that blend into environments to create a multi-biome kind of emulation Unique terrain. Unique and dynamic weather. Unique visuals. Unique ecology. Unique AI activity. Unique buildings.
Although the Multi-Verse is partially handcrafted by choice (where I look at the conceptual imagery and re-create what I am seeing live in-game, through the executable's memory code), my source code loads those unique templates and re-creates them in a rule-based unique fashion, based off of complex algorithms. You will never know what to expect in your travels. This is a self-creating Multi-Verse consisting of infinite universes with infinite worlds (Irrelevant to the maximum number of a 64-bit value).

 My Ambition (What to expect):

Expect 'RaYRoD's Multi-Verse' to be drastically different (from older versions). You see, I don't like being identified as a 'modder'. I don't like identifying this as a mod. Even though I am, and it essentially is. I see it as a custom multi-build hybrid, similar to former versions, but in this case... every aspect of it is being developed more carefully, from scratch, with higher standards that I'm not willing to bend; and the ultimate goal is to create something that is a blend of every unknown and known build - in such a way, where it hopefully won't really feel like a mod - but more-so, as if it could be an actual addition to the current game because of the effort and refining poured into it.

It will be an entire game overhaul, a multi-build hybrid of every data-mined unreleased, and released version of No Man's Sky (including a series of numerous, mysterious pre-release builds and the PS4 RC1 build ported to PC)... alongside an INFINITE amount of stylish, rule-based/algorithmic biomes modernized for NEXT; without losing any NEXT content. This is a massive game expansion that is carefully being made by me, with A LOT of effort. This fan project is a complete overhaul of No Man's Sky: NEXT, and is always in a continuously consistent development and progression by yours truly. This project has over 18,000 hours invested, and the amount of content and variety that this fan addition to the game brings is endless. This has also been created out of passion and inspiration of Hello Games... and their beautiful No Man's Sky game. There's too much to bottle up, so I recommend just checking it out firsthand when the first custom test build is released.

I set a general standard for myself pre-NEXT for this reboot. That every moment in-game, no matter where you are MUST look like a concept art. Now that NEXT is released, and it looks absolutely gorgeous, I had to set the bar higher for myself. It's still early in development, but I'll get around to other decisions later (as it's too early for that). Everything is also interconnected, so, it can't really be isolated into different components (and function as intended and without issues). So, it's not like a ton of separate mods fused into one thing. Everything is being developed in separate areas from the ground up, for different reasons and different purposes; in order to create one singular mod that just happens to modify a lot of files as that's the natural hierarchy of the game's filesystem. Other assets depend on other assets that depend on other assets. *That would be a lot to get into*, and when equating all factors in all files - it results in the final, intended result. However, the more subjective and intrusive things will be optional.
Feel free to also make requests, when that time comes, as in the potential event of something not being desirable, I'm always willing to whip up a hotfix (override file) that will re-shape it to your preference. Modders will also be able to make compatibility patches, and I'm considering also making some on my part too.

Credits to anyone who has kindly contributed will be included on this official page (whenever this fan project is officially released) and in the official mod source.

There will be infinite variety: 

The motto is quality over quantity. However, who says that we can't have both? I prefer quality and consistency in quantity.  

I am handcrafting procedurally unique biomes, with advanced rules... and now through rule-based intelligent automation.

 
An example of 2,000 *distinctively unique* rule-based, algorithmic, generated sub-biomes:

 

A few examples of one of *uniquely* generated sub-biomes (showing consistency in the generational algorithms): 
 

 

Regarding vanilla (base No Man's Sky game biomes):

 
Boiled down: In the base (vanilla game) - All of HelloGames' biomes are handcrafted; yet procedural. All of the (models that get called through biomes are procedural models that have procedural parts; in which the game chooses which part to load for that model). So, take one procedural rock as an example. On one planet (it may look this way), but on the next planet, it may look another way. However, each biome (even with the assets that are chosen to get spawned have various rules for the style of how the biomes will generate) and there's no limit to different kinds of generational styles and biomes that you can have (while everything being consistently unique and different all of the time). Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of unused assets that are present. The game's engine is using roughly less than 1% of it's potential and a lot of things are underused and there's virtually infinite potential with the engine; which happens to be the groundwork for infinite expansion and flexibility).

 
Regarding an approach of mine (one of many) for 'RaYRoD's Multi-Verse':
 
In this case, I'm generating everything based off of advanced algorithms within the click of a button. It gets really complex. I'd also like to mention that there is a large gap between something being "entirely random" and rule-based with procedural randomization. Random often results in chaotic. Rules prevent that. No Man's Sky in itself is rule-based. RaYRoD's Multi-Verse will also not be entirely random, but rule-based (and also based off of a massive variety of carefully made biome templates made with unique algorithms - replicated based off of concept arts and other creative things in-game by hand first and foremost) - however, every object file/sub biome there is unique and drastically different (and created based off of unique, advanced rules and algorithms).
 
Prior to 'RaYRoD's Multi-Verse" I have had creative ways of creating mass-variety by hand, through the utilization of tailor-made, unique rules... (that I creatively form with the use of HG's engine). Unique methods. Unique styles. Unique ways of affecting things by hand on a mass scale - while not really being random - but not really being static. In other words, I affect the game on a massive scale, and I ensure that 'even I don't know what to expect', being the author of the modded content... but I can surely expect not to see what I expect not to see - due to rules.
 

If you're curious to see, some of my older handcrafted; yet fully procedural work:

 

 

 

 
A universe with depth: 

When I replicated a swamp (from a 2013 photo by HelloGames), I handcrafted a procedural biome with 86 other distinctively unique 2013 Style Swamp biome variations for it... and I also made a custom environmental palette file for it (with different kinds of swampish colors) in aligned areas. Thousands of custom palette files, with custom palettes, for things like grass, plants, water, etc... while also having also an additional, custom, procedural (swampish) atmospherics preset that affected things like fog, height fog, the ground colors, sun colors and sky colors and various other things..., alongside the overall atmospherics of that planet (to make it fit the swamp-like environment) which I made through memory hacking, prior to rewriting in XML, prior to rewriting in python (to add certain RNG values in key areas of that particular struct.... for the purpose of generating millions of (carefully, handcrafted yet uniquely procedural variants of that swamp atmospheric template) to ensure infinite swamp variety.... with a custom file. Afterward, I began creating custom weather in real-time, to ensure that the weather fit the swamp environment and was immersive (which also worked in coherence with the swamp color palette).
So, I have all of these swamp visual assets (properly indexed in their respective files ) - But I have yet to find a way, to have the game to properly index all isolated custom template files, intended to be used with each other like... "SwampPalette.MBIN", The Entry (For the swamp atmospherics) in Atmospherics related MBIN, and "The entry for the Swamp HeavyAir file, getting loaded through the Weather related MBIN that handles which also has other heavy-air MBIN files parsed inside of it, with a probability of getting loaded - in coherence with dynamic weather and over 500 custom weather types that I've made, including pre-release style weather types.
So, the game might load a Swamp biome - But instead of using my swamp palette, it might choose my "natural lush palette" that I made for the alpine biome - and maybe, different weather on the Swamp Biome.
 
As a resolve, I have been working to balance out all potential "what ifs" on a universal scale (by memory) - to make sure that it doesn't have wonky results - but instead a positive result such as "more variety" with consistency (throughout the entire in-game universe)
So, it's a lot of madness that I have been balancing out effectively, to ensure visual consistency.
So that the game looks as I intend it to, and due to the nature of "creative rules" rules... I'm in a place where I don't know what to expect, but I know to expect to NOT see what I do not want to see.
So, now, rule-based automation; I will be able to push things (exactly as I have done before with rules, but in an infinite fashion). I would also like to give a big thanks to a few people who have helped me to get started with this (will credit their usernames in the official release of my fan project update).
 
A video of a Swamp Biome replication (inspired by a 2013 photo by HelloGames): 

Concept (Credit - HelloGames)


My Take:

 

 

 

 

 

A few images containing only a few examples of planetary visuals/atmospherics and space visuals/atmospherics that I made by looking at concept arts, fan arts, pre-release footages, pre-release images, real-life locations, random google images, or photography from outside of my house... prior to painting them in the No Man's Sky game manually, through executable code, prior to porting to XML, prior to re-writing in python (for other uses, in order to generate custom files) - However, in the future, I will be automating my template more practically and effectively...

Image 1: Fan Art Based Planetary Visual/Atmospheric Example (An infinite amount of unique variations of different styles in-game):

 

 

 Image 2: 

Space Visual Replications (An infinite amount of unique variations of different styles in-game, including different styles of black space; dynamically in the same stylish multiverse) -

 

   IGN Footage GRAFNINGARD System Replication:
 
Everything works dynamically, all in one play session without the need for swapping files or rebooting.

 

Infinite Visual Variety (With Consistency):

 

Visual Variety Update: 

~ @RaYRoD_TV