No Man's Sky "A Very Sad Case of Over-Promising & Under-Delivering", Says Osiris: New Dawn Creator

Soaring away through the universe in No Homo's Sky has been a dream for many since the game was appear. Reality turned out to be much different when the game released, though, in a very disappointing fashion; the Twitter debacle from last week is but the latest episode of a sad serial.

In the meantime, other fairly similar games have been released such as Osiris: New Dawn. Created past industry veteran Brian McRae with his studio Fenix Fire Entertainment, it launched a couple of months ago on Steam Early on Access, something that peradventure Hello Games could have used in gild to correct the form of its projection.

Osiris: New Dawn is a much more than focused experience, with gainsay playing a far more important role and multiplayer already working. And so far, the approval rating is positive with a 78% recommendation from user reviews on Steam and the game is also in development for PlayStation 4 and Xbox Ane. We've chatted with Fenix Fire's CEO & Founder Brian McRae, who also offered his stance on No Man's Sky, to discover out more about the game'south past, nowadays and future. Savour!

Which books, movies or games inspired you lot for the concept of Osiris: New Dawn?

I've ever been hugely fascinated past infinite travel, astronomy, planets and theories of alien life. Space is such a bang-up backdrop for anything sci-fi related – I all the same have memories of watching the original Star Wars in the theaters back in '79 (I'thou dating myself, I know). I'm a huge fan of anything Ridley Scott has washed as I retrieve he has a great grasp on how astonishing and terrifying space tin be, particularly in "Aliens", "Prometheus" and "The Martian". I as well love "Starship Troopers" and I guess I wanted to bring that kind of fun experience to Osiris. I've also read The Martian and quite a few theoretical books about how we'll travel to and live on Mars, in addition to countless fiction novels.

Several users commented the game's videos on our YouTube channel by saying 'This is what No Human being's Sky should accept been like'. What do you call up of what happened with No Man's Sky? Was this debacle more beneficial or harmful for your game, given the similarities betwixt the two?

Information technology's funny y'all mention the No Human being'due south Heaven comparisons; when we debuted Osiris at PAX West, that was a surprisingly common annotate from attendees and from media when they saw and played our game. At that time the negative NMS fallout was nuclear and from what I have read almost the situation, it's a very sorry instance of overpromising and under-delivering.

Information technology's hard to say if the whole NMS situation has been more benign or harmful in regards to Osiris. Obviously, given the negative criticism towards NMS, we were quite cautious on whatever negative fallout toward whatever space-based games and thankfully, nosotros've had very positive response from editors and gamers alike. We made a very conscious decision to be as transparent as possible with the public in regards to our evolution process, updates, and more; that has fabricated a very big impact especially on our forums and I truly believe that our constant daily engagement with our audience has made a huge positive deviation. I hope other indie game developers take a like mental attitude in beingness open up with their audience – while in some means I experience the NMS state of affairs has "forced" developers to communicate more often and with greater clarity, that'due south probably the best policy.

I too want to make information technology clear that the only real similarity between NMS and Osiris is that both games are based in space and have exploration and crafting elements – beyond that, NMS had a completely different endgame than what nosotros're intending, especially when information technology comes to multiplayer (e.g. nosotros take it working).

The game recently released on Steam Early Access. What kind of feedback did you lot become from gamers and then far and is at that place a particular surface area of the game that needs more than attention right at present?

Wow, the feedback has been cypher brusk of gratifying and humbling. When we launched the game, nosotros thought we would be somewhere in the top 20 Steam games for a day or so – we ended up being the #one Steam game for a whole week! The feedback has been great, refreshing, and voluminous! We're constantly getting a lot of suggestions from the forums and there have been some great ideas, crazy bug reports, and criticisms. And with about criticisms, information technology's usually with a positive tone every bit I think even harsh critics can meet the great potential we take for this game.

Currently, I think the part of the game that has been needing the most attention has been the overall multiplayer experience. That's a lot of little things – more content, skill proficiency system, balancing, and stability – that add together upwards to making the multiplayer experience both entertaining and challenging

How many planets are y'all planning to add to Osiris: New Dawn other than the starter one?

As Osiris takes identify in an actual real solar system – the Gliese 581 system – nosotros want to loosely base it off what we know of the organization and take some artistic liberties of what is not known virtually the system. Right at present, astronomers have classified v planets in the arrangement so I retrieve nosotros definitely want to aim for 5 or more planets; in terms of moons or other celestial bodies, they aren't certain and so we're going to have some creative fun with that. Additionally, we're in communication with the original Gliese 581 astronomer squad as they've expressed interest in helping every bit much as they tin can.

Are in that location any plans to eventually expand the size of official servers down the road? It seems like this universe could be better populated by more than than twelve players at in one case.

Oh yeah, and that's office of the reason nosotros launched into Early Access – to see and feel what felt right in our game and to make fixes, add updates, and tune the gameplay especially when it comes to online. With our latest round of optimizations we call up we can get effectually 24 players per planet, and upwards to 50 players after some other planned optimization. Too, these numbers are per planet, pregnant that in a universe comprised of 5 planets and fifty-fifty more moons we can take hundreds, even thousands of players in a Solar System at any given fourth dimension.

Why did yous choose the Unity engine over the Unreal Engine 4 and CRYENGINE for Osiris: New Dawn?

We performed many tests early on in both Unity 5 and Unreal four. Ultimately, we decided we tin leverage our knowledge of art and environment rendering to push Unity, while leveraging Unity's flexibility in how it handles physics and powerful scripting linguistic communication. This has allowed us to have a game with full first person and third person back up and lots of dissimilar control modes for vehicles: hovercrafts, wheeled vehicles, spaceships, rockets, and eventually infinite stations.

Since you worked on several tech demos for the Oculus Rift, it is a bit strange to notice out that Osiris: New Dawn does not currently support VR. Is that merely due to resources direction? With the game also confirmed for PlayStation 4, are you considering a PlayStation VR version?

Nosotros actually started this project every bit a VR experience with our earliest test taking place spacewalking around a docked space station. While these early tests were encouraging we apace plant it challenging to incorporate all the UI and gameplay intimacy needed to do the VR mode justice. I'g a large supporter of VR and I can meet that equally the next level of gaming. At the same time, VR is a big time commitment to practice right – what I mean past that is, to truly have a VR experience, you simply can't only add VR support onto a pre-existing game that hasn't been fully realized for VR. I desire to do VR right for Osiris: New Dawn, just allow's take the proper showtime steps. The very first step is making the Osiris game every bit solid as possible. Once we go that right, we'll definitely await to getting proper VR back up for Osiris, potentially for PlayStation VR besides.

How much of an improvement can players expect from your updates when it comes to performance optimization on PC? Also, do you intend to add together back up for multiGPU configurations?

We're spring to Unity for any exotic multiGPU support. That said, we've pushed the graphic operation really far. Some users are reporting 60fps on 5 yr erstwhile machines.

Will Osiris: New Dawn release on Xbox One before PlayStation four due to the absence of whatsoever Early Admission program on Sony's console?

We are looking closely at the Early Access plan that Xbox One has, simply we as well take a cracking relationship with Sony. Nosotros looking to make a conclusion on our console platform plans very presently.

Which frame rate and resolution targets do you currently take for PlayStation iv and Xbox I?

That's actually impossible to specify at the moment equally we are notwithstanding 100% focused on PC. Our first console tests are starting within the side by side month.

What do you recollect of the upcoming PlayStation 4 Pro/Xbox Scorpio consoles and do you intend to support them? If so, what kind of improvements can we wait from the standard console ports?

I have to look closer at the technical specifications for both PS4 Pro and Xbox Scorpio, but from what I've heard it'south extremely promising. I really couldn't say what blazon of improvements could be expected at this time though.

Volition yous enable cantankerous-play functionality to allow players of different platforms band together at some point in Osiris: New Dawn?

Cantankerous play has been something I've been planning for since we bankrupt basis on the project five years agone. What is interesting is that since nosotros have a lot of dorsum-finish information nosotros're investigating ways to organize your colony and view your characters and base from a mobile device. I'thousand not certain if we'll be able to have Playstation players battle Steam players and so on, largely because of encryption guidelines that each console has to protect their players. Only it's definitely something we're looking into. For now, I've got a game to make first! 🙂

Thanks for your time.