The Traveller (Immersive design for lovers of exploration)
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Version6.2
124 comments
I've just tried your mod and, even though I played just for a couple of
minutes, I was instantly fascinated by what you have achieved. You really
managed to seriously change the feeling of the game, in a direction that,
at least for me, was really needed. I've being always kind of bothered with
the fact that NMS has an incredible potential that is somehow wasted with
its meaningless and immersive-breaking mechanics. Of course, this is my
personal taste and I understand, and respect the fact that, it is not
the same as the NMS community.
I'm a computer scientist, I do research on programming languages' semantics,
but I have a small experience on game development (just a year and a half,
long time ago xD). Looking at the state of NMS made me feel the urge to do
something to change the game into a more immersive direction, but clearly
I lack the understanding in game mechanics (and the know-how) that you
have. Anyway: is there any project going on that aims at adding more
meaningful and immersive mechanics in NMS?, are you working on more of this
stuff?, is it possible to help with such project in some way?
I'm not actually a programmer myself. I have like an extremely basic concept of programming languages, enough that it helps me look at a bunch of code and figure out a bit of how its structured. But like, when I say extremely basic I mean extremely basic. Definitely as I've spent more time modding NMS I've gotten more familiar with things. But I don't have to do any real 'programming' with my mod, it's more like interpretation/comprehension, problem solving, testing, and design.
So anyways, that is to say I'm limited in scope with what I can do, given my lack of programming abilities.
There are a few people exploring NMS modding from a place of being knowledgeable programmers. The person I would point out especially is Rayrod, who is totally out of my league in what he does. He's working long-term on a project that I think aims to alter NMS mechanics in more significant ways than I could possibly do. Right now he's been focused on a tool that allows you to change all kinds of things in-game in real time, like colours, terrain, and other stuff. I tried an early version of that a while back and without it I wouldn't have done the pitch dark nights. I'd always had the idea that pitch dark nights might be better in VR, but I remember trying out someone else's "dark nights" mod and didn't like it, and assumed that I wouldn't be able to achieve what I wanted. Then I tried Rayrod's tool and was changing night-time colours in real time while in-game (in VR!! Super cool) and turned all the colours to black and it was amazing. He's made a lot of progress since I last tried it, here's a recent video of changing biome colours: https://youtu.be/sfbbDakaqdQ
Anyways, the point being Rayrod is on another level from any other NMS modder I know of ha (it's not normal to be able to change stuff like this in real-time. And I think it's the culmination of a couple years of work for him). And yeah as far as I understand he has plans/goals of changing all kinds of things, not limited to aesthetics. I don't know if his goals align with mine in terms of vision, I've talked to him a bit about it and suggested collaborating when it comes to design/vision. He is friendly and perhaps such a collaboration will happen, or perhaps not, of course he has his own vision and I can appreciate that he might want to maintain control over the direction he takes with changes. I do think he's very interested in immersion though, he just might have different ideas than me (or maybe not! I don't know!). Here's rayrod on nexusmods: https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/users/37637030
As for me, I suspect I'm reaching the limits of what I can do. Every once in a while I figure out how to do something that I previously thought was not possible for me to change. But those moments are continually fewer and further between and I'm not expecting any new 'revelation'.
I don't have any particular idea for how you could help. If you find motivation, you could try getting into the modding and see where it takes you! People have made pretty good resources to help start with modding. NMS is the first and only game I've modded! Here's a good place to start if you find yourself interested: https://stepmodifications.org/wiki/NoMansSky:The_Modding_Basics. And this is the NMS modding discord: https://discord.gg/zBuRsxYbwu. Let me know if you get into it! :)
that you replied.
I must say that I am even more impressed now that you tell me that you started without
knowing about programming! Also, I see that a lot of people are really enjoying your work,
which are superb news!, because if there are people enjoying this kind of experience in
NMS, we could expect more work in this direction.
Have you thought about extending this work? There are plenty of areas where it could be
possible to apply your same vision, hopefully with little effort: navigation, even more
minimalistic HUD (I tried disabling totally the HUD, and it makes some aspects of the game
more interesting). And, the recipes of the refiner are mostly senseless (or maybe I'm
missing the point here xD). It may be possible to redefine them in a way that makes
sense (and, if possible, is lore-friendly). So when a person needs some substance, the
person can "think" about how to obtain it, instead of just memorizing or reading the recipes
somewhere else. Thanks to the links that you shared with me about modding (great info,
thanks!) I was able to inspect the content of some other old mod that changes some
recipes, and to replicate it for the last version of NMS. So I could say that I could
help in these tasks.
I do not want to interfere with your personal plans for your modding activity, but I think
that it would be awesome to gather people that share your same vision of NMS, and see if
we can continue this work. Of course, maybe you like to work alone, and that would be
completely understandable! But let me know if you are open for a discussion about the
matter!
I definitely feel like I'm hitting the limits on what I am capable of doing with the mod, with my current level of knowledge/technical skills. And my energy is also just focused elsewhere lately, and I've been only dong the bare minimum of updating the mod for new NMS updates.
I'm not attached to a sole sense of ownership over the mod though, and if other people are interested in exploring how it might be taken further, or adapted to a different idea, etc etc, I'd be happy for others to take that on (and I hope give credit/recognition where it is due!). And anyone wanting to do that is welcome to contact me as well, to discuss it with me if they want to, and I'll engage to the level that I feel comfortable given my own time/energy. (My email is [email protected]. I'm slightly concerned gmail is filtering out what it perceives to be spam emails and not even sending them to my spam folder. So if someone emails me and I don't respond within a week, alternative contact would be through this website direct messaging, or through my twitter handle twitter.com/hilightnotes).
In case you aren't aware though (and maybe this is something I have to make clearer in the documentation), when using file X you can find these cargo pods with the target sweep. File X is known as the "target sweep overhaul", and the icons removed by this file are all icons that have been made available to find with target sweep.
Here's how it works:
Atlas Pass v1 and Atlas Pass v2 are now 'signal databases' that sync with your Target Sweep (the sonar tool in your binoculars). To sync Atlas Pass v1 for example, you will open the menu screen and go to the Catalogue tab. Then go to the Constructed Technology tab and pin Atlas Pass v1. Now your Target Sweep will search for objects in the Atlas Pass v1 database.
The Atlas Pass v1 database locates nearby subterranean objects. For example the freighter cargo and underground crates.
The Atlas Pass v2 database locates nearby phenomena. I think it's fun leaving it a surprise what it can search for, but if you want to know you can look at the full patch notes. This is the kind of thing you can just leave pinned as you explore and check your binocs every once in a while to see if your target sweep has picked anything up!
So my personal recommendation is to continue using file X and learn to use the new Target Sweep functionality it provides :) But yeah deleting file X will restore those icons (and you won't have that special Target Sweep functionality).
1) Are you using the torch (flashlight)?
2) Are you in VR or nonVR? (I think True Nights is only really good for VR, where you can comfortably direct your torch with your hand. And also the ship headlights I added that can be toggled on when in ship by pressing a 'button' under your right armrest).
Note that I haven't been to settlements much so I also don't remember how I felt about their lighting at night with True Nights (which is what I use). I'll keep it in mind to take a look though.
And finally to answer the actual question, I think that this is possible, but I think probably I won't get into tweaking light sources like that. However, there is a mod by Lo2k that adjusts light sources, and I think the result is that certain lights do emit light over a larger area if I'm not mistaken. You can give it a try and see if that brings the improvement you want! https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/1644
1) yes, using the torch
2) Currently playing in NonVR, one of my Vive wands battery has crapped out on me and those things are expensive to replace :(
didn't know about the ship headlights though.
Unfortunately I don't think I can map the ship headlights to a keyboard button. There is a way to get it available in nonVR but it's janky + a bunch of work and so I don't plan to do it.
is there a way to get Planetary Flight Fixes mod to work, I much prefer the control this mod gives but can't seem to get it running with The Traveller
Yes this seems like a good idea. I haven't tried that mod but someone else requested it too.
Which version do you like to use, the main version or lite?
I've sent them a message also to ask if it's okay with them if I offer a combined version.
After spending some more time with this mod btw I can't believe how much I'm just enjoying exploring, needed some copper and instead of instantly knowing where to go I had to go to each deposit to check them out to see if it's what I wanted, simple little thing that adds so much to the experience.