Hello Games has dropped the recently announced Foundation Update for No Man’s Sky, which is now live. The Foundation Update adds three new game modes, a base-building feature that lets you create more complex edifices than are currently encountered in-game, camping features, a farming system and even an interstellar freighter to let you haul your crop to the next star system for better payoff.
While No Man’s Sky has achieved a level of near-hysterical infamy over broken promises and fervid speculation about the team’s prospects, the beefy Foundation Update was released with little hubbub.
"The discussion around No Man’s Sky since release has been intense and dramatic," wrote Hello Games. "We have been quiet, but we are listening and focusing on improving the game that our team loves and feels so passionately about."
While many gamers may not be ready to forgive Hello Games for their radio silence in the weeks following No Man’s Sky borked release, the Foundation Update may be the team’s first step towards redemption. “It adds the foundations of base building, and is a foundation for things to come. This is the first of many free updates,” said Hello Games.
Check out the Foundation Update patch notes below:
Game Modes
Explorers can now decide to play with different rule sets, across three game modes:
Normal mode is the original chilled exploration experience
Creative mode allows players to explore the universe without limits, and build a huge base
Survival mode really changes the game, creating a much more challenging endurance experience
Base Building
Claim your home planet by finding an uninhabited base and creating your own, fully bespoke outpost
Construct your homestead for shelter, using modular structures and decorations, replicated from resources gathered while exploring
Recruit alien lifeforms to help research new technology. Farming, engineer, weapons and science specialists are hirable from Space Stations
Use Terminus Teleporters in Space Stations to teleport to and from your base at will
Expand your base with storage containers to stockpile precious resources and rare products
Find an even more beautiful location and you can simply dismantle your previous homestead to refund all of the spent resources
Farming
Cultivate biome dependent crops outdoors, or inside your base or Freighter using Hydroponic Labs
Plants grow over time and offer a steady supply of resources to be harvested
Hire a farming specialist to research and grow ten new plant types, and discover new resource elements
Making Camp
Players can now build essential equipment in the field on-planet
Place save points anywhere in the world, crucial for Survival mode
Automated Harvesters gather resources from mineral deposits in your absence
Waypoints can be placed and colour-coded to allow explorers to return to discoveries
Communications Terminals allow explorers to leave sub-space messages for others to find
Discover nearby mineral deposits, uninhabited bases or suit upgrades with the use of a Signal Scanner
Freighters
Purchase huge interstellar Freighters at great expense, and then summon them from anywhere in the galaxy
Resources can be teleported to your Freighter while on-planet, ideal for stockpiling goods for trading
Customise the inside of your Freighter within the Base Building section
Create extended cargo holds to expand your vessel’s capacity, and grow crops of rare resources on board
Transport your Freighter and its cargo to different, more economically favourable systems to maximise your earnings
Use the new recruitment system to crew your Freighter with Engineer, Farmer, Weapons and Science specialists to help research new technologies
New Resources And Technology
Discover new biome and star specific resource types as you explore the universe
Craft the new Advanced Mining Laser and Hazmat gauntlets through base building and use them to gather rare resources
Research and discover dozens of new products, building components and technologies
User Interface
The user interface has been improved to accommodate the stress of Survival Mode where a small inconvenience can be the difference between life and death
The intelligent Quick Access Menu streamlines Inventory access
Products can be stacked up to five times per inventory slot, resulting in increased starship, base container and freighter storage capacity
New arrow indicators have been added to emphasise shield and life support changes more clearly, to aid decision making
Scanned Primary resource elements have been given specific symbols to allow for easier differentiation
View your current objective at any time quickly by pressing left on the D-Pad, or H on your keyboard
The UI has been visually improved by removing colour tint and other artifacts
Early warning indicators have been added to starship cockpits to notify explorers of inbound Pirate activity
Red cockpit warnings indicate more clearly when Pulse Drive is unavailable
TAA And Motion Blur
Motion blur has been added to accentuate the feeling of speed, particularly when in-flight This can be switched on or off via the Options menu
Temporal Anti Aliasing (TAA) removes jagged edges effectively and has been added as an option to improve visuals clarity
Terrain generation and colourisation algorithms have been revised to produce more aesthetically interesting planets
General Gameplay
Fixed technology becoming instantly fully charged when repaired
Fixed ship appearing on incorrect pad in space station after loading
Added interactable objects that required certain tech to collect
Added shootable objects that require certain tech to mine
Rebalanced resource availability and technology charge requirements
Fixed initial game flow - where travelling to space too quickly after visiting the monolith could prevent the first atlas station notification appearing
Prevented player being prompted to scan for buildings before leaving the system after visiting the monolith
Prevented laser and melee attacks while in space from attempting to edit terrain
Improved calculation of resources received when mining terrain
Renamed Signal Scanners to Signal Boosters
Signal booster objects updated to search for playable bases, suit upgrade pods, and mineable resources
Removed signal booster from being distributed on terrain, as player can now build them
Improved accuracy of environment detection, fixing cases where it rained inside caves
Fixed galactic waypoints not loading correctly across saves
Removed atlas pass v1 requirement from doors in stations
Suit upgrade pods are no longer spawned in stations
Suit upgrade pods can now only be used once
Fixed collision in anomaly that was causing issues when exiting larger ships
Increased the number of different NPC character models generated per system
Fixed the game always remaining in day time for players who began their save prior to patch 1.03
Fixed a potential crash in foliage instance renderer
Localisation
Fixed stats page in asian languages
Fixed multiple issues with asian language formatting
Multiple improvements and fixes to localisation text in all languages
UI
Added new icons for specific types of primary resources
Fixed health bars not appearing on some targets
Added hazard and life support drain indicators
Fixed mission messages not appearing in a timely fashion
Beacons now notify the player that they will save the game
Fixed crash when creature IK animations were updated under certain conditions on the discovery screen
Improved navigation in discovery UI
Massive speed improvements to browsing huge discovery lists
Increased size of discovery storage
Added option to load "Earliest" previous save in Options menu
Fixed weapon naming
Added icon to remind players of the reload button when weapon is empty
Multiple fixes for viewing discoveries
PS4
Added photo mode
Large optimisations to the engine to accommodate base building
PC
Added support for up to 8 mouse buttons
Fixed better order position history for mouse smoothing
Fixed bug where setting gamma to zero gave a fully bright rather than fully dark image
Fixed hard-limiting on save sizes, with appropriate warning about free space on boot
Player is now notified when shaders are being loaded
Fixed occasional crash on exit
Fixed performance of trail renderer for some AMD cards
Large optimisations to the engine to accommodate base building
Generation
Added biome specific plants
Adopted new method of distributing resource plants on terrain, for more lifelike clumps of plants
Improved distribution of plant life across all terrain types
Introduced visual differentiation of red, green and blue star systems
Introduced new mineable terrain resources found only in red, green and blue star systems
Reduced average building frequency
Introduced planets with elevated building density
Introduced planets with no buildings or sentient life
Increased the proportion of lush and tropical planets
Decreased the proportion of lifeless planets
Fixed bug where multiple ships could appear, overlapping, at the player's start scene
Prevented certain building types being incorrectly placed underwater
Prevented multiple buildings occasionally being placed in overlapping positions
Prevented buildings occasionally being placed intersecting with the terrain
Improved and altered per-planet terrain resource generation, improving gameplay and visuals
Creatures
Fixed elevation cache mismatches, causing errors in creature knowledge and pathing
Fixed slow memory leak in creature role allocation
Improved creature animation speeds
Fixed issues where some creatures turns had the incorrect frame count
Fixed occasional crash when interacting with creatures
Atmospherics
Increased proportion of vibrant blue skies
Corrected cloud levels for clear skies
Improved average cloud level settings
Fixed cloud rendering while flying in your ship
Improved atmosphere depth when transitioning to space
Increased fidelity of atmosphere rendering on nearest planet
Improved atmospheric fog as you fly to a planet
Improved fog method for planets seen on the horizon
Terrain
Improved terrain generation algorithms
Improved and extended blend areas between different terrain noise types
Terrains now generate more open spaces
Smaller features now appear at nearer lods to improve visuals in the distance
Fixed objects being placed on incorrect terrain material types
Improved resolution of distant planet terrain
Decreased differences between planet as seen from space and actual planet terrain
Fixed seams on planets when seen from space
Improvements to terrain material selection and terrain material blending
Terrain generation priority and cost calculation improvements
Fixed terrain generation angle calculations, which would previously prevent nearest region being generated first
We now generate caves on lower terrain lods to decrease visual differences in lower detail terrain
Introduced more varied and vibrant colouring to terrain for each biome
Decreased frequency of brown terrain colour selections
Changed texture scales to improve transition between terrain lods
Improved terrain colour combinations to add variety and better match terrain contouring
Improved terrain texture blending method to better retain vibrant colours
Improved settings for hue, saturation and value noise variation on terrain
Fixed a number of issues causing holes to be seen in the planet terrain
Fixed occasional crash when mining terrain
Visuals
Fixed colour of muzzle flashes on player weapons
Added muzzle flashes to ship weapons
Added cockpit lighting for damage and weapon firing
Added debris to freighter explosion effect
Improved freighter cargo explosions
Improved photon cannon hit and space explosion effects
Improved turret explosion effect
Improved grass colour selection
Improved grass colouring method to match underlying terrain colour
Improved grass placement to match gradient of terrain, and rocky terrain slope patches
Improved lighting on grass
Improved alpha cutoffs and blending for grass in the distance
Improved colouring method for on-planet buildings
Fixed "pop" in lighting when flying between planets
Fixed incorrect lighting seen in shadow areas
Improved lighting method when rendering tree leaves
Fixed procedural texturing on objects with multiple overlapping textures
Fixed size of certain texture atlas normal maps
Fixed texture scaling on asteroids
Zinc plant is now more obvious when it has been gathered
Fixed occasional rendering errors due to precision on cockpit during warp
Fixed pulse lines not appearing when pulse driving out from planet atmosphere
Fixed shadowing artefacts on imposters
Space
Improved asteroids to allow much denser fields
Improved explosion effects
Fixed scale of moons on the space map
Added freighter groups to the space map
Changed distribution of resources in asteroids
AI ships will now clear asteroids in their path
Planets are now scannable from space to see their resources
Space Combat
Fixed bounty targets warping out too soon
Improved HUD indicators in space combat
Added damaged ship effect on AI starships
Added formation flying
Improved locking on passive starships
Improved AI combat flight patterns
Added new ship weapon technology
Holding brake whilst turning now activates drift for fast turns
Improved AI ship freighter attacking
Improved freighter targeting code when under attack by enemy ships
Freighters
Fixed pulse drive to prevent travel through freighters
Improved docking code
Added hangar to the lead freighter
Added docking in freighters
Added icon to accessible freighter hangars
Added colouring to cargo drops to identify what is in them
You can now only pick up cargo drops that will fit in your inventory
Added auxiliary freight ships to freighter groups
Added alert lights and alarm audio for when freighters are in combat
Improved turret lights and explosions
Improved muzzle flashes on freighter turrets
Added indicator of cargo contents
Freighter Commanders now give rewards for rescuing them from pirate attack
Fixed collision on freighter cargo containers
Audio
Updated the lush ambience to make the wind sounds less noisy
Ambient background fauna now checks for the presence of creatures
Added rain on foliage
Added rain on ship
Added freighter specific footsteps
When on a dead planet, no music will play
Round table prop now plays an appropriate sound
Added more music to the loading sequence and game start
Added audio to new base building props
Created sounds for new base building props
Added audio to freighter doors and internal freighter ambiences
Added freighter explosions
Added freighter alarm
Added ambient radio comms when approaching a freighter
Fixed missing sounds when in a space station due to the mix settings
Multi-tool upgrades now affect audio
Lots of minor mix changes
Changed some compression settings for PS4 audio to make the sub-channel audio play more reliably
Do you feel that the Foundation Update brings No Man’s Sky closer to what was promised in the game’s first trailers? Will you be giving No Man’s Sky another go, or are you done with Hello Games? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
