Update: The first experimental patch is now live for No Man’s Sky, but you might not see it right away. According to GameInformer, here’s how you can access it without having to wait for a patch roll-out:
- Right-click on No Man’s Sky in your Steam library
- Go to the “Properties” option
- Select the “Betas” tab
- Type in the code “3xperimental” and then select the new option that will appear in the drop-down menu
With that done, you should get the following fixes according to Cogconnected:
- Improved support for AMD CPUs
- Fixes for framerate stuttering
- Enables setting the max frames-per-second to 30 or 60
- Fixes mouse jittering
- Fixes crashes that occurred after Alt+tabbing out of the game
- The game will now also notify you if you are running the game with an unsupported graphics card and disable the Gsync feature by default
Original story follows below, in which I mention the various bugs, Hello Games promising a fix and John McEnroe:
No Man’s Sky! A breath-taking and technically impressive showcase of being given a universe to bugger around in with no direction at all! Glorious! At least it is, on PlayStation 4. Mostly. On PC however, the game appears to be a complete mess. Crashes, bugs and various other performance issues aplenty are reportedly plaguing Hello Games’ massive space-sim, with affected people being angrier than John McEnroe on a Swedish tennis court.
Faced with a gathering storm of people pulling a Michael Phelps Rio-face, Hello Games responded on Steam by saying “Whilst many people are enjoying No Man’s Sky, we are tracking several issues, and we’re working hard to resolve them as quickly as possible”.
We’re pulling an all nighter to get through as many issues as soon as possible. Please try to be nice 🙂
- We have updated our support page with some common issues and workarounds http://www.no-mans-sky.com/2016/08/pc-support/
- We have updated the auto response from support@hellogames.co.uk to help suggest common fixes, and help gather better info
- We have filed tickets for everyone who has mailed support and are responding to them in turn.
- We have gotten back to a lot of people already, who were trying to run the game significantly below min spec.
- Additionally your bug reports have shown us a handful of key issues we are working to resolve
According to Hello Games, the three most common crashes can be attributed to:
- Running the game with an Intel card. This is not supported
- No Man’s Sky is an OpenGL 4.5 game, and requires latest drivers on most cards, please update
- VC++ Redist 2010 was not included by default. We have updated in a patch, please restart
To fix all of this, Hello Games say that they’ll be creating an “experiment branch” for No Man’s Sky to sort out the following problems:
- Shader Cache issue – means that framerate is initially stuttering on some cards. Whilst it resolves itself over time (~1 hour of play), we will fix this issue in a patch.
- SSE 4 – for CPUs that do not support SSE 4, it is causing the game to crash on boot (some of these area technically below min spec, but we don’t want it to crash!)
- Mouse controls jitter on foot – this caused by a combination of certain resolution and GFX card. A fix is in progress.
Rough stuff. The game isn’t entirely perfect on PS4 either, as I can testify to having it randomly crash several times on my side as well. Which may or may not have something to do with a certain exploit I tested to see if I could double up on resources by pretending to be in a literal version of Suicide Squad.
Last Updated: August 15, 2016
Alien Emperor Trevor
August 15, 2016 at 08:36
When last I looked it was sitting at “Mixed” on Steam with 27k reviews – with the majority complaining about the game’s bugginess. That’s not good.
Ottokie
August 15, 2016 at 08:38
Game works fine for me. “touch wood”
I was lucky enough (had a proper spec PC) to play from the word go (Saturday Morning). This game is amazing fun but I can see why the reviews are so split down the middle. This is a R600 game and for some it will be worth way more than that and others it will not be even worth R5.
If you like resource managing games like Warframe, Terarria, Minecraft, Subnautica and the rest of what else I missed then you will love it. But if you are more into Fallout, Bioshock, TW3 and hectic story driven games you will probably not like this all that much.
Alien Emperor Trevor
August 15, 2016 at 08:40
Warframe!
I don’t like resource grinding in Warframe. ;P
Ottokie
August 15, 2016 at 08:41
We might not like it but we kinda have to manage it to play the game 😛
Alien Emperor Trevor
August 15, 2016 at 08:46
Yes but that’s not the point of why I play the game. The point’s shooting, stabbing & burning my way across the galaxy for relaxation. And some crap about freedom and preventing oppression for normal humans or something.
Admiral Chief - Check
August 15, 2016 at 08:47
That and murdering Grineer
Ottokie
August 15, 2016 at 08:48
Exactly. You want to stabby stabby pew pew? Go get all the rocks from that planet so I can build a boomerang rifle grenade plasma lazor!
Alien Emperor Trevor
August 15, 2016 at 08:50
Buzzlok!
Ottokie
August 15, 2016 at 08:51
Ahhh yes that’s the name. Also I forgot to mention you need 20 nitain for that build *fly’s away*
Admiral Chief - Check
August 15, 2016 at 08:53
I’m well on my way to MR20
Ottokie
August 15, 2016 at 08:55
I am on my way to Dickbuttius Prime tonight.
Admiral Chief - Check
August 15, 2016 at 08:55
Do it, that name deserves a planet!
Ottokie
August 15, 2016 at 08:55
xD
Mark Treloar
August 15, 2016 at 09:48
I named one system The WB, and called the first planet Hello Nurse!
Ottokie
August 15, 2016 at 09:48
My first planet was named “Go back, wrong way”
Admiral Chief - Check
August 15, 2016 at 10:36
Hahahahahaha
Alien Emperor Trevor
August 15, 2016 at 08:56
Only 20? What a noob.
Admiral Chief - Check
August 15, 2016 at 09:01
Just behind you, ubernoob
Alien Emperor Trevor
August 15, 2016 at 09:03
Good luck catching up 😀
Captain JJ off track
August 15, 2016 at 15:11
Subnautica!
slap
August 16, 2016 at 17:13
warframe is a pile of poop
Mark Treloar
August 15, 2016 at 08:49
Have a proper spec PC, but still get frame rate drops after a few hours.
Also first System name:
Omicron Persei 8
Admiral Chief - Check
August 15, 2016 at 08:50
Dickbuttius Prime!
Mark Treloar
August 15, 2016 at 09:03
Erm no, the game has its own issues with naming stuff.
Ottokie
August 15, 2016 at 08:52
Yup, my FPS drops to about 40 when I do a melee jetpack jump and gain a lot of speed. But then it goes right back up to 120fps
Mark Treloar
August 15, 2016 at 08:58
Yeah i’m talking a massive drop to 5 FPS. I have to restart the game to fix it.
Ottokie
August 15, 2016 at 09:41
Sounds like a memory leak. Did you get the new GPU drivers?
Mark Treloar
August 15, 2016 at 09:44
yip, installed for Doom, which runs just fine.
ElimiNathan
August 15, 2016 at 10:52
Whats your PC specs ?
slap
August 16, 2016 at 17:16
new drivers do not stop a memory leak within a game
HairyEwok
August 15, 2016 at 12:26
Having the same issue. After playing for over an hour and you either save or get into your ship the frames drop to about 5. Funny enough if you look straight up into the sky the fps drop disappears.
slap
August 16, 2016 at 17:16
turn off shader cache, v-sycn off in game, on in control panel with triple buffering, borderless. 55-60fps always on max settings except reflections to medium and shadows to high
Deceased
August 15, 2016 at 10:48
I LOVE THIS XD
slap
August 16, 2016 at 17:15
100% wrong. This game is neither like Fallout, nor like Warframe or minecraft. Funny that I actually like none of the former mentioned games, but like all the latter games, yet I love this game. Your evaulation is noted but deemed completely incorrect
Ottokie
August 16, 2016 at 18:34
okie dokie
Admiral Chief - Check
August 15, 2016 at 08:48
I saw many, many people on my Steam friend list starting/restarting/restarting/restarting the game
Alien Emperor Trevor
August 15, 2016 at 08:49
I saw Otto playing, then I saw an even longer time of Otto not playing. I hoped it wasn’t because he’d crawled into the bath to cry about the game being crap. 😀
Admiral Chief - Check
August 15, 2016 at 08:50
Hahahahahahaha
Ottokie
August 15, 2016 at 08:50
NEVER! I was only home Saturday and Friday night. I had such a craving I was watching streams last night until midnight
Ottokie
August 15, 2016 at 08:50
The graphics settings force you to restart the whole game. So for peeps who had fps issues, they tried multiple setting types
slap
August 16, 2016 at 17:17
too many people with bloated OS’s and clueless how to optimise a PC. Runs just fine on my modest 3570/960
Pieter Kruger
August 15, 2016 at 08:52
Did these guys really try to pull the biggest hoax in gaming history with No Man’s Sky “multiplayer”? Apparently data mining on PC found no traces of multiplayer components at all. Only an unfinished character model(suggesting you were never meant to be seen by any other player?). No wonder PSN plus is not needed to play on PS4 LOL! Kudus to the developers, I’ll stay very doubtful until someone actually meets up with another player…..
Ottokie
August 15, 2016 at 08:54
I am not going to lie. This is what almost made me give up on the game totally. Sketchy developers, especially indie dev’s are a big no no.
Fox1 - Retro
August 15, 2016 at 08:58
Should have been an indie game at indie prices exclusively for the Indiestation. Watch as the Last Guardian follows NMS.
Dane
August 15, 2016 at 10:02
They removed the “Multiplayer” tag from the Steam page a day before ps4 launch.
Captain JJ off track
August 15, 2016 at 15:15
I put the game on my wishlist many many months ago and from the start it always displayed Single Player only. I was never under the impression that it had MP as it didn’t state so.
Captain JJ off track
August 15, 2016 at 15:14
No Man’s Sky has always displayed Single Player only on the Steam store page, so I was never under the impression that there was multiplayer.
UltimateNinjaPandaDudeGuy
August 15, 2016 at 09:38
Loving the game. Exploring the universe and upgrading my stuff! I am going to wait out till official release of the patch though. I get some frame stuttering, but it is not that bad.
Excited to see what comes with the game and for only 15 devs this is amazing.
Dane
August 15, 2016 at 10:09
Definitely not worth the AAA price tag. Buggy AF with a terrain generator less depthy than Age of Empires.
ElimiNathan
August 15, 2016 at 10:54
Ye the generation becomes kinda boring, sure the planets look completely different to each other but you cant stay long on one planet cos within 5 minutes you’ve seen pretty much everything there is to see there
slap
August 16, 2016 at 17:18
not true at all. I’ve seen planets with mountains and forest on one side, full of desert and rocky landscape on the other, and in another area rivers and lakes. You don’t stay long enough because you think nothing is different and there’s your problem right there.
ElimiNathan
August 17, 2016 at 07:57
I’ve put about 15 hours into the game so far and have extensively searched across a few planets. They are all the same all over. Don’t say not true, how would you know what I’ve experienced? I’m glad you had a better experience and hopefully I come across some better planets
Allykhat
August 15, 2016 at 11:07
I have no problem with this type of game. It was, however, an indie game marketed as a AAA release and sold for the same. A lot of people are saying the cost is justified because of the amount of content you get. Is it really? While fundamentally this game is entirely different to something like The Witcher, but I don’t see how, price wise, you can even class these games at the same price point. Witcher has exploration, Inventory management, a solo only play style, hunting/gathering mechanics and even to a degree a market/trading/economic system. Pretty much the only thing NMS has over Witcher is space flight and procedurally generated content. While technically impressive, after a good few jumps even the procedural content begins to get a bit “samey”.
I have both games and even excluding Witcher’s (rather impressive) story line(s), I find the exploration elements and gathering much more fleshed out. So far my time in NMS has consisted of the following:
1.Shoot at rocks and crystals
2.Fuel a ship and fly to space
3.Land on another planet
4.Shoot at rocks and crystals
5.Fly to space station to sell rocks and crystals
6.Warp to another system
7.Repeat from step 3 while occasionally taking selfies with some funny looking creatures.
**SPOILER**
Even the endgame is a bit mind boggling… you spawn a new galaxy. A new procedurally generated galaxy. In a technically INFINITE universe of generated galaxies. How is that even special? What makes spawning this new galaxy even worth the effort when there are millions of them around already? Even naming them isnt that special because of the odds of another person stumbling into your named galaxy are pretty tiny. Even then its a case of “oh this galaxy was named by a player, that’s nice.”
**END SPOILER**
This isnt a game for everyone, and there are opinions conflicting my own, so to those people, have at it! Enjoy this game like nobody has enjoyed it before! And dont forget to upload that enjoyment for the 2k units 😉 Handy little PSA for you there.
I honestly think for this game to shine like the star it is trying to be, it needs to become like Minecraft in space. Base building, capital ships (please… let me build a Deathstar), AT LEAST some form of co-op if not full fledged MP. Something more to engage the players than mindlessly gathering items to flog for better inventory space. Once your ship and suit inventories are maxed and you have the best multi tool you can find, thats the end of progression. Then the only thing left to do is naming planets and animals. This game has MASSIVE potential. Think EVE in first person.
Spy Master Tokashi
August 15, 2016 at 11:17
They built a minecraft game with better graphics and spaceships which does not multiplayer like minecraft does very well and they slapped an AAA price tag on it.
Damn I am glad I did not pre-order this …. hahahaha … now TEST THE GAME peasants…I cannot wait for the 75% discount No Man Sky steam sale… it will be sooner than I thought it would be … hahahha
Allykhat
August 15, 2016 at 11:39
No. They didn’t build a minecraft game at all. There is the underlying problem I believe.
Secondly, be thankful that peasants like myself actually took the time and money to test the game for you. If we didnt you would be in the same boat as the rest of us 🙂
slap
August 16, 2016 at 17:19
there is no “endgame” it’s not that sort of game. And nothing like eve, incomparable.
Spy Master Tokashi
August 15, 2016 at 11:14
Come come now pre-order peasants! Test the game for the master race who will buy it from the steam sales…
TEST IT NOW ….
Muhammad Rizqan Ilmi
August 15, 2016 at 13:56
Just testing NMS at my specs:
Intel Core i3 4005U 1.7 GHz
RAM 8 GB DDR3
Nvidia GT820M 2 GB
Surprisingly it runs without any crashes, but of course it’s super laggy and stuttering, only got around 10-15 FPS at lowest settings with 1280 x 720 resolution, and it’s GOG version, I really want the official patch will also released for GOG version :'(
ElimiNathan
August 15, 2016 at 20:11
The patch is 17MB LOL
Feonix
August 15, 2016 at 23:17
“..live on PC” You mean live on Steam, people who purchased on GOG (it was roughly $30 cheaper) still don’t have access to the patch.
Samuel Rodrigues
August 16, 2016 at 02:01
Fuck the Steam shit, what about GOG?
slap
August 16, 2016 at 17:13
Well, there is no experimental for me. Yes I know how to do it. Been on steam for over 10yrs, wouldn’t be the first time I used this function. But in the drop down there is nothing.