The universe of No Man's Sky is so large, the design team had to develop space probes to randomly explore and document some of it.
The universe of No Man's Sky is procedurally generated so the design team doesn't have full control over it. In fact, the universe is too huge for the team to even keep an eye over at once and that's why they turned to NASA for inspiration on how to explore a practically unlimited universe.
"To populate this alternate reality, the artists created seeds: the essential parts of plants and animals and geographic locations. Trees have trunks and leaves. Animals have bone structures. Spaceships have cockpits. Buildings have doors, windows and roofs," explained Art Director Grant Duncan.
"Then they threw those seeds into what Duncan calls a "big box of maths," where the British developer’s algorithms create variations on those themes. Short trees with orange foliage. Spaceships with stubby cockpits. Alien creatures whose deer-like ancestry is graspable at a glance."
"Feed No Man’s Sky‘s big box of maths the same inputs — the art team’s seeds — and it will produce the same outputs, whether on your system or a friend’s. That’s where its mighty universe comes from."
Originally, Duncan was against procedurally generated world as he feared that they would essentially be dull without giving him the ability to intervene and tune things up. But then he changed his mind and embraced the variety and scale it entails.
"I think that the truth is, we’re actually all control freaks. Artists are so used to having complete control of every single pixel. Especially now with digital artists. We can get Photoshop, we can zoom right in and obsess over something no one will ever care about."
