I've discovered a hidden game mode

[Tom]

I've discovered a hidden game mode. I actually feel a little uncomfortable describing this - the NMS developers might not appreciate it - but nevertheless here it is.

It's called Ambient mode, and I'm guessing that it's a mode that's used by the dev testers. It's basically a Creative mode that lets you choose your starting planet, but without the ability to save your progress.

When you come up in Ambient mode, you're in a randomly-chosen system, floating around inside or near to a space station. There's a user interface, which you can bring up with the Escape key and perhaps others that are supported by the UI. Here's a screen shot of the UI:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1306387253

Bring up the UI and press the W key to switch to one of the planets in the system. You float along on autopilot observing the chosen planet and, I suppose, deciding if you want to play a game there. If not you can change to a different planet in the system, or to an altogether different system. When you find a planet you'd like to play on, you press the Shift key (the UI tells you that you'll be starting a Creative-mode game, but it's actually an Ambient-mode game), and you're plunked down on that planet at a habitable base with the starter equipment. You're in creative mode, basically, but when a restore point would normally be saved you're reminded that you can't really do a save.

It's probably extremely useful to the devs and their testers, but not really of much use to us unless you really want to start out a short creative game on a planet with particular characteristics.

How to play it:

Of course you don't see an Ambient option in NMS, so you have to hack your way to it. Do it like this:

1. start a new game in one of the game slots; any game mode except permadeath would do but it might as well be creative;
2. in the game, create a restore point;
3. close NMS, and bring up the No Man's Sky Save Editor (NMSSE); if you don't have it, get it from www.nomansskymods.com;
4. Open the most recent save file from the game you just started;
5. In NMSSE, pull down the top-level Edit menu and select Edit Raw JSON;
6. in line 2, change the version to 6152 (your creative mode game will have 5128 there, a normal mode game would have 4616, etc.;
7. Close the JSON window (X in the upper right corner) and click Yes on the dialog that starts out "The JSON data has changed..."
8. Exit NMSSE, and click Yes on the dialog that says "Save data before closing?";
9. Start NMS back up and start the game that now says Ambient;
10. Enjoy.

[Xaine]

Very interesting, cool find, this could be useful for testing indeed, cheers bud :)

[MrMesmer]

Wow, great find, bud!
+1

[darkflemish]

+1 for Tom ;-)

[Waldo3000]

Cool. Reminds me of the "attract mode" in coin-operated video games, where it plays a teaser of the game to get you to spend your quarters.

In addition to what has been described here, I sometimes follow a metallic "tour guide" orb around. It also cycles to a different planet/space station/etc occasionally rather than staying on a single planet.

[Gmr Leon]

Tom you magnificent devil you! I've no idea how you found the appropriate version number for this, but this is a wonderful find! Thanks so much!

[Dio Solis]

Nice find.

[MS. Green Label]

k5rto původně napsal:

Nice find.

Wow Colts in here :)

Didnt expect you to be slumming it in the Steam Forums lol

[Adarynin]

Congrats on successful sleuthing! This little drone (in your video) is also part of it? Does it do anything?

[Tom]

So you want to know how I found it, eh? It'll help if you know the hexadecimal numbering system.

I was experimenting with NMSSE to see if I could switch game modes by hacking the save file, so I started a game in each of the four modes and saved the files so that I could inspect them. Here's what I found for the four modes, with the numbers in decimal, hexadecimal, and binary:

name decimal hex binary
normal: 4616 1208 0001 0010 0000 1000
creative: 5128 1408 0001 0100 0000 1000
survival: 5640 1608 0001 0110 0000 1000
permadeath: 6664 1A08 0001 1010 0000 1000

Looking at the hex versions of the numbers, I saw a gap between survival and permadeath. A is ten in decimal, so the missing hex code would be 1808. Inserting that code in the missing slot gives you:

name decimal hex binary
normal: 4616 1208 0001 0010 0000 1000
creative: 5128 1408 0001 0100 0000 1000
survival: 5640 1608 0001 0110 0000 1000
ambient: 6152 1808 0001 1000 0000 1000
permadeath: 6664 1A08 0001 1010 0000 1000

Following that hunch, and just to see what would happen, I hacked a save file to use 6152, and when it came up there I was in ambient mode!


@Adarynin, I didn't hang around the space station long enough to know if the little drone does anything.

[Dio Solis]

MS. Green Label původně napsal:

k5rto původně napsal:

Nice find.

Wow Colts in here :)

Didnt expect you to be slumming it in the Steam Forums lol

hahaha. I need to hit the red light district more often. XD

[rhuntington]

k5rto původně napsal:

MS. Green Label původně napsal:

Wow Colts in here :)

Didnt expect you to be slumming it in the Steam Forums lol

hahaha. I need to hit the red light district more often. XD

Hahahahahahaha!

[MS. Green Label]

rhuntington původně napsal:

k5rto původně napsal:

hahaha. I need to hit the red light district more often. XD

Hahahahahahaha!

Richard too lol

[No Man's Sky Resources]

Does anyone know the updated version numbers for each mode, as they've changed now?

[japp_02]

craig_mark původně napsal:

Does anyone know the updated version numbers for each mode, as they've changed now?

Easiest way to find this out is: save a game in a specific game mode and go watch the numbers in the save file. Changing these numbers accordingly is also how you can change a game mode in a save.

[Tom]

OP here - interesting to see this come up on the group again after so long!

The version numbers change from time to time, incrementing slowly with new versions but in a fairly predictable way. Right now (3/14/2020) these are the numbers:

normal 4636
creative 5148
survival 5660
ambient 6172
permadeath 6684

I haven't tried this again since my original post, so I have no idea what would happen in this much-later version.