Not Man's Sky: A Quartet Of Procedural Planety Things
My god, it's full of stars!
Look, I know what we said about No Man's Sky and hype and all that, but this isn't about that. Stop pointing hissing "Hypocriiite" at me and howling like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Give over. I'm trying to show you nice things. Sheesh.
Today I bring you a quartet of things showing pleasing procedurally-generated spacebits, two directly inspired by No Man's Sky and two I'm mentioning again because they're nice and you might like them. We can't explore No Man's Sky yet, but we can coo over many other colourful planets.
Every Planet Procedural [official site] will show you planet after planet, all of them with procedurally-generated mountains, rivers, flora, structures, and skies, all of them in many different colours. Refreshing the browser-based doodad in search of a pretty planet is pretty great. Creator Marian Kleineberg calls it a "fanart generator" and yeah, sure, that's nice.
Seeing that yesterday also reminded us of the cheeky No Man's Sky Beta [official site], which offers very barebones text descriptions of planets. What wags!
Moving onto things that are less NMS-y but still procedural pleasantness, Daniel Linssen's Planetarium [official site] generates procedural spinning planets complete with moons, asteroid belts, and their own climate. You can tweak the temperature to watch ice, water, and land spread and recede, accompanied by a very chill soundtrack. It's lovely and I'm not sure why I didn't post about it when it came out.
Lastly, I've posted before about Sunrose [official site] but it's nice enough that I want to mention it again. Sunrose generates musical stars based on letters you feed it, a lovely wide range of stars to spin and stare at and slightly dread. Have fun entering names and words and see what comes out. It's very relaxing.
No Man's Sky is coming out... who cares? Look at all these cool planets and stars, man.