Now that the NEXT update has been out for a week I wanted to take this opportunity to get everybody up to speed on the latest happenings on this website and evaluate how NEXT affects The Portal Repository.
The Changes
Since NEXT was the biggest update from Hello Games it’s unsurprising that some things about this site would need to change. Below is a list of some of the changes implemented to accommodate the latest version of No Man’s Sky.
The Atlas Rises Archive
When NEXT launched it included a universal reset of the procedural generation seed. This meant that most planetary characteristics such as biome type, flora, fauna, etc were changed. To keep a historical record of the Atlas Rises era I created a subdomain site (https://atlasrises.portalrepository.com) where all 372 addresses submitted before July 24th are stored in perpetuity. Each address is accompanied by a purple banner with a link to the corresponding address on the Main Repository, that way users can see how the address has changed after NEXT.
Tags Added, Tags Removed
On the main site, all Atlas Rises addresses are still present, but they’ve had all their tags removed and replaced with “Atlas Rises” (except for addresses “Near Center” since they are still near the center of the galaxy). The glyphs background for all Atlas Rises addresses has been changed to purple to help differentiate outdated information. A banner has also been added to the top of the metadata table that contains a link to the Atlas Rises subdomain archive, where users can view all the original tags associated with that particular address.
Got Updates?
On the submission form a new selection option has been provided to indicate whether the information you’re submitting is to update an existing address. When an old Atlas Rises post is updated with NEXT information the “Updated” tag will be appended, which applies a banner at the top of the metadata table, indicating that the address has been updated and gives a link to the original Atlas Rises address in the archive subdomain.
Top Ten Reset
The Top Addresses page has been updated and now will only display the top ten favorited posts from the NEXT version of the game. The favorite count for the old Atlas Rises addresses have not been changed, but they will no longer be included in the Top Addresses page since they contain outdated information.
All Your Base Are Belong To Us
Well, not actually, but I have updated the submission form so people can indicate if there are any publicly available player bases located at that portal address. Now that we are not limited to only one player base per planet I don’t think the “Base Redacted” tag is needed anymore, since it’s no longer possible to exploit that game mechanic and overwrite other people’s bases. I’ve also included an option to indicate how many player bases are present so that large multiplayer colonies can be sorted appropriately in the future. As a side note, the old tag for player bases was “Base (Inhabited)”, however since you can place base computers anywhere I’ve changed the tag to just be “Base”.
Remember, a base will not be publicly available until it has been uploaded!
Xbox Players, Welcome!
Now that No Man’s Sky is available to players on the Xbox platform I’ve created categories for Xboxgalaxies just like we have for PC and PS4 platforms. Since Xbox players are all starting from scratch I know it might take a little while before the Xbox community becomes familiar and comfortable with portals. Rest assured, The Portal Repository is ready and waiting to accept portal addresses from Xbox players!
Reach The Unreachable
During the Atlas Rises iteration of No Man’s Sky we quickly discovered a pretty substantial glitch in the portal network where we could not dial the address to the last planet in any star system. This became known as the frustrating “Unreachable Last Planet Glitch” and was the bane of many traveller’s existence. Fortunately my preliminary tests in NEXT indicate that this bug has been fixed and now we can reach every planet in a given star system!
In addition to the changes listed above I’ve made a few other tweaks and fixes to the website over the past week. That being said, I’m constantly improving this site and would welcome any suggestions from you guys on how The Portal Repository could be better. Please comment below or reach out to me via email.
