Have you ever wondered what inspired the Portal system in No Man’s Sky? As a fan of Stargate SG-1, in my opinion it’s quite clear that the portals in No Man’s Sky are conceptually-inspired by the stargates from the TV show. Don’t believe me? Below I compare and contrast between stargates and portals, and you can be the judge:

The Concept

• Stargate: A series of ancient circular devices that create a stable artificial wormhole in order to allow near-instantaneous transportation between two devices (generally within the same galaxy).
• No Man’s Sky: A series of ancient monolithic devices that, when activated, allow near-instantaneous transportation between two devices (exclusively within the same galaxy).

The Coordinates

• Stargate: An address within the same galaxy uses seven symbols which are based on constellations. Each of the first six symbols represents a point in 3-dimensional space, with the seventh symbol being the point-of-origin which is unique to wherever the gate is being dialed from. There are a total of 39 different symbols, including the unique point-of-origin which are engraved on an inner spinning ring.
• No Man’s Sky: An address consists of twelve glyphs which use hexadecimal coordinates to determine a location within a galaxy. The glyphs are engraved on a spinning ring around the portal’s entrance. The first glyph identifies the portal index within a star system, the next three glyphs determine the solar system index within a region of space, the next two represent the galactic y axis, the next three glyphs identify the galactic z axis, and finally the last three glyphs determine the galactic x axis.

The Dialing Device

• Stargate: The Milky Way stargates are normally dialed using a circular pedestal that traditionally sits somewhere in front of the ramp. This pedestal is called the “Dial Home Device” or “DHD”. All 39 symbols are included on it, including the unique point-of-origin symbol. After dialing all 7 symbols the gate is activated by pressing down on the large orange button in the center of the DHD.
• No Man’s Sky: Portals are dialed using a circular pedestal that springs up from a recessed area in front of the ramp. All 16 symbols are included on it. There is no activation button.

The Dialing Sequence

• Stargate: As each symbol is pressed on the DHD it is illuminated on the pedestal. Then the inner ring of the stargate spins to center the selected symbol to align with the respective chevron on the gate itself. Each of the 6 chevrons on the sides of the gate illuminate in order, then as the 7th top chevron “locks” the gate activates.
• No Man’s Sky: As each glyph is dialed from the pedestal the ring around the portal’s entrance rotates to position the glyph at the top, which is then displayed on the Traveller’s screen. Once all twelve glyphs have been entered the portal automatically activates.

The Activation

• Stargate: When the gate is activated the artificial wormhole briefly forms an unstable vortex sometimes referred to as the “Kawoosh” before settling into a stable event horizon.
• No Man’s Sky: When the portal is activated an unstable vortex briefly forms before settling into a stable event horizon.

The Travel

• Stargate: Travel through the gate’s wormhole is unidirectional. Once on the other side of the gate the wormhole disengages and the user must re-dial their origin gate to return (or they can dial any other address)
• No Man’s Sky: Travel through the portal is bidirectional. Once on the other side the portal remains active and is unable to be deactivated. User simply needs to walk back through the event horizon to teleport back to their origin.

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So as you can see there are many characteristics of portals in No Man’s Sky that are reminiscent of stargates from Stargate SG-1. No Man’s Sky has always touted itself as being inspired by many different science fiction works and I think we can safely say that Stargate SG-1 is one such inspiration. Are there any other similarities between portals and stargates that you can think of? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts!

What do you do if you’ve only learned the first two portal glyphs but want to join the community of portal Travellers? Maybe you’re even looking through The Portal Repository and enviously eyeing all those addresses that require fifteen or sixteen different glyphs. Who’s got time to learn all those!? You’ve got a job, a family, a needy feline companion, etc and just don’t have time to grind out all the glyphs. I totally understand your predicament and rest assured you’re not alone.

If you’re on PC you can always cheat by using a mod like the Portal and Runes Cheat Bundle. If you’re on PS4 you can take 1-2 hours to follow Top of the Galaxy’s path on this planet to find the last 14 glyphs. Or maybe you don’t want to cheat or take the easy way out. That’s a respectable choice! Here’s the good news for the honorable (stubborn?) Traveller: Even with only the first two glyphs you’ve already unlocked access to thousands of worlds!

That’s right, even if you only know the first two glyphs you can still explore more planets then you probably have time for in a single year! If we do some math using permutations, given only two objects (glyphs), out of a twelve-digit sequence, allowing for repetition we get a total of 4096 possible outcomes. Granted we may have to subtract at least one address because it doesn’t lead to a valid destination (000000000000), but the rest of the combinations, to the best of my knowledge, should mostly lead to uncorrupted destinations. Go ahead and see for yourself using dCode’s Permutation with Repetition Generator.

So then, the Duality Gate Network is the name I’ve given to the approximately four-thousand worlds in each galaxy that can be dialed using only the first two glyphs. Right now there are only a handful of these addresses published on The Portal Repository, however in the near future I intend to start exploring some of these two-glyph addresses and will add them to The Repository as soon as possible.

Calling All Travellers: If you would like to help speed up the process of populating the Repository with addresses to two-glyph worlds please feel free to send in your submissions and they will be posted with the tag Group 02 in the respective galaxy. Let’s help our fellow Travellers  access the riches and resources that these worlds may hold without needing to know more than two glyphs!

Please submit your portal addresses using the form here.

Behind the beauty, wonder and shear size of the No Man’s Sky universe is math. A complex mathematical formula within the game uses “seeds” to generate the worlds that we explore. These seeds are the same across everyone’s game, that is why two different players can visit the same world and see the exact same thing. Every rock, tree, bird, landscape etc is generated by passing the seed through the algorithm, which produces the same result every time. But although this consistency makes it feel like a persistent universe, the truth is everything could change tomorrow.

When version 1.3 Atlas Rises came out in August 2017 players logged in to find their universe changed, dramatically. What were once lush and beautiful planets had turned into toxic wastelands, and vice versa. The landscape had changed too, with some beacons and comm stations now either suspended in mid-air or buried deep underground. Plants were different, animals changed, entire star systems reconfigured. With all the new content Atlas Rises brought, a “galactic reset” was needed; the seed had changed and a virtual apocalypse was upon us.

This was an eye-opening experience for many players. We now saw first-hand that with the flick of a switch Hello Games could alter the entire universe that we had perceived as permanent. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We understood that this needed to happen in order to bring all the new features that Atlas Rises promised. Players adapted to the change. Some rebuilt where they stood, others packed up and moved to greener pastures. But we all moved forward with the understanding that our beloved universe could change again during future updates.

Those of us who love to document things in No Man’s Sky are most affected by galactic resets. For example, players in the Galactic Hub named planets and systems with descriptions that would help other players easily identify what was in that system or on a particular planet. After the galactic reset, all these names and descriptions were obsolete and no longer accurate. As a result, the players in the Galactic Hub packed up and moved to a new region of space to start over.

Here at The Portal Repository we are ready to deal with the consequences of another potential galactic reset. If Hello Games changes the galactic seed again with the next update all the current portal addresses in The Repository will be moved into a separate archive site where they will remain unchanged, a testament to worlds that were, but are no more. Meanwhile, on the main site, all existing addresses will be marked with a “Version 1.3” tag until the new details can be obtained. All future addresses will be tagged with the appropriate version number as well to make searching easier.

The fact that the universe can suddenly change doesn’t diminish the fun of exploring or of documenting our discoveries. In fact, if a galactic resets happen again there is a certain sense of accomplishment that comes from documenting as many worlds as we can before the next reset. Once that seed changes the only record of the old worlds will be in the player-made documentation such as The Portal Repository.

Even in the face of sixteen, we must declare that we lived. We existed, no matter the horror of the end.

A few weeks ago I decided to start a Creative Mode No Man’s Sky adventure to catalog each type of planet biome across the first ten galaxies on both PC and PS4 (except the “weird” biomes, sorry, those were just taking too long to stumble upon) .  The Euclid galaxy tends to be the most well-documented galaxy because it’s the first one, however with the advent of quick-travel portals and the Artemis storyline there is an increasing player presence in the other galaxies. So in an effort to make The Portal Repository useful to those outside Euclid I decided to launch an intergalactic portal expedition through the first ten galaxies: The Great Decagalactic Expedition!

Here’s how I quickly jump from galaxy to galaxy:

1. I dial a portal address to a planet somewhere near the center of my current galaxy. In the case of Euclid I used Kobol’s Gateway.
2. Then I build a signal booster and search for habitable bases. The first two results are usually far away from the portal, but the third result tends to be less than a 20-minute walk from the portal.
3. Build a Nomad exocraft and drive to the nearby habitable base.
4. Claim the base.
5. Drive back to the portal, go back through to the previous planet that I originally dialed in from.
6. Get back into my ship and fly to the space station.
7. Use the space station’s teleporter to transport back to my freshly-claimed base.
8. Upon arrival in my new base my ship is now parked just outside.
9. I disown the base so others can claim it in the future.
10. Hop in my ship, fly to space and then follow the path to the galactic center and jump to the next galaxy! (Sometimes the planet I portal to isn’t exactly right on the edge of the central void, but it’s close enough and only takes a single jump to get to a system right on the edge.)

So as you can see, no mods, no cheating. I only use methods of travel that are intended to be used during normal gameplay. Although I started this expedition on PC I plan to do the same thing on PS4 eventually. Since I can’t use mods on PS4 I needed a method that used only the built-in mechanics.

This is how I conduct the portal expedition in each galaxy:

1. I generate a list of between 10-20 random portal addresses using This Spreadsheet I created.
2. Then I copy those random addresses to my phone’s Notes.
3. On the first planet that I start off in the new galaxy I build the signal scanner, find the nearest monolith, use it to locate the portal, then fly to it.
4. From the top of the list I just start dialing each address and travel to the random planet.
5. Using the Notes app on my phone, I document one of each type of biome in that galaxy (Dry, Lush, Radioactive, Dead, Toxic, Frozen and Hot). If I travel to a planet with a biome that I have already documented in that galaxy I turn around and head back to try the next address on the list.

Although galaxies other than Euclid are less populated I’m hoping that the addresses documented here on The Portal Repository will help Travellers feel a little less alone.

So far I’ve completed expeditions on PC through Hilbert Dimension and Calypso. More are soon to come…

 

Greetings Travellers!

First of all I want to thank you for visiting The Portal Repository. This site is focused on collecting and organizing portal addresses from every galaxy in No Man’s Sky. When I started this website in late 2017 it was just a way for me to keep track of only my own portal adventures. However as the site grew, other players started to ask if they could add their addresses. Today, The Portal Repository features not just my own content but also content submitted by other players throughout the community and it continues to grow every day!

I was so excited when No Man’s Sky: Atlas Rises introduced functioning portals and right away I started studying how they worked. However,  although I loved the new portal system it bothered me that I couldn’t view a list of portal addresses in-game. The make-shift solution people came up with was to just post screenshots of their portal addresses online on the massive mega-threads on Reddit and the ETARC forums. This method of portal sharing was a quick-and-dirty solution and it was far from ideal.

When someone sees a portal address posted online one of the biggest problems is determining which game platform it is on (PC or PS4). Although the galaxy seeds are the same between both platforms (same planet climates, flora fauna, etc) player discoveries, comm stations and bases are not shared between platforms. That meant that if someone posted a picture of their base they would have to remember to specify not only which platform they were on, but also which galaxy and which game mode (Normal, Creative, Survival, etc).

Unfortunately, although some people provide all the necessary details, many people do not. What the community needed was some sort of portal sharing standardization. We needed a place where portal addresses always included at least the platform, galaxy and game mode. Furthermore, we also needed a system to organize, filter and search for what we were looking for. The answer: WordPress.

WordPress has been around for years and is probably best known for blogging. But WordPress isn’t just a blogging platform, it’s a complete Content Management System (CMS). A CMS is a database system that makes it easy to categorize, sort, filter, keyword tag and display vast amounts of information. When it comes to portal sharing, this is exactly what players of No Man’s Sky needed!

On The Portal Repository we quality-check all the submitted addresses to ensure they contain all the basic information. Ultimately this site’s purpose is to provide No Man’s Sky players with a way to easily find the places, planets, bases, resources and sights that they are looking for. The Portal Repository also offers players a convenient way to share their discoveries with the community.

Do you have a portal address you would like to add to The Portal Repository? If so please use the form below to submit it!