Burryaga’s Blooming Biomes

The screenshots explain the mod better than any words I know.

Latest News: Experimental branch of No Man’s Sky was released today (6 September 2021) as public branch 3.63. I have therefore rereleased the experimental version of my mod as the official mod. Anyone who was running experimental already has this new upload already, and does not need to download a new version.

The downloadable .zip (installable via Vortex) comes in two editions with four variations each:

Full Bloom Editions
BloomingBiomes-FullBloom-NothingResized-NothingRecolored
BloomingBiomes-FullBloom-NothingResized-FloraRecolored
BloomingBiomes-FullBloom-FloraResized-NothingRecolored
BloomingBiomes-FullBloom-FloraResized-FloraRecolored

Weeping Lorax Editions
BloomingBiomes-WeepingLorax-NothingResized-NothingRecolored
BloomingBiomes-WeepingLorax-NothingResized-FloraRecolored
BloomingBiomes-WeepingLorax-FloraResized-NothingRecolored
BloomingBiomes-WeepingLorax-FloraResized-FloraRecolored

When you figure out which .pak you want to use and extract it from the .zip, you can rename it BloomingBiomes.pak.

I will refer to your final selected version as BloomingBiomes.pak in the instructions below.

If you want it to load after another mod, add a Z or three to the beginning of the filename.

Warning!

If you are concerned about having new flora to scan on all of your old planets, then do not use the recolored versions of Burryaga’s Blooming Biomes!

The recolored versions of this mod use SwapPrimaryForRandomColour in GcObjectSpawnData. This will actually cause entirely new species of plants to appear on your planets while the mod is running, and any plants found during this time will be permanently added to your Discoveries. You will see them in Discoveries with or without the mod, but you will only be able to scan them while the mod is running. Similarly, you will only be able to scan vanilla flora while the mod is not running.

You have been warned. 😀

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Editions and Variations

All Version — All versions increase the group sizes and raise maximum spawnable number of fauna by over fifty percent.

Full Bloom Edition — The craziest floral bloom. This is the full experience: worldwide forests of trees and shrooms, with a range of increased coverages of various other flora. Grass planets will become jungles. Prepare to need to clear land for building in some areas.

Weeping Lorax Edition — Some people feel the full bloom is too many trees and shrooms, and some people simply struggle to run the full bloom with their usual graphics settings. The Weeping Lorax Edition allows those people to experience something between vanilla No Man’s Sky and the Full Bloom Edition of Blooming Biomes. This edition also decreases my adjustment to max fauna population.

Flora Recolored Variation — This variation will change your flora to new flora, as stated above in the warning.

Flora Resized Variation — This variation will make virtually all flora significantly bigger (the size changes are not applied to animals, although I have considered doing this as well in the future). Mushrooms are massively bigger, trees about double in size. Other flora such as bush, flowers, and grass are resized a bit more modestly.

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Installation Process

The first few steps are the same for everyone: download the .zip from FILES, and unzip it somewhere.

You will now have access to four .pak files. Decide which version of the mod to try, and rename it BloomingBiomes.pak.

The process for installing this .pak varies slightly, depending on whether you are using the Steam or Windows Store version of No Man’s Sky. Follow the instructions below that are relevant to you.

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Installation Process for Steam Users

Navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\No Man’s Sky\GAMEDATA\PCBANKS.

I cannot tell you where you installed Steam, but mine is in C:\Program Files (x86).

In PCBANKS, rename DISABLEMODS.TXT to .DISABLEMODS.TXT (notice the leading period), or just delete this file entirely. The game will not care at all if this file ceases to exist (it’s callous like that). You can disable individual mods, such as the one you’re about to install, by simply moving or hiding them.

Move or copy your desired version of BloomingBiomes.pak into PCBANKS\MODS\.

That’s it! Installing mods is easy on Steam.

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Installation Process for Windows Store Users

Ultimately, the idea is simple (and almost identical to the Steam method):

Navigate to GAMEDATA\PCBANKS\ in your game installation directory.

In PCBANKS, rename DISABLEMODS.TXT to .DISABLEMODS.TXT (notice the leading period), or just delete this file entirely. The game will not care at all if this file ceases to exist (it’s callous like that). You can disable individual mods, such as the one you’re about to install, by simply moving or hiding them.

Navigate to GAMEDATA\PCBANKS\MODS\ in your game installation directory.

Move or copy your desired version of BloomingBiomes.pak into this folder.

Then you’re golden!

However, the location of your game installation directory is a bit odd and possibly unique when you use the Microsoft Store. The folder’s naming conventions are unclear to me. I use Steam, so my knowledge of this process is entirely secondhand.

I have been told that GAMEDATA\PCBANKS\MODS\ is located in the following convoluted location:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\HelloGames.NoMansSky_ODD-SUFFIX\LocalCache\Local\Microsoft\WritablePackageRoot\

ODD-SUFFIX is a string of seemingly random numbers and letters, and may not be the same for all users. Therefore, you need to first explore %localappdata%\Packages\ in order to determine the precise name of your HelloGames.NoMansSky folder, and then add the rest of that folder address. Furthermore, in order to affect the game by accessing this folder in the first place, you may need this program:

ANMSMEMSPC – Andy’s NMS Mod Enabler for the Microsoft Store Edition (Xbox GamePass PC)

The above program may deal with DISABLEMODS.TXT for you.

Sorry, Microsoft Store people. I have heard that things are not so easy for you guys, but they are doable with persistence.

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Installation Process for Vortex Users

(Even though you probably already know.)

Launch the app and log into Vortex.

Add No Man’s Sky to GAMES if you have not already done so.

Navigate to MODS.

Drag & Drop the Blooming Biomes .zip file into the dotted box where you see, “Drop File(s)” (bottom of the app).

Clickthe button labeled Never Installed (not the arrow, the actual words).

Choose which version of the mod you would prefer to try, and then Finish.

Click the button labeled Disabled. It will become Enabled.

That’s it!

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Frequently Asked Questions

Will this affect my framerate?

This is an extremely new mod, and I have obviously not had time to thoroughly test it on Frontiers. Please contact me if you have any major issues on modern graphics cards. If you’re trying to run Ultra everything on a card older than a GTX 1080, good luck with that; obviously, generating more of everything is not computationally “free”, and you should not expect an identical framerate to vanilla No Man’s Sky. However, I have done my best to make sure that everywhere I visit is stable and smooth on my MSI 2080 Super Trio, so you will probably have great results on anything as good or better than that. I have also enlisted the help of testers who can confirm that this mod works on anything as good as a GTX 1080, but you may need to adjust settings.

Will this make me crash more?

It should never make you crash. If you do crash anywhere unusual, please contact me! I will determine why so that I can patch the issue as soon as possible. Please note that some people have discovered unusual crashing in vanilla Frontiers, so it will be helpful if you can confirm with certainty that the mod is your reason for any crashes before you contact me.

Are these changes permanent?

Yes and no. The changes to game files (the biome updates and animal group size increases) are not permanent. These will go away when you disable the mod. However, as mentioned above, updates to your Discoveries are permanent after you save your game.

Are there any known issues with the mod?

Nothing game-breaking. However, collision detection on spawned objects can be inconsistent. Most objects will spawn with collision, but I have found patches of objects that seem to be missing collision detection. Also, some large objects have poor collision detection on their top surface (even in vanilla, for the record), so standing on them for screenshots is a bit of a fine art. Also, you will see some tree-type plants growing into or through each other. This is inevitable, and, for me, a small price to pay for what the mod brings.

I’m seeing rectangular patches of grassless terrain. Did you do that?

No, Frontiers did that. They can also be found in vanilla.

The elevation of my settlement just changed slightly. Did you do that?

No, Frontiers did that. This change arrived with the introduction of the new Expedition in 3.63.

A phantom tree is growing in my base and I can’t hit it with the mining beam. Can I do anything about this?

Use the terrain manipulator to destroy the phantom tree’s foundation, then repair the ground. Not a perfect solution, but, again, that’s a price that I am happily willing to pay in order to run this mod.

Are any updates planned?

Probably. MBIN Compiler has officially been repaired to the point that Blooming Biomes is in complete working order for Frontiers (thanks to the amazingly dedicated efforts of the MBC team for their incredible efficiency). However, I do want to continue exploring objects that will look good when I increase their coverage without doing too much harm to frame rates, especially on non-lush worlds.

Will the updates break my bases?

Break, no. However, you may have some new trees or shrooms growing through your base. I will never do any terrain edits. Future updates will be aimed at balancing density to reduce the frequency of stuff growing through each other and increase proportion of objects that properly spawn with vanilla collision (meaning never expect perfection here), rebalancing plants a bit so that the rarer pretty stuff grows more frequently, and, of course, attempting to save as many frames per second as possible in order to enable as many people as possible to enjoy this mod together! I appreciate any suggestions regarding performance enhancements.

Is there anything I can do to improve performance?

Maybe. You can try to follow these steps, and hope for the best. It will not work for everyone. For me, I gained about 10 FPS on average, give or take 5, depending on the scenario. This honestly blew my mind. This fix involves modifying a game settings file in a text editor in order to allow No Man’s Sky to use more of your GPU threads (assuming I understand the field’s name correctly). If you do not have more threads than No Man’s Sky is already using, this might not help you. I am not completely sure, but I suspect No Man’s Sky may use less than the actual maximum number of threads by default for some GPUs. This setting, apparently in beta judging by its name, seems to allow use of all or at least more of your threads.

Navigate to your game installation directory, where you will find two folders: Binaries and GAMEDATA.

Navigate to Binaries/SETTINGS.

Open the file named TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS.MXML in any text editor. I use Atom and Code.

Find the following line in TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS.MXML:

<Property name=”NumGraphicsThreadsBeta” value=”0″ />

Set the value of the above Property to the value of either the Property element named NumHighThreads or the one named NumLowThreads (these had the same values for me, but pick the higher value if there is one), and launch the game.

As implied by its Beta status, I can tell you that this adjustment will not work for everyone. You may crash. However, when I set the value of this Property to 12, I saw a clear performance boost of about 10 fps on average.

Note that Property elements NumHighThreads and NumLowThreads will revert to their default values upon launching the game, so they can’t help you any further; NumGraphicsThreadsBeta is all we have. Spare yourself the trouble of trying them.

Why 12? Why NumHighThreads? Well, I tested quite a bit and found similar performance improvements at both the 12 and 16 level. Since the number of threads intuitively appears to refer to a CPU variable, Chris Kushnir (author of NMS Mod Builder) hypothesized that it may be referring to the number of CPU threads that can push requests to the GPU (hence NumGraphicsThreads). Based on my own testing, I hypothesize that this value is capped by either NumHighThreads or NumLowThreads, and, unfortunately, as stated before, changes to those fields appear to revert.

If this helps, let other people know! If it doesn’t, sorry! I wish I could help, but I have no way of forcing it to work when it fails.

Which version of this mod do you use?

My favorite is the one with larger stuff and randomized colors, but I don’t really care about my Discoveries featuring nonexistent entities. (See warning above if you have no idea what I mean.) For me, it’s super fun to see a bunch of new stuff on all of my old planets, so I don’t care if a few species are missing while I run the recolored versions.

Special Thanks

I want to thank a number of other modders who have made this mod possible for me.

First and foremost, this mod was made using Chris Kushnir’s NMS Mod Builder. That program is amazing and extremely helpful for anyone with C# experience. His libraries for packing my C# code into meaningful game data were fundamental to me being able to do this at all. And his app’s ability to safely handle incomplete game data has allowed me to have this mod ready for playing around in Frontiers before any updates his MBIN Compiler.

I also want to thank the modding community of the No Man’s Sky Modding Discord as well as the No Man’s Sky Discord (especially its #modding channel) for being awesome and helpful and supportive of new modders. Thanks in particular to several modders who have helped me personally understand various technical issues related to modding No Man’s Sky, including Mjjstral, Gumsk, monkeyman192, RayRod, WinderTP, and WoodyMontana. I would also like to give a shoutout to Argh, Exosolar, and jasondude7116 (also known as Dud) for creating some amazing mods that make my screenshots so much better.

Thanks as well to all of the programming legends who make MBIN Compiler work (especially monkeyman192 and WBertro, as well as the mysterious emoose, whom I do not know personally but who definitely worked on earlier versions of MBIN Compiler). They comprise a small group of very hardworking programmers who make NMS modding a possibility for most of us. They can’t possibly get enough credit for the possibilities they’ve brought to No Man’s Sky.

Finally, thanks to the many people who have been willing to help me test the mod and fix early crashes while I figured out what I could get away with modding, and how much I could get away with modding it. The early versions were less stable than what anyone on Nexus will be trying, and I appreciate their willingness to try and crash and try again. Their reports helped make this mod much more reliable than it would otherwise be. I truly appreciate you all.