neilcomara

Dude that’s a million x more user friendly while still looking sweet! Did you design that?

To each their own but I took this limited early access a little bit differently than you Max. I saw a team of developers that, after working on this thing for 4-6 years, probably have a crazy huge list of mind blowingly awesome things that they're working on, but before they're ready to move forward, they wanted the heart and soul of this incredible fan base to be a part of their development. They released an very limited early access version that they knew only the biggest die hard fans would get right away, and want to use our initial thoughts and reactions as a part of their UX research process, with a promise that they're going to keep grinding away at the development of this game. I honestly don't know a dev team that's this devoted to their fanbase that they would do so much to show that they're not only diehard fans themselves, but also willing to let us play this much of a role in the development of this game. It gives me goosebumps, ngl. Anyway that's just my two cents about it.

I could be totally on my own in saying this and this is all just my personal opinion, but man all of the menus and the UI design elements really just don't feel right, like that department is on a totally different page from the rest of the team in terms of what they're going for with this game. I get what they're going for with that old timey 60s terminal typeface, they're trying to capture the cute kerbal vibe while also trying to give off the feel of space race era old tech look and feel, and if this were KSP 1 I'd say it kind of works, but in this beautiful game it just feels wrong and out of place. The graphics have been overhauled to the point where they're recommending an RTX 3080 and it looks so insanely good. Not only that but the models for the different ships look so high tech and shiny. But then you look at the interface and see this pixelated pukey colored crap all over your screen and it just doesn't make sense together. The marketing for the game also has that upgraded high quality look and feel to it in addition to the logo refresh. I'm not saying that the look and feel of KSP2 should completely drop the awesome silliness and charm of KSP, but it should definitely make a statement that: "Hey we're still those goofy green dudes, but this time we've got better tech, better graphics, better plume, sound effects etc. and we're about to take this thing to the next level." It's not just the mood and the overall ugliness of it though, it's also really brutal to read. That typeface with those colors are so pixelated and garbly looking that it's a really rough read in the map mode, and in the UI. When you open up a save file and see the typeface above the loading bar it's like night and day and you're just like: man why can't the UI look as clean as the loading screen lol. The iconography is supposed to go with these other design elements, and there definitely is uniformity between the two. The icons are also pixelated intentionally to look outdated along with the typeface to the point where I can't always tell what the icons are supposed to represent. I think it's possible to add elements of cartooniness to the UI without making it ugly, and I feel like KSP 1 did a phenomenal job at that. Right now in early access, I feel like the graphic design elements in KSP2 don't have a subtle cartoony charm; it just looks bad on purpose.

Pain Really don't like that jamming down on '<' ends up pausing the game. I don't know how other people have played ksp, but I like speeding up time warp fast and then if I'm over zealous, I mash <<<<<<<<<<<<<< fifty times. I do use '/' occasionally but it's not as simple of a transition in different situations if you were to do an observational study. There's certain things that I find creating a maneuver node really wasteful for. If I'm just making small adjustments to smooth out the circularization of my orbit, I'm not going to open a node for that, or left click in the map mode and click 'time warp here'...I'm just going to eyeball it because it's easier. Same with matching orbital planes...no need to go through the trouble of creating a maneuver node for that. I just fast forward with '>' but then as I get closer I mash '<' repeatedly. But then I may have slowed down to 1x speed a little too soon, so I have to hit '>' again. For these kinds of situations, going back and forth between '<' and '>' is just a much easier interaction for the user than to keep going back and forth between '>' and '/'. '/' is the equivalent of slamming your car brake down as hard as humanly possible, and for that reason, I only use it when I absolutely know that I'm intending on stopping on 1x speed, and I plan on staying there for a while. If I ever need to pause the game, that's what the escape key is for. I might be weird though, so it would be interesting to conduct some more user testing to see what other users find more beneficial. On my end, it just makes more sense to have repeated mashing of '<' only knock you down to 1x speed instead of completely pausing the game. Gain The speed transitions of speeding up and slowing down time warp feel so smooth, I love the way it transitions...feels way better than ksp 1 I love the way engines are working in sped up time warp. That one developer talked about how she would do those mega long burns on the nerv engine and how the team was working on fixing that in one of the Dev insight videos, and wow you guys actually pulled it off. I've just been flying around in a tiny little xeno engine thing and those time warp burns are a life saver. I also can't believe how smooth the x4 time warps in the atmosphere are now...ksp always went full kraken on me when I tried to do x4 warps in the atmosphere but you guys crushed it and it feels awesome. I Wish I don't know what you guys have planned for transfer window tools...my guess is you guys have some tricks up your sleeves. That may come wayyyy down the road though, I mean it took KSP 1 forever to add transfer window tools, and IMO they still weren't very good. Here's a feature you can implement quicker to ease players' pain points right now while you're working on transfer window tools: On the bottom of the UI, it shows the date: "000y ,00d, 00:00:00" If you give users the ability to double click these numbers and fast forward to a specific year, day, and time, they can just fast forward to exact times that already existing transfer window tools are already giving us. It would ease the pain of inaccurate time warping to certain dates, and simultaneously ease the pain of having to wait several minutes to time warp hundreds of days Thanks for a very fun day 1 in KSP 2, Fly Safe!

Phew thank god lmao

I tried putting a coupler over one like you could in ksp 1 but it just wouldn't go on

I can't get over how amazing everything looks. At one point on a trip back from the Mun, the sun was behind Kerbin and I could just feel how dark and empty everything was...I could barely make out Kerbin in the darkness and it gave me chills. I hope the lighting stays that way because it felt amazing. I really miss the reentry effects, looking forward to seeing that in future updates.

I made a note of the map view rotating (right click + drag) being super slow, but I just realized that it's also the same for rotating the camera in flight view as well.

A really useful feature that I liked in KSP 1 was being able to focus on a celestial body that I'm going to in the map mode, to see what my orbit will look like when I pass through its sphere of influence. It helps me know if I'm going to be passing in front of it, or behind it, which helps with gravity assists. When I try to focus the Mun for example, it doesn't show me the trajectory line, it just shows me that I'm going to be passing through its sphere of influence.

When I'm making Maneuver Node adjustments, all of my planned AP and PE information gets minimized. When I close the node, I can right click the planned AP and PE, but I want to be able to see the AP and PE while making the adjustment so that I don't have to keep making a small adjustment...close node...right click AP to see apoapsis....open node again...small adjustment...close node...right click AP again

(Talking about rotating the camera around in map mode by holding right click) It feels a lot slower and sluggish. I'm physically moving my entire arm across my desk to turn a birds eye view of the kerbin system just a few degrees clockwise

I like the hierarchy of the way the part menu is set up in the VAB, but I found myself having to mouse over a lot of icons to read the description. The Iconography is vague, lack of colors and details on different parts and side icons make it hard to tell at a glance what I'm looking at, whereas in KSP 1, the iconography made it very easy to tell just by looking at it, what category I'm clicking on, what part I'm selecting etc.

KSP 1 had a really clean feature in the VAB where you could push a button and it would automatically reset your staging in a way that makes the most sense. Really nice quality of life feature to have

Shift + Scroll to go up and down in the VAB is way easier

Awesome, thanks guys!

Awesome I'll have to try that, thanks for the great advice!

Hi guys, I've been setting up evenly spaced triangle orbit satellites at 120 degrees for my network and can get them at exactly at 120 from each other without any deviation. But every six months-year the phase angles either rise or drop by .01 degrees and decades later my little triangles are all messed up. I know it's because my apoapsis and periapsis are just barely not matching but damn it's hard to get the apoapsis and periapsis that precise. Has anybody else had this issue?