poopslayer78

Wow! This is an impressive list in such a short time. I'm watching a stream of the updated game now and the quality improvement is very noticeable. Hope ya'll can have a team outing or something on Friday to celebrate. -edit- Looking on youtube/reddit the community response seems to be very positive for this update.

There is an official statement from Intercept stating that Linux/Mac support is on their extended roadmap. As a Linux gamer myself, I'm hoping there's a native (not Wine/Proton) version eventually.

Thanks for posting this, this is a big relief for me. Growing pains are easy to tolerate when it's clear that the issues are only temporary. Thanks for sharing insights on the fine-grained lifecycle for different features so we know what to expect when something new comes out. In particular, thanks for providing this level of detail. You aren't mincing words or providing vague promises here. This directly addresses some of the biggest criticisms of the ESA footage and shows that you're able to respond quickly. It also prevents unhealthy speculation. I'll still be waiting and watching a bit before purchasing, but I feel much less anxious about the future of KSP2.

This video makes a good point: If a bunch of people buy a very early version of KSP2, then the publisher as already received its money and any continued expenditure on upcoming features just cuts into profits. The counter argument is that long term support will be determined by how well the early versions of the game are received. Honestly I have no idea which of these is more true, but I would encourage everyone to withhold your money until your personal quality threshold is met, both for your own self interest, but also to keep a carrot out in front of the people financing KSP2. I also agree with the video when it pushes back on the "It's just early access" response that gets parroted back every time concerns are raised. Early access would be justified for an indie studio early in development, but this is not the situation KSP2 is in. If the current level of quality is the best the KSP2 team can do after >3 years of time and money, it raises serious doubts that they will every deliver on their roadmap. Yes, I am aware of what happened in 2020, but that didn't stop other games from having successful releases.

The second coming of Krist Kerman is upon us.

Performance seems to be a universal concern among the KSP2 community and there seems to be a consistent request for improvements. Based on the ESA footage and scraps of other evidence, many speculate that the bottleneck is single threaded rigid body calculations. This thread will work under the assumption that rigid body physics is currently a major FPS bottleneck, so my apologies if this is not actually true. Also, this thread will not be concerned with optimizations to the physics engine, but instead suggest parts of the game where physics can be eliminated entirely, so the calculations are not necessary in the first place: Connections between vertically stacked fuel tanks Either make the connections non-wobbly aka "welded". Or make fuel tanks procedural Colony buildings - In my mind putting colony buildings under physics adds no fun and opens tons of potential for frustration. For example, colonies spontaneously exploding when switching to them, or a launch pad tilting slightly. Not to mention the performance overhead. Consider thinking of a different mechanic to constrain colony building, such as construction resources or static limits within the base assembly editor for things like mass, height, height/width ratio, etc. Delivery routes - If these are not in the immediate vicinity of a player, automated delivery vehicles should be non-physical and on rails so they don't spontaneously fail off screen. I'd also like to mention that most players don't actually seem to like wobbly rockets in KSP1 based on 2 observations: Cognitive: Players have explicitly stated on various KSP2 social media platforms that they aren't very nostalgic or heavily invested in wobbly rockets and a lack of pushback saying "keep rockets wobbly". Behavioral: Most players eventually learn to auto strut or spam manual struts until their vehicle becomes rigid. Reid Captain summed this up well by lamenting that "the game is actively playing against itself here" when talking about his gameplay loop of build rocket -> it's too wobbly -> spam struts -> bad performance.

As an avid player of Factorio, Satisfactory, and Dyson Sphere Program, I think the best fit for KSP2 will be to keep supply chains simple. A simple Mining (Ice) -> Refinement (Hydrogen) -> Consumption sounds good for most products. 2-step refinement or multi-input material refinement would be OK for late game stuff but it shouldn't go overboard. I remember an official comment from the devs stating that KSP2 is still mostly about building rockets and colony/resource management would be kept simple. Maybe it was a Shadow Zone interview... I couldn't find it. In terms of logistics, automated delivery routes should not be affected by physics, even if performance eventually becomes a non-issue. See also: If you really want an interplanetary factory & logistics simulation Dyson Sphere Program might be for you.

Hello World! Let me tell you something... The millisecond that colonies are implemented... I'm going to the highest peak of Eve and building a launch pad. Then I'm going to pay my respects to the dozens of lost kerbals who almost made it out of the atmosphere and bravely watched their last stage run dry and slowly fall back down to be consumed by the purple beast. The first 5000m will always be free after that. Mua ha ha!

This basically describes my reaction to the voice overs. I'm actually having a hard time pinning down specifically what bothers me about the KSP2 tutorial voice overs to keep my criticism constructive. I went through some other games with female voice overs during tutorials or instructions: Homeworld 1, Ixion, and Portal and tried to to a comparison: All voice overs were extremely calm The human character (Homeworld) mostly spoke the way people do in real life. The AI characters (Ixion/Portal) had slightly more exotic rhythms, pronunciations, and word emphasis but never went overboard. All speakers were adult characters Perhaps "over acting" is what happened here? My advise would be to tone things down and speak as if you were giving a lesson to teenagers or college students in a lecture hall. I agree with @darthgently that speaking this way won't alienate young viewers and may actually hold their attention better. The same voice actress could be used and do very well. --- A few minutes later --- OK so I just re-watched all the available tutorial footage: Missing The Ground and SWDennis Tutorial and the Training Center and honestly they're fine. I guess after the initial shock I just needed 24 hours to get used to them and now I'm wondering why I got so worked up over this. All this said, I don't think redoing the voice overs is a good use of time and resources. KSP2 honestly has quite a few urgent fires to put out and complex features to add making it hard to justify ripping out something finished.

See also procedural parts wishlist which talks about tanks and trusses. This seems like a great way to reduce physics load (performance) and most players seem to want to avoid the wobbly rocket gameplay as demonstrated by the common practice of auto strutting or adding tons of struts manually.

Yay! The ESA event footage shows an unambiguous thin line next to the rocket showing your precise position in the atmosphere! The devs also made the 4 atmosphere regions less dithered. Sounds like the devs are listening to our feedback and made the change within a reasonable turnaround time. Source: Matt Lowne KSP 2 APOLLO STYLE MUN MISSION

After watching the gameplay footage from the ESA event that released today, I've gotta say that all aspects of the audio in KSP2 are great. The soundtrack, rocket sounds, VAB sounds, UI sounds, footsteps, and kerbal chatter (which I totally wasn't expecting and love). Even better there's a ton of modulation depending on where you are (atm/vac) and the music seems to adapt to the environment. This seems like the most polished aspect of the early access gameplay and is perhaps the only area where I have 0 complaints or worries. Good job KSP2 audio team!

I also like this idea, not just for freedom during construction, but also for reducing part count and unnecessary physics calculations.

Personally I wouldn't mind the outer planets as a paid DLC that gets released after 1.0. The outer planets were never part of the early access roadmap, wasn't promised in any of the feature videos, and is a true "extra" that isn't critical for enjoying the base game. Plus, the outer planets would be a sufficient amount of content to justify a DLC. This seems like a fair one-time transaction of money for game content. That said, the OPM will probably be released as a mod long before 1.0 so we'll probably get it for free anyway .

Had another thought regarding the hefty GPU specs: I'd much rather the graphics be poorly optimized (which is an assumption, not fact) than the physics. The skills for optimizing 3D graphics are much more ubiquitous in the workforce since they've been required for basically every game since the 90s. The KSP2 devs will also have more knowledge and support available from Nvidia, AMD, Intel, and Unity since graphics optimization such a common task. Even if graphics are poorly optimized now, there's a good chance they will get better. If the bottleneck was physics on the CPU, like in KSP1, I'd be much more worried. The detailed physics in KSP2 is somewhat unique to this game and probably requires lots of custom in-house solutions to function. If physics were broken on Feb 24, then there may not be a clear path forward to making it better. I'd also like to note that I've been scrutinizing every clip of landing legs, rover wheels, and cargo bays and believe the kracken will be mild to non-existent even during EA. Or maybe I'm just huffing copium... luckily in a week we won't have to speculate and fret anymore.

I was literally about to write this, and if this is true then that's a good thing. It could explain why the GPU requirements seem disproportionately heavy compared to the CPU. Pure speculation of course, it could just be a case of bad optimization, and doesn't explain the ray tracing requirements. It wouldn't necessarily be more expensive, just shifted from the CPU (KSP1) to the GPU (unconfirmed, for the sake of argument).

Looks like I'd better get back to work assembling my new rig... cause my current 8 year old machine is nowhere near close. Hopefully the game will get a lot of optimizations before the 1.0 release.

This sounds like a good idea, I like it.

Looks like the devs took some of our feedback to heart: Less dithery/retro graphics on the navball, atmosphere indicator, and readouts Portraits moved to the corner

This is great! I'm no longer concerned about the graphics... because the graphics in this trailer are awesome! Clouds cast shadows on the ground now!?! The VAB looks like a cathedral with its big glass windows, lighting, shadows, and reflections off parts. I was specifically hoping they kept this architectural aesthetic from previous feature videos. The UI itself looks very clean I can tell the devs put a lot of thought into it. Do we actually get dust clouds like this when landing on the Mun!?! Can't wait to see what Duna landings look like.

The VAB looks like a cathedral with its big glass windows! Can't wait to hear the audio. Very pleasant setting to spend a lot of time in. Also... WHAT?!? Do we actually get these beautiful dust clouds when landing?!?

Whoever owns this user... your name made me chuckle today. That is all.

This also makes sense in terms of feature triage. Implementing in-game voice chat seems like a low yield (not necessarily bad) way to spend dev time. Just support a reliable windowed mode and make sure push to talk key presses get passed through properly and I'll be happy.

New screenshot from Discord