Cities on Kerbin

[capitaniojr]

i, I'd sugest one new biome on kerbin, cities,

some major ones could be new biome

some of them could even have a runaway, just like earth does, where we could land and refuel if needed, and maybe alow some contracts:

-goods trasnport betwen them

-aerial photos or reconaiscance, (create special equipment for that)

etc.

sorry for the bad english.

 

[RatchetinSpace]

I've always wanted cities for Kerbin, the issue is, to add enough buildings to make them good, and to add enough variety to make them worth visiting, and to place them all over Kerbin would be an enormous undertaking on the dev's side of things. Plus, I'm not sure that everyone's computer is up to rendering several thousand buildings at a time, maybe not even the game engine. You could fix this by making cities togglable, but then, whats the point of working so long on something that most people will leave turned off due to memory and performance issues.

Frankly I can't see this being added to the game. Prehaps some community modders could get together with something like the KerbinSide or Kerbtown mods to make some modded cities, but considering how quickly those mods died down their promises to make full Kerbal cities I don't think it'll happen in the foreseeable future.

I do want Kerbal cities, but I think its a lot of work to add what you're talking about to the game.

PS: Your English is pretty good

[ZooNamedGames]

To answer of a lot of what he mentioned is easily solved by letting the community create the cities. I know I'd love to help make it.

[pandaman]

I suppose 'cities' could be relatively small by Earth standards, and be fewer in number too, so that would reduce the impact a bit.

Perhaps for simplicity and reduced impact they could be made up of standard geodesic domes or similar, of maybe 3 or 4 different sizes, ranging from maybe about 250m across going up to maybe 1Km .

Towns and cities would then just be a collection these standard domes in different arrangements.  And standard 'destroyed' models could also be applied for the inevitable. 

Not exactly the most inspired architecture I know,  but it does have a recognisable 'habitation' look and it may be a viable approach to getting settlements at least represented in some way. 

 

[capitaniojr]

thanks, but i'd just thinking a simple city, just like pandaman sugested, just for visual efect, and could be just a few of them, like 10 cities on 3 diferent sizes would be cool, the point here should be the runaways, 3 sizes of cities, 3 sizes runaways,, this would not impact optimization too much and could add some more options for contracts and landing places with a refuel system, so we could have simple planes being refueled to a litle more range, this could lead to a balance on planes fuel tanks, they are too eficient rigth now, it is possible to travel around all the planet with the first aircraft i can build on carrer mode with 30 parts, having some runaways around could change the way airplanes are played in this game making it a lot more fun.

[pandaman]

1 minute ago, capitaniojr said:

thanks, but i'd just thinking a simple city, just like pandaman sugested, just for visual efect, and could be just a few of them, like 10 cities on 3 diferent sizes would be cool, the point here should be the runaways, 3 sizes of cities, 3 sizes runaways,, this would not impact optimization too much and could add some more options for contracts and landing places with a refuel system, so we could have simple planes being refueled to a litle more range, this could lead to a balance on planes fuel tanks, they are too eficient rigth now, it is possible to travel around all the planet with the first aircraft i can build on carrer mode with 30 parts, having some runaways around could change the way airplanes are played in this game making it a lot more fun.

That's pretty much what I was thinking too.  Not too many, but enough to give the impression that most of the planet is inhabited to some degree.  Any cities shown would represent the larger sttlements, and some would have airports with runways etc.

[RatchetinSpace]

On 8/22/2016 at 6:39 AM, pandaman said:

I suppose 'cities' could be relatively small by Earth standards, and be fewer in number too, so that would reduce the impact a bit.

Perhaps for simplicity and reduced impact they could be made up of standard geodesic domes or similar, of maybe 3 or 4 different sizes, ranging from maybe about 250m across going up to maybe 1Km .

Towns and cities would then just be a collection these standard domes in different arrangements.  And standard 'destroyed' models could also be applied for the inevitable. 

Not exactly the most inspired architecture I know,  but it does have a recognisable 'habitation' look and it may be a viable approach to getting settlements at least represented in some way. 

 

The only problem with this idea is that the runways at these cities are going to end up longer than the cities themselves. The KSC runway is more than 2.5 km long, and the island airstrip is over 1km. Unless you want Kerbin's major cities with runways fit only for model aeroplanes, or you want runways that look ludicrously long compared to the city itself, you'd just have to make much bigger cities than 1km across.

The problem is, Kerbin is just a lot smaller than Earth. It's only 1/10th the radius, but alot of people don't realise that equates to about 1/100th the surface area. If Kerbin had the same population density of Earth, it would have a population of just 62 million. Yet despite how small Kerbin is, the physics of flight remain the same as on Earth, so runways need to be just as long.

Anyway, if cities were to be added into the game I would hope they'd be much bigger than 1km. 20km2 would roughly equate to Tokyo on Kerbin.

[pandaman]

I get your point @RatchetinSpace, but does it actually matter if the runways and cities are not in proportion to Earth standards?  I don't think it does petdonally, there is nothing to say that Kerbin is as over populated as Earth, or that they have a similar town planning policy. 

The 'settlements' just need to be big enough to indicate main areas of habitation (or the bits of them visible above ground) so that the planet looks like it actually has a civilisation of some sort.

[RatchetinSpace]

3 hours ago, pandaman said:

I get your point @RatchetinSpace, but does it actually matter if the runways and cities are not in proportion to Earth standards?  I don't think it does petdonally, there is nothing to say that Kerbin is as over populated as Earth, or that they have a similar town planning policy. 

The 'settlements' just need to be big enough to indicate main areas of habitation (or the bits of them visible above ground) so that the planet looks like it actually has a civilisation of some sort.

Quite agree. Prehaps Kerbals build massive underground nests like ants.....

[Pthigrivi]

It could be possible, I'm not a programmer but I'm sure even very simple cities would take a huge amount of work. As far as I gather as with terrain scatter it's the collisions that are the main performance issue. Once they become physical objects you're talking about thousands of shapes that now have to be loaded and tracked by the game's physics. 

I'm an architect by trade so I'll admit I'd love to think about how a simple system of masses could be procedurally replicated to make something fun and convincing looking. 

Edited August 31, 2016 by Pthigrivi

[The_Rocketeer]

I don't see a need for more than one single (detailed and realistically-proportioned) city - Kerbopolis, if you will - reasonably close to KSC. KSP is a very wilderness/natural state-themed exploration game. Having a single comprehensive city would settle the 'where do they come from/live' question in a very satisfactory way, while still allowing the player to be the great Kerbal discoverer, adventurer and explorer of the wilderness of Kerbin. Kerbin is still, by a long way, the most interesting and scenic of all the planets in KSP. Adding cities all over it would really taint the game for me, like Kerbals were on the same path to self-destruction as the human race.

Now I feel all depressed

[pandaman]

I share your concerns about 'over population' @The_Rocketeer.

When you see one of those 'Earth at night from the ISS' images and all you can see are street lamps it's a bit disturbing.   I think there should be a few settlements dotted about all over Kerbin, to give things to see from orbit and destinations to fly to or land near.  But not very close together or In large numbers to avoid that sense of overcrowding. 

Maybe just a couple on the KSC continent, and the others spread around at similar densities. 

[322997am]

I make towns (they're more like villages) out of structural plates, but yeah I would like towns.

[Wjolcz]

Maybe. But only if @bac9 would do all the work. He's the master of beauty and polygon efficency.

[Corona688]

On 8/19/2016 at 5:05 PM, RatchetinSpace said:

I've always wanted cities for Kerbin, the issue is, to add enough buildings to make them good, and to add enough variety to make them worth visiting, and to place them all over Kerbin would be an enormous undertaking on the dev's side of things. Plus, I'm not sure that everyone's computer is up to rendering several thousand buildings at a time, maybe not even the game engine. You could fix this by making cities togglable, but then, whats the point of working so long on something that most people will leave turned off due to memory and performance issues.

It could be another kind of ground scatter.

[Zamolxes77]

I intensely dislike this idea. Kerbals are a race of lifeforms who live underground, in caves and grottoes, like the Ixians from Dune universe. They chose to keep the surface of their planet in pristine, natural form, free of pollution and eyesores. The only exception is the KSC itself, the only "town" allowed to exist on surface.

There is also a practical component. Can you imagine how slow the game would run with even more textures to load ?