KSP Weekly: The art of making missions

[magico13]

31 minutes ago, JPLRepo said:

Starts from placement in the editor/ShipConstruct.
Ends at recovery/destruction (but nothing stopping a mod from re-adding it).
Works in any scene

This sounds fantastic. I'm rolling my own thing right now but it should hopefully be a quick change over once the stock version is out. Is it safe to assume things will be identified with a Guid?

[JPLRepo]

8 minutes ago, magico13 said:

This sounds fantastic. I'm rolling my own thing right now but it should hopefully be a quick change over once the stock version is out. Is it safe to assume things will be identified with a Guid?

Not a safe assumption. But it is safe to assume they will be unique. If for some reason an ID is a duplicate, say if I load a craft file from some other time/save there are GameEvents for handling that.

[basic.syntax]

So much hate for the stock parts! I just can't manage it. Art may clash in various ways, but I still enjoy the experience, and chuckle at "Kerbal-engineered" re-purposed oil drums.  (Not an insult at Kerbal engineering; the fuel tanks passed all pressure tests!)  You should buy a game based on what it is right now, not what it might be.  (Unless a pre-order, and we're long past that.) Thanks Roverdude for taking the time for your replies in this thread.

[0111narwhalz]

17 minutes ago, basic.syntax said:

Art may clash in various ways, but I still enjoy the experience, and chuckle at "Kerbal-engineered" re-purposed oil drums.  (Not an insult at Kerbal engineering; the fuel tanks passed all pressure tests!)

And here we see the conflict. Some of us like the jerry-rigged aesthetic. Others want something that looks like it rolled out of JPL. I just want triangular structural plates.

[tater]

The junk aesthetic basically fit until the spaceplane parts.

Once those were stock, we were left with making the spaceplanes look awful to match, or the rockets better. Pick one.

Edited April 9, 2017 by tater

[passinglurker]

46 minutes ago, 0111narwhalz said:

And here we see the conflict. Some of us like the jerry-rigged aesthetic. Others want something that looks like it rolled out of JPL. I just want triangular structural plates.

This isn't a debate any more B9 settled it back in .21 with the ksc overhaul

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ArtyomZuev/20130731/197365/Environment_art_and_modeling_in_Kerbal_Space_Program.php

And the community reaffirmed it again in .90 when they turned down the barn. You'll get a few young pups that don't know any better and old dogs that just never care either way but it's still settled.

Parts are supposed to look well made. Exaggerated, and simplified to give a cartoon or toy like flair but still well made.

That's the default the expectation if squad wants to tap the majority of its existing user base for dlc sales. 

That being said a mesh/texture switch feature with different styles of parts from default, scifi, and lolzkerbalz fly trash cans as dlc would be a good way to make money and settle this once and for all.

Edited April 9, 2017 by passinglurker

[basic.syntax]

The "barn" had two problems: it went too far into the farm aesthetic, and it needed a ton of technical touch up work to complete, ("WIP" folks!) which critics shredded.

Although there hasn't been any official word about it in more than a year, it could still happen. They wanted to rework the Tier 0 buildings, making it more like an old abandoned military complex. I think it's needed, because career mode was originally designed to have four levels. Cutting it down to three increases the jump in upgrade costs between levels.

 

[DoctorDavinci]

2 hours ago, passinglurker said:

lolzkerbalz fly trash cans

This made me think of Oscar the Grouch flying a garbage can in KSP ... I'd buy that for a dollar 

[passinglurker]

22 hours ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

I'll toss in my $0.02 here: I think the 3.75m parts are a good design aesthetically, but they are poorly implemented technically. The rhino is one of the best designed engines in the game IMO. It's only implementation that's holding it back. For example, the mammoth vs. the KS-25:

They are the same overall design of engine, however the KS-25 has details that make it shine, like the caution text, better modeled regenerative cooling tubes, and more tris.

I think that there is nothing wrong with the design of the 3.75m tanks, and they would look great with an art pass.

Like I said before the 3.75m parts can get by on thier pallet choices from a distance but I'm afraid to fix the other problems an "artpass" would quickly escalate to "strip off everything but the collider and start over"

First thing to try is just a simple retexture just paint over the top to bring in some modern texture elements like I've done here

This quickly proves insufficient because the pixel density is just too low in many places to carry the sort of fine details we see in other parts so the next escalation is to use higher res textures. If squad has higher res masters then maybe they can catch a lucky break, but otherwise this means a total repaint from scratch at higher res, and if you are gonna go through that trouble why not re-unwrap the UV's for more uniform pixel density and greater resource efficiency? and if you are gonna crack open blender and fix the UV's why not make a new one with a properly spherical dome and straight sidewalls like a real fuel tank and unwrap that instead?

I don't entirely disagree the nasa parts had some good idea's like domed caps and imperfect paint jobs that were picked up on by subsequent authors, but like you said they were just poorly implemented, and unfortunately in thier case there isn't really a big difference between polish and purge.

18 hours ago, basic.syntax said:

The "barn" had two problems: it went too far into the farm aesthetic, and it needed a ton of technical touch up work to complete, ("WIP" folks!) which critics shredded.

Although there hasn't been any official word about it in more than a year, it could still happen. They wanted to rework the Tier 0 buildings, making it more like an old abandoned military complex. I think it's needed, because career mode was originally designed to have four levels. Cutting it down to three increases the jump in upgrade costs between levels.

 

Same goes here for what I just said about the NASA parts. Sometimes you're better off scrapping off the canvass and starting over. There was nothing about that WIP shot of the barn that was salvageable other than the simple idea of making a space center out of repurposed buildings. Repurposed building can be well made like the the way parts in ksp should be just because its a barn, or a silo, or a boat house doesn't mean it needs to look like junk. I welcome tier 0 buildings as long as they are made well.

Edited April 10, 2017 by passinglurker

[Terwin]

On 4/9/2017 at 11:04 AM, passinglurker said:

I'm sure your work meets the standards of smoothness and pixel density but in defining what is kerbal Leticia seems to be incorporating elements from parts that much of the community sees as artistically obsolete. 

Personally I am perfectly happy with the look of the rocket parts.

I might appreciate a few more LF tanks and adapters due to my over-use of nuclear engines, but I do not have problems with the appearance of the existing parts.

I expect this is probably just one more case of a vocal minority thinking it represents a larger fraction of the user-base than it really does.

(I must admit that any time I have used KAS to re-arrange inflatable fuel containers it does look pretty make-shift due the lack of a regular pattern, but it is also pretty hard to argue that the appearance does not match the fact in those cases...)

In any case, looking forward to starting a new game with the new version, but this time with more science containers now that I can collect multiple copies in bulk.

(would be nice if I could transfer to/from pods and labs without an EVA, but it is usually not that big of a deal, and with the new change, it should become even less so ).

 

[passinglurker]

21 minutes ago, Terwin said:

I expect this is probably just one more case of a vocal minority thinking it represents a larger fraction of the user-base than it really does.

The fact that visual overhaul, and alternate launcher pack mods are so popular proves otherwise if there wasn't a desire for better art the niches modders would settle into would turn out very different with more gap fillers and fewer replacements.

[regex]

42 minutes ago, Terwin said:

I expect this is probably just one more case of a vocal minority thinking it represents a larger fraction of the user-base than it really does.

"Vocal minority" and "silent majority" are just cheap attempts to silence an opposing opinion. State yours in confidence and be counted; there is no need to drag others down with cheap shots.

[Terwin]

11 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

The fact that visual overhaul, and alternate launcher pack mods are so popular proves otherwise if there wasn't a desire for better art the niches modders would settle into would turn out very different with more gap fillers and fewer replacements.

That does suggest that there are a number of mod makers that care about the appearance of certain parts.

But mod makers are a small fraction of mod users and mod users are a minority of those that play KSP.

It could well be that more than 90% of KSP players strongly dislike the current rocket part aesthetics for one reason or another, or it could be that it is less than 10%.

I do not know, but my guess would be the latter.

 

In any case, I do believe that you have made it clear that you personally have a strong desire for a rocket-part over-haul at this point.

[passinglurker]

30 minutes ago, Terwin said:

That does suggest that there are a number of mod makers that care about the appearance of certain parts.

But mod makers are a small fraction of mod users and mod users are a minority of those that play KSP.

Mod makers may be a minority but they are the sort of people you want in your community they have the same desires as users but with the skill and work ethic to make those desires reality therefore you can look at the modding trends as a snapshot of what the community wants. Factor in the mod users and this becomes a sizeable and dare I say majority demographic that shouldn't be marginalized or ignored.

Edited April 10, 2017 by passinglurker

[Waxing_Kibbous]

The reality is that you can't please everybody. As someone who has worked on multiple creative projects with others the butting of heads is a given- I imagine within Squad there was a bit of back and forth over how things should look, then they show a preview and suddenly the team of creative directors grows a thousand fold. It is difficult to get 2 people to agree on something, let alone 3 or more- that is why in the end there needs to be an authority with a final say. It's not to say other's opinions aren't valid or don't have some thought behind them, it's just that if all opinions were considered this DLC would be released in 5X the time.  This game is Squad's world, they made it, they make the rules. If their 5m tanks have a different color on the rim then the 3.75m, that's how the kerbals do it. I'm OK with that- it's Squads world, I just play in it.

@SQUAD One thing I'm sure you know already, Blender has an awesome node system, and one type of node is a pynode that allows the more skilled coder types to code within a node. Is something like this being considered?

 

[Curveball Anders]

4 hours ago, Terwin said:

Personally I am perfectly happy with the look of the rocket parts.

Same.

I'm perfectly happy with both the looks of the parts and the graphics in general.

Some functionality missing from the core game, but no biggies.

[MaxPrime]

On 07/04/2017 at 8:40 PM, SQUAD said:

Correspondingly, our friends at Blitworks have helped us develop a new maneuver node control scheme, which according to our testers greatly improves upon the previous one, which were adjusted using the cursor mode, in contrast with the newer scheme that uses the joysticks in combination with the Left and Right Shoulder Buttons for more precise and easier maneuver node adjustments.

Happy launchings!

I find this to be an extremely positive sign. I'm very hopeful we'll get a port that does the game justice. 

[SkyKaptn]

A lot of opinions and passion. Why? Because we love this game. Simple as that. 
-And one thing we all can agree on is that beautiful graphics add to the immersion. So more of that please and less of the old designs and early low-res textures. They are in fact not up to today's standards by a long shot. 
Period.

[Capt. Hunt]

19 hours ago, Curveball Anders said:

Same.

I'm perfectly happy with both the looks of the parts and the graphics in general.

Some functionality missing from the core game, but no biggies.

Same here, for a game that involves stacking dozens of parts together to build a rocket, the graphics are fine.  If anything it's better to have a little lower poly density on some of them so that big rockets don't effect performance.  I'd rather have a smooth running game then a photo-realistic slideshow.

[SkyKaptn]

2 hours ago, Capt. Hunt said:

I'd rather have a smooth running game then a photo-realistic slideshow.

Why should we choose at all between the two? The textures (GPU) are barely making a dent on the game's smoothness. We just have a poorly optimized game AND sub par textures on older parts. My PC is almost idle when running the game but still stutters (approx 20% used cpu, and my graphics card has not even revved up the fans) when things get crowded. (i7 4790K at 4,3GHz + GTX1080)

Edited April 11, 2017 by SkyKaptn

[passinglurker]

3 hours ago, Capt. Hunt said:

Same here, for a game that involves stacking dozens of parts together to build a rocket, the graphics are fine.  If anything it's better to have a little lower poly density on some of them so that big rockets don't effect performance.  I'd rather have a smooth running game then a photo-realistic slideshow.

First no one is asking for photo realism we only want consistency and it only makes sense to be consistent with the highest quality recent additions squad spent so much time and money overhauling (tier3 ksc, spaceplane parts, etc...)

Also Ksp's graphics are a drop in the bucket compared to the processing it dedicates to physics. If you are truly so apathetic to style that you would rather have a smooth running game at all costs then I'd suggest you simply open the settings menu, turn your graphics down, and stop building like a clip happy whackjob otherwise you get the lag you brought upon yourself.

Edit: oh and many old parts are UV mapped really inefficiently cause it was quick and cheap so you actually save resources if these are overhauled.

Edited April 11, 2017 by passinglurker

[DMagic]

17 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

Edit: oh and many old parts are UV mapped really inefficiently cause it was quick and cheap so you actually save resources if these are overhauled.

I think it's worth re-emphasizing this. There are a lot of really wasteful part textures in the Squad folder. Many fuel tanks that use similar, or nearly identical textures each have their own copy; compare the old fuel tanks to the Mk2 and Mk3 folders, where a single large texture is across 2-8 parts. If you are at all worried about the amount of RAM used by stock KSP then you should support overhauling the oldest parts (even if parts only account for a relatively small part of the overall RAM usage).

But, in my opinion, by far the worst offenders are the regular and small docking ports. Just open those two folders and look at what's inside, it get's only worse when you realize those 1024*256 textures (which resemble nothing but grey smudges) are only used for that little ring that gets pushed into the docking ports' parent part.

Most of the improvements people are discussing regarding the old rocket parts entail only minor changes to the part geometry, maybe adding round end-caps to the fuel tanks, and some other small details, even engines (probably the most visually complex parts in the game) don't use all that many triangles. It's the textures that are really in need of improvement.

[RoverDude]

5 hours ago, DMagic said:

There are a lot of really wasteful part textures in the Squad folder

You'll find that the models in the expansion are significantly more space efficient

[Temeter]

On 10.4.2017 at 0:02 AM, passinglurker said:

This isn't a debate any more B9 settled it back in .21 with the ksc overhaul

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ArtyomZuev/20130731/197365/Environment_art_and_modeling_in_Kerbal_Space_Program.php

And the community reaffirmed it again in .90 when they turned down the barn. You'll get a few young pups that don't know any better and old dogs that just never care either way but it's still settled.

Parts are supposed to look well made. Exaggerated, and simplified to give a cartoon or toy like flair but still well made.

That's the default the expectation if squad wants to tap the majority of its existing user base for dlc sales. 

That being said a mesh/texture switch feature with different styles of parts from default, scifi, and lolzkerbalz fly trash cans as dlc would be a good way to make money and settle this once and for all.

B9 didn't really settle anything, that was his personal vision. Squad people actually said they see it differently.

 

Btw, if anyone is bothered by the style or wants a stock part rework, there is always Ven Stock Revamp, which is quite high quality work (and near seamlessly upgrades your existing craft!):