Implement Story Mode?

[Dmen2]

I read that the developers of KSP have try to put a story mode in KSP, but it never happened. The only sign about the story mode is the SSTV signal from Duna.

Do you think there will be a story mode in the future?

[Richy teh space man]

Doubtful, unless its a new DLC or something.

Part of the appeal of the game is the open endness of it, you are free to set your own objectives and make your own story.

[SchwinnTropius]

I'm sure one could be built in the upcoming DLC, though it would be an extensive "mission".

[Mastikator]

How would that even work?

[pandaman]

I'm not sure what benefit a full 'story mode' would give.

Perhaps in some limited form, as a series of linked sequential tutorials, it could be of some value.  It could then add some context to the learning process and help newcomers get to grips with the game by introducing stuff gradually in a more 'formal' and structured manner.

[GarrisonChisholm]

I think in the beginning a "structured" path to your first moon (either one) landing might be useful, to tell beginning players "this is the next step according to your leaders," but that you could post-pone as long as you wanted while honing your skills.

[Bottle Rocketeer 500]

I think that someone should make a mod to prove how hard it is to make story mode.

[KSK]

It's one of those ideas that comes around every so often but opinions remain divided, even amongst the folks over on the Fan Works forum (myself included) who are really into their kerbal fan-fictions.

Two questions - how do you actually do a story mode? And how do you do it well?

It's not obvious - not to me at any rate. Taking my own fanfic as an example, I sometimes think that parts of it would work reasonably well as an in-game story mode. The problem is that other parts would be tedious beyond belief, even if you're the kind of player who spends more time reading the part descriptions and Kerbopedia entries than actually playing the game.  

Jumping back to @Richy teh space man's comment about making our own stories though - it would be nice to have better ways of doing that in-game. Some kind of crew biographies that update as you play ( a la Final Frontier) would be good, as would having a more dynamic Contracts system with companies that are founded, grow (or not) and maybe even go bust, depending on how you engage with them and how well you execute any contracts that you accept from them.

 

Edited July 6, 2017 by KSK

[ZooNamedGames]

I used to have a storyline for the game which I used to introduce new mechanics and challenges not used yet by KSP...

...but sadly the community convinced me it wasn't worth writing up so I scraped it.

[NSEP]

I geuss you can make a story "mode" if you made your own tutorial, and spiced it up so its more like story.

[Snark]

I could totally see a "story mode", a.k.a. "campaign".  A series of missions where you start off with some situation or constraints, and you have to achieve some "victory condition", which takes you to the next chapter.  Could be fun, if done well.

I'm curious how sophisticated the mission editor in "Making History" will turn out to be.  If it's fancy enough, I could see it enabling something very much like this very thing.  It would be great if that were the case-- basically, hand players the ability to build their own "story mode" campaigns, which they can share with people.  Could potentially be a huge win.

Totally depends on how it's implemented, though-- in particular, how flexible it is, and does it allow for multi-step "chapters".

[razark]

I have Story Mode.  Final Frontier mod, my own tracking application, and some manually-operated digital random number generators.

 

Each game, the story's a little different.

After all, who wants to play the same story every time?

[adsii1970]

4 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I used to have a storyline for the game which I used to introduce new mechanics and challenges not used yet by KSP...

...but sadly the community convinced me it wasn't worth writing up so I scraped it.

Do things that you enjoy. Don't let the crowd tell you what or how to enjoy.

[Just Jim]

6 hours ago, KSK said:

It's one of those ideas that comes around every so often but opinions remain divided, even amongst the folks over on the Fan Works forum (myself included) who are really into their kerbal fan-fictions.

I'm kind of torn.... part of me maybe would like to see it... maybe even take a shot at writing it.

The other part of me says I already am writing something for this very reason : the game itself doesn't have any story. So I'm making my own up as I go along, and writing it down. And weird as it seems... people seem to like it! So why change things now?

But the biggest reason I think I'm a little more against than for a story mode is what @razark just said:

13 minutes ago, razark said:

After all, who wants to play the same story every time?

Unless they come up with something really unique that can change the story from one game to the next, this is what I'm afraid of with a story mode... after playing it a couple times it would get boring.

[Ultimate Steve]

17 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

The other part of me says I already am writing something for this very reason : the game itself doesn't have any story. So I'm making my own up as I go along, and writing it down. And weird as it seems... people seem to like it!

Exactly! I feel the same!

That's one of the reasons Iove KSP so much - it is a very flexible platform for writing your own story. That being said, a playable story mode would be interesting to see (as long as it didn't replace normal sandbox/career/science/etc).

 

[Ty Tan Tu]

3 hours ago, Snark said:

I could totally see a "story mode", a.k.a. "campaign".  A series of missions where you start off with some situation or constraints, and you have to achieve some "victory condition", which takes you to the next chapter.  Could be fun, if done well.

I'm curious how sophisticated the mission editor in "Making History" will turn out to be.  If it's fancy enough, I could see it enabling something very much like this very thing.  It would be great if that were the case-- basically, hand players the ability to build their own "story mode" campaigns, which they can share with people.  Could potentially be a huge win.

Totally depends on how it's implemented, though-- in particular, how flexible it is, and does it allow for multi-step "chapters".

The original story can be found here "The "plan", for a narrative loosely connecting easter eggs."

It was a bit like J.R. R.Tolkien's The Silmarillion, the idea to create a "Sketch of the Mythology" for KSP.

Having built stories for the city building series of Caesar (and its many iterations), small building blocks can be used to used to tell a compelling storie.

The tech tree can take the place of chapters. At the beginning of the game a hint is given to the first easter egg, or even maybe the limited tech at the beginning naturally leads you to the first easter egg. The first easter egg gives a cryptic hint to the finally story's epiphany, along with hints to maybe two more easter eggs. Along with the hints, you gain a bit of tech on the tree. The discovery gives the player two or more paths to pursue, and each path gives more branches. Depending on which path you take, you gain specific tech resources and cryptic hints. Ultimately you need all the hints to find the ultimate epiphany, but the path you take you to find it will be unique to each player.

True to the original mythology, you could put a huge space station so far out in the Kerbol system that it can only be reached if you know where to find it from the hints and have the technology gain to get there...

Of course other stories could be told. Stories that send you to the far reaches of Eeloo only to find the answer back on Kerbin..

[White Owl]

The K-Files story-based contract pack is a pretty good story mode. I still haven't finished it though, due to my compulsive restarting over and over.

[Guest]

Next thing you know, Telltale Games releases "Kerbal Space Program: Story Mode"

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Implementing a Story-Mode is actually quite easy.

KSP already registeres when you discover a Monolith or any other Easter Egg just by getting close enough to it.
A story-mode could just as simple as Missions are right now.

"We found a Monolith at KSP, engraved in it is the Position of another one on the Mun"
"The Monolith on the Moon has a Picture of a Face inside a Canyon on a red Planet on it"
"The Face on Duna is pointing towards a pyramid-like structure on the southpole of that planet" (it actually doesnt but that can be altered)
"The pyramid is radiating a strange signal"

.... and so on. You dont need more, leave the decription to the player
Tie it all together with some "finding the meaning of life" flavourtext and your storymode is done.

It wouldnt even interfere with the "freedom" of carreer-mode right now.
The foundations for an even more fleshed-out Story-Mode were planed out a long time ago, but forgotten and dismissed due to staff-fluctuations.

Edited July 8, 2017 by MalfunctionM1Ke

[Vanamonde]

This discussion of the game's development has been moved to Development Discussions. 

[Kerbinchaser]

On 7/6/2017 at 9:19 AM, Dmen2 said:

I read that the developers of KSP have try to put a story mode in KSP, but it never happened. The only sign about the story mode is the SSTV signal from Duna.

Do you think there will be a story mode in the future?

I am currently developing this mod: