KSP Weekly: Ultima Thule

[Angelo Kerman]

@SQUAD

It could happen...

 

 

 

[StarStreak2109]

3 hours ago, Nertea said:

Damnnit guys I'll do it almost pro bono. Two UCS Millenium Falcons. 

Now that's what I'm calling worthwhile! These will be a great improvement for the game!!!

Awesome work, @Nertea

3 hours ago, Nertea said:

 

 

Edited August 4, 2018 by StarStreak2109

[riocrokite]

This is a top notch revamp effort, awesome @Nertea

Seeing this one can understand why new stock parts are a bit underwhelming.

[shdwlrd]

12 hours ago, SQUAD said:

Among the improvements we are planning is the revamping of a few parts. Actually, we’ve already started this task and we thought you’d like to see an example of what we have up our sleeve so far.

I do like what I see here, but some of the other forum members do bring up some good points. It adds a more consistent feel to the stock parts, but the textures are boring and tired. Adding the possibility of using a straight white, orange, or green (olive drab?) colors for a cleaner look or adding a pattern other than stripes to help breakup the monotony of the parts would be nice to see. Ex. Instead of using a black and white stripes for the FT-100, use a checkered pattern.

7 hours ago, Nertea said:

Damnnit guys I'll do it almost pro bono. Two UCS Millennium Falcons. 

Those are some good looking parts. If Squad doesn't go into that direction, I would love to see these released as a mod. (If it hasn't been already.)

[klgraham1013]

I will say, there are some very good artists in the KSP community.  It would certainly be a shame to not utilize such a resource.

...but, I feel like we've been down this road before.  ...and because of [NDA REDACTED] that artist left the project, and their work was discarded.

[Dark Lion]

I only have two things to say. If it's too vague to be understood, then I don't suppose I know how to be understood.

!!!FOR SCIENCE!!!
and
I don't give a kraken's RUD about how "pretty" it is.

That is all.
 

[Vexillar]

First - great news on the 1.5 front.  And big thanks, Squad, for listening to the community and asking for our thoughts.

The quirky, junk-yard models/textures for the entry-level parts still, IMHO, lend a certain something to the early [career] game - but I greatly welcome the ability to choose a sleeker, more advanced look for the parts to make our Kreations look more high-tech in later career stages and sandbox.  I like the consistent-looking Apollo/Soyuz textures shown here, but it would be better still if there were further alternatives such as the ones@Lupi  posted.  Such a variety of choice in the stock game would encourage creativity and more craft sharing, perhaps?

[StarStreak2109]

2 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

I do like what I see here, but some of the other forum members do bring up some good points. It adds a more consistent feel to the stock parts, but the textures are boring and tired. Adding the possibility of using a straight white, orange, or green (olive drab?) colors for a cleaner look or adding a pattern other than stripes to help breakup the monotony of the parts would be nice to see. Ex. Instead of using a black and white stripes for the FT-100, use a checkered pattern.

Those are some good looking parts. If Squad doesn't go into that direction, I would love to see these released as a mod. (If it hasn't been already.)

Doing a revamp of the stock parts is a thing long overdue. That is for certain. The fact is however also that this revamp as we see it now looks uninspired and unmotivated. When comparing this to what the modding community puts out, one can't help but feeling underwhelmed. I already felt this way, when the new base was put put as part of the last major update, when compared to KerbinSide. I mean this should not be a contest, but if you want to attract new customers or even want to pursuade existing players to buy the "next DLC", I would hope there was a bit more effort to make it worthwhile.

The other thing is - also why I commented with "Yawns" above - why do they announce 1.5 so early??? Surely it is nice that the team - whoever they are now - continues to put effort (even if at marginal levels) into the game, but I feel there is no vision, no road map going forward. Right now, from what they posted, 1.5 looks to me like a 1.4.6 with some parts overhauled.

And instead of inspiring us with truely exciting things to come, they bore us with almost no info on KSP development, random science / space news (which most of us prefer to read from other sources) and (oy yay!) news from the community... So actual content is going to be watered down even more.

At the end of the day, I get the nagging feeling that KSP is a terminally ill patient, that is being kept alive by life support machines - in this case small-ish updates that mostly focus on bug-fixing. Even that would not be the worst thing, if they actually fixed bugs, but instead often enough new ones are introduced...

So yeah, where do we go from here, @SQUAD??? A dónde vamos desde aquí?

[flart]

stock way of launching sea ships: https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/19482

[klgraham1013]

22 minutes ago, StarStreak2109 said:

I feel there is no vision, no road map going forward.

Yeah.  I'm not sure there's ever been.  It has always felt as though the only planning was for the next update, and little beyond it.  ...or even how it relates to previous states of the game.  Unlocks being chosen based on when they were added in development, and not how they fit within the flow of the game.

25 minutes ago, StarStreak2109 said:

...updates that mostly focus on bug-fixing. Even that would not be the worst thing, if they actually fixed bugs, but instead often enough new ones are introduced...

Agreed.

[klesh]

12 hours ago, Nertea said:

Damnnit guys I'll do it almost pro bono. Two UCS Millenium Falcons. 

I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the 3.75m preview so many months ago on reddit.   Those are really what I would like this game to look like art wise.  I would seriously buy those from you.

16 hours ago, Lupi said:

 

Like that smaller band of checkering..

 

You can achieve the checkering look by using a few of the smaller stripped tanks and rotating them.  I do this currently with the 1.875m parts:

 

Spoiler

 

I really hope some of the problems we've been seeing with the artwork from 1.4x and MH can be sorted out before a whole new set of textures is messed up, with alpha channels everywhere and broken bumps maps etc.  It doesn't come off as professional, especially when there is an additional charge.

Edited August 4, 2018 by klesh

[Mikki]

I know its not teh place to ask for cookies but rounded tankbutts would be also great. And a light girdermesh/ truss system... My Kerbals constantly want to build and assemble more wider and longer vessels in orbit. A directional fixed clamp or square port would also be awesome... So my Kerbals could go wild and free...

[Saltshaker]

13 hours ago, Nertea said:

Damnnit guys I'll do it almost pro bono. Two UCS Millenium Falcons. 

I can't wait until @RoverDude gets to see Nertea's amazing work!

Edited August 4, 2018 by Saltshaker

[Lupi]

12 hours ago, klesh said:

You can achieve the checkering look by using a few of the smaller stripped tanks and rotating them.  I do this currently with the 1.875m parts:

Oh, I know! I do it myself a ton!

I was more specifically talking about that more dense checkering, with little squares instead of big rectangles!

Maybe it would look good on the shortest 1.25m tank.

 

I'm super down for a Fl-t400 with the diagonal stripes though

Edited August 5, 2018 by Lupi

[klesh]

17 minutes ago, Lupi said:

Oh, I know! I do it myself a ton!

 

High five for being another weirdo that pushes the base of the Battmans in so only the cells show. 

[CobaltWolf]

So we're still regressing the quality of the art assets in the game? Aight.

[Lupi]

10 hours ago, klesh said:

 

High five for being another weirdo that pushes the base of the Battmans in so only the cells show. 

What, you're *not* supposed to do that?

Also, the striping thing is alright, except when it isn't.

The jumbo-64s texture is/was wrapped funny for a while:

Here's more of that jool probe, it turned out pretty nice.

Edited August 5, 2018 by Lupi

[klgraham1013]

Rules to live by for life in general.

It's also why I was so annoyed by small, simple things like the missing IVA on the Mk1-3 pod and the mis-sized fairings.  So many obvious bugs that players noticed within minutes of booting up 1.4, yet were apparently missed by Squad's QA team.

Edited August 5, 2018 by Vanamonde

[passinglurker]

1 minute ago, klgraham1013 said:

Rules to live by for life in general.

It's also why I was so annoyed by small, simple things like the missing IVA on the Mk1-3 pod and the mis-sized fairings.  So many obvious bugs that players noticed within minutes of booting up 1.4, yet were apparently missed by Squad's QA team.

It would be a different story had squad establish a reputation of utilitarian low fidelity work on the outside but solid professional work under the hood, but after this long that has soundly been proven to not be the case.

[KraterKreator]

15 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

Is it a surprise we're getting a 1.5?  I'll admit, 1.4 was a bit of a surprise for me, but this I sort of expected.

I was expecting Take 2 to start working on 2.0. A significant free update to the current KSP is very welcome. I look forward to learning what the intent of 1.5 is.

[klgraham1013]

8 minutes ago, KraterKreator said:

I was expecting Take 2 to start working on 2.0. A significant free update to the current KSP is very welcome. I look forward to learning what the intent of 1.5 is.

I suspect Take Two may already be in the pre-alpha stages of KSP2.  No way to say for sure though.

[Vanamonde]

Some personal remarks have been removed from this thread. Please don't attack each other over opinions about the game. 

[passinglurker]

18 hours ago, Dark Lion said:

I don't give a kraken's RUD about how "pretty" it is.

That is all.

no one's asking for the most modern of techniques or the highest fidelity, but we still have standards and squad has shown consistently that parts that don't meet those standards on the surface often don't meet standards under the hood either resulting in heavier system resource use, or even bugs. If they are willing to cut corners where we can see them then they are definitely already cutting corners where we can't see them. As a result its very important for the community to care and hold squad to the standards for professional work and quality we've come to expect from squad's predecessors.

[StarStreak2109]

43 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

no one's asking for the most modern of techniques or the highest fidelity, but we still have standards and squad has shown consistently that parts that don't meet those standards on the surface often don't meet standards under the hood either resulting in heavier system resource use, or even bugs. If they are willing to cut corners where we can see them then they are definitely already cutting corners where we can't see them. As a result its very important for the community to care and hold squad to the standards for professional work and quality we've come to expect from squad's predecessors.

The game costs 40 bucks now, 55 bucks, if you count the DLC in. That is almost on par with an AAA game title. For that you get a game essentially still in beta, with pretty outdated graphics. Unity can do so much more as other Unity based games show. But that is not the point here. My point is that if I buy the game now, I am paying at least 40 bucks and get mediocre graphics. At least some effort should be made to make the game look as pretty as possible, without giving up on its heritage. Many modders in here have shown that this is possible, and "unfortunately", this is the standard the base game is measured by.

It is of course also understood, that this game has some history, i.e. the "original" game's scope was much different / smaller, than what it is now and that this history is also a burden. But all of this is IMHO no excuse to not just try to walk the extra mile to get as best a result as possible.

[passinglurker]

3 minutes ago, StarStreak2109 said:

My point is that if I buy the game now, I am paying at least 40 bucks and get mediocre graphics. At least some effort should be made to make the game look as pretty as possible, without giving up on its heritage. Many modders in here have shown that this is possible, and "unfortunately", this is the standard the base game is measured by.

Don't even need to look at mods. porkjet in stock showed you could do a lot with diffuse/specular/normal mapping, 200pxm, lowpoly meshes, etc... We want parts to be made to thier fullest potential within those standards because if they go the mile to get that right they might be going the mile to get the under the hood elements right aswell instead of shipping updates with config file typos of all things...