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KSP Weekly: Lunar Water


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10 hours ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

They should be side by side

I think we should have new monuments to the Mk1-2 and Mk1 pods if anything.

Oh, and also put some of the old rocket parts in the Island Runway hangar next to the old rocket parts there.

As for the suits, I think they look pretty good, except for four things:

  • The mouth is stuck open weirdly. I really hope this bug doesn't carry through to the final release.
  • The grey helmet with white stripes looks kinda awful. White with red stripes is the way to go! (Also the dark blue-green band that joins the helmet to the visor should be a dark grey or black color.)
  • The EVA visor should be a yellow/green or even gold color. Without that tint, the Kerbals look too pale.
  • The display on the back of the jetpack is too flashy--and why should there be a flashy display on the back of a space suit anyway? Something subtler, that looks more like a debug panel (like the original was, or the lovely gauges on the vintage suit) than an at-a-glance computerized display. It also looks a little too futuristic. The game's tech seems to go between 1950s and 1980s, but the flashiness reminds me of something out of the 90s. At any rate I feel the suits should feel less era-specific. It should work in a futuristic setting as well as an early 1960s space program, and the suit otherwise fulfills that pretty well. (I know this is the longest entry on this list, but it's also the last in terms of importance)

What do I like?

  • I like that it still keeps most of the shape of the original space suit, while still being a unique design that blends bits from several different space suit designs.
  • The texturing is generally pleasant and traditionally stockalike, and matches the art style but not design style of the retro suits very nicely!
  • The blue accents are a major piece of the original suit, I'm glad they're not going anywhere... (I didn't like the red-only suit nearly as much)
  • The boots and mittens are so cuuuttte!
  • That little box on the left chest is a lovely detail, a bit of detail where there was none before. But its placement is confusing--it seems to be sewn to the suit but also to the blue straps--wouldn't a central position make more sense? Anyway I still love the depth that it adds. (Personally I would have liked to see the detail on the original suit brought to life--the control panel from an EMU space suit)

Some suit suggestions

  • The veterans should have their orange suits in IVA and on EVA. I have long wanted to see Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val in their trademark orange suits, out in the solar system. (Which is why I made a texturepack that did just that ages ago!)
  • You could have different suit textures for the different roles of kerbals--my suggestion would be to use the iconic Star Trek TNG colors--red for pilot, gold for engineer, and blue for scientist. Could change the helmet stripes, or the red straps on the suit. Or some other detail that would tell you the rank of the Kerbal just from their appearance.
  • I'm pretty sure female Kerbal hands are smaller than male Kerbals--this should be preserved on the new models.
  • We should keep the old space suit model and texture as an optional suit for the same reason we can still find the classic rocket parts in the VAB--backwards compatibility. A lot of kerbal suit texture packs are going to get screwed up when the model changes, and the extra detail and geometry on the new model would make it hard to replicate the custom design in many cases.
  • That blue and red icon on the box on the left of the chest--can we have that as a flag! It looks like a cool NASA parody logo with the red launch vehicle graphic instead of the red arrow.
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27 minutes ago, GregroxMun said:

I think we should have new monuments to the Mk1-2 and Mk1 pods if anything.

Oh, and also put some of the old rocket parts in the Island Runway hangar next to the old rocket parts there.

As for the suits, I think they look pretty good, except for four things:

  • The mouth is stuck open weirdly. I really hope this bug doesn't carry through to the final release.
  • The grey helmet with white stripes looks kinda awful. White with red stripes is the way to go! (Also the dark blue-green band that joins the helmet to the visor should be a dark grey or black color.)
  • The EVA visor should be a yellow/green or even gold color. Without that tint, the Kerbals look too pale.
  • The display on the back of the jetpack is too flashy--and why should there be a flashy display on the back of a space suit anyway? Something subtler, that looks more like a debug panel (like the original was, or the lovely gauges on the vintage suit) than an at-a-glance computerized display. It also looks a little too futuristic. The game's tech seems to go between 1950s and 1980s, but the flashiness reminds me of something out of the 90s. At any rate I feel the suits should feel less era-specific. It should work in a futuristic setting as well as an early 1960s space program, and the suit otherwise fulfills that pretty well. (I know this is the longest entry on this list, but it's also the last in terms of importance)

What do I like?

  • I like that it still keeps most of the shape of the original space suit, while still being a unique design that blends bits from several different space suit designs.
  • The texturing is generally pleasant and traditionally stockalike, and matches the art style but not design style of the retro suits very nicely!
  • The blue accents are a major piece of the original suit, I'm glad they're not going anywhere... (I didn't like the red-only suit nearly as much)
  • The boots and mittens are so cuuuttte!
  • That little box on the left chest is a lovely detail, a bit of detail where there was none before. But its placement is confusing--it seems to be sewn to the suit but also to the blue straps--wouldn't a central position make more sense? Anyway I still love the depth that it adds. (Personally I would have liked to see the detail on the original suit brought to life--the control panel from an EMU space suit)

Some suit suggestions

  • The veterans should have their orange suits in IVA and on EVA. I have long wanted to see Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val in their trademark orange suits, out in the solar system. (Which is why I made a texturepack that did just that ages ago!)
  • You could have different suit textures for the different roles of kerbals--my suggestion would be to use the iconic Star Trek TNG colors--red for pilot, gold for engineer, and blue for scientist. Could change the helmet stripes, or the red straps on the suit. Or some other detail that would tell you the rank of the Kerbal just from their appearance.
  • I'm pretty sure female Kerbal hands are smaller than male Kerbals--this should be preserved on the new models.
  • We should keep the old space suit model and texture as an optional suit for the same reason we can still find the classic rocket parts in the VAB--backwards compatibility. A lot of kerbal suit texture packs are going to get screwed up when the model changes, and the extra detail and geometry on the new model would make it hard to replicate the custom design in many cases.
  • That blue and red icon on the box on the left of the chest--can we have that as a flag! It looks like a cool NASA parody logo with the red launch vehicle graphic instead of the red arrow.

Indeed

They should have had the poll on the forums not on google

57 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Anyone else find it odd that they added the model/texture switching to Kerbals only to limit choices by having us vote which finished suits to not add to the game?

I don't get what your saying

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Great to see the revamp of the Mk1 Pod - it looks sooo "HD".  It is a very welcome improvement visually and physically, yet doesn't IMHO represent a change to the part within the game universe.

Thanks also for lending an ear to the feedback on the new kerbal mesh and suits.  The (continuing) constellation of comments just goes to show how much of a connection there is in the community with our little green spacefaring friends and their iconic appearance.

Looking forward to whatever else the art dept is cooking up :)

 

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(geez I'm late for this one)

On 8/24/2018 at 12:14 PM, SQUAD said:

One such parts is the MK1 Command Pod, which just got out of the VAB, fully revitalized and optimized.  We’re taking this opportunity to fix a few small issues with the original Mk1 pod. Attachment nodes will be adjusted so that the pod nests correctly on a 1.25m stack, and the top has been tweaked to be exactly 0.625m in diameter. The MK1 Pod will keep all its features and specifications, but with this new look it will make your first rockets look sleek and modern. Just as with the other parts we have shown off, the goal of this revamps isn’t to reinvent the wheel, but to give the part catalogue a more cohesive and sleek look, as well as to optimize the texture maps and the model geometry to reduce load times. Here is a GIFs to give you a full 3D look of the MK1 Pod.

congrats you have landed within the ballpark of acceptable results I can happily play with this as is. I especially like how I didn't notice the fasteners on the "cheeks" next to the hand hold until I zoomed in (this is good do fastener details like this in the future instead of framing panels with excessive shirt button rows of the stuff that you can pick out from orbit please :) )

Though there a few minor things that could make it just a little better.
1. as others have said a proper hatch texture or 0.625m standardized end cap texture instead of a scaled space plane end cap would be lovely
2. this is really subtle but slightly rounded panel corners like you find in porkjet's spaceplane's and elsewhere  generally make things look more playful without being painfully cartoony, and would help subtly tie this "sleek and modern" pod to the already regarded as sleek and modern looking space plane parts if they follow similar que's like that.
3. Show us the texture sheet its a great crunchy dev detail to show off especially since you are making a point of being optimal.

all in all a good devnote.
 

On 8/24/2018 at 3:38 PM, Deddly said:

And is that a reflection in the window I'm seeing in the gif there? 

Probably not if squad had implemented PBR or some other reflection-esque scheme I'd bet they'd be bragging about it more. Rather that's the work of the specular map. You know the thing I've often gone on about how every part should have no matter what (@nestor why don't the 1.25/2.5m service bays have specular maps?) it tends to make a difference doesn't it?

Edited by passinglurker
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12 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

@passinglurker I’m surprised. I was really sure you’d find this new MK1 Pod ugly, terrible, inefficient and inconsistent with other parts... “Ballpark of acceptable results” coming from passinglurker means that the part must be truly amazing. :wink:

See.  It can be done with a little gusto and elbow grease.

Edited by klgraham1013
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2 hours ago, sh1pman said:

@passinglurker I’m surprised. I was really sure you’d find this new MK1 Pod ugly, terrible, inefficient and inconsistent with other parts... “Ballpark of acceptable results” coming from passinglurker means that the part must be truly amazing. :wink:

Yeah its almost as if I was being honest, and serious this whole time, and wasn't just criticizing for the sake of stirring up fights. Weird right? :P

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Making the mk1 pod stack properly is most welcome.
As for the rest, I have no problem with the existing suits and no problem with the mk1 pod textures. If you want to improve the eyecandy, try adding some clouds.
The new pod is an improvement, true, but I'd certainly prefer to hear about some progress on...

As I haven't mentioned it in a while, and haven't seen any progress on the bugtracker: When are we going to get joystick support back on Linux? You know, that regression you guys introduced with 1.4.0 and still haven't fixed?
Care to explain why retexturing is getting a higher priority than fixing regressions?

Edited by steve_v
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48 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Care to explain why retexturing is getting a higher priority than fixing regressions?

I'm not minimising the issue (I think that sounds incredibly frustrating) but as you know, artists and coders work on entirely different things. Just because they are showing us the results of some work the artists have been doing, that doesn't mean it is higher priority than bugfixing. 

However, since they are jumping to 1.5, one could argue that other code has higher priority. As to whether or not that is a good move I have no insight into, though. 

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26 minutes ago, Deddly said:

Just because they are showing us the results of some work the artists have been doing, that doesn't mean it is higher priority than bugfixing.

Fair enough. I'd sure like to see some news though, even "we have some ideas", or that someone is working on it. So far all I can extract from the bug report is an insinuation that it's a Unity problem and it's not getting fixed any time soon.

Hell, I even get the impression there that certain unnamed individuals think SDL and the mythical "open source community" need to solve the problem Unity introduced, and they're not planning on doing anything about it.
A little word that this is not the case would go a long way.

Edited by steve_v
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Love the new Mk1 pod. It is much more there, where the whole level of quality should be.

If I may make a suggestion though: Please add a Mercury-like manouvering part, that fits on the nose of the pod, maybe along with a matching LES. It could be a bespoke RCS / parachute / docking part.

I have to agree with the others: Nice dev notes! :)

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On 8/24/2018 at 11:41 PM, Nertea said:

Pretty nice work! I might suggest using something other than the 1.25m aircraft endcap for the 0.625m endcap. Visual differentiation for size classes is fairly important.

15 hours ago, passinglurker said:

1. as others have said a proper hatch texture or 0.625m standardized end cap texture instead of a scaled space plane end cap would be lovely

EMfdsNL.png

Echoing the sentiments of the above, a little geometry here in the mesh would go a long way in making the part look a lot better as the complexity and quality of the model is obviously a lot higher than it was previously and by reusing the old, flat end cap plate texture seems a bit... wrong(?) here. It would be awesome if a decision was made to go the whole hog here with a recessed area showing the walls of the pressure capsule with a small hatch at the top but even if it was kept simple with some undulating mesh geometry within the sets of concentric rings it would give the whole area a lot of visual interest.

Other than that, the new pod looks nice, definitely a nice upgrade compared to the old one without any weird, pointless panels or greebles slapped on the side. I think in this kind of aesthetic, function should drive form in the whiteboxing stage but once that is decided up, then the form can be expanded on; clearly this is just my opinion about part style so this doesn't hold much weight. :D 

EDIT: Even something so simple as this quick Photoshop mock-up, just to give the whole surface a little sense of depth:

eaOYeyE.png

 

Edited by Poodmund
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Orange suits for EVA for the big 4 - Agreed!

We seriously need colors for the kerbal specializations.  Give everybody the suit-changing function from MH.  Retain MH suits for MH owners only, but give us new colored specialization version of those MH suits too.

Mercury and Gemini capsule noseparts - agreed; sorely lacking from MH parts list for Capsule MkII (1.875m).

Letting us look at artwork, critique them, and then letting your artists have the time to go back and make tweaks based on our feedback  - Agreed!  This tete-a-tete is nice, but only if you give your artists a chance to put our feedback to use.  It needs to be part of their time budget per part.

I am looking forward to checking out more new parts.  There are some that really need an overhaul.  Thanks for doing this!

 

 

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9 hours ago, Poodmund said:

Echoing the sentiments of the above, a little geometry here in the mesh would go a long way in making the part look a lot better as the complexity and quality of the model is obviously a lot higher than it was previously and by reusing the old, flat end cap plate texture seems a bit... wrong(?) here. It would be awesome if a decision was made to go the whole hog here with a recessed area showing the walls of the pressure capsule with a small hatch at the top but even if it was kept simple with some undulating mesh geometry within the sets of concentric rings it would give the whole area a lot of visual interest.

Thanks for the illustrated demo, Poodmund.  :)

I'll confess that I had to stare and stare and stare and stare to try to see any difference whatsoever between the two pictures, even with them conveniently side-by-side like that.  I seriously couldn't figure out how they were different.  Perhaps I'm just graphic-design-challenged?  Anyway, for anyone who, like me, isn't super quick at spotting "how are two things visually different", here they are overlaid, and now it's a whole lot more obvious:

cWaRU6k.gif

Yes, that definitely has more "character" to it.  :)   Thanks for the illustration, that's fantastic!

I agree that, now that I see them side by side, I do like your suggested more "rugged" look better.

That said, though... it also doesn't matter much to me.  It's only 0.625m, I rarely spend that much time zoomed super far in to the part, and in any case when I'm playing I'm always going to have it covered up by something else anyway, since it's an end cap.  So in my actual gameplay, I doubt I'd ever notice any difference between the two in practice.

If it's actual geometry, it would also add a fair number of polygons to the part, no?  Seems like a waste, given that they won't be exposed most of the time.  On the other hand, if we're just talking about adding a bit of bump-map to it, then I'd say yeah, no reservations there.

My other concern-- which is perhaps a non-issue, since I'm a modeling ignoramus and I don't have a good feel for how much time it takes the artists to produce the various parts-- is that there's a finite amount of time for the artists to work on stuff, and all other things being equal, I think I'd prefer that they be spending more time on the stuff that I'm actually going to see in-game (i.e. exposed surfaces, especially of larger parts, rather than tiny end caps that will always be covered).  If I'm wrong and this is a total no-brainer because it would literally only take a few minutes of someone's time, then never mind.  I merely bring it up because I'm always hesitant to follow the dictum that "anything I don't understand must be easy."  ;)

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52 minutes ago, Lilithvia said:

What about those of us who like the look of the current Mk1 command pod?

Is there something in particular you want? I hope its not asking they focus on code that's a completely different man power resource from art, squad is a studio not a one man modding team they can do both. If it's about keeping the old pod then they'll probably keep the old part hidden in the background for a while as they've done with other revamps so old craft files load properly before downscaling the textures or deleting the part entirely to save space after people have had a chance to replace craft or backup thier files in a distant update, but it would defeat the purpose of optimizing the art assets if they kept it around forever. 

also... there  are many  modder  revamps... if one suits your fancy better.
 

17 minutes ago, Snark said:

If it's actual geometry, it would also add a fair number of polygons to the part, no?  Seems like a waste, given that they won't be exposed most of the time.  On the other hand, if we're just talking about adding a bit of bump-map to it, then I'd say yeah, no reservations there.

It's not a high poly model or a physic collider an extra (counts...) 96 vertices won't hurt anything. Though personally I'd just give it a nice 0.625m specific end cap texture and call it a day rather than reusing the same spaceplane endcap everywhere but hey why not a texture and geometry change right?

Edited by passinglurker
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47 minutes ago, Snark said:

If it's actual geometry, it would also add a fair number of polygons to the part, no?  Seems like a waste, given that they won't be exposed most of the time.  On the other hand, if we're just talking about adding a bit of bump-map to it, then I'd say yeah, no reservations there.

My other concern-- which is perhaps a non-issue, since I'm a modeling ignoramus and I don't have a good feel for how much time it takes the artists to produce the various parts-- is that there's a finite amount of time for the artists to work on stuff, and all other things being equal, I think I'd prefer that they be spending more time on the stuff that I'm actually going to see in-game (i.e. exposed surfaces, especially of larger parts, rather than tiny end caps that will always be covered).  If I'm wrong and this is a total no-brainer because it would literally only take a few minutes of someone's time, then never mind.  I merely bring it up because I'm always hesitant to follow the dictum that "anything I don't understand must be easy."  ;)

The amount of extra vertices that this change would take would be relatively very low and the time it would take to texture such a thing would be rather trivial to a professional artist. Its worth noting that tris in the models aren't usually the cause of lag of fps drops unless the tri count is crazy high, lag is usually related to the amount of draw calls each frame when considering models/texturing.

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On 8/26/2018 at 3:26 AM, GregroxMun said:
  • The veterans should have their orange suits in IVA and on EVA. I have long wanted to see Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val in their trademark orange suits, out in the solar system. (Which is why I made a texturepack that did just that ages ago!) 

I personally disagree, and would prefer that the orange suits be limited to IVA only.

This is because the orange suits are meant to represent the Space Shuttle "pumpkin" Launch Entry Suits (LES) of the 1980's and the Advanced Crew Escape Suits (ACES) of the 1990's through to 2011, neither of which were used for EVA.

I'm certain there are other ways to modify the suit to denote veterancy, though.

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5 minutes ago, sumghai said:

I'm certain there are other ways to modify the suit to denote veterancy, though.

How about orange stripes on the veteran suits instead of the red/blue, since that is now associated with veterancy?

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