Is Ksp for switch possible?

[Athen]

I've been thinking about it a lot recently. Could ksp work on switch? I had a computer that had simillar specs to the switch, and i was able to run ksp pretty good (without visual mods of course)

Im still not sure weather or not the game could run on a switch.

Could the game even be ported to the switch in the first place?

 

[Snark]

12 minutes ago, Athen said:

Could the game even be ported to the switch in the first place?

I'd say it would be extraordinarily unlikely, given the very different platform architectures.

Impossible to say without a crystal ball, of course, but personally I'd put this solidly in the "not gonna happen" category.

[MechBFP]

You ran KSP on a computer with a 1GHZ CPU?

[JERONIMO]

1 minute ago, Snark said:

I'd say it would be extraordinarily unlikely, given the very different platform architectures.

Impossible to say without a crystal ball, of course, but personally I'd put this solidly in the "not gonna happen" category.

Yet would be cool

[Geonovast]

The switch's hardware is simply not good enough.

Even if they bothered to do a port, it would be flat-out unplayable, and Squad would be attacked and harrassed for the performance by people who think all quad-core processors work the same, and fall into the  "If it can play X, then it can play Y" belief.

The CPU would melt and the RAM would run out.

It wouldn't be "cool" or "neat".  It would be horrendous and would lose Squad copious amounts of respect for something out of their control, not to mention irritate everyone who bought into the idea that it could possibly work.

 

Edited June 18, 2019 by Geonovast
Tyoing is hurd

[Snark]

11 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

You ran KSP on a computer with a 1GHZ CPU?

...powered by a battery?

1 minute ago, Geonovast said:

The switch's hardware is simply not good enough.

Even if they bothered to do a port, it would be flat-out unplayable, and Squad would be attacked and harrassed for the performance by people who think all quad-core processors work the same, fall into the  "If it can play X, then it can play Y" belief.

The CPU would melt and the RAM would run out.

It wouldn't be "cool" or "neat".  It would be horrendous and would lose Squad copious amounts of respect for out of their control, not to mention irritate everyone who bought into the idea that it could possibly work.

... entire post quoted for truthiness. Very much this.

[cantab]

The Unity game engine supports the Nintendo Switch, though I'm not sure KSP uses a version that supports Switch; if not then an engine upgrade would be needed.

As mentioned though, it's questionable the Switch's CPU could run KSP acceptably without altering the game. Although it has long occurred to me - if the game simply behind-the-scenes "welded" parts when launching a vessel that could cut down the CPU load a lot, without having a huge impact on gameplay.

[qzgy]

Just now, cantab said:

Although it has long occurred to me - if the game simply behind-the-scenes "welded" parts when launching a vessel that could cut down the CPU load a lot, without having a huge impact on gameplay.

And... what would happen to individual part level destruction? Cause that too is a part of the game and sometimes important. Unless you have a work around I'm not thinking of, I think behind the scenes welding would take away from this....

[Shadowmage]

1 hour ago, qzgy said:

And... what would happen to individual part level destruction? Cause that too is a part of the game and sometimes important. Unless you have a work around I'm not thinking of, I think behind the scenes welding would take away from this....

You can still do dynamic part-destruction.  Each part still has its own colliders; only difference is there is only one RigidBody, and thus only one 'body' for physics calculations (as opposed to the current state of one rigidbody and multiple joints per part, which is what kills on physics updates).  When a collision is detected, you query for which colliders were involved, and destroy just that part if needed.  If that part happened to be in the middle of the craft, the craft gets split apart, and now you have two craft each with a single rigidbody (but still consisting of multiple parts).

A system very similar to this was implemented by the game TrailMakers, which also uses Unity.  They do dynamic body welding of individual blocks to reduce the number of rigidbodies in a craft, while still allowing some 'flex' in the craft.  As blocks in a craft are destroyed/added/removed, the rigidbodies are recalculated as needed.  Rather than having 200+ rigidbodies for a craft, they are able to weld them down to 4-5 (and could go lower); mostly these splits are across moving parts such as hinges/rotors, which is the one place where multiple rigidbodies and joints would still be needed.

TLDR:  It would work.  It would work well.  It is entirely possible (and better for performance).  SQUAD explicitly has decided not to go this route, because they like the floppy-ness that multiple joints gives.  (though, with autostrut being added and player-usable, this is a far less compelling argument -- can't we just get single-rigidbody vessels already, and stop worrying about performance due to part-count?  (I'd happily pay for that DLC, many times over... hint... hint...)

[Athen]

1 hour ago, MechBFP said:

You ran KSP on a computer with a 1GHZ CPU?

Simmilar on other aspects, now that you've pointed that out i doubt that it could ever be possible to run ksp at all on switch.

Essentially, what ive gathered from reading all of these posts is that it is probably not possible. 

Edited June 18, 2019 by Athen

[KerbolExplorer]

From a switch owner:

As other stated the hardware of the switch is simply not enought.

Adn by the way...You do know KSP is virtually imposible to play without a keyboard right?A good chunk of the Xbox/PS4 Player base is asking for keyboard and mouse support.

 

And remember to that the switch is less powerfull in undocked mode(portable mode) so they will need to optimice the game EVEN more to run in undocked mode.

 

 

[magnemoe]

On 6/18/2019 at 7:54 PM, Snark said:

I'd say it would be extraordinarily unlikely, given the very different platform architectures.

Impossible to say without a crystal ball, of course, but personally I'd put this solidly in the "not gonna happen" category.

Yes, PS4 and One run on the same hardware as pc, OS is another story but far easier to port across OS than hardware. 

[Superfluous J]

On 6/18/2019 at 2:04 PM, Geonovast said:

It wouldn't be "cool" or "neat".  It would be horrendous and would lose Squad copious amounts of respect for something out of their control, not to mention irritate everyone who bought into the idea that it could possibly work.

Pfft that's what people said about the Xbox and Playstation ports. And look how those turned out.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

Everyone seems to be forgetting the Tegra chips CPU's  in the switch are not X86; it's ARM. You would need to recompile the source for the new architecture; along with ensuring the proper instructions are there. Is it impossible? Not by a long shot.

But would it be in the best interests of Squad to hire on an entire team of ARM developers to develop a port of a niche game for a niche system that won't ever manage to equal the experience available on even the slowest PC ? I can't speak for their financial department; however ,  common sense says no.