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PAX West Pre-show info dump (Thanks to NoMrBond for bringing this to our attention, all credit goes to them)


GoldForest

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45 minutes ago, nsgallup said:

2:07 shows some examples of overhanging features

You mean that shot of the base sitting on the ice planet?  I'm looking at it, and I sure don't see any overhangs.  I see some steep surfaces, sure, and also some tumbled boulders (i.e. what I assume are scatters that aren't part of the "terrain"), but I'm not seeing any overhangs there.

 

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1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

Yep both Duna and the ice planet had a few.

I'm sitting here looking at the trailer, and I see no overhangs on either Duna or the ice planet.  Could you post a screenshot with an arrow, or something?

To be clear, here's where I'm coming from:

  1. Direct statement from Star Theory about the trailer (in person at their studio), "everything you see in the trailer is a game asset"
    • My eyeballs don't detect anything in the trailer that looks like an overhang to me, which appears to corroborate this
  2. Direct statement from Star Theory about the terrain engine (in person at their studio), "no caves, no overhangs"
    • My eyeballs and memory tell me that what we're seeing here does look pretty much like the terrain they demoed to us, at least as well as my 10-day-old memory can tell me, which appears to corroborate this

So if anyone's feeling "disappointed", what are you disappointed about?

  • If you're feeling disappointed that "we won't get terrain like what we see in the trailer", I think you don't have to worry.  I think we will be getting terrain that looks pretty much like the trailer, based on what Star Theory has said and shown thus far.
  • If you're feeling disappointed because you were looking forward to having some sort of situation that's not shown in the trailer, like having an underground colony in a cave, or having some big overhanging shelf of rock that you can walk around underneath so that it's directly over your head like a ceiling... then yeah, I believe you're not getting that.
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I agree with you Stark - what's seen is just scatters looking like overhangs.  However, for discussion sake I grabbed a screenshot and circled the two most likely overhangs:

download

I do note that there are a lot of *near* overhangs - places where the terrain looks like an overhang but actually goes vertical.

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Those are some pretty large scatters if that's what they are. I would be happy if that was how they are done in game-play but I am not sure that we will have this based on current footage and dev comments.

@Snark I hope these features are extremely large scatters as you guess. If not, I would be a little disappointed as I am not sure how they would have the overhangs shown in the trailer. Not a deal breaker, and I am still very excited about this game. This might be a good question for the developers.

I don't trust that just because the terrain appears a certain way in the trailer it will be the same in game. For example the devs have been noncommittal on the question of clouds even though those were featured in the trailer.

Edited by nsgallup
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1 hour ago, Snark said:

I'm sitting here looking at the trailer, and I see no overhangs on either Duna or the ice planet.  Could you post a screenshot with an arrow, or something?

There's one in the bottom-right corner of the Duna wide-angle shot, close up. 

Edited by Guest
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2 hours ago, DStaal said:

I agree with you Stark - what's seen is just scatters looking like overhangs.  However, for discussion sake I grabbed a screenshot and circled the two most likely overhangs:

Oh, that. Thanks for the screenshot, it really helps.  Yeah, those look like scatters to me, i.e. not terrain.

Note that the "terrain versus scatters" distinction is probably less important in KSP 2 than in KSP 1.  In KSP 1, they're simply eye candy added as a sort of afterthought, and don't have colliders so you can't interact with them in any meaningful way.  In KSP 2, scatters have gotten a lot of love and are much more of a "real thing" than in KSP 1.  There are a lot of them, they have more variety in size and type, and they have colliders.  So that's something that a modder would have  to care about, but players probably don't, much.

TL;DR:  KSP2 scatters are a lot more "real" and important than in KSP 1.

 

2 hours ago, DStaal said:

I do note that there are a lot of *near* overhangs - places where the terrain looks like an overhang but actually goes vertical.

Yep.  Cliffs are fine in the underlying terrain engine, overhangs are not.  There's a big difference between "vertical" and "actually upside down".

 

46 minutes ago, nsgallup said:

Those are some pretty large scatters if that's what they are. I would be happy if that was how they are done in game-play but I am not sure that we will have this based on current footage and dev comments.

Hard to say if literally that scene on the ice planet would happen in the game or not.  The trailer is not game footage.  It's made of art assets from the game, but they've been put together by a cinematic artist for this video.  So those boulders you're seeing there are real things that will really be in the game (unless they change it between now and release, of course), but I dunno if that's the scale they'll be at, or if the artist may have played around with that for dramatic effect.  No way to know, until/unless Star Theory chooses to say more on the topic.

However, from the game footage that we did see, scatters are more prevalent and come in a variety of sizes, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's actually how big they are.  I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be that big.  After all, scaling a thing to any arbitrary size is trivial, in a computer program-- it's no additional work to pick a size.  In practice, the upper limit on scale is usually caused by level of detail, i.e. if you've made a rock that looks nice when it's a meter across, then scaling it up to 100 meters will "look wrong" because it'll seem blurry and not have enough detail in it.  But we've already been told that these boulders you're seeing in the trailer are actual game assets, which means they have enough level of detail to look good at that size.  And it takes time and artist effort to put detail into a thing, so if they weren't going to make the boulders that big in-game, why would they have taken the trouble to put that much detail into them?

TL;DR:  My guess is that they'll likely have scatters on that order of size.  But that's based on a certain amount of derived reasoning from what we've been seen/told, so I don't actually know that in any "authoritative" way.


 

28 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

There's one in the bottom-right corner of the Duna wide-angle shot, close up. 

Nope, I'm looking at it and I'm not seeing anything that even vaguely looks to me like an overhang.  Gonna have to see a screenshot with an arrow or something, like what @DStaal did, if I'm going to have any idea what you're talking about.

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@Snark  thoughts/questions that you may have some insight into...

Are the scatters persistent, as in permanent and always in the same places, so they don't move around when i am not looking?  I would assume this is the case, but worth checking.

And, are they always the same for all players/each new save, or are they randomly generated with each new game started?  Meaning each save/game has different scatter placement, so a safe landing site in one save could be littered with boulders on another, even though the underlying terrain is identical.

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3 minutes ago, pandaman said:

Are the scatters persistent, as in permanent and always in the same places, so they don't move around when i am not looking?  I would assume this is the case, but worth checking.

We didn't specifically talk about that, but I have to assume that they are, because anything else would be completely insane.  It's trivially easy to make them unchanging (just use a deterministic seed on the random number generator).  And since they have colliders, by design, to force you to have to cope with them... it would be a pretty gamebreaking experience if they moved around.  Land your ship on a boulder, then come back later and suddenly you're floating in midair and fall to your doom?

So at least for a particular game, they'd need to be totally constant.

5 minutes ago, pandaman said:

And, are they always the same for all players/each new save, or are they randomly generated with each new game started?  Meaning each save/game has different scatter placement, so a safe landing site in one save could be littered with boulders on another, even though the underlying terrain is identical.

That, I have no idea.  From a technical standpoint it would be trivially easy for them to do it either way-- it's just a matter of which one they choose.  (Or maybe "world seed" is a user-selectable option, or something, no clue.)

So your guess is as good as mine on this one.  If I had to guess, though, I'd suppose that at least by default, they'd want to make it the same all the time.  Otherwise it would be harder for players to share experiences ("look at this cool place I found at <latitude, longitude>, everyone!").

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2 hours ago, Snark said:

Nope, I'm looking at it and I'm not seeing anything that even vaguely looks to me like an overhang.  Gonna have to see a screenshot with an arrow or something, like what @DStaal did, if I'm going to have any idea what you're talking about.

LOL okay. I don't particularly care about the overhangs anyway, so let's just say that I'm seeing things. :cool:

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@Snark

32 minutes ago, Snark said:

So your guess is as good as mine on this one.  If I had to guess, though, I'd suppose that at least by default, they'd want to make it the same all the time.  Otherwise it would be harder for players to share experiences ("look at this cool place I found at <latitude, longitude>, everyone!").

My thoughts too.

Player options for 'Standard' (always identical), 'None' or 'Random' (with density options) could be a fairly easy way to make the Kerbolar system at least a bit different each time. Which would then make exploration and surveying for landing sites worthwhile.

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1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

LOL okay. I don't particularly care about the overhangs anyway, so let's just say that I'm seeing things. :cool:

There's a couple of rocks on the bottom right that are definitely jutting up and therefore have an overhang in the Duna wide-screen shot.  They look fairly big - but they're also *really* close to the camera, close enough that their size is largely a result of the field-of-view, not their actual size.  They're definitely scatters, and could well be small enough for a Kerbal to pick up by hand - it's just that they're *right* in front of the ground-level camera.

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1 hour ago, DStaal said:

There's a couple of rocks on the bottom right that are definitely jutting up and therefore have an overhang in the Duna wide-screen shot.

Shrug?  I'm looking right there and I see nothing that looks to me like an overhang.

I do see  a somewhat-level, brightly lit area in the foreground, then a small mini-cliff face (dark, because it's in shadow, because the camera is facing towards the sun) rising above it, and then above that another somewhat-level (and therefore brightly lit) area on top of that which is the elevated upper surface.

So, no, no jutting-out overhang.  Just a rock platform with a somewhat sharp edge and near-vertical sides, so that what I'm seeing is like a two-step "staircase" rising away from the camera.

That's assuming I'm looking at the same thing that you are, of course-- I'm just inferring that, since I can't actually know for sure what you're looking at without a picture and an arrow or something.  ;)

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12 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

After reading what you guys all say, it seems that overhanging terrain is impossible. But waht about overhanging scatters? Can it be made? As a scatter?

If I am wrong, someone please correct me. Thanks.

Considering scatter isn't part of the terrain, I think it would be possible. 

Edited by GoldForest
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