Will Kerbal Space Program 2 be Cross-play?

[Scars1978]

Has anyone heard if the new KSP 2 is going to be cross-play on multiplayer?

[shdwlrd]

No info has been released on multiplayer yet.

[SciMan]

Crossplay is already a vanishingly rare feature in multiplayer games, but since this is a Unity game I see no reason why it shouldn't be doable.

However, the technical feasibility of the thing is rarely the sticking point. What usually happens is that the game developer wants to do crossplay but either Sony or Microsoft stick their foot in the door and say "nope" for one of who knows how many reasons.

The best situation I can see is crossplay between PC and Xbox, but even that's unlikely because as the PC player you'd be limited to "no mods" when doing crossplay with an Xbox player.
Plus, for performance reasons you'd likely have some limits on part count or something of the like, similar to in KSP 1's console ports.

And none of that addresses the fact that I sincerely doubt that KSP 2 will have any form of console port available at launch, so cross-play during that period becomes a moot point.
Probably gonna work more or less like with KSP 1, where the port to consoles is done at a later date (tho hopefully this time it's done by the same studio that actually made the PC version of the game, as they seem to know what they're doing).

[TheSameKerbal77]

I’m hopeful that we will i know one of the main reasons I gonna get KSP2 is multiplayer(alongside colonys and insteller travel) and a lot of other people likely feel the same way. But if for some reason you can’t develop cross-play between PC and Xbox the at least give us Mac and Windows (and maybe Linux) Crossplay.

 

 

 

 

I‘m quite sure that this post is 100% option based so don’t take it too hard. And awesome job Devs keep it up! I hope to have a game worthy of 3 lawn moving jobs!

[SciMan]

Oh PC/Mac/Linux crossplay shouldn't be hard to do at all (but you'll be paying way too much for whatever Mac you play games on, like most things Apple).

At least with PC and Linux the hardware's mostly the same. I'm not sure about what they're going to with the newest Macs tho, since those are (once again) going away from the X86 architecture (for who knows what reason, maybe to make it harder for people to "build their own Mac" probably, because apparently it's not in Apple's best interests to allow their customers the ability to choose to use anything non-Apple, and therefore intentionally make their stuff incompatible, despite their stuff likely not doing anything any better than a similar PC).

Aside from my personal extreme dislike of Apple's business practices, I don't see any reason why crossplay wouldn't be possible, but like I said since they're moving away from the X86 architecture there would have to be a port of the whole Unity game engine over to handle that.

So I guess I'm saying "PC/Linux crossplay highly likely, Mac maybe but that's not on the KSP developers to make it happen, and after that they might maybe who knows make Xbox also crossplay a little bit (or maybe even do like Fallout 4 did and make a miracle happen by allowing some kinds of mods on consoles too).

[K^2]

On 12/10/2021 at 11:03 AM, SciMan said:

At least with PC and Linux the hardware's mostly the same. I'm not sure about what they're going to with the newest Macs tho, since those are (once again) going away from the X86 architecture

That doesn't really matter to a game like KSP2 or just about any Unity game. The CPU difference hardly matters when you're running CIL code on a CLR. There could be some minor incompatibilities due to new CLR being written to support the new Macs, but that's more in the realm of bugs, really. Either way, it should have no impact on how the multiplayer functions. There is certain degree of challenge to actually get the game to run well on the Mac, but once you have that, making PC/Linux/Mac cross-play is going to be just as easy with M1 Macs as it would be with x86/64.

That said, we haven't really had confirmation that KSP2 will be natively supported on Linux and Mac. Valve's Proton might actually end up being the best way to play KSP2 on Linux if nothing changes, since they are getting pretty good at supporting Unity games, and if Steam Deck does well, I suspect that will only improve. I don't think it will ever quite match native, but it could get close enough to where you don't mind. And, of course, if your best option to play KSP2 on Linux will be via Proton, you'll get cross-play automatically, as you'd be running the same exact version on both platforms.

In contrast, I don't think there are particularly great options for Mac right now. With Vulkan dropped and OpenGL getting deprecated, options for running Windows games on Mac are getting thinner. It is possible to take a Windows Unity game, partially decompile it, and then build a native Mac project from it, which people have done successfully with some other games, but also, if something doesn't work, there aren't a lot of good options to fix it. So I would say there's a bit of a question mark on KSP2 on Mac at the moment, at least until we hear a confirmation of native support.

 

And yeah, as people have pointed out, with consoles, there is very rarely a tech reason not to support cross-play. There can be some little things, like tying your match-making too much to the game services, which could make matching players on different platforms difficult, but there are always ways to work around that. So the reason is almost universally in contracts that developers have with console companies. Usually, at least one of the two will have a clause that makes it impossible or very costly to develop cross-play games. It does sound like these restrictions might be loosened at the moment, as there are a lot more games showing up with cross-play, but it's very hard to say if it's anything Intercept can count on.

[magnemoe]

On 12/12/2021 at 1:14 PM, K^2 said:

That doesn't really matter to a game like KSP2 or just about any Unity game. The CPU difference hardly matters when you're running CIL code on a CLR. There could be some minor incompatibilities due to new CLR being written to support the new Macs, but that's more in the realm of bugs, really. Either way, it should have no impact on how the multiplayer functions. There is certain degree of challenge to actually get the game to run well on the Mac, but once you have that, making PC/Linux/Mac cross-play is going to be just as easy with M1 Macs as it would be with x86/64.

That said, we haven't really had confirmation that KSP2 will be natively supported on Linux and Mac. Valve's Proton might actually end up being the best way to play KSP2 on Linux if nothing changes, since they are getting pretty good at supporting Unity games, and if Steam Deck does well, I suspect that will only improve. I don't think it will ever quite match native, but it could get close enough to where you don't mind. And, of course, if your best option to play KSP2 on Linux will be via Proton, you'll get cross-play automatically, as you'd be running the same exact version on both platforms.

In contrast, I don't think there are particularly great options for Mac right now. With Vulkan dropped and OpenGL getting deprecated, options for running Windows games on Mac are getting thinner. It is possible to take a Windows Unity game, partially decompile it, and then build a native Mac project from it, which people have done successfully with some other games, but also, if something doesn't work, there aren't a lot of good options to fix it. So I would say there's a bit of a question mark on KSP2 on Mac at the moment, at least until we hear a confirmation of native support.

 

And yeah, as people have pointed out, with consoles, there is very rarely a tech reason not to support cross-play. There can be some little things, like tying your match-making too much to the game services, which could make matching players on different platforms difficult, but there are always ways to work around that. So the reason is almost universally in contracts that developers have with console companies. Usually, at least one of the two will have a clause that makes it impossible or very costly to develop cross-play games. It does sound like these restrictions might be loosened at the moment, as there are a lot more games showing up with cross-play, but it's very hard to say if it's anything Intercept can count on.

Yes, Mac getting a bit of an problem here, now its the 4th time they changed CPU, I feel their long term plan is to merge the Mac and the phone / tables there they really make money. Feeling Apple know they left gamers out in the dry here and did not really care.  Yes for very popular games like fortnite you make an M1 version for an far more niche game you don't. 

Now matchmaking should usually be done entirely inside the game, in most cases. In KSP 2 case it might not as here you join an server instance created by somebody for an purpose. 

[K^2]

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Now matchmaking should usually be done entirely inside the game, in most cases.

The problem is user discovery. If you only play with random people, it's not too much of a problem. You just need a simple name server for that. But if you want ability to play with friends, you need a system in place. So if I'm making a game available on Steam and consoles, my options are to roll my own user registration, user search, friend list, request/approval for said friend list, all of the UI that goes with it, some place in database to store all of the information and then a facility to report potential abuses and give users ability to manage and delete their accounts (GDPR!)...

Or I can just hook into Steam/Sony/Microsoft API and have you play with anyone you have as a friend on that platform, including built-in ability to send chat messages to invite said friend to a game. Yes, each platform has a slightly different API with slightly different limitations, which means some of this you'll have to implement in triplicate (or more), but this is usually implemented through a thin wrapper, meaning UI and game logic is only implemented once, so you still end up with an order of magnitude less work than building your own system from scratch.

And because a lot of games are taking that latter approach, they are inherently locked out from cross-play, not because there is a platform incompatibility, but because you just don't have facilities to invite players from other platforms into a game. Of course, this is something that can be expanded after the release. And at least with Steam/Windows you have an option of adding Windows Live API to have access to your friends on XBox. So there are definitely ways to work around it. But it might not be something you have out of the box on any given project.