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Developer Insights #14 - Part Creation


Ghostii_Space

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Oh and in addendum while cosmetic parts are great I do hope that habitation modules themselves have in-game effects and are important for keeping kerbals productive rather than just non-functioning role-play mass. Part of the fun of KSP is not just that you can snap all these parts together, but that each one (or most of them) are important components of a working machine, and I hope that logic flows through to the major colony modules. 

Edited by Pthigrivi
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9 hours ago, Ghostii_Space said:

In addition, we have a long roadmap of features

Awesome to know that KSP2 will have further development after release. I look forward to seeing DLCs in the future. (please please....add robotics sooner than later)

6 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

They are extremely cool. Our team is still trying to wrap our heads around all the new design possibilities that come with procedural wings - last week we all spent time building racecars... and they're just fantastic.  It's one aspect of the game that I'm very excited to see in the hands of players.

What I am wondering about here is how procedural parts explode. If a large wing blows up, does it just cease to exist or does it break into smaller pieces? (for a future Developer Insight maybe)

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11 hours ago, t_v said:

Wow, I learned a lot about engines just from this! Thanks for making parts that have components reflecting their function. 

We're always striving for a high level of realism and personally one of the things I love about KSP is the teaching effect - if we've done our job right, everything in the game should inspire in some way. If you see a rocket engine with a really weird, unique looking pipe, you should be able to look up that kind of pipe and learn about it. 

9 hours ago, Bubbadevlin said:

My other question is more of an art one, but will the parts be more visually uniform? The visual style of KSP's parts has very distinct waves depending on when things were introduced. Parts can have very noticeably different shades of white  or the metallic portions can reflect light entirely differently (look at the spherical fuel tanks vs the mylar skinned panels vs that probe core..)  While this can be cool in the sense that each brand and lineup of parts is slightly different, it can be incredibly annoying if you are trying to mix the two together. 

We're putting a lot of effort into making sure you can build cohesive ships, so I can certainly say yes here. 

9 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

@Nate Simpson@Nertea Thank you for your insight on the design process for how parts are made for KSP 2! When the game gets closer to release, would it be possible to have a part creation guide for modders? Perhaps something like the above, but some descriptions about color palette, number of faces in a cylinder, that sort of thing. Modders have deduced these things for KSP 1 over the years, but with a style guide, it would be easier for us to make parts that mesh well with KSP 2's more sophisticated art style.

I would love to see us ship as many tools for modders as possible, which definitely includes documentation on standards. 

5 hours ago, Thundy said:

I noticed the word "Rotational" in some of the annotations. does that mean some of the parts will be animated?

We certainly have animated parts, but that annotation just refers to the magnetic field that piece creates -  it causes the plasma particles to rotate in a cylindrical fashion, compared to the nozzle's field that directs the particles outward. 

4 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Oh and in addendum while cosmetic parts are great I do hope that habitation modules themselves have in-game effects and are important for keeping kerbals productive rather than just non-functioning role-play mass. Part of the fun of KSP is not just that you can snap all these parts together, but that each one (or most of them) are important components of a working machine, and I hope that logic flows through to the major colony modules. 

The right answer is probably a mix - we want some parts where you can just go crazy and make fun things, but also considered setpiece parts that have specific purposes. 

Edited by Nertea
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5 hours ago, Thundy said:

I noticed the word "Rotational" in some of the annotations. does that mean some of the parts will be animated?

The following video was released showing a rocket engine with animation that will be in KSP2 to give you are working model

 

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1 hour ago, Nertea said:

The right answer is probably a mix - we want some parts where you can just go crazy and make fun things, but also considered setpiece parts that have specific purposes. 

I’m definitely excited to see what you’ve all cooked up, and obviously I haven’t seen playtest feedback and what seems to be a fun challenge and what bogs things down. Im sure you’ve played games where you kind of top out your resources and can do whatever you like and peacock a bit, and there’s going to be that personal relationship between the drive to min-max and the drive for something beautiful in its own right. And maybe its just me but when I get to that point where I have ‘all the money’ and nothing really matters anymore a game reaches its limit and kind of falls flat like a cake. Purely aesthetic parts should really be interstitial rather than formative. Its a binder rather than a riser.  You can eek a lot out of small game bonuses, especially in a game where you have dozens of planets to explore and can build crazy elaborate bases on each. Certainly there are parts that are connectors and adapters that make a thing look cohesive even if they don’t serve an explicit gameplay function, but a simple and elastic relationship between resources and habitation and capacity would be awesome to see, if possible. 

Edited by Pthigrivi
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Regarding asteroids as parts- KSP1 asteroids had variation based on size, but not much else. In the real world asteroids have a pretty great variety in terms of their composition. Will KSP2 asteroids vary based on composition? For example, will there be KSP2 equivalents of C, M, and S type asteroids?

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18 hours ago, Bubbadevlin said:

Parts can have very noticeably different shades of white  or the metallic portions can reflect light entirely differently (look at the spherical fuel tanks vs the mylar skinned panels vs that probe core..) 

Just because two parts are white doesn't mean they are made of the same material. The white version of the panels would probably be some sort of thermal blanket. Tanks are tanks, so paint? the probe core would likely be mylar as you said.  All of those things, even with the same colour would look different, because the materials are different, and will reflect light differently. Of course none of that matters when you are using a monoprop tank as a bearing.

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15 hours ago, Vegatoxi said:

Another devblog without actual gameplay.

After 4 years of announce and 3 delays.

 

Who still ever believe this game isn't dead?

 

12 hours ago, Vegatoxi said:

Which is never happen.

Aaahh the beauty of pessimism.  At least you set yourself up for a happy ending.

 

As for me, I have no real doubt that it will release - sometime - probably next year - hopefully before the end of March. 

If it was going to be canned they would have done so long ago...  Unless my 'theory' about Nate Simpson being a billionnaire prankster is actually true of course :cool:.

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20 hours ago, Vegatoxi said:

Another devblog without actual gameplay.

After 4 years of announce and 3 delays.

 

Who still ever believe this game isn't dead?

Genuine question, what do you get from just bad talking the devs? I've seen your other posts and almost all of them are centered around complaining about game timelines and how you believe the game will flop. Just genuinely curious what you get out of it when you don't seem to be here to post about anything else. Do you just want forum members to argue with you? Is it a desire to be a contrarian thing? Just seems odd, personally.

 

Unless you are here to troll (perhaps?). In which case, I too mourn the loss of flash games and forumwarz was a great one, all the LULZ to you sir.

Edited by mcwaffles2003
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20 hours ago, Vegatoxi said:

Another devblog without actual gameplay.

After 4 years of announce and 3 delays.

 

Who still ever believe this game isn't dead?

I'm really curious, what other games have you anticipated for so long and not complained about delays, announcements, gameplay, etc? As above, really curious.  

Do you have experience with game development, or any significant software development at all?

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Would it be possible to follow this the rest of the way through in a future installment?

Taking it from the blockout model shown at the end, through the rest of the process to a finalised functional in-game part

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19 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Wow we made it all the way to page 2 before a doom post.

And no multiplayer complaints yet!

On 6/27/2022 at 6:02 PM, Vl3d said:

Did you build and race them in multiplayer? Will we have a persistent universe to build race tracks in?

It'll be the first spinoff product: Kerbal Race Program

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37 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

We're already getting runway parts and such, no need for a spinoff game.

We're talking about a spinoff mini-game inside KSP2. 

It's not a new idea, we would be able to build the infrastructure and logic for mini-games and fun activities in multiplayer (ad-hoc or better).

I called them "extreme sports tourist colonies". It would sustain player economy and you would be able to trade resources for a nice race car to crash on the local track.

It's a way to finance your interstellar journey. Someone would surely build a huge amusement park on the Mun (harder to get downforce from procedural wings though).

 

Edited by Vl3d
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On 6/28/2022 at 12:18 AM, Pthigrivi said:

I’m definitely excited to see what you’ve all cooked up, and obviously I haven’t seen playtest feedback and what seems to be a fun challenge and what bogs things down. Im sure you’ve played games where you kind of top out your resources and can do whatever you like and peacock a bit, and there’s going to be that personal relationship between the drive to min-max and the drive for something beautiful in its own right. And maybe its just me but when I get to that point where I have ‘all the money’ and nothing really matters anymore a game reaches its limit and kind of falls flat like a cake. Purely aesthetic parts should really be interstitial rather than formative. Its a binder rather than a riser.  You can eek a lot out of small game bonuses, especially in a game where you have dozens of planets to explore and can build crazy elaborate bases on each. Certainly there are parts that are connectors and adapters that make a thing look cohesive even if they don’t serve an explicit gameplay function, but a simple and elastic relationship between resources and habitation and capacity would be awesome to see, if possible. 

Or to put this in a less oblique way usually in city builders adding houses increases the total population you can house. Now, ksp isn’t a city builder but it will now have a strong base builder aspect. It wont probably have an internal economy beyond resource processing or ask players to worry about pathing workers or anything like that, but some of those basic mechanics (support bigger populations, make more stuff) would make colonies feel more like real machines the way vessels do than empty, mostly functionless sets. Of course late in the game when you had all the resources in the world you could go hog wild and build whatever you liked, but in that main progression sequence players should be somewhat carefully distributing their expenditures and weighing the trade-offs of expanding this or that. City builders also often have trees and fences and doodads you can add that are mostly aesthetic and have negligible direct gameplay value, but they aren’t the meat and potatoes components of the build and the way it functions. 

Edited by Pthigrivi
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