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Rover wheel tracks, kerbal footprints


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This has probably been suggested a lot of times before, but I'm bringing it up anyway. Is there any chance that this will be implemented one day? Is there perhaps a mod that does something similar? Anyway I think it would be very nice to actually see where you came from, to have that legendary footprint. What do you people think about this?

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Sadely, a (big) drawback of this feature is memory usage, that's why games usually don't make them persitent (like Far Cry, many racing game, ...)

Of Course, the best will be to let user decide how he/she want his/her computer's memory to be use ;) ?

@allmappedout: Kerbin might have its own Nazca lines :)

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I would adore having the ability to leave trails. It would make activities all the more rewarding, in my opinion. It also opens up the potential for burn scars - charred land from previously landed rockets blaring their engines and scorching the ground beneath them. It would honestly double the enjoyment I'd get from visiting planets/moons, no word of a lie. It's the little things.

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Well, NASA does that too...

That can't have been intentional. Was it intentional? Please tell me this was intentional. Nice to know NASA can have a little fun alongside their science-ing :)

Edited by Rowsdower
Potentially NSFW photo link.
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That can't have been intentional. Was it intentional? Please tell me this was intentional. Nice to know NASA can have a little fun alongside their science-ing :)

We'll never know. Officially, it's unintentional, but it's up to you to decide.

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We'll never know. Officially, it's unintentional, but it's up to you to decide.

After trying to drive rover using only navcam in Take On Mars, with its camera at one side and science equipment at the other, I believe it's unintentional. It was always like that: come close enough to the rock, rotate so you can see it through the navcam, drive closer, rotate 180 so that you see your own tracks right in front of you, drive backwards to get into equipment range.

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After trying to drive rover using only navcam in Take On Mars, with its camera at one side and science equipment at the other, I believe it's unintentional.

They might have planned ahead. They might have thought "Since we're taking a panorama, why not make a phallus on Mars?" and coordinated the rover's movements accordingly.

Anyway, back to the thread. Trails are good. Anyone else agree?

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  • 8 months later...

Another forum member (sorry can't find the post) speculated that the new feature of destructible buildings will also will make such things as foot prints, tire tracks, scorch marks, crators and I was hoping splat Kerbals would be possible. I have little understanding of programming and was wondering if the "backend" changes that have been made to KSP to have destructible buildings will also make the above possible be it in a mod or stock?

I feel this would make the game so much more immersive. How satisfying and motivational would it be to leave Kerbal prints all over the system. And you could see where you have been and how you did it. Neil's first foot print on the moon is know and inspiring to a good percentage of the worlds population. Kerbals need to leave their mark too. Or if things don't go to plan ,splat.

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In KSP when a building blows up the object of the intact building is swapped with the destroyed one. (Look closely, you can see that.)

Unfortunately prints, tracks and marks require another technology than the destructible buildings.

But! Unity most likely already has what you need.

In fact you usually add a transparent ground texture in which you draw the prints, marks, etc. and display that. The marks will be flat and a giant texture or several small one will be needed. It's pretty common.

Another method is to change the ground mesh. A crater will then be a real crater you can fall in and never get out again. This requires a lot of work to implement! Only a few games do that.

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All of this would be a great things to have, but let's not forget about sounds - RCS, Wheels, stuff opening/closing - tons of sounds are missing all over the game.

There are some mods adding them here and there - sadly no one mod but rather few spread all over the place - and you really don't realize how much of a difference does it make till you install them!

So yea... would be really nice to have all these effects in a game. But as said - it got nothing to deal with destructible buildings.

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I think it will not be very hard to do, just add planes with footprints textures at runtime! It can be even done via mods! ( Other thing will be making them persistent :P )

They should not lag a lot, if they are optimized properly (Make them disappear at certain distance/time)

Cheers! :)

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I agree, this would be very cool. Memory is a concern. This is why earlier games like Halo: CE only allowed a small number of bullet holes to persist before the old ones got deleted. Increased memory usage wouldn't necessarily be a problem, as you could disable them in Settings, same as sample rate, etc. However, I assume it would take a lot of work to implement. I don't know of any mods in particular that do this, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.

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I feel a little forced to give my 5 cent in.

I think, the OP is referencing to this post: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/94774-What-s-the-secret-feature?p=1438984#post1438984

So I'll try to justify my guess a little:

Until (including) v0.24.2 we had these types of objects:

dynamical (not on rails) and destroyable - Vessels (including asteroids and Krebals)

statical (on rails) and undestroyable - "undetailed" Planets and Moons, "hard" Objects (like Easter Eggs, KSC, Island Buildings etc.)

statical (on rails) and undestroyable - "detailed" Planet and Moon - Kerbin and Mun (I take them out, because Kerbin has KSC and detailed landscapes and the Mun has a procedural surface)

semi-static (because slider in settings) - visual (no interaction besides looking at it) - scatter objects (trees, rocks)

With 0.25.0 two change occured.

1) Obvious change

Some statical objects are now destroyable, hence dynamic in at least one dimension. There must be a query that askes "Is this first object beeing hit by a second object that has a speed times mass greater than x? If yes change the state of the first object."

This code is certainly reusable for other interactions between dynamic objects (e.g. vessels).

If this is the case, it must be possible to ask "Is this planet hit by a Kerbal? If yes, change the state of the surface and add footprints". I leave open if the result is modelled by a texture change or by applying a change in the collision and surface mesh.

2) not so obvious change

The textures of two planetary bodies have changed in visual behaviour. First Kerbin, second the Mun. I guess, those both static objects are the only objects that have different surface implementation than every other body, as Kerbin is the oldest and most detailed body, and Mun is the only body with procedural craters.

I theorize, that the change in the texture behavior has something to do with the behaviour of other static objects like the KSC.

If this hypothesis is true, than this behaviour is a result of the implemented collision behaviour, thus it migth by reasonable to claim: billateral interaction between all objects in KSP is possible, and a static object can react and change to actions from dynamical objects, which may open the way to features like I guessed in my post, referenced above and by the OP.

I admit, that this is hypothetical, but from a software architectural view, my conclusion seems valid for me. Even if I leave open the precise solution or possible ways of implementation.

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