mattinoz

The other angle I've seen on the same problem is to go the other way. Map the bodies to particles and deal with everything as particles. https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch29.html Sorry it's nVidia dev article but it has the best pictures (or this one if you like reading drier https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcgt/2014/485019/) Would seem to lend itself to what we know of KSP2 so far. In that particles lend themselves to unique scary snowflake explosions, better smoke and visuals, rings, better scatter while allowing GPU processing and a higher degree of multi-threading. Would also seem to lend itself to future advancements on the games physics.

What if the issue wasn't rigid-body physics? Be seeing a lot of talk about using particle physics engines to simulate rigid-bodies by binding groups of particles into and approximate shape. Seem as a plan well suited to KSP given the "Thrust" of the game is throwing particles out the back of the craft to go forwards. Well that and particle engines handle orbital and gravity mechanics very well.

I do wonder if Level of detail (LOD) which seems to be the greatest buzzword for graphics Engineeers at the moment was the main breakthrough in making the engine faster and more robust for KSP2. I could see how having an engine be able to discern when nothing interesting is going to happen in part of the calculation until a future threshold and just ignore till then would be a big win for the game. I do wonder if it’ll lead to other advantages. If say they are situationally loading assets could they do the same with mods creating per save modding.

Yes game music tends to get highly repeative if the game has decent replay value. It is usually the first thing turned off for me. I was sort of hoping with Arcade Apple would have done something cool with game music and music streaming like letting developer pick a mood, tempo, character for the current game situation and pick tracks from the players library/likes to suit.

Did everyone miss the memo? KSP 2 Developer video. KSP 2 has a musician on staff doing as far as I can tell situational sound tracks.

Career / Progression will be a poor game mode until Kerbals and Time matter. Maybe it needs to be non-linear, it certainly need tools to better manage time other than lets just give you buckets of it. The type of contracts is hardly relevant if each one is just the same but a higher dV budget. Unless they get actually harder no one is pushed, no one is challenged, there is no sense of success other than what you set for yourself.

Yes "soon after" has been very abused by game makers generally. Oddly I started playing KSP because SimCity for Mac was going to be "soon after" PC release. For all practical intents and purposes (as defined by Australian consumer law) in never arrived.

Seems to me the list is exactly what is needed as the foundations to get right to set KSP for another 10 years as they say in the Dev video. Also most of the tasks are related. So they must have gotten a key one or two already done as they speak in past tense about them. Task A) rework physics engine to be Streamlined. Hey look if we do this and that we can multi-task the engine. Task A1) Improved timewarp thrust on rails .... interstellar Task A2) multi-actor ... bases Task A3) multi-player Task B) Streamline development .... Hey look this means modding will be easier. Task C) Rework Interface make easier

I do believe Nate said this would be the case.

There is a lot a space in space to handle such things. So why does paradox need to be prevented? Seems to me letting Paradox build up then tasking players to drop in to the timeline to correct it could be an awful lot of fun in its own right.

driving 1 kerbal in a command seat.

Under the 1.5x size change I double the fuel in a rocket by doubling tank length or increasing to the next size. With .0625 increase there isn’t a simple rule of thumb like that. So I need the machine to reason and trail and error turns to drudge quickly..

A) Increasing step size by 1.5 means that tanks double (2.25) in volume each size step. Well allowing for rounding structure, insulation and a bit of game magic. B)Increasing by 0.625 (or 0.5metres rounded up to fit a kerbal) while very Kerbal isn't very reasonable* in that each step is well complicated. To me balance of probably would suggest A was the intention but in a round about Kerbal way that finally conceded 1.85 (1.5kerbaled) was good to make things look right. *meaning of the work being easy to reason about.

Won't it depend on the game play mechanics and what it makes worthwhile. Would hope the game tries to makes one station or colony in each SOI worthwhile and different in terms of challenge.

Or allow us to diverge an accerated timeline so we can "plan by the seat of our pants" then just let the rewards roll in as the conical timeline catches up.

What will happen to the forums when there is no longer Hypothetical discussions about how LS and multiplayer should work because we'll know how they work.

Only if the colony platforms are called Paul - planetary assembly unified launch.

Almost be better business to develop DLC to the new game engine.

People did for Eeloo missions way back before extra time warp settings. Add talk of background thrust on rails and I get the impression is you set a ship on it's way to another system and get on with other things till it gets there.

To me it was mainly the Habitation mechanic in USI-LS that made it awkward. Was watching the a nature doco last night and was reminded there are creatures on earth that can hibernate in the ground for 20years waiting for the right conditions then they pop-out and feed and get busy. So who's to say life support needs to be based on a human-like lifestyle. Kerbals could be good nappers and given the wrong conditions could go off to their habitat and nap for days or years until things improve. So LS could then be Lively Support not Life Support. You want Kerbals to do stuff you have to supply them. You want them to go on long trips and not consume resources the whole time they need a napping hole. Also most things already work without Kerbals around at all running on a probe core. A miner with no active kerbal just doesn't mine as well until the power runs out. Then again a colony ship will be so far away from communications that will need Kerbals to steer. I think there is a way to find the balance between Kerbals being not just ballast and a micro-managed drudge. The kerbal the way the better in my book.

Given Colonies get be built on Kerbin. Each player could start with a colony that is capable of some ship building. Tactics from there could then vary based on objective.

Might not even be known to the Developers as yet. We don't know how they'll be discovered and journey times will be many hours (decades running high warp). So conceivably they could drop new ones in with each update dependent no some economic factor based on sales. Makes each update a bit larger, while the base game is smaller and good for new buzz (marketing). Systems as Easter Eggs.

Do they think they have a better way to balance wanting to do plan something to completion vs challenging the player to as a game Tycoon? Will we see a career mode about more than funds,... will Kerbals and time matter?

Could they scale up the timeframe with the planets? If base time was 4x so one physics frame dealt with 4sec native and wrap controls could make it faster or slower from that as a base then the Planet scale could increase 3x and game time to orbit would be slightly less. Main reason physics wrap doesn't work very well in KSP1 is SAS is overzealous. Fix SAS, demagic it a bit so it relies more on aerodynamics less on reaction wheel. Give it some ease-in ease-out smarts. We might also need auto shutdown for node burns as well but that's kinda needed for long duration burns while warping which is a confirmed feature. Still if that was workable the craft engineering would look more sensible and the challenge increase without the time hit.

I'm not so sure. I haven't seen many real life rockets that have one stage literally pushing the engine bell of the next stage. Usually they have some tube structure on the outside and the engines dangle inside until needed. tank --- fairing/decoupler --- tank not tank --- engine --- decoupler --- tank |-- engine |--- fairing I know I'm only an Architect but KSP really does many things our structure lecturer said was bad.