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Snark

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Everything posted by Snark

  1. Ah, okay, sorry. I assumed you were aware, since you specifically asked me to ask them that question and I quoted you and said I would and then I did and they answered. My mistake. On a more serious note: yes, I know there's a whole lot of info out there, and I do appreciate that not everyone can follow everything all the time (believe me, I know). Just sayin'... if one doesn't have the bandwidth to follow everything that's going on, perhaps be a little more benefit-of-the-doubt and not so quick to assume the worst? Actually, that one I'm pretty sure had nothing to do with it-- when they were working out the list of attendees and sending out invites, it was pretty clear that initially at least they didn't even realize I was local. (e.g. asking me questions about flights and hotel accommodations, I had to tell them "won't need 'em") If they were aiming to save money on plane flights, they wouldn't have flown Shadowzone in all the way from Europe, after all.
  2. I've been reading through the discussion up to this point, and I'm kinda scratching my head. One of my usual Walls of Text™ below, but the executive summary is that companies are simply revenue machines, and their "relationship" to customers is simply a transaction at the point of sale, exchanging product for dollars. That's it, that's all it is, and expecting anything more than that is likely to lead to disappointment. It's just how the world works. On to the long-winded bit, in spoiler: So if you see a company doing something-- and if you think that what they're doing is "wrong" and that they should do something else instead-- then there's only one realistic way to make your case: How would the company make more money doing things your way than what they're doing? If the answer is "they wouldn't", then your idea's simply a non-starter; it's not gonna happen, no company's ever going to do that, and you're being unrealistic if you expect them to. So, for example, if you think that the company should give KSP 2 for free to KSP 1 early adopters, then that's fine-- of course you're free to want what you want. But if you want to try to make a case, then explain: How would doing that earn money for the company? Doesn't look to me like it would, but perhaps you have some thoughts on this you'd like to share? I'm confused. You say that as if this is... somehow a bad thing, or wrong? Look, everything that any company does is aimed at making money, directly or indirectly. Of course, there's directly making money, i.e. selling the product at their store. But anything they do outside of that is-- ultimately-- simply aimed at persuading people to buy the product. So everything's a "publicity stunt", if you prefer that term. If you don't like it, then I suppose you can say "just a stunt" to try to make it sound bad, but there's nothing inherently bad about trying to persuade people to buy your stuff. It's how business works. It's why internet search engines (pretty much all of which use advertising as their business model) exist-- do you use those? So, sure. It was a public relations thing, because they wanted to get the word out about the upcoming game, and the people they picked were ones that they presumably thought were well placed to do that. That's just common sense, what else should they do? And the other reason they had was, they wanted to get feedback from people who are closely plugged into the community, because what sounds good on paper is not always what customers end up liking, and this sort of "reality check" can be priceless for a company. I'm confused. What's your point, here? I mean, who else should they have picked? If they want to get the word out, they should start with the folks that lots and lots of people engage with, yes? That just seems like common sense to me, I'm not sure what your objection is. So that's a good thing, right? Plenty of companies don't even make a gesture. You're right, 9 people is just a tiny slice of the community. So? Given that they've been completely under wraps, top secret for well over a year... well, they gotta start somewhere. I expect they'll be here in the forums engaging more broadly soon enough: So, assuming they do that... then that's what you'd want, right? Sure. They appear to me to be doing a lot more than Squad did (I'm guessing due to lessons learned). For example, I note that we're still at least half a year before they release anything, and yet here they are, inviting widely-followed members of the community to come tour their studios and talk to the developers directly. Sure, it was just nine people, but my impression is that the number of people that Squad did this with, half a year before anything was released, was zero. Another thing they've done, half a year before release, is let me sit down with the creative director, all to myself 1:1, for a full half hour to grill him with dozens of questions directly taken from the community, like this: Which seems pretty darn nifty to me. Again, I don't recall Squad doing this, six months before release of anything. And all of this is literally within less than two weeks of the very first public announcement of the product. You're entitled to your feelings, of course, but I gotta say I'm kinda scratching my head about how Star Theory's track record thus far-- brief as it is-- would be cause for criticism. I'll certainly grant you that the jury's still out on how well they'll engage with the community, moving forward. They've talked the talk, but we'll need to reserve judgment until they've walked the walk. It certainly appears to me, based on what I've seen thus far, that they've got their hearts in the right place and that they intend to engage, but how well (and how soon) they do that remains to be seen. We'll just have to see what develops. Oh, absolutely, couldn't agree with you more. So... based on what evidence do you think that they're only going to engage with celebrities, given that they've explicitly stated that they'll be here in the forums engaging with us "soon"? OK, so? Your theory is that that's... somehow wrong? Clearly they wanted to get the word out. They've been top secret for over a year, they want to take the wraps off as publicly and quickly as possible. What's wrong with streamers? After all, it's no accident that they made the announcement right before PAX. The whole shebang where we came out to their studios was explicitly a "pre-PAX event". Obviously a major point was to drive buzz to help jazz the interest at PAX, so going streamer-heavy for that initial meet-up simply looks like a smart move to me. Heck, I'm a modder myself, and I have no use for streaming myself (I enjoy playing games, I don't enjoy watching other people play games), so you'd think that my sympathy would be on the modder side of the equation. But the streamers are good at what they do. It's a craft, just like modding is. And I gotta say that at this stage of the proceedings, going for the streamers to start with makes perfect sense to me. Probably because streamers are more effective for the purpose of the initial meeting. Also, it's worth noting that with all due respect, neither you nor anyone else has any idea how many modders they invited. You only know who showed up. Other folks may have been unable to attend or had other issues. It's pretty clear that LGG and Galileo were invited precisely because they're modders. I'm also a modder, true, but there are plenty of other modders considerably more prominent than I am in that regard, so I suspect that my own role was there mainly because of the degree to which I'm plugged into the forum community. (That's just my speculation, I don't actually know that-- nobody told me "why me".) Right. And they've explicitly said they're going to be doing that soon. Which is exactly what you want, right? So what's the complaint? Right. After they had a game out there that people could play with, and had established a community around. This is at least half a year before Star Theory will be releasing anything, and they only just took the top-secret wraps off it within the last couple of weeks. And for being that early in the publicity cycle, they're way ahead of where Squad was at the same time. So this is a bad thing... why, exactly? Oh, really? You mean, like, for example, when Scott Manley schooled them about SRB gimbaling, and they were all "whoa" and scrambled for notepads to jot that down? Or how, when we were all sitting around the table, they spent as much time listening to us as they did talking? While we talked about "here are community concerns, what are your plans to address that"? Something like that? Okay. So... given that they've explicitly stated that they'll be here soon, what's your particular reason for assuming that they're not going to be similarly engaged here? I mean, sure, it hasn't happened yet, of course, since they only just now opened up. Jury's out, we'll have to see how they do. We don't know yet, for example, that they'll live up to your particular standards on community engagement. But we don't know that they won't, either. So... is it not a little premature to be jumping down their throats now about a supposed lack of community engagement? Perhaps wait and see how they actually do, before passing judgment? Right. And do you remember when in their development cycle they were actually doing that? It was after players already had things in their hands, that's when. It certainly was a whole lot more than two or three weeks after the first public announcement.
  3. Yep. The relevant PartModule is ModuleScienceAvailabilityIndicator (note that this is distinct from ModuleScienceDataIndicator, which controls the lit-up display when the instrument already contains science). That module has two configurable fields that are relevant to your question: lowScienceThreshold: Defaults to 0.15. Below this, no blinking. Above this (but below highScienceThreshold), slow yellow blink. highScienceThreshold: Defaults to 0.7. Above this, rapidly flash bright green. Below this (but above lowScienceThreshold), slow yellow blink. Additional details in spoiler, for the curious.
  4. Yes. As @VoidSquid points out, it's a science indicator, same as with the science instruments. It means there's a crew report available to collect from the current location.
  5. Minor correction, they didn't fly me. I'm local. Not that it's relevant to your point, just keeping the record straight. There were nine of us in total. Six streamers, three modders. (The other modder was @Galileo.) Though if I had to guess their reason for inviting me, I suspect that my role as forum moderator was probably more relevant-- I'm better known in that regard, and certainly among modders there are plenty of others better-known than me.
  6. 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.
  7. 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. 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!").
  8. 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. Yep. Cliffs are fine in the underlying terrain engine, overhangs are not. There's a big difference between "vertical" and "actually upside down". 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. 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.
  9. Nope, no idea, sorry. As you might imagine, "I have <some big list> mods installed, and one of them is causing this problem but I don't know which one" is a pretty common problem. And since there are literally thousands of mods out there, and different people generally have different lists of mods installed, it's the sort of thing that can usually be only sorted out on the user's end first. So the normal way to address this situation is that you just need to figure that out yourself, by process of elimination. i.e. try running with only half of your mods installed to see if the problem reproduces. That'll tell you which half has the bug in it. Then install half of that list and repeat, and so forth. Since the list gets cut in half each time, it's reasonably quick to narrow down even if you have a very large number of mods. Once you've got that, then you can go to the thread of the relevant mod.
  10. 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: 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 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.
  11. 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.
  12. Unfortunately, the original author neglected to specify a license, which means that it's presumed All Rights Reserved. Therefore, nobody is allowed to share or redistribute the mod, so please don't post any links, folks. Which means the mod is dead, at least until and unless @Lunaran decides to come back and update the mod to specify a license in the OP of this thread and in the .zip file. Accordingly, we've removed the download links from the posts above-- please, nobody share this, it's not allowed. We've also removed the download link from the OP, since the mod is in violation of our add-on posting rules, which require every add-on to explicitly declare a license (even if it's ARR) in both the thread OP and in the downloadable .zip, to remove any possible confusion, to prevent exactly this sort of scenario from happening. If @Lunaran would like to make it available again, the necessary fixes would be to, 1. update the .zip so it includes the license, and 2. specify a license in the OP. And, if the mod contains any plugin code (i.e. a DLL), would need to post a link to the source code, too. If those things are taken care of, then the author can restore the download link. We apologize for the inconvenience, we know it's a hassle. It's just that experience has shown us that unfortunately we have to be sticklers about this particular rule or chaos ensues. Locking the thread to prevent further confusion. Lunaran, if you're around and would like to make the mod available again, please let us know (best way is to just report this post, with an appropriate note) and we're happy to unlock the thread for you.
  13. Hi folks, This question was asked (and answered) four years ago, so everyone involved in the original question has presumably long since moved on. Accordingly, locking the thread to prevent further confusion. If anyone has further questions about the issue, feel free to spin up a new thread. If anyone's still wondering: As I write this (September 2019), the current requirement is that you have to be out of the queue (5 approved posts) before you can edit your profile, including changing your profile picture. We know it's a hassle, and we're sorry about that, but unfortunately it's necessary to protect against the spammers that would infest the forums otherwise.
  14. Hello, and welcome to the forums! Moving to Technical Support (since the "mod development help" forum is for folks writing mods). Ah, okay. That's probably it, then, there's your answer. So to solve your problem, just establish which mod it is that's causing the issue. Once you know that, you can go to the mod's thread to ask about the problem.
  15. I'm... confused. What overhang? I didn't remember any overhangs, and just now went back and looked at the trailer again and I'm still not seeing any overhangs. Cliffs, yes, but no overhangs. Am I missing something? Do you have some particular moment (i.e. a timestamp) where you think you're seeing an overhang? What I'm saying is, I believe you'll get terrain like in the trailer, just no overhangs (which aren't in the trailer, as far as I can tell), that's all.
  16. Hi @SansYT15, We're sorry, but we've had to remove the giant log file text that you included with your post, since it's so big that it's making the page very difficult for people to read, and causing problems (browser lockups and such) for anyone on a mobile device. It's a great idea to share log files when you've got a problem-- you did exactly the right thing by sharing. However, please don't share it by pasting the actual giant text into the forum itself, because the big size causes problems for people. Instead, upload your log file to some third-party file sharing site, and then just paste a link to it here. That way, people who want to dig into it can get the information, but it won't bork everyone else's browsers. Thank you for your understanding.
  17. So, if their website is scarce with contact information at the moment, that may simply be that they're not really ready to be contacted yet (just guessing, I don't actually know that). It's worth noting that when I interviewed Nate Simpson at PAX, I asked this: KSP 2 release is spring 2020, i.e. still over half a year out, so it's early days yet. My guess is that they probably haven't even finalized the craft format yet (which is my read of the fact that they tend to respond with "no comment" so far about their file formats). So, putting that all together, my guess would be that, 1. it's still too early to ask this question, and 2. they'll be available here in the forums "soon", which ought to be in plenty of time to ask them then. That's my take on it, anyway.
  18. A few orders of magnitude bigger and higher resolution, with procedural detail added in at various scales, but basically yes. It's a pretty common way to model terrain.
  19. I don't think it has anything to do with whether it would be nice or not, just a technical limitation of the underlying terrain engine. I think it's a heightmap. A new and improved and much prettier heightmap, but still a heightmap.
  20. Actually, there couldn't. We asked them about this specifically, with regard to the new terrain system, and their response was very definite. No overhangs, and no caves.
  21. It's going to be okay. Seriously, this is a friendly and helpful corner of the internet, and we're all pals here. No worries!
  22. *shrug* Why should he? People like what they like, and form their own opinions according to their own needs. It could be magic ponies sprinkling pixie dust. If it works for him, that's all that matters. After all, nobody's opinion is more "right" than anyone else's-- that's what an "opinion" is. Lest we forget, this is the "Hopes and Wishes for KSP 2" thread, not about whose opinion is "right". It's a place for people to say, "here's what I hope the game does or doesn't do", and find out what other people are hoping. And naturally, whatever anyone expresses, in that regard, is "right". They're just saying what they like, and trying to argue with that would be pointless, like trying to have an argument over which ice cream flavor is better, vanilla or chocolate. (Chocolate.) Of course, there's nothing wrong with asking about someone else's thoughts or opinions, out of curiosity. After all, we're all friends here (right?), and lots of us are interested in each other's views. For example, when you were expressing your own viewpoints, I was interested (precisely because they're not a carbon copy of my own), so I asked about it. You've got a fresh (to me) viewpoint, naturally I'm gonna be interested in your ideas-- maybe I'll hear something that I like, or that didn't occur to me. And even if it's something that's contrary to my own likes, it's still worth learning about, isn't it? And as it turned out, you have a variety of ideas, some of which I agree with, others of which I'm diametrically opposed to-- which of course is fine. Certainly no reasonable person would try to argue with you about what you like. Just as no reasonable person would expect everyone to like the same things. So it's fine to ask about others' opinions, if one is interested in that. But trying to argue that someone likes a "wrong" thing achieves nothing. We've wandered fairly far afield from the topic at this point, so I'm going to leave the matter there in hopes that the thread may perhaps inch a little closer back to the rails. Thanks for explaining your opinion, I feel that I understand your viewpoint now, which is what I was interested in. I've expressed my own already, FWIW, so there's no need to belabor that point further.
  23. Either that, or else you have a different headcanon from tater's, difficult though that may be to imagine. The point is that different people have different ways of looking at the game. Just because they're different from yours doesn't mean that they (or you) are wrong.
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