JoeSchmuckatelli

This whole line of thought needs to go. Think of development starting with Intercept. It hurts your brain less. Way I see it - what they had before was little more than a great promo video and not much else... Intercept gets stood up, stands down for Covid and then really started to roll after that. Nothing else makes sense.

Turn on AA, maybe? I don't (didn't) have that when I played the game.

I get the quibble here - but then the industry has also played fast and loose with the terminology. I think its fair for consumers to think 'shipped' once a product has been monetized (especially to this extent), with some exceptions to very small studios trying to survive. That's one of the biggest questions I have. Mainly, because once you start looking at how lighting and shadows and stuff work - the presumption is that its rendering / working with the existing geometry. So - for a duffer... what has to come first? Like - I don't know if doing HDRP work now is a total waste of time if they do something that changes the geometry of the planet... but I kind of suspect it might be.

I remember those days!

Actually - that ship has sailed. OTOH - once the game is performant, they should just give all of us Alpha/Beta testers a couple of free DLC updates ('cause you just know 'Robotic Parts' is gonna be a DLC)

Frankly, I'm in tea leaf reading zone here. I literally have no practical knowledge of how this stuff works at the nuts and bolts level. But I have been reading about it a bit, plus doing the odd scrying. Delving into everything we know - we were first told it was going to be a from the ground up redesign. We know that they defined that differently than we hoped, deciding instead to push ahead with PQS+ (plus-plus???) and push the absolute limits of the system. From what I've seen they did a decent job. (I like the art direction, for the most part) There were costs to doing that - as we've also seen. Apparently the decision has an enormous load that can't readily be overcome. So the need to try something different. I've delved as deeply as I can into the CBT idea... and I suspect its still an idea - because one of the guys who wrote a paper on it (or worked with the guy who wrote a paper on it) doubted that CBT was the absolute best idea for world-sized objects. The interesting piece I picked up from the GDC video is the part about using the S2 geometry/coordinate system developed by Google. Maybe (seriously, I don't know enough to even suggest 'maybe') but maybe they found a way to combine S2 and CBT to get planetary sized objects rendered in a way that massively reduces the resource overhead and speeds up game performance. For the "Laptop KSP crowd" that would be huge. Similarly, HDRP looks to be a potential path towards reducing complexity. It appears - again from what I've read and interpreted - that they did a whole lot of HDRP-like things with the game up to this point, most likely custom work, that could be sped up by having access to the actual HDRP tools in Unity. That said - again from what I've read - they're gonna have to unwind some of that work, rework stuff and custom port over a lot of the assets already created to get the full functionality of HDRP and see any performance improvements. Plus, the lighting guy has his work cut out - but he seems to be motivated. The part I don't know is whether CBT and HDRP work can be done separately or if they have to redo everything together... nor do I know if they can do it planet by planet (CB by CB). Like - could we see an update where Kerbin, Mun and Minmus are CBT/HDRP - while the rest of the system is still PQS+ and awaiting updates in a future pass? If that happens - and they see improvements - then most people who ever played KSP could have access to KSP2 in a way that would be performant for them. (Most never went to another SOI). ... The thing that has constantly bugged me about our collective response to the current state of the game is that we've not adequately separated performance issues (graphics, rendering and FPS issues) from the things that actually make the game performant. Specifically, a functional orbit and physics system that is predictable and works. Functioning VAB, Docking/separation/ non-noodle rockets, etc. The game is broken - but people whining about the graphics is overwhelming the core issues the game has and should not have shipped with. It's almost like we need two separate and distinct 'kibitz' (put in the correct word that the filter won't allow) subforums. One to 'kibitz' about graphcs performance, FPS and "my 1990s potato won't run the game" threads - and a completely separate sub for "the game is broken" threads. Flight model issues, unstable orbits, parts not functioning correctly, etc.

This is a double-edged sword question. The 'Dev Side' answer (confirmed by professionals in the forum audience) is that the only way for MP to EVER be a feature of KSP2 is for it to be baked into the game from the beginning. MP isn't something that can be slapped on at the end stage. The flip side? There is every possibility that the decision to include MP at all is the cause of a reduced SP experience for all players.

@Dakota... Can we get a CBT / HDRP update into the comms pipeline? Would really like to know more now that they have been playing with this for several weeks.

I need to look for the date - but sometime in the mid 80s this happened. Some people got all Y2K about it (briefly) Here you go: "... the big question is, what will happen to us on May 5 in the year 2000? Let's look at the past. In 1982, an even better alignment happened. All nine of the planets were on the same side of the Sun, scattered over some 90 degrees, in what scientists call a "Grand Alignment". In 1974, the astrophysicist John Gribbin predicted in his book, "The Jupiter Effect", that when the planets lined up, the Earth would be caught in the middle of a huge gravity struggle between the Sun and the planets, especially the giant planet, Jupiter. These stresses, he claimed, would change the speed of the Earth in its orbit, and shift the centre of the solar system. He warned that geological fault lines would be ripped open, causing massive earthquakes. In fact, he went far enough to predict that " in 1982, when the Moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars and with the other seven planets of the solar system, Los Angeles will be destroyed"! Well, as predicted, the Grand Alignment happened, with the planets scattered over some 90 degrees. Los Angeles was not destroyed, life as we know it went on" https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2001/11/05/94846.htm#:~:text=In 1982%2C an even better,call a "Grand Alignment".

Have you seen the KSP2 / GDC talk? There is a brief portion where they discuss HDRP & CBT. I'm curious as to what you think now that we've had several weeks. Can they do HDRP independent of the CBT work - or do they need to do both together? @RayneCloudany thoughts?

Actually - I think I need to meter my own expectation... I think we will see some HDRP implementation fairly early, since that is merely a feature of the Unity engine. I write 'merely' advisedly (ironically) because that doesn't look all that simple. https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.high-definition@14.0/manual/Upgrading-To-HDRP.html They have a lot of work to do just on this aspect.

Just an observation - but my walking away in frustration the day Patch 2 flopped hasn't hurt. Give yourselves a little space from this. It's pretty clear that for most of us, the game isn't in a playable state - so quit banging your head against the wall. The more I think about Nate's 'lengthy delay' post - the more I support it. I'm guessing that the next drop will be more akin to an overhaul than a patch. At least that's my hope

If I can interrupt - this conference info (the part about CBT and HDRP) in conjunction with Nate's most recent post suggests that they see some real promise in doing a major overhaul at this point. I'm guessing that they're delaying the next patch to at least get some CBT /HDRP work done and into our hands along with regular bug fixing and some of the features we've been waiting for. Edit - probably just HDRP... CBT likely to be a longer path.

I see an upside to this.* The implication from Nate's post in relation to the other things we've learned from the team is that they're working on the big stuff like CBT over PQS+ and HDRP implementation. The focus on Planet Shine is our indirect indication. I encourage folks to watch the latter half of the GDC vid. That is not a beat down team. That is a team that has been offered some new toys and seems excited to start playing with them. Getting that stuff online is a major effort - not something that can be done quickly. Pure guesswork - but the timing and implied direction suggest that they see these tools as a way to reduce machine time and get the game's performance under control. Because that's a big job and will take time, the other implication is that they'll have time to work on the other stuff that isn't working. So... The possibility is that the next patch won't be just a patch - but maybe a revamp. Shrug. I'm not a developer - just someone hopeful they can actually make this game live up to the potential (and promises). *Of course, I put the game down the day Patch 2 came out and frustrated the *liquid* out of me. So have a little mental distance between wanting to play and hoping they fix it.

There is a whole lot of *internet* going on here

You may have some other kind of conflict. I've only a 3070 and a non x3d cpu - but I've never had spikes that bad. System is way overbuilt for most applications and so should be butter smooth - unless you have some kind of errors outside of the game or an enormous mem leak.

Spock: I've never understood the human inclination to laugh at others' misfortune. It feels impolite. Chapel: That's why it's funny. Spock: Because it breaks the social expectation? Pike: Sometimes, Mr. Spock, things go so badly, you just have to laugh.

It's a dog's world https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sled-dog-balto-new-dna-study-zoonomia-project/ Balto's genome sequenced. All Dog. But a very healthy dog.

Observation: we are past the time for righteous indignation. The tone now should be metered annoyance or resigned hope. FWIW - polyannaish 'all is well and they are great' is also wrong.

To be fair 'they're probably also aware that those 5 million copies did not all sell in the first year of the game's availability. They've time to fix it and recover

I found the 'Lighting guy's part of the talk interesting; his initial math-based solution annoyed the artists because Moho was too bright/washed out and things around Jool too dim. Only, later in the video he talks about the 'not having access to the HDRP tools'. Would that have any impact on leaning towards more physics in lighting design? (I write this aware of their caveat that little in Nature would make Jool green, but they wanted to keep that). Or are they likely to simply tweak things to keep the artists happy, rather than trying to play around with reverting to a more realistic model?

I posted this in another thread, but it's relevant here. ... That was interesting. 3/4 of the presentation was all about how they've done what they've done up til now - using the PQS+ system they got and tweaked from KSP. Moving into the CBT gets mentioned, if not talked around, in the section of the video labeled "Early Access - Tool Plans". It's the shortest segment of the video. Given that we got Mortoc's Dev Insights # 18 on the 10th of March and the GDC presentation happened 10-15 days later... it sound like the artists and engineers on the panel are new to the whole idea. They like it ("super pumped") - but it doesn't read like something that's been in the pipeline for a year - rather something that they only started maybe in February, if not March itself. The actual phrase used was "Investigating a new terrain system". A few other tidbits: "Science mode - which will introduce a campaign" "Gurdama... Introduced during the Interstellar update" "[they were using a built-in render pipleline right up to EA Launch and did not have access to HDRP]" but they do now - or will have moving forward. Given some of what the Engineers and Artists said before... there may be some additional time spent by the engineers building out tools for the artists with the new capabilities, or to match what they did using the old tools - before they can get started. The note here, is that there are four biomes per planet and four textures per biome (currently) - and the artists are excited that HDRP and CBT might give them more freedom, both in increasing textures per biomes, but also biomes per planet/ CB. They're shifting to a coordinate system called S2 (developed by Google) that is supposed to be considerably faster and lighter on storage. By comparison, the PQS system uses Cartesian with double precision. (Not pretending I understand all of this... but someone will). Tides are not going to be a thing. Blocky shorelines are a problem - mostly an artifact of rendering and how that scales with distance; it sounds like it will continue to be a problem, but one that can... time allowing... be fixed - it's just not a high priority at the moment. (lot of interpretation on my part)

We may be remembering different but related statements. I know the publisher would like to have it on Consoles as soon as possible, because that's where the money is. So - just to keep up the quibble - I think it was "Console release is after 1.0" (which to correct myself, doesn't imply no Console related work until then... just for folks to not anticipate KSP2 for any Console until 1.0 comes out. - I don't remember anything about concurrency or delay, either way).

Thanks! That was interesting. 3/4 of the presentation was all about how they've done what they've done up til now - using the PQS+ system they got and tweaked from KSP. Moving into the CBT gets mentioned, if not talked around, in the section of the video labeled "Early Access - Tool Plans". It's the shortest segment of the video. Given that we got Mortoc's Dev Insights # 18 on the 10th of March and the GDC presentation happened 10-15 days later... it sound like the artists and engineers on the panel are new to the whole idea. They like it ("super pumped") - but it doesn't read like something that's been in the pipeline for a year - rather something that they only started maybe in February, if not March itself. The actual phrase used was "Investigating a new terrain system". A few other tidbits: "Science mode - which will introduce a campaign" "Gurdama... Introduced during the Interstellar update" "[they were using a built-in render pipleline right up to EA Launch and did not have access to HDRP]" but they do now - or will have moving forward. Given some of what the Engineers and Artists said before... there may be some additional time spent by the engineers building out tools for the artists with the new capabilities, or to match what they did using the old tools - before they can get started. The note here, is that there are four biomes per planet and four textures per biome (currently) - and the artists are excited that HDRP and CBT might give them more freedom, both in increasing textures per biomes, but also biomes per planet/ CB. They're shifting to a coordinate system called S2 (developed by Google) that is supposed to be considerably faster and lighter on storage. By comparison, the PQS system uses Cartesian with double precision. (Not pretending I understand all of this... but someone will). Tides are not going to be a thing. Blocky shorelines are a problem - mostly an artifact of rendering and how that scales with distance; it sounds like it will continue to be a problem, but one that can... time allowing... be fixed - it's just not a high priority at the moment. (lot of interpretation on my part)

They would know!