Suzerain

Well, I left Jeb on the Mun to write this. First, the obvious - everyone who worked on this should be proud as punch, and I want to congratulate the team on reaching this milestone. The game is beautiful. Unoptimised, yes, but looks fantastic already. My first descent down to the Mun was on the sunny side, with me going "oh, that looks good!" a lot. and having left Jeb on the mun, I went back into the game, to the VAB. I planned to have Valentina land next to them, and do a good old fashioned rescue (even if I did land fine!) So I built a new ship. Tried to name it in the VAB, and it changed to the map. Whereupon it jumped to Jeb's ship, which had then fallen into the mun, and in some kind of unlit Kraken Zone, it fell 150km to the barycentre of the mun before imploding. Oops. I think there's a couple of minor little krakens lurking in here that aren't going to make it particularly playable for a while. I am however finding the flight control UI unintuitive in some areas. I don't need a great big throttle control bar, while the target marker on the navball's not as clear. Its a very good bit of game interface design, but I'm not convinced its yet the best way to transfer control/heading/velocity data. Also finding it very distracting to have to visually scan from one side of the screen to the other while trying to monitor fuel. I hope that there's ways to rearrange the UI later on to aid that. But despite that, I like the map UI design generally - it needs improvement, but its little critiques, not a disaster. Conversely to the flight controls, I'm finding that EVA surface controls are, on initial impression vastly improved over KSP1 - WSAD controls felt much "snappier", less like Jeb was stumbling around. I really like that and look forward to dropping landers around to try them out. So that's definitely to be commended. Getting them there might be a headache, though. I'm not finding any delta-v change being displayed for burns, making orbital alterations difficult. I noticed the last time that there was a little "progress bar", for an ongoing burn but its not intuitive, clear, nor conveying sufficient data. In KSP1 I have regularly managed to do landings on the mun without any manoeuvre node controls, and that is what probably helped me land. I'm not convinced that a complete newcomer to KSP would enjoy the experience as much. In a similar data problem, I'm not finding it easy - or even possible - to get data on what my orbital periapsis or apoapsis are in the map. Again, insufficient data being displayed, or displayed in an unintuitive location I'm yet to find. And creating a manoeuvre in the map isnt as intuitive either, as the UI icons are bulkier and less crisp, so I think it needs a bit of cleaning up. But I am confident that it will be resolved to make a better game overall. Amidst all the bugs and glitches, etc, however, I must say that I do see there is another diamond in the rough in the core of the game, and I'm going to look forward to that. Those first impressions of the gameplay are positive. And while tutorials are mostly redundant for someone with more hours in KSP than I want to ever admit to, they're excellently done so far - albeit at the moment intrusive at moments - I'm sure I'll be able to disable them later. (side note: Is it just me who thinks the voice actress for the tutorials sounds like Noël Wells, the actress who played D'Vana Tendi in "Lower Decks"? I know its not, but to my ears, it sounds rather similar. and I'm laughing at the idea of someone getting typecast into playing green aliens...) -- There is however one area which I've not seen anyone else comment on, which does disappoint me greatly - and that is that it doesn't feel like a new game at this point. I know all the features of colonies etc are down the road some way, but here I am, building a ship with a Mk 1-3 capsule, a LTV30 or 45 engine, a Mk 16 parachute, etc etc. It feels like I've just paid £45 for the same game I bought 11 years ago, with a graphics update. While the core gameplay of KSP is excellent, and if its not broken, it would be foolish to try to fix it, this doesn't feel like a new game. Having the exact same components tarted up with a fresh lick of polys, to me, feels like KSP2 as it currently stands is not a sequel, but a remaster. Intellectually, I know that there probably isn't a single line of code shared between the two games, but emotionally, that it seems to be repeating the exact same thing so slavishly disappoints me. I'm not sure I entirely like that aspect of KSP2. -- I'm confident this will be a fantastic game, and will carry on KSP's legacy for another 10 years. I want to congratulate every one of the developers, And I hope that those criticisms don't hurt them, because I know what its like to be in their shoes. For each of those criticisms, I've tried to emphasise a positive impression too. I look forward to the future of this - but with the reservations I've stated here.

I just keep thinking, what I'd really like to see is various stellar life stages in other star systems. The video's shown we're getting young systems just forming. (is it wrong to want Jeb to be God, and drop snacks on a proto-kerbin, seeding it with living organisms for KSP3 in 3 billion years? ) but i'd like to see the opposite end of the spectrum too, in particular, a red giant star with formerly habitable planets seared by the bloated star, and a jupiter-distant planet/moon system that's just become a habitable zone as a result, and an ancient white dwarf system where the inner planets have been entirely consumed, and there's ancient dead planets far away from a cold star. Really hoping to see an SDK which would enable such systems to be added.

Aside from saying how well-produced these videos are, I cant help feel that KSP2 really needs some sort of SDK to enable modders to create not just new planets, but entirely new systems with all the density of detail that is shown in that video. Even a stripped-down version could easily suck up more hours than playing the game for some people.

What I'd really like is a Mod Manager built in. Install all your mods to a particular folder, they all go into subfolders, and then the Mod Manager gives you each mod, and a tickybox to enable or disable. So if you install till you break it, you can deselect a mod, restart, see if its that one that's causing a crash, etc. Would be a nice quality of life improvement, I suspect.

two wee images to explain some of what I was saying yesterday: http://imgur.com/KEUaF44 shows the "pipeline" text and how it overlaps the flag decal. nice and simple overlay error there. the other image is a bit of a speculative doodle. I wrote about the possibility of altering some of the design style to closer mirror the existing model, particularly the ladder arrangement, and doorway style, plus a lighter weathering pass that ties the texture into the original stock ones a little more. in particular, I've altered the size of the hatch, to be more in keeping with the styles you see on other stock capsules, and while I've copied theporthole and locking mechanism details from the original design, I've added in two indents to echo the X shape pattern on the stock capsule hatch. I've followed those general style notes here to create a mock-up of how that could work to tie the designs together into a cohesive whole: http://imgur.com/FTuyq4l Hopefully, you'll agree the result looks lot closer in appearance, a those are of some use to you in ideas of what might be possible.

Absolutely love the idea of these, particular the element of merging into the existing capsules in angle as well as style - something that existing mods hadn't managed. that difference in angle always left them feeling disjointed to my eye. Several details of this have left me wanting to comment so far, hopefully, this will be taken as constructive criticism: I'm inclined to agree with a previous comment that the textures are quite pixellated. They're fine for a WIP test version with a nice small footprint, but I'd like to hope that the finished versions will be crisper. Artistically, I find some of the panels to be over-weathered too, to the extent that they contrast a little with the stock textures - that's just a case of pulling back the intensity of the wear layers if you're working on a master image for that. the bigger issue with texture design is placements - the "pipeline" text texture area shares the same space as the mission/agency flag, which can result in two text areas fighting to be applied to the same area, making it look messy. I'm inclined to suggest that the mission flag be moved to a different location, and ideally, I'd like to see that pipeline text made much more subtle - in fact in general, while I like the terms of use text as an idea, I feel that the texture design is excessively cluttered at the moment. There is a quality to understatement which is currently missing. Small flashes of detail work - covering everything simply leaves the eye unable to settle on any one area. Likewise, I'd agree with the previous comment about ladder placement. I would much rather see a staggered, indented ladder panel of dark rounded rectangles aligned with the existing ladder for the stock module, than modelled ladder handles over the hatch as currently made. That primary design change would make the graphic design tie in much tighter to the existing model, and make it look much more complimentary. In a similar vein, I would suggest either enlarging the border texture surrounding the hatchways slightly or even better, in a future remodel, alter the hatch size very slightly, and taper the hatch edge indent slightly to mirror the slightly trapezoidal form of the stock hatchway, then add a second hazard warning strip texture in yellow and black to the right side of the hatch, to mirror that of the stock capsule doorway, with its paired strips. Those three details combined would serve effectively to tie the graphic design of the two modules together very strongly. I'm not entirely taken with the exterior models and textures for the general crew and the science module being absolutely identical. Further along the line, I'd love to see greater degrees of difference in there. An ambitious part in my brain cant help think that the science module needs something a little similar to the K&K Planetary Lab model, a "deploy" animation and model which opens a panel to reveal a telescope, for instance, or very different window layouts to make it a different appearance. That, of course, is something for the future, without it sliding into feature creep. (And while its possibly outside of the remit of the mod, since we're talking of matching graphic design, I'll just add, I'd also love to see a 1.25m to .675m conical element to tie into the design style like this module too: a one-kerbal cockpit that closely matches the 3-kerbal mk1-2 cockpit design in colouration and graphic design (a "mk2-1 cockpit" perhaps?), unlike the stock mk1 command pod with its black "Gemini" look to it. The second part I'd love to see in 1.25 to .675 is a conical, tapered parachute fairing that would seamlessly fit onto the stock capsule fitting.)