tstein

That is more than volumetric, that is the first game with THICK clouds.

Raytracing does not seem to be a logic dump of resources on KSP like game (since we are NOT going to have a dense environment with lots of different things to reflect and refract anything (remembe that kerbin itself is an exception in the game and one that we basically do not pay much attention). Even for people wanting very high end graphics, I think other techniques are more than enough for kerbal other planes (and certainly for space where ray trace is basically a waste of time sicne 99.9999999999999999% of time where is nothing to reflect or interact in the lightining) I general I agree. My order is setting (is the game about somethign I like? ), gameplay challenge, gameplay depth, interesting unique mechanics, then story, then graphics. Not that I dislike good visuals, as my main hobby is painting and I really like good well developed visual stuff (I even buy books because the cover looks cool ), but games are the place where it affects me the least, i am not sure why.

Well in a static show you can never tell if something is truly volumetric. I can paint with oils far more realsitic clouds than that and they are not volumetric at all One needs to see a video to judge it.

Coffee is written almost the same in my language, but not exactly the same so it is one word I usually write wrong in english.

All I want to know is.. can I remove clouds from the game? I want the lest graphics eye candy as possible. I do not even put sugar in my coffe.

early exposure of an unready product to a segment of its potential costumer base that is not fully willing to accept its unready state is detrimental to the long term image of the product... i learned that lesson the hard way.

No it is not, not when they might feel their current EA is very short of features and drawing attention now might do more harm to their reputation than good. I burned a lot of opportunities in my company by advertising hard when the product was not in the needed condition. Nowadays I do not do that mistake anymore. The studio clearly has a plan and they care for the long run success . Howmuch they sell on the first month is not relevant. How much they sell during the lifetime of the game is what matters for them.

I think your definition of marketing is very strict and that it may not match their business model for the current moment. Remember that no you cannot go full adds allt he time during the EA up to the end.. they do not hav emoney for that very likely. To chose the best moment is as relevant as to chose the right content.

Considering a lot of streamers are complaining openly that the EA first moment will have too few features, it might be wise to not market up much now. I think it might change when we get to interstellar stuff or Colonies.

It could work.. the area could be a semi arc segment (with depth ) alongside the orbit of a body. It is a reasonable aproximation that allow SOME complex maneuvers yet it does not deeply disrupt long travel planing, not more than entering and leaving a SOI already does

So your idea is a SOI still, but a SOI that has different rules, where conics are replaced by NBody and when you leave that SOI things get into rails again? It still ahs some BLINDNESS to the future (as oen cannot predict the future beign the horizon event of entering or leaving that SOI, but it is a limit that I think most players would accept (but need to find a way to explain it because some will get cofnused by that new bermuda triangle in space.

To be sincere, if in the first day we do not have the forum flooded with complains of bugs the launch will be a great success. In the start of such a process is usually so easy that most likely people will not need help with that. When th obvious issues start to vanish is when more directed and controled form of search becomes relevant.

Yes and no... the lagrange points are very missnamed making people think it is a place where you balance in top of a needle. They are local minima or local maxima (in fact cell points in the function) potential and kinetic energy wise (that is why you have L4 , L3 and L5 even when these are not aligned in direct counter forces) , so you tend to get dumped into energy function minimum around them and get a lots of comes and goes until you can be finnaly pulled out of them and while on that process minimal dV adjustments can return you to the deepest point in the local energy function, the result is that they are SEMI stable.

That woudl be hellish complicated to implement AND would go in a bad direction of the feeling of managing a space program. It becomes too much a n arcade feeling for me

On the late game yes, but I fear might make the early game just a rush with the largest thing and be done with it.

naaa the fun part is the composite orbits. You can make some nefty tricks of changing your orbit for much much reduced Dv. Lagrange points can be implemented without n-body You just need artificial SOI on vacuum aroudn those points. The shape of the "points"orbit will be wrong although. O woudl nto think so. I implemented an N-body simulation just for fun after the last discussion in the topic and could easily put things in lagrange points that lasted quite a lot of orbits (in real life they are NOT eternal either. And I used no advanced tricks at all just Float 64 and position in cetimeters, mass in grams of real universe sun, earth and moon and data from a site I found with specific and clear data of the position and speed needed. It is NOT hard, once again N-Body is not a hard problem it doe snto demand more precision than patched conics. All its problem is related to PLANING AHEAD and the huge gameplay impact that the lack of long term predictions create.

I am sure it would have a few... We would all see competitions to get to certain bodies with minimum Dv at an extreme level.

yes, unfortunately for some (;ole me that like the challenge of keeping ships small) and fortunate for others that are allergic to finances.

Probably it is not a true N-body implementation or there would be no reason to not have it always on between kerbin and the moon (the most interesting place to use it). Again NBody is something trivial to implement (cosnider only the ships beign affected by N-gravitational pulls and only from moons and planets). The hard thing is PREDICT the orbit in future without incurring a large computational cost and the game navigation is completely dependent on that. 99% sure it is because of interface. Simulate n-body is easy, really easy. The hard part is predict future orbits. So you cannot plot a parametrized orbit and see if it intersects another parametrized orbit ... you need to iterate the simulation until that point. Sicne you do not knwo how far you need to go into the future you need to spend quite a bit or processing to compute it. Ye sin a few second you could extend current orbit by several months of prediciton no problem.. that is easy. the problem is.. how to show the orbit while you are accelerating? you will not be able to update the orbits 3 years ahead in time while you are accelerating.

I think worst than the options is the lack of someone/something telling you how to progress. The career , even with the simplistic contracts still gave you an early path.. launch something.. tryt to get high.. try to orbit... good now try for the mun pass by.... That sequence helps a lot newcomers. It can although be covered by a good tutorial sequence that helps you all the way to a landign in minumus (woudl do that before the mun)

That is what I keep saying. While not in game industry, my company do not want to draw new costumers with our experimental new products, only when they are validated, by a specific type of costumer that we know are not going to rage if something need to be changed) we want them to be tried by everyone. It is very very bad marketing to sell a product with 80% of its features for the general public that still needs to be convinced.

At least you got only 3 posts late

A bear face after it has been slapped with a shovel

I am the owner of the company, it is not a matter of callign out. It is a matter of having a good excuse

They had to release it 1 day after my birthday that would be a perfect excuse for me to not go to the office.