VlonaldKerman

Maybe I should edit my post and clarify: I am NOT referring to the new terrain maps/textures themselves, especially on Kerbin. I'm referring to the PQS/PQS+ system that the terrain uses to exist, which, in my EXTREMELY low-level understanding, is limited in some fundamental way. They repainted KSP 1, but they didn't change the underlying system which, if they did change it, could yield better, more performant results. And, they talked up their new terrain system as offering unprecedented close-up detail. Additionally I would certainly say that up-close planetary textures themselves are underwhelming as currently implemented- for instance, Duna's "sand". For now, I'll stick with KSP 1 + Parallax.

Wow. We need a thread which compiles all of the statements like this that were made, in my opinion. This is pretty egregious. I’ve often read people saying, “when did they say X.” Statements like this are important because they are relevant to the future of the game: he knew, at the time, that this wasn’t true. That speaks directly to trust in the dev team and the game’s future prospects.

Yeah- that’s one of the reasons I created this thread. If anyone has links to statements, that would be appreciated. Either they said something to this effect, or the community generally assumed there would be a new code base given the things they promised to achieve. It’s also been a common point raised by people who defend the state of the game that they scrapped the initial vision of the game in 2020 when T2 took over, and that the initial vision did not include revamped core systems and was a reskin like you described, and that the game is in an early state because they decided to start over with a more ambitious, ground-up development that fundamentally altered game mechanics and systems. However, this doesn’t seem to be true, which casts doubt on the idea that development was restarted. If dev wasn’t restarted, then that means that the game was in an unbelievably early state when they claimed to be < a year away from release.

Kerbalism mod gives long-duration science in KSP 1, but is not integrated with gameplay in any way. This is a good idea in my book. I also like that SCANSat gives you maps you can actually use.

We need the astronaut transfer van! And the elevator ride to the top of the rocket! Could be made procedural/automatic, like an alternative to the current launch clamps.

Would be awesome. Reminds of Interstellar.

I don't get it, why would you expect this to be in a rocket game???

Interesting. I just made a post about this kind of issue- I feel like we've seen/heard about a lot of systems that aren't yet well integrated with each other, which is concerning considering that this under the hood stuff is the most important part of the game. Also directly contradicts some Nate Simpson pre-launch statements that I think were in the vein of, "The core game is mostly finished, so we're releasing into EA to refine game features and improve polish" or something to that effect.

I was looking at this thread: And it made me think about my KSP 1 save that I'm playing right now. I have over 100 mods installed, including MKS, Galaxies Unbound, and Blackrack's volumetric clouds. I've experienced my fair share of bugs (exploding crafts, editor bugs/craft file corruption, crashes, removing some stars from GU which I've never visited despawned crafts which were in orbit around Mun), and the performance is pretty poor due to poor CPU and GPU utilization levels (~40 fps in orbit), which pretty much nullifies any benefit to my having an RTX 4090, etc. That being said, the gameplay is so rewarding that I still push through the bugs and poor performance. It made me realize what I really want KSP 2 to be, and what it is basically supposed to be: Modded KSP 1, but with better feature implementation, and VASTLY better performance. Personally, I think MKS does colonization pretty well, and while I'm excited to see what the KSP 2 devs have done with it, I'm mainly looking to KSP 2 to implement the same or better quality features without the bugs and performance issues you have to endure (no matter the hardware) with modded KSP 1. It is through this lens that I view KSP 2's development: not so much whether they're implementing new parts, features or reworked science. These things are nice, but they're not so different from what we already have with FREE KSP 1 mods. The NEW thing I paid $50 for, is the promise of eventually getting these things, plus performance and stability. The current performance and stability issues KSP 2 has aren't so concerning to me- rather, it's to be expected. What IS a concern, is when a community poll shows that a vast majority people on this forum don't believe the game has the "foundations" to make 1000 part vessels a reality, and most respondents didn't think the game would ever get to that point. This gets to the question of reworked systems, and there is a concerning pattern: - The physics system is supposed to be substantially changed, to make larger crafts performant. According to data miners, they've made some edits to the base unity physics engine, but anyone who's played the game knows that they haven't reworked the physics system in a fundamental way. - They demoed an atmospheric scattering system that hasn't been integrated. We don't know if it's possible to make it performant and game-ready. - The reworked terrain system has not yet been implemented. For now, we are stuck with almost the same thing that we had in KSP 1, with some revamped textures and new heightmaps. - The reworked heating system is not yet in place, though hopefully it will be soon. - The reworked aero model is fundamentally similar to KSP 1, with maybe some tweaks to formulas and weightings to accomodate procedural wings. - The maneuver system has been reworked, but creating maneuvers is very clunky and we don't know if the rework was fully successful due to having no interstellar bodies to test it on. - The trajectory system was reworked to accommodate long-duration burns and brachistochrone transfers, however it is currently broken. Good luck getting a Tylo gravity assist, I hope Tylo ends up being where the game says it will, but in my experience, it almost never is. - We have not yet seen the full persistent supply consumption and transport system that will facilitate colonies. - I'm not sure if they've implemented the location system which moves the origin to accommodate interstellar distances- if they have, seen my trajectories bullet. - We don't know what the new science system is going to be, but I suspect it will be fine, so not much worry there. - We don't really know about multiplayer. Presumably this will require fundamentally new under the hood tech. - I'm not sure where the tutorial system stands- I haven't really paid attention to it. I remember there being lots of bugs, but presumably those will be fixed. What remains to be seen is if these tutorials will succeed in attracting or onboarding new players more effectively than Scott Manley videos- that question is way up in the air ATM. - Am I missing a reworked "under-the-hood" system from this list? Do I have inaccurate information? Please let me know- I'm going off memory here. My point is not that we don't have all the features or that it's very early access, or that the game should be in a more advanced state- those debates have been played out (and are still playing out) elsewhere. My point is that, in my opinion, KSP 2 will live or die by these bullet points, not just in the extent to which they are implemented, but that they're implemented performantly and relatively bug-free. These core systems and their quality are what really counts, long-term. I've heard this sentiment expressed elsewhere in the fanbase and I wanted to state it clearly here. I've seen a lot of comments to the effect of: "Wow, KSP 2 obviously has a great team of visual artists. They are good at designing parts, planets and they are good at having ideas for the game. But we have no idea if that beautiful planet texture and terrain tessellation will make it into the game, and we don't know if they physics system will allow players to make use of those massive interplanetary transfer parts." Are they doing well at implementing reworked core systems? We just don't know. I asked this question for both of the Q&A's, and despite the fact that, in my view, it is the single most important question facing KSP 2's development, I don't believe they addressed it (at least not in my brief review of the transcripts). Does anyone have information that I'm missing on this? Or just interesting opinions? I feel like I see a lot of yelling about "BUGS BUGS BUGS" and a lot of yelling about "IT'S EARLY ACCESS OF COURSE IT'S LAGGY", but these conversations tend to miss the point if the cause of the low FPS is a fundamental issue rather than bug-hunting or other optimization problem.

I think Juno craft creation is much more based around procedural parts, as opposed to the "lego" KSP build style. Personally I like KSP, in that I don't feel paralyzed by infinite options. I do really like Juno's coding system, though- it's basically a drag and drop (think: scratch) version of KOS. Is this really true? I don't see why they couldn't just implement the Scatterer mod-level stuff, as a starting point. Not to say that they can copy the code or anything, but Scatterer proves that it can be done to a reasonable level of effectiveness and performance. This seems wild- have I misunderstood what you're saying?

I just hope that once the bugs are fixed people will come back. Me personally, I just don’t feel like building a big elaborate mission and having the trajectory be completely wrong and miss my gravity assist, etc. As it stands, ultra-modded (100+ mods) KSP 1 is less buggy and similarly performant to KSP 2 (even though my max GPU utilization is ~50%) WITH all the features we don’t have yet in KSP 2. Once the basic systems are largely bug-free and we have science, I’ll probably start my first real KSP 2 save game, and I would expect to see engagement rise exponentially once people are actually logging on to play the same save game day after day.

I feel like this is an attack on Warm Snow, which has more current players than KSP 2 and a higher all-time peek. I understand criticism of KSP 2 but warm snow? Come on.

See title. There’s been a lot of contentious debate on this forum, and throughout the discussions, this one question keeps popping into my mind. Interested to hear the community’s thoughts on this?

Really appreciate how this post directly addresses some of the discussions that have been playing out on this forum. Thanks for this, looking forward to the next update.

I loled at this because I didn’t see this coming but it’s 100% accurate lmao. Not super interested in arguing about the anti-aliasing in KSP 2 beta but I had to thumbs up the comment for this. Edit: they also own lots of information about you and your hardware, permanently! Gotta love that EULA.

Even with AA on this seems to happen. Def not a rig issue either- I've got an RTX 4090. I can get 60 fps but still aliasing issues.

Unless they didn't initially plan on having interstellar, planning on reusing the KSP 1 codebase would have been a decision worth criticizing. I'm pretty ignorant on this stuff, but if you read the dev blogs, they certainly talk as if the terrain system, colony stuff wrt. supply routes and background processes, and physics resolution at interstellar scales are each deeply challenging technical problems which require rewriting fundamental code. In fact, I remember the reasoning behind KSP 2 being, originally, according to STG, created was that the KSP 1 architecture was insufficient for substantial further improvements to be made. In other words, redesigning core functions was synonymous with the development of KSP 2 from the project's inception. I currently doubt that their intention was ever to, "[make] a big enough expansion to KSP to sell it as a new game, but still, fundamentally, on the same tech, recycling much of KSP code and art." Personally, if I had to guess, I would guess that this is the way it went, or that the scope never changed, and it was ambitious from the beginning. Again, I'm guessing. I agree, I suspect it was started from scratch. But, as stated in my prior points, I think it wasn't obvious at all that the initial project had to be scrapped, prior to the new datapoint of the EA release. In fact, looking in from the outside, as you mentioned in your post, with a delay only until 2021, the most reasonable conclusion was that (and the stated reasons at the time were that) a combination of COVID and corporate stuff had slowed progress on the build of the game that was supposed to be released in 2020. This is a fair point. However, the mere fact that the screenshots from 2020-21 were lackluster is not evidence that KSP 2 was initially supposed to be a KSP 1 reskin. It could also be a signal of incompetence/over-ambition of the dev team at STG- many of whom transferred to PD and are still working on the project. For this reason, the history of the development of KSP 2 seems important. I never said I considered it to be "going well." Only that, as a statement of fact, it is possible that the game could release in two years, and it wouldn't shock me. It is possible for people to have opinions in between "Everything is going fine and as expected," and, "The recked development of KSP 2 will lead the world into nuclear war." Eek. Saw this.

I am aware of all of this... Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall reading that most of the dev team ended up transferring. Thus, with respect to a "neon sign", I don't think it's obvious at all that the game had to be scrapped and restarted. Sure, I would expect delays and difficulties, and that's why it made sense when they delayed the game for a number of months, rather than years. Everyone in the community seemed pretty understanding, and still cautiously optimistic. I don't remember it being widely known or discussed that they were essentially starting from scratch. Again, correct me if I'm wrong. I completely agree with what you've said here. The point of my post was to highlight the fact that messaging/communication is largely responsible for the backlash that KSP 2 has received. Indeed, as many have pointed out, the game is in early access, and many early access games release in various states (I would argue most better off than the 0.1 release of KSP 2). However, those games don't receive 50% positive reviews on Steam, therefore, something must be different about KSP 2. Are KSP fans more negative than the average fanbase? I would say certainly not. My post was about my interpretation of the negative reception of the release- that is, that either: 1) The game was in development for multiple years before the planned release date and should therefore be in a more advanced state, especially given that (if I recall correctly, may be wrong) they didn't initially plan on releasing early access (certainly not this early) and so such messaging arrived at the last minute, or, 2) The game had to be scrapped when T2 took over, and redone from scratch. In this case, I think it would be fair both to criticize STG for wanting to release a game that evidently was so bad it had to be trashed, and T2/PD for the bizarre schedule of delays, and a lack of transparency about why those delays were taking place. As you point out, it would have been better for them to say, "Turns out, game is in a bad state, we're going to have to do a lot of work. It will likely be several years, maybe tentatively 2022+". People would have been disappointed, but I think it's important to remember that every time they announced a delay the overwhelming sentiment from the community was, "take your time, do it right." With respect to the topic of this thread... the timetable for new content release is obviously dependent on what exists so far. The good news is that if in fact development had to be restarted 3 years ago, I would say that development has moved at a reasonable pace. Therefore, I would expect EA to be nearly complete in a couple of years at most. I suspect updates will be sparse as they work on core systems and other "back-end" stuff, and a lot of the chunkier "content" updates will be more rapid as many of the assets/implementation are already actually written, though not yet integrated.

So work began on the scheduled release date... I've said it before, if they announced early access dropping 2022 and it got delayed and is in this state, I think no one would have a problem with that. The reason why people are complaining is that there was clearly mismanagement (at best) behind the scenes and no explanation has been forthcoming. No matter how you slice it or dice it, if they had to start over from scratch in 2020, they should have delayed it more than a year. Therefore, their delay timeline + the state of the game is fishy. For me personally, I'm still waiting and hopeful that the game will end up being great.

The old mountains were disproportionately huge compared to the size of Kerbin. 6000+ m mountains on kerbin are like 60000+ m mountains on earth. The to-scale version of Mt. Everest in KSP would be ~800m tall. That said, Kerbins atmosphere is also rediculously tall, and I’m not a stickler for perfect geological realism. I enjoyed the old mountains- I used to climb them on foot (because I’m weird and I’m a climber myself).

This was my first thought upon seeing it. Much agreed.

I believe the explosion was actually range safety self destruct, not even exploding bc of aero (yet).

How different are the core physics systems from the first game? How much of the core architecture has been redesigned, and what is planned?

Hehehehehe... yeeeeaahhhh boiiiii

I think they’ll have some sort of LS functionality for colonies but not sure about vessels. They’ll probably leave that up to modders.