Nesses

Greetings, forum-goers! I’m Ness, the Art Director here at Intercept, and I’m interrupting your regularly scheduled UpNate to bring you a special broadcast. Let’s talk about KSP2’s User Interface, the most meta of all game art disciplines! UI must surface moment-to-moment information and actions to players in either text or clever visual shorthand. When making a simulation game like KSP, an even greater burden of information is placed on the UI, since we need to supply players with a mountain of information and choices without overwhelming either the player or their screen’s real estate. It’s a fascinating and sometimes frustrating balance to strike and I am consistently impressed by our UI/UX team’s ability to analyze abstract, un-implemented features and translate them into visuals. Jordan and Colton from our UI/UX team at Intercept work tirelessly to make rocket science digestible and slick-looking! Before we dive into future plans for KSP2’s UI, I’d like to first take a quick look at KSP1’s. Its UI went through several distinct stages over the course of KSP1’s history, the most radical changes happening early in development. One thing that I love about videogame UI is that on top of all the information it must convey, it’s visual styling can suggest subtle narrative and worldbuilding—something that KSP1 has absolutely utilized and that we will continue to evolve in KSP2. Some very early unreleased examples of KSP1 0.2’s UI can be found on HarvesteR’s dev blog. We can see a mix of fonts, both handwritten and geometric sans serif, as well as a barebones parts catalogue. The mix of fonts here is the most interesting detail to me; the handwritten altitude and speed readouts suggests a theme of "DIY" that applied to both the Kerbals in the game and the developers making the game. A later iteration of the UI around KSP1 0.3 introduces the familiar grey that stuck around for the rest of development, as well as a precariously-stacked flight heads up display. This cobbled-together “junkyard” readout was an evolution of the Kerbal narrative of a DIY space program using salvaged parts. By the time KSP1 0.7.3’s public release rolled around, the staging stack had moved to the left side of the screen, we had a flight cluster, and Kerbal live-feed portraits all carefully spaced around the edges and wrapped in that grey pseudo-metal that we saw back in 0.3. Gone was the junkyard aesthetic, and the skeuomorphic gauges were carefully lined up. Ty to @Whirligig Girl for the image above And finally, a shot of KSP1’s UI as of 1.0 We’re all familiar with the symbiotic effect that mods had on KSP1, and I believe that by keeping the UI simple and grey, it allowed modders with limited artistic ability to easily match the look of the canonical UI and maintain a level of visual consistency which ultimately cuts down on cognitive load and increases immersion. This is absolutely something we on the art team are aware of in KSP2, and when it comes time to roll out additional modding tools the UI team will also share our internal style guide for modders interested in mimicking KSP2’s UI. Now onto what I think most of you all are here for; what’s in store for the future of KSP2’s UI now that For Science! is out the door. In the weeks since release, we’ve enjoyed following along as new and returning KSP2 players have checked out the missions, discovered points of interest, and put all of our flight systems through their paces. As thrilling and satisfying as it’s been to see all of the impressive feats you’ve achieved since the For Science! update, we’re also been watching and documenting your reactions to the user experience and the user interface in particular. We’re excited to see that many elements of our UI have facilitated a smoother first-time user experience, but with your help we’ve also identified several areas of confusion that we are actively tracking. These improvements include: Fonts can be hard to read for a variety of reasons (size, scaling, color, contrast, etc.) The maneuver gizmo can be difficult to interact with, and precision maneuvers are especially difficult Trajectory tag markers can be difficult to differentiate or identify Trajectory tag stems can get tangled with one another in ways that cause significant visual confusion SOI transit "bullseye" indicators are too bright, too big, and too prominent relative to other map elements (this is a personal bugbear of mine) Rearranging the staging stack order when selecting the bottom-most stage is difficult The Part Manager presents several usability issues including but not limited to; observing many parts at once, using the Resource Manager as a separate app to specifically track fuel on a per-part basis feels awkward, associating a viewed part in the manager with the actual part on the ship We are not adequately communicating that "Revert to VAB" causes a loss of recent progress, and there are situations when reversion should not be accessible at all It is not obviously clear, especially to new players, when a vehicle is recoverable The audio-only countdown on launch presents both accessibility and legibility problems When in any time warp state other than 1x, the UI does not adequately communicate the state change. The tendency to interpret an under-warp failed control input as a bug has caught out quite a few members of our own team, and is likely responsible for quite a few bug reports Visual styling for some UI elements is not completely unified It would be very handy to be able to see mission requirements in the VAB while constructing a vehicle KSP2’s Early Access is delivering exactly the kind of active feedback loop we were hoping to see, and we’ve now got a nice collection of feedback items to help guide our work priorities. We’re excited to continue improving on the UI. In the meantime, we’ve been working away on a few UI improvements of our own! In the upcoming v0.2.1.0 update you’ll not only see us begin to work through the 2024 bug list, but you’ll also see the following changes: We’ve adjusted the iconography and visuals of intersect nodes to make them easier to interpret (and hopefully easier to learn). We’ve also adjusted the colors of the planned trajectory line to further differentiate from your current trajectory, and shifted the colors on intercept nodes to make it more clear what relation your craft has to celestial bodies. Time and space are weird, but through these and future trajectory improvements we’re working on, we hope to make parsing orbital mechanics more approachable! Aaaaaalso as a sneak peek for something that’s coming beyond the v0.2.1.0 update, Jordan has been diligently combing through and adjusting KSP2’s UI in a giant unification pass in order to align some of our disparate visuals. The shot below represents the first wave of style unification on the highest traffic areas of the game: I’m looking forward to sharing more UI improvements with you all in the future! --- Finally, we’ve got an exciting announcement! We’re working on a new promotional video for KSP2, and we want YOU to share your favorite creations with us. It doesn’t matter if it’s a rocket, a plane, a rover, a boat, a giant mechanical turkey, or whatever your heart desires—if you love it and you’re proud of it we want to see it! If we end up using your submission in the video, you’ll be credited and have eternal bragging rights If you’d like to submit, send an image of your creation along with a craft file (.json) to [email protected]. Please also include your preferred name so we can credit you! (can be real name or username). A bit of fine print here: by submitting your creation, you’re agreeing to let us use the craft file in any and all future marketing materials. Thanks! We’ll release more details as the trailer project moves forward. We’re excited to take your vehicles out for a spin! Ness

Hello all! I'm sorry for the delay on posting the written answers to these questions we didn't get to during the stream last week. The America-day holiday delayed me, and then suddenly it was Friday again! Weird how that happens. Anyhoo--thank you all for the thoughtful questions: How do you ensure visual consistency across assets, especially when you have different people working on different things in parallel? (kavaeric, Discord) Are there any planet concepts that the team has stumbled on and loved but are technically/mechanically/etc unfeasible at the current moment? (cutwithapaperknife, Discord) Can we expect to see different colors of explosions in the future? (spicat, Discord) What software do you use? (noobyeeter69, Discord) what are the kerbals made out of (the ultra dungeon master, Discord) What's your favourite type of cheese? (totallyadan, Discord) Which part was the most fun/challenging for you to work on? (Dragon, Discord) Is it possible to get images of the planets or interstellar vehicles in a higher resolution so we can se where it's all at in terms of progress? (I also really want some deep space wallpapers) (astralminer, Discord) how has the pace of development been post release vs pre release? How many more problems are you able to find and fix now that thousands of players can play and send feedback? (themann, Discord) Will atmospheres eventually get better scatter? Right now, at the edges of the atmospheres where it meets the land, it has a "bar" of white light which doesnt seem very realistic. (astro648, Discord) Just wanted to ask what the team's overall thoughts were on the fans reaction to the woobly rocket statement? How much has the overall opinions of the wobbly rockets been changed by it and has it changed the priorities of patch 0.1.4? (phoebeplague, Discord) What was your favourite engine to design? (xd_ceurvo_bx, Discord) Which planet or moon took the longest time to design? (xd_ceurvo_bx, Discord) We know about the priority of bug fixes, but what about the Art? How do you prioritize what you do? Are you working on things that will come in future updates like colonies or even resource gathering or you do only the science for now? (spicat, Discord) When can we expect to see crew modules which require animations such as gravity rings, especially ones with cool deployment methods? (cyanastro, Discord) First off, what makes a part look 'kerbal'? and secondly, how does the team go about ensuring new parts such as the new engines that came with Patch 3 have a look that feels novel and fresh, but still 'kerbal' at the same time? thanks! (thespacepeacock, Discord) How does the team feel about giving players more options to make their own 'art' in the game? (thespacepeacock, Discord) How do you keep the visual design congruent with the audio side of things, be it foley, soundscapes, music, etc? (kavaeric, Discord) When incomes to cockpits, do we have any progress on the transparent windows like the mark ones, and will there be larger sized cockpits/passenger bays for possibly interstellar (cryonixx, Discord) What are you most excited for the community to see that hasnt been unveiled yet? (even if you cant show us yet) (megamikemikemike, Discord) How do you balance the needs of performance optimization with pushing the boundaries of visual fidelity in Kerbal Space Program 2? (Heretic391, Forums) What is the #1 big artistic item coming up for KSP2 that is not yet in the Early Access we have seen so far? (emberskymedia, Discord)