K^2

It's all, well, relative. The electrons in wires are barely moving, and you still get magnetism as side effect of relativity, simply because if you were to separate all positive and negative charges, the forces and energies involved would be absolutely enormous, so even a tiny relativistic correction of these gives you an appreciable force. I wouldn't get stuck on any particular value of fraction of c as a cutoff. Just do the quick estimate for any given case. Fortunately, the math for special relativity is super simple.

I sort of wonder why. It seems like on-the-fly tessellation is basically mandatory for any sort of terrain fidelity they'd be aiming for. In that case, procedural cratering would just involve sampling from a crater texture on top of height map, biome, and procedural noise they're already sampling. It wouldn't add a whole lot to the game, but it also seems like it's easy enough to implement that I don't know why it ended up on the cutting floor.

Just bring a really big vacuum cleaner, and finally use it for what the name implies - cleaning vacuum.

I know. I just saw a setup for "Where did rogue planet get its rings," and had to run with it. :p The other option, of course, was to go with stand and deliver.

From its ex-star. When they were breaking up, the rogue planet said, "I hope you know that I'm keeping the jewelry." So the planet still has rings. No idea how they're meant to produce light, though. Also, not sure we need to invent some McGuffin for it. There's still starlight, so you'd get same illumination as on a clear moonless night. It's not a lot, but it's not pitch black. It'd make exploration more difficult and more treacherous, both because of poor illumination and because you can't rely on solar. But I think it would feel like a challenge, rather than frustration. So long as there's something exciting there to find, I think it would be worth it. One rather grim possibility is ruins of a civilization on that dead world. If a habitable planet gets knocked out clear of its orbit, say, during a stellar near-miss, the planet will turn into a snowball with no weather to speak of within years. Eventually, atmosphere itself will condense and liquify, increasing the ocean level by some tens of meters at the most, leaving a lot of the cities open to vacuum. As the planet continues to cool, the former atmosphere might freeze as well, leaving giant planes of perfectly smooth surface with continents preserved almost as they were in between. There would be few asteroids to come by in interstellar space. No destructive radiation. No weather in what little trace atmosphere remains. Cities can stand preserved for millions of years waiting for someone to find them. Edit: And look at that, Kurzgesagt did a video on something very similar. Though, they do claim that atmosphere will snow out. That is incorrect. Triple points of nitrogen and oxygen are low enough that they will turn into liquids first and come down as rain. Rain of liquid oxygen might not be great for a lot of structures, but concrete should be able to survive that.

Yeah, Tesla's definitely overrated. That's not to say that he wasn't a genius. He invented many marvelous things, some of which are in use today, mostly related to fluid dynamics. As @Cavscout74 points out, they aren't necessarily the most efficient, but they have uses due to some of their other unique features. Most notably, Tesla turbine and Tesla valve. He also had a lot of good ideas on electricity, some of which did pan out. That said, he was sloppy in testing things, and a lot of ideas he claimed would work he never took beyond paper. Primarily, that seems to have come from the fact that he jumped from one exciting idea to the next, not taking due diligence with any one of them. And there's nothing wrong with recognizing his achievements, and I know that some people are fans of Tesla because he achieved so much despite some flaws that maybe they can relate to, which is good. Unfortunately, there are also two categories of people who are trying to rise him to nearly martyr status for just completely wrong reasons. First, there are people who think they are unrecognized geniuses and keep pointing at Tesla and claiming they are the same. While statistically I expect that a few of them are, and we're talking literal few, as in fewer than ten, an overwhelming majority of these people never bothered to learn even the most fundamental parts of math Tesla needed to do what he did, and think that anything they think up is absolutely true, without any evidence whatsoever. Second, there are people who try to prop up Tesla as martyr fallen to capitalism. They claim that Tesla would single-handedly lead us into the bright future if it weren't for the likes of Edison ruining his chances. But the truth is that Tesla's biggest problem in making a successful business out of his genius was lack of personal discipline, and it's the same problem that would prevent him from building anything truly grand given resources.

Reminded me of Satisfactory more than anything. Definitely viable for a mod if nothing like this is in the game. Also, above and beyond on illustration.

Won't make a difference, unless KSP2 absolutely tanks, scaring away most mod devs. KSP2 is being developed under Unity. There are ways to inject mods into Unity games* even if devs don't support it. You might need to run it with a mod launcher if Intercept decides not to support them natively, but there will be mods with or without the help from Intercept. Adding new components to a Unity game in memory is a solved problem, so a mod loader can be written. There are tools that will extract game's assets, so you'll have access to all of the stock part models and textures to use as a starting point for any new parts. All of the Unity API is available, so you can just write a part script completely from scratch. What can be tricky is getting access to some of the game-specific APIs, like fuel, action groups, control inputs, etc. But it might be possible to simply decompile the game and see how existing parts work. KSP was obfuscated but with an off-the-shelf solution, so there was a tool for disobfuscating the code, and decompiled C# retains all but local variable names, so KSP source code was pretty easy to navigate. Time will tell if KSP2 will be in the same boat. Case-in-point, with or without decompiled code, procedural wings are absolutely doable. Intercept would have to invest considerable resources into making it impossible, which I can't imagine they could spare even if they decided, for some strange reason, that they don't want to have mods anymore. * Technically, any game is modable, but deciphering the inner-workings of an engine you're not familiar with is a lot of work. Take a look at history of GTA modding for a good example. Modern community-built tools make it pretty easy, but people had to make these tools completely from scratch, deciphering game's archive system, resource management, and hooking into game's script engine.

With the work they are putting into vegetation on Kerbin, I can't imagine they won't put it on other worlds. At a minimum, Lathe seems like a must. But yeah, seeing something really alien on some distant world would be great. There are ways to do schools of fish with GPU that's pretty cheap to render. If they scatter as you approach, you'd just basically see some movement in the water without ever seeing one up close. Could work for Kerbin oceans as well. And yeah, I like idea of shadows under ice for some of the ice planets. That's a pretty simple way to make a world seem extra alien without too much work. And it's pretty easy to render.

Broader markets, fewer exclusives, digital distribution, and a lot of additional monetization. There are a lot of the games with full price tag that make something like 2/3 of profit from micro transactions. So that can average out to $180/game. Obviously, that's not all games, but so long as you can push more copies, price point isn't really the issue. A lot of games would probably actually do better at a lower price point, simply because it's a fairly elastic demand, and with digital distribution extra copies cost you nothing. Not even bandwidth, because distributors like Steam take a flat percentage cut, and all maintenance costs are on them. So dropping price on release can actually generate you more revenue. Except, people are so used to $60 price that anything shipping under $60 is perceived as lower quality, or at least, lower value game. So some games get released at $60 and then pretty much instantly go for a discount. Because $60 game with 25% discount is perceived a lot better than a $45 game.

It's a little hard to say what's the best way to roll that into KSP2, because I don't know what's all going to be in it, but if I was implementing a challenge of finding a rogue planet into KSP with Interstellar mod, or something similar, I'd probably roll it into career mode. Have some contracts for setting up some observation satellites around the home system first, then maybe have some blurb about an anomaly, but not enough data, so you get contracts for setting up observation satellites in another star system. Once you complete these, you get location of the rogue planet. It's a bit artificial, and isn't really all that different from normal career playthrough, but at least it's some kind of reward of something other than just credits and reputation for doing contracts. Hopefully, KSP2's rework of contract system will make it more exciting, while still allowing for a quest chain sort of missions like this.

I kind of want to see an ocean world, maybe one with just a few volcanic islands? Especially if there is reason to go exploring the depths. I think it would also be interesting to have a pair of moons playing tag around a planet, similar to the dynamics of Janus and Epimetheus. Doesn't need to be terribly complex, the transition points can be entirely scripted, with the two bodies trading orbits every time they get close. Somebody mentioned a rogue planet in another thread. Could be exciting, especially if it has a moon or several and is actually a challenge to find. A binary star system, maybe? A black hole would be very difficult to make both interesting and realistic from perspective of physics and rendering. But a neutron star is totally doable. You can get away with entirely classical physics. Just give it stellar mass and tiny radius. Flyby probes go ZOOOM! If they add tidal stress it could be a competition for who can do the deepest dive and return.

Back in the day when most radio was amplitude-modulated, and people had tooth fillings made with metal alloys, it's possible that some people were able to pick up radio with their teeth. Certain oxides that can form from metals in fillings of mid-century dentists work like semiconductor under the right conditions, and that can make a diode in your tooth with adjacent crown, for example, which will act as antenna of a simple detector radio. That might let you feel the signal when you are close to the transmitter. I don't think there is any possible way for you to actually hear the sound, but if the station is playing a song with familiar beat, you might be able to recognize it and think you hear it. There is a lot of conjecture in this, and I'm not aware of any case being properly documented by a physician, but it's the only variant on this story that seems plausible. As in, it absolutely could have happened, but I can't say for sure if it has. I don't think anything like this can happen with modern radar. Even if people still used these kinds of materials for dental work, the frequency is too high for a simple detector like this to produce even a pain sensation. Unless the beam is powerful enough to literally start cooking your skin, I can't think of any way you'd feel it. And that is possible with power of a long range active radar, but you have to be standing within meters of the dish. As for picking it up in glass, I don't think it will screw with any modern nav-aids or any other electronics. So unless you have a dedicated RWR, I don't think there's any chance of you becoming aware. If you do happen to be flying a plane equipped with RWR, which would pretty much make it a military plane, then you'll know that there is radar trained on you because the RWR will be making a ruckus with buzzers and blinking all sorts of warning lights, telling you to get the hell out of Dodge. Edit: I'm just now realizing I'm not sure how RWR behaves with friendly radar. I assume the simple and most useful way would be for it to give you a warning on a new source, then shut up once it does the IFF handshake, but with older systems that might still have produced a new bleep on each sweep, since tracking location of sources is somewhat sophisticated.

I wouldn't. I'd still make it completely clean code base, maybe copying a few files over when it makes sense. But if I didn't care about money and had some other way to fund it, I'd release it as a patch for the original that basically replaces everything, and keep the old version available as an opt-in branch as "legacy version", or something like that. If all of the original parts are present in the updated version, and I wouldn't see reason not to, and all of the planets of Kerbol system are there, you'd be able to convert save files and really have it be an upgrade. Naturally, there is little reason to go to all that effort if you can't fund it, and nobody's going to fund it if it won't sell like a new game, but if we were talking purely hypothetically, you could keep it all under the KSP label.

It's also a case that Take Two wants to make money by selling a new game. But all of the above reasons definitely hold as well, so it's a case of financial and creative interest coinciding.

Sounds like classic feudalism to me.

Which is always a good indicator that you should be careful with this, as extrapolating from a polynomial is always trouble. But either fit is missing one crucial element, the fact that release dates already have some assumptions baked into them which you don't track. There are other statistical models that are designed to track changes like this, but they don't really work with just a few points of data.

None of these things factor into how long it takes to make a game, though. You can invest your entire life time into playing Chess, as many people have, but it doesn't mean that it will take decades to make a Chess game. I mean, you could spend that long if your goal is to write some very clever AI for it, but I can also write a simple Chess client, complete with networked multiplayer, in a couple of hours, and it will have everything that makes Chess a great game. In terms of production, KSP is a very simple game. And I'm not saying it to diminish that game - that's part of brilliance of the original. Things were added over the years to make it a bit more complex, but I remember looking through the code of the early-ish version, around 1.0, and the physics was basically just a few lines of code for aerodynamics and gravity. Everything else was handled through Unity. Likewise, there were some clever bits to load graphics and collision around the player when you're on the surface, so that you can handle planet-sized planets without running out of memory, but the rest is Unity doing its thing. Some resource management in flight, a ship editor, some UI, and you basically have your game. Updates expanded on that. We got biomes, mining, asteroids, robotic parts - all coming with a bit more logic and a bit more UI. But there is still a very reasonable amount of work there for a very modest team. The current vision for KSP2 is a lot bigger. I agree. But I don't think it started out that way. I think the original pitch was remake of KSP + interstellar + colonies + visual update. And depending on how you implement colonies, all the extra stuff is basically a big expansion. But then the reveal happened at 2019 E3, and everyone was excited, and I think that's when the push for larger, more ambitious KSP2 was made. I could easily be wrong about that, but a simpler, leaner original vision for KSP2 fits well with the timeline, what we saw at E3, and how the narrative changed in the months following it, as KSP2 became a bigger project. Even now, though, KSP2 isn't that big and complex. Things they are doing with rendering of planet surfaces and sky is pretty typical for modern games. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a good reference here. The general look of ships makes it seem like they embraced PBR, which is industry standard now. Colony building becoming an integral part of gameplay essentially means introduction of economy, but again, it's hard to come up with modern games that don't have some form of economy going. Again, KSP2 is kind of doing a lot with little here, going after bigger world-building pieces rather than getting caught in the details. And that's great, because that is what lets a mid-sized team build a game that's just as fun and long-lasting as the best of the AAA games. It's also why I think they are on reasonable schedule now despite increased ambition for the project.

Hydroplaning would make all kinds of amphibious aircraft more viable, but it's pretty tricky to get right. In general, I think the reason parts were so sensitive to water collision in KSP is because they were forced into a compromise between that and making it too easy to survive a water landing, making parachutes unnecessary. I hope Intercept finds a way to have both of these, but I wouldn't be disappointed if we have to use special parts for floats or flying boat bodies to allow for high speed movement on water without breaking, with all other parts interacting with water as before.

Anything designed for controlled flight is an aircraft according to FAA rules. Moreover, everything above 18,000 feet and up to 60,000 feet is class A controlled airspace, meaning that you cannot fly through it without permission from the ATC. And the only way you'll be allowed in class A is if you are either flying a certified aircraft with a tail number and a flight plan or you have filed for and were granted an exception to allow you use of class A airspace. I doubt that any rocket has ever had an airworthiness certificate and a registered tail number. I imagine, at most, they'd be registered as experimental aircraft. In that case, you would absolutely need to file for an exception to be allowed to climb to 60,000 feet, and FAA has right to approve or reject it on case-by-case basis. Military launches can bypass all of that bureaucracy, of course. And I believe, there is a simplified path for getting permission for high altitude amateur rocket launches, so long as you have membership with one of rocketry associations in the US.

I've worked in multiple game development studios. Currently, I am an engine lead for one of major AAA studios, and so I am involved in long-term and day-to-day planning for multi-year projects. I've seen projects that failed and I've seen projects that have suffered many delays before getting released. I was concerned about originally stated schedule after the game was transferred from Star Theory to Intercept, in part due which reqs were unfilled. Since then, several key slots have been filled, and the new schedule matches where the game is at. Late 2022 is entirely reasonable for the team Intercept has based on progress made so far. The two unfilled reqs that concern me are graphics engineer and multiplayer engineer. There is still time to fill these, but even if these do not get filled in the near future, the game can still ship on current schedule. We might not have multiplayer at release or have fewer features, but it's not the sort of thing that would prevent the game from being shipped. It's alright to have concerns about the delays, but jumping to, "It will never get finished, the game is doomed," is needlessly alarmist at best and bordering on shameless trolling at worst.

KSP is actually pretty simple as far as modern games go. Even with stated ambitions for KSP2 it's not exactly AAA-scale. But they're also working with a fairly small team on (what I assume is) a modest budget. So yeah, it definitely takes time. I'm pretty sure the original early 2020 goal was for "KSP, but with bigger tech tree, more parts, more planets, and some extras." That was reasonable for Star Theory, but then they got ambitious. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, and some great games came out of the team deciding that they can make an even bigger game, but then you either grow the team, slip the schedule, or most realistically, both. The original 2021 goal for Intercept seems like it was in "salvage Star Theory plan" mode. The new date indicates that they rescoped, re-scheduled, and are now making the Intercept vision of KSP2. And based on some of the recent updates, it looks like a big part of it is that rather than making KSP with a fresh coat of paint on it, they're now making something that preserves the core of the original, but also feels and looks like a game made in the decade it's actually released, and not something that belongs on last gen hardware.

By literally writing out every single task that needs to be done, estimating the duration of work on each and dependencies, then arranging the tasks on the schedule and assigning them to available developers. It's a lot of work and it might sound impossible, but you get a knack for it after you've shipped a few titles. Planning for something that's two years from release is not so bad. For a game of KSP2 size it suggests they are re-entering production with a new plan. Planning out a game five years out, before you enter pre-production, is a lot harder, and we still do that. Studios just rarely share the estimates from these schedules, as they are much more likely to change.

Making good waves is work, but not unreasonable. There are good methods out there. Sea of Thieves is one of the best examples of doing it right, and pretty much everyone's been using the same underlying technique for the past few years. (Look up Jerry Tessendorf's papers if you're interested in details.) The serious problems start the moment you want anything to interact with water in any way. And I don't think it's unreasonable to expect Intercept to make something that works a little better than current water in KSP, allowing for better boats and planes on floats, but don't expect miracles.

Doubt it made that much difference. I work for a much larger studio and our schedule slipped by maybe a few weeks, if that, due to WFH situation.