notcomplex

The Mun terrain is passable these days but the other planets look like lumpy quilts. Higher res terrain (most likely needing an overhaul of their chunked LOD system) would add a lot more immersion for me. Hobbyist programmers on youtube create way better planets (this one is a bit same-y but is still a huge improvement over what KSP has) https://youtu.be/rL8zDgTlXso

I am so up for this but you'll need an n-body mod for it to have any difference besides cosmetics. Otherwise you'd just orbit the barycenter of the two stars, that said the planets orbits could be modeled in something like Mathematica before being baked into their rails position creating some pretty interesting orbits.

Eh resource mining has been around since Kethane and with the system being so small and LVNs being fairly OP I've always found it pointless. I don't think we would need much different tech to pull off a mining economy. My line of thinking is you would mine asteroids which aren't that large and then ship it to various industries around the system for profit which would work under the mysterious forces of supply economics from multiple actors contributing. It would also be cool if you could set up actual space bases on planets so you can get to certain asteroids easier, which would require you to mine metals to build rocket parts on site as well as runways launchpads etc. Honestly you could just scrap the economy bit and find a way to build functioning space bases on other planets (so you would build up a KSC on Laythe for the hell of it). And the devs have stated gameplay > realism, not like anything in KSP is realistic.

It's no secret that once you've gotten everything down and done crazy challenges like Jool V or pulling off multiple flybys (Voyager style) the game doesn't have much else to give. So this discussion is for ideas that would give added depth to the game once you've actually gotten to the planet. A good example is MKS/OKS which adds a ton of new resources and the challenge of building a self sustaining colony. Science and contracts feel cheap, and new planets or *gasp* a procedural system (even though Squad decided this was a bad idea for some reason...) just give you a new place to land on and then a few minutes later leave. I'm not knocking a proc system, I'd play the .... out of it and I think the game needs way more procedural content (seriously the terrain sucks) but essentially the depth of gameplay hasn't changed since .18 days (they added some asteroids). I wouldn't mind seeing a robust supply economy based on space mining with multiple independent AI actors and obviously multiplayer , and if the n-body mod ever completes (and figures out a stable configuration for KSPs wonky system) could see some really amazing flightpaths to hit up multiple mining sites (one day I'll find a use for Mathematica outside my physics hw). As of now the system feels really dead once you figure out how to get around, I think that should be a priority. ofc just my idea and it probably sucks, so post yours and have fun with it, think outside the box of what is practical or what ksp has been so far (a sandbox game with some misplaced game elements tacked on) and go wild. Mostly I'm just looking for a programming project lol.

I was thinking about that, since things like Docking ports and Flaps are just animations, sending just the commands (ie open/close dock) and having the other player call them may be best, all this feels like additional caveats and nothing game-breaking/impossible to do. Control surfaces may pose a real issue though, but who cares if they aren't really synced.

Nope, but really as long as each client does the physics for its own vessel this shouldn't be drastically different than trying to dock two ships in single player (one just gets movement updates from the other clients) As the game isn't that graphically intensive I'm hoping this won't cause an absurd amount of lag. This is all speculation though :/ Also I think I'll be able to use a lot of Dead Reckoning as the courses of vessels are predetermined Kepler orbits. If anyone wants a nice explanation, I believe Unity supports this already so it shouldn't even be that much coding overhead (Did I mention that I love Unity's ease of use so far!) http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3230/dead_reckoning_latency_hiding_for_.php

Well I'll post an update demoing some actual stuff in a few weeks and as a general reach out to the modding community for help. Thanks a ton to OdinYggd for implying a lot of the things I am trying to implement are possible.

I really haven't been ripping notes this is just what I've thought up the past few days and the forum wipe has made research hard I'm a professional software engineer and have a basic chat system in place Sorry for the double posts replying on my phone atm

Well still gonna keep trying but thanks I guess Well as long as each player maintains there own universe and constant syncing happens I don't see the issue If people are actively working on multiple vessels I'd love to help Thanks for the insightful comments on the issue... I have another few coders that can help me and will definitely open a git when I reach a decent jumping off point

Wow thanks for the encouragement, I'm looking for why my solutions won't work as looking at the code this should all be feasible.

Dear god don't shoot me, but I'm making another multiplayer thread. I really am working on this mod, and have hopes of finishing it. I have no intention of supporting more than 4 players at a time, and I'm totally fine with that restriction. So here's the major technical challenges I see and possible solutions to them: Time Warps: Just do a locking system ... solved. User initiated warp at speed x for game time x which is roughly real time x. Upon every other player accepting the player will have full control of warp for the alloted x game time seconds (could just be set to next maneuver node for easy timing). People will have to wait and communicate, but really so what? Some scenarios will automatically disable time warp like : craft under acceleration, craft has periapsis in atmosphere, craft is undergoing SOI change, etc. This is all about communication and not playing with dicks. Observation Mode: In order multiplayer to be fun and not just wainting in boredom, players should be able to warp to other player controlled vessels as a spectator. This way synchronizing warps won't be such a pain because you can just see what your friends are doing while you wait. Honestly don't see any major obstacles with this one, just sit down and code the thing. Controlling physics for multiple vessels: This is easy enough if you say each player controls their own vessel and any other vessels/debris on rails are split up evenly and calculations offloaded to separate players. This will become more of a problem as two player controlled vessels are close enough to each other that the vessel is rendered to the scene (I believe this is 2.5km). As the game physics can slow down what an actual second is the easiest way to fix this is just forcing all other players to slow themselves down to the slowest player. This shouldn't be hard in theory as it's just a matter of syncing the Systems Universal Time between all players. KrakensBane: This may be unsolvable. Basically the Space Kraken is caused from floating point errors which accumulate the farther you are from Origin, or moving faster than Origin. Both times the delta V or delta R are shifted to move you with the Origin (your vessel becomes Origin basically, or the Origin moves with delta V away from you). So the obvious issue of how can you have multiple Origins becomes an issue. My current idea which may be impossible is for each player to control their own Origin/Origin speed so that their craft is always stable. As long as these offset values are passed between each client, every ship and celestial body can be remapped from the other clients coordinate system to your coordinate system ( a basis change on a cosmic scale ). Since each player deals with their own physics for their controlled craft and simply passes its vector properties (position speed etc) to the other players KrakensBane is a moot point for everything but your own controlled vessel. Anyway I'm slowly researching and coding the project and I honestly believe a usable multiplayer for atleast 3 people and probably 4 is completely doable given enough time, but I'd like to know if any of these solutions are viable and any other alternatives / things I'm totally ignoring and are game-breaking.

I know the vessel has a convenient function but it only works for the flight stage. I was thinking I could loop through the parts get their masses and attachment node positions and calculate it that way (but damn a bit annoying). Was wondering if there's a simpler way to get this info, and if this is even feasible.