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Devnote Tuesday: Rocket Technology

SQUAD

By SQUAD
in KSP1 The Daily Kerbal

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Whirligig Girl

Whirligig Girl

Posted
Posted (edited)

TL;DR: THIS BLOG POST needs to be read by whoever is in charge of all buildings. Not just Tier 0, but Tier 1, 2, and all destroyed ones. They are all sub-par at best. I talk about the Barn, but I use it in the context of the other buildings as well.

There absoultely MUST be an art pass on the destroyed buildings. The overlayed textures look absolutely horrible up close and there's even some shader issues with transparent textures being used for ground rubble piles, it's all messy and it's unproffessional at best, and downright ugly at worst.

The low-tier buildings as they are right now are also rather poor. I think there's way too much blue in it, and and there are some crappy places. Some corners are see through, there are floating yellow lines on the floor, and Kerbals walking through boxes!

I hate to be so much of a downer, but it really just is not even close to matching the visual quality of the rest of the game. They're only a mild improvement from the old 0.20 and previous KSC Buildings!

Let me quote Bac9.

Another thing I have to point out is strange reluctance to work on art techniques. The thing I hate the most about my island runway is the way I did the grass to sand transitions - with two separate materials split with an ugly sharp border, and the very same thing is everywhere here. I compensated it a bit on the runway edges with a third transition texture (by the way, why the hell isn't it used when it can be done with a simple loop offset operation on every sand edge?), but it still wasn't that good looking.

Just a little bit of research and half an hour of work on a vertex-color driven shader can allow you to forget about those ugly transitions forever. Here I recorded few examples of those shaders in use:

KSP-like grass

Rubble

Example of underlying vertex colors driving the result

Essentially, every vertex stores a color value that is then used in the shader to set the clamping point of a height map. The result of that operation is then used as a mask for the top texture. It's an extremely widespread technique in the industry, used in hundreds of games, allowing you to reduce polycount and drawcalls and so on. There are some nuances and raising costs if you want to use that to blend, say, three or four textures, but two texture case is dead simple.

This was talking about the barn, but I think it also applies to some other things.

Wow, I can't believe I just bashed on a part of KSP so much. I love KSP and all who work on it, as long as they realize that things can always be better if they're not already amazing.

Edited by GregroxMun
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Whirligig Girl

Whirligig Girl

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That does sound pretty bad.

Have you tried NOT harping on it for a while?

:D

If the Battman Batteries were removed, I would cry.*

*If you remember your HypeScience, you'll know that since my own personal hype is directly tied into the regulator/throttle of the train, this would make the train go in reverse.

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Starwaster

Starwaster

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A more important question than barn concerns: is the SRB inward decoupling bug going to be fixed for 1.0? It's a serious bug that hasn't seemed to get much dev attention.

http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/2842

One would hope so considering that they're basically sticking a fork in 1.0 and calling it done.

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Superfluous J

Superfluous J

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One would hope so considering that they're basically sticking a fork in 1.0 and calling it done.

I thought they specifically said they were NOT done come 1.0.

And if this isn't fixed (along with a bevy of other bugs I encounter all the time)... well let's just say I'm sharpening my pitchfork.

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Starwaster

Starwaster

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We'll see. I wonder if the aero update would fix it.

No.

Edit:

Oh and let's also hope that the rescaleFactor bug is FULLY fixed this time, not just halfway fixed or sort of fixed.....

Edited by Starwaster
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Lord Aurelius

Lord Aurelius

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One other feature I would like to see added to the editor that I haven't seen the devs mention is the ability to list all parts on the craft and to be able to select/tweak them from that list instead of having to mouse over them. Far too many times when I try to select low-profile radially mounted parts, the editor highlights the part underneath and refuses to let me select the part I want so I have to creatively clip the camera inside to finally be able to select it and being able to do something as simple as listing the parts and being able to select them from the list would go a long ways to making the editor easier to use. It also would be very helpful when clipping parts.

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GusTurbo

GusTurbo

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One other feature I would like to see added to the editor that I haven't seen the devs mention is the ability to list all parts on the craft and to be able to select/tweak them from that list instead of having to mouse over them. Far too many times when I try to select low-profile radially mounted parts, the editor highlights the part underneath and refuses to let me select the part I want so I have to creatively clip the camera inside to finally be able to select it and being able to do something as simple as listing the parts and being able to select them from the list would go a long ways to making the editor easier to use. It also would be very helpful when clipping parts.

Even just part selection from the staging list would be great.

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ArmchairGravy

ArmchairGravy

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I think the best sort of tech tree to satisfy the largest number of players (and hence the most likely) is one that will start in such a way that from the very start of career mode you can build any of the main categories of ship: manned rockets (much like they are at present in early career), rather rudimentary probes, very basic aeroplanes (and possibly mini-rovers)

Then they would develop into bigger rockets, more advanced probes, bigger aeroplanes and spaceplanes and bigger rovers.

I very much agree with this. Instead of unlocking classes of parts (ie all rover parts) the tech tree should spread them out across, well, technology level of the part. For example, the science lab should be the last piece of a science equipment unlocked instead of the third. (You should also be able to do all of the experiments with just the lab but that's another issue. :) )

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meve12

meve12

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I very much agree with this. Instead of unlocking classes of parts (ie all rover parts) the tech tree should spread them out across, well, technology level of the part. For example, the science lab should be the last piece of a science equipment unlocked instead of the third. (You should also be able to do all of the experiments with just the lab but that's another issue. :) )

Can we have sensors first, then goo, then material lab, then science lab?

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John FX

John FX

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Can we have sensors first, then goo, then material lab, then science lab?

I'd like it like this. I wouldn't mind the option to send unmanned sensor probes in the first wave of craft cheaply with manned missions giving vastly more science and funds which would enable you to afford goo and science/materials labs.

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Vanamonde

Vanamonde

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Numerous posts removed.

Guys, when the moderators ask you to drop a subject, and somebody doesn't listen, that doesn't mean you all get a free pass to reply to the problem post. Nobody has a right to get the last word in. Just hit the report button on the problem post and move on. Any further rehashing of the pro/con barn argument in this thread is going to start receiving infractions.

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