My 1.2 Experience

[ansaman]

2 minutes ago, regex said:

I thought it was a debate about an IDEA... Oh well.

Perhaps you can come up with a better implementation idea. I was thinking about it as a writer who could storyboard the missions.

 

[regex]

1 minute ago, ansaman said:

Perhaps you can come up with a better implementation idea. I was thinking about it as a writer who could storyboard the missions.

 

I was thinking about it as someone who could say "No, that's not an idea that works within the game".

vOv

[ansaman]

Just now, regex said:

I was thinking about it as someone who could say "No, that's not an idea that works within the game".

Perhaps you are right... you have convinced me. I give up. (Cockpit Voice Recorder: "Sounds of Human Suffering")*

*Yes, they actually use these terms in some official CVRs.

[regex]

1 minute ago, ansaman said:

Perhaps you are right... you have convinced me. I give up. (Cockpit Voice Recorder: "Sounds of Human Suffering")*

*Yes, they actually use these terms in some official CVRs.

I like it. Ending on a CT note is always the best.

[Draco T stand-up guy]

25 minutes ago, regex said:

Not everyone plays on Steam.

True but it's more likely to become universal than Reddit.

Another option would be for Squad to set up their own Achievements Server which both sends out the challenges to players, records them being achieved and provides a place for them to be viewed. I suspect that it would be more cost effective to use Steam though.

[regex]

Just now, Draco T stand-up guy said:

True but it's more likely to become universal than Reddit.

No, it's not. KSP is distributed through like, four or five other means, some of which simply cannot support Steam.

[Just Jim]

On 9/24/2016 at 2:38 AM, ansaman said:

Squad needs a writer

Squad already has a bunch of available writers, all they have to do is ask...  

[Stargate525]

On 9/24/2016 at 1:38 AM, ansaman said:

I bet with a little work a system of weekly or monthly puzzles, encounters, and surprises could be developed to expand a mature KSP to a service.

God no. PLEASE NO.

Of the last ten games I've played, six of them are 'services.' my OS is a 'service,' 80% of the people I regularly watch online has a patreon... I'm sick of services. I want a BLOODY PRODUCT.

[theend3r]

I don't think that's a good idea but something like an in-game workshop where you can select player made missions and rate them would be awesome. Maybe they'd need to go through some approval proccess but that's what community managers are for, right?

KSP has a great community so the missions would be awesome. Just imagine a mission where you need to return to KSC with a Kerbal stranded on a derelict station, or a mission to recover a rover from Eve in one piece, or... Even better if they gave us some "story parts" like obelisks, nano asteroids (glowing of course), Kraken eggs or whatever.

[Sandworm]

2 hours ago, theend3r said:

I don't think that's a good idea but something like an in-game workshop where you can select player made missions and rate them would be awesome. Maybe they'd need to go through some approval proccess but that's what community managers are for, right?

KSP has a great community so the missions would be awesome. Just imagine a mission where you need to return to KSC with a Kerbal stranded on a derelict station, or a mission to recover a rover from Eve in one piece, or... Even better if they gave us some "story parts" like obelisks, nano asteroids (glowing of course), Kraken eggs or whatever.

That's what I was hoping for with career mode.  Lots of people would have written hundreds of creative missions.  I had expected mission packs to be created and traded openly.  What we got, procedural fluff, killed that dream.  While Squad is certainly very open to us creating in-game assets, I'm not sure that they are comfortable with user-created narratives.  Such authoring has the potential to take KSP to places that parts cannot.  The mission controller mod did allow for storytelling, and I tried my hand at some historical tellings, but the lack of a decent interface with the stock game kept mission packs awkward and cumbersome.

[DerekL1963]

3 hours ago, Sandworm said:

That's what I was hoping for with career mode.  Lots of people would have written hundreds of creative missions.  I had expected mission packs to be created and traded openly.  What we got, procedural fluff, killed that dream.  While Squad is certainly very open to us creating in-game assets, I'm not sure that they are comfortable with user-created narratives.  Such authoring has the potential to take KSP to places that parts cannot.  The mission controller mod did allow for storytelling, and I tried my hand at some historical tellings, but the lack of a decent interface with the stock game kept mission packs awkward and cumbersome.

Huh?  You can tell your own story regardless of mode (career, sci, sandbox).  In career sometimes you have to be a bit creative to work the hand you've been dealt (via contracts) into your narrative, but it's certainly not impossible.

[Sandworm]

3 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Huh?  You can tell your own story regardless of mode (career, sci, sandbox).  In career sometimes you have to be a bit creative to work the hand you've been dealt (via contracts) into your narrative, but it's certainly not impossible.

A game narrative tells a story.  It is a communication from the author to the reader.  That cannot happen via procedural generation or sandbox play.  Enjoying a story crafted by someone else doesn't mean the reader lacks imagination.  For instance, I wrote a mission pack designed to replicate the early military missions of the US space program.  It communicated a sort of alternative history by including many programs that never few (ie blue gemini, mol etc).  And there was a story linking and explaining the missions.  Sure, everyone is free to do the reading, create their own missions and fly them in sandbox.  But that isn't storytelling.

Stock contracts are pathetic.  They contain nothing interesting.  They cannot communicate complex mission profiles, nor can they be linked in any meaningful way so as to make one contingent on another.  A thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters couldn't decline contacts fast enough to line up a proper representation of any realworld program.

[DerekL1963]

3 hours ago, Sandworm said:

A game narrative tells a story.  It is a communication from the author to the reader.  That cannot happen via procedural generation or sandbox play.

Ah...  then what I've done on several occasions, and what I've seen done by friends on several occasions obviously didn't happen because it's impossible.  My bad. 

Seriously, you can weave your own story in Career mode by choosing which contracts to accept and when, choosing the order their executed in, and by flying your own flight either as a lead-in or follow-on to contract missions.  It takes a bit of imagination, but it's quite doable.  And not so different from a choose-your-own-adventure book.
 

3 hours ago, Sandworm said:

For instance, I wrote a mission pack designed to replicate the early military missions of the US space program.  It communicated a sort of alternative history by including many programs that never few (ie blue gemini, mol etc).  And there was a story linking and explaining the missions.  Sure, everyone is free to do the reading, create their own missions and fly them in sandbox.  But that isn't storytelling.

o.0  No offense, but I'm not sure you grasp the difference between storytelling and reading.  You wrote the story by writing the mission packs, your reader reads the story by reading the expository material and executing the missions.  That is indeed storytelling, computer games by the bucket load have told stories using that exact framework.

[theend3r]

5 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Seriously, you can weave your own story in Career mode.

Yes. But that's not what we were talking about, you know? We were talking about having others play through our stories or playing stories/missions carefully designed by others. Sure, you can do it, with some mods and if you copy some files here and there then you can play one "situation" in a world build by another but that doesn't really count.

[nosirrbro]

I just wouldn't be interested in being given missions and story, I do all that on my own and don't need/want someone to do it for me, whether it's payed or not.

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, nosirrbro said:

I just wouldn't be interested in being given missions and story, I do all that on my own and don't need/want someone to do it for me, whether it's payed or not.

That's totally fair.

I would like to be able to do it very much.

[Sandworm]

14 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Ah...  then what I've done on several occasions, and what I've seen done by friends on several occasions obviously didn't happen because it's impossible.  My bad. 

Seriously, you can weave your own story in Career mode by choosing which contracts to accept and when, choosing the order their executed in, and by flying your own flight either as a lead-in or follow-on to contract missions.  It takes a bit of imagination, but it's quite doable.  And not so different from a choose-your-own-adventure book.
 

o.0  No offense, but I'm not sure you grasp the difference between storytelling and reading.  You wrote the story by writing the mission packs, your reader reads the story by reading the expository material and executing the missions.  That is indeed storytelling, computer games by the bucket load have told stories using that exact framework.

Then you aren't playing the right games.  Storytelling is far more than reading.  It goes well beyond narrative texts or cutscenes.  In game development, properly designed missions guide the character towards the story, not simply read it out to them.  The ability to set tasks beyond KSP''s 'bring X part to Y location' is essential precisely because it gets beyond narrative exposition.  A well-authored mission pack doesn't even need a verbal narrative.

Edited September 26, 2016 by Sandworm