Lively Planets: Procedural and more interactive

[amunray]

I suggest or would (very much) like to see procedurally generated planets. So that the player is able to keep exploring endlessly on different planets in/with different positions (orbits).

My second suggestion is to add adequate objects such as (moving) volcanoes and cryovolcanoes. I really like the easter eggs, but this will be a more frequent special features of a planet or moon.

I would like to know how/if this is do-able in KSP, and what does the community think about this? (have I spelled everything correctly? )

 

Apart from that: A lot of real life planets have unique features that make them special such as Tritons young surface and Titans cryovolcanoes. Some moons even have a very thin atmosphere and/or retrograde orbit. That is what I like about space, and I think Kerbal Space Program has this too but at smaller scale. Yet I love it.

 

 

[DrLicor]

35 minutes ago, amunray said:

I suggest or would (very much) like to see procedurally generated planets. So that the player is able to keep exploring endlessly on different planets in/with different positions (orbits).

My second suggestion is to add adequate objects such as (moving) volcanoes and cryovolcanoes. I really like the easter eggs, but this will be a more frequent special features of a planet or moon.

I would like to know how/if this is do-able in KSP, and what does the community think about this? (have I spelled everything correctly? )

 

Apart from that: A lot of real life planets have unique features that make them special such as Tritons young surface and Titans cryovolcanoes. Some moons even have a very thin atmosphere and/or retrograde orbit. That is what I like about space, and I think Kerbal Space Program has this too but at smaller scale. Yet I love it.

 

 

I have different thoughts with your suggestion, to begin with, planets can not be procedurally generated like in no-man sky. It's not like an asteroid in KPS which appears on random moments. Also, a planet has to stay in it same spot to work in KSP. Objects in space are planets or asteroids, planets are on a rails and can't de-orbit and have a gravity, asteroid are moveable but it can't have any gravity. And image, you have 100 crafts all on those 'generated planets'

If you want more to discover, I suggest a planet packs like this:  

 

The second suggestion is one I love, more 'easter eggs' on the planets. For instance 100 per planet. 

 

But keep in mind, journeys to planets far away aren't going as fast as in no-man sky or space engineers. In ksp you have to develop a bigass rocket to get there. 

[Karol van Kermin]

Im not such a big fan of your first suggestion (proceduraley generated planets), but I really like the idea of adding volcanoes, geysers etc. more frequently into the game. I would also love to see rocks or unique objects you could pick up, store and later on research. Also It kinda annoys me, that you can walk through all rocks.

Also, what do you think of adding different surface areas, not only differed by color, but also by roughness, density etc., like mud, where your rover could get stuck in :P, therefore making the game a bigger challange.

[amunray]

@DrLicor  It may be interesting to know why the planets can't be procedurally generated. But thanks for the mods, it certainly helps.

It think it's how you 'orbit' a planet in space engineers. just fly up.

Then I guess I will have to install a lot of mods...

4 minutes ago, Karol van Kermin said:

Im not such a big fan of your first suggestion (proceduraley generated planets), but I really like the idea of adding volcanoes, geysers etc. more frequently into the game. I would also love to see rocks or unique objects you could pick up, store and later on research. Also It kinda annoys me, that you can walk through all rocks.

Also, what do you think of adding different surface areas, not only differed by color, but also by roughness, density etc., like mud, where your rover could get stuck in :P, therefore making the game a bigger challange.

Me too, I would like to see that. The scatterer isn't really immersive, no tree line, no grass, the same rocks...

[DrLicor]

4 minutes ago, Karol van Kermin said:

I would also love to see rocks or unique objects you could pick up, store and later on research.

This.... my friend, this is genious.. That would make your exploration so much more usefull. And a lot more fun. But indeed. I think that if squad is going to pay more attention in the planet itself, besides the 'rock' that travels a sertain orbit, the game would be much mor fun to explore etc..

 

@amunray indeed, in space engineers its more focussed on exploring, mining and ksp more on the math and building.

 

[GluttonyReaper]

I feel the need to point out that the craters on the Mun are all procedural, and it definitely works for it. I would love to see the rest of the bodies in the game upgraded to that level of detail, it both makes them more interesting to look at and to explore.

Prodecural planets in general... probably would be very nice if we ever got interstellar travel. Seems a lot more feasible than Squad creating each planet individually, if only to actually give us dozens of star systems explore rather just two or three extra.

Don't know how I feel about random generation, though. In the Kerbol system at least, it just seems like a bit of a waste of time, especially when there are so many planet pack mods which give a much nicer experience than pure randomness, and the whole issue for new players. That said, there was a mod a little while back that did just that - randomized the position and characteristics of all the Kerbol bodies for every save. Not sure what happened to it, though.

[amunray]

4 minutes ago, GluttonyReaper said:

I feel the need to point out that the craters on the Mun are all procedural, and it definitely works for it. I would love to see the rest of the bodies in the game upgraded to that level of detail, it both makes them more interesting to look at and to explore.

Prodecural planets in general... probably would be very nice if we ever got interstellar travel. Seems a lot more feasible than Squad creating each planet individually, if only to actually give us dozens of star systems explore rather just two or three extra.

Don't know how I feel about random generation, though. In the Kerbol system at least, it just seems like a bit of a waste of time, especially when there are so many planet pack mods which give a much nicer experience than pure randomness, and the whole issue for new players. That said, there was a mod a little while back that did just that - randomized the position and characteristics of all the Kerbol bodies for every save. Not sure what happened to it, though.

I imagine generating other solar systems will be too unrealistic or too slow to go to. I agree that mods are very use ful, but I think it would not beat generating another Kerbol system and starting over discovering them all.

I see that almost everyone has different opinions about this... must be hard for Squad

[GluttonyReaper]

9 minutes ago, amunray said:

I see that almost everyone has different opinions about this... must be hard for Squad

Haha, yeah, that's why mods are a thing I guess, so they don't have to choose.

[amunray]

2 minutes ago, GluttonyReaper said:

Haha, yeah, that's why mods are a thing I guess, so they don't have to choose.

I agree... got me thinking why there isn't a steam workshop integration... but that's off-topic

[Jonfliesgoats]

Not sure about procedurally generated planets.  I do believe an outer gas giant or three would be good in stock.  Also, IRL the solar system is full of surprises.  As a child I remember learning that Viking discovered Mars was cold and dead.  We assumed the moons around the gas giants were boring rocks.  Liquid water only existed on Earth.

Between Voyager, subsequent probes, landers and orbiters we find ourselves in a much more vibrant and exciting place than we could have ever imagined!

i would love to see volcanism, cryovolcanism, science from excavating below the surface of a planet and other things.  Procedurally generated features within biomes could be a great way to duplicate this experience.

[Thomas P.]

One of the problems here is the definition of procedural.

Procedural does not mean random.
Procedural does not mean dynamic / endless generation (like in No Mans Sky)

Procedural does mean that the terrain and maybe the properties of the planet are defined by mathematical function and rules, who are controlled by a seed. In fact, most of the bodies in KSP have procedural terrain, but their seed is fixed so they are always the same.
Randomised planets would be easily possible in KSP, just by iterating over all PQSMods and changing their seed parameters - even though that would be rather ugly, not facing other implications (ScaledSpace generation and whatever). It's doable though.

Endless generation simply isn't possible without a lot of hassle. It is certainly possible, but in a game that wasn't built for it, this would not make much fun.

Edited October 26, 2016 by Thomas P.

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I don't think procedural planets is too useful, if only for the community's sake. We have so many challenges and tutorials and stuff, having new solar systems each time would invalidate all of them

[panzer1b]

Procedurally generated planets would be cool, but i dont really know how this could be implemented well without causing problems.  For one, the only think i think could be made procedural is the locations (shifting the orbit or inclination of this or that planet is unlikely to cause issues provided you dont ever end up with 2 planets intersecting their SOIs (ive tried that with Hedit, it kinda breaks the game).  because of that, the orbits could only be shifted by slight amounts (and is it really worth bothering with when all you get is a slightly different approach and dV requirement).  Now that i think about it, procedural locations would cause way more harm then good, since you would never know the expected dV as everyone;'s save would be different, challenges would be impossible (since everyone would have different solar system), ect.

As for terrain features, i STRONGLY support any improvements to the fairly dull landscape in stock KSP.  Its not that the planets themselves are bad (besides a few of them having horrendous textures), but when you go down to the small scale, features are completely absent.  In reality planets have small scale features, valleys, rivers, hills, cliffs, volcanoes, glaciers, caves, rocks, cities, roads, canals, ect, and this sort of stuff really lacks in KSP.  We get the large scale formations only, nothing small.  Personally id absolutely love to get cave like formations (tunnels would open up a whole new world in KSP), but id still settle for less impressive features but something more detailed then the large scale landscape we get in stock.  For starters, a few more easter eggs will do the trick, but i think its time to start considering a way to make features present on all bodies without killing the framerates.

Also, i really would like to see city like (or some sort of artificial) constructs on kerbin.  Im not asking for high poly or super detail, but a few rectangular buildings in a few spots on kerbin would be cool, large enough to for example drive cars between them and fly under them (say bridges or something like the RND center has but on a larger scale and somewhere else on kerbin).  While there were mods (nothing in 1.2 that im aware of), it really wouldn't take all that much time to place a few rectangles in groups on kerbin and slap on a so-so texture so it looks like a building (literally 10 or so triangles to render per building, a few more if you have an opening in it or whatnot, that is absolutely nothing for performance wise).  All it takes is then a few of said buildings in the center surrounded by a few smaller buildings and or some sort of roads (probably could pull that off with nothing more then textures on the landscape)...

[Tyko]

6 hours ago, GluttonyReaper said:

I feel the need to point out that the craters on the Mun are all procedural, and it definitely works for it. I would love to see the rest of the bodies in the game upgraded to that level of detail, it both makes them more interesting to look at and to explore.

Which craters on Mun are procedural? I haven't noticed any changes. Over the past several iterations of KSP I've landed near the same small formations numerous times.

[GluttonyReaper]

7 minutes ago, tjt said:

Which craters on Mun are procedural? I haven't noticed any changes. Over the past several iterations of KSP I've landed near the same small formations numerous times.

All the little ones are procedural - before 0.21, all we had were the larger ones. I think there's a bit of confusion on the difference between procedural generation and random generation. Procedural generation is whenever a computer is used to generate anything - it doesn't necessarily have to be different every time or anything. The only advantage is that it means smaller details like craters can be added to planets without someone having to go through and add each one individually. Compare the Mun to Ike, say. The Mun has much tinier, hazardous craters, while Ike has really large craters that are essentially meaningless once you land on the surface. That's because Ike's craters are all hand-painted, while the Mun's were all generated by an algorithm. Still not random, though. Just procedural. Hence why they've been the same since.

[Tyko]

13 minutes ago, GluttonyReaper said:

All the little ones are procedural - before 0.21, all we had were the larger ones. I think there's a bit of confusion on the difference between procedural generation and random generation. Procedural generation is whenever a computer is used to generate anything - it doesn't necessarily have to be different every time or anything. The only advantage is that it means smaller details like craters can be added to planets without someone having to go through and add each one individually. Compare the Mun to Ike, say. The Mun has much tinier, hazardous craters, while Ike has really large craters that are essentially meaningless once you land on the surface. That's because Ike's craters are all hand-painted, while the Mun's were all generated by an algorithm. Still not random, though. Just procedural. Hence why they've been the same since.

Got it...the distinction between "were procedurally generated" (by Squad and are now permanent) and "are procedurally generated" (by the KSP game)

[Wjolcz]

Why does everyone assume that procedurally generated stuff is fun to play with. It always (at least for me) felt like this: "Oh, this a cool procedurally generated thing, but I'm pretty sure I can find something even better *spends a few hours searching* Eh, OK this is good enough, but I've seen better".

Look at No Man's Sky. Is it fun? Do procedurally generated planets make up for poor gameplay design? The answer is most likely they don't (never played it but would also never buy it).

So, yeah... I'm still waiting for better career experience. And more procedural craters (like the ones on the Mun).

[paul23]

I would like to see a "randomization" of the kerbol system at start of a carreer - so when the "rails" are made. This has been a long long standing request of mine and I sure hope a mod can do this someday.

 

But in such a (sanitized to keep contracts a bit logical, or it would also need to dynamically change the contracts), I could see moho having gilly, and maybe another moon. - Or moho suddenly at a way different orbit (outside jool?). It shouldn't be too hard (I could easily make a mod if someone could explain me how to edit those variables, I can give the function/calculations needed). It would only run at game start, thus preventing all kind of weird "spacecrafting movement" behaviour. It also isn't infinite: so the safe file won't become any larger than it currently is.

 

The advantage is that each run in carreer would then be different, maybe there is a run where getting to duna is actually near impossible (50+ degrees out of kerbin's orbital plane?), and eloo becomes the easy-to-get-to planet. Right now there's no incentive to "do it differently" in carreer mode, and the same rockets will do the trick in each and every new load. I've got over 200 highly specialized rockets (different science levels and missions) and especially till I get to duna it's just a matter of selecting the correct rocket - each time again.

 

Heck if this was possible (afaik the biggest problem is that the orbits are loaded with KSP program, and not with each save file - so changing the orbits would change them for each and every save file) - it could be extended further and easily allow extra planets/moon, changing the asteroid regions, and maybe even dynamically creations of biomes.

 

[DrLicor]

Maybe this is a bit off-topic at the moment, but this planet pack is also really good  :

 

[Galileo]

Or maybe even this planet pack will make forget about procedural generation for a little while 

 

[Andem]

Well, technically, the planets in KSP are already procedurally generated.

 

As far as making new seeds on the fly, I don't think it would work very well in a game like KSP. And, if you were to do that, it might take years to get it somewhere passable, let alone good.

 

The rest of what you said, yes pls.

[Tyko]

5 hours ago, Andem said:

Well, technically, the planets in KSP are already procedurally generated.

This came up earlier in the thread...'technically' some parts WERE procedurally generated. That differs from the idea that they ARE procedurally generated (for each save)  

[RatchetinSpace]

Procedural generation from save to save just seems like a waste of time. What difference will it make? You're not going to tell me you've been to every part of every planet and seen the same terrain features a dozen times and gotten bored of them.

I DO think we should have volcanoes and geysers and caves and all that stuff. The planet's surfaces are a bit dull and I think they need livening up (Kerbin is pretty good but the rest...).

[CobraA1]

Ramping up the variety is definitely something I'd like to see. As well as a few more planets, especially dwarf planets and a ringed gas giant.

. . . and at least on Kerbin, I'd love to see more life. And some signs of civilization. They're a space going species - surely they have cities and towns on the continent that has the space center! Some procedural content could make that a reality.

[Thomas P.]

19 hours ago, tjt said:

This came up earlier in the thread...'technically' some parts WERE procedurally generated. That differs from the idea that they ARE procedurally generated (for each save)  

This is not correct. If they were procedurally generated, they would've been exported to some kind of static dump, that cant change easily anymore, like a heightmap.

If they are procedurally generated the output parameters are entered into KSP and KSP does the generation on the fly. If you change the formula, the whole planet changes. This is what KSP does.

What you mean is "randomly generated (for each save)"

Edited October 29, 2016 by Thomas P.