[1.12.x] Near Future Technologies (September 6)

[Deddly]

Hey all, we'd appreciate it a lot if you could kindly let Nertea put/remove what he wants in his mod and not discuss politics, thanks  

[DareMightyThingsJPL]

10 hours ago, Nertea said:

On 2/15/2025 at 12:08 PM, DareMightyThingsJPL said:

I think that the ideal outcome would be an optional patch (idk, something  with a name like 'Near Future Repolish') that adds the TUFX+Preferred+Resurfaced texture upgrades. It'd probably have to be it's own mod.

Yeah I definitely won't do both. Every asset needing to authored in 2 different workflows is a killer and just won't happen.

Yes, looking back on it, it'd be very difficult to do, too much to bother doing so. As arbsoup said, 'ideal, but not optimal'. 

[Kavaeric]

I'm not Nertea, but they felt it made sense for me to share something I've been working on in this thread.

Edited Tuesday at 11:09 PM by Kavaeric

[Nertea]

I have a defence contractor now. 

[funnelton]

So what do the new textures look like without resurfaced installed? can you tone down/ disable the reflectivity of the parts?

Edited Wednesday at 12:50 AM by funnelton

[Svm420]

Spoiler

1 hour ago, funnelton said:

So what do the new textures look like without resurfaced installed? can you tone down/ disable the reflectivity of the parts?

On 2/14/2025 at 3:36 PM, Nertea said:

This will introduce a hard dependency on Resurfaced..

You wont be able to use the next version without it. That what a hard dependency is.

Edited Wednesday at 02:43 AM by Svm420

[hello there]

3 hours ago, Nertea said:

I have a defence contractor now. 

what?

[funnelton]

40 minutes ago, Svm420 said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

You wont be able to use the next version without it. That what a hard dependency is.

Yeah im aware what it means, im still curious how broken it looks without them

(also the whole tone down the shinyness thing)

[DareMightyThingsJPL]

5 hours ago, Nertea said:

I have a defence contractor now. 

Even in context, I find this really funny

In a good way, to be clear

[Nertea]

2 hours ago, funnelton said:

Yeah im aware what it means, im still curious how broken it looks without them

(also the whole tone down the shinyness thing)

 

[DareMightyThingsJPL]

25 minutes ago, Nertea said:

2 hours ago, funnelton said:

Yeah im aware what it means, im still curious how broken it looks without them

(also the whole tone down the shinyness thing)

Will soft deprecated parts be affected by this? Or will they stay fine until they become hard deprecated.

[Nertea]

46 minutes ago, DareMightyThingsJPL said:

Will soft deprecated parts be affected by this? Or will they stay fine until they become hard deprecated.

I won't upgrade any soft deprecated parts. I might reduce their texture resolutions to save on RAM.

[DareMightyThingsJPL]

2 minutes ago, Nertea said:

I won't upgrade any soft deprecated parts. I might reduce their texture resolutions to save on RAM.

I more-so meant 'Will soft-deprecated parts become Magenta, since they won't receive the texture upgrades.' I probably should've worded initial question better.

[MinimumSky5]

6 hours ago, DareMightyThingsJPL said:

I more-so meant 'Will soft-deprecated parts become Magenta, since they won't receive the texture upgrades.' I probably should've worded initial question better.

Resurfaced isn't a binary switch for a mod, Beale has just released some new parts for Tantares that use Resurfaced but the existing parts don't and everything still works as intended. Nertea would need to delete the existing textures for that to happen.

[Poodmund]

10 hours ago, funnelton said:

Yeah im aware what it means, im still curious how broken it looks without them

(also the whole tone down the shinyness thing)

As a serial hater of the 'shiny part syndrome' that plagues legacy faux-implementations of the PBR workflow, trust me when I say that, after being shown some previews by Nertea:

a) using a well developed shader implementation

b) having not only great artists but also the source artists work on this development

... means that even I'm loving the way that the in-progress work is coming out. I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised.  

[JadeOfMaar]

8 hours ago, DareMightyThingsJPL said:

I more-so meant 'Will soft-deprecated parts become Magenta, since they won't receive the texture upgrades.' I probably should've worded initial question better.

No, they won't. Since he's not updating them they don't get the requirement and so, won't fail when Resurfaced is absent.

[Jeffery Kerman]

12 hours ago, Nertea said:

 

tf2 when I delete the textures folder:

[funnelton]

7 hours ago, Poodmund said:

As a serial hater of the 'shiny part syndrome' that plagues legacy faux-implementations of the PBR workflow, trust me when I say that, after being shown some previews by Nertea:

a) using a well developed shader implementation

b) having not only great artists but also the source artists work on this development

... means that even I'm loving the way that the in-progress work is coming out. I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised.  

So can you disable / tone down the shininess or not?

[Nertea]

20 hours ago, funnelton said:

So can you disable / tone down the shininess or not?

Well, that depends what you mean. The kinda whole point of PBR is to increase the contribution of the local environment to the object, so e.g. the sky adds blueness to things facing the sky, green grass could tint something greenish. That manifests itself broadly by reflections and ambient contribution, which very much depends on the material's properties, which are an artist/author's defined parameters. So when you say that you want to reduce the shininess, that means that in this workflow you want to change what the artist decided on. So you can't, not easily. You could probably hack some stuff into the lighting setup to decrease the strength of the light probes (things that create the reflections/lighting contribution to the objects) but then you're kinda just removing the whole point of the conversion. So I'm questioning why you would do that at all and what the goal is. If you don't want reflectivity, just stay on older versions of the mod. 

[AIM-9X]

will there ever be parts like the neried and tethys again? I loved using those capsules as landers because of the extra engines, didn't even know it was based on spacex

[Shantaboy]

On 2/14/2025 at 10:36 AM, Nertea said:

So, there's something that will probably be happening in the next set of NF updates. I will likely be moving all parts to a PBR workflow, which results in a far higher fidelity than the currently existing parts. This will introduce a hard dependency on Resurfaced, and a soft dependency on Deferred (because it won't look quite as good without that). This update would not be backwards compatible, as it requires reauthoring new textures and using new shaders that will not work in the older shading model. This wouldn't break crafts, but would not work well without the new dependencies. The existing mods in their current versions would still exist but any new development will only happen in the new workflow. 

Thoughts welcome. 

Here's some examples of how parts look in that context.

To provide feedback (sorry for the length): I think your visual fidelity is already top of the pyramid. I'm sure there are people who will greatly appreciate such a redo and I'm sure I'll enjoy it as well, but what really captivates me is the most variety of parts in a common enough visual style that they don't seem to clash when I mash everything together.

You are the top of the KSP modding pyramid in every category. You made Restock, and you defined stockalike. Why not do a good enough patch on your cluster of mods (put them all at a common floor instead of creating a new ceiling for the community) and wrangle some other modders to round out some of the legacy mods to a similar polish in your art style. The Endurance mod for example: it seems abandoned and a new coat of paint and finished IVA would revive it permanently.

JohnnyOThan has done something similar in adopting a lot of old mods and helping to unify the scattered IVAs made by modders over the last decade. That work has been transformative in expanding the diversity of how we play the game. I have nothing but respect and admiration for your work, your parts are essential downloads and your art style sets the standard for BDB, Tantares, and a whole host of others. I don't want to sound like I am dictating how your creative direction should go. I would just be remiss if I didn't mention the opportunity to bring together a lot of the scattered modding projects and build on a strong uniform art style that the community seems to have subconsciously settled on.

Edited 12 hours ago by Shantaboy
Clarify point, and fail to make shorter.

[Nertea]

11 hours ago, Shantaboy said:

To provide feedback (sorry for the length): I think your visual fidelity is already top of the pyramid. I'm sure there are people who will greatly appreciate such a redo and I'm sure I'll enjoy it as well, but what really captivates me is the most variety of parts in a common enough visual style that they don't seem to clash when I mash everything together.

You are the top of the KSP modding pyramid in every category. You made Restock, and you defined stockalike. Why not do a good enough patch on your cluster of mods (put them all at a common floor instead of creating a new ceiling for the community) and wrangle some other modders to round out some of the legacy mods to a similar polish in your art style. The Endurance mod for example: it seems abandoned and a new coat of paint and finished IVA would revive it permanently.

JohnnyOThan has done something similar in adopting a lot of old mods and helping to unify the scattered IVAs made by modders over the last decade. That work has been transformative in expanding the diversity of how we play the game. I have nothing but respect and admiration for your work, your parts are essential downloads and your art style sets the standard for BDB, Tantares, and a whole host of others. I don't want to sound like I am dictating how your creative direction should go. I would just be remiss if I didn't mention the opportunity to bring together a lot of the scattered modding projects and build on a strong uniform art style that the community seems to have subconsciously settled on.

Well... I have almost zero interest in picking up other peoples' work and giving it a fresh coat of paint (I am vaguely interested in knowing what mods you're thinking about). Benjee needs no help updating endurance stuff and I really try to avoid working on replica mods at all. Just painting up other peoples' stuff is not really rewarding and I'm usually chasing some kind of unified gameplay with my things. If I were to start taking legacy mods, ripping them apart and making them fit my visions, I expect people wouldn't be happy.