Interactive planets

[Karol van Kermin]

Hey there!

I haven't been playing ksp for a while now, but in the meanwhile, I came up with an, in my opinion, good idea! Currently Ksp offers you a bunch of planets, on which you can land on and visit different biomes, to get more science. And thats pretty much all you can do with planets... In my opinion kinda boring .

So my suggestion would be to make planets more interactive, and therefore much more interesting. As you may know, rocks are not solid. You can walk through them... But this is just one thing that bothers me. In my opinion planets also look a little bit boring. The textures are bad and surfaces can be either solid or fluid only. There isn't any kind of action on these planets. I mean, imagine big dusty storms on Duna! Or Geysirs on Jools moons! Just these little details would make the game so much more awesome!

What do you think guys? I'd love to hear your opinion!

Thank you very much!

 

[DDE]

47 minutes ago, Karol van Kermin said:

I mean, imagine big dusty storms on Duna!

Implemented as part of some cloud mods.

47 minutes ago, Karol van Kermin said:

Or Geysirs on Jools moons!

Used to be in the works alongside Gas Giant 2.

47 minutes ago, Karol van Kermin said:

As you may know, rocks are not solid. You can walk through them...

Trust me, you don't want them to be solid. I accidentally modded 1.0.5 to have solid terrain scatters, and it was ugly for my rovers.

[Galileo]

My mod, Stock Visual Enhancements, adds dust storms on Duna and geysers on Eeloo.

another mod I develop, Stock Visual Terrain, has scatter objects with colliders enabled. 

Both mods are developed simultaneously, so they work perfectly together.

Edited February 25, 2017 by Galileo

[ottothesilent]

Your problems are mostly solved by existing graphical mods. Those of us who play KSP on a potato don't need another thing to kill the framerate.

[The Aziz]

Storms, geysers etc would kill framerate anyway, even in stock game.

[Human Person]

Volcanoes everywhere!

[JacobJHC]

On 2/26/2017 at 8:30 PM, Physics Student said:

Volcanoes everywhere!

*Jupiter's moon Io busts through the wall* "Did someone say volcanoes?

[Matuchkin]

You know what I want? Terrain that does not look like plastic. I'd like a more detailed and bland texture. For example, the Martian surface doesn't look like a bunch of vibrantly red hills: it looks more bland, orangeish-greyish, and sand covered.

[kreutzkevic]

On 25-2-2017 at 10:22 PM, Galileo said:

another mod I develop, Stock Visual Terrain, has scatter objects with colliders enabled.

This caught me out so hard! It was brilliant

Love your work, btw. Keep it up  

[RatchetinSpace]

On 3/7/2017 at 0:53 AM, Matuchkin said:

You know what I want? Terrain that does not look like plastic. I'd like a more detailed and bland texture. For example, the Martian surface doesn't look like a bunch of vibrantly red hills: it looks more bland, orangeish-greyish, and sand covered.

Or if you ever find a cliff on Laythe. Seriously:

I couldn't find a screenshot in my directory but I can assure you it still looks like this......

[KerikBalm]

I think the game supports a different texture for steeper terrain...

example:

I'd be surprised of laythe still looks like that.

This particular example is unfortunately a bit pixelated, and that pixelation seems to be more evident with scatterer on.

[Matuchkin]

Yeah, but even the steep terrain textures don't make it actually feel like terrain. It looks as if these planets were cut out of butter, or made of rubber.

[KerikBalm]

yea, I know, but its an improvement over the situation in that laythe picture

[Galileo]

I tried to combat the with SVT. It's helps but it's just hard to make it look natural, ya know?

 

[W. Kerman]

On March 8, 2017 at 9:03 AM, Matuchkin said:

Yeah, but even the steep terrain textures don't make it actually feel like terrain. It looks as if these planets were cut out of butter, or made of rubber.

They may look like plastic, but don't be fooled. These crazy planets have a density above that of depleted uranium. (I agree with you though)

[jofwu]

Having interesting visuals and fun scattered things is great, but I do think the game could use more than that. These provide a bit more reason to look around, but they don't add much in terms of gameplay. They don't give you a bunch of extra stuff to do, or reasons to stay around.

I like the idea of Resource Lode's in MKS. Objects that you can DO something with.

It would be cool if you could interact with scatters. Like what if a contract asked you to "find X different kinds of rock on Duna"? And you had to go out with a rover and inspect a bunch of rocks until you find one of each type. What if a contract asked you to take a sample from a number of different Eeloo geysers? Could be contract type things... or another way to get Science... or maybe a way to increase resource percentages planetwide... or another way to level up your Kerbal's skills.

I'm struggling to be more creative, and to look beyond objects or points of interest. But I think there's a lot of potential.

Most of these ideas could probably be modded, but it would be cool in the base game obviously.

[Starcow19]

You can download mods like USI Kolobization to give you something to do on the planet.