Time for KSP 2.0

[Tyko]

On 8/26/2018 at 6:33 PM, klesh said:

 

I very much disagree.

KSP could be built by a dev team with thousands of employees very easily.  It is in the hands of a goliath publisher, Take Two Interactive, they have more money than they know what to do with.  For whatever reason, they've chosen to keep the scrappy little Squad on as a devteam, and I'm not so sure I agree with that decision as a consumer of KSP-related things.  Its holding back KSP1, as evidenced by Making History's lacklustre quality and sales.  Several new faces are making parts and art and the quality shows.  Did you see them on the MH release stream?

I get where you're going, but the issue with throwing the resources of a giant developer at KSP is that investors will expect a return on the investment. Since big developers are so keen for microtransactions and other recurring revenue models there's a big risk that a KSP built by a massive team would be just as money-grubbing as most other games built by massive teams.

I'd much rather the simpler game with solid modder support we have now rather than some giant corporate construct designed to milk my last dollar away.

[Sharpy]

5 hours ago, DunaManiac said:

You realize that most of these are available from mods, except the story mode idea.

You mean realistic planet surfaces exist? With pebbles, rock outcrops, something that looks realistic up close? Something that the landscape stuff look like... uh, let's not be too demanding, say, Half-Life 2 minus all the industrial stuff.

I know there was a texture randomizer that somewhat prevented the land from looking like a grid, and there was atmospheric scatterer, but is there really something that makes a rover with 2m/s of max speed make sense in the game?

 

I mean this is one of the best gfx overhauls available to KSP:

And this is the real thing:

And this is a screenshot from Half-Life 2, Lost Coast. 2004 game.

 

Edited August 28, 2018 by Sharpy

[hypervelocity]

@Sharpy though striking, the comparison is not relevant: HL2 is running on their custom Source engine that was engineered to deliver what they wanted - this is a different game running on a pre-built engine.

[Sharpy]

4 minutes ago, hypervelocity said:

@Sharpy though striking, the comparison is not relevant: HL2 is running on their custom Source engine that was engineered to deliver what they wanted - this is a different game running on a pre-built engine.

I posted it to show what was possible 14 years ago - and ran smoothly on more than 14 years old hardware. Back then Unity didn't exist.

Want something more relevant? That's a quick example from Unity.

 

[hypervelocity]

I know - what I meant to say is the HL2 engine was designed to deliver those graphics on an action game. KSP is different and it is created to spend its resources calculating physics for your craft's parts. I'm not entirely sure if we couldn't have both (nice planetary surfaces & part-based physics) but I imagine it would run even worse than it functions as it is.

EDIT: don't get me wrong - I would LOVE detailed planetary surfaces and actually having something to do once landed, but hey, dreaming is free.

Edited August 28, 2018 by hypervelocity

[Sharpy]

Just now, hypervelocity said:

I know - what I meant to say is the HL2 engine was designed to deliver those graphics on an action game. KSP is different and it is created to spend its resources calculating physics for your craft's parts. I'm not entirely sure if we couldn't have both (nice planetary surfaces & part-based physics) but I imagine it would run even worse than it functions as it is. 

Gfx is a GPU thing, physics is CPU and physics co-processor (often a part of a gfx card but not the same hardware that runs gfx.)

It would be difficult to make because the terrain needs to be generated procedurally only with rough guidance from the devs, and on top of that with this sort of quality you need to write aggressive culling reducing quality of distant terrain, and that's tricky to do seamlessly. It's definitely not a thing for a mod or even KSP 1.5 or 1.6, that's a heavy rewrite of the underlying engine, a clean 2.0 stuff. But it could be done - it's a matter of work, effort and skill, not of impossible trade-offs.

 

[DMagic]

Those examples are hand-crafted designs, but there is no inherent reason why you couldn't improve KSP's terrain system to generate something in the same ballpark.

There are all kinds of tools and methods that allow for procedural texture mapping and placement of decorations (trees, rocks, etc...). Things like terrain slope, height, smoothness and others can be used to produce moderately realistic looking terrain without the need for lots of hand-placing of textures or assets. And you could conceivably come up with multiple sets of textures and assets to be used on a planet that could be specified by biome, or some other method. 

I agree that it's never going to happen. But it's mostly time and the effort required that are preventing that, not anything inherent about how KSP works.

It's also worth pointing out that performance isn't necessarily a problem. This kind of thing presents a ton of options for reduced settings: vary the number and quality of trees, vary the distance where a tree is replaced by a 2D billboard, shadow quality, lighting effects quality, texture quality, etc... All of that kind of stuff can be turned up or down to allow potato GPU's to run without getting baked (), and since most of KSP's performance problems are related to CPU-based physics there isn't too much of a trade off.

Edited August 28, 2018 by DMagic

[Sharpy]

34 minutes ago, DMagic said:

I agree that it's never going to happen. But it's mostly time and the effort required that are preventing that, not anything inherent about how KSP works.

Never say never.

KSP is aging. And it's a valuable franchize in hands of a commercial entity. And one of good ways to "refresh" a franchize is to provide a graphics overhaul.

Take World of Tanks, a 2012 game which suffered a serious decline in the player base. Last year it undervent a "HD" refresh.

Original 2012:

Still the same game, same rules, lots of tweaks and expansion but it's still the same game in 2018:

And it helped. It attracted a bunch of new players.

The small facelift KSP got with the part texture and model updates isn't enough. If KSP is ever going to shine again, it needs a massive graphics overhaul.

[DunaManiac]

A

18 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

Never say never.

KSP is aging. And it's a valuable franchize in hands of a commercial entity. And one of good ways to "refresh" a franchize is to provide a graphics overhaul.

Take World of Tanks, a 2012 game which suffered a serious decline in the player base. Last year it undervent a "HD" refresh.

Original 2012:

Still the same game, same rules, lots of tweaks and expansion but it's still the same game in 2018:

And it helped. It attracted a bunch of new players.

The small facelift KSP got with the part texture and model updates isn't enough. If KSP is ever going to shine again, it needs a massive graphics overhaul. 

I actually like that terrain overhaull mod. Because if we take the mars texture and add it to duna, we'll have just a bunch of flat rocks. Then we'll be saying that it needs to be 3d. After that they'll need to be solid. As this was said before, newbies will find this to hard to play. Already KSP with graphics mods will not run on some computers (like my old one). Adding this to the game is only going to bar many people from this game. Besides, people would actually buy KSP2 for it's graphics, not really the game play. Once they realize it's to hard for them, they won't play it unless they bought it for the gameplay. I think that high end graphics is only for easier games.

[DunaManiac]

23 minutes ago, DunaManiac said:

A

I actually like that terrain overhaull mod. Because if we take the mars texture and add it to duna, we'll have just a bunch of flat rocks. Then we'll be saying that it needs to be 3d. After that they'll need to be solid. As this was said before, newbies will find this to hard to play. Already KSP with graphics mods will not run on some computers (like my old one). Adding this to the game is only going to bar many people from this game. Besides, people would actually buy KSP2 for it's graphics, not really the game play. Once they realize it's to hard for them, they won't play it unless they bought it for the gameplay. I think that high end graphics is only for easier games.

Even If the developers would do this. You probably won't be seeing this level of graphics for a long time because this would require a complete rewrite of the terrain generator and textures.

[Sharpy]

2 hours ago, DunaManiac said:

I actually like that terrain overhaull mod. Because if we take the mars texture and add it to duna, we'll have just a bunch of flat rocks. Then we'll be saying that it needs to be 3d. After that they'll need to be solid.

Natural progression in computer games. For now we have none, just a bad texture over enormous boring polygons.

Quote

Already KSP with graphics mods will not run on some computers (like my old one). Adding this to the game is only going to bar many people from this game. Besides, people would actually buy KSP2 for it's graphics, not really the game play. Once they realize it's to hard for them, they won't play it unless they bought it for the gameplay. I think that high end graphics is only for easier games.

Sorry to say, no matter how avid a fan and player you are, you are no longer a customer. Nor are most people with old hardware they won't keep up to date.

Yes, people buy games for graphics. Money change hands, the developer is happy. The player will be happy if there's a captivating gameplay behind that graphics.

I don't think many people will find KSP too hard. 10yo kids play it, and the gameplay at the core wouldn't change much. Playstyle would need to change - making an all-terrain buggy and completing the Elcano challenge would become much harder, but you would no longer *need* to drive 80km/h to be able to get anywhere new within the week. You'd poke around a single valley like Curiosity. Rocketeering wouldn't change much. Aviation - similarly, except for landing at random spots; the terrain generator could actually make it better, providing areas that are much more flat than currently; safer to land. KSP's beauty is in that you can make it as hard or as easy as you like, and that would be unchanged.

[KSK]

15 hours ago, Sorabh said:

This discussion has me wondering...what happens when it all ends? When everyone sort of burns out of playing KSP? Will the forum fade away? All the mission reports, fantastic stories and spaceships that were shared, will they all fade to black... If yes, then how long do we have until the inevitable??

I think the answer to the first two questions is - yes. All things come to an end.

Stories tend to go one of two ways from what I've seen. The author stops writing for whatever reason, the story slides down the forum, disappears under a heap of new threads and is forgotten about. This isn't a criticism - I suspect most, if not all, KSP stories are written and/or illustrated in the author's spare time which can vary without notice due to other life concerns. 

Alternatively, the story gets finished, slides down the forum, disappears under a heap of new threads - and is forgotten about. Now, I may be completely wrong - there may be people reading and enjoying the old stories here but if so, they're not posting any comments, so its kind of hard to tell.

As to the third question - for stories at least, I'd say its already happening, with one or two notable, and well deserved exceptions. How often do you see a story appear on Thread of the Month? Heck - how many recent Threads of the Month have had more than a handful of nominations? Also, Squad's notion of engaging with community content is heavily focused on modders, streamers, fan art (to a lesser extent these days) and now Missions. Other content creators including writers of any type, craft builders, mechanical artists (the folks building crazy working machinery in KSP), simpit builders etc. have been mostly overlooked or ignored.

I wish I was just grousing but look what happened to Fanworks Friday. Disappeared with when the Daily Kerbal got a general downgrade, reappeared erratically as Fanart Friday (which in fairness is a much more honest name - back when Fanworks Friday was a regular feature, it was about 80-85% fan art anyway), fizzled out again and has now been belatedly resurrected as a footnote to the weekly devnotes. Also, even back when the Daily Kerbal was a regular daily thing, guess which day tended to be the one for Squad to release major game news in place of that day's DK content? Spoiler - it was almost never (I wouldn't like to say absolutely never without going back to check) Modding Monday or Video Wednesday.

 

[DunaManiac]

13 hours ago, Sharpy said:

Natural progression in computer games. For now we have none, just a bad texture over enormous boring polygons.

Sorry to say, no matter how avid a fan and player you are, you are no longer a customer. Nor are most people with old hardware they won't keep up to date.

Yes, people buy games for graphics. Money change hands, the developer is happy. The player will be happy if there's a captivating gameplay behind that graphics.

I don't think many people will find KSP too hard. 10yo kids play it, and the gameplay at the core wouldn't change much. Playstyle would need to change - making an all-terrain buggy and completing the Elcano challenge would become much harder, but you would no longer *need* to drive 80km/h to be able to get anywhere new within the week. You'd poke around a single valley like Curiosity. Rocketeering wouldn't change much. Aviation - similarly, except for landing at random spots; the terrain generator could actually make it better, providing areas that are much more flat than currently; safer to land. KSP's beauty is in that you can make it as hard or as easy as you like, and that would be unchanged.

I disagree. Many people can't even get into orbit. And don't get me wrong I have been playing this since I was 11 but for 2 years I didn't know how to rendezvous. I spent half of that time learning to travel to other planets. It took me 2 years to get to minmus and get back. It took me  3 years to do a round trip from duna and back. Ksp's learning curve was already hard enough for me. Although there are features I would really like to see in the console version, the things your describing are just not going to happen. I've seen people quit the game in pursuit of call of duty or whatnot. Sometimes the game is too hard as it is.

[KSK]

On 8/11/2018 at 8:10 PM, TheLoneMartian said:

Another thing I would like to see is realistic progression. Starting with small Kerosene engines to gargantuan antimatter. You will be able to buy space elevators when your company reaches trillions of 

I think we're working to different definitions of 'realistic' here.

[TheLoneMartian]

43 minutes ago, KSK said:

I think we're working to different definitions of 'realistic' here.

Eh, good point. Was kinda on a power trip.

[DAL59]

On 8/25/2018 at 7:37 AM, Gidreess said:

Graphics in the stock are bad. Very bad. What about simple atmosphere and water? Simple version of Scatterer will be enough, but stock clouds will be even better.

I'm not asking for modded level graphics, but having no clouds on Eve is ridiculous and breaks immersion.  It can't be that hard for a team of developers to add, given that several mod makers have done it.  

[micha]

Minor graphical updates would be nice (clouds, better water, better terrain etc), but I actually LIKE the cartoonish looks. This game is not supposed to look photo-realistic. Not really essential though as mods cover it, unless a stock implementation could vastly improve on the performance.

What I would like to see more from a potential major revision is basically things which mods can't do. I have no issues taking the vanilla game and adding mods to it to tweak the experience to my liking.  In fact, I've actually been a little disappointed at some of the "mod integrations" in recent versions because the stock implementation of a feature which was previously provided by a variety of mods meant I've now got less choice in how I want my Kerbal experience to be.

Things which mods can't really do include:

• core optimisation improvements
• new functional frameworks (such as the mission builder); for example adding AI-based competing space programs (aka, have a space-race where you have to beat the other programs to various milestones and/or compete against them for contracts by being faster/cheaper/better etc)
• a proper in-game mod management system (mods need to pass some sort of QA to be part of the official "mod store" although people should still be able to install any mod they like; each save can specify which mods to load, etc)

 

There's not so much point in having revisions to add some mod feature to stock (let's face it, every persons' list of "must have" mods is different) or adding new textures or parts as these things are easily covered by mods.

[Piatzin]

On 8/28/2018 at 4:30 PM, Sorabh said:

This discussion has me wondering...what happens when it all ends? When everyone sort of burns out of playing KSP? Will the forum fade away? All the mission reports, fantastic stories and spaceships that were shared, will they all fade to black... If yes, then how long do we have until the inevitable??

Statistically speaking, the number of new users that join the forum has been declining since 2014......

[Sorabh]

Well...someone should start archiving the stories and the mission reports, at the least!!!!!

[qzgy]

3 hours ago, Earthlinger said:

Statistically speaking, the number of new users that join the forum has been declining since 2014......

I would assume that's because the pool of people potentially interested in the game and joining the forum have mostly joined by then or something along those lines. The community won't expand at a certain rate forever. 

[klgraham1013]

9 hours ago, micha said:

I actually LIKE the cartoonish looks. This game is not supposed to look photo-realistic.

Muddy ground textures are not cartoonish, they're muddy ground textures.  I wouldn't mind if KSP embraced it's cartoonish visuals as long as they did it of a high and consistent quality.

 

9 hours ago, micha said:

Not really essential though as mods cover it

New players shouldn't be expected to use mods to have a good experience.

[Sharpy]

On 8/29/2018 at 2:15 PM, DunaManiac said:

 I have been playing this since I was 11 but for 2 years I didn't know how to rendezvous. I spent half of that time learning to travel to other planets. It took me 2 years to get to minmus and get back. It took me  3 years to do a round trip from duna and back.

Did you per chance do this while KSP still didn't have the Tutorials option available?

 

[klgraham1013]

1 minute ago, Sharpy said:

Did you per chance do this while KSP still didn't have the Tutorials option available?

 

I do recall the early tutorials being not so great.

[Sharpy]

Might be the reason. I joined around 1.1, and got orbiting and landing within 1 day. Can't remember how long until Mun, but I didn't hurry too much nor had too much problems doing it. Rendezvous took me a longer while, primarily because I didn't know about marking objects as target. Took a couple tries to get through the tutorial for that, and a big "whoa" that you can set planets as targets (had a really, really bad time returning from a Duna flyby without knowing this...)

[KerbolExplorer]

On ‎8‎/‎28‎/‎2018 at 3:30 PM, Sorabh said:

This discussion has me wondering...what happens when it all ends? When everyone sort of burns out of playing KSP? Will the forum fade away? All the mission reports, fantastic stories and spaceships that were shared, will they all fade to black... If yes, then how long do we have until the inevitable??

I think the fórum will stay.Exept that there will probably be almost nobody posting on it.

How long until that?.....Id say the current development trayectory of squad gives this game 2 more years