I just heard of KSP 2. Are they officially using Unity?

[ronson49]

 

Hey guys!  Long term lurker.   I stopped playing KSP because i bought a 2 grand gaming PC and the game ran worse than my 2008 old PC.   

Is it true that they are sticking to Unity for KSP2?   That really shatters my excitement if so.   Unity is best kept for Shovelware,  it is not what I expect Take Two to be doing on a game of this scale.  

Thanks :)!

[GluttonyReaper]

Yes, they are, it's been officially confirmed.

EDIT: It's been confirmed in a few places, for example the FAQ in this thread: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/187315-kerbal-space-program-2-master-post/

Edited September 14, 2019 by GluttonyReaper

[DStaal]

There are AAA-games that use Unity, and there's shovelware that uses Unity.  It's a platform - and I don't even think most of KSP's performance problems are related directly to Unity, rather they're in how KSP was implemented in Unity.  And experienced team of developers could quite likely get a lot more performance out of the same platform.

(And I'm guessing your 2008 old PC was a high-clock, low-core system, while your 2 grand gaming PC was a multi-core and graphics monster - because of what KSP is doing, it's performance is largely CPU-driven, while most games are easier to parralize and are often GPU-limited.)

[Guest]

3 hours ago, ronson49 said:

 

Hey guys!  Long term lurker.   I stopped playing KSP because i bought a 2 grand gaming PC and the game ran worse than my 2008 old PC.   

Is it true that they are sticking to Unity for KSP2?   That really shatters my excitement if so.   Unity is best kept for Shovelware,  it is not what I expect Take Two to be doing on a game of this scale.  

Thanks :)!

Unity is not KSP performance problem, don't worry about it.

[DMagic]

Is there some particular problem with Unity that you think makes it unsuitable for KSP (preferably something specific, not just the same vague issues everyone tries to point out)? Is there some alternative game engine that you think would work better?

[BudgetHedgehog]

3 hours ago, ronson49 said:

Unity is best kept for Shovelware,  it is not what I expect Take Two to be doing on a game of this scale.  

Unity is only associated with shovelware because there's a free version to use (as KSP I believe originally did). Unity is a great engine that many high-quality games from AAA devs and publishers use (Cities:Skylines, Cuphead, and Hearthstone are the big ones that come to mind) and as @DStaal said, the problem's more a fault with KSP itself rather than the engine - I remember them referring to spaghetti code more than once.

[HebaruSan]

BATTLETECH uses Unity. It runs smoothly when first launched, but if you play for a very long time uninterrupted (6+ hours?), there is some visual stuttering not unlike KSP's. It's easy to suspect that the causes are also similar.

Unity makes it easy to get started, but its core features sometimes violate programmers' normal expectations of how things work (garbage generation and collection, the custom == operator), which means producing a polished final product can be difficult and require extra workarounds and code conversion efforts (such as SQUAD removing LINQ and foreach from their code in 1.2). Yes, it's definitely possible to achieve high quality, but you have to already be aware of all the subtle gotchas.

[ronson49]

Thanks for your help guys. 


I have just never played a well performing 3D rendered Unity game and I was an Avid gamer since the 80s.   Cuphead.... Hearthstone...  Cities:Skylines.    They aren't anything close to what is needed to do this game justice.   I mean by several magnitudes.  


I would go further and say even with a top tier engine, it would need exceptional work to tune the engine to this scale and make it performant.    I could get my grandmother to download unity and get some physics rendered within 24 hours.....   Do you know what I mean? I totally understand a small team making massive games like Squad and I appreciate (only a percentage of) the skill, time, and effort that went into making it a reality. 
 

But when a multi billion pound entity takes over the purse strings,  I expect a little bit more.  

Each to their own on that,  I am just crestfallen 

 

[linuxgurugamer]

14 minutes ago, ronson49 said:

Thanks for your help guys. 


I have just never played a well performing 3D rendered Unity game and I was an Avid gamer since the 80s.   Cuphead.... Hearthstone...  Cities:Skylines.    They aren't anything close to what is needed to do this game justice.   I mean by several magnitudes.  


I would go further and say even with a top tier engine, it would need exceptional work to tune the engine to this scale and make it performant.    I could get my grandmother to download unity and get some physics rendered within 24 hours.....   Do you know what I mean? I totally understand a small team making massive games like Squad and I appreciate (only a percentage of) the skill, time, and effort that went into making it a reality. 
 

But when a multi billion pound entity takes over the purse strings,  I expect a little bit more.  

Each to their own on that,  I am just crestfallen 

 

I'm curious as to your background.  You are making some strong statements, do you have any background in computer science, programming, game development, mathematics, etc?

Have you written a mod, for any game, not necessarily KSP?

How many years of experience do you have in the above mentioned areas?

Do you really know where the bottlenecks are in KSP-2?  That would be amazing, since the developers do not yet know the bottlenecks.

I'm going to make an assumption that since you started being an "Avid" gamer in the 80s, that you were maybe 12 years old when starting to game, and assume early 80's.  Which would make your birth year around 1970 or so.  Taking all into account, I'd say you are under 50 years old, but not by much.  

Can you explain the differences between multi-threading and hyperthreading?  Advantages and disadvantages of each?  What are co-routines, and why are they different from threads?

I'm trying to make the point, that being an avid gamer does not give you any insight into game engines, game optimizations, game development, etc.  KSP is KSP because a couple of guys without any experience from an internet marketing company decided to write a game.  They literally learned as they went, and the resulting mess was KSP.  It's been cleaned up and updated a lot over the years, but the basic framework is still there, and cripples the game with high part count vessels.

A new developer, with more than 30 employees, all with years of game development experience of successful games, started to write KSP-2, mostly from scratch.  How can you make a statement without any supporting facts?

[ronson49]

@HebaruSan

 

Isn't that the ultimately issue with "The Unity Look"?  Garbage Collection and the entire middle tier of managed stuff existing between your code and the executable?  The stuff that  "Makes it easy for Newbs" also makes it absolutely dire for performance.   

One of the reasons you aren't going to get GTA or Elder Scolls written in Unity is because it isn't possible to do so in a way that is satisfactory.    It doesn't matter how many years of experience you have, you cannot undo its Entity system or any of the tens of thousands of choices that lay the foundation for it all working in the first place when you hit run. 


There is definitely limitations, and KSP is going to hit those limitations before the actual user is ready for them.  
 

[ronson49]

1 minute ago, linuxgurugamer said:

I'm curious as to your background.  You are making some strong statements, do you have any background in computer science, programming, game development, mathematics, etc?

Have you written a mod, for any game, not necessarily KSP?

How many years of experience do you have in the above mentioned areas?

Do you really know where the bottlenecks are in KSP-2?  That would be amazing, since the developers do not yet know the bottlenecks.

I'm going to make an assumption that since you started being an "Avid" gamer in the 80s, that you were maybe 12 years old when starting to game, and assume early 80's.  Which would make your birth year around 1970 or so.  Taking all into account, I'd say you are under 50 years old, but not by much.  

Can you explain the differences between multi-threading and hyperthreading?  Advantages and disadvantages of each?  What are co-routines, and why are they different from threads?

I'm trying to make the point, that being an avid gamer does not give you any insight into game engines, game optimizations, game development, etc.  KSP is KSP because a couple of guys without any experience from an internet marketing company decided to write a game.  They literally learned as they went, and the resulting mess was KSP.  It's been cleaned up and updated a lot over the years, but the basic framework is still there, and cripples the game with high part count vessels.

A new developer, with more than 30 employees, all with years of game development experience of successful games, started to write KSP-2, mostly from scratch.  How can you make a statement without any supporting facts?

 

I was educated and into games for a good few years,  graphics and physics before I won some money.  I am not qualified. 

Perhaps you can share a Unity game of similar scope that is not 2d, 2.5d, or 3d plane?   These games are fine.  Unity is a great choice in fact. 
 

But KSP is pretty vast, it's uniqueness makes it difficult to compare to other things. 


Anyway guys, I just want to iterate that this is all my view,  anything I say isn't going to change the choices that have been made.  I am just saddened and maybe it is unfounded.  I lack the faith is all.  



 

[linuxgurugamer]

13 minutes ago, ronson49 said:

But KSP is pretty vast, it's uniqueness makes it difficult to compare to other things

That is the point.  It is incomparable.  Frankly, no game engine was designed for what KSP needs.

14 minutes ago, ronson49 said:

Anyway guys, I just want to iterate that this is all my view,  anything I say isn't going to change the choices that have been made.  I am just saddened and maybe it is unfounded.  I lack the faith is all.  

I suggest you look at the trailer on YouTube, and keep in mind that it is pre-alpha footage.  Yes, it isn't the smoothest, but that sort of optimization won't be done until near the end.  

I respect your opinions, and sincerely hope that your fears are unfounded

[Guest]

38 minutes ago, ronson49 said:

Isn't that the ultimately issue with "The Unity Look"?  Garbage Collection and the entire middle tier of managed stuff existing between your code and the executable?  The stuff that  "Makes it easy for Newbs" also makes it absolutely dire for performance.   

The whole "Unity Look" feel is based on the fact that the unity logo is mandatory only for games with the free version of Unity and a lot of new indie developers use that version with the same base assets and menus. It has nothing to do with how actually good is Unity.

 

41 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

KSP is KSP because a couple of guys without any experience from an internet marketing company decided to write a game.  They literally learned as they went, and the resulting mess was KSP.  It's been cleaned up and updated a lot over the years, but the basic framework is still there, and cripples the game with high part count vessels.

 This is the main problem with KSP, to that I would also add that when they were writing the game's framework things like other landable planets were not even considered, this game literally exploded in scope during the last years but the base code is not up to the task anymore.

A new code written from the ground up with things like mods, multiplayer and ground/orbital station** in mind from the start is exactly what KSP needed.

 

**  ground/orbital station I really want to put a focus on this, the problems with orbital and ground structures goes way beyond the mere part count limits and the fact that they designed a new system just to manage them (the BAE) speaks on how well they understand the problems with the first game.

[Radar]

Your experience with Unity (having its problems for you) I'm going to put it down to your PC. You said in the OP that you spent 2k on a new computer and it was worse. KSP is one of the most basic games (in the sense of gfx and pc requirements). The game runs DX9, hardly new and only in the last few updates have they gone to 64 bit, so either you have a crap load of mods installed which slowed it down, or your 2k machine was not the best machine.

And I did read the thread that we can no longer like a post (damn, didn't think this site would follow Insta and Facebook, but anyway) so @Master39 I like the above post in regards to ground / orbiting stations.

[ronson49]

Just now, Radar said:

Your experience with Unity (having its problems for you) I'm going to put it down to your PC. You said in the OP that you spent 2k on a new computer and it was worse. KSP is one of the most basic games (in the sense of gfx and pc requirements). The game runs DX9, hardly new and only in the last few updates have they gone to 64 bit, so either you have a crap load of mods installed which slowed it down, or your 2k machine was not the best machine.

The Unity Look is in the video below.

What you see is the usual,  slow FPS that Unity provides and that isn't going away. 

 

 

[The Aziz]

3 hours ago, ronson49 said:

Cities:Skylines.    They aren't anything close to what is needed to do this game justice.   I mean by several magnitudes.  

C:S is also very cpu-heavy. Constant real-time calculations of all game mechanics ain't cheap.

56 minutes ago, ronson49 said:

What you see is the usual,  slow FPS that Unity provides and that isn't going away. 

I recommend reading again this: 

2 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

keep in mind that it is pre-alpha footage.  Yes, it isn't the smoothest, but that sort of optimization won't be done until near the end.  

 

That being said, I want to point out two things:

First, is that games made in any engine can work like crap if they aren't optimized (I'm looking at you, Chivalry [made in Unreal for the record])

Second, is that new team is also a team of long time ksp players, so I think, no, I truly believe they know what they're doing.

[GoldForest]

2 hours ago, ronson49 said:

The Unity Look is in the video below.

What you see is the usual,  slow FPS that Unity provides and that isn't going away. 

 

Unity works really well when OPTIMIZED! 

That is PRE-ALPHA footage, which means no OPTIMIZATION has been done. 

Unity is a great engine and can do great things. All the Unity games that are slow or have poor performance are NOT optimized well. 

Let go of your inhibitions about Unity. Blame the developers for poor performance, not the game engine. 

Like @The Aziz said, any game can run poorly, whether they are using Unity, Unreal, the Doom engine, or any other engine. It also has to deal with how well built the engine is. Look at Halo, it's engine is literally BROKEN and yet, for some reason, it works. 

[ShawnPhillips]

4 hours ago, ronson49 said:

@HebaruSan

 

Isn't that the ultimately issue with "The Unity Look"?  Garbage Collection and the entire middle tier of managed stuff existing between your code and the executable?  The stuff that  "Makes it easy for Newbs" also makes it absolutely dire for performance.   

One of the reasons you aren't going to get GTA or Elder Scolls written in Unity is because it isn't possible to do so in a way that is satisfactory.    It doesn't matter how many years of experience you have, you cannot undo its Entity system or any of the tens of thousands of choices that lay the foundation for it all working in the first place when you hit run. 


There is definitely limitations, and KSP is going to hit those limitations before the actual user is ready for them.  
 

You don't know much about how Game Engine work, do you?

There is nothing wrong with KSP 2 still using Unity. Unity is a good engine and will likely work out great. KSP1 had a lot of issues with the core code of the game limiting it's own capabilities. Likely a side effect of the game starting out life as a side project by one man when Squad was a Marketing company, not a game dev company. KSP 2's code is being rewritten from scratch to overcomes KSP's inherent limitations and push Unity much further then what the Original game could.

[LekkoBot]

18 minutes ago, GoldForest said:

Unity is a great engine

I wouldn't say it's a great engine, its not terrible and can get the job done but probably isn't the best for running a game like ksp.

[ronson49]

1 hour ago, GoldForest said:

Unity works really well when OPTIMIZED! 

Hit me with a 60FPS 1080 AAA Unity game. 

 

 

1 hour ago, GoldForest said:

That is PRE-ALPHA footage, which means no OPTIMIZATION has been done. 

No features have been done either and it is CRAWLING.  Google "Premature Optimization".   I expect 60fps@1080 right now on that demo.  I don't want a 30fps demo when nothing has been implemented.  =  Welcome to Unity. 

 

1 hour ago, GoldForest said:

Unity is a great engine and can do great things. All the Unity games that are slow or have poor performance are NOT optimized well. 

Yeah, you just hit me with your golden unity child and we will chat further.  
 

44 minutes ago, ShawnPhillips said:

You don't know much about how Game Engine work, do you?

KSP1 had a lot of issues with the core code of the game limiting it's own capabilities.

That would be Unity itself?   I could spend 1 million on software developers, to write optimised code.   But Unity is compiling it..... So, you won't see it.  Itll just be 1 million pound of developers, compiling through the same system as my grandmother learned in 24 hours.  That is how compilation works.  


I am going to assume obvious coding in my statement above.  I could have 10 entities calling 10 entities when 10 entities could possibly be shared.  I get it.... but, that only takes you so far before you hit the compiler.

Edited September 15, 2019 by ronson49

[Guest]

18 minutes ago, ronson49 said:

Hit me with a 60FPS 1080 AAA Unity game.

A 60fps 1080p AAA game would say nothing at all about its game engine’s suitability for KSP. The constraints and problems are completely different.

In your typical AAA the hard parts related to performance are about handling a massive amount of geometry, animations, FX, and textures and making them run, render, and load fast and without stutters. In KSP the hard part is making rigid-body physics with complex objects run fast and without stutters. AAA engines are terrific at rendering and streaming rich, big, detailed open worlds, making skin and eyes look realistic, lip-syncing voiceover, and animating faces. How much do you think KSP would benefit from that?

I’m a programmer but not a game dev so I don’t have an informed opinion about which engine is best suited for KSP. Star Theory however are game devs, and I am confident they picked Unity for good reasons. Game engines are cheap to license nowadays so I doubt cost was the deciding factor.

[Yeet_TheDinosaur]

32 minutes ago, ronson49 said:

Hit me with a 60FPS 1080 AAA Unity game. 

 

 

No features have been done either and it is CRAWLING.  Google "Premature Optimization".   I expect 60fps@1080 right now on that demo.  I don't want a 30fps demo when nothing has been implemented.  =  Welcome to Unity. 

 

Yeah, you just hit me with your golden unity child and we will chat further.  
 

That would be Unity itself?   I could spend 1 million on software developers, to write optimised code.   But Unity is compiling it..... So, you won't see it.  Itll just be 1 million pound of developers, compiling through the same system as my grandmother learned in 24 hours.  That is how compilation works.  


I am going to assume obvious coding in my statement above.  I could have 10 entities calling 10 entities when 10 entities could possibly be shared.  I get it.... but, that only takes you so far before you hit the compiler.

Just to clarify, I know almost nothing about programming. BUT what I know is that making gaming engines is HARD. Unity took many years to be released, and so are other engines. 

Can you name any engine that can run KSP2 like unity? I don't think many engines can simulate the Solar system.

[GoldForest]

36 minutes ago, ronson49 said:

Hit me with a 60FPS 1080 AAA Unity game. 

Cuphead
Rick and Morty VR 
Ori and the blind Forest
Hearthstone

 

Quote

No features have been done either and it is CRAWLING.  Google "Premature Optimization".   I expect 60fps@1080 right now on that demo.  I don't want a 30fps demo when nothing has been implemented.  =  Welcome to Unity. 

They want to make the game optimized for PART COUNT. They've said in multiple times. They want the player to be able to build very large and complex builds. So, they are focusing on gameplay optimization and not graphic optimization. 

 

Quote

That would be Unity itself?   I could spend 1 million on software developers, to write optimised code.   But Unity is compiling it..... So, you won't see it.  Itll just be 1 million pound of developers, compiling through the same system as my grandmother learned in 24 hours.  That is how compilation works.  


I am going to assume obvious coding in my statement above.  I could have 10 entities calling 10 entities when 10 entities could possibly be shared.  I get it.... but, that only takes you so far before you hit the compiler.

Again, there's nothing wrong with unity. If you pay software developers to give you optimized code, you'll get optimized code. 

[Yeet_TheDinosaur]

1. As @GoldForest said, there are many AAA games which are based on unity.

2. KSP 2 is backed by a multi-billion dollar company (Take-Two). Why would take two approve Star theory's decision of using unity if unity was indeed a trash engine?

3. The original KSP's performance should be blamed on the game itself. KSP was the first game to be created by Squad, and they had many staff replacements. On the other hand, Star theory have created many other games.

4. The current video of KSP2 is PRE-ALPHA. Expecting Star-theory to have 60fps 1080p in pre-alpha is like expecting a 9-year old kid to get 100% in SAT and finish the test in 30minutes.

5. Even if unity is a trash engine, there's nothing you can do. Star theory have decided to use unity, so to change the engine, they'll have to start again from ground zero

Edited September 15, 2019 by Yeet_TheDinosaur

[Incarnation of Chaos]

Everytime this comes up i still chuckle; let's say Unity isn't the right engine. Which one is? Unreal?Crytek?Lumberyard? None of these are made with the type of gameplay KSP has in mind; Unreal is mostly geared towards shooters and fairly linear experiences. But has a proven track record in more open games; Crytek is similar but seems to handle more complex scenes better. Lumberyard i'm not familar with but it seems to be decent; Frostbite isn't open to anyone to use but that's what BF is made on and given enough hardware works reasonably well.

IdTech? Well-optimized and looking at DOOM eternal it seems decent enough at complex scenes; or perhaps it will show otherwise.

Point being; unless they want to roll their own engine then they have 3 options (Two really since Crytek isn't doing so hot RN). Neither is going to do what they want without extensive modification on their end; at the end of the day an engine is a tool that must be wielded by a user that knows it's limits. Now for all i know KSP2 could be a disaster; filled with slideshow and floppy rockets galore. Which means it's no worse than KSP1; which runs fine with 200-300 part count ships on my heavily modded install with a Vega 56 and Ryzen 1700.

But the thing is; i have no reason to assume the worst. Star Theory is aware of the issues; starting from a clean slate and have had over a year to refine the game. Who knows how old the build was for that trailer? We could be looking at months-old gameplay; we could be looking at the current debug build. We don't know.

Endless Space 1 was built on Unity; it performed pretty damn terribly past turn 150 with the largest galaxies. Endless Space 2 was built on it also; my crappy laptop can run it reasonably well till endgame. Newer Unity versions made a hell of a difference it seems, so at the very least losing the cruft from the ancient Unity build KSP 1 was built on will give us performance gains.

And they've talked at length about their plans for optimizing the game; could they be blowing smoke? Sure, but it's not for me to judge until a product is in hand. 

Point is; you're jumping the gun by assuming Unity is the root of the major issues in any game. Let KSP2 release; then judge their work.