Thinking ahead towards standardization

[Incarnation of Chaos]

On 5/10/2020 at 10:40 PM, mcwaffles2003 said:

Well its a good thing that we have the mods of KSP 1 to guide us. I don't think its over reaching that, at the least, we will see the majority of current mainstream mods (that aren't integrated into the base game) will make a comeback. If things get missed or must be revised then at least there will be a somewhat stable foundation upon which can be built. 

This was my hope as well. It may not last but it can be used to give a good start.

I think a general list of needed resources could be made and any that are already in the game could simply be omitted from that list. Or even then a completely separate list which omits the stock resources entirely. Either one could world work. Implementation to code I assume right now isn't feasible but compiling a list of fuels and oxidizers, setting naming/nomenclature, defining necessary variables (density, thrust/unit mass, etc) could all be prepared and discussions/compromises could be made to set a path forward.

Again you keep using this word "Needed" when we have no information about what KSP2's resource system will actually look like. We have no idea what gaps would need to be filled by mods, we have no loveing idea about anything.

This "General list" doesn't exist because right now KSP2 doesn't for all intents and purposes! Now if you want to speculate on what resources will look like in KSP2 that's all fine and good; we can make pretty good guesses. But again, anything else is jumping the gun massively.

For instance it's reasonable to assume some form of Metallic Handwavium will be present, along with Orion's hydrogen bomblets and some form of fusion fuels (Likely Deuterium). So we have three additional fuels in KSP2, but we have no real idea of anything besides that.

 

[harrisjosh2711]

9 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Having liquid fuel, monoprop, electricity, etc. instead of a bunch of pointless resources makes the game much easier to pick up to beginners. Have we all been forgetting the fact that the game is supposed to be easier to pick up and not just RSS/RO and Interstellar Extended with clouds, or do hardcore players just want to make the game harder for the rest of us?

Dont buy the game. LF will no longer be the only fuel regardless. This "too hard" argument about 1 or 2 fuels...... I imagine you guys said the same when fuel actually became a thing. "Now we need an infinite fuel button to have fun." What i find hilarious when discussing newbies in terms of difficulty, you guys bring up fuels lol, smh. When im thinking newby, planning a 50 year colonisation mission to a distant world seems much more overwhelming. I can decide in 30 seconds which i fuel i want. I may spend all night building a ship only to realize i forgot to put solar panels on my lander, after traveling 50 years. Ohh lord, but a stock KIS would prob be considered "too hard" for a newby lol. Thats after the newby gives up and cheats his ship into orbit because he's spent the past 5 hours trying to design a rocket that is stable and powerful enough to lift the ship, to no avail.

I can understand why nany people would prefer to keep solely LF. However, that is not related to difficulty. If you cant take 1 minute to read about the difference between two fuel types, i have no sympathy for you. Further, you should not play this game because multiple new fuel types are confirmed and threfore the game will be "too hard" for you. 

Edited May 14, 2020 by harrisjosh2711

[mcwaffles2003]

7 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Again you keep using this word "Needed" when we have no information about what KSP2's resource system will actually look like. We have no idea what gaps would need to be filled by mods, we have no loveing idea about anything.

This "General list" doesn't exist because right now KSP2 doesn't for all intents and purposes! Now if you want to speculate on what resources will look like in KSP2 that's all fine and good; we can make pretty good guesses. But again, anything else is jumping the gun massively.

For instance it's reasonable to assume some form of Metallic Handwavium will be present, along with Orion's hydrogen bomblets and some form of fusion fuels (Likely Deuterium). So we have three additional fuels in KSP2, but we have no real idea of anything besides that.

 

Could a framework not be established at least for adding fuels so all mod made fuels can at least be established in a unified system so compatibility remains high?

 

3 hours ago, harrisjosh2711 said:

12 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Having liquid fuel, monoprop, electricity, etc. instead of a bunch of pointless resources makes the game much easier to pick up to beginners. Have we all been forgetting the fact that the game is supposed to be easier to pick up and not just RSS/RO and Interstellar Extended with clouds, or do hardcore players just want to make the game harder for the rest of us?

Dont buy the game. LF will no longer be the only fuel regardless. This "too hard" argument about 1 or 2 fuels...... I imagine you guys said the same when fuel actually became a thing. "Now we need an infinite fuel button to have fun." What i find hilarious when discussing newbies in terms of difficulty, you guys bring up fuels lol, smh. When im thinking newby, planning a 50 year colonisation mission to a distant world seems much more overwhelming. I can decide in 30 seconds which i fuel i want. I may spend all night building a ship only to realize i forgot to put solar panels on my lander, after traveling 50 years. Ohh lord, but a stock KIS would prob be considered "too hard" for a newby lol. Thats after the newby gives up and cheats his ship into orbit because he's spent the past 5 hours trying to design a rocket that is stable and powerful enough to lift the ship, to no avail.

I can understand why nany people would prefer to keep solely LF. However, that is not related to difficulty. If you cant take 1 minute to read about the difference between two fuel types, i have no sympathy for you. Further, you should not play this game because multiple new fuel types are confirmed and threfore the game will be "too hard" for you. 

I feel like your conflating difficulty and complexity. Also your example for the 50 year colonization mission would come well after the initial learning curve where as the various carbohydrate based fuels would come in at the very beginning of the game. My argument against it was I would prefer a simplified resource system in the base game as logistics would remain simpler in the long run and mods can always be counted on to add nuance to the game where players desire. Also, as the game is, engine efficiency was dependent on the engine and not the fuels so I always felt you could simply pretend the LF tank for a terrier was filled with hydrogen where as the swivels LF tank had RP-1 in it.

That said, why are you guys dragging an argument about base game fuels into a thread about modded fuel standardization. Did you just come here to draw out an argument even if it is not very related to the topic? Please take this back to:

 

[Incarnation of Chaos]

29 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Could a framework not be established at least for adding fuels so all mod made fuels can at least be established in a unified system so compatibility remains high?

Sure; the developers of KSP2 will provide that via the API's they expose for modding.

[mcwaffles2003]

1 minute ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Sure; the developers of KSP2 will provide that via the API's they expose for modding.

As stated in OP im not a modder. Is that how it was done in KSP 1 or is this hopeful speculation? If this was done in KSP then why do incompatibilities persist?

[Incarnation of Chaos]

2 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

As stated in OP im not a modder. Is that how it was done in KSP 1 or is this hopeful speculation? If this was done in KSP then why do incompatibilities persist?

KSP2 devs have already said they're going to overhaul the way mods are made in KSP2, and expose more of the games inner workings. In Unity this is all done via API's, so i'd imagine KSP may expose some (Not 100% sure).

But the crux of the issue is that the moment you allow a user to add a new item, you cannot stop them from adding another with a very similar name, purpose and even look that only works within their systems. So since I'm much more familiar with TESV i'll explain it using it as a example.

In Skyrim every object in the game has a unique FORMID field, and it's the FORMID that identifies the object NOT THE NAME!. So when i want to make a new item; let's say a Steel Sword that has a unique texture and buffed stats. I'll copy the entry for the Vanilla Steel Sword, edit the FORMID and Damage fields but leave the name the same because I'm a lazy fk and I'm testing.  I'll then apply my new textures and meshes and then import them into my new plugin, and with a couple hours work i'll have my new Sword.

However, because the FORMID is unique to that sword Skyrim doesn't see it as just another Steel Sword even though it has the same name! So i can't craft it at a Forge, Upgrade it at Grindstones, or melt it down at a Smelter. Because all of those require a "Recipe" that defines how all of those work, and in the case of the upgrades how they scale with the Player's level and perks. And how do those Recipies identify which item they apply to? The FORMID.

Now i don't know exactly how KSP handles Resources, but in a similar vein they're uniquely identified. So you can have a "Lh2", "LH2", "lH2" and so on Resources that all don't work with each other, don't work with engines, don't work with tankage etc.

Now using Module Manager it's possible to patch incompatible resources to work with each other, and since the KSP2 developers have already said they're implmenting a similar scripting system as part of the base game then I'd speculate that whatever API's they expose to add/modify fuels would also allow you to flag them as being part of a group of fuels (Cryogenic, Liquid, Monopropellants etc.) and then patch them with an overarching super class that would ensure 100% compatibility.

Do i know that's how they've done it 100%? Absolutely not, but even if this isn't the case because of the way KSP2 will be built then modders can plug a similar system in later. Think the Community Tech Tree and Resource packs on steroids, with templates and all. 

[Bej Kerman]

14 hours ago, harrisjosh2711 said:

I can understand why nany people would prefer to keep solely LF. However, that is not related to difficulty. If you cant take 1 minute to read about the difference between two fuel types, i have no sympathy for you. Further, you should not play this game because multiple new fuel types are confirmed and threfore the game will be "too hard" for you. 

It won't make the game too much more difficult, but it'll add complexity that we don't need.

[DStaal]

10 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

As stated in OP im not a modder. Is that how it was done in KSP 1 or is this hopeful speculation? If this was done in KSP then why do incompatibilities persist?

Incarnation of Chaos listed one type of incompatibility, but there's another as well for resources:

Say that two modders both create a Deuterium resource.  Modder A is using it for engines, and thinks of it as a cryogenic liquid.  So it's mass, volume, etc. are all based off of the liquid.  Modder B is doing resource processing and thinks of it as a gas - so it's mass, volume, etc. are all based off of the gas.

Now you have two resources of the same thing (possibly even with the same internal ID), but they have different properties.

That said, there's a lot that the KSP2 devs could do to help with some of these situations.  They could for instance have as part of resource definitions a vaporization heat, and then you can have one resource that can be either a liquid or a gas, with some defined transitions.  Tanks could instead of containing specific resources have a volume and be able to contain 'solids', 'liquids' or 'cryogenic liquids' or some other set - and then any tank can be switched between different resources in the same category, without having to be defined for it.  Etc.  What happens depends on what problems they foresee, what they think are the best trade-offs, and what the various benefits/disadvantages are.