Kerbal Architecture

[Pthigrivi]

So this is all pie in the sky. Cities on Kerbin would be really cool but are in no way a priority for me. Its probably best as a mod, which I might even start doing myself if I finally break down and buy 3ds max. Still though Kerbal and architecture are my 2 favorite things so I couldn't help but write a silly long thesis on the subject--if Kerbin did have cities, what would they look like? What styles would be appropriate? 

Let's start with geography. Because its scaled down Kerbin has a total area somewhere between India and Australia, and most of that is oceans and poles, so it really isnt an ungodly surface to worry about. We're really talking about half a dozen large cities and a few dozen smaller towns. I personally think its important that while Kerbals stand in for humans, they are not us, and don't have the same politics or cultural landscape. Its probably best in fact that even if there are allusions to real-life landmarks and styles that they are left deliberately ambiguous for the player to fill in as they like with headcannon. Its always nice when doing this to deliberately conflate so there's no 1-1 comparison to 'Kerbal United States' or 'Kerbal Russia'.  Its also possible/likely that Kerbin will change quite a bit from the map we now know (though I hope the big crater stays). Lets start though with the area right around KSC. I think it would be cool if it were something of a conflation between Kennedy Space Center and Boca Chica, looking more like the former but geographically like the latter. There could be arid farmland surrounding, with smaller towns and coastal cities like Corpus Cristi nearby. There might be a Miami/Rio/Buenos Aires analog to the south. Inland though I'd love to see a reference to Squad, with the nearest big city making lots or references to Mexico City.  I think it would be cool to built it as if Lake Texcoco had never have been filled in, with the Kio Grande running east to KSC. Lets look at some aerial highlights:

Palacio de Belles Artes and Torre Latinoamericana 


Cuidad Universitaria 


Volcan del Zico


Tenochtitlan (mix in El Caracol from Chichen Itza if you like).


The city of Monterrey also really has the look:


More good stuff: 
 

Spoiler

Next let's talk about appropriate architecture styles. My personal feeling is you want to avoid a few extremes. You don't want it to be so generic that its just whatever why did you bother, and it doesn't want to be so specific as to be pigeon holed. It also wants to be fun without feeling so wacky that you lose that blurred sense of realism. I think its also worth looking at architecture around the world and being a bit inclusive in terms of references. Kerbals are industrial but non-violent, adventurous but efficient. They're the kind of idealized humanity you could imagine building colonies on other planets but not living in a full-on bio-futurist utopia. It should look aspirational but achievable. A few styles come to mind.

1) Bauhaus/ New Objectivity: 










With some classic industrial looks: 

Spoiler

Flowing into Mid Century Modern:








And some good ol' Space Age/Soviet Constructivist/Googie:









And finally 1980-90's High-Tech:











And sparingly, it might be fun to include references to things that look like rockets, and things that look like colonial modules;











Anyhoo just some opening thoughts on a subject that will probably never be relevant haha 
 

Edited May 23, 2021 by Pthigrivi

[TLTay]

There is some possible indication of design direction in the reveal trailer: toward the end, you see the glass greenhouse domes with trees in them. It's hard to make out, but it looks like there are possibly buildings inside them.

[Guest]

<snip>

Edited June 20, 2021 by Guest

[Jack Mcslay]

If there are cities would there also be kerbals angry you're dropping stages on them?

[swjr-swis]

3 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

I imagine kerbals as utterly good-natured and perfect pacifists, to whom even the concepts of armed conflict and crime are incomprehensible. (Hey, they didn't even bother to build a fence around KSC, with all the crazy stuff that goes on around there.) That means that military architecture would not exist and would never have existed.

Fully agreed.

I honestly don't even see kerbals as a city-building society, at all. I would be happy with a random smattering of small concentrations of buildings, something to show where kerbals live, learn and work. Mostly small residential areas, but some obviously focused around locations for education, mining, farming, snack distribution, some power plants, a couple of factories and research centers, etc.

I mean, we do know they form companies... at the very least there's construction, space component fabrication, fuel distillation, food. In current KSP we have all these allusions to those but nothing to show for it on the surface, so it'd be warranted to see some physical manifestation of those when exploring Kerbin. Nothing says it needs to be entire cities though.

[Hotel26]

Gee.  I just place a Mk3 cabin on the Kerbin gameboard somewhere and call that a "town", similar to Monopoly.  Build the town (Mk3) and (hand-waving) the airplanes will come.

Real (procedural) airports would be wonderful, though.  SQUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD????!!  (Hear my plea?)

(And, no, Thumbs Down, I have never gotten Kerbal Konstructs to work.)

Edited May 23, 2021 by Hotel26

[Caerfinon]

23 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

Real (procedural) airports would be wonderful

mmmmmmmmm airports mmmmmmmmm

[Hotel26]

6 minutes ago, Caerfinon said:

mmmmmmmmm airports mmmmmmmmm

I wake up in the morning thinking about them and I go to bed at night, dreaming about them.  (Think Marlon Brando in the street bellowing, "Hey SQUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADD!!")

Edited May 23, 2021 by Hotel26

[mcwaffles2003]

I think that a good way to start generating cities while having variety would be to categorize them by biome type, flat top roofs in warm climates and slanted roofs in colder climates, for instance, since these features seem more utilitarian than cultural, kind of a convergent evolution thing. I think cities could be sparse and largely dominate the land with farms or natural landscape though I hope to see a few skylines along the way. If I had to pick among the styles you have presented I think the mid-century modern look would be most fitting for cities in general and a few industrialist outcroppings scattered among the farm lands.

If we really want to get into this though we probably should ask ourselves what do kerbals prioritize? Do they even partake in entertainment (arenas) or luxuries (shopping malls and industrial centers) or are they intensely utilitarian needing only food(farmland), water(sanitation centers), and shelter (simple housing)? Do they have culture and respect the arts (opera houses and theatres) or are they solely knowledge driven (labs and schools)? Are they pious (churches/mosques/synagogues praising the kraken)?

Also, if resources will be in the game with a fair bit of nuance I hope that they're already being utilized where they are naturally concentrated on kerbin and the architecture around those areas presents that story. Perhaps this is where cities could be centered as well as river mouths near the coasts showing industrious cities and mercantile trade cities respectively.

I think there's overall 2 ways this can be done. Generic and randomly plopped cities or cities that make sense with the natural landscape that seem to have evolved purposefully. Depends on the budget and time they'd be willing to invest in this.

Above all I think their presence should be peacefully utopian to represent a desired peace and harmony we real people should desire amongst ourselves and our ecosystem. The games main attitude is optimism and hopefully that can bleed from the game into our own lives further captivating its audience.

 

P.S.

Spoiler

No venus project cities?

 

 

 

 

Edited May 23, 2021 by mcwaffles2003

[Jack Mcslay]

I think players will probably be able to make their own airports with the BAE though

[SOXBLOX]

I would like to see a few cities. I know it's probably a pipe dream, though. Maybe use Cities: Skylines? 

[Pthigrivi]

@BrikoleurThats a really cool tool. I doubt I have the technical savvy to employ it on a big round surface with topography but Intercept probably does. I do agree with you it would be a lot of work for something that isn't critical to the gameplay. If they or a modder were to build the layouts I'd love to spend the next few years populating it with assets in my spare time. 

@SOXBLOX I love Cities: Skylines but whats funny is I don't actually like most of the stock buildings. The aesthetic feels haphazard and flaky. It's like they took a lot of very boring buildings and splashed random colors on them. Contrast this to Frostpunk where the the buildings themselves are interesting and excellent and the colors and lighting all really work together to feed into the overall atmosphere. Obviously the vibe would be much different but thats what I'd hope for Kerbal cities, that they would look like the kind of places Kerbals would build, riffing off the look of real life launch sites, but also drawing in 1950's and 60's Space Age architectural design and imagining a history of its development. 

You could even dig into some Art Deco, which has a lot of early industrial/aerospace and Mesoamerican influence, 







And just a tip of the hat to retrofuturism:




You just don't want it to be so out of wack that a space center looking like Cape Canaveral looks wildly out of place. It has to feel realish still. 

4 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

If we really want to get into this though we probably should ask ourselves what do kerbals prioritize? Do they even partake in entertainment (arenas) or luxuries (shopping malls and industrial centers) or are they intensely utilitarian needing only food(farmland), water(sanitation centers), and shelter (simple housing)? Do they have culture and respect the arts (opera houses and theatres) or are they solely knowledge driven (labs and schools)? Are they pious (churches/mosques/synagogues praising the kraken)?

This is all fun to think about. So players could map their own interpretations on I might not get too specific, but I think it stands to reason kerbals have farms and factories and suburbs and bustling downtowns. A lot of the disbelief-suspension comes from not really seeing any hint of a supporting infrastructure around KSC. So it might be cool to see greenhouses and windmills and fuel refineries and nuclear plants:
 

Spoiler

And the question about Kerbal sports made me think think of this cool aerial of a stadium in Mexico City. Its a bullfighting ring which seems not very Kerbal but I like that it looks like a radar dish and you could imagine wacky kerbal sports on a round field with like a dozen balls flying around. 

Edited May 23, 2021 by Pthigrivi

[swjr-swis]

5 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Its a bullfighting ring which seems not very Kerbal but I like that it looks like a radar dish and you could imagine wacky kerbal sports on a round field with like a dozen balls flying around.

And in the early morning when there's no games going on, the arena floor parts and they launch a Mun rocket from the subterranean silo.

No? Just me?

[modus]

17 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

I would like to see a few cities. I know it's probably a pipe dream, though. Maybe use Cities: Skylines? 

I've had dreams of a game that's a combo of cities and kerbal. Average loadtime would be 3 hours probably. 

[Dr. Kerbal]

I agree. Kerbin is kind of empty. I mean, where does the Kerbal race live?!

[shdwlrd]

I would love to see Kervin as a living planet. Some large cities and towns would help so much to that point. When released, if they had areas setup for civilization and really generic buildings, it would help complete that view. Over time, they can update the buildings and styles to give the cities a more unique look to them.

[SOXBLOX]

On 5/24/2021 at 10:20 PM, shdwlrd said:

Over time, they can update the buildings and styles to give the cities a more unique look to them.

I like that idea. It would help with realism.

[KSK]

My personal take on Kerbal culture is (very briefly) that it revolves around a species of sentient tree called a Kerm (historically, this is where the Kerman name came from). Their society consists of two major groups, the Kerman and the Kermol. Roughly speaking, the Kerman are predominantly urban dwelling technophiles, whereas the Kermol are rural and mostly given to agriculture and care of those Kerm trees I mentioned.

The traditional Kermol village is based around a group of generally dome shaped buildings each built around a Kerm trunk. The other buildings in the village will also be dome-shaped. Bigger buildings are constructed by merging two or more domes together.

Suburban  architecture tends to follow this model - dome shaped buildings, lots of green space, the odd building built around a tree. Heavy use of wood and other natural materials for decoration if not for structural members.

City centres also have their share of traditional architecture but mixed with more modern buildings which tend towards the Art Deco from @Pthigrivi’s post - that building with the sandstone cladding and greenish ironwork looks about right if you imagine it with more gardens.

Industrial parks near the cities would probably be more utilitarian but clean and with a focus on green space as far as possible. Solar panels and wind turbines would be appropriate greebling.

I only mention this because I think it’s a scheme that would be possibly amenable for in-game use. Most of Kerbin would be rural with lots of fields, forested areas and a regular pattern of fairly similar looking villages, each built in and around a small group of trees.

After that there would also be a handful of larger cities which could reuse quite a few of the art assets from the villages.

[kerbiloid]

A typical Kerbuilding is a Kerbungalow.

[Bej Kerman]

On 5/23/2021 at 3:29 AM, Pthigrivi said:

Its probably best as a mod, which I might even start doing myself if I finally break down and buy 3ds max.

Blender is free and beats it by a long shot.

[KSK]

42 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

A typical Kerbuilding is a Kerbungalow.

And overuse of K words is a very tired kliche. How about we make the forums a happier (or at least marginally more creative) place and avoid them?   

[Bej Kerman]

7 minutes ago, KSK said:

52 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

A typical Kerbuilding is a Kerbungalow.

And overuse of K words is a very tired kliche. How about we make the forums a happier (or at least marginally more creative) place and avoid them?   

no

[Pthigrivi]

6 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Blender is free and beats it by a long shot.

Good to know! Truth be told though Im used to autocad through work I hate Autodesk with a deep passion.

[mcwaffles2003]

2 hours ago, KSK said:

Suburban  architecture tends to follow this model - dome shaped buildings, lots of green space, the odd building built around a tree. Heavy use of wood and other natural materials for decoration if not for structural members.

So the architectural styling of Dragonball Z?

 

[kerbiloid]

28 minutes ago, KSK said:

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

A typical Kerbuilding is a Kerbungalow.

And overuse of K words is a very tired kliche. How about we make the forums a happier (or at least marginally more creative) place and avoid them?   

Ok I'm all for the Querbals living in Querbungalows, but the idea was that they live at the coastline, so their habitats should reflect this fact that they should face the hurricanes and the storms.