the ability to create custom planets as part of the stock game ksp2

[asap1]

here is an interesting  idea what if the devs included the ability to create custom planets and place them in varying orbits as part of a sandbox mode  this could be a great feature if implemented correctly and would open many avenues of creativity aside from ship and base/station building

[PlutoISaPlanet]

Their have been a few threads about this. Personally, I would love it. However, I have a feeling this will be left to modders, dlc, or a different game.

[Guest]

Kopernicus is already a great mod to create planets, and tbh, it's the best we are probably ever gonna get. It's not easy to learn, but it's the best option we have for now,

[Zaffre]

As Pluto commented there have already been threads.

I cannot understate how this is dreaded in the planet modding community. There is already a large amount of low-quality planet mods due to the lower skill and resource floor. I hesitate to imagine what spam there would be should KSP2 take the SR2 approach. There is of course the realm of accessibility and customization to consider, which KSP2 appears to be aiming for. Neither of those are bad things at all, and I imagine many would take the opportunity to tinker around.

Whether KSP2 would actually do it, I am not sure. I personally lean towards not so much at least on initial release, as they are planning new systems that they would like for us to explore and they may take the time to try to note or educate us about them and their features, and I imagine they wouldn't want people to change them right off the bat willy-nilly.

If it doesn't come officially supported, I don't doubt we'll see an analogue to today's Kopernicus. Hopefully one that is more stable and intuitive.

[pandaman]

I very much doubt there will be a 'stock' planet creation feature.  Just maybe as a standalone design DLC and 'import' tools at some point, but I doubt it.

I think it is very easy to underestimate how much work would be involved in designing interesting planets.  Sure, you can probably generate something that looks ok from high orbit, but it's the little surface details that finish it off that would really take a long time to do well.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

On 6/1/2021 at 10:05 PM, Zaffre said:

As Pluto commented there have already been threads.

I cannot understate how this is dreaded in the planet modding community. There is already a large amount of low-quality planet mods due to the lower skill and resource floor. I hesitate to imagine what spam there would be should KSP2 take the SR2 approach. There is of course the realm of accessibility and customization to consider, which KSP2 appears to be aiming for. Neither of those are bad things at all, and I imagine many would take the opportunity to tinker around.

Whether KSP2 would actually do it, I am not sure. I personally lean towards not so much at least on initial release, as they are planning new systems that they would like for us to explore and they may take the time to try to note or educate us about them and their features, and I imagine they wouldn't want people to change them right off the bat willy-nilly.

If it doesn't come officially supported, I don't doubt we'll see an analogue to today's Kopernicus. Hopefully one that is more stable and intuitive.

I cannot say how happy i am to see someone finally just straight up say it.

I'm definitely not a KSP modder, but iv'e played numerous other games where map creation/level creation tools were made available and while some user-made maps were decent. The majority were low-quality spam, trolling or otherwise just not unique.  I definitely don't think stock planet creation tools would even be available in game tbh, the way the physics and the game itself handles planets would prevent new systems from being spontaneously loaded in unless KSP2 changed a decent chunk of their backend (Might very well have going by the latest posts).

But i also think that eventually some type of GUI front end for planet creation will emerge, especially since KSP2 has API's that could be hooked and make a program like that far, far more useful. But it won't be something for the casual user, it would be an SDK that would require a decent amount of knowledge about how KSP2's planets/star systems are put together scripting wise.

3 hours ago, pandaman said:

I very much doubt there will be a 'stock' planet creation feature.  Just maybe as a standalone design DLC and 'import' tools at some point, but I doubt it.

I think it is very easy to underestimate how much work would be involved in designing interesting planets.  Sure, you can probably generate something that looks ok from high orbit, but it's the little surface details that finish it off that would really take a long time to do well.

This definitely ties in with the above, even a 2D map for an RTS (Let's use Tiberium Wars III as an example) requires far more than just it's bare essentials to look passable. Sure you can make a functional map with nothing more than a barren landscape, a few resource deposits and a couple goodies to capture. But it would look terrible, the AI pathing would be defective, and no interesting gameplay would come from nothing but flat terrain for miles in every direction.

A truely decent map took major effort to create, and required a fairly in depth understanding of how the game handled AI, encounter zones, scripting, and then finishing it off with Buildings to break up the wastes. Then you also had to consider those small little details, where to place impassable terrain? Water features? Hills and valleys to slow down or funnel advancing armor? Any bridges? Are they destructible? Do you have multiple bridges? Or force the players to contest a single crossing to assault each other?

ALL of these make a major difference in the moment-to-moment gameplay, and even how a player decides to conduct their entire strategy.

KSP2 isn't an RTS, but i'd imagine the same principles hold. Terrain, elevation, ore/resource deposits, atmosphere, liquids? All would change how the player tackles the planet, and would be incredibly difficult to do automatically.

[Zaffre]

On 6/3/2021 at 5:22 AM, Incarnation of Chaos said:

I cannot say how happy i am to see someone finally just straight up say it.

I'm definitely not a KSP modder, but iv'e played numerous other games where map creation/level creation tools were made available and while some user-made maps were decent. The majority were low-quality spam, trolling or otherwise just not unique.  I definitely don't think stock planet creation tools would even be available in game tbh, the way the physics and the game itself handles planets would prevent new systems from being spontaneously loaded in unless KSP2 changed a decent chunk of their backend (Might very well have going by the latest posts).

But i also think that eventually some type of GUI front end for planet creation will emerge, especially since KSP2 has API's that could be hooked and make a program like that far, far more useful. But it won't be something for the casual user, it would be an SDK that would require a decent amount of knowledge about how KSP2's planets/star systems are put together scripting wise.

This definitely ties in with the above, even a 2D map for an RTS (Let's use Tiberium Wars III as an example) requires far more than just it's bare essentials to look passable. Sure you can make a functional map with nothing more than a barren landscape, a few resource deposits and a couple goodies to capture. But it would look terrible, the AI pathing would be defective, and no interesting gameplay would come from nothing but flat terrain for miles in every direction.

A truely decent map took major effort to create, and required a fairly in depth understanding of how the game handled AI, encounter zones, scripting, and then finishing it off with Buildings to break up the wastes. Then you also had to consider those small little details, where to place impassable terrain? Water features? Hills and valleys to slow down or funnel advancing armor? Any bridges? Are they destructible? Do you have multiple bridges? Or force the players to contest a single crossing to assault each other?

ALL of these make a major difference in the moment-to-moment gameplay, and even how a player decides to conduct their entire strategy.

KSP2 isn't an RTS, but i'd imagine the same principles hold. Terrain, elevation, ore/resource deposits, atmosphere, liquids? All would change how the player tackles the planet, and would be incredibly difficult to do automatically.

Absolutely. Making a thing is easy. Making a good thing that is polished and functional is time-consuming and difficult. To top it off, KSP2 almost certainly has more advanced mechanics and more features than the stock game to consider, which while myself and other planet modders may giggle with glee, it could also make good world creation more of a bugger.

If it does arise, perhaps not an SDK and something more analogous to Kopernicus. Not needing to know the ins and outs of programming is part of what makes planet modding an attractive endeavor.

[Jack Mcslay]

I've mentioned in an earlier thread asking about this that making whole planets in an in-game editor is not very feasible, but tweaking existing planets to put them in different orbits and change atmospheric parameters shouldn't be too difficult to implement

[Incarnation of Chaos]

4 hours ago, Zaffre said:

Absolutely. Making a thing is easy. Making a good thing that is polished and functional is time-consuming and difficult. To top it off, KSP2 almost certainly has more advanced mechanics and more features than the stock game to consider, which while myself and other planet modders may giggle with glee, it could also make good world creation more of a bugger.

If it does arise, perhaps not an SDK and something more analogous to Kopernicus. Not needing to know the ins and outs of programming is part of what makes planet modding an attractive endeavor.

Well to be honest with you, when I say SDK I'm more thinking about a gui front end for the kopernicus analog that could also get code if needed.  

So I misused the term lel

 

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Jack Mcslay said:

I've mentioned in an earlier thread asking about this that making whole planets in an in-game editor is not very feasible, but tweaking existing planets to put them in different orbits and change atmospheric parameters shouldn't be too difficult to implement

Yeah about that, this stuff is on rails. You change anything as far as orbits and atmosphere? Reload.

 

[Guest]

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Edited June 20, 2021 by Guest

[OHara]

4 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

(I also don’t expect a stock planet editor, but I do expect planets will be externalised into data files, so you won’t need a mod to load them.)

That by itself would satisfy the wish in the top post, I think, and seems to be a wise path for the KSP2 developers.

The planet-changing capabilities of Kopernicus, come from KSP1's existing API (link). Kopernicus uses that API to load at startup planet-definitions and textures defined by configuration files.  That lets modders do everything from artful re-arrangement of the planets to their complete replacement.

Sometimes Kopernicus struggles to adapt when that API changes, like when the new 'ultra' planet textures came in version 1.8.  If KSP2 developers are willing to maintain a configuration-file format as well as API, that would reduce work for modders-plus-developers overall.

(The bugs in Kopernicus that I have investigated come from its add-on features ---supporting heat from multiple suns, heat from planetary cores, memory management for colliders for scattered rocks--- and always when new contributors work on the original modders quick and dirty code.)

[asap1]

thanks for the feedback maybe it could be implemented in such a way that the player specifies parameters (orbit specifics maximum and minimum terrain elevation atmospheric height biomes and atmospheric height density etc.) and the planet is then created using procedural generation and reusing some assets from different planets (that the player doesn't create) and modifying them so as to include the same quality that the developers have in imbued into the base planets and fit the parameters that the player specifies. this could solve the problem of boring player created planets and still allow some degree of flexibility in regards to player creativity that isn't a base or ship or station. 

well it's an interesting idea I hope the devs consider it if it does happen I would suspect it would be a dlc released after the main game. 

[Guest]

[snip]

Edited June 20, 2021 by Guest

[Incarnation of Chaos]

14 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

 

 

1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

I don’t think there’s anything inherently impossible about procedurally generated solar systems at the level of detail we expect from KSP. I’m not sure how well they jibe with the identity of KSP however — a lot of what we talk about here revolves around known places, and for example a lot of craft sharing is based on being able to specify them as “Eve capable” or whatever. Procedurally generated planets would remove that dimension.

I would vote against them for that reason. They could work as a DLC though, and even a mod might be possible.

I think procedural generation would be best used for reducing the time it would take to make a planet pack tbh 

Like if you can generate basic terrain, water features and an atmosphere based on a set of input variables, then you can focus more on the details and sculpt it to your liking

 

[Guest]

17 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

I don’t think there’s anything inherently impossible about procedurally generated solar systems at the level of detail we expect from KSP. I’m not sure how well they jibe with the identity of KSP however — a lot of what we talk about here revolves around known places, and for example a lot of craft sharing is based on being able to specify them as “Eve capable” or whatever. Procedurally generated planets would remove that dimension.

I would vote against them for that reason. They could work as a DLC though, and even a mod might be possible.

My biggest point is that procedural generation will result in a huge swath of "just the same old DV challenge but the sand here is yellow and the gravity is a little less than Duna" without any of those "interesting puzzles" the devs were talking about during interviews and even if they put them in the procedural generation it's just the same finite number of interesting quirks repeated over and over again.

Edited June 6, 2021 by Master39

[Guest]

<snip>

Edited June 20, 2021 by Guest

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

I just don't think it fits the identity and "feel" of KSP, where operating in a known universe that works the same way for everybody is a part of the experience.

More than "everyone having the same universe" it's about the exploration needing a lot of information and preparation to happen and you need to get that information before finding yourself without fuel in orbit around an ocean planet in another start system with no water capable mining equipment on board.

Esploration in KSP is slow, planned and deliberate, and with KSP2 we're getting not only several times more places to explore, but also several times more things to do in the places we're exploring or have already explored.

And on top of that the terrain improved so much that Pol alone had now more details and interesting features than the whole KSP1 Kerbolar system.

 

I think that the stock "Kopernucus equivalent" should reflect that, providing a powerful tool for competent modders to make a planet and not a simplified in-game editor to throw together things rapidly and with no knowledge required.

The use I can see of such a tool, at least for the first few months, it's more about bringing to KSP2 some beloved planet packs like OPM or RSS, not filling the game with a bunch of new solar systems even before people have had the chance to test the new stock ones.