A big problem I foresee with KSP 2: pc resources

[king of nowhere]

This game uses up a lot of resources, especially ram memory. it's several years old by this time, and my pc is a pretty good one, yet I can barely run it smoothly. or, I could run it smoothly if I didn't have a penchant for 1k part ships, those lag horribly.

Anyway, the game takes easily a couple of minutes to open. And loading anything but the simplest ships into physics range is taxing. and it keeps getting worse the longer you keep it open.

I've neer seen a game sequel that didn't have vastly superior hardware requirements than its predecessors. and i've not been following the devs, but from what i heard of the new features they want to implement, "software optimization" is not one of them.

Hence, I am seriously concerned that the only way to play ksp 2 and launch ships with more than 20 parts will be to borrow nasa's supercomputers.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Have you read any of the dev updates about KSP2? It has been repeatedly stated that KSP2 is using a greatly improved physics system to make large and high part count vessels (and bases/colonies) not only possible but usable without it becoming Kerbal Slideshow Program. KSP is a decade old and has expanded far beyond the simple foundations it was built on; KSP2 is brand new and built to perform much better in this respect.

[king of nowhere]

oh, ok. as i said, no, i did not read in detail, i only heard snippets here and there, and they did not mention this part.

i recall my objection, then. given the stuff that i routinely fly, it may be the one single reason that could actually persuade me to switch. after there are the right mods, of course

Edited June 19, 2021 by king of nowhere

[mcwaffles2003]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

I've neer seen a game sequel that didn't have vastly superior hardware requirements than its predecessors. and i've not been following the devs, but from what i heard of the new features they want to implement, "software optimization" is not one of them.

Comparing KSP to other games with generic statements like this doesn't really make much sense. Not many other games are bottlenecked by a computers CPU like KSP and KSP doesn't inherently have an upward bound on part count which allows us to put as many parts as we want on ships until it just gets arduous to play. Also seeing as this game is more akin to a simulation than to a generic game like an RTS, FPS, etc.. the efficiency with how the code is run probably plays a larger role in its overall performance and the game was made originally by a hobbyist then picked up by a small indie team. KSP 2 is being made by professional game designers and engineers with experience in the relevant fields so I think it's fair to assume it will run smoother. Though, there may be a GPU update in the future of some players who are still running genuine potatoes

 

This is an interesting look at why KSP is actually slow:

 

TL;DR - It's not even really due to the part count really, but its actually a problem with how crossfeed works

[TLTay]

KSP1 runs like it was someone's hobby project who had never made a game before - because it was.

KSP2 is built from the ground up by a team of well-funded professionals.

It should be a major difference.

[linuxgurugamer]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

This game uses up a lot of resources, especially ram memory. it's several years old by this time, and my pc is a pretty good one, yet I can barely run it smoothly. or, I could run it smoothly if I didn't have a penchant for 1k part ships, those lag horribly

10 years old on the 24th

[The Aziz]

2011 vs 2022. While it is obvious that ksp2 will have higher requirements than the original, an overall performance on pcs which fit in "recommended hardware requirements" for both games should be much better. 

What I mean is, if you have a pc that checks all the boxes for ksp1, it starts to struggle after certain amount of parts involved.

A pc that checks boxes for ksp2 should be quite okay with much higher amount of parts.

[Pthigrivi]

Id also just add that Squad has some incredibly bright people who went out and solved problems and created new gameplay that no one had ever conceived of before so I wouldn't necessarily discount all of KSP's inefficiencies to 'these guys are amateurs'--(forgive me for tone-infill). As others have mentioned  KSP 1 has grown far, far beyond its original aspirations and its not surprising 10 years later things are pretty bogged down. It is incredibly fortunate that Intercept has been able to see how KSP 1 dealt with these challenges and has the advantage of hindsight to hopefully fix a lot of those errors from the ground up. 

[Incarnation of Chaos]

Also the way KSP handles loading is known to be wildly inefficient. KSP2 will likely load far faster than it

[mattinoz]

34 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Also the way KSP handles loading is known to be wildly inefficient. KSP2 will likely load far faster than it

If they are setting themselves up for 10years of income from the franchise then dynamic loading of assets and LOD physics are the things to get right to allow the game to play as well as possible on the range of hardware over that time. 

[Incarnation of Chaos]

1 hour ago, mattinoz said:

If they are setting themselves up for 10years of income from the franchise then dynamic loading of assets and LOD physics are the things to get right to allow the game to play as well as possible on the range of hardware over that time. 

I'm pretty sure it's HARDER to make their game load worse than KSP2 than actually making it better lel

Especially since you can drastically improve KSP's loading times by just overriding the stock reader with a buffered reader (There's a mod that does this, forgot the author). But KSP is so bad at this it's almost comical.

[Dr. Kerbal]

On 6/19/2021 at 6:35 AM, jimmymcgoochie said:

Have you read any of the dev updates about KSP2? It has been repeatedly stated that KSP2 is using a greatly improved physics system to make large and high part count vessels (and bases/colonies) not only possible but usable without it becoming Kerbal Slideshow Program. KSP is a decade old and has expanded far beyond the simple foundations it was built on; KSP2 is brand new and built to perform much better in this respect.

Well. Lets see. A simple term for this to to put. It like balancing a stick and then balancing a house a top of those sticks. That's KSP. But KSP2 as from heard is going to be more like a ground holding the house. 

[mattinoz]

18 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

I'm pretty sure it's HARDER to make their game load worse than KSP2 than actually making it better lel

Especially since you can drastically improve KSP's loading times by just overriding the stock reader with a buffered reader (There's a mod that does this, forgot the author). But KSP is so bad at this it's almost comical.

Still a testament to the original game and team that people are still passionate about it 10 years down the track even with almost comical major systems. 

[Incarnation of Chaos]

2 hours ago, mattinoz said:

Still a testament to the original game and team that people are still passionate about it 10 years down the track even with almost comical major systems. 

Oh yeah, KSP1 is still a magnitude of order more than i could do lel.

[linuxgurugamer]

On 6/21/2021 at 12:25 AM, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Especially since you can drastically improve KSP's loading times by just overriding the stock reader with a buffered reader (There's a mod that does this, forgot the author). But KSP is so bad at this it's almost comical

That mod is very system dependent.  Some systems it helps, and some it doesn't 

[Brofessional]

I'm still a bit concerned that KSP2 is using Unity which isn't exactly known for great performance in general. From what I understand the newer versions of the engine still have the same limitations that haunt KSP1 (32-bit floats and limited physics multithreading.) I also understand that there are a lot of factors besides performance that go into choosing a game engine for your project though.

KSP1 also suffered from massive feature creep as it turned from a simple little game into a full spaceflight sim; no telling how much spaghetti there is under the hood. In that regard KSP2 should be a lot more efficient. Worst case scenario the CPU performance can't be any worse than KSP1.

Edited July 14, 2021 by Brofessional

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Brofessional said:

KSP1 also suffered from massive feature creep as it turned from a simple little game into a full spaceflight sim; no telling how much spaghetti there is under the hood. In that regard KSP2 should be a lot more efficient. Worst case scenario the CPU performance can't be any worse than KSP1.

I think there isn't a "if" here, I love indie games, but KSP1 is a garage fan built car where KSP2 should be something out of a reputable manufacturer. 

[Lisias]

[snip]

Some of the biggest companies on the World were born from garages, dude. And they shadowed most of the "reputable" manufacturer out there.

Edited July 14, 2021 by Vanamonde

[Bej Kerman]

On 6/21/2021 at 11:56 PM, mattinoz said:

Still a testament to the original game and team that people are still passionate about it 10 years down the track even with almost comical major systems. 

It also says a lot that KSP 1.3 and above have introduced so much to the game yet people stick with it because of the performance. Hopefully there's an inrush of activity here as KSP 2 brings KSP gameplay to people who don't like having every single bit of RAM and CPU power taken up to keep every asset loaded.

On 6/21/2021 at 5:25 AM, Incarnation of Chaos said:

overriding the stock reader with a buffered reader (There's a mod that does this, forgot the author)

BUMP if anyone else remembers this mod's name.

[Lisias]

21 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

BUMP if anyone else remembers this mod's name.

Hyperspace. Clever trick, it replaces the default BinaryReader constructor with one that creates a bigger read buffer, and this speeds up reading things, as you less IO commands for the same file.

At that time, there was a gotcha, however. Apparently this thing was affecting BinaryWriters too and this was kinda annoying when you are debugging things and monitoring the KSP.log, as the file buffer gets bigger too and so the flushing happens with really large amounts of text at once.

ideally, the developer should trim the buffer size to the kind of file he/she is dealing with. Large blobs read at once will benefit from large buffers, but big files made of many, many small chunks of data (as databases) are better served by smaller buffers.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, Lisias said:

Some of the biggest companies on the World were born from garages, dude. And they shadowed most of the "reputable" manufacturer out there.

Wild accusations set aside, I'm pretty sure that you don't have a clear idea of the difference in conditions between the development of KSP1 and KSP2.

Just taking the art assets as an example, after a decade KSP1 doesn't have an uniform art style, just a bunch of different ones, some of which are terrible cases of programmer graphics (looking at you Oscar-B) and the music is mostly if not all taken from royalty free stock tracks from the internet.

In comparison KSP2 not only has an in-house composer, but when they decided to have animated tutorials they hired a dedicated animator.

Yep, sometimes guys from their garages have some crazy idea that change an industry or a genre, but we're not talking about the basic idea here, they already have a blueprint for that, KSP1.

We are talking about the technical aspect, and on that side Intercept has access to the kind of resources Squad couldn't even afford to dream about.

Edited July 14, 2021 by Vanamonde

[Incarnation of Chaos]

5 hours ago, Lisias said:

Hyperspace. Clever trick, it replaces the default BinaryReader constructor with one that creates a bigger read buffer, and this speeds up reading things, as you less IO commands for the same file.

At that time, there was a gotcha, however. Apparently this thing was affecting BinaryWriters too and this was kinda annoying when you are debugging things and monitoring the KSP.log, as the file buffer gets bigger too and so the flushing happens with really large amounts of text at once.

ideally, the developer should trim the buffer size to the kind of file he/she is dealing with. Large blobs read at once will benefit from large buffers, but big files made of many, many small chunks of data (as databases) are better served by smaller buffers.

Yep that's it.

[Dr. Kerbal]

Gulp. 

[Lisias]

8 hours ago, Master39 said:

Wild accusations set aside, I'm pretty sure that you don't have a clear idea of the difference in conditions between the development of KSP1 and KSP2.

It's exactly the other way around.

Spoiler

You appears to think that TT2 is a big company. Well, it's not small, for sure - but there are bigger around there.

I had worked for some of them. Now some of them are my clients.

 

8 hours ago, Master39 said:

Just taking the art assets as an example, after a decade KSP1 doesn't have an uniform art style, just a bunch of different ones, some of which are terrible cases of programmer graphics (looking at you Oscar-B) and the music is mostly if not all taken from royalty free stock tracks from the internet.

And yet, KSP1 has inspired some of the most specialized professionals on the aerospace industry. NASA uses KSP1 for fast prototyping some ideas, just for starters.[Nope, it's the University of Alabama, see my post below...]

Spoiler

 

It's not about how much money you put on it. It's about how you use the money you put on it. People love results, not the money you spent.

 

8 hours ago, Master39 said:

We are talking about the technical aspect, and on that side Intercept has access to the kind of resources Squad couldn't even afford to dream about.

As Boeing/Starline versus SpaceX/Dragon 2 ? 

Big Corps also screws up. Badly. See CDPR Red.  There's no such a thing as "Too Big to Fail" anymore, you can lose your job by buying IBM if the thing doesn't work nowadays.

I don't know if KSP2 will be a huge success, a flop or will have just a moderate response from the market. But I  know that whatever it happens, it will be a direct consequence from how money is spend there, and not how much.

Edited July 14, 2021 by Lisias
Fixing a wrong statement.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Lisias said:

It's exactly the other way around.

  Hide contents

You appears to think that TT2 is a big company. Well, it's not small, for sure - but there are bigger around there.

I had worked for some of them. Now some of them are my clients.

 

And yet, KSP1 has inspired some of the most specialized professionals on the aerospace industry. NASA uses KSP1 for fast prototyping some ideas, just for starters.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

It's not about how much money you put on it. It's about how you use the money you put on it. People love results, not the money you spent.

 

As Boeing/Starline versus SpaceX/Dragon 2 ? 

Big Corps also screws up. Badly. See CDPR Red.  There's no more such a thing as "Too Big to Fail" anymore, you can lose your job by buying IBM if the thing doesn't work nowadays.

I don't know if KSP2 will be a huge success, a flop or will have just a moderate response from the market. But I  know that whatever it happens, it will be a direct consequence from how money is spend there, and not how much.

[snip]

Yep, it's not it's not the idea of making a rocket sim in which you build spaceships out of Legos. That already happened, 10 years ago. On this side of things they don't have to invent a whole new genre like Harvester did back then, they just have to follow the recipe. 

And they could totally screw it up.

But that's not the argument of this topic, [snip]

And from that point of view KSP is barely passable, don't get me wrong, for how it was developed and its story it's a miracle what we got, it's way more than you usually get from comparable indie projects, but still by today's standards the performance of the game is barely acceptable, and it would take actual intentional work to make a 2021 game perform any worse.

 

Again, performance, not innovation, not bugs, not style. Performance.

Edited July 14, 2021 by Vanamonde