KSP 2 Planet Packs

[Jool the Planet]

How will we be able to write planet packs for KSP 2?

[intelliCom]

2 hours ago, Jool the Planet said:

How will we be able to write planet packs for KSP 2?

By modding the game, though perhaps the process will be different than KSP 1. You'll find out when it comes out.

[Jool the Planet]

17 hours ago, intelliCom said:

By modding the game, though perhaps the process will be different than KSP 1. You'll find out when it comes out.

Ok.

Ik that we use Kopernicus in KSP 1. But, I was thinking about making a planet pack for KSP 2.

[intelliCom]

14 minutes ago, Jool the Planet said:

Ok.

Ik that we use Kopernicus in KSP 1. But, I was thinking about making a planet pack for KSP 2.

For now, I strongly suggest brainstorming ideas for lots of different planets, choose the best ones, write/draw your ideas on what to do with them.

No coding, no software development, just the creative side exclusively.

A few months after the game comes out, someone will have likely made a Kopernicus 2.0 for KSP 2. Since we don't have one at the moment, you will have to wait. For now, just come up with ideas while we wait. You can't make a planet pack for a game that hasn't even come out yet.

[Jool the Planet]

2 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

For now, I strongly suggest brainstorming ideas for lots of different planets, choose the best ones, write/draw your ideas on what to do with them.

No coding, no software development, just the creative side exclusively.

A few months after the game comes out, someone will have likely made a Kopernicus 2.0 for KSP 2. Since we don't have one at the moment, you will have to wait. For now, just come up with ideas while we wait. You can't make a planet pack for a game that hasn't even come out yet.

Ok. I guess I might make a planet pack for KSP 1.12.x for now.

Edited March 4, 2022 by Jool the Planet

[intelliCom]

Just now, Jool the Planet said:

Ok, I guess I might make a planet pack for KSP 1.12.x for now.

I'm not saying you can't design a planet pack for KSP 2, it's just that no software stuff can be done yet.

You could make a few planet packs in KSP 1, then start porting them to KSP 2 when it releases? That would probably work.

[Jool the Planet]

2 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

For now, I strongly suggest brainstorming ideas for lots of different planets, choose the best ones, write/draw your ideas on what to do with them.

No coding, no software development, just the creative side exclusively.

A few months after the game comes out, someone will have likely made a Kopernicus 2.0 for KSP 2. Since we don't have one at the moment, you will have to wait. For now, just come up with ideas while we wait. You can't make a planet pack for a game that hasn't even come out yet.

Or I could remake some discontinued planet packs.

Just now, intelliCom said:

I'm not saying you can't design a planet pack for KSP 2, it's just that no software stuff can be done yet.

You could make a few planet packs in KSP 1, then start porting them to KSP 2 when it releases? That would probably work.

Though, it could be possible that KSP 2 devs would add the planet pack APIs.

[intelliCom]

1 minute ago, Jool the Planet said:

Or I could remake some discontinued planet packs.

That too. All you need to know is that KSP 2 isn't out yet, so you couldn't make planet packs for it if you wanted to.

[t_v]

This seems to be mostly about the API situation around planet packs, but another aspect of planet pack development that I would like to see is the ability to stream planets into the game to circumvent massive file sizes and RAM usage. This is probably going to be a mod rather than the stock game, but a Community Galaxy Pack that hosts all planet packs in the cloud that loads planets when you look at them would be cool. 

[Missingno200]

13 hours ago, t_v said:

the ability to stream planets into the game to circumvent massive file sizes and RAM usage... but a Community Galaxy Pack that hosts all planet packs in the cloud that loads planets when you look at them would be cool. 

Why does everyone love the idea of streaming something in? I know I live in first world America, but a 1 terabyte drive is only 32 bucks. Storage generally should not be a concern at all. I mean, we're not working with the Sega Master System here. Arguably, streaming would consume MORE resources trying to keep track of which planets need to get loaded, and uncompressing everything, because streaming such content means you'd definitely need hefty compression to make sure that you don't kill someone's ADSL.

Oh, speaking of which, streaming resources in would definitely only work in smaller countries, because large countries like the United States of America, Canada, Australia and to an extent Germany/France don't have fast internet nationwide due to just how vast the country is.

[Catto]

they should add DLC planet packs too.

[Jool the Planet]

It would be cool to fly through interstellar space with procedurally generated planets and stars. The gameplay would be similar to Space Engine, but we would be building rockets and then fly them into different solar systems. 

[shdwlrd]

1 hour ago, Missingno200 said:

Why does everyone love the idea of streaming something in?

You're also missing the security aspect too. It's not hard to embed malicious code in image files. The last thing you would want is streaming in files from a public code site with little to no real scrutiny of the files being transferred.

[t_v]

1 hour ago, Missingno200 said:

Why does everyone love the idea of streaming something in? I know I live in first world America, but a 1 terabyte drive is only 32 bucks. Storage generally should not be a concern at all. I mean, we're not working with the Sega Master System here. Arguably, streaming would consume MORE resources trying to keep track of which planets need to get loaded, and uncompressing everything, because streaming such content means you'd definitely need hefty compression to make sure that you don't kill someone's ADSL.

Oh, speaking of which, streaming resources in would definitely only work in smaller countries, because large countries like the United States of America, Canada, Australia and to an extent Germany/France don't have fast internet nationwide due to just how vast the country is.

You’re right on all fronts. File transfer like that would really be bad. But we already know that not every texture is going to be loaded up in RAM upon launch, so maybe having thousands of celestial bodies won’t actually require you to have them all loaded at once. 

[darthgently]

8 hours ago, t_v said:

You’re right on all fronts. File transfer like that would really be bad. But we already know that not every texture is going to be loaded up in RAM upon launch, so maybe having thousands of celestial bodies won’t actually require you to have them all loaded at once. 

I'm nearly certain that even in the current game not all textures for the bodies are loaded at start time.  Gilly textures and terrain geometry, for example, probably don't load from disk until you are in the SOI of Gilly for example.  I'm pretty sure, but do not know for sure.  I'd bet $10.  That is how sure I am.  $10 sure.  Not $100 sure

[t_v]

19 minutes ago, darthgently said:

I'm nearly certain that even in the current game not all textures for the bodies are loaded at start time.  Gilly textures and terrain geometry, for example, probably don't load from disk until you are in the SOI of Gilly for example.  I'm pretty sure, but do not know for sure.  I'd bet $10.  That is how sure I am.  $10 sure.  Not $100 sure

I know that when I install more planets, they are loaded into RAM when the game launches and take time to load. I know the textures aren’t rendered, but they are not dynamically loaded in, they are all kept loaded. That sort of goes beyond just planets, having parts and stuff load and unload when needed would do wonders for startup time and memory usage while playing. 

[darthgently]

3 minutes ago, t_v said:

I know that when I install more planets, they are loaded into RAM when the game launches and take time to load. I know the textures aren’t rendered, but they are not dynamically loaded in, they are all kept loaded. That sort of goes beyond just planets, having parts and stuff load and unload when needed would do wonders for startup time and memory usage while playing. 

Are they really loaded in or just verified to exist and perhaps indexed?  I wonder if that is just they way mods work and the stock body textures work in a more sane way.  Can mods load textures after startup?  If not, it might explain why they'd be loaded up front.  Still, I find it hard to believe that even with mods, in 2022, graphics resources wouldn't be loaded on demand via a cache

[t_v]

I don’t know, but I heard somewhere that KSP 1 didn’t have dynamic loading (which I really hope is fixed for KSP 2). Can someone more knowledgeable about how things are loaded confirm or deny this?

Edited March 5, 2022 by t_v

[Missingno200]

19 hours ago, t_v said:

I don’t know, but I heard somewhere that KSP 1 didn’t have dynamic loading (which I really hope is fixed for KSP 2). Can someone more knowledgeable about how things are loaded confirm or deny this?

I'm pretty sure it had dynamic loading, but only for the planerts. It most certainly did not for the textures of your vessels, exemplified perfectly by the fact that no matter what you did, KSP would occasionally screw up and seriously blur textures no matter you texture setting(this was during I believe 1.2.)

[K33N]

There are so many types of exoplanets that there is no way that all of them will be in the game. There is a lot of room to explore!

[Catto]

DLC planet packs. Even if there's only one.

[awsumguy76801]

I had been wondering of the guys who make OPM would port it to KSP 2

[Jool the Planet]

On 3/12/2022 at 3:24 PM, awsumguy76801 said:

I had been wondering of the guys who make OPM would port it to KSP 2

Especially with Glumo.

[intelliCom]

On 3/5/2022 at 3:59 AM, Jool the Planet said:

It would be cool to fly through interstellar space with procedurally generated planets and stars. The gameplay would be similar to Space Engine, but we would be building rockets and then fly them into different solar systems. 

So basically mixing Minecraft's "infinite" randomly-generated worlds with KSP?

That sounds absolutely amazing, but I feel that the size of a file would start to increase drastically as a result, trying to keep track of all the newly generated terrain. Unless it simply reloads the terrain from a seed; especially since landmass isn't modifiable like Minecraft's blocks are. All you'd need to record are craft co-ordinates on each world, then re-render the terrain directly from a seed. It saves hard drive space, but it would likely result in longer loading times and stronger lag when reloading terrain.

Though, then again, if No Man's Sky can do it, KSP could surely do it too.