KSP2 System Requirements

[MechBFP]

18 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

It's not the code, it's the data the compiler adds to the executable for debugging purposes. That can add up to a lot of bloat and code that runs slower (but, if it crashes, your debugger can step in). The code itself can usually be flagged as "conditional compile" and simply be excluded by setting a flag or compiler variable. It's not being removed, just not compiled.

That is all fair and good, but are we really arguing that is what is causing KSP2's issues in the ESA event?

[Vanamonde]

More posts removed. This is not the place to revisit the history of the game's development companies. Any further such posts will receive warnings. 

[Incarnation of Chaos]

So after three years they decided to go EA, and somehow managed to make this game suck down a RX 6800 for medium at 1080p.

Full disclosure, I meet the specs. Ryzen 9 3950X and a 6800 with 32GB of RAM. 

That doesn't make me any less surprised at the sheer amount of compute power that Intercept has managed to make KSP2 use for graphics that honestly hardly look better than a 10 year old game. 

I know I don't have to buy it in EA (wasn't planning on it), but I seriously doubt they're going to improve performance significantly over the years. KSP 1 improvement was from moving to DX11 from DX9 in the later versions, KSP2 really has nowhere similar to go from here.

If nothing else, I hope we get a good postmortem of KSP2s development.  Until then, discuss below. 

*Activates flame shield*

[Scarecrow71]

Looks like, while you caught the requirements announcement, you missed all the discussion both here and on YouTube by ShadowZone AND the discussion on Discord about this.  Be patient.  Performance will improve with time.  And those specs they gave out are for high-end gamers, not the average person who is going to get the game.  Heck, IG and PD both have come out and stated we need to calm down, and that they didn't communicate effectively, and that they should have worked harder on being a bit clearer on the specs needed.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

How many times have I heard that same thing? Performance will improve with time.

You know how many times I've seen that actually occur? Maybe once, twice in my entire gaming experience.

You know what else they said? We'd get a complete game and not this early access hackjob. I've been willing to give intercept immense slack, but this is just downright shameful.

Forgive me for not caring about what they say about their plans at this point, because they have proven time and time again they won't hold themselves to it

[Scarecrow71]

2 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

How many times have I heard that same thing? Performance will improve with time.

You know how many times I've seen that actually occur? Maybe once, twice in my entire gaming experience.

You know what else they said? We'd get a complete game and not this early access hackjob. I've been willing to give intercept immense slack, but this is just downright shameful.

Forgive me for not caring about what they say about their plans at this point, because they have proven time and time again they won't hold themselves to it

I don't understand why people continue to complain about the upcoming game in one breath, but then in the next say they are going to buy it.  I also don't understand why people complain about something that hasn't even been released yet.  None of us has played this.  None of us has any insight into what will happen in the future.  And unless your name is Nostradamus, you have no ability to predict what is going to happen.

Is anyone capable of just letting things go and waiting to see what actually happens?  Your past experiences with other game companies does not, in fact, mean you will get the same thing here.  Past experience != Future experience.  Plain and simple.

[MechBFP]

4 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

How many times have I heard that same thing? Performance will improve with time.

You know how many times I've seen that actually occur? Maybe once, twice in my entire gaming experience.

You know what else they said? We'd get a complete game and not this early access hackjob. I've been willing to give intercept immense slack, but this is just downright shameful.

Forgive me for not caring about what they say about their plans at this point, because they have proven time and time again they won't hold themselves to it

 Nothing to discuss then. 

[Vorg]

On 2/19/2023 at 1:45 PM, GoldForest said:

The Nvidia power plug problem was confirmed to be user error. I will admit, it is a slightly faulty design for letting a half-out plug overheat itself, but on the other hand, people should be plugging every plug in all the way and securely. It's a double edge sword/catch 22. 

Shouldn't be so easy to not get it plugged in correctly to the point that it melts down. It's a bad design for the power levels it's ment to handle.

[RW-1]

Hey, you will:

 

1. Buy it and run it ok.

2. Buy it and run it at lower settings until you upgrade.

3. Skip it and play KSP (with mods due it likely will look better than 2 stock ... wink wink parallax and Eve volumetrics)

4. Skip it and play KSP until you upgrade and play both.

5. Skip it until you upgrade and then play both.

It's been this way forever.

No one will be totally happy with 2, it's also a fact that rarely a sequel game outdoes the original, and in this case look how long the original took to get where it has, modders included.  Let's revisit my reply on this aspect in 12 years.

 

Edited February 20, 2023 by RW-1

[Incarnation of Chaos]

Just now, Scarecrow71 said:

I don't understand why people continue to complain about the upcoming game in one breath, but then in the next say they are going to buy it.  I also don't understand why people complain about something that hasn't even been released yet.  None of us has played this.  None of us has any insight into what will happen in the future.  And unless your name is Nostradamus, you have no ability to predict what is going to happen.

Is anyone capable of just letting things go and waiting to see what actually happens?  Your past experiences with other game companies does not, in fact, mean you will get the same thing here.  Past experience != Future experience.  Plain and simple.

My post said explicitly I wasn't planning on buying it, so not sure why you mentioned that.

Second you're absolutely right that in most cases you can't reliably extrapolate past experiences from different companies to each other.

Game performance though, that's a different one. In the best case it remains the same from launch to final version, in most cases it regresses as more features are added on in each following version.

Is it possible that they completely botched their multithreading implementation and the performance would improve once resolved? Sure!

Could they have completely flubbed the setup of their render pipeline? 100%

But all of these are issues that don't need a slew of paid beta testers for them to see or resolve, they'd know already.

 

 

[darthgently]

10 minutes ago, RW-1 said:

Hey, you will:

 

1. Buy it and run it ok.

2. Buy it and run it at lower settings until you upgrade.

3. Skip it and play KSP (with mods due it likely will look better than 2 stock ... wink wink parallax and Eve volumetrics)

4. Skip it and play KSP until you upgrade and play both.

5. Skip it until you upgrade and then play both.

It's been this way forever.

No one will be totally happy with 2, it's also a fact that rarely a sequel game outdoes the original, and in this case look how long the original took to get where it has, modders included.  Let's revisit my reply on this aspect in 12 years.

 

Seriously.  It is difficult to fathom the number of likely programming hours involved in KSP1 + popular mods

[TLTay]

This has been a disappointment, OP. 

I don't really know what else can be said that hasn't been said somewhere already.

[Starhawk]

Overlapping threads have been merged.

Thank You For Your Understanding.
Forum Moderation Team

[Bej Kerman]

12 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Then why are the CPU requirements so low? Even with multithreading we should expect higher loads for physics calculations. Is it possible that CPU requirements will increase as EA advanced?

Half of KSP 2's goal is to make the physics run well on high part count vessels.

[dave1904]

27 minutes ago, RW-1 said:

it's also a fact that rarely a sequel game outdoes the original, and in this case look how long the original took to get where it has, modders included.  Let's revisit my reply on this aspect in 12 years

Thats actually not true at all. When it comes to games sequels are more often than not better. 

Red dead 2

Mass effect 2

Arkham city

Halo 2 

Call of duty 2 

Many many more 

Certain parts of originals can be better but when it comes to games sequels are better in most cases. Sequels often have a larger budget and are built on existing mechanics. Not like movies. 

[Bej Kerman]

Talk about the framerate if you like, I personally love the fact that the launch loading times don't leave room to make several cups of tea.

And besides, there's not an apparent physics delta, so at least 20fps doesn't mean waiting 3 times longer to get to orbit

[Profugo Barbatus]

42 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Talk about the framerate if you like, I personally love the fact that the launch loading times don't leave room to make several cups of tea.

And besides, there's not an apparent physics delta, so at least 20fps doesn't mean waiting 3 times longer to get to orbit

Bingo. I'm playing on a modestly modded install, no graphics mods and some content mods. Despite running on an i9-9900k, 32gb ram, M.2 drive and a 4080 gpu, opening the VAB is a "tab out and wait for the music" moment, launching a craft requires me to wait 10-15 seconds for the physics to settle down a bit. And god forbid I hover a complex assembly over something that was made radial, and the game decides to give me 2fps for 30 seconds until it registers my mouse is no longer there and it should stop making 6 clones of it.

I'll gladly take the graphics upgrades and mechanics upgrades we've been given to not have the game freak out every time I open the VAB, and I'll happily deal with a few framerate hiccups in an early access product to not fight bugs from mods battling the inherent limits of KSP1. I basically rage quit for a day from losing a days worth of gameplay because USI life support bugged out and forgot it had any hab time left, which turned my colonists who were in training into tourists, and then broke and didn't turn them back when they were recovered, leaving me stuck with 8 tourists I couldn't do anything with and none of my needed people for colonization. That very nearly made me abandon the save, with the salt I had, and was only saved by a well timed manual quicksave 100 game days earlier.

KSP1 mods are pretty amazing, but they are janky as Kraken soup, and I really think we have to step back and recognize that the game is built for its fans, but us heavily modded people still playing the game hard to this day are the upper percent of the 1% of the audience - Our expectations are far from representative of the experience and actions of the average player. Your average player isn't dealing with compatibility between graphics mods, or putting up with scatterer making landings harder for them. They were never running Near Future Propulsion, or running 800 part grand tour ships. Us wildcards are basically the living walking examples of the worst things KSP2 will be subjected to, and the designers can only do so much to accommodate our insanity.

They've already given us a promise of stabling integrating the largest, most impactful mods both mechanically and visually. We have vastly improved scatter - Not full Scatterer, but its still vastly improved. We have vastly improved planets - Its not Parallax, but its still vastly better. We have a vastly extended parts tree - Its actually already confirmed to be at least as deep as Near Future, and probably Far Future, so full points there. We have vastly expanded colonization - Sorry USI/WOLF, but you never stood a chance in KSP1. We have vastly expanded travel targets - Kopernicus gave us new worlds, and now we're getting them base.  We have vastly expanded multiplayer capability - Mods did exist for these, but I suspect they were not very good just by virtue of the limits of KSP1.

And that's all without bringing in KSP2 modding. Its impressive enough that KSP2 is not just a pure knockout defeat out against KSP1 Modded in comparison. I guarantee you that as modding opens up, the teams responsible for those leading edges in KSP1 will either create or inspire successor mods that continue to push that edge. But the fact they can do that doesn't take away from the impressiveness or the achievement of the KSP2 team in making this version of the game, as it stands today. The fact you can get beautiful individual results atop a janky core for lower specs does not invalidate this more stable core or its demands.

[Multivac]

Eh. Between the high system requirements and multiplayer being at the very very end of the development ladder, I've gone from enthusiastically waiting for KSP2 release day to "I'll get it later, maybe, depending on reviews." For me, pretty graphics have always been a "nice bonus" rather than a must-have feature, and the features I was excited about are a long way off from being released.

I've played KSP1 on a tiny netbook with integrated graphics, and while it wasn't pretty, it ran, and I still had fun. My current computer is better than that, but nowhere near the system requirements that have been posted, and from everything I've seen and read, it doesn't look like I'd be having much fun with KSP2 in its current state. I feel sad, because before the roadmap and, now, the system requirements were released, I was quite excited to get KSP2 as soon as I could. But it looks like I'll be sticking with KSP1 for the foreseeable future, instead.

On a less self-centred note: What about other people who don't have top-of-the-line gaming computers? What about, say, schools? Remember how KSP1 got used to teach kids about space travel? Not a lot of educational institutions have top-of-the-line gaming rigs available for educational purposes. And wasn't making KSP more accessible, like, a core goal with KSP2? That's what the tutorials were about, right? Sky-high system requirements are the exact opposite of making the game accessible.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Multivac

[Bej Kerman]

7 minutes ago, Multivac said:

On a less self-centred note: What about other people who don't have top-of-the-line gaming computers? What about, say, schools? Remember how KSP1 got used to teach kids about space travel? Not a lot of educational institutions have top-of-the-line gaming rigs available for educational purposes. And wasn't making KSP more accessible, like, a core goal with KSP2? That's what the tutorials were about, right? Sky-high system requirements are the exact opposite of making the game accessible.

As with 99% of games, the specs will get lower closer to release. EA isn't for teachers and schools, that's what release is for. EA is for "I want to be a part of the game's development" and "I'm so sick of KSP 1 that whatever issues KSP 2 has couldn't be any worse".

[Multivac]

6 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

As with 99% of games, the specs will get lower closer to release. EA isn't for teachers and schools, that's what release is for. EA is for "I want to be a part of the game's development" and "I'm so sick of KSP 1 that whatever issues KSP 2 has couldn't be any worse".

I... honestly can't imagine someone being "sick" of KSP1 and excited about KSP2. The core gameplay will be the same, especially considering all the features that will make KSP2 really different from KSP1 won't be around for a while longer.

And sure, I certainly hope the system requirements will drop, but, like... by how much? And how soon? I'm not saying I'm definitely never going to buy KSP2, or anything as extreme as that, but it sincerely was something I expected I'd buy on day 1, no questions asked, and now I feel I very much have no choice but waiting and hoping for the best, possibly for a year or more longer, or however long the rest of development will take (and many EA titles stay EA for years...)

(... Actually, considering how many features have yet to be implemented, I'd say it's all but a sure thing that it'll take years. Will that be how long it'll take for the sysreqs to drop, too? And again, by how much?..)

Edited February 21, 2023 by Multivac

[LHACK4142]

1 minute ago, Multivac said:

I... honestly can't imagine someone being "sick" of KSP1 and excited about KSP2. The core gameplay will be the same, especially considering all the features that will make KSP2 really different from KSP1 won't be around for a while longer.

I'm 1000% with Bej here. Every one of their complaints about KSP1, I feel it.

I wanted to make some cool landing legs for a reusable rocket. My plan was to have a beam on a hinge, then a piston connected to the rocket and the beam to actuate the leg. Basically the simplest design possible. Guess what happened when I tried it design out? First, the legs started flopping all over the place. Next, when I tried to retract them, they somehow started spinning on the hinge at ridiculous speeds, leading to an inevitable RUD. 

The last mission I tried was a Duna return mission. I had a rover from the mod Planetside, and I had landed my ship far from it. I had driven that rover a long ways, so I figured I'd be fine. For some reason, though, the rover just wouldn't respond to any input at all. I tried everything, but nothing worked.

KSP1's main gameplay loop is to build a thing, test it, fix it, then repeat. This becomes really tiring if there's a 3-minute loading screen between each 3-minute step. When I run KSP, it inevitably crashes a few hours in. It's actually corrupted my user registry and forced me to re-install my entire operating system. It's just unbearable.

I hope KSP2 does better, but given these requirements and the footage we've seen, it doesn't look too promising. Maybe I'll have to try SimpleRockets2 again.

[Rocket Farmer]

On 2/19/2023 at 4:06 AM, Chibbob said:

Are you sure about that? I feel like 80% is a safe assumption, it would probably be higher.

Per the steam GPU survey it’s somewhere around 50%.
 

so nowhere near 80%.

[Valic Aeronatics]

Everyone is talking about how the new game has high minimum requirements, when my dang laptop from 3 years ago with i7 and GTX 1650 can barely get 20 FPS on regular settings. 

[Bej Kerman]

Just now, Multivac said:

I... honestly can't imagine someone being "sick" of KSP1 and excited about KSP2.

And I honestly can't imagine enjoying the buggy mess KSP 1 still is. KSP 2 is at least still in development, so if for example docking ports weld when the part tree changes, I can at least expect the devs to fix that in the future, as opposed to how Squad gave up on fixing KSP 1, even before 1.12. At least the minor jolts Lowne experienced were fixed with reloads, and weren't baked into the save like with many of KSP 1's bugs (no doubt an indicator of KSP 2's backend improvements). Like, I'm struggling to understand what's so weird about looking forward to the changes to the interface, navigation, backend, etc. that Intercept's made. Half my KSP 1 projects end up shelved because, for example, NERV and Ion engines don't work in timewarp without using mods that just exponentially increase my chance of running into bugs that bring my missions to a complete halt.

8 minutes ago, Multivac said:

The core gameplay will be the same

On the surface level, it looks that way. But then again: workspaces, stock persistent thrust, nuclear reactors, non-impulsive nodes, procedural wings, a proper interface for building fairings. a development team that is still fixing bugs, etc etc etc. The idea that the core gameplay will be the same couldn't be any further from the truth. Yeah, you waited 4 years for Daedalus engines and interstellar contraptions, but in my eyes, not dealing with KSP 1's antiquated gameplay systems, and being able to expect that reported mission-breaking bugs will get fixed at some point, makes the wait worth it.

7 minutes ago, Multivac said:

And sure, I certainly hope the system requirements will drop, but, like... by how much? And how soon?

It depends on Intercept's priorities - I'd imagine if Take Two did force a premature EA (which seems likely given that Intercept before delayed the game repeatedly, likely to prevent such a backlash), then they'd be in a scramble to optimise features they deem ready for optimisation. But specs will definitely lower before 1.0.

[alexalex]

4 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

So after three years they decided to go EA, and somehow managed to make this game suck down a RX 6800 for medium at 1080p.

Full disclosure, I meet the specs. Ryzen 9 3950X and a 6800 with 32GB of RAM. 

That doesn't make me any less surprised at the sheer amount of compute power that Intercept has managed to make KSP2 use for graphics that honestly hardly look better than a 10 year old game. 

I know I don't have to buy it in EA (wasn't planning on it), but I seriously doubt they're going to improve performance significantly over the years. KSP 1 improvement was from moving to DX11 from DX9 in the later versions, KSP2 really has nowhere similar to go from here.

If nothing else, I hope we get a good postmortem of KSP2s development.  Until then, discuss below. 

*Activates flame shield*

 

Have you ever coded anything?  Its pretty clear this game is in the early stages (probably shouldn't be released just yet) with missing core fundamentals such as heat transfer etc, and as such it looks to be very unoptimized.  Personally, I think they are releasing it now because those are the orders from on high they have received rather than thinking its ready themselves which explains the current state of things.  It also doesn't take very much at all for a game, any game, to slow a comp to a crawl.  Just one bad piece of code will do it, and clearly given the letter from Nate he seems to know that there are some big bad pieces of code in there. 

So personally I don't think its the end of the world for KSP2 just yet, rather that its unfortunately following the trend of a lot of modern games and releasing before they should be due to shareholder and corporate pressures.  Myself I will eagerly await EVE volumetrics, finish the mod update I'm working on, and play original KSP while  KSP2 matures.  Eventually KSP2 will surpass KSP1 but it won't be in the first few months after EA release.

 

Edited February 21, 2023 by alexalex