AMA 3 - Art Director Kristina Ness Answers

[Dakota]

Below is a transcript from the Ask Me Anything we did with Art Director Kristina Ness on 6/29. You can find a VOD of the AMA here: 

 

TRANSCRIPT

If there are any issues/misspellings, feel free to @ me <3

hello Kristina, how are you today? (paradact, Discord)

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I'm good. Thank you for asking. And, please call me Ness. I go by Ness here.

Yeah, I'm having a good day. I'm excited for this AMA. Right before Dakota was counting us in, And Loreno and I were watching the new Dune Part Two trailer. So hype! My energy is very high right now. 

a few questions, how did you get involved with ksp? do you play the game? Do you like the art you do, or are you the only one who doesn't- and then everyone else does? (MMDMK5, Discord)

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So yeah, a few few answers here. Okay, how did I get involved in KSP? So, several years ago, I actually worked on a game with a group of ex-KSP1 devs. And they actually, I really got along with them, really enjoyed working with them, really liked the project we were working on. And they kind of taught me like the basics of ship construction and what thrust-to-weight ratio is and how "No, Ness, you can't design a ship with like that's asymmetrical because this is what happens when you apply thrust and a vector." And so it I had a really great time working with them. And then when I saw this job pop up here at Intercept on KSP2. I was like, well, it's probably very similar personality styles and content that I'll be working on. And it sure has been and I had a great time. I had a great time with ex-KSP devs.

As far as do I play the game? Yes, I do play the game. I played KSP1 for a bit very badly way back when and now that I'm working on KSP2, I've had to try to not play the game badly here. I've gotten a lot of help from folks on the team who are more knowledgeable - everyone is really, really open to like sharing and skilling up folks on the team who don't have like the deep KSP knowledge that maybe other folks on the team do have. So we've got a good mix of like veterans and new to KSP devs kind of bringing all their influences to the game.

So I do play the game often. And actually, the first time I got to the Mun, I was showing my dad the game I worked on. And I was very hype - I don't think he understood the importance of that. But he was there to witness it which I like. 

And yeah, I do not like my own work. I think that is a common sentiment among artists. 

Actually, funnily enough, this just happened last week, I had to send Nate, our creative director, one of my concepts being like "is this good?" And he told me to be quiet.

How did you choose what art style you wanted KSP2 to have? In order words, how did you decide what to keep and what to change from KSP 1's less cartoonish art style? (tortoise6, Discord)

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Yeah, there's so there's a couple questions that are similar to this. So I think we'll kind of answer them in chunks. But to kind of focus in on this specifically, how did we decide to kind of what to keep and what to change from KSP1's kind of more heavily stylized appearance. So going forward on KSP2, and from the start, our style has been informed by the project goals mostly. So first off, you know, weighing, a lot of our focus on player customization. So stuff like team colors, being able to leverage current, you know, game development technologies like PBR, which is Physically Based Rendering, which allows us to get materials that are in game that are way more indicative of the way the materials would behave in the real world under, you know, realistic lighting and material conditions.

Also, we wanted to showcase more of a diversity of materials, incredible team color patterns on these vehicle parts. So a lot of it is actually informed by some of the kind of like, just technological advancements in the game's engine, you know, area that we can focus on.

But also when it comes to kind of depicting future tech and KSP2. we really wanted this like clean and futuristic aesthetic. The found by the side of the road kind of style of KSP1, I think it's hilarious. I think it's such a fun conceit for a game. But in a game like KSP2, where we're going to depict like, massive cities in space, and the player is actually going to be doing things that human race currently can't do yet, yet. It made more sense to kind of update the style of our parts as well to match.

What approach, flow chart, or other method and metric, do you use to analyze how silly or serious certain design elements are allowed to be? Would you want thing to be sillier? More serious? (non_newtonian, Discord)

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Okay, this is actually a really good question. And I'm gonna get kind of abstract with this answer. So please bear with me.

So the balance of silly and serious is something we have conversations about constantly in the office with with all departments, not just with art, also with like UI and narrative and kind of like art-adjacent departments as well. And when I joined the team, as I was having all these conversations, and just kind of getting used to, you know, the style of KSP2, and what had been worked on before I joined, what started to solidify in my mind was that there's really this silly seriousness, kind of push and pull between the Kerbals and everything that the Kerbals have, you know, built lore wise, like they built the KSC, they technically, you know, built the UI in the game, because it's, it's all part of their, it's all part of their, their own world, that they're physically building kind of the background lore, and then also the seriousness of the universe that they inhabit, and all these celestial bodies.

And what came to mind for me and what kind of becomes like a guiding light for me is there's a, there's a comedy routine called straight-man/funnyman. And in Japan, it's called Manzai, which is, it's like a comedy duo kind of like Abbott and Costello, where there's one man who's like, real goofy and silly, and, like, always messes up and then there's a straight man who's like "Come on, buddy, get it together, get it together." And in my mind, when I when I think about like high level decisions and artistic decisions on KSP2, I always think, "Okay, well, is this an asset that the Kerbals are in charge of? Because they are this like, Goofy, funny man. Or is this an asset that is supposed to speak to the seriousness of kind of the the star system around them, the Kerbolar system, and that would be way more serious. So I kind of put things in those two buckets, and I evaluate kind of the sliding scale of silly versus seriousness based on a comedy act.

Aside from KSP 1, are there any particular artists, films, or real-life space exploration missions that influenced your creative decisions? (Heretic391, Forums)

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Absolutely. I don't think you can make a game like KSP2 in a vacuum without being influenced or influencing kind of like the surrounding sci fi media landscape.

Personally, for me, I've always been a big fan of science fiction, I actually realized recently that all of my work in the industry has only been on Sci-Fi games, which kind of tracks honestly, I'm a huge sci fi fan as well. I read Martian Chronicles when I was really young, like God bless Ray Bradbury national treasure, Martian Chronicles, I think is like a absolute must read. It's anthological, it kind of talks about this, you know, hopefully near future society where we're living on Mars and we've colonize Mars and there's there's humans doing deep space travel. And there's like one story very specifically about out a little girl, I can't remember the exact narrative structure around it. But she knows that if she goes to space, her like, body will atrophy and her muscles will atrophy. But she still wants to get to space. And there is something about that. And that uncertainty and that excitement that has just like, lodged itself deep, deep in my brain. And then I've been obsessed with sci fi ever since then. 

I also interned at NASA. For a while, I was doing educational public outreach on the ICESat-2 team at Goddard. And so it was all kinds of stuff of like, "how do we explain the ICESat-2 instrument that's going to be on this?" obviously, the satellite that is now in orbit and giving us very, very valuable data, topological data about kind of the changing polar ice caps, as well as just general topological data all over the earth right now. It it does one orbit every 90 minutes, and it covers the entire Earth. And so, so I worked on my set to team on educational public outreach, and then I also was able to attend that satellite launch. And that's another little seed that's just like, burned in my brain forever. 

SCIFI FOR LIFE

Any experience from other space games that can be carried over?  (Kerbart, Forums)

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Previous to joining Intercept, I worked at System Aerosoftworks on the game ASTRONEER. And they're also doing spherical planets. Right? There's, there's not a lot of games out there doing like fully spherical planets that are traversable. And really kind of convey a different viewpoint of our universe to players, right? Like, even, you know, we won't dig too far into this because I feel like I have a conversation about this every day. But, you know, all all game engines are built with like flat levels in mind. They're not made to support spherical mesh, spherical planets. And so it's very, I think, special and rare when you get games that are trying to do what is hard. And what is very rare to show. And I think it's important to bring that kind of unique, literal viewpoint to the rest of humanity. And so, yeah, ASTRONEER is one of them. KSP2 is other, obviously, Outer Wilds does it as well, EVE. Yeah, yeah. As far as my personal background, it's been ASTRONEER, it's been a lot of stylized games. I worked on the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, I worked on Hob from Runic Games. I've worked on League of Legends.

How do you tackle animating the more complex science parts in the upcoming Science update? (pleysu, Discord)

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Yeah, we have a one man band for our animation department. His name is Paul Zimmer. And Zim is an absolute powerhouse. And so he animates everything you see in game, and that goes from Kerbals, to parts to what have you.

And so basically, when we have like a complex science part, Zim references heavily, he goes back and forth with subject matter experts that we have on the team, making sure that we're trying to like depict, even though it's goofy, even though it's silly, even though it's, you know, more on the stylized side, our parts. We still want to make sure that we're rooted in reality. So we always reference and then we always iterate. So we have first pass, he shows it off, we give critique, he takes that critique, he goes back, he does another iteration, he shows it off, right? very iterative process. We think about, you know, camera, okay, the camera, because we've got kind of like a free cam and KSP2, it's gonna be able to move 360 around this part. So we're gonna want things that move all over the part, right? We're not just playing to one kind of viewpoint. So, you know, a lot of kind of like, General Good Game Dev practices, but then also the subject matter. We need to be able to reference real life aspects.

How many "real-life" rocket parts should we expect in the game like Dragon Capsules? Or will that be left to modders? (emberskymedia, Discord)

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Oh, yes. So all our parts, we try to pay homage to like real world rocket parts. But if we want to, like depict real world parts like the Dragon capsule or something, we need permission. We have a legal team who watches what we do. And so if you're out there you have the power to help give us that permission, please get in touch. But yeah, otherwise everything we do is probably just going to be little winks and nudges.

How were the new Kerbal spacesuits designed?. (TwoCalories, Forums)

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Yeah, so this is actually I just learned this tidbit the other day when I was researching this answer. So when we design actually, things that are going to be complex in the game, like this Kerbal Space Suit, we'd like to get a concept. And so. Nate Simpson, our creative director, very early on in the project, he actually told me, this might be one of the very first concepts ever made for KSP2 were these Kerbal spacesuits. And I actually think they're very, very close to what is made it in game, right?

So, you know, this is again, just like Good Game Dev practices. We start with looking at reference, we start with looking at what KSP1 did, we start with looking at what's out there in the real world. And then we create a concept 2d concept like this, that concept art gets handed off to 3d artists. And then they do a first pass, they come back, we give feedback and critique. And then they go back and do another iteration, right? And then it gets put in game, it gets animated all that good stuff.

But yeah, you're looking at a very first KSP2 concept art ever made.

How did you approach the creation of textures for the various parts? (Heretic391, Forums)

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Yeah, yeah, good question. So we have an absolutely like, All Star, 3D art parts team here at Intercept. And, and Chris Adderley, from the design team, who I think you all know - he is our kind of design liaison who works very, very closely with our 3D Art team here, to conceive and iterate and finalize those vehicle parts. And so when it comes specifically to the textures, one of our senior artists, Jonathan Cooper, who has created a really really useful kind of style guide that all the artists look at and kind of reference as they go.

So we've got kind of a uniform default material for any bare vehicles don't have team colors applied to them. And default properties are shared across all parts on this bare material, because we want all parts to match when you kind of click them together. We also have other standard materials such as like our gold, MLI, the multi layer insulation, reentry tiles, as well, if they're ceramic, they're all gonna look very, very similar.

But then after that, we allow flexibility for artists to apply different materials that will differentiate the various components across maybe a part, especially if it gets more complex, you don't want everything with the same metal all the time, always right?

But that said, when we differentiate between materials, we want those choices to be like rooted in reality. And we very much believe that form follows function here, especially in a game like KSP2. So we want to lean into the functionality and the believability, right? We always have a functional story in mind when we make choices about breaking away from that default material, right? For example, does this metallic alloy have carbon in it, right? Does is material darker from being exposed to like heat or a flame? Like I said, Coop has like a massive documentation that is really, really useful when it comes to something like this, especially when we're working on a large team. And we work very closely with other disciplines. And we want to make sure we're all on the same page.

So we try to make sure that artists also have good references and like photo reference and realistic reference, if they're making materials that like, definitely exist in real life like carbon fiber. We want to make sure it's accurate to what is going on in the current aerospace industry. But if it's futuristic, if like we're looking at something future tech that doesn't exist, all concepts will also come with like material notes. And again, we go to our subject matter experts and make sure that we're we're doing you guys justice.

What are your plans in regards to tweaking UI after all of the feedback you have received about it? (acid_burn9, Discord)

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Okay, so *shock* we're still in early access, which means that you guys are going to keep seeing kind of our art iterate over time, and that definitely extends and includes the UI of the game. So that said, you know, we've got features, UI features, that are not in yet. For example, like, what is currently planned, we've got a spec for a triumph notification, which is, you know, when you land on a celestial body, the Kerbals should send you a little pop up, that is like celebrating your achievement, you know? Right now, you only get a little pop up when you plant a flag. But I know the UI team is really, really eager to lean into like, the Kerbal flavor of the UI and like, what we can do to get more of their personality and more of that silliness on a sliding scale into, you know, moment to moment gameplay and moment to moment actions that the player does.

Also, the UI is inspired by, you know, obviously real flight instruments, ASCII art, I think you can see some of the details that are very ASCII-ified along the edges of our UI in game, and also IDEs, which for non-engineers in chat, that stands for an Integrated Dev Environments or Development Environment, like Visual Studio, like coding software.

And so we wanted to make sure those visuals were kind of integrated into the UI, because the overall conceit that our UI team has come up with for the UI is that it is the Kerbal Operating System, it is what all the Kerbals at the Kerbal Space Campus use in during their, you know, flight missions and to build with and so because the UI is lore wise, built by the Kerbals, there's a lot of kind of Kerbal humor, we can lean into there and more silliness that we can inject into the game. Yeah. So on screen is an example of like, some of the visual reference that our UI team is looking at, you know, ASCII art, emoticons, you know, realistic flight instruments, old operating systems, IDEs there at the bottom. And so I think a lot of people have responded positively to that kind of like retro inspiration. And again, it's the lore that really doesn't get conveyed in the game there about the UI is that the Kerbals built this OS and so there's gonna be some like, goofy aspects of it. And we can't wait to show you guys what's coming.

How do you think kerbals take in energy and how could this be modelled in the future (my theory is photosynthesis) (clayel, Discord)

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I mean, my personal head canon is that they photosynthesize because they're green, and they come in different shades of green, and they poof, disappear. I mean, that is not mainstream canon. But that's what I choose to believe.

When it comes to future tech and there’s no real-life equivalent to grab photos of, what does the team use for inspiration? Do you have any favorite reference sources for what these technologies should look like? (pschlik, Discord)

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Yes. Okay. So I went to, again, our kind of parts designer, Chris Adderley, to talk about this question, because, like I mentioned, he's really our design liaison on the parts team to make sure that we are kind of depicting our vehicle parts as accurate as possible, right?

And so he loves rocket punk. That was his number one bit of feedback. So he takes a lot of inspiration from more realistic sci fi films and art, the rocket punk aesthetic, which is heavily like references the kind of 50s classic space-race space-age aesthetic of like Soviet and USA going at it trying to get to the Moon and beyond. Some like media reference of this, here's some more book references Jules Verne. He depicts rocket punk and a lot of his stories. The manga and anime Planetes also depicts kind of that rocket punk, again that like 50s, NASA, Soviet-style rocketry, and then future stuff that we put in the game can involve actually working backwards from theoretical NASA papers.

So, we had to stand up once on the art team, where we were, you know, stand up, we go one by one, each artist, each designer, each engineer, talking about what we're doing for that day, if there's any blockers, if anyone needs to follow up with anyone else on the call, it just kind of helps keep us all on the same page. And we got to Adderley and he was like, "Yeah, I'm just kind of reading this, like NASA white paper about what this theoretical fuel type would be like. And so that's my day" and we had to be like, "Wait, stop. Everyone. Shush. Chris, share your screen. What the heck are you working on?" And he's like, "oh, yeah, well, you know, this is a" -  You know, he shared screen and it's like, got the NASA stamp in the corner and it's got like this like, you know, diagram of like fuel flow through a motor and it's all very like, yeah. Plain. It's like it's like a diagram, right? And then he flip screens. He's like, this is what I think it would look like. And it's a full engine that he's like, you know, gray-boxed out and mocked up for the artists and we're like "oh my god can we patent this?" It's like, are we even allowed to? So? Yeah, we we take our research seriously,

What is your favorite part for vehicles(like engines, landing legs, etc.) that you and the art team got to work on concepts for? (novaraptortv, Discord)

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Yeah, yeah. So personally, personal preference. I like all the solar panels. I think there's like a huge variety of not just like shape and look of them. Oh, yeah. Here's, here's like a little video of one of our 3D artists Alex Martin, kind of walking through a material update he was doing to some of the solar panels and when he zooms in Oh, that's so nice. So again, this capture is from in 3D software program that he was doing to generate these kind of new materials and textures but I love how like, whimsical all the solar panel like unveiling animations are. I really love the look of this like gold and kind of blue, the solar cells. I also think, personally, I build very goofy vehicles. And I like using solar panels. For the purposes..... I've got some I've got some screenshots for you guys later. But yeah, they're interesting shapes. I feel like they're if you're doing like weird non rocket creative builds that you can, you can use solar panels for a lot of stuff. So yeah, yeah, these are my favorites.

 

 

What is your favourite looking part? (extra points for parts that haven’t been shown yet) i love the game and all the art btw, the visuals are absolutely stunning! (zerozeros, Discord)

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Thank you zerozeros. And because you were so nice. We've got a part reveal for you here. I don't know if this was shown in dev diary. But we're also going to show it here.

This is the mini lab. This is going to be a part of this science suite of vehicle parts that you can deploy to gain those sweet, sweet points. And yeah, we're calling this the mini lab, you can see some green goo right there. And again, I love the whimsical animation. I always love the look of MLI actually, on fact, at Goddard, I got to see the room where they sew and like quilt the MLI altogether. And it's just a bunch of like very sweet, older women sitting in a room with a bunch of like heavy duty industrial sewing machines. And they make these like, perfectly tailored, like, you know, insulation wraps for all of the satellites and rocket parts. And I think if I wasn't working in games, that might be my dream job.
 

 

In terms of KSP2's development, what would an idealised/exceptional asset artist be like to your team? (Kavaeric, Discord)

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Yeah, thank you for this question. I love all the game dev questions, too, because we're here, not just educate about space travel, but also how games are made.

So you know, I could talk about artistic skill and portfolio and, you know, just understanding the software and the engines that we're building in. But what we screen very heavily for here at Intercept - and we hire a lot of folks who don't necessarily have traditional game dev backgrounds, right? KSP2, we hire a lot of folks from the aerospace industry. We just hired a producer the other day who comes from JPL, Hi Kyro!

So what part of what we look for what I like looking for an art team is someone who is creative and curious. I would, you know, you don't hear about it a lot - maybe you do depending on what GDC talks you listen to, but I value soft skills very, very highly people who are open to differing ideas, willing to take feedback, positive in their interactions with cross discipline, you know, willing to talk to design, willing to talk to engineering, willing to work with QA, right? Someone who understands the game dev pipeline, someone who wants to learn more, who's curious about the subject matter that we're working on? Yeah, soft skills are huge for me.

 

 

What is the process for choosing the design for different planets and moons in the game? (funnyguy7749, Discord)

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Yes. Okay, good question. This is fun. So if you want to know more about this, we have a GDC talk that we did, which is Game Developers Conference. It's kind of like a big industry conference that happens for game devs. And our, we were sent there in March, myself, Jon Cioletti, our tech artist, Sung Campbell, one of our Principal Environment Artists, Brandon Orden, who is our Senior Environment Artist, and Mike Azzinaro, who is one of our graphics engineers -  flew up, flew over to San Francisco and gave a big talk about the spherical mesh and how we create, you know, planets and celestial bodies in KSP2, and so if you want more info, check that out.

 

But the cliffnotes version is that for the Kerbolar system, we really obviously looked at the first game, we wanted to retain the identity, and also the kind of physical challenges that come with landing on various celestial bodies. For example, so we wanted to represent kind of like design challenges visually, we consider that to kind of the intersection of design and art is user experience. And it goes past just interacting with like UI, right?

This is user experience, to me the fact that those darker kind of mare zones on the Mun which mimic the mare on the moon, they are flat, and there's way less scatter and they're easier to land on. And then the heavily cratered kind of lighter areas of Mun there - they look way busier, right? They're way more higher detail there, you're gonna have a slightly of a harder time landing there. So so that kind of visually conveys that landing puzzle. And we always every celestial body in the solar system and beyond, will have some kind of learning puzzle that is conveyed visually.

And  also, when it came to KSP2, we wanted to add more physical credibility. So like really getting hyper detailed with like the clouds on Jool and making sure that they were as accurate and fluffy as a gas giant should have.

For upcoming star systems that are not rooted in KSP1, it began with research on exoplanets, and like exotic celestial bodies. So the research you can see at the top here, obviously, this is for Kerbolar system celestial bodies, Eeloo and Moho. But the process is still the same. And so it starts with talking to design, getting references you can see up there, I think that's the like reference board for Eve, what kind of the real- life analogues we were looking at, and some of like kind of the aspirational stuff we wanted to show, We get a concept made, then at the bottom, those are actually two 2D illustration concepts of Eeloo and Moho.

So starts with design, we brainstorm, we figure out the landing puzzle, then it gets a concept, then it goes over to environment, either Sung or Brandon, one of those two, to flesh it out using various software programs and terrain tools in order to create the topology and the textures, that then get adjusted so that as the camera as the player moves in and out of, you know, right up close to the planet's surface, you know, through the cloud layer, if it has clouds, in the atmosphere, and then up into orbit, that it's smooth, and that that transition feels as good and as fluid as possible. We don't have loading screens between the landing and taking off a planet here in this game, which is a technical challenge that is actually really fun to work around. So finally, after all that's kind of ironed out, then we have kind of create bespoke rocks and meshes and scatter to kind of populate the surface of the celestial bodies with

 

 

What is the priority list on graphics improvements? (spicat, Discord)

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Yes. Okay. Not going too much into the details, there is an excellent dev diary by our graphics, one of our graphics engineers Mortoc on the forums.

Our kind of first priority is updating our terrain tessellation system from PQS to CBT, which stands for Concurrent Binary Trees. This will allow us to have a much much higher level of detail when players are actually approaching and on the surface of these celestial bodies. And it will also have some major performance improvements. So that's number one for us. In that dev diary, he also talks about kind of our next priority, which is updating our render pipeline to HDRP which I believe just stands for High Def Render Pipeline versus Universal Render Pipeline. This is all Unity game engine jargon, you know, since we started the game, a new Unity version has come out with some updated tools we want to take advantage of. And then you know, next I think on the high level priority scale when it comes to graphics improvements? Clouds, atmosphere and water and we should have news on that for you guys soon(tm).

 

 

Will the Pyramids ever come back? (gordonlemons, Discord)

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Um, I may or may not have had a conversation with Matthew Poppe, one of our artists about that yesterday, so......

 

 

Do you have any plans for making planets so realistic to the point where no visual enchancments mods will be needed? Or visual mods will continue existing? (norminaluser, Discord)

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I'm gonna steal Addlery's line here like "modders gonna mod" like, they're gonna do it, I encourage you guys to do it. I don't want to discourage or stop anyone from doing any kind of mods on KSP2. You guys are super talented.

You know, that said that our concurrent binary tree update is coming. It will bring an added level of realism to the game as well to kind of get it, get it to a comfortable or a higher level space, you know, more higher visual fidelity is what I'm trying to say.

I think the question is really like, where do you draw the line? Like, I think in any game process, you can really get into the weeds on like, depicting realism in a game engine. And at a certain point, like, video games are just an abstraction of real life. And the level of abstraction depends on resources, including, like, personal resources that the people working on the game have, like the motivation and inspiration and stuff like that. And so you know, similar to how we kind of have to draw a line when it comes to depicting physics, right? Like, we can't depict accurate n-body physics because I don't know if NASA even has like accurate math to depict n-body physics. We were kind of forced to draw a line there. And similarly, we're kind of like forced to draw a line. We'll push the visuals as far as we can go. We've got a very dedicated, very senior team working on this who have tons of plans already to update this game throughout early access and beyond. So, our goal is always to make a beautiful or inspiring game and you know, modding is part of that.

 

 

Was it hard converting the art for the Kapybara and Kerbug into the models that will be used in the game for them? (thespacepeacock, Discord)

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Well, let me tell you how we sent our entire art team on a research to a farm....no.

Actually, funnily enough, I do have a little bit of Art Director art to show you guys here. Of the Kerbugs, the inception of the Kerbug.

This is a  paint over of a very early version of Cooper's loading screen for the Research Station, I think. And this is where the Kerbug originates from, I wanted a bug on that telescope lens that the Kerbal scientist was getting surprised by. And I drew it with a little capsule head and six eyes. And then the whole art team was like "Yeah, we're gonna make a bug." And that is how the Kerbug was born.

 

What are your thoughts on ways to allow further customization, such as finer control over painting of surfaces, icon/stamp applications, etc? (funphaze, Discord)

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So, plug we're hiring a senior tech artist for KSP2 to help out with this exact thing.

https://www.interceptgames.com/#jobs

So short answer, yes, I would love - we've got plans for further customization of vehicle parts, for more user control over vehicle, you know, customization, whatever that means. And we need another tech artist to help us out on this team. Basically, that tech artist will be working directly with Chris Adderly's feature team, all the vehicles artists, all the parts artists, we call them partists. And so please check out our website and apply to that role because we want you!

 

 

Are there many discussions between the different teams that start with the artists? (sylvifisthaug, Discord)

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Yeah, that start with the artists? Yes. Our entire team is very collaborative, we do a lot of cross discipline work. So for example, on our art team, we work really closely with the designers to make sure, right, we're depicting their user experience the UX, visually as well, so that we can help convey that information to players. And then, like our tech artists, and our environment artists work daily, very, very closely with the graphics engineers, who are obviously on the engineering team. And so, so much so that our, you know, our environment artists are incredibly technically minded. Our tech artists, Jon Cioletti, got dubbed an honorary Junior Graphics Engineer the other day, you know, so there's a lot of kind of cross-pollination here, you it has to happen on a game. That's also just like, Good Game Dev Practices is making sure everyone's talking to each other.

 

How do you start on designs? Do you usually try to make it realistic from the start, or do you try something else? (FailSpace, Discord)

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Yeah, it um, it depends on the asset. When it comes to, you know, it actually comes back to that question, we talked about the start, which is, is it silly? Or is it serious? Right? Like, okay, lore wise, is this a naturally occurring asset? Is this something that's going to occur on a celestial body, okay, then we have to lean into, like the seriousness of it, and have it rooted in reality and rooted in geology and kind of tell a cohesive, you know, historical story to where it came from, how it existed, how it fits into, like the larger universe, etc, etc.

And if it's something the Kerbals built, we can go weird. We can go a little goofy, you know, we can have, you know, all of our parts are slightly stylized. And I've had some really, really fun chats with Adderley about this, about like, shape language, and our parts and our vehicles all have like a subtle kind of stylization and shape language to them, because they're made by the Kerbals and the Kerbals are the most stylized thing in the game. Right? They are abstractions, entire abstractions. So not only just have like little humans, but also like concepts of like these big optimistic little creatures. And so yeah, it again, we take a step back, we look, where is this asset fit into what category and then that kind of determines how realistic we need to push the envelope on for it.

 

 

How do you plan to approach the visual appearance of aerodynamic effects and how they'll transition into the re-entry effects at high enough speeds? Great work on the game's visual design so far by the way! (Dibznr, Discord)

Quote

Yes. So we have plans to be much more communicative, visually communicative, about the moment to moment aerodynamics that are happening in the game, and overall across all of KSP2. So eventually, aspirationally, we want to show different plasmas during reentry on different atmospheres, Mach effects should appear at Mach, etc, all of that. So again, like I was saying earlier, this ties into depicting UX and gameplay feedback for the player, but also to look sick as hell.

 

 

What's your favourite part of working on this game? (samalanda_, Discord)

Quote

It's the people who work on this game. Yes, yes. The lovely folks in this room and beyond. This building and all over. We're a distributed team, we've got plenty of remote workers. Actually, we have a joke that we say like KSP2 has 24/7 -  someone's working on it 24/7 because we got folks all over the world, you know, working on this game. But no, seriously, I think I'm, I'm not just saying this for the stream, I promise. But like, more so than any other studio I've worked at - these are some of the smartest co-workers I've ever had. Everyone's incredibly supportive of each other. It is, I feel like, you know, as an artist, our artists are so open to showing early iterations of their work, because they're not, they're not like scared of showing their work here, right? Because everyone is so willing to offer a respectful and thoughtful critique. And, you know, no one's got like weird rivalries or anything or any kind of drama, like our art team is really solid and even beyond the art team. The whole studio is just like, so, so clever. And we're working on something here on KSP2 that no other game is really doing. You know, orbital mechanics, real world rocketry, entire star system in one game, and more star systems to come. You know, our folks, not just Adderley but like our tech artists and our graphics engineers, they're reading theoretical white papers about how to make our spherical you know, star systems work. It's challenging, but it's very, very rewarding to work on. And I love coming to work and talking to everyone I talk to day to day.

 

 

What is your vision for KSP? (xytronix, Discord)

Quote

I know I could talk about this for a long time. So cut me off and it goes on.

Very high level. I think that specifically, science fiction media has a history of depicting things that don't exist yet -  that then exist because they are now in the cultural zeitgeist. As an example, Star Trek, right, Star Trek depicted tablets, it depicted, you know, automatic doors, it was, I love the production design on Star Trek, even just the like visuals and their UI, I can't remember the name for that aesthetic, but they're beautiful. And even the costume......anyway, Star Trek, the Production Designers influenced Apple! And I don't know if there's other genres that you can point to that do that for society.

And so I think there's a moral imperative to be respectful stewards of the next steps of human existence, and also technology when it comes to space travel, and just you know, how humans interact with the stuff around them. This is from Star Trek, right? And that's, that's boiling it down to its very simplest form. But I think that's important.

And I think, you know, we hear stories all the time about how KSP has influenced someone to study aeronautics or study, you know, go to NASA, you know, and this game has so much potential to genuinely normalize space travel and normalize planetary colonization to humans. I know that is a lofty goal, but it's happened before in other you know, sci-fi media.

To Infinity and Beyond! We can do it!

 

 

With a fresh start under unified management and a dev strategy from the get-go, how does the team ensure art assets made now still look relevant months, even years from now? (Kavaeric, Discord)

Quote

This is a fun question, because this is also kind of like a broader Game Dev question. It's a challenge. Honestly, when it comes back to is just good art foundations. KSP2, like I was saying earlier, all our vehicles have a slight stylization to them, right? Very, very slight. All our buildings are Kerbals. The game itself, slightly slightly stylized - and stylization, and stylized games to me, have a timelessness to them, right? Because they are cartoony, they age very gracefully, right? And so I think, first off to just having art that looks relevant months, even years from now is bingo, we've got that stylization and then also just, you know, leaning into good art foundations, you know, rhythm, shape, language, color, form. We've got a very senior experienced art team here who have an eye on foundations and making sure that this game can look as good as it can for as long as it can.

 

 

will there ever be a shiny kerbal, like how you can get shiny pokemon? (gamernamedian, Discord)

Quote

Oh, man. So fun, funnily enough, there kind of is something we're working on along these lines. It's not it's not a shiny, I'm sorry, it's not shiny. But um, as you generate Kerbals you may be able to see some Kerbals that look pretty indicative of some, you know, KSC employees. That might be named, like KSC employees........?

 

 

Have the assets for the game been done?  What does the art team do after the assets are made? (thishoflettguy, Discord)

Quote

Yes. The art team is actually, as is with most games, the art team is ahead. So the art team, you know, we've got the specs, we're working closely with design. We're working with engineering. You know, when art is done, we always work on the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and so, our 3D artists right now, our partists are working on colony parts. All the science parts are already done and ready to go and they're all lined up. And so, they're onward to colony parts.

I've got some visuals here for you guys too, because when our 2D artists, Raf Calonzo, wrapped up on some of his kind of tutorial art duties, he actually moved on to doing marketing art for us. And so this is his thumbnail pass on what you guys hopefully recognize as the key art for early access for the right?

I don't know if this has been shared publicly. Raf is an absolute machine. And I love this. I actually love this sketch so much. Cooper, who is one of our 3D artists kind of translated it into the final key art you see on our Steam page, and all that good stuff.

And then I also have another image of more behind the scenes. This man's brain.... look at all of these key art thumbnails. There's some, again, talk about the sliding scale of silliness to seriousness, you can kind of see it at play here, right? We've got some very serious key art images, and then some real goofy ones. The playing volleyball on the Mun one, and that's 4D - I love that one.

Um, but yeah, so so the answer is really, art is generally always ahead, working on kind of future update stuff, working on marketing stuff, you know, doing graphic design and logo stuff, kind of whatever's needed.

 

How is the design for exoplanets going? Will we see something extravagant and unusual or will it be much simpler and realistic? (MAD MANKEY, Steam)

Quote

Exoplanets are gonna get weird. I'm very excited for them. You know, we've got two planets that we've actually already talked about and revealed. One is Ovin, which is kind of this super-Earth and then Gurdamma, which is actually kind of like a depiction of Earth from the Hadean era - so it's like primordial earth planet. You've all seen Rask & Rusk before as well and kind of like some of our older Dev Diaries that kind of like binary system with lots of really cool lava. So yeah, just expect an increase in weirdness. The Kerbolar system is rooted in our realistic star system. But there's some funky stuff coming!

 

 

Should we expect to see other cool easter eggs like how the new Tuba engine and it's siblings make the sound of their namesake? (eskomaz, Discord)

Quote

You guys still have not even found all the easter eggs currently in the game.

All right, Howard Molstrom, who is our audio designer, I was gushing to him about how someone found that when you just mouse over some of the parts icons in the VAB they're in a scale. And you can play a song with them. And I was gushing to Howard about it. And he's like, "Psh, they haven't even found half of the audio easter eggs I put in the game." Like "ARE YOU KIDDING ME" - get your headphones on!

 

 

Currently the UI for the game makes it very hard to use the navball and to plan anything other than very close maneuvers, will we get similar features to KSP 1 in the future (such as a maneuver panel, approach panel, etc)? (WhamyKaBlamy, Steam)

Quote

Yes, yes. So yes, we do expect to add, fine maneuver controls prior to 1.0. We definitely recognize there's lots of room for improvements when it comes to kind of trip planning and maneuver creation and maneuver editing. And so they are definitely priorities for us.

 

Are you satisfied by the way the game look so far? (Dakitess, Forums)

Quote

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a good question. And it's also kind of like a larger game dev question. Like, I think the key word is "satisfied." Like, we still have a lot of stuff to add in early access. We've got tons of updates to tackle. You know, we've got big ones on the horizon. We've talked about CBT, we've talked about HDRP, there's additional parts and features on the way.

So, while maybe satisfied isn't the right word, you know, like, because we're building it in front of you guys. And that is a very vulnerable place to be as an artist, right? Art is already very, very, very close to our hearts and our egos. And so showing it, showing it off to tons of people, while it's still kind of a work in progress can be hard.

But am I proud of what the team has done? Absolutely. I already gushed about the team earlier, but like this is a Herculean effort. Our team is incredibly talented, absolutely punching above their weight. I'm very, very proud of what we've accomplished.

 

for future interstellar travel. will there be a procedural generation of planet and solar systeme in order to offer a unique experience for each player (guerrier_xxl, Discord)

Quote

Um, procedural generation is a hell of an undertaking. I will say it's not in our plans right now. That would be us, changing over a lot, switching our lane massively.

 

I found that the ground texture is sometimes pixelated or blurry, do you plan to improve this system? (spicat, Discord)

Quote

 That is concurrent binary trees. That's what we're working towards right now.

 

In the future, will more animations be added to the kerbals depending on what their stats are? E.g lower bravery kerbals nervously waddle when they run, or ntelligent kerbals tend to obvserve their surroundings alot more. (bull_toad, Discord)

Quote

I will forward this question to our animator Zimm.

 

have you ever had any nightmares involving kerbals? (sol666, Discord)

Quote

About Kerbals? Or about Kerbal Space Program? Yes. *laughs*

 

Can kerbal appearance change during long hard missions (like growing hair / beard)? (Vl3d, Forums)

Quote

I think that's very fun. That smells of scope creep. But post about it in the forums?

 

will the colour selector for crafts ever include a hex code for the colours? (suppise, Discord)

Quote

That's great feedback. Also, please post that in the forums?

 

Hello. Will there be other RCS animations? Such as flying too fast, out of fuel (and drifting away), ETC? Just animations for certain situations. (3om30n3, Discord)

Quote

Great feedback...to the forums!

 

 

Will there ever be an animation of your craft being taken to the pad by the Super heavy-lift launch vehicle? For making cinematic sequences. (link12313, Discord)

Quote

I want this! Put it in the forums, please!

 

Right now, some of the parts like the fuel tanks look "plasticky" when painted. If I remember correctly, Kavaeric also pointed out that the grass texture on the terrain, when lit a certain way, reflects light unnaturally. Is the team aware of this? (astro648, Discord)

Quote

We're very aware of it. Most visual stuff that gets called out on the forums are things like the grass terrain that we've been staring at for years. So yes, we're working on it.

 

 When will we get a proper Anti-Aliasing solution? The one we have in the game just makes the image significantly blurrier  without reducing aliasing at all. (acid_burn9, Discord)

Quote

Yes - forums, please!

 

What is your favorite animation for the kerbals (both current animataions and in progress) so far? (novaraptortv, Discord)

Quote

 This is the Science Research Animation. This is again, Zim our animator did this. I love that the Kerbal just he hooks a little thumb in his belt. He looks around, like a Disney animation. This is my favorite. I looped this several times when he posted it for the first time. So number one

 

 Are there any plans to implement graphic setting options to disable things like layered textures, transparent textures, character and part animations, lighting effects, and ground foliage. In order to make the game more playable? (waldcha, Discord)

Quote

Yeah, we have a lot more sliders and controls planned for settings.

 

 

Will Kerbals be different colours based on what planets they originate from when colonies are introduced?  (emberskymedia, Discord)

Quote

That's a very fun idea. I have my own headcanon about Kerbal colors. And we'll see. We'll see if that becomes canon.

 

 Will personal parachutes be coming back?  (Wheekaw Kerman, Forums)

Quote

Yes, we have a spec for it.

 

A Thank You From Ness

Quote

We so appreciate everyone who's played Kerbal Space Program 2 - and Kerbal Space Program 1 up until now. If you've got feedback, no matter what range it is in, please go to our Discord, go to our forums, let us know - our community managers are amazing. And they've got eyes on all of our social. So let us know what you think of the game!

 

[Dakota]

We had a bunch of questions left over that we didn't have time for - and Ness is planning on getting to some of them once she gets more time. She will add more to this thread from her Forum Account @Nesses.

She also mentioned that she still has a bunch of behind-the-scenes assets to share - so stay tuned!

[Clayel]

i hope that my photosynthesis question caught her off guard, lol

[Pyritin]

57 minutes ago, Dakota said:

Albert and Costello

I was going to blame @Dakota for this as a typo then watched the vid and was mortified that this was actually said... The comedy duo is ABBOT and Costello, not Albert. One of the greatest comedy duo's of all time. Looking for a good glimpse into their act you can search "Who's on first" on YouTube and watch one of their more famous routines.

I realize Albert was said but could we please put the correct name in brackets in the quote. Would do the heart good.

[Dakota]

1 minute ago, Pyritin said:

I was going to blame @Dakota for this as a typo then watched the vid and was mortified that this was actually said... The comedy duo is ABBOT and Costello, not Albert. One of the greatest comedy duo's of all time. Looking for a good glimpse into their act you can search "Who's on first" on YouTube and watch one of their more famous routines.

I realize Albert was said but could we please put the correct name in brackets in the quote. Would do the heart good.

My bad! I do know the duo, transcribing this all was just a process, so things definitely fell through the cracks. Fixed,

[Pyritin]

Just now, Dakota said:

My bad! I do know the duo, transcribing this all was just a process, so things definitely fell through the cracks. Fixed,

I mean the transcript was accurate, so feel free to blame Ness for the error. You take enough flack as it is, feel free to spread it around. Sharing is caring!

[jacksawild]

Was not expecting a manzai reference in this AMA. Love gaki and Downtown (bring back  the new years batsu special).

Some nice peeks under the game's hood too.

[Alexoff]

8 hours ago, Dakota said:

post about it in the forums?

8 hours ago, Dakota said:

Put it in the forums, please!

 

8 hours ago, Dakota said:

Yes - forums, please!

8 hours ago, Dakota said:

Great feedback...to the forums!

It seems to me that it would be worthwhile to first show the questions to Kristina so that she can tell if she can answer them. I didn't really understand what she suggested.

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

Are you satisfied by the way the game look so far?

Quote

 

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a good question. And it's also kind of like a larger game dev question. Like, I think the key word is "satisfied." Like, we still have a lot of stuff to add in early access. We've got tons of updates to tackle. You know, we've got big ones on the horizon. We've talked about CBT, we've talked about HDRP, there's additional parts and features on the way.

[...]

But am I proud of what the team has done? Absolutely. I already gushed about the team earlier, but like this is a Herculean effort. Our team is incredibly talented, absolutely punching above their weight. I'm very, very proud of what we've accomplished.

 

 

Kudos for not skipping this question.

Now while I get it, I wouldn't throw my team under a bus either, and I also get the enthusiasm (this is why most of us can't help it and reading the updates), can we at least tone it all down to match was it was actually delivered and the public reception?

I wouldn't be so bothered by this if it were the first time I see a member of the KSP2 team that claims is proud with the accomplished, but it starts becoming a common theme, and IMO it needs to be more realistic.

I don't think anyone can agree that this current state of the game is anywhere close to an accomplishment that a team can be "very, very proud of", unless this is telling of what level of quality to expect from the game going forward...?

Edited June 30, 2023 by GGG-GoodGuyGreg

[GobboKirk]

Nice, thanks for the write up

[PDCWolf]

First off, announcing the changes on the hotfix but not including the "you're now forced to use the launcher" change... Very naughty behavior.

As for the answers...

Regarding planet design: They insist the guided gamemode will be about exploration, yet refuse to talk about the important aspect of it. No one cares how the planets look on the map and scaledspace, the problem has always been landing on them to find yet another empty, unimaginative, boring wasteland. This answer did no favors to that, as they only talked about and showed scaledSpace planet design.

Regarding graphical improvements: It was a bit of a red flag to hear they've known about the shiny grass for (I quote, which was omitted on the transcript) "Years", when it is such a simple problem to fix. They must really be waiting for HDRP so that their work to fix that (as insignificant as changing specularity values might be) isn't overwritten by work on the new pipeline.  As for CBT, yall still need to show more regarding whatever it is, since what most people know for CBT doesn't look like much of a fit to solve the current problems.

Regarding icon/stamp customization: A great idea, infinitely better than the mesh flags of KSP1.

Regarding re-entry heating: Shame that this was a problem slated for "shortly after launch" yet we're barely talking about what "we want to do", this should be a done and closed issue by now. It is probably the most glaring gameplay mechanic currently missing from the game, and it is so basic...

Regarding UI: The only thing that seems inherited from those inspirations shown is the eye friendly color scheme from IDEs. The practicality, compactness, and design rules of making something for people to use first, and pretty later, has been completely lost. The current UI is overly big, has tons of wasted space, and most of the used space is just "used" to convey useless information. I believe there's much more work to be done than just a maneuver panel.

Regarding parachutes: I'm firmly on the camp that the upcoming EVA chutes and the ones currently in game need to be rescaled.

[Spicat]

22 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Regarding planet design: They insist the guided gamemode will be about exploration, yet refuse to talk about the important aspect of it. No one cares how the planets look on the map and scaledspace, the problem has always been landing on them to find yet another empty, unimaginative, boring wasteland. This answer did no favors to that, as they only talked about and showed scaledSpace planet design.

Well, I care, they definitely nailed the planet looks from space. Also, this might be an opinion, but I find the "height map" much more interesting in ksp2 than it was in ksp1 (just blob to make a mountain). However, I'm just a bit disappointed with how the ground texture looks, that's why I asked a question about this (and it was answered).

22 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Regarding re-entry heating: Shame that this was a problem slated for "shortly after launch" yet we're barely talking about what "we want to do", this should be a done and closed issue by now. It is probably the most glaring gameplay mechanic currently missing from the game, and it is so basic...

I agree, but to be fair, here they talk about how they "want" different plasmas on different bodies. Nate talked about reentry with different colors in the first AMA, very different from the simple ksp1 vfx.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Spicat

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

Regarding planet design: They insist the guided gamemode will be about exploration, yet refuse to talk about the important aspect of it. No one cares how the planets look on the map and scaledspace, the problem has always been landing on them to find yet another empty, unimaginative, boring wasteland. This answer did no favors to that, as they only talked about and showed scaledSpace planet design.

Agreed.  While the textures look great from space, landing on a planet still shows us the same old, same old.  Uninspired/unimaginative terrain, some hills, maybe a rock here or there.  It's just plain boring.

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

Regarding graphical improvements: It was a bit of a red flag to hear they've known about the shiny grass for (I quote, which was omitted on the transcript) "Years", when it is such a simple problem to fix. They must really be waiting for HDRP so that their work to fix that (as insignificant as changing specularity values might be) isn't overwritten by work on the new pipeline.  As for CBT, yall still need to show more regarding whatever it is, since what most people know for CBT doesn't look like much of a fit to solve the current problems.

Color me as one of those people who really don't understand what HDRP and/or CBT are supposed to really do.  I keep hearing the acronyms, but I've not yet heard what they are supposed to do, nor have I actually seen examples of what things are supposed to look like both with and without them.  So I simply don't get why everyone is so excited about this.

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

Regarding re-entry heating: Shame that this was a problem slated for "shortly after launch" yet we're barely talking about what "we want to do", this should be a done and closed issue by now. It is probably the most glaring gameplay mechanic currently missing from the game, and it is so basic...

At this point I'm simply waiting for one of the modders to take care of this.  TT/PD/IG doesn't really have a good track record right now with the things they've promised the community.

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

Regarding UI: The only thing that seems inherited from those inspirations shown is the eye friendly color scheme from IDEs. The practicality, compactness, and design rules of making something for people to use first, and pretty later, has been completely lost. The current UI is overly big, has tons of wasted space, and most of the used space is just "used" to convey useless information. I believe there's much more work to be done than just a maneuver panel.

Simply put, the current UI is ugly.  Big, unnecessary blocks of stuff just taking up space for the sake of taking up space.  The information is hard to find, it's not very intuitive, and it needs a reskin.  Not to mention there are things the UI should be showing but isn't (like TWR).

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

Regarding parachutes: I'm firmly on the camp that the upcoming EVA chutes and the ones currently in game need to be rescaled.

For starters, how did they leave these out to begin with?  Are Kerbals now born with the ability to simply fly?

[PDCWolf]

2 hours ago, Spicat said:

I agree, but to be fair, here they talk about how they "want" different plasmas on different bodies.

But that's exactly the point: it's been 4 months and we're still on the "want" stage, for stuff that's been communicated, again, 4 months ago. To make it even shorter: We should be way past the "want" stage with this topic already.

 

 

[Strawberry]

For clarification, the different plasma thing was for after the basics of heating was established, it is very unlikely we will see it with the first iteration of heating. 

[Astro648]

Cool!

@PDCWolfIt's been confirmed that the being forced to use the launcher is a bug and will be patched

[Astro648]

@Scarecrow71CBT: revamped terrain system, HDRP: better lighting system

[PDCWolf]

2 hours ago, Astro648 said:

@Scarecrow71CBT: revamped terrain system, HDRP: better lighting system

It's a bit more nuanced than that. First off, its important to nail down that neither are silver bullet solutions to performance or looks. Now, CBT can be described as a way to adaptively adjust the poligonal resolution of the terrain. In fact the creator of the paper himself says this is not entirely a good idea at planetary scales, as it would limit terrains to "low resolutions", though the specific application in KSP2 remains a mystery until it comes out. Another of his warnings is that CBT subdivisions are calculated every frame, vs the system some proper space games use (he cites Outerra, Space Engine).

HDRP is the acronym for "High Definition Render Pipeline". First off, HDRP is allegedly built for high performance systems, doing away with the retrocompatibility of URP (the default render pipeline on Unity). HDRP is specifically tailored to high end hardware and (and I quote) "realistic looks". URP should, by default, be more performant, up to 15% on Unity, however HDRP is supposed to just be pushed by the higher tier hardware it requires anyways. HDRP is specifically DirectX11 or 12, Vulkan, and of course compatible with the latest gen of consoles.

It allows greater flexibility with shaders, such as tiled or clustered execution instead of ye olde single pass. It allows unlimited lights (though shading is reserved for the "main"), unlimited lights per object, scene, and so on along with shadow masking per light, plus a lot of new toys for global illumination with a proper sky-light system. It can also make use of depth AND normal "maps" at the same time. Supports camera-relative rendering, PBR, and easily implements things like decals. and finally HDRP also implements tesselation shaders.

HDRP should, as an end product, allow a much better lighting and rendering system, specially physically consistent lighting. But it will sacrifice performance to do so, even if you ultimately don't enable those effects.

 

[RocketRockington]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

It's a bit more nuanced than that. First off, its important to nail down that neither are silver bullet solutions to performance or looks. Now, CBT can be described as a way to adaptively adjust the poligonal resolution of the terrain. In fact the creator of the paper himself says this is not entirely a good idea at planetary scales, as it would limit terrains to "low resolutions", though the specific application in KSP2 remains a mystery until it comes out. Another of his warnings is that CBT subdivisions are calculated every frame, vs the system some proper space games use (he cites Outerra, Space Engine).

That by itself makes it unuseable for terrain that needs to be collideable - not sure how they plan to make this a thing when you need to generate physics mesh from it.  CBT seems like the KSP version of Star Citizen 'mesh servers' and 'object container streaming'.  Something that is an idea, is not a silver bullet, but both the community and the weird hybrid dev/marketting talking heads from CIG promote to keep people on the hook and give the fanboys a hope that all the problems in the project will be solved once the magic tech is implemented.
 

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

HDRP should, as an end product, allow a much better lighting and rendering system, specially physically consistent lighting. But it will sacrifice performance to do so, even if you ultimately don't enable those effects.

Should.  But lighting is not just good or bad because of tech. A lot of the lighting comes down to art/tech art doing well with it.  If KSP2 has been waiting with their crappy overblown lighting for 4 years for Unity to solve their problems for them - its just another dumb magic bullet.  Especially so since it will require so much work to rebuild shaders and assets.  As you know, the problem shader - plantary - won't just come 'for free' from upgrading to HDRP.

Again, its more ways to blow smoke and give the people who don't know what they're talking about fancy-sounding buzzwords to hang their hats on.

[Strawberry]

16 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Now, CBT can be described as a way to adaptively adjust the poligonal resolution of the terrain. In fact the creator of the paper himself says this is not entirely a good idea at planetary scales, as it would limit terrains to "low resolutions", though the specific application in KSP2 remains a mystery until it comes out. Another of his warnings is that CBT subdivisions are calculated every frame, vs the system some proper space games use (he cites Outerra, Space Engine).

In specific, the low resolutions are referring to "far out" views, CBT does wonderfully when zoomed in. We likely won't see much of an improvement in resolution when far from a planet (which honestly is fine as it already tends to look quite good there), but you can definitely get much higher resolutions when close up. As mentioned in the link, CBT isn't the most performant system in the world for this type of stuff, however assuming its well implemented, it should be way better then what we have now. You've probably seen this thread, but for those who hasn't, it does a wonderful job of breaking down what ksp2 uses its gpu on, and on a pretty uninteresting and simple area of the mun, around 80% of the render time just goes to the surface. Even a 50% improvement in rendering times for planet surfaces would mean a reduction of total render times by 40%. https://twitter.com/NicholasTimmons/status/1629522839777705984

16 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

HDRP is specifically tailored to high end hardware and (and I quote) "realistic looks". URP should, by default, be more performant, up to 15% on Unity, however HDRP is supposed to just be pushed by the higher tier hardware it requires anyways. 

KSP2 does appear to use a different rendering pipeline instead of the default unity one, HDRP as an alternative, isn't the most performant alternative, but considering how bad the current one is, it will likely be a far more performant alternative. 

14 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

That by itself makes it unuseable for terrain that needs to be collideable - not sure how they plan to make this a thing when you need to generate physics mesh from it. 

HDRP and CBT are just the systems used for rendering, which the last we heard about this stuff was when the dev diary on them was released. It's possible that plans have changed since then, but it sounded like it was planned to continue using a height map system for the physics mesh, which is what both ksp's use already.

[RocketRockington]

6 hours ago, Strawberry said:

HDRP and CBT are just the systems used for rendering, which the last we heard about this stuff was when the dev diary on them was released. It's possible that plans have changed since then, but it sounded like it was planned to continue using a height map system for the physics mesh, which is what both ksp's use already.

[snip]  Yes, HDRP is just rendering. But that's not what I was referencing when I talked about physics.  PQS  and CBT are about how you generate the position of polygons for the terrain.  Guess what, that includes collision geometry unless you want your craft floating above/embedded in your terrain,  you need to have those match up.  And they need to be generated at different detail levels due to distance - but you need them to be consistent when you load up a section of terrain that will be inside the physics bubble of a craft.

CBT really doesn't fix the gpu bottleneck at all, which is due primarily to badly built shaders that rely too much on interpolating too many large textures and too many conditional statements, so the processing elements are underused because the card is either paging memory or has its pipeline stalled.   Which is likely why we'll never see this 'silver bullet' implemented at all, as it doesn't really address the performance issue, and Mortoc has moved on to do other work while leaving the fans stewing over the devblog he wrote while early in his tenure on the project.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Snark
Redacted by moderator

[Sylvi Fisthaug]

On 6/30/2023 at 3:43 PM, Scarecrow71 said:

Color me as one of those people who really don't understand what HDRP and/or CBT are supposed to really do.  I keep hearing the acronyms, but I've not yet heard what they are supposed to do, nor have I actually seen examples of what things are supposed to look like both with and without them.  So I simply don't get why everyone is so excited about this.

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Staying Grounded 

Clearly the PQS System and related shaders are a big performance problem. Let’s talk about that, but first dig into some background. A core philosophy for the early part of KSP2’s EA cycle is to make sure “it still feels like a KSP game”.  This means that for each feature we build, we want to start with what KSP1 did and then build a similar system that improves on it. 

Following that goal, the team started with the PQS design from KSP1 and added modern graphics features for KSP2’s PQS+. As development progressed on KSP2, more and more features were added to PQS+ to keep pushing the artistic envelope.  

I might be biased, but from orbit, Kerbol’s planets look incredible. Our art team did a fantastic job. From the surface the game is still quite pretty, but the terrain itself just doesn’t have the consistent visual quality we want yet. While trying to build that ground up to our visual ambitions, we added more features than the previous PQS architecture can support. It wasn’t until the ramp up to EA that it became understood just how far past the limits of the tech we had reached.  

 

[TwoCalories]

Spoiler

The EA Artwork concepts are very interesting. There's ones that have a movie poster-vibe to it, some humorous ones, and few ones that are just Kerbal. C4 is my personal favorite. it's like the EA art, but with more Kerbonauts. B3 is also nostalgic of that one KSP1 loading screen. Some of that artwork also implies lore, like Kerbals have cellphones now. I'd love to see more concept art in the future.

[AtomicTech]

On 7/1/2023 at 5:16 PM, TwoCalories said:

  Hide contents

The EA Artwork concepts are very interesting. There's ones that have a movie poster-vibe to it, some humorous ones, and few ones that are just Kerbal. C4 is my personal favorite. it's like the EA art, but with more Kerbonauts. B3 is also nostalgic of that one KSP1 loading screen. Some of that artwork also implies lore, like Kerbals have cellphones now. I'd love to see more concept art in the future.

Wouldn't it be neat if we got all of these?

[Nesses]

Hello all! I'm sorry for the delay on posting the written answers to these questions we didn't get to during the stream last week. The America-day holiday delayed me, and then suddenly it was Friday again! Weird how that happens. Anyhoo--thank you all for the thoughtful questions:


How do you ensure visual consistency across assets, especially when you have different people working on different things in parallel? (kavaeric, Discord)

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We have lots of internal docs, examples, concepts, and references to make sure everyone’s brain is on the same page. This is a challenge for any game or any creative group project; what tools are useful to make sure that when we say “X”, everyone is imaging the same X?
There are a lot of production techniques we follow to make sure everyone is communicating effectively, and our Art Lead Mike Sawicki helps me out a ton to ensure our artists are all held to the same high quality bar. We have frequent Artist feedback threads and meetings so that we can stay consistent.

Are there any planet concepts that the team has stumbled on and loved but are technically/mechanically/etc unfeasible at the current moment? (cutwithapaperknife, Discord)

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Unfortunately, our PQS terrain system doesn’t like non-spherical bodies  This limits how weird we can make the shapes of our celestial bodies, but above a certain mass all planets coalesce into spheres so physics works in our favor here (thank you, physics).

Can we expect to see different colors of explosions in the future? (spicat, Discord)

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Yes! Explosion colors are largely inspired by fuel type and location context, so new fuel types = new explosion colors. 

What software do you use? (noobyeeter69, Discord)

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Photoshop is my personal weapon of choice. Across the art team though, folks use all kinds of software: Substance Painter, Houdini, 3DS Max, Maya, Blender, etc. Sometimes the choice is up to an artist's preference, sometimes it’s down to the needs of the task at hand.

 

what are the kerbals made out of (the ultra dungeon master, Discord) 

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Probably plant matter. I imagine they are all vegetarian.

What's your favourite type of cheese?  (totallyadan, Discord)

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PORT SALUT  + cracker + chili fig jam = perfect bite

 Which part was the most fun/challenging for you to work on? (Dragon, Discord)

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The more heavily realistic celestial bodies were a fun challenge. We have some seriously talented Environment Artists (Sung Campbell & Brandon Orden!) who know this game inside and out and have constructed awe-inspiring locations across the Kerbolar System. In fact—they gave a GDC talk alongside Jon Cioletti (.Sr Tech Artist) and Mike Azzinaro (Software Engineer III, Graphics) about their process if you want to know more.
On the Design/conceptual side of creating our CBs; we reference a lot of strange and interesting real-world geology and planetary science, which kiiiiinda makes every day at work feel like a Discovery channel episode.

Is it possible to get images of the planets or interstellar vehicles in a higher resolution so we can se where it's all at in terms of progress? (I also really want some deep space wallpapers) (astralminer, Discord)

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The community team is on it!  

how has the pace of development been post release vs pre release? How many more problems are you able to find and fix now that thousands of players can play and send feedback? (themann, Discord)

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Any and all feedback you folks can send us is incredibly useful. We read it all and our Production, QA, and Community teams help sort through the information to disseminate it to the rest of the studio.
As far as the Art Team’s pace is concerned, it’s steady and fairly similar to pre-Early-Access-launch. Around a launch there’s always more stress and anxiety in the air as well as lots of small fixes, cleanup, and randomization that happens. Post-Early-Access-launch we have been able to refocus on larger tasks and more long-term plans.

Will atmospheres eventually get better scatter? Right now, at the edges of the atmospheres where it meets the land, it has a "bar" of white light which doesnt seem very realistic. (astro648, Discord) 

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Yes. Atmospheres, clouds, and water are all being evaluated for a facelift. Hopefully more to share about that soon........ 

Just wanted to ask what the team's overall thoughts were on the fans reaction to the woobly rocket statement? How much has the overall opinions of the wobbly rockets been changed by it and has it changed the priorities of patch 0.1.4? (phoebeplague, Discord)

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Our position is unchanged from our previous statement—rockets should not be wobbly in most cases, but we are looking for ways to achieve that balance while still preserving some elements of the original KSP-style wobbliness that occur under some specific circumstances. We definitely agree with the general community sentiment that in most cases, wobbly does not feel good.

What was your favourite engine to design? (xd_ceurvo_bx, Discord)

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Like I mentioned in the livestream, Art works very closely with Chris Adderley (Sr. Mechanical Designer) to design our engines—but even though the Poodle got me my first Mun landing, I personally like the small Twitch engine best. I like its formfactor and the fact that I can use it in weirder non-rocket builds!
Actually, now that I have a captive audience, I’m going to make you all look at some of my abominations creations:



Behold my Robo-Laika! It kind of flies!



Behold my Turkey-Sat! The plumage extends 

Which planet or moon took the longest time to design? (xd_ceurvo_bx, Discord)

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Actually, Kerbin did! It’s the only celestial body that needs to compare to what most players have seen IRL with their own two eyes—it needed to have a high diversity of biomes, feel natural, and be beautiful. Kerbin has also gone through more iteration and polish than any other celestial body and is owned by Sung Campbell, our Principal Environment Artist.

We know about the priority of bug fixes, but what about the Art? How do you prioritize what you do? Are you working on things that will come in future updates like colonies or even resource gathering or you do only the science for now? (spicat, Discord)

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Great question! We prioritize our work based on what the KSP2 team’s current feature goal is and balance that work with bugs that emerge. The Art Team as a whole is ahead of Design and Engineering, which is pretty typical for game development. Our Environment team is focused on Science implications for Kerbolar System celestial bodies, and our Vehicle Parts team is currently focused on colony parts. Our Art Team is segmented into several cross-discipline feature teams so that we can stay communicative and dynamic, which is why Parts is ahead of Environments.

When can we expect to see crew modules which require animations such as gravity rings, especially ones with cool deployment methods? (cyanastro, Discord)

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Colonies!! I actually just saw a gif of a module very similar to what you are describing that I hope we can share soon.

First off, what makes a part look 'kerbal'? and secondly, how does the team go about ensuring new parts such as the new engines that came with Patch 3 have a look that feels novel and fresh, but still 'kerbal' at the same time? thanks! (thespacepeacock, Discord)

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I’ve talked to Chris Adderley (Sr. Mechanical Designer) a lot about this process. He does the initial research, reference gathering, and 3D blockout for all of our parts. They all share similar characteristics because their initial form & proportions are established by the same person’s hand. Our parts also have a slight stylization to them, since they were canonically built by the Kerbals who are highly stylized themselves. We strive to include details and consider questions like “if a Kerbal-sized construction crew was building this part, what assembly decisions would they make?”
Engines in particular utilize shape language, material choices, and specific silhouettes to convey their gameplay purpose. I stole these images from Adderley’s Dev Diary #17 to describe what I’m talking about:

 

 

How does the team feel about giving players more options to make their own 'art' in the game? (thespacepeacock, Discord)

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I would love more creative or versatile parts for this purpose! I use a lot of panels, lights, fairings, and wings in my own builds, but I want to see even more eventually—please refer again to my beloved and doomed Turkey-Sat
 

 

 

 

How do you keep the visual design congruent with the audio side of things, be it foley, soundscapes, music, etc? (kavaeric, Discord)

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Well our Audio Director, Howard Mostrom, is a wizard. Audio comes in towards the end of production, so he is creating lots of music and SFX in reaction to the visuals and gameplay. We also all have similar Sci-Fi references that we are inspired by as a team, and I believe that contributes heavily to cohesion on a project.

When incomes to cockpits, do we have any progress on the transparent windows like the mark ones, and will there be larger sized cockpits/passenger bays for possibly interstellar (cryonixx, Discord) 

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We have plans for IVA cockpits down the line, but we want to make sure we have the right 3D solution for the IVA experience we’re planning. As far as bigger cockpits—yes. We will have larger IVA spaces to fit our core parts sizes.

What are you most excited for the community to see that hasnt been unveiled yet? (even if you cant show us yet) (megamikemikemike, Discord)

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I am very excited about the addition of uh, "cool points of interest" . Don't tell Nate.

How do you balance the needs of performance optimization with pushing the boundaries of visual fidelity in Kerbal Space Program 2? (Heretic391, Forums)

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It’s a constant back and forth communication internally across various teams. Our artists are in close contact with engineers and graphics engineers to make sure our pretty art isn’t melting someone’s keyboard. You all also have front row seats to that balancing act and I’m sure have all read Mortoc’s Dev Diary #18 about our terrain system, so know that additional improvements are coming.

What is the #1 big artistic item coming up for KSP2 that is not yet in the Early Access we have seen so far? (emberskymedia, Discord) 

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An entirely new star system! Debdeb is going to have our Protoplanetary disk which is going to be quite an artistic undertaking, and ultimately differentiate Debdeb as being a strange new frontier. Looking forward to having you all explore it!