What's an RPG, What's a Simulator, and why KSP2 is (or is not) one of them

[Hotel26]

I'm not a nitpicker, nor a nitpicker's son, yet I'll be a nit-picking simulacrum until a nitpicker comes.

There!  I used the word simulacrum in a meaningful sentence...

Spoiler

Was I faking it, though? 

And yeah, an electronic rendition of the board game might be trivially a simulacrum of the board game, but chess, the game, is not a simulacrum.  It's an original idea.

A game defines rules.  An electronic game implements those rules.  If the game permits you to clip in the VAB, then that clipping is permissible according to the rules  of the game and that clipping is therefore  NOT "cheating".

There is NO rule that states that games must be realistic.  (This is hogwash.)

All that matters is whether or not you have fun.  If the game is fun but you claim you are not having fun, then you are not bloody doing it right!

Because the first rule of all games is that you must have fun!!

(If you complain, you are cheating.)

 

Edited November 6, 2023 by Hotel26

[Lisias]

On 11/6/2023 at 9:29 AM, Hotel26 said:

There is NO rule that states that games must be realistic.  (This is hogwash.)

All that matters is whether or not you have fun.  If the game is fun but you claim you are not having fun, then you are not bloody doing it right!

Because the first rule of all games is that you must have fun!!

I completely agree.

However, different people have fun in different ways. An engineer surely is able to get a good time doing things that would bore an artist to death.  

Going back to the last sub-subject (heat), I like how KSP¹ simulates it (and, so, I hate how KSP2 is doing it - or, at least, what people are telling me about) because I know something about thermodynamics, and what KSP¹ does helps me on the illusion of doing something ("immersion" would be the right word?).

If I'm doing a solar prob, keeping the radiators away from the Sun is so important as keeping the Solar Panels towards it. It makes sense - having no difference between the radiator's efficiency when it takes directly sunlight breaks the immersion to me in the same way the Solar Panels would do if they generated electricity at night.

The way how KSP¹ simulates the thing using Core heat and Skin heat also allows us to be creative on how handle heat - how about the radiators being submersed? This could allow better radiation even on EVE at direct sunlight (didn't tested this, doing it now at lunch time, I will keep you informed about).

Now, granted. People that knows squat about thermodynamics and are not willing to learn about would be annoyed by these details, granted. But some people gets annoyed the same by not being able to reach orbit with anything they do on VAB the same - some people don't want the technical challenges, just want to do things and fly it without caring to anything else.

IMHO would be way easier for everybody to have these people expectations handled on the open: I agree that my conception of "fun" is not universal, but yet I have the right and the will to have fun my way. If KSP2 is not going to be the game that would make me have fun, that's fine - as long I don't realise it after buying the game!  

— — POST EDIT — — 

Nope, apparently being submerged doesn't affects the radiator's performance! On the contraption below, both rear radiators were deployed at the same time, and then the engine under the cockpit was fired (a tank full of ore was applied under the vessel, otherwise the radiator would float and capsize the vessel).

The performance of both radiators (above and under the sea level) were the same. 

Thinking about, this may be related to the fuel tank not being able to conduct enough heat, I will try this again later this night.

— — POST POST EDIT — —

Nope, no matter what I do, water is not a factor for the radiators. Time to a new add'on, as it appears.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Lisias
POST POST EDIT

[Lisias]

Still about the ongoing dumbing down process of the game, it's not something specific to KSP2 as it appears.

Apparently this is happening on the whole industry:

Quote

Being an AAA game from 2023, it's expensive, rammed with DLC and microtransactions and frequently insulting to your intelligence.

Source: https://youtu.be/DvJkrf9yv_8?t=318

 

It's a pitty such discussion is happening a the same time the Game Industry is suffering some serious drawbacks on employment:

Video game company layoffs are creating an industry crisis

Things are going to be harder to fix now, I really think we may be reaching another VideoGame crash as we had in the 80s.

 

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Things are going to be harder to fix now, I really think we may be reaching another VideoGame crash as we had in the 80s.

Naw. In the 80s some rando couldn't build a game-of-the-year from scratch in their spare time. I mean, they could but they'd need Atari or Nintendo to burn it onto a cartridge.

We're in a Golden Age of gaming and it has nothing, and I mean NOTHING to do with AAA studios (present host of this forum included).

[Lisias]

9 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Naw. In the 80s some rando couldn't build a game-of-the-year from scratch in their spare time. I mean, they could but they'd need Atari or Nintendo to burn it onto a cartridge.

In 1984, when things started seriously to go South, making cartridges were cheap enough to independent developer be able to buy 3.000 of them in advance for launching their game.

It was still a steep threshold, but not too much worst than buying an expensive Game Engine license for professional use.

Nintendo may was charging about 17£/unit for manufacturing for you less than 50.000 cartridges (royalties included), but what you are forgetting is that you didn't had to buy from them. Bootleg manufacturing was way cheaper (Activision anyone?) and rampant at that time.

It was doable.

Besides, the VideoGame crash was terrible for… Hardware Manufactures, but not for Software. The Home Computer Era was beginning, and even Atari jumped ship on it porting their videogames for home computers (even Apple II got some ports).

The indies of that era were programming on 8 bits home computers, not on videogames - and they were one of the reasons for the Crash, as people started to prefer buying Home Computers instead of VideoGame Consoles.

But they kept buying games: people that played Moon Patrol on the Atari VCS not rarely bought it again for the Atari 400/800.

 

1 hour ago, Superfluous J said:

We're in a Golden Age of gaming and it has nothing, and I mean NOTHING to do with AAA studios (present host of this forum included).

We were in the Golden Age of gaming in the early 80's too. Guess what? That Golden Age passed, leading to the Home Computer's Golden Age that, well, also ended in the early 90s when the PC era, fuelled by WinTel,  started (and are still lingering).

I'm afraid you don't understand exactly how an industry is interconnected and interdependent.

The big boys get screwed, the money they pump into the rest of the industry dries, causing a chilling effect on the supply chain:

• Indie developers have free or cheap access to Unity3D because the big guys subside them with their fat fees.
  • If the fat fees slim down, they start to charge more on the Indies.
    • I'm hearing a bell ringing somewhere?
• Online Stores have a pretty significante (if not most) part of their income from the AAA titles
  • without this income the Stores will be forced to raise their fees into the Indies too.
• With less money circulating on the industry, we have potentially more layoffs
  • This is already happening, by the way
• More unemployed developers tend to squashed salaries
  • And so the good ones are incentivised to switch industry as a way to preserve their incomings
• And with less experienced developers having to take the O.G.s duties as they leave, titles will suffer and we have a self-feeding crisis

The big difference between this crisis and the ones before is that this time, the problem is on the Software.

On every past crisis, the devastation played havoc on Hardware Manufactures:

1. From VideoGame Consoles to Home Computers
2. From Home Computers to the PC
3. 8 Bits Consoles to 16 bits
4. 16 bits Consoles to the 32 bits era
5. etc.

And on each one of that changes, gaming got better and stronger.

AFAIK, we never faced a Software crisis as what's happening now.

[AstroWolfie]

 

An RPG is something like Pokémon, where you get to go on an adventure and do shenanigans, while a simulator is something like Microsoft Flight Simulator or Digital Combat Simulator, where you simulate something, its in the name.

 

[Lisias]

14 minutes ago, AstroWolfie said:

An RPG is something like Pokémon, where you get to go on an adventure and do shenanigans, while a simulator is something like Microsoft Flight Simulator or Digital Combat Simulator, where you simulate something, its in the name.

And you think that KSP2 is going to be one of them, both, or none?

[AstroWolfie]

I think that it is a spaceflight simulator with quite a few RPG elements (ie, tech progression, etc), and *hopefully* an at-least simple story using the easter eggs we have found.

so yes, both