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KSA | The KSP Replacement from RocketWerkz | Seamless Movement and Terrain


Saturn1234

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Checked it out and I'm loving what I'm seeing so far. Seems like a responsible start to straight up solving the biggest technical problems and moddability, both of which were stopping the original games from growing, like how they focused on hype rather than technicality with KSP2 and the product died in the water.

Embeds aren't working for me for some reason, so I'll quote (and here's the video rehosted):
 

Quote

 

My game studio is RocketWerkz, we've made a few games most notably ICARUS and Stationeers. Originally I made the DayZ Mod. Incidentally prior to that I actually made a lot of KSP mods, in particular the Component Space Shuttle (CSS) and was very active on the KSP forums.

Our studio actually was in the bidding to make KSP2 and we made it to the top three bids. The final step was a call Private Division. I put a lot of work with the into a good design document and opted to keep the focus entirely on this design and the technical aspects of the project - this was a serious problem for two of the people on the call who said we were the only pitch that did not contain art. Obviously out studio wasn't chosen.

We have been working on custom technology to allow us to build games that really scale for some time now. This is called the BRUTAL Framework which is similar in approach to the older XNA Framework. The desciption:

BRUTAL is a C# game framework that is designed to be complicated, slow, and difficult to use.

KSP Team members + RocketWerkz

We have employed some of the original KSP and KSP2 team and a number of modders and expect the team to continue to grow. Here is a video demonstrating a unique approach we have been able to take with rendering, given BRUTAL gives us direct access to everything Vulkan can do.

There is also a key person we are still sorting out the exact details for but I'd love to introduce them once that is done. I think this person is a key individual in our industry as a whole and our studio will be backing them and their future endeavors as well.

The original crew are providing a lot of assistance and we are bringing technology, production, and approach from our own work.

Achieving Seamless movement

Instead of generating the terrain on the fly, at game load we generate a variety of spherical billboards using XML defined data. This means a modder making RSS can generate spherical billboards that might be necessary to give good terrain for different data sets. As the player gets closer to a planet we choose a different version of these spherical meshes. We can also do a lot of tricks that would be much harder in a traditional game engine, such as leaving the data on the GPU.

Dealing with Floating Point precision loss

The "size" of the values used for position need to be doubles for precision, but for rendering we realistically have to use floats. in KSP, HarvestR made an amazing solution that works in Unity for this. However in BRUTAL we have so many more options. In the video linked you can see that we don't have the usual precision issues. The camera is always rendering at 0,0,0 meaning that imprecision is pushed out to infinity.

Using Solar System Data for now

For testing purposes, we are using Solar System data. This is all fully moddable. The simulation is fully threaded. Are currently working on laying in close physics simulation using Jolt physics API - as we can instance this for each "scene" requiring data.

Next Steps

I will leave it to individual team members who are welcome to share what they are working on with the project. You can also follow the discord for live changlog and more information or to answer questions.

We will be making builds and data systems available to modders as early as possible to get feedback so we can restructure this to best support the project in future.

Feel free to ask me any questions here, and others in the team will reply also.

 

 
 
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If anyone was looking for the spiritual successor to KSP, this might be it, if it works out. Looks like they have done a lot of work behind the scenes. Their own custom engine just for the game sounds like a great idea.

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I'll definitely keep an eye on this. I have seen plenty of game series  being burnt by a failed or bad successor and expected the KSP franchise to be pretty much dead for the next one or two decades. So yay!

The approach seems reasonable, focusing on technical details before showing off shiny stuff. Hall should have quite a bit of experience how to handle (and how not to handle) game projects by now.  Also it's not one of the big corporations looking for ways to hypermonetize a game.

Time will tell.

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6 hours ago, Deddly said:

If anyone was looking for the spiritual successor to KSP, this might be it, if it works out. Looks like they have done a lot of work behind the scenes. Their own custom engine just for the game sounds like a great idea.

It's mind blowing to me that they'd be pursuing this in C#, never seen it used for a project in this scale or with this many potential complexities.

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LOL

Quote

This is called the BRUTAL Framework which is similar in approach to the older XNA Framework. The desciption:

BRUTAL is a C# game framework that is designed to be complicated, slow, and difficult to use.

That actually describes all programming, for me. :D

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There's an unofficial subreddit that's rehosted some of the info they've posted on Discord. Including:

1. A dev stream!

2. Images!

early-screenshots-and-video-of-the-terra

it5eta8e54yd1.gif

nhgedd7e54yd1.gif

3. "Very rough concept, the animal or its appearance might change"

very-rough-concept-of-the-cat-astronauts

 

 

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I'm pretty sure a lot of y'all heard the news from SWDennis, the Kitten Space Agency announcement. If not, go watch that.

 

Could this actually be a "KSP3" of sorts? Or are we being too hopeful?

 

PS. I didn't know where to put this post, so I chose the best place I could think of...

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44 minutes ago, modus said:

HarvesteR also seems to be involved somehow

Oh yeah. how could I forget. 

Been on their discord for a bit before it was opened to the public on reddit the other day.  With the smaller audience, being able to speak more directly with them, there seems to be a real passion on their part for getting this right.  I'm hopeful they'll put something amazing together.   Giving JPL a bespoke engine to do what he wants this time has me very optimistic.   

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Overlapping threads have been merged.

 

26 minutes ago, TechieV said:

I'm pretty sure a lot of y'all heard the news from SWDennis, the Kitten Space Agency announcement. If not, go watch that.

 

Could this actually be a "KSP3" of sorts? Or are we being too hopeful?

 

PS. I didn't know where to put this post, so I chose the best place I could think of...

 

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37 minutes ago, TechieV said:

I'm pretty sure a lot of y'all heard the news from SWDennis, the Kitten Space Agency announcement. If not, go watch that.

 

Could this actually be a "KSP3" of sorts? Or are we being too hopeful?

 

PS. I didn't know where to put this post, so I chose the best place I could think of...

I'm sure when we mod in Kerbals in place of Cats (or whatever it ends up being, Capybaras?), it'll be what KSP2 should've probably been. They haven't revealed any long term plans so far that I know of.

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3 hours ago, Snips said:

At first glance it looks promising, but "once bitten, twice shy". Will keep an eye on it, it can't get worse then KSP2.

First, Felipe (HarvesteR) is indeed involved as a developer. This project started back in July when Dean tweeted a photo of him and Felipe together. Dean had been working on his custom game engine for a while already, and with what happened with KSP2, I think there was a mutual desire to make the true KSP successor, and so they started on the "KSP-like game" that Felipe had expressed a desire to make.

Second, Take2 is not involved. Enough said/.

Also, Twitch streamer and giant GSP fan EJ_SA said yesterday on stream that he has been working as a consultant to Dean & Co. ever since the project began, and in fact personally steered former KSP1 and KSP2 devs to Dean. We only know a few of the names, there are others that have not been announced yet..

Oh, third: Dean is a coder, Nate was just an artist. Who do you want leading a project like this?

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