Homogenisation of Part Design and Style

[FanaticalFighter]

KSP now has a very large collection of parts in its catalog. However, these parts, rather than follow a singular art design, follow a very diverse "style". For example, the fuel tanks come in four sizes. There's the 0.65m tank, which has its own distinct texture style, while the 1.25m tanks look completely different. The 1.25m tanks look consistent with each other, but look completely different from the "trashcan" look of the smaller of the 2.5m tanks, and also from the "cryogenic" look of the Orange tank. And all of these tanks look entirely different from the new SLS parts, which have a very professional, "NASA"ish feel to them. Similarly, the small 0.65m engines have a completely different look from the larger 1.25m engines and the 2.5m engines, while the 3.75m engines look entirely different from either of these. The SAS parts look very different from each other, although their purpose is the same.

And not only do the parts differ in style, they also differ in quality. The parts introduced in the science updates appear more well modelled and textured than the older parts to me, for example. The older parts sometimes have blurrier textures, and models that don't quite match up to the quality of the newer parts.

Would you people like there to be a patch that cleans up the part list into a list with a consistent art style and quality, or do you think that the current design is good, and the developers should focus their attention on more important features like implementing economy in the career mode and such? Or do you have any other ideas/suggestions?

[vger]

Could it be that the older parts were textured at a lower resolution, and just need to be updated?

[Halsfury]

I wouldn't say it's such a big deal with the parts themselves, but more of a problem with the decouplers, adapters and especially the mainsail engine.

I understand different styles for different sizes of parts is a useful way to distinguish stuff in the VAB right now, in future though I think that the devs need to put the power to paint rockets differently into our hands

Ideally, each tank would have 4 styles (NASA, Original, Shiny and Matte), for texturing and in the two latter cases colour choices could be made which would affect the whole tank. Also I would suggest not giving players a whole colour palette but rather just a few colours (Vostok Green, Titanium White, External Tank Orange, Unpainted steel/Gunmetal Grey)

This should also apply to decoupler shrouds so that the rocket looks more orderly

The engines however should be made to look more professional to homogenize the style a bit better, right now the poodle and the mainsail look stylized and haven't changed at all with the rest of the game's evolving aesthetic

But I'd much rather that the devs finished the cockpits for spaceplanes and rebuilt the stock spaceplane fuselage parts etc.

[r4pt0r]

I wouldn't say it's such a big deal with the parts themselves, but more of a problem with the decouplers, adapters and especially the mainsail engine.

I understand different styles for different sizes of parts is a useful way to distinguish stuff in the VAB right now, in future though I think that the devs need to put the power to paint rockets differently into our hands

Ideally, each tank would have 4 styles (NASA, Original, Shiny and Matte), for texturing and in the two latter cases colour choices could be made which would affect the whole tank. Also I would suggest not giving players a whole colour palette but rather just a few colours (Vostok Green, Titanium White, External Tank Orange, Unpainted steel/Gunmetal Grey)

This should also apply to decoupler shrouds so that the rocket looks more orderly

The engines however should be made to look more professional to homogenize the style a bit better, right now the poodle and the mainsail look stylized and haven't changed at all with the rest of the game's evolving aesthetic

But I'd much rather that the devs finished the cockpits for spaceplanes and rebuilt the stock spaceplane fuselage parts etc.

while i agree different schemes would be cool, remember that unity loads everything on start up....and there is a 4gb ram limit....see what im saying?

[Halsfury]

while i agree different schemes would be cool, remember that unity loads everything on start up....and there is a 4gb ram limit....see what im saying?

well, instead of doing a whole new texture, why not do something mine craft like, make little texture squares which load easily, and then let the player place the squares like a radial part, use the .craft file to store the texture locations, that way you get around the ram limit