Kerbal Space Program TWO, DOS, DEUX, ZWEI....

[Hellraiser]

Sheeet

Eh, I mean it is america and a gaming industry soft skill position, so both being obese and a woman is hardly unlikely.

Now if it was a dangerhair or POC with a job position of diversity officer I would worry. Take 2/Private Division did infamously do a rather pointless online panel only about diversity some time ago for some "online" version of a trade show during covid (even normies complained about it being a waste of time and offtopic), so there is a risk.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

Sheeet

Eh, I mean it is america and a gaming industry soft skill position, so both being obese and a woman is hardly unlikely.

Now if it was a dangerhair or POC with a job position of diversity officer I would worry. Take 2/Private Division did infamously do a rather pointless online panel only about diversity some time ago for some "online" version of a trade show during covid (even normies complained about it being a waste of time and offtopic), so there is a risk.

but she's not originally from murica, she is from "Merrico" (Sure helps explain the fatness, given the exploding rates on central america).

 

[Infinitron]

 

[anvi]

First we built the engine and now we just need to build the car!

 

[anvi]

Multiplayer.... of course. Bet it's awesome with 1 fps.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Resource gathering for colonies is just such a 1 dimensional way of looking at them. You had the opportunity to go full city builder and you didn't. Don't just have it so Kerbals on other planets generate science. I'm getting spore vibes.

 

[anvi]

jk lol

 

[Jaedar]

Multiplayer.... of course. Bet it's awesome with 1 fps.

Considering how ksp works, with spending a long time with the game paused designing rockets, 10 min launching the rocket, and then 2 days fast forwarding while waiting for the rocket to reach mun... how is that a fun experience for multiplayer?

 

[Hellraiser]

Since it is supposed to hit EA next month there's been a bunch of screenshots or short videos posted on social media and zoomer shit like dickscord and tik-tok over the past weeks. They also stopped putting pre-alpha and now all new footage is labeled as beta version footage.

Spherical tanks and the new round truss/girder are



If the above is Minmus it looks a bit dull, usually the terrain is more detailed with better scatter. Here it looks too similar to KSP1 and really is the only case so far with screenshots where if I didn't know better I would think it was KSP1 and not the sequel (well maybe apart from the stars in the sky and the realtime metallic reflections on the texture). By comparison Bop looks a lot better in the new steam page screenshot:

Also from further back, I like the skybox here, even if stars shouldn't be visible when in sunlight. Although this is a screenshot from the outer system, so maybe it would be enough distance from the sun to see other stars in spess without a sunshield.

EDIT: Forgot about this one, also Nertea's hinged nose-cone cargo bay is in, good to see modders that became devs putting their shit in.

I like the muted "reverbing through metal" sound effect.

 

[Hellraiser]

Eve descent, including snazzy parachute animations/physics. The deployment animations on the antennas/solar panels are also a clear improvement.



Eve could however use more scatter and the surface is low res, either settings or build are at fault I imagine, there's some speculation they want to optimize it first but who knows. All the videos they showed stutter, so odds are it does not run so well with recording added on top.

There was also a livestream today showing the KSC, so basically just the day/night cycle but with the ingame music:



And here's a plane:

 

[anvi]

Looks like it runs like shit. Certainly better looking though.

 

[Hellraiser]

I guess we're maybe going to see some more gameplay in longer form soon or details about what will be in the EA release, as apparently they flew a bunch of streamers to ESA this week(?) or something:



Also here's uhh... Minmus? Not sure:

There was also some damage control by one of the devs (I think, or a PR drone) about no scatter and low res surface textures in some screenshots, mentioning that they've been made on lower settings or dev builds by the devs at some point and shared just now. We'll see soon enough if the scatter is indeed improved.

 

[Hellraiser]

The EA trailer has been release, personally I don't like the style they did it in including the music, aiming to much for the cartoony and memetic. That CGI trailer they did a few years back had a better balance between the memetic and epic space lego akshun.

Space and VAB editor scenes are good though. Frame rate also looks ok, I only noticed slowdown during the ignition shot under the launch pad.

'spergs already freezeframe captured the trailer to allow for easy dissection.

The editor in particular as quite a bunch of new parts are shown, including at least 1 if not 2 types of nuclear reactors (the LG generator part might be a large RTG, but the conical one is definitely a fission reactor):



Methalox engines available at release, as the part list can now be sorted, seems we'll need to wait a while longer to see if we get any electrical thrusters to use with the new nucular reactor:

Are those spherical inflatable habitats or just spherical tanks with a decorative texture picked?

Kicking up dust at launch/landing, very nice. EDIT: Seems this is just some VFX added to the video in after affects or something and not ingame dust kick-up major

The Mun looks great here.

Surface looks decent enough on this one. I'm also wondering if the rover wheel physics are vastly improved.

Here's the trailer:



BTW the stuff they did with those streamers at ESA's location in the Netherlands won't release before the 20th or something, according to what some of them mentioned regarding their NDA.

EDIT: this new screenshot shows the new HUD/UI

 

[anvi]

Those cartoony icons are bad. I am super excited for this game though. I love KSP but I have some major problems with it. I think they are fixed in KSP2, or at least some of them are.

 

[Hellraiser]

There's a a bit of a riot over the just released system requirements, the minimum graphics card in particular which is more demanding than for example soybeerpunked 2077 ever was. Supposedly the minimum is for 1080p and the recommended for 1440p, although they only mentioned that after the butthurt started with no mention of the FPS target.

At least I won't need to download more RAM or gigahurtz.

 

[anvi]

3080 recommended LOL. They need to learn to compress textures and shit.

 

[Hellraiser]

The NDA/media embargo ended few hours ago so footage and previews from the ESA event started coming in, plus some things posted by the devs like the pre-release notes:

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.co...-program-2-pre-release-notes/#comment-4233618

The as tl;dr as I can make it version is: collision/buoyancy physics look buggy/janky (parts sinking into the ground, kerbals walking above surface (ditto for rover wheels hovering), parts breakdancing due to wonky collision physics, water acting like), performance for a 100-ish part craft with 12 (I think ) engines firing at the same time was crap on a RTX 4080 (it had to be sped up 8x in the video by Everyday Shill-o-naut to look smooth, but this is also with all setting on high), no re-entry heat on EA release, various minor UI bugs (pause/unpause spam, trajectory after SOI change around new parent body not drawing), no autostrut and rockets as wobbly as in KSP1, trees/rocks have collisions disabled.

However the sound design and some other presentation stuff is quite impressive, they added kerbal mission radio chatter for staging, there's a countdown with a call out from mission control that can be skipped, tutorial voice over is quite professional quality-wise even if very cartoony/perky and aimed at kids judging by the style, each celestial body seems to have its own musical a theme or at least the planets do, there's also some nice QoL stuff like rendering the sphere of influence around other bodies as a transparent sphere or marking where your acceleration will end on the orbit (plus timewarp during acceleration is already in for EA), the delta-v map is available inside the game in the VAB, the sea has actual polygonal waves now, the VAB has orthographic projection (blueprint mode) available from any of the 6 right angle directions for easy part alignement, rover wheels don't break from speed as easily (ex. jet cars are viable with rover wheels), procedural wings can have integrated control surfaces (there are 3 types, just a wing, wing+control surface and procedural canard), active pause allowing you to plan nodes/check the orbit.

The build was 2 days old during the event, and that took place 10 days ago, so apart from some minor QoL related bugs I doubt they'll fix much. Also it seems the PC they provided to streamers managed to crash for Scott Manley as he lost a lot of his footage somehow, unfortunately.



This guy has a decent short one that's to the point regarding performance while also showing a lot of the stuff, although his voice is kind of hard to take seriously:

 

[anvi]

Fuck this game so much, and everyone who pays for it.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Unfinished game is unfinished, news at 11.

I've played KSP since it was just 3 (4?) parts you could use to build your ship. It was rough and ugly and unoptimized then as well. Most people should not get this game in EA.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

Unfinished game is unfinished, news at 11.

I've played KSP since it was just 3 (4?) parts you could use to build your ship. It was rough and ugly and unoptimized then as well. Most people should not get this game in EA.

Really dunno why people be complaining about this exactly thing, price to a extend i can accept, but not "lack of content" given how the fist game was during the early days. Took me a year or so after purchase to really start messing around with the same.

 

[Hellraiser]

Unfinished game is unfinished, news at 11.

I've played KSP since it was just 3 (4?) parts you could use to build your ship. It was rough and ugly and unoptimized then as well. Most people should not get this game in EA.

I agree in principle, just the price at 50$ IIRC (at least that is what is being thrown around) is steep for what they're offering. Should have cut it down by 10 dollars at least and raise it to 50 after a major update or two. If they had re-entry heat in and working collisions for wheels and scatter I would have said the price was fair or acceptable for the given content, since it would already have everything from KSP 1.0 apart from ISRU*, career mode (which people bitched about when it was being developed and even after it), science mode (people also bitched about this) plus a bunch of QoL improvements and what sounds like a very good orchestral soundtrack.

There's also the complaint that Take2 unlike some ad company in mexico could have afforded to actually release it done (the "early access is for indies not AAA publishing corporations" argument) and they're outsourcing testing to paying customers. I'm skeptical whether something of this scope could ever be released "polished" enough, short of a very long open beta or something. Even then someone would do something that none of the testers ever did, because sandbox. But I get the sentiment people have with this that corporations are once again taking a dump on the customers.

Still I guess this will kill the arguments how amateurs made KSP1 so it ran like shit and proffessional devs would make it run well, Unity is just a piece of shit or KSP is too ambitious even if they had a custom engine due to the individual part physical simulation.

*wondering how soon somebody revives Kethane, considering how long resources are down the roadmap.

 

[Jaedar]

I've played KSP since it was just 3 (4?) parts you could use to build your ship. It was rough and ugly and unoptimized then as well. Most people should not get this game in EA.

Yeah. I'm for sure waiting for some optimization patches, and at least colony building.

It looks really good graphically at least.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

It's out. Get it if you want, or don't if you don't care.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

TL;DR def don't get it yet unless you want to test something that's quite buggy. If it wasn't for the extensive catalogue of parts, it would feel exactly like KSP around 0.9.

Good stuff:
1. New Tracking Station, with all the bodies listed. Will really help esp in later game when there's lots of stuff flying around.
2. Trip Planner in VAB. Goodbye Community Delta-V map!
3. Parts Manager, fuck yeah! No more hunting that hidden bit, everything nice and listed.
4. Editor widgets are nicer, but still some stuff from Editor Extensions are missing (global or local movement, etc).
5. More useful stuff on navball is great, shame there's no current TWR.
6. Magboots on kerbals yeah!
7. Part selection is good, engines/fuel tanks on par with vanilla ksp, pods bit better selection, airplane stuff better, rover stuff better. No robotics for now.
8. Easy to build color-matching rockets.
9. New KSC looks super cool.
10. Tutorial missions (where you actually do something) are a bit heavily scripted, but a great introduction IMO. I'll have my kid play through them, and see if they work for her.

Bad stuff:
1. Stack display. Does show DV on each stage, but not TWR, and as far as I can see, no way to adjust where TWR is calculated at (Kerbin not same as Mun etc).
2. Navball needs to be front and center, not tucked in on the left. It's the main thing you use for flying ffs.
3. Everything seems blurry for some reason? I'm playing at native 1440p with 4x AA and everything on max. So far, no performance problems. And everything seems to be too bright and bloomy.
4. Fucking pixelated dot-matrix font. It's terrible. It really, really has to go.
5. Staging looks off, stuff just magically detaches and is not in correct position. Chalk that one up on game being EA.
6. All kind of pixelated stuff in GUI. Why? KSP is not a game from pixel art times. It doesn't make it more readable, or more attractive. Just looks trash. Hopefully will be changed for final, or modders can mod this shit.
7. Tutorial videos clearly made for kids or GD posters. Tutorial helper, PAIGE, is also incredibly annoying, chirpy and peppy american over-enthusiastic crap. Attempts at humour are more miss than hit. I'll get my kid to express her opinion on it.
8. Important stuff like burn timers and dv readouts are bugged.

Meh:
1. Electric charge still measured in funny units. (Us to be exact on batteries, but EC/s on solar panels).
2. EVA still feels bit finicky, I miss some of the extra controls from EVA Extension mod.
3. Flying feels a bit different than KSP1. I couldn't get to orbit with simple stuff and manoeuvring like in KSP1, probably lack of TWR display, or game aerodynamics actually different.
4. Graphically, it looks way nicer than vanilla ksp, but not that much better than EVE+Parallax+Scatterer.
5. New manoeuvre planning gizmo is bit different? I liked DMagic improved one from KSP, this one will take a while to get used to.

 

[dbx]

Right now I miss the Kerbal Joint Reinforcement mod