Kerbal Space Program videos: KSP-2 is dead, long live KSP-1 (maybe?)

[Weaver]

Scott Manley being very silly, but in the process producing something that looks very, very buildable in styrene....

The Ultimate Enterprise (CVN-1701 presumably...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEuoZjOboj0



Original inspiration sketch by @GregroxMun:

[Weaver]

KSP is now up to version 1.4.3, but since nothing after 1.2-odd will run reliably on my ancient potato-PC, I havn't been paying as much attention as I used to.

However, this vid by Hazard-ish caught my attention. Apparently v 1.4.3 includes paragliders, so in true KSP tradition, this new toy has to be suitably abused...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYWuG7xzM1M

[Weaver]

On a livestream the other night, Scott Manley tried building a Rotodyne and a Credible Sport C-130 (Iran hostage rescue version with braking rockets), then cut the best bits down into a short video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mMu505vzMo

The 'Italian Job' landing and take off at 5:58 ate particularly amusing and/or impressive.

[Weaver]

KSP 2 has just been announced, produced by a different company (not sure of the behind-the-scenes there), for release next year. The video trailer looks awesome, though one should always take non-gameplay trailers with a pinch of salt:

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_nj6wW6Gsc

Scott talking about the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D353IVwY_1g

Scott interviewing one of the devs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-xM_e5x6oc

There are a bunch of other videos of people doing similar interviews.

Scott Manley's pretty much given up on KSP these days, apart from using it to illustrate points in his astronomy/rocketry videos, however this might get him back into it. I've recently been watching his old Interstellar Quest series from 2013-2015 (106 videos!) which was just ending as I got into KSP. These videos are a particularly epic sample:

Interstellar Quest Episode 41: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdBbfVzoehg
Interstellar Quest Episode 42: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lup16nAqwJY
Interstellar Quest Episode 43: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joSMTAsfG2k
Interstellar Quest Episode 44: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hWL-69qQuw

The whole playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYu7z3I8tdEmjsTPxZMAsU8_d30ctM1Hm

[Weaver]

So it seems Scott Manley has been organising a KSP fighter design competition via his Discord channel (which is why I never heard about it: I don't do Discord). The competition uses KSP plus a mod called BD Armory which addes weapons and a bunch of other handy things. Players submit designs for each stage, according to changing design rules, and an AI then flies them against each other over multiple rounds. There are also points for style and poetry...

He's putting edited highlights videos up on Youtube:

Episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUTZgOnSkRs (only allowed to use the smallest engines in the game)

Episode 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-cQxOaylCk (got to use only one huge airliner engine)

There are links at the end of Episode 2 to unlisted videos which are just hours of combat footage.

[Weaver]

KSP 2 has just been announced, produced by a different company (not sure of the behind-the-scenes there), for release next year.

HAHAHAHAHAHA... Wellll yeah. COVID was... a ride, huh? Anyway, just a tad later than promised, KSP finally launches, in EARLY ACCESS form (i.e. far from complete yet) on Friday. A couple of weeks ago, various journos and KSP Youtubers including Scott Manley, Matt Lowne and Billy Winn Jr got taken to a big launch event and treated to a three hour play session on the latest build of the game, and as of this week, they can put their videos up.

There's lots of new features in the game, but the one which I suspect will most please people on here is that ALL WINGS ARE NOW PROCEDURAL. That means that instead of cobbling together a big wing from a "Lego set" of fixed parts, you choose one "rubber" wing and then stretch and tweak it into whatever shape you want, (including the thickness, which is a first). There's also DOCKS, which you can launch a craft from, which means that if you've built a boat (or a seaplane    ), you don't have to come up with some kind of Heath Robinson contraption to get it half-a-mile from the end of the runway to the sea.


Scott Manley, general introduction to KSP 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWcx8AiV2CM

Matt Lowne, playing with the procedural wings to build a spaceplane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n24PwdqMUhU

Billy Winn Jr, general intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UzmQarGaWk

This is where you'll be able to buy it from: https://store.privatedivision.com/game/kerbal-space-program-2


Some important points:

1. The players above got ZERO coaching and only three hours to learn the game (which is significantly different to KSP 1) AND make promotional videos, so cut them some slack for their fumbles and mistakes, eh?

2. They hit quite a few bugs, all of which were reported to the developers who took copious notes. This was two weeks ago, so many of those bugs will have been fixed by now.

3. The system requirements are likely to be quite high, so you might want to check whether your PC can run it before buying. I was going to get a new PC in advance of the game coming out, but in the end I decided to wait a bit and see what you actually need in order to play it properly.

[Gondor]

You forgot to mention Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut and one of the few selected for the Dear Moon mission.

I have already checked my PC and only need to upgrade the memory and I will be good to go. No hurry though as I would rather get the full game than start with a part one.

Gondor

[Weaver]

If they're following the same business model as KSP 1, then if you get the Early Access version you'll get free upgrades for life as the game gets fleshed out and fixed.

EDIT: they've published the system requirements since the last time I looked:

Minimum (1080p at Low Settings):

OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i5 6400 @ 2.7 GHz or AMD Athlon X4 845 @ 3.5 GHz
Memory: 12 GB
Graphics: nVidia RTX 2060 w/ 6GB VRAM or nVidia GTX 1070 Ti or AMD Radeon 5600XT w/ 6GB VRAM
Disk: 45GB


Recommended  (1440p at High Settings):

OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel i5-11500 @ 2.7GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core @ 3.6GHz
Memory: 16 GB
Graphics: nVidia GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
Disk: 60GB


Despite what it says there, I'd get as much RAM and hard disc space as you can: the ones the gamers were using at the launch event had 32 GB.

[scooter]

Despite what it says there, I'd get as much RAM and hard disc space as you can: the ones the gamers were using at the launch event had 32 GB.

Definitely get more RAM.  I got my laptop with 64GB, and boy does it help with a lot of games (and Daz3D for rendering)

[Weaver]

Lots of RAM especially helps with KSP, because one of the inherent problems in the game is the range of values it has to simultaneously calculate: everything from millimetre-scale interactions between parts to multi-million kilometre orbits. A lot of the glitches ('Krakens' to the KSP community) were and are caused by the maths buffer overflowing and vomiting numbers all over everything else.

[Gondor]

A lot of the glitches ('Krakens' to the KSP community) were and are caused by the maths buffer overflowing and vomiting numbers all over everything else.

        

That's the best description I have heard of that particular little problem

Gondor

[Weaver]

Matt Lowne interviewing the devs about future plans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XFxyeciMQU

Shadowzone, talking about system specs, drama & expectation management: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlgSoZQttAE

Shad also say that he's going to stress test KSP2 when it comes out by running one of his huge 1000-part ships in it on various PCs to find out what you really can and can't do. I'd suggest keeping an eye on this: I certainly will be.


For what it's worth, my PC was WAY under spec when I first got KSP1 and I was still able to play it as long as I wasn't too ambitious. As the game got bigger and more complicated with subsequent updates, my ability to run it decreased, and eventually I just stopped because I was fixing system crashes more often than spaceship crashes. No guarantee that this is how KSP2 will go mind you, and Shad makes the point that early updates are promised to IMPROVE system resource useage rather than add to it.

[Weaver]

Shadowzone's review of a preview build of KSP2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVpeUc5mIF0

Note that some of the issues he mentions here may be fixed in the version that's released today. Scott Manley and Matt Lowne are currently playing that on livestreams, but I can't watch them because I don't have a TV licence (yes, you need one to watch anything live on Youtube).

[Weaver]

Okay, so consensus so far seems to be that it's very buggy and has quite limited features compared to late KSP1, but that the devs have a good attitude and people who buy the game now, in early acccess, will really be able to influence how it develops. If it was $15 I'd say that's great, but for $50... it depends how much you want to be in on the ground floor or not. If you just want something you can play without having to 'get involved', then waiting might be a better idea. KSP 1 isn't going away.

Feedback on performance seems to vary a lot, but what people seem to agree on is that while KSP1 tended to max out the CPU first, KSP2 consistently hits the limits of the graphics card way before that. Different fundamental game architecture. Live playing footage from everyone (i.e. not sped up in post for Youtube) looks decent to me, but then I don't play any other modern games so I don't know how it compares. What we do know is that this first release has NOT been performance optimised yet. We also know that the outfit behind KSP2 is a 'proper' game company (Squad wasn't: KSP1 was a little side-project that exploded), the development team is WAY bigger, and they're talking about updates every few WEEKS, rather than months.

I won't be buying KSP2 for at least a couple of weeks, because I need to know if I can cope with going back to work before I spend money on the expensive luxury of a new, high-end gaming PC.

[Weaver]

Just for chips and giggles after all the serious analysis, here's VERY EXPERIENCED KSP1 PLAYER Matt Lowne trying to launch a Space Shuttle in KSP2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPwmKBlW8aQ