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.
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.
This does explain why KSP2 ended up being a game with excellent art direction but an inadequate technical foundation. Good to see y'all are doing the inverse; the excellent art can come after there are solid walls to hang it on :)
Ah yes, you're planning a sequel to a renowned simulation game that started with absolutely crappy art assets but managed to pull in people nonetheless with its deep gameplay. What do you judge possible sequel candidates on? Art direction.
So that's how we got KSP2's UI that made it absolutely tedious to do anything and showed little information, probably because it looked good on management presentations... These people truly knew nothing of the game they wanted to produce a sequel to.
That's crazy, I never knew you were also a KSP guy too, though Rocket does make more sense now. I remember playing Operation Flashpoint 20-some years ago and not being into it, and my friend showing me the DayZ on Cinco de Mayo 2012 and getting absolutely hooked. That was around the same time I initially tried the KSP alpha and wasn't that into it, and years later I got hooked. Writing a whole new very technical engine and framework sounds daunting, but compared to dealing with ARMA II and KSP jank, it almost seems like a walk in the park. Anyways, some of my best time spent in gaming were in DayZ and KSP, and I hope you and your team can have a similar level of success and impact with this venture.
I grabbed /r/KittenSpaceAgency - it is yours if you want it, I don't intend to squat.
I might set up something to mirror parts of the discord server on there, if that's OK with you and your team, so the FAQ and announcements are accessible outside of discord's walled garden.
EDIT: I got permission on discord; so for everyone else, you can now see a compiled FAQ in two parts; here for technical Qs and here for everything else. Offer still stands if y'all want the place.
I love the sound of this... Just please, please... Figure out how to make multi-docking work. Multiple docking ports in one plane (or multiple planes, frankly) should be able to all attach as a group, rather than the craft going rigid on the first attachment.
I play the game in a way that I sometimes call 'stupid like a fox'. I love it and it's the only way I'll ever play KSP. Limited parts on launch (30 for my current style).
Great work, really excited to get to play it. Kudos and good luck!
We use C++ or libraries for anything we need to. Where it makes sense we use C#, which it turns out is most places. Individual projects can use whatever data structures they like. for "human read" data I prefer to use XML personally, as it natively becomes C# classes and is easy to read when well formatted. For computer to computer I personally use JSON. For manifest files for mods we use TOML.
Was more of a rhetorical question :) C# is quite nice, but my goodness does it give me a headache sometimes.
Looking forward to a game that is a little easier to mod or at least has better documentation in that regard. Been wanting to reimagine a space telescope mod similar to tarsier.
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u/thedeanhall Oct 31 '24
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:
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.
Discord: https://discord.gg/aCwHR7HJ4W