KSA's Part & Art Development Thread

Thought it would be a good idea to start a thread containing all the in-progress progression and WIP content I post to Discord. As the forums are a little more grounded and persistent compared to an endless scrolling list of short-form content; it might make for a better place to discuss ideas and the development of the game's parts, art style, scope etc as it happens. When things are resolved enough I'll post em as their own threads as usual

I'll kick things off with the first look of our initial docking port part - an androgynous system designed to be both passive and active inspired by the APAS75 port created collaboratively by the Soviet Union and the USA. This was to help facilitate docking between a Soyuz and an Apollo CSM, and represented one of the first instances of a universal design that the Cold-warring nations worked together on. It sits a bit ahead on the timeline of the OG Apollo docking parts (as they were probe and drogue systems) but is probably more appropriate for straightforward craft-to-craft attachment this early in dev. We might branch backwards to more complicated passive\active systems as time goes on.

 

[Kiwi Shark]

I think 2027 is going to be the year when we see a huge explosion of new parts and gameplay features. I’m actually pretty curious about what Nertea has been working on. I’ve seen him in the Discord channels, and he’s also one of the developers, but he seems to be very mysterious. Hopefully he and Daishi can bring us all kinds of miracles.

As I understand it, Nertea hasn’t been actively working on anything KSA. I think it may be a sort of contract situation? Last blurb from Nertea on Discord talked about doing systems engineering and software architecture for actual satellite constellations.

 

[twipsy]

As I understand it, Nertea hasn’t been actively working on anything KSA. I think it may be a sort of contract situation? Last blurb from Nertea on Discord talked about doing systems engineering and software architecture for actual satellite constellations.

So some of the developers aren’t actually full-time, right? I thought all the developers were working on the game full-time, and that Nertea was just keeping a low profile, since I haven’t seen any commits from him in the changelogs. I only just realized that he hasn’t been actively involved yet, or rather, that he hasn’t actually started working on the game yet.

 

[RileyHef]

I’m actually pretty curious about what Nertea has been working on.

I'd temper expectations from Nertea. While they have been listed as a designer dev on Discord there has been no elaboration I've seen from anyone on the team about their role or contributions. Additionally, they've only posted 4 messages to the Discord all-time, half of which are about how their actual non-KSA day job has caused them to stop KSP modding. KSA doesn't seem to be keeping any secrets, the dev team is very public about their progress and add content to the game as it is made. I'd say it's less mysterious than you might be expecting, seems he simply is not a contributor right now.

 

[Daishi]

Structural stuff, things are probably missing from the "core" KSP set but they can always come later

New fabric workflow (thx again for all the help getting my head around blonder, @Beale), foil workflow (gawd i hate mylar), and hopefully a variant switching system to come out of it

 

[Aziz]

Begs the question of the trusses being partially procedural at some point in the future
As in not fully, but incremental size variants (1x length, 2x, 4x, 8x).
Simple reason, decluttering the part selection window. Fuel tank list is long enough already and we're not done yet I don't think.

 

[Daishi]

If not the procedural route, we are looking into a way to group and collect similar variations of parts into a toggle in the VAB eventually. If we don't there's gonna be a *ton* of clutter once i'm done with everything I want to make



Smol radial decoupler, and a tidy up of the existing one. Perfectly sized for lander cans and small probes

 

[Daishi]

Moar struts