Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Little context for the trailer: it seems to be a homage to this fan video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkDOOsGg-9I, which is one of the most well-known videos in the KSP community, and something people show to people to get them into playing this game. I must say the new, "official", video does capture the atmosphere very well.

If the game will look a third as well as on the trailer visualization, I'll buy it without thinking (who am I lying to, I'll buy it anyway). One thing though: I hope the modding capability and freedom won't be diminished.

If KSP is a great game by itself, mods make it a literal order of magnitude better - a huge amount of solid fan work was done to expand every imaginable aspect of KSP. And I mean it: among many things, mods give you many more realistic and unrealistic building blocks, life support management, communication networks including speed of light delay, trajectory planning, UI/UX improvements, graphics improvements, orbital assembly, working space telescopes, realistic aerodynamics model (including supersonic physics), n-body simulation and non-symmetric gravity fields,... I don't think there's another game where so much of such highly skilled effort was spent for free to make it deeper.

I really hope they won't do anything that would make this depth of modding impossible.




> ...n-body simulation and non-symmetric gravity fields...

I want to agree with everything said here, and add that the KSP mod ecosystem is no joke. The few things mentioned here barely scratch the surface.

As a point of comparison: I'm aware of and long involved with the Minecraft community, and it is huge and excellent. While the total amount of mod material is likely greater for Minecraft compared to KSP, I'm comfortable saying that the mods in KSP are deeper and wider in scope.


I never understood the Minecraft modding scene. When I was last playing heavily, Mojang was insisting that there were no mods, there was several implementations of multiplayer servers mods based on decompilation of the source, one of the major players had dropped off and gone stale, client modding was even hinkier, and version changes screwed everything up.

Did it ever get somewhat accepted officially?


What ended up working out was building modpacks rather than installing specific ones.

Makes it easier for streamers to play a modpack and people play it as well.


Someone should marry the two


Please don't, some of us have families to feed!

On a more serious note, I wonder how hard it would be to introduce even semi-realistic Newtonian physics to a voxel-based game world.


I was thinking use KSP to "drive" objects in Minecraft... not that I'd do it, but I could imagine some twisted soul. :-)


The world may be voxel-based, but objects in Minecraft still move in a Newtonish fashion.


You should have a look at StarMade: https://www.star-made.org/


Have a look at Space Engineers and possibly Empyrion.


This also looks inspired by the short film Wanderers, about humanity's expansion into the solar system. https://vimeo.com/108650530


I'd say that Gary's Mod has had a similar amount of work put in to it by modders. But it was also designed specifically to be modded, the default game gets boring really quickly.


I really REALLY need kOS to have fun playing this game... Hopefully mods are not hard to port over (Or a default scripting language, I can get behind that too)


Once I got past a certain point on the learning curve in-game, KSP kind of got boring for me. Docking, landing on the Mun, building space stations, were all very very doable.

But adding kOS and trying to script my way to doing the same things is honestly the coolest thing I've ever seen in a game. It went from "fairly easy" to "excruciatingly difficult in the most fulfilling way imaginable".

11/10, will play again.


If you're the kind of person who likes kOS, you might REALLY enjoy KRPC: https://krpc.github.io/krpc/


> One thing though: I hope the modding capability and freedom won't be diminished.

There was a video posted alongside with a lot of development interviews and one of them was very specific about mentioning they were creating a platform and they wanted to expose the framework they use to the community. Hopefully not just lip service but as far as signalling goes it was important enough for them to mention.


Website mentions modding, but I wonder whether it would be limited only to the PC version. But, I'm really glad that the consoles are getting KSP2.


From the website:

>Multiplayer/Modding >The technological developments made to the foundations of Kerbal Space Program 2 will build on the beloved modding capabilities of the original game, as well as deliver on the long-requested addition of multiplayer. Soon players will be able to share the challenges of deep space exploration. More details on these features will be revealed at a later time.


Thanks for the context.


> it seems to be a homage to this fan video:

The end of the KSP2 trailers says "Special thanks to Shaun Esau #buildflydream", which is for that video.


Yes. I wanted to drop a link to it here, because it's worth watching.


Must be quite an honor for Shaun Esau. I know I would be flattered.


I think PC's point was that it more than "seems to be" an homage.

It explicitly is an homage.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: