Kerbal Space Program 2 News

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

[h3]Flight & Map[/h3]

• Fixed: Shielded docking ports cannot be undocked after a reload
  
• Fixed: Shielded docking ports can dock when closed
  
• Fixed: Orbital drift compensation did not take axial tilt into account consistently, leading to additional drift near Celestial Bodies with axial tilt
  
• Fixed: Orbital drift compensation decreases in quality over time
  
• Fixed: Vessel collision with water often only destroys the first part
  
• Fixed: Heat shield automated fairings cause aerodynamic occlusion to parts near them
  
• Fixed: Decouplers require two clicks to stage
  
• Fixed: Vessel becomes active and the scene is switched automatically to flight view of the vessel
  
• Fixed: Jet engines cannot be deactivated until throttled down to zero
  
• Fixed: LT-5 "Bandioot" landing legs collapse to minimum length when any weight is applied
  
• Fixed: Surface teleport tool doesn't work in non-English languages
  
• Fixed: Surface teleport tool shows incorrect maximum altitude values for some celestial bodies
  
• Fixed: Vessel and KSC icons on the map are too large, particularly when closer to the camera
  
• Added new color theme to both A and B Intersect nodes on the Map
  
• Adjusted colors and iconography associated with Intersect Nodes on the Map
  
• Fixed: Switching to Mission Control when paused in flight hangs the game
  
• Fixed: Flight Report does not appear when crashing a vessel if the previously launched vessel had been recovered
  
• Added a delay before showing the Flight Report after a vessel crashes
  
• Fixed: Velocity readout in the Flight HUD only shows 4 significant figures
  

[h3]Optimizations[/h3]

• Fixed: Several memory leaks when launching or loading vessels
  

[h3]Saving & Loading[/h3]

• Fixed: Burn Timer window does not show staging events after loading a save with an active maneuver
  
• Fixed: Vessels lose functionality if loading a save that was made outside of flight mode in certain situations
  
• Fixed: Reverting to VAB with multiple vessels on the runway causes one of them to become unusable
  

[h3]Parts & Stock Vessels[/h3]

• Reduced atmospheric shock heating in the upper 45% of most atmospheres significantly
  
• Increased heat transport away from parts in the top 20% of most atmospheres
  
• Increased stack decoupler and separator thermal masses by up to 3x
  
• Increased unshielded docking port thermal masses by 1.5x, increased temperature tolerance to 800K
  
• Increased thermal mass of light procedural wings, stabilizers and control surfaces by 1.5x
  
• Increased thermal mass of medium procedural wings, stabilizers and control surfaces by 1.75x, increased temperature tolerance to 1350K
  
• Increased thermal mass of spaceplane procedural wings, stabilizers and control surfaces by 1.2x
  
• Fixed: Solar panels occlusion is not calculated correctly near and past Jool
  
• Improved: RSCM-01 "Sample Grabber" arm incorrectly deploys in many situations
  
• Fixed: Surface attached lights don't function when first launching a vessel
  
• Fixed: Crater Crusher stock vessel has its solar panels incorrectly oriented
  

[h3]Construction[/h3]

• Fixed: Game crashes when moving an assembly in the VAB with a nose cone as the anchor part and any non-single symmetry mode
  
• Fixed: Stack Separators placed below a vessel root part do not separate correctly causing destruction of the vessel
  
• Fixed: Clicking on the Orthographic Cube while holding a part or vessel deletes it while in the VAB
  
• Fixed: An exception is thrown when changing the Launch Assembly in the VAB, affecting the functionality of the Delta-V tools
  
• Fixed: Loading a vessel in VAB shows magenta cubes for a few seconds
  

[h3]Environments[/h3]

• Fixed: Black dots show on Jool when observing the planet from the surface
  
• Fixed: Galaxy skybox does not rotate in some situations
  
• Fixed: Stars are too dim when orbiting some celestial bodies
  
• Fixed: Lighting on vessels orbiting Kerbol at a semi-major axis of >=23,000,000,000 flickers
  

[h3]EVA[/h3]

• Fixed: Running a surface survey when planting a flag results in the Kerbal becoming uncontrollable
  
• Fixed: Running a Crew Observation from the PAM on an EVA Kerbal does not show any animation
  
• Added new Kerbal Variety assets from the Exploration release to KSC Kerbals
  
• Fixed: Kerbal Rocket Pin haircut does not receive correct hair colors
  

[h3]FX & Audio[/h3]

• Adjusted reentry VFX trigger points to more closely correlate with start of reentry heating
  
• Fixed: Heat shields do not show heat glow during reentry
  
• Fixed: Procedural wings do not show heat glow during reentry
  

[h3]Missions & Tutorials[/h3]

• Fixed: Numerous errors in mission text
  
• Added a waypoint to guide the player as part of the "Tertiary Dibs: Platinum" mission.
  
• Fixed: An orange arrow/marker persists on the map during the tutorial "Establishing an Orbit"
  
• Fixed: Mission debrief text is repeated in "Minmus Monument" mission
  

[h3]Localization[/h3]

• Fixed: Missing localization of some terms in the Mission control screen
  
• Fixed: Missing spaces in some languages in several sections of the Part Info window in the VAB
  
• Fixed: Incorrect localization for Research Reports collected around Dres
  
• Fixed: Incorrect localization for Research Reports collected around Jool
  

[h3]Menus & Settings[/h3]

• Fixed: Using the Teleport tool with the maximum AP selected teleports the vessel slightly outside the target Celestial Body
  
• Fixed: Cheats menu can become locked into a box on the screen and cannot be moved outside its boundaries
  
• Fixed: Time Warp controls are still available when exiting to the Main Menu from within a gameplay session
  
• Fixed: Part poses for some main menu animations are incorrect
  

[h3]Science[/h3]

• Changed the behavior of experiments that take time: they will no longer pause when leaving a valid research location and will instead enter a suspended state until you return to the original region, where they will restart without player input
  
• Fixed: Experiment crew requirements depend on the vessel's crew intead of the part's crew
  
• Fixed: Orbital Surveys do not work in Low or High Kerbol orbit
  
• Fixed: Science action button flashes for already-completed experiments
  
• Fixed: Using the Transmit All button in the Research Inventory re-transmits already completed experiments
  
• Fixed: Mission notifications appear in Sandbox mode
  

[h2]Submitting Bug Reports and Feedback[/h2]
If you'd like to provide feedback about this build, there are many different ways to do so: Submit Feedback through the Game Launcher Suggest a Change on the KSP Forums Join us on Discord to discuss potential changes

Bug reports should be shared to either: Private Division Customer Support Dedicated Bug Reports on the KSP Subforum

Greetings! I'm Ness, the Art Director here at Intercept Games - let's talk about KSP2's User Interface, the most meta of all game art disciplines!

UI must surface moment-to-moment information and actions to players in either text or clever visual shorthand. When making a simulation game like KSP, an even greater burden of information is placed on the UI, since we need to supply players with a mountain of information and choices without overwhelming either the player or their screen’s real estate. It’s a fascinating and sometimes frustrating balance to strike; and I am consistently impressed by our UI/UX team’s ability to analyze abstract, un-implemented features and translate them into visuals. Jordan and Colton from our UI/UX team at Intercept work tirelessly to make rocket science digestible and slick-looking!

Before we dive into future plans for KSP2’s UI, I’d like to first take a quick look at KSP1’s. Its UI went through several distinct stages over the course of KSP1’s history, the most radical changes happening early in development. One thing that I love about videogame UI is that on top of all the information it must convey, its visual styling can suggest subtle narrative and worldbuilding—something that KSP1 has absolutely utilized and that we will continue to evolve in KSP2.

Some very early unreleased examples of KSP1 0.2’s UI can be found on HarvesteR’s dev blog. We can see a mix of fonts, both handwritten and geometric sans serif, as well as a barebones parts catalogue. The mix of fonts here is the most interesting detail to me; the handwritten altitude and speed readouts suggests a theme of "DIY" that applied to both the Kerbals in the game and the developers making the game.



A later iteration of the UI around KSP1 0.3 introduces the familiar grey that stuck around for the rest of development, as well as a precariously-stacked flight heads up display. This cobbled-together “junkyard” readout was an evolution of the Kerbal narrative of a DIY space program using salvaged parts.



By the time KSP1 0.7.3’s public release rolled around, the staging stack had moved to the left side of the screen, we had a flight cluster, and Kerbal live-feed portraits all carefully spaced around the edges and wrapped in that grey pseudo-metal that we saw back in 0.3. Gone was the junkyard aesthetic, and the skeuomorphic gauges were carefully lined up.

Credit: Whirligig Girl

And finally, a shot of KSP1's UI as of 1.0.

We’re all familiar with the symbiotic effect that mods had on KSP1, and I believe that by keeping the UI simple and grey, it allowed modders with limited artistic ability to easily match the look of the canonical UI and maintain a level of visual consistency which ultimately cuts down on cognitive load and increases immersion. This is absolutely something we on the art team are aware of in KSP2, and when it comes time to roll out additional modding tools the UI team will also share our internal style guide for modders interested in mimicking KSP2’s UI.

Now onto what I think most of you all are here for; what’s in store for the future of KSP2’s UI now that For Science! is out the door? In the weeks since release, we’ve enjoyed following along as new and returning KSP2 players have checked out the missions, discovered points of interest, and put all of our flight systems through their paces. As thrilling and satisfying as it’s been to see all of the impressive feats you’ve achieved since the For Science! update, we’re also been watching and documenting your reactions to the user experience and the user interface in particular.

We’re excited to see that many elements of our UI have facilitated a smoother first-time user experience, but with your help we’ve also identified several areas of confusion that we are actively tracking. These areas include:

• Fonts can be hard to read for a variety of reasons (size, scaling, color, contrast, etc.).
  
• The maneuver gizmo can be difficult to interact with, and precision maneuvers are especially difficult.
  
• Trajectory tag markers can be difficult to differentiate or identify.
  
• Trajectory tag stems can get tangled with one another in ways that cause significant visual confusion.
  
• SOI transit "bullseye" indicators are too bright, too big, and too prominent relative to other map elements (this is a personal bugbear of mine).
  
• Rearranging the staging stack order when selecting the bottom-most stage is difficult.
  
• The Part Manager presents several usability issues including but not limited to: observing many parts at once, using the Resource Manager as a separate app to specifically track fuel on a per-part basis feels awkward, associating a viewed part in the manager with the actual part on the ship.
  
• We are not adequately communicating that "Revert to VAB" causes a loss of recent progress, and there are situations when reversion should not be accessible at all.
  
• It is not obviously clear, especially to new players, when a vehicle is recoverable.
  
• The audio-only countdown on launch presents both accessibility and legibility problems.
  
• When in any time warp state other than 1x, the UI does not adequately communicate the state change. The tendency to interpret an under-warp failed control input as a bug has caught out quite a few members of our own team, and is likely responsible for quite a few bug reports.
  
• Visual styling for some UI elements is not completely unified.
  
• It would be very handy to be able to see mission requirements in the VAB while constructing a vehicle.
  

KSP2 in early access is delivering the kind of active feedback loop we were hoping to see, and we’ve now got a nice collection of feedback items to help guide our work priorities. We’re excited to continue improving on the UI. In the meantime, we’ve been working away on a few UI improvements of our own! In the upcoming v0.2.1.0 update you’ll not only see us begin to work through the 2024 bug list, but you’ll also see the following changes:


We’ve adjusted the iconography and visuals of intersect nodes to make them easier to interpret (and hopefully easier to learn). We’ve also adjusted the colors of the planned trajectory line to further differentiate from your current trajectory, and shifted the colors on intercept nodes to make it more clear what relation your craft has to celestial bodies.

Time and space are weird, but through these and future trajectory improvements we’re working on, we hope to make parsing orbital mechanics more approachable!


Aaaaaalso as a sneak peek for something that’s coming beyond the v0.2.1.0 update, Jordan has been diligently combing through and adjusting KSP2’s UI in a giant unification pass in order to align some of our disparate visuals. The shot below represents the first wave of style unification on the highest traffic areas of the game:


I'm looking forward to sharing more UI improvements with you all in the future!

[hr][/hr][h5]Share Your Creations![/h5]

We've got an exciting announcement! We're working on a new video for KSP2 and we want YOU to share your favorite creations with us for inclusion in the video. It doesn’t matter if it’s a rocket, a plane, a rover, a boat, a giant mechanical turkey, or whatever your heart desires—if you love it and you’re proud of it we want to see it! If we end up using your submission, you’ll be credited and have eternal bragging rights.

If you’d like to submit, send an image of your creation along with a craft file (.json) to [email protected]. Please also include your preferred name so we can credit you (can be real name or username). A bit of fine print here: by submitting your creation, you’re agreeing to let us use the craft file in any and all future marketing materials. Thanks!

We’ll release more details as the project moves forward. We’re excited to take your vehicles out for a spin!

Hello Kerbonauts, happy new year!

We had a lot riding on the For Science! update that we released two weeks ago - it's been a long first year of Early Access, filled with the arduous and mostly unglamorous pursuit of bugs, stability improvements, and performance gains. This update, the first of our major roadmap updates, had to achieve some big new goals for KSP2:

• Round out the core game loop with re-entry heating and buoyancy
  
• Introduce a whole new progression system via the R&D Center and Mission Control
  
• Introduce Science collection, Science parts, and dozens of new points of interest
  
• Continue to deliver quality of life improvements (like banishing wobbly rockets) and performance improvements
  

Also: there are boat docks now! In a nutshell, the additional of Exploration Mode transformed KSP2 from a sandbox experience into a proper long-form game.

With working on something with many moving parts, there's always a little trepidation when we release a new build to the public - especially when there are so many new systems in play. We do our best to test every possible scenario, but there's always a chance that something terrifying will rear its head once we’ve got thousands of people playing the game. It was with this fear lurking in the backs of our heads that we sat together in our own mission control room and waited for confirmation that For Science! had been released into the world.

We nervously watched the first review videos appear of YouTube, and were relieved to discover that veteran players like Carnasa and Matt Lowne were excited about what they found in the new update. We cycled between Everyday Astronaut, EJ_SA, and Giantwaffle, discovering to our delight that all three were not only having fun, but were having trouble putting the game down! By the time we did our own livestream that evening, it was clear that we'd succeeded in creating a more stable and realistic universe and gave players compelling goals to pursue within that universe. Our stream ran over an hour longer than planned because we too had trouble putting it down. That's a story we're hearing a lot - you sit down to play this game for an hour, and before you know it the sun's coming up.

Over the last couple of weeks, a clear picture has emerged - there are still bugs, as well as some big opportunities to improve the player experience - but for the most part, those rough edges have not gotten in the way of some very ambitious exploratory missions. I’ll talk more about those bugs in a bit, but first I’d like to highlight some of this update’s biggest wins:

• The music. Yes, you all love Howard Mostrom. We’re going to need a bigger inbox for all his fan mail.
  
• The tutorials and first-time user experience have paved the way for a new group of first-time Kerbal players. We’re not only seeing lots of you get to space, we’re also seeing a lot more players doing interplanetary missions. In many ways, the original justification for KSP2’s existence was to find a way to welcome more new players to Kerbal, and we’re very excited to see that this work has begun to bear fruit. We knew that bringing rocket science to the masses wasn’t going to be easy, and there’s still a lot more work to do in this area...but we’re making progress!
  
• Folks are enjoying the missions! We’re excited to continue adding new missions to the game via upcoming updates, and we’d love to hear your suggestions for compelling new exploration goals.
  
• In general, we’re beginning to see the flourishing of player creativity that we knew would take place once the most critical performance and usability issues had been ironed out. It’s been a pleasure to visit the KSP Subreddit and our #bestof channel on Discord and bask in the awesomeness. People are making magnificent things, and it feels nice to see all that imagination unleashed.
  

Look at this stuff!

Courtesy of Aravir

Courtesy of Flypig07UA

Courtesy of Dr. Seno

Courtesy of BioticKeen

Of course, a key benefit to our game being in Early Access is that we get detailed bug reports and feedback from a wide variety of players. And boy, did we get a big helping after releasing this update. Check out the spike we saw on our K.E.R.B. bug submissions at the end of December:


There are some annoying bugs and usability issues in the mix - some are new, some have been around for a while but have risen in prominence now that other more consequential problems have been addressed. Some areas of frustration include:

• Font scale and legibility
  
• The maneuver node interface
  
• Thermal system tuning, including the propensity of some parts to explode even when they’re shielded and the insufficiency of fairings to protect their contents)
  
• One-off stability issues (most of which can be corrected by reloading or restarting)
  

We are triaging and trying to reproduce issues related to things like parachutes failing to deploy, trajectories vanishing from the map view, and Delta-V accuracy (which given the dependency of maneuver plans on accurate Delta-V projection, can result in being blocked from planning a maneuver). We’ve also noted some user experience gaps, most notably the game’s failure to properly communicate to new players that "Revert to VAB" is different from "Return to VAB" - an oversight that has led some newcomers to lose their progress after completing a mission.

I’ll also take this moment to offer a new protip that I learned today after complaining to Chris Adderley about my spaceplane wings being destroyed on re-entry: while the heavier wings are more heat-resistant, the volume of every wing (and especially the wing’s thickness) affects its thermal mass. A thicker wing will be more resistant to destruction via heat! I’ll be trying out the "fat wings" approach tonight after work. Procedural wings sure are cool.

Anyway, back to bugs. If you’re one of the people who have come up against a truly blocking or fun-destroying issue, please do take the time to share that information with us via the KSP Forums. We’re seeing less of this after the For Science! update, but it’s still something we want to investigate aggressively when it’s encountered.

We’re already hard at work on the v0.2.1.0 incremental update to address as many of these issues as we can, and we’ll update you here as soon as we know the exact timing and contents of that update. In the meantime, thank you for continuing to share your bug reports and feedback - your detailed reporting continues to play a huge role in helping us to improve the game.

Another exciting new development: modders have started to produce some extremely cool augmentations for KSP2, including Orbital Survey, an alarm clock mod (already heading towards 2,000 downloads!), and there's even some planet modding underway! Our team is especially happy to see that the extensible tech tree file format created with future moddability in mind has paved the way for things like the new Tech Tree Manager mod.

The Orbital Survey mod

The 2.5x Kerbolar System mod

The next major roadmap update, which will bring colonies to the game, is now also in progress. In the meantime, the current plan is to sneak a few additional missions into the next incremental update, just to keep things fresh. Now that there are interesting things to do in the game, we’re very excited about all the ways that we can continue adding new layers to that experience in the coming year while knocking out the bugs that remain. 2024 is going to be a very exciting year for KSP2, both for the players and for us developers!

Nate

[hr][/hr]Keep up with all things Kerbal Space Program 🚀 KSP Forums KSP Website Facebook Twitter Instagram Intercept Games Discord KSP YouTube

Hello Kerbonauts!

With the imminent launch of the Vulcan Rocket, Creative Director Nate Simpson paid a visit to the experts over at United Launch Alliance (ULA) HQ to get their help in his own Vulcan attempt in KSP2.

You can join in on a limited time challenge to create your own Vulcan Rocket in KSP2 and complete an ambitious mission (the more ambitious, the better!) with the potential to win some exciting goodies.

Post your videos/images on X or Instagram, tag @ULAlaunch and @KerbalSpaceP, and use #KSPVulcanRocket. Tory Bruno, CEO at ULA, will pick out his favorite! You have until January 5!

Thank you to ULA and the Vulcan team!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[hr][/hr]Keep up with all things Kerbal Space Program 🚀 KSP Forums KSP Website Facebook Twitter Instagram Intercept Games Discord KSP YouTube