From Dean on Discord. Permalink:
/channels/1260011486735241329/1260507565792563201/1353577762274807911

Development Update

videos and content below uploaded to this folder for people to access: link

Townhall this week

There will be a town hall at Thu Mar 27 2025 22:45 UTC event details [in Discord, can't link it unfortunately]

Exploration of Volumetic Rocket Exhausts

This is an intial shader test only, so is very experimental

The project has been heavily trying to approach technical challenges from first principles. As such, Stefan hunted out some papers from some time ago that looked into using our volumetric approaches we have for clouds, for rocket plumes instead of particles. This work is still experimental but early efforts are proving promising both for performance and visuals.

One of our key pillars is "Wonder", so in terms of graphical fidelity we want to ensure that this is captured in the game. With the level of camera quality we are seeing on real-world rocket launches now, we have a lot of reference. We have discussed internally if our first use of this might be for RCS on the current test Apollo CSM.

Explanation of Atmospherics in KSA

Blackrack has put together an excellent description of our it is currently working. I'm including this PDF dump here for now, as it will be useful for modders in the coming months as we release our early builds.

Work towards distribution and custom content

We are working towards how we get early builds out as well as the wider work to get towards true playable milestones. This will include how we collect contributions with a view to expanding the team, to hire community teams to make assets for the game (that might include music, the solar system, etc...).

Harvest[e]R in KSA + New Stuff

You'll see a lot more of @HarvesteR as he is now deep into BRUTAL use, both helping with KSA and with new projects. We managed to spend some time with him at GDC, and I personally think his work is very underrated in gamedev circles. We are keen, aggressively so, about bringing his game ideas to life with BRUTAL as well has his work with KSA directly. It was really amazing being able to watch Stefan and Felipe talking through gamedev and rockets in person!

Linx on the KSA team

You might have noticed @Linx (Paralax Author) is now "yellow". I managed to talk them into helping us out. It is still early days so please don't pressure them too much about what they can. The key is for them to take a look through where we are at, and then identify package(s) of work they can do to advance things. Current likely focus summary:

detail heightmaps and also biome-based texture blending (which by extension would include biome based detail heightmaps!)