this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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Kitten Space Agency

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A community for the planned game with placeholder name Kitten Space Agency, developed by Rocketwerkz as the spiritual successor to Kerbal Space Program.

Rules:

Note:

Official KSA discord: https://discord.com/invite/kittenspaceagency/

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What we know so far (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

First of all, I can't be bothered linking every source, so I'll just list what I remember hearing from official sources, mostly Rocketwerkz CEO Dean Hall. I will update this post as more information becomes available.

  • Current status: Active development. Some semi-playable tests have been seen. According to the devs the first milestones have been reached: "universe simulator" and "yeeting around in the solar system". These are currently being refined. The next milestone is parts building (not to be confused with ship building) to allow for easy additions or modification of parts from which ships can later be built. The gitbot has reported code changes related to parts.
  • Platform(s): Depends on the popularity of the end result. The main development target is windows, but some of the devs are on other platforms, so porting is highly possible, just not a priority. It is worth noting that Rocketwerkz' other games run fine via wine/proton.
  • Engine: Developed in-house. The name is "Brutal framework". Highly flexible and purpose-built for KSA. Seems extremely efficient and optimized with great multithreading. The name comes from the fact that "it's quite brutal to use" (Citation by Dean Hall), in that you have pretty much raw access to Vulcan.
  • Modding: Confirmed and highly prioritized
  • Pricing/business model: Not set in stone, but Dean Hall has said on multiple occasions that he would like to have some sort of free access. This may or may not involve pay-what-you-like, freemium, or other models. Hall has expressed the desire to have the game funded via contributions, an distributedfor free via bittorrent. However, they will not be taking contributions before they have something playable.
  • Multiplayer: Confirmed
  • Early access: Unknown in the traditional sense. However, the intention is to have early playtests (free) available during 2025
  • Interstellar travel: Confirmed
  • Currently our real solar system is being used for everything, as it's easy to find assets for it and it's a known model they can test against. However, the intention is to have a smaller and more game-like system later.
  • Similar to KSP in how maneuver nodes work, but with more QoL feature such as automatic calculation of transfer orbits, porkchop charts, and movement of maneuver nodes to best fit for intercept. These have been seen in gameplay.
  • No Online-only or DRM. Dean Hall during a townhall livestream: "All my homies hate DRM"
  • Scripting and automation: "Absolutely! I'm a big fan of kOS". Not surprising, as Stationeers (also by Rocketwerkz) has an implementation of MIPS for this purpose.
  • Water buoyancy: "float and interact with water at minimum". They just started working on the graphical aspect of water, and the physical aspect is still not 100% determined.
  • Colonies: Unknown. Dean Halls doesn't want to say anything on this topic because "colonization can mean so many different things to different people."
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[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I know there are good reasons a game like this is a bad fit for something like UE5, but there is massive risk and cost in using an in-house engine. I hope devs are up to the task.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I agree. They seem to be doing pretty well, though. Plus it's a studio with a lot of experience.

From the looks of it, they are focusing on the core mechanics for now. While it may not look very interesting, it does seem to be paying off now that they can start adding things with relative ease.

It's worth noting that I really like how transparent they are with the development process, and the performance of the framework is impressive.