On patching and paperwork.

[sal_vager]

Publishing a game to someone else's platform is never a small undertaking, even tiny games on iOS and Android have to abide by certain rules to be accepted, and the consoles are much stricter on their criteria for the software they will allow.

And porting a PC game to the consoles adds a mountain of new problems to overcome, as code needs to be rewritten to work in the new environment.

For developers, your number one source would be Microsofts Independent developer program, and the Sony PS4 development network, but access to these is restricted, and the goings on are covered by non disclosure agreements between the developer and Sony/MS.

A good source of information on this if you're not a developer is this dev update on the game Hawken, where they reveal a little on the time it can take for certification, which is repeated every time a new version is submitted.

Quote

Having a game build in certification testing is nerve-wracking. You go for several days fearing the worst – dozens of

Condition For Resubmission items (in Xbox parlance) or Must Fix items (in Play Station testing terms). The stakes are high at this point ; it takes a week or two from the time you do final commits for a build to when that build is done with submission testing. Getting fixes retested and approved can be that long plus the time it takes to find and fix the issues.

Emphasis mine.

 

This is around where we are now with KSP on Xbox and PS4, which is understandably frustrating not just for you, our players but for us as well, as unlike on PC where we can push a new update within hours, on console it takes much longer.

If the bug (and let's be honest, they are bugs) is in Squad code, then Squad developers have to fix it (of course), then Flying tiger has to port it, then it's tested as much as possible before the new build is submitted for certification.

If it's a bug in the porting, or in the new code from Flying Tiger it at least saves a step, but that doesn't translate to saving much in the way of time as certification is no different.

Sometimes (though thankfully rare) the bug is in Unity, and both Squad and FT have to find a way around it, but this adds even more time.

 

This makes it impossible to put a date on any patches, as we won't know ourselves until a new version has been approved.