passinglurker

The pesticide of speculation is the truth. The greater the flow of information the more the growth of rumors can be mitigated and controlled. Through well communicated intentions and plans speculations can be nipped in the bud early and misunderstandings clarified. Then as people grow accustomed to receiving answers they will be less inclined to speculate in the first place.

The speculation that actually tends to grow legs is rarely "wild" and "baseless" serious cases are the result of a long term culmination of clues and evidence. Anyway my point was people can't blame the lack of a roadmap on the behavior people have exhibited trying to fill the information void in an environment that lacks a roadmap. It's squads choice to adopt a stance of teasing its user base with piecemeal information. I'm sure they've talked it over and decided they were willing to put up with the speculations, uncertainties, and disappointments this would inevitably cause in exchange for the flexibility in direction this provides, but saying they close up because of salty users doesn't make sense because the teasing model makes salt too.

I'd dispute that and argue that these "playground swing accidents" happened as a result of squad not providing a proper roadmap leading to people reading between the lines speculating and those speculations growing legs with squad doing nothing to curb peoples expectations until it was too late. Its all one big failure to communicate. People taking a line out of a recent weekly address to mean making history will have planet scaling is a prime example of the reading between the lines that happens when squad doesn't use a roadmap that people can refer to.

You have no Idea how wrong you just thought

Hm... Dithered paint detailing... Check Dithered edgewear applied consistently to the corners... Check A gradual darkening near the sides of a color stripe or panel with lighter softening in the center... Check Appreciable and consistent ambient occlusion... Check A normal map... Check Blink... Recheck... Blink again... I dare say I approve of this direction. If this trend can be maintained (and maybe retroactively applied) you may just pull this out of the fire yet.

Public relations. Something squad is consistently bad at for a studio that spawned from a marketing company. Think of how many customers this port has burned how many that are fed up with squad and kerbal that won't come back, won't recommend the game, won't buy dlc, etc... all because not only did squad screw up but they didn't own up to their mistake.

but they caaaaaan... Issue an apology Issue refunds Issue free PC copies of the game through their inhouse store to affected console users Issue free DLC vouchers to affected console users Pull thier product from the stores to prevent customer confusion When your product is a dumpster fire you can only say "hold tight be patient" up to like 3 months before you lose any shred of a moral high ground you had left against your enraged customers at which point concessions need to be made to save face. Instead Squad knuckles down and reinforces its policy of sticking its fingers in its ears and pretending everything is fine and has always been fine. You see it everywhere from thier art previews to thier development priorities, they aren't fixing the console port because they owe thier customers anything they are only doing it for the same reason they fixed all the bugs in 1.2. It's because sony europe caught them, and stopped them, and since they really really want to break into the european console market they had no choice but to stop and do half of a right thing to pass inspection. You can say some of this is speculation on my part but if I'm wrong how come we haven't seen any of these concessions yet after almost a year of these shenanigans?

Porkjet doesn't work for squad any more (better job offer iirc) But his style and standards live on in our modding community even if squad wants to say "Ambient occlusion isn't kerbal"

Of course the parts are KSP scale that isn't the problem the problem lies in that a real world rocket brought down to ksp scale proportionally (as in both height and diameter) and balanced to ksp's "balance" (to the bet of ones ability) will be capable of much greater feats than its real world equivalent because ksp's planet scale is much much smaller than its rocket scale. Plausible solutions though imo they seem a bit more hacky than an upscaled kerbin. Also keep in mind that it'll take more than short stacking or underfilling the saturn V it'll still be using 5 F-1's which would have some pretty out of control twr on a lightened saturn V. So at this point you need to add restraining weights or thrust limits to your rocket and at some point you're gonna ask yourself which is easier/cleaner... upscaling the solar system by 3.2 (roughly 1/4 the scale of our own) and using the parts as is?... or custom balancing the anchor weights of all the historical missions?

Well served indeed it's hard to imagine how one would create more than a snap shot of apollo without the over kill for stock scale parts getting in the way

I'm not opposed to new ways a part can fail from crashing, bumping, over heating, things that can be avoided through good design and cautious piloting, etc... but I'm generally opposed to "life spans" its not conducive to infrastructure style of play the end result is either tedious repair eva's or tedious milk runs with replacement spaceships. But anyway thats assuming this work on part failures some how back feeds into the core game I wouldn't be surprised in the end if this part failure work became confined to things like.. "You have a mun intercept!" *boom* "oops your fuel cell failed! teehee! your objective has changed. Use you lem's engines to modify your orbit for a free return back to kerbin!"

There is a reason they've been talking about programmable events and part failures. Basically it could be a tool kit to recreate events like apollo 13, fiction like the martian, or even your own original stories. So yeah basically its like a contract but is outside career mode, doesn't count for career mode and whoever gave you the user generated mission file probably programed in a bunch of part failure type events. I wonder if we will have a problem like happy wheels and mario maker has where the vast majority of user created content for it will be super hard "all the parts fail rate 5 stars to fix parts" type content.

The historical mods worked out a long time ago that if you want a real rocket scaled proportionally to kerbal size (basically 1m = ~0.625m) to perform with in their real world limits you'd need to either upscale the kerbal solar system to about ~x3 or down scale RSS to about ~1/4 I'm curious to see what approach if any squad takes to solve this conundrum. It will make for an interesting read in the coming months. Though something like what regex expects with historical craft being more cosmetic than balanced wouldn't surprise me either.

I think this is just wishful thinking in some anti-overhaul circles. They'd rather see the game redone in unreal or something than squad polish what we've got. [snip]

Crew pod mass balance is tricky. Like with fuel tanks there are two approaches either a flat rate based on capabilities or a scaling rate based on volume. if fuel tanks are being balanced based on volume it would stand to reason so should crewed parts to an extent. Personally I'm partial to simple flat capability based rates in both cases but scaling with volume can have its merits

So when I say the UV map of an old part is inefficient (hard to walk without tripping over one), or that the endcaps are the wrong size (mk1 pod, mk16 parachute, etc), or that the colliders are some weird wonky size/shape (RT-10, inline docking port, etc...), or that the part description is misleading (lander cans), or that the stat balance is arbitrary and nonsensical (mk1-2 pod) and all the other technical problems old placeholding programmer art have I'm really just saying "Its perfectly fine I just wish it were prettier?". I don't think so. The label of placeholder means so much more than just cosmetic production quality.

That's the point. Through attention to detail I made a part that fit in with porkjets overhauled mk1 pod had I cut corners on the details there would have been a discernible difference between the two parts. The problem with the parts I've ragged on is that there is a discernible difference between them and the parts that set the standard for kerbals aesthetic mostly because they are missing details such as scratches, grunge/grime, paint imperfections, AO shadows,etc... It makes the parts look like they come from different universes. Though some are better than others (I actually liked vostok a lot more than the saturn tanks that sparked this) Anyway that's why I care about the small details, but this isn't a subjective preference. I've always referred to the aesthetic of the finalized art already in the game this is the standard squad chose for themselves when they integrated porkjets work. If you want to go into this more or into what I specifically find wrong with a specific part there is a separate thread for that

Small details add up to make a big difference. Especially when you are trying to follow the lead like porkjet's. Is it really wrong to hope the artists at squad would show similar passion? (before anyone asks it's a pork-alike mk16 parachute replacer imagined as if it was manufactured by kerlington instead of just found by the side of the road)

I'm afraid I can't share your optimism here sorry. In my experience following kerbal development a part you see in a preview is what you will see in game if anything isn't done when they preview a part its the testing and balancing they talk about in the subsequent weeks. Naturally I'd love to be proven wrong come time for release I do want to believe kerbal is worth supporting further I just need a sign to counter the accumulated mistrust. As for complexities depending on how the part is UV mapped the fix could be as simple as photoshopping a few layers. Like I said the previews we've seen are genuinely good starts at the very least.

No you missed it I linked the critique thread to roverdude in a weekly thread. He answered that he stopped reading after I apparently started with a "cheap shot" much to the confusion of myself and others who saw no intended cheap shots until regex finally pointed it out, but by then a fight had started between RD and some bystanders. So yeah like I said I tried I failed and positivity is apparently for suckers. This life lesson was brought to you by squad. Like a lot of what the team has been putting out lately it is honestly a good start, I just wish they'd pay more attention to the details I mean look at baked ao shadows on vector and then compare to the F1 they are sooooo close seriously just push a little more is that really too much?

Which is why the DLC is such an important opportunity. If they handled DLC like paradox does the overhaul could happen gradually DLC would be purchased in good faith knowing a portion would go to implementing the otherwise unprofitable overhaul, but when I see cut corners it's like a "where there's smoke there's fire" response so I can't just read between the lines and assume that's what they are doing. I've been down this road of between the lines assumptions and subsequent disappointment to many times. So yeah they are in a tough position but they've repeated this cycle so many times they've brought this upon themselves. Heh after my initial reaction I tried to backpedal and mellow out. frame my concerns objectively and all that jazz. It didn't do a lick of good. I got publicly blown off and edited out in the cleanup because despite subjecting my arguments to peer review they still thought I was rude pointing out that you don't put bolts on a fuel tank pressure vessel. I tried to mellow it further but it was to late they weren't listening, or even if they were this is the post-1.2 dev team they don't communicate, and they don't acknowledge. Like roverdude said a few weeks ago I can't expect an answer all I can do now is rage against the machine until release and cross my fingers. apathy works both ways if you don't care then you also won't mind.

I support this

So what's your excuse for modeling after inefficient placeholders that have long been slated for replacement since you are so "aware"

Oh you really want to know? I did try to be optimistic long ago I used to be one of those bright eyed "they are space enthusiasts like us we can trust'em to pull through in the end" defenders. Then they shipped 1.0 without the needed art and ballance polish and in an generally shoddy shape all around, then they did it again... and again.... and AGAIN!!! [rant] Each time they add to the technical debt of things that will need to be changed when the polish finally comes. Need to rebalance the parts? guess you have to remake the tutorials again. Want to redo the art? don't forget to make it in 5 different languages. How about they just say it just won't happen already? oh wait they have DLC buying users who give a damn what if that turns them off and loses sales? almost 2000 posts as you say I'm not some troll who fell off the turnip wagon this is years of accumulated salt from my trust and optimism being spent. 1.2 could have turned it all around for me they had hired trusted members of the community they were responding to feedback everything was going great, but squad just needed the contractors to fix the bugs so they could sell a console port in europe so once the bugs were fixed the contractors were out and they went dark again. Now finally with the DLC squad has had yet another chance to make amends and what do they do? add yet another layer of fractured artistic geology making new parts that try and blend in with the placeholders that should have been replaced before 1.0 !!! [/rant] DEEP BREATH [calm] look dude... I understand that there are budget and schedule realities that they have to deal with, and that development can't be as smooth and ideal in practice as it is on paper, and I do want them to succeed because I do love the potential this game has, and I'd compromise and pay DLC prices to see that potential polished and fulfilled but... I just don't see it anymore... I can't read between the lines and see the positives like I once did. My patience is spent I need explicit and straight answers about the intent of thier roadmap, because at this point I wouldn't be surprised if 1.4 is a hollow disability accessibility update to branch into yet another market instead of polishing and refining the gameplay they already got... [/calm] thank you for clarifying this.

No I don't think that at all. History has shown differently.