FleetAdmiralJ

October 21, 2022

2 hours ago, memphis_mg said:

for an EA title the price is quite expensive.

I mean, this is true, but if I play this as much as I played the first game, it is still going to be pennies or fractions of a penny on the hour, so I'm not going to complain too much as long as it is good and engaging

September 8, 2015

Finally, the analytic thermodynamic code has been improved to give it a more gradual transition between temperatures, which can be configured globally and on a per-part basis. All this is a fancy way of saying that the game will support (for example) refrigerated interiors.

I have no idea how this might be applied in the game, but for some reason this sounds awesome

September 7, 2015

So i guess from the description on the first page and trying to fidget with the mod on a save (and reading some of the comments) that this won't work unless the ship starts from the launch pad?

I know you've talked about precision landings before briefly in comments, which would be nice, but with resource mining in the game, it might be nice to allow the mod to also do missions such as surface->station->surface, station->surface->station, as well as station A->station B->station A such as sending a ship from a Minmus station to a Kerbin station and back (or at least set up each one way trip)

April 28, 2015

I guess not unexpected after going out into the wild .

I did have a weird bug where after a plane carrying it exploded I had a half-sized 2.5m fuel tank suspended floating in air with lots of red errors in the debug menu xD

April 27, 2015

You will probably find sales have stagnated. They need the game to release to bring in fresh revenue. Then they can judge how much money and time they can spend on future updates. If they make $200k just as a random number from fresh sales as a newly finished and released game they will budget some of that for new content.
New Porche - $100k
New House - $100k
New Big Screen TV + Home Theatre - $10k
Amount left over for future development - I hope we sell some more copies.

Wow, the amount of cynicism here is breathtaking.

Also: How dare they pay themselves for working!

April 27, 2015

Being critical and vocal about some issues is a good thing (like Round-8 case).

I would add that the above case and the thing with Kerbal experiences were things that the community as a whole largely spoke up about, not just a few nay-sayers that Squad suddenly decided to listen to.

April 27, 2015

Which is why they should have released it as a 0.95 version. Fix the stuff that needs to be fixed (Manley and Valdez ran into a few after only a couple of hours of play, imagine would thousands of players will do) and THEN release 1.0 as a much more stable version. That's been the whole point of the complaints of going to 1.0 and introducing so many new things without playtesting in the first place.

I don't know about Das, but someone above mentioned that Scott might have run into mod-related bugs, which isn't really Squad's problem per se if he was using mods not actually designed for 1.0 yet. Also, experimentals is meant to be a play test. And let's be honest - KSP has gotten a heck of a lot more playtesting generally than I imagine a lot of AAA games get before release.

Also, there will always be bugs. Fixing bugs is, of course, always nice. But expecting a game devoid of bugs is just plain ridiculous. I mean, I find bugs in GTA V all the time and I'm not in a rage yelling at them that it wasn't ready. I think most people who play games expect some minimal level of bugs. The larger concern is if they are bugs that seriously affect game play or not.

And from a marketing perspective, let's be honest - would we really get this much hype out of a 1.0 release that was little more than a bugfix release? I doubt it.

April 27, 2015

Can we at least wait until we have the actual game in hand before we start telling Squad how terrible it is?

I guess not. and I'm amazed at some of the reaching being done in this thread considering a lot of the things they demanded-or-else-this-game-is-horrible were actually implemented. I guess it just goes to show that if people want to complain, they will find something to complain about.

My favorite is the "there are things they want to still add, therefore it is not 1.0!" argument.

Please, show me a recent game release where a game was released gold with 1) no post-release bug-fix and/or 2) no post-release DLC or content update.

I'm sure they might be able to dig up some example. But I mean, c'mon, really?

April 27, 2015

especially when they've stated themselves that some of the things they wanted in aren't in.

There is a difference between the game including all the goals they had originally set out to achieve (it apparently does) or a game that includes every conceivable thing that the developers might want to include. Based on that metric, games like Minecraft or World of Warcraft (or pretty much any game with a DLC) is not actually 1.0 worthy b/c it was released with content that the developers want in but isn't in yet.

Also, what random player X might think is a "complete" game is not necessarily what the developers think is a complete game - or other players for that matter. There may be people who think KSP shouldn't go 1.0 until we get life support, 15 more planets, and other solar systems. And that list is probably for just about any different player. The point is, there is no real "correct" feature list for a "complete" game.

I think I may have become a naysayer, regrettably.
I think many of us were hoping that 1.0 would bring all the planned features that were listed in the wiki for one thing.
No ÃŽâ€v readouts and no tier 0 buildings make this update seem like every other update so far and not a release.

The list on the wiki was, and always has been, an unofficial list curated from comments made by people at squad in the past - many of which who no longer work there - as things that they might consider doing at some point in development.

Squad never really released an "official" list for the very reason that they didn't want to promise something that they couldn't deliver on in the end.

April 27, 2015

KSP server is down right now. They are uploading KSP 1.0 right now! HYPE!!!

I think the server being down is just a sign of them rebooting/upgrading something or just due to a lot of traffic. The webserver (or any server, for that matter) shouldn't have to come down to upload the game.

Personally I'll be refreshing SteamDB all day (at least until they tell us to use their IRC channel cause we're crashing their steamDB server )

April 3, 2015

I have a feeling we will have an extended hype period this time around, but that's OK

So when do people think? Mid to end of May probably for release maybe?

April 1, 2015

I would presume that they don't think the return is poor enough to justify stopping. Or more accurately, it's strong enough to keep it up.
I don't work in Marketing, so I'll defer to those who have a closer relationship to people who do.

Wasn't some/most of the art department hired pretty much specifically for making these videos?

April 1, 2015

With all the focus on the camera, there was something else I noticed: a thought about hiring Kerbals.

Now, perhaps you are still working on this and have plans for it, but I've always had an issue with reputation not really having a purpose. I mean, you can turn it into other currencies, and it is (presumably) needed to get better contracts, but there is no way to "spend" reputation directly, per se.

It might be nice if say either, 1) lower reputation made the cost of any kerbals you buy go up (so cost is a combination of # of kerbals on your roster and reputation), OR 2) it actually costs you reputation to hire kerbals as well, and like money, the more reputation the more kerbals you have.

March 18, 2015

An easily editable tech tree? Yas! YAAAASSSS! (sorry )

Also, I like the idea of how you want to do the tech tree nodes. I get the difficulty with the tech tree. A lot of people say it doesn't make sense in comparison to what a space-faring society would likely already have at the start of the game (and they're not wrong) but re-doing such a tech tree in a way that makes it very playable is another story. What one would likely end up having is having Kerbal Space Program turn into Kerbal Plane Program, where you get to fly probes...eventually. And maybe if you get enough science you might get equipment to eventually launch manned missions. But that's clearly not how the game was intended to be played.

The only suggestion I would make is to move the probe parts up by at least one node (at least the starting ones). To wait until tech level 4 to get a now virtually useless probe part (the Stayputnik) given it's lack of SAS is kind of silly. I might move that all the way up to a level 2 node, and move all the others up one node level. I get that the point of the game is to fly Kerbals, but it would be nice to get probe parts a tad earlier. As for things like getting batteries and ladders later in the game, that's actually never really bothered me that much b/c we get a basic battery pretty early, and you can do a lot with that without needing other battery upgrades immediately.

Can I please make a request?
Can the crew name generator be made to pull from a .cfg file? That way we can easily mod it to create "real world" names for our Kerbals, or modders can release packs to expand the variety of names, like KPseudonym does now. I'm guessing the introduction of female Kerbals is going to break that mod.
While I'm at it, will the gender of the Kerbals be decided by their name, like their profession is? Or is that all going to be separated out in the future?

Well, you can edit the persistence file to edit Kerbal names now if you would like. I use the Crew Manifest mod myself to do it (though I think you're asking about a pre-determined list of names, right?). More useful to me would be allowing the career type to be toggleable. I probably get why they don't - if it were toggleable you could just train a bunch of level 5 pilots, then "retrain" them to be Scientists and Engineers, who are now all level 5 as well (because level and career type are separate values) and there would be no way for the game to "know" that one made that change. So I suspect the career-type-by-hash has something to do with that. But it would be nice if there were SOME way to control that.

- - - Updated - - -

I have posted this elsewhere and I'm going to post it again because it grinds away at my soul.
The release animations are a waste of time! please redirect that art and animation talent to producing and refining IN-GAME CONTENT.

Marketing is almost never a waste of time. And that's what that is in the end - a marketing piece. If anything, I would say having one for 1.0 is more important than for the alpha releases.

Um, not to sound obvious, but why continue with a tech tree when you have just presented a brilliant solution to the tech tree issue to begin with? Wouldn't the solution be to have a contract unlock the tech node, so every game has a different tech progression that doesn't require a tree, but can utilize a matrix so we have much higher replay value? You can even set the tech up in layers to match the contracts and use the difficulty setting to determine how many layers are revealed for early purchase (for those that don't like the idea of a procedural tech tree).
It just seems to me that going with the option that generates the most replay value and requires the least amount of work from you guys is win-win.

Because having a tree may require you to unlock parts that you frankly don't need or want to get to nodes you DO need or want. Just having a grid doesn't do that. Have a contract to unlock a node you don't need? Pft, skip it. If anything, I'm not sure the tech tree implements this well enough. I'm not a big plane person so I'll tend to keep the entire string of plane parts unresearched for quite a while until finally I'm just forced to unlock them for some reason for I finally feel like, maybe, I should go back and research them.

March 17, 2015

Stuff

What sal_vager said!

Edit:

Arggghh I was hoping this would just be appended to my last message (since it was the lastest one in the threat) but oh well :blush:

----

this implies that they have to meet a deadline because development will stop. they have said it wont, so why the rush to call it 1.0?

Given how long this update has taken, I would hardly call it a rush. But I wonder if it is taking them longer than they anticipated and they're risking either getting off their timeline or are already off their internal timeline for getting the release out. (I don't think there is any drop dead date or anything, but I think they would like to not have TOO much time between releases if possible). My guess is that this is to gauge what the community would prefer - more feature or more polish or even waiting even longer for everything. I mean, we like it when they ask us what we would prefer, right?

March 17, 2015

So my impression is that things that you originally planned on being in the game (fixed aero, resources, etc.) are going to be in 1.0 (or else you wouldn't be calling it 1.0) so I'm guessing we're talking about additional features that you have thought about adding but haven't really officially announced vs. polish and bugfixing.

If this were another Beta release, I might say more features now and bugfixing later might be about equal. But I think considering this is "1.0" that bugfixing and polish are a must, and are a priority over adding other not-necessary features that can be pushed to a 1.1 release.

- - - Updated - - -

reviewers will review 1.0 and assume the game is finished.

In the age of DLC and after release updates, will anyone actually believe and do this. Yes, they will evaluate 1.0 as if it is a release quality game (which is essentially what you are announcing if you're making it 1.0), but that doesn't mean reviewers or players are going to assume that nothing more is being added to the game in the future. I mean, look at all the content that a game like GTA V has continually added to their game post-release in a non-paid DLC fashion. I don't think anyone believes anymore that "1.0" means "the end" anymore.

That doesn't mean 1.0 shouldn't be a quality product. It should. You're saying that this game is good enough TO BE a final product. But it doesn't mean there will be no more updates.

March 6, 2015

The problem with 1.0 is that KSP will no longer be in early access. That said, there's not much space for improvements left. It won't probably affect steam reviews, since KSP will be still a damn good game, but professional reviewers could (I'm not saying they will, but there is that possibility) roast KSP on open fire if there's one too many bugs.

As many complaints about bugs, KSP really isn't all that buggy, especially compared to other early access games and, heck, even compared to gold release games. Sure, it has it's fair share of bugs, and I'm sure they'd (and we'd!) like to get them cleaned up, but I think people would be a little less hair-on-fire about bugs. Bugs happen. They're in every game. What matters is how many there are and how bad they are. Sure, we have the hell craken. It's not like other gold games don't also have errors that freeze the game too. Would it be great if it were fixed? Sure. Will it doom the game? no.

- - - Updated - - -

Pfft, Game of the Year Contender if you ask me. (Which nobody ever does)
The only problem with that is many of us don't run it through Steam simply because we have multiple modded versions.

Yeah, I'm in the 300 hours in steam, but I probably have 1000+ hours played OUTSIDE steam.

March 4, 2015

I don't know about weird, but the best contract I ever saw was on one of my twitch streams:

It was to test the ion engine in Jool's atmosphere at an altitude between 22.6km and 24.9km and going between 100 m/s and 300 m/s.

I mean...that is wrong is just about every way possible lol.

Edit: here is the screenshot

March 4, 2015

I still think that going straight from QA to 1.0 without an interim beta is a bad idea, but it's your funeral game.

They aren't. It goes through experimentals as well, which is essentially squad's version of beta testing. every release does. Do they catch everything? No. But things they caught did bring about the much distressing delays in releasing both 0.23.5 and 0.24 IIRC heh.

--- more ---

As far as the engineers check, I think you guys may be overthinking it. I know part of the concern is new players, but it might be useful to just check for parts (parachutes, solar panels, etc.) and just be like "it looks like you have forgotten solar panels. Do you wish to continue editing or launch?" Maybe that's what you're already doing but the impression reading is that you're almost having it try to build the ship for them (OK, not really, but perhaps babying the building quite a bit).

I have no problem with it telling me if I've forgotten something because I still do it. But I'm not sure how I'd like it if it started telling me how it thinks I should build my ship.

February 25, 2015

I so should build my super duper Jool 5 ship which would probably cost me 5 bazillion dollars to print lol

February 25, 2015

development has stalled a little this week as I have been as sick as a dog.

Testing on it is going well despite me managing to catch the flu over the weekend.

STAHP! Stahp getting sick! ;.;

But otherwise sounds cool. I'm not sure I can easily picture what exactly you have in mind for the fairings. I have a picture but I have no idea if it's right. Can't wait to see them. And look at new IVAs on Friday? woohoo!

Also congrats to Newbius and 1stGhostLive on joining KSPTV!

- - - Updated - - -

Is the prompt really necessary anymore with the engineer report thingy? Just a thought.

While I obviously don't know myself, my guess is that you click launch and it's like "Warning: So and so is not on the ship!" with something like an "Oops!" and "Launch Anyway" button. We don't really know how the engineer's report will look, but I suspect it is that it'll be a button at the bottom like the Mass/Part Count button that one would need to click to view, so a final check when launching would be a good way to catch those who either don't know about it or who forgot to check, much like how the game complains at you if you are overweight or over part count (except with the engineers report it would give you an option to proceed anyway)

February 23, 2015

Well, if it's Laythe and space planes, that's definitely #1. I can't land planes well anyway, and trying to land it on the very hilly lands of Laythe is extra hard. But if I just need to land a capsule, it's not too bad.

If this includes actually GETTING to the body as well as landing, I would say Gilly is the hardest. In my current save I've been sending a few probes to series, and my failure rate even having enough dV to get to Gilly is about 50%, which is pretty high considering I tend to overbudget.

Tylo is definitely a challenge as well, but if you have the dV and the TWR necessary, it's very taxing but not necessarily difficult.

Edit. Speaking of landing on Tylo, I will just put this here...

http://www.twitch.tv/fleetadmiralj/c/4571446

February 23, 2015

Excellent. I think a good job adding feminine characteristics while still making them clearly Kerbal. I can't wait to see the character animations for the female kerbals

- - - Updated - - -

Amen to that. Whoever thought hashing a string was a good way to set attributes was ... well, I'll leave it at that. ROLL SOME DAMN DICE!

I can see using that to initially set an attribute. I'm just sad there is no way to edit it after the fact. I guess that's to prevent someone from being like "oh, I need a level 3 engineers. I have 3 level 3 pilots. I'll just turn one into an engineer!) even though they all level up using the same process.

- - - Updated - - -

Pretty much awesome, good job!
..wait, nobody noticed this?

Sorry, I fainted immediately after reading it and forgot

February 18, 2015

@FleetAdmiralJ
I don't mind if they roll all the major systems into one update (and with something like aerodynamics that kind of forces a major rebalance anyways), the issue is that this particular update is scheduled to be 1.0.

Don't forget that there is also the experimentals team that is essentially there to be squad's beta testers. IIRC both 0.23.5 and 0.24 were delayed because of major bugs the experimental team ferreted out.

Also, while I don't think they've ever really said this, I've always gotten the feeling that they don't see their player base as a testing bed. And releasing the game as a 0.91 beta "just in case" release is treating their player base as a testing bed. I'm sure there are many early access games that produce their games with that viewpoint - and that's fine. I'm not sure that's how SQUAD sees their production cycle, however.

Having said that, yes, if there are any major bugs that slip through, that will make them look bad, which is probably one major reason why they appear to be taking their time testing and testing and testing this release.

February 18, 2015

I'm sure there are other factors as well that ultimately led to this decision (they said as much in the initial 1.0 announcement), but this early decision of "we're almost ready for 1.0" might have prompted them to start negotiations with other storefronts before the community announcement, and these negotiations might have locked them into a timeframe that made them think that there wasn't enough time for further betas.
Edit: I use Steam like many others, but I also know a lot of people who don't want to deal with a steam account for various reasons and would be more inclined to purchase from a place like gog.com, or a boxed copy.

I tend to doubt this. I think there was just a simple decision that they felt it would be easier to just do all the updates at once and integrate them and balance the game altogether in one go than string it out over multiple releases. And really, looking at the list, you're probably looking at, at most, one additional release anyway.

Assuming all the aerodynamic-related stuff is all one release - and it would probably have to be - what does one have left? Basically resources, female kerbals, Level 1 KCS, and a few other smaller updates which could easily be put into a single additional update. Perhaps they looked at this, and though that 2nd update was so small that they just as well combine it all.

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