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Devnote Tuesday: A big announcement


SQUAD

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It's a cool announcement for Squad, and I wish them success with it.

But I was disappointed in how it was handled. They should have realized this was only an "in-cred-i-ble" announcement from Squad's perspective, not from ours. They got me all fired up over nothing, as this really doesn't benefit current KSP customers a bit.

It'll be interesting to see how they handle the UI through a game controller, but mostly I'm worried about the mods. Personally, I don't consider KSP a viable product without mods. While there may be ways to use parts mods, plugins certainly aren't going to be directly compatible between PC and PS4.

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Oh and regex, multiple platforms was a long term goal...
And had there been a publicly available long-term roadmap (instead of obscure forum posts) no one would have been surprised by this announcement.
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And had there been a publicly available long-term roadmap (instead of obscure forum posts) no one would have been surprised by this announcement.
Are there closed-source companies that 'do it right?' I think you want to see a document that is linked to a change log, with full disclosure of all business reasons that prompted this or that feature to move up the list, down the list, or off it entirely.
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Red herring. It has nothing to do with his point.

Correct, it's a a completely different point and one I think bears talking about.

Listen, PS4 players (likely) won't be able to access the huge library of mods. If they are, to my knowledge, it'll be the first time a console game will allow itself to be legally modded. All those things so many players take for granted now - Kerbal Alarm Clock auto-slowing warp near a node, EnhancedNavball scaling the navball up (something useful if you're playing from the couch), EVE and Scatterer producing amazing visual effects and even just clouds, DefaultThrottle making the default throttle less stupid, FAR, CSS (both the Shuttle and Science mods), a different skybox, DistantObjectEnhancement.. even Claws bugfixes directed towards a released game (why are these even needed? They should be unnecessary. Instead FTE will be porting a broken game) - will be entirely inaccessible to this new market. So we then have to rely on Squad themselves to release updates that fix more bugs than they introduce and we all know how well they do that :rolleyes: Rolling out an update to console will take ages as Sony will have to review it. If we have the same situation as in 1.0./0/1/2, where releases were a few days apart, that could be disastrous for console players as they'll have no choice but to play a broken release until it's fixed. So they'll more than likely be behind PC versions by a few weeks or months - something I don't think will go down too well. So again, Squad will really have to improve their releases to not include memory leaks, broken code, incorrect cfg values, unbalanced parts etc etc.. can they do it? I'm not confident.

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Are there closed-source companies that 'do it right?' I think you want to see a document that is linked to a change log, with full disclosure of all business reasons that prompted this or that feature to move up the list, down the list, or off it entirely.
Nice, many would be hard-pressed to top that level of exaggeration, you're on your way to top-poaster status.

No, I want to see a feature roadmap and evidence of actually long-term planning, something like this would be fantastic but I don't actually expect that of Squad. A lesser list would have been nice. Earlier dev blogs about career mode read like Squad pretty much planned out each set of features separately from the previous and then handed us the jumbled together mess, and that's exactly how it plays.

E: Anyway, too late now. We have what we have and the modding community will have to correct it.

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Well yes, communication 'could' have been better :rolleyes: We can speculate on why communication wasn't all that great. I've seen a few possible reasons posted already (champagne, a tense day, relief and maybe some of that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you win the lottery). This could be something they learn from though, because obviously some of the fans got 'a little' concerned.

And although not all responses were thought out very well, they were based on the (initial) feelings of the writers. They show us that 1, the community likes this game very much and would not like to see it get hurt. And 2, the community very much appreciates the few lines of text the team writes each week (and that they are probably nagged about and have to squeeze in between all that hard work). So please keep these coming!

Anyways, congratulations on this deal. I really hope this will work out for the company and the game!

PS And yes my skeptic dont-trust-any-profit-business feelings are also bit unsure about this new heading, but they were voiced by others in a not so subtle manner.

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Agame barely out of beta going on PS4? Why not Dbox One with Kinect?

Id prefer you finished the main game first instead of looking for more ways of getting profit.

Also, where are the devnotes?

Were you just trying to summarize the last 30 pages of posts?

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Every time something like this happens I just remind myself that Squad is not a tried and true game developer with many titles under their belt. They are first and foremost a marketing company. Oh wait...

*goes back to his rock*

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Finally someone speaks some sense. So much entitled whining. Even a former dev throwing a tantrum.

This isn't at the heart of the issue. Nobody's throwing a fit at squad, though sarcasm about flying tiger and their past exploits abounds.

Consider this example, J.R.R. Tolkien writes a book, to make money, and some random translates that book into French (so that both the translator and Tolkien can make money). Now, in order to be written in good french some things will not appear in translation. This is 100% fine, I read books in my other languages and I read books in translation, and they are overall just as good as the original.

But if Tolkien has to re-word and re-write his book so that the English and French match perfectly then the artistic vision of the book has been fairly seriously compromised.

This I think is everyone's concern, and it should be the concern of future PS4 players too. Squad has assured us that this will not happen, and I think they have the sense not to sanitize the PC version to make a PS4 and PC game.

In short, I'm all for making money and I want squad to have plenty because they deserve it, just like Tolkien deserved/deserves it. My giving said money however, is conditional on receipt of Tolkien's books, and Harvester's KSP. I don't want Jean Pierre's Tolkien translated back to English from French, and I don't want Flying Tiger's KSP.

C'est le droit de l'économie que j'achète le produit mieux

Edited by Halsfury
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As I have not been around for the whole 4 year journey so far, I definately have less scars than some folks when it comes to coloring my view of Squad. As it relates to this devnote I have a couple observations:

1. Its not a dev-note. As others have observed this announcement may have been better served being posted in the announcements forum.

2. PS4 port is good and bad. Good because it will create more exposure and more revenue for Squad which will allow them to continue to invest in getting us the game we all know this can be. It could also be potentially bad however because if the port doesn't go well, or the game isn't complete enough (without mods) for PS4 players then this could create a lot of bad press damaging the image of the game and potentially Squads level of committment to it.

If you want to do a PS4 port guys fill your boots, but please have it done right... for all our sakes :)

Edited by maxrsp
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Nice, many would be hard-pressed to top that level of exaggeration, you're on your way to top-poaster status. No, I want to see a feature roadmap and evidence of actually long-term planning, something like this would be fantastic ...
Thanks for the example. I often get called out for speculation... which I call others on, lol. I guess I'm not immune to trolling. My frustration is that there is no limit to the demands for information some people will make; they won't be happy until they are sure no conspiracy-type information about game features or business deals is being held back, and they are looking at the accountant's sheet.

I don't disagree with you on the technical observation about lack of a rigid roadmap, they probably revise what they have for various reasons, and the company is still small enough that HavesteR can sneak in a cool feature of his own accord, in the last few days before 1.0 shipped. I think that is kinda cool, even though it risked new bugs. We are still witnessing the polishing and linking of feature components in full public view: 1.0 was just a number. But I don't choose to dwell on these things or grumble about PS4 possibly leading to terrible consequences for the PC game.

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I'm not sure why the console dev seems to be targeted solely at the PS4, especially considering Harvester's original intentions in 2011 indicate he wanted the game on as many platforms as possible. Especially if the process is mostly hands off, and other studios work on the brunt of the port.

Surely developing in an Xbox environment first is going to help a PC game develop faster. The Xbox One is going to be given DirectX12 alongside its rollout with Windows 10 - and with the tighter PC\Console integration Win10 is pushing - cross platform play will apparently be easier to develop for. Unity has already adopted DX12 and Microsoft touts it unlocks better use of the GPU with its new multithreading tech, something KSP currently under-utilizes.

Xbox or not, the majority of KSP users are suddenly (if they choose to upgrade to Win10 for free) going to have far more capable systems soon with DX12, and Squad are surely going to be working to optimize the game to use it. Why backtrack and port to the competitors environment? Most of KSP's userbase run Windows. Sure, the PS4 has double the marketshare - but there are still 10 million Xbox One owners around the world.

If the goal is to reach new markets, so be it. But 10 million consoles that run API's that the current version of KSP is going to be using (and they'd be silly not to) is terribly low hanging fruit.

Edited by Daishi
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As I have not been around for the whole 4 year journey so far, I definately have less scars than some folks when it comes to coloring my view of Squad. As it relates to this devnote I have a couple observations:

1. Its not a dev-note. As others have observed this announcement may have been better served being posted in the announcements forum.

2. PS4 port is good and bad. Good because it will create more exposure and more revenue for Squad which will allow them to continue to invest in getting us the game we all know this can be. It could also be potentially bad however because if the port doesn't go well, or the game isn't complete enough (without mods) for PS4 players then this could create a lot of bad press damaging the image of the game and potentially Squads level of committment to it.

If you want to do a PS4 port guys fill your boots, but please have it done right... for all our sakes :)

Do agree with this.

Now the OP would not be as bad if they also included in the first post. This will help us speed of going over to Unity 5. That in it self is dev note worth. Instead we got an advertisement. Which while is great. Is a bit worrisome that the UI will be affected badly. Hopefully they will keep the K&M controlls in.

Do agree that the game pad is going to be a nightmare for some people using the VAB/SPH. Even using a mouse can be frustrating to get some parts to attach right.

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I guess I'm not immune to trolling.
That's half the reason I'm on these forums... :wink:
My frustration is that there is no limit to the demands for information some people will make; they won't be happy until they are sure no conspiracy-type information about game features or business deals is being held back, and they are looking at the accountant's sheet.
That's an incredibly ridiculous thing to ask for, IMNSHO. Tarn Adams is pretty special in the game development world and tons of developers could stand to learn a thing or two from him, flaws included. IMO a feature roadmap/outline is pretty critical for any sort of development and it's something I use day-in and day-out, and we share that outline and discuss it with our clients. The situation may be different but the basics remain the same. KSP's public roadmap, and the development that came out of any internal roadmap they had, was just too broad to indicate any sort of specific long-term planning.
I don't disagree with you on the technical observation about lack of a rigid roadmap, they probably revise what they have for various reasons, and the company is still small enough that HavesteR can sneak in a cool feature of his own accord, in the last few days before 1.0 shipped. I think that is kinda cool, even though it risked new bugs. We are still witnessing the polishing and linking of feature components in full public view: 1.0 was just a number. But I don't choose to dwell on these things or grumble about PS4 possibly leading to terrible consequences for the PC game.
Sincerely, I just hope they carry the criticism forward to the next game. However, it's obvious that Squad is still figuring out how to be a game company and their marketing roots show through far more than their attempts at being a game company.

And don't get me wrong, I love this game and have put more hours into it, playing and modding, than any other single game I've ever played (except for life, I suppose) but that does not excuse it from criticism. Whether I'm harsh or not, I try to be fair with my criticism, and I approach my own code and projects with the same level of criticism.

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I'm not sure why the console dev seems to be targeted solely at the PS4, especially considering Harvester's original intentions in 2011 indicate he wanted the game on as many platforms as possible. Especially if the process is mostly hands off, and other studios work on the brunt of the port.

My purely speculative guess is that the lack of touchpad on the XBONE controller is the sticking point.

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Mu made some comments about patch progress in his joint appearance with Maxmaps on Squadcast, May 30. Also, check my sig for the lengthy "Squad HQ" SQ summary/transcript I did (omg the hours...) , which has a nice section with comments about the Aero problems / changes between 1.0 / 1.0.1.

Which is lovely because we know they're looking at a better option - and mildly frustrating because these dev notes suggest after two weeks, none of the test team has a comment on how it's working out? At this point even a "Yup, <feature x> works and it's cool, but we're still balancing it so hang in a while," would have hushed most of the grumbling in this thread :)

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Which is lovely because we know they're looking at a better option - and mildly frustrating because these dev notes suggest after two weeks, none of the test team has a comment on how it's working out? At this point even a "Yup, <feature x=""> works and it's cool, but we're still balancing it so hang in a while," would have hushed most of the grumbling in this thread :)

The devs have just returned from a two week vacation that started after that Squadcast, so there wasn't much to report on, we'll definitely get devnotes like usual next Tuesday though!</feature>

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I think the problem here and the lesson to be learnt is that the issue is not the lack of dev notes nor the porting to PS4 but a communication issue. People expect dev notes to be a particular way and have some information with them but posting just an image can come over as "wow look at us".

In the end most communication problems arise when people get something other than expect. People expected usual dev notes and instead got an image saying KSP to PS4.

If instead the image had text with it saying:-

"We've just got back from vacation and have nothing to report this week but want to share with you the news we are going to be porting KSP to PS4. We'll be posting more on this soon and the regular dev notes will return next week. Be assured 1.0.3 is in testing and will be released as soon as it is ready."

I think there might have been less shouting and criticism. People may still have been slightly disappointed but not as much.

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I think the problem here and the lesson to be learnt is that the issue is not the lack of dev notes nor the porting to PS4 but a communication issue. People expect dev notes to be a particular way and have some information with them but posting just an image can come over as "wow look at us".

In the end most communication problems arise when people get something other than expect. People expected usual dev notes and instead got an image saying KSP to PS4.

If instead the image had text with it saying:-

"We've just got back from vacation and have nothing to report this week but want to share with you the news we are going to be porting KSP to PS4. We'll be posting more on this soon and the regular dev notes will return next week. Be assured 1.0.3 is in testing and will be released as soon as it is ready."

I think there might have been less shouting and criticism. People may still have been slightly disappointed but not as much.

Exactly.

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