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Devnote Tuesday: UI, more UI, and answers to frequently asked questions!


SQUAD

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Dear KasperVld, and all of squad. I hope you realise you just acted out encouragement to post feature requests here.

This is the only topic that apparently gets some dev-attention. So it's the obvious jump-board to post requests. You just asked someone to post a link to a topic in the requests section. You basically confirmed that suggestions here get more attention than in suggestions and development.

Drop a short line in suggestions and development every now and then. Take five minutes a week to scroll through the top page of requests, and maybe respond to one or two interesting or popular topics. Doing that, you make it a worthwhile platform. This will maybe take 15 minutes of your time a week. And it doesn't need to be the same person every week, or even on an actual weekly basis. Give people a sense that the suggestions and development forum is being actively read, and THEN maybe the suggestions in this topic will lessen.What you basically did was confirm this is the best place for ones suggestions. Since they're actually being read here. Again, not saying you don't read the suggestions and development forum, just that people get a sense you're not, because you post more often in this topic, than in that forum.

Not disagreeing with you, but I can see the "This will maybe take 15 minutes of your time a week" part as demotivating and even belittling of one's efforts, depending on how far from reality the number is. And I can easily see it being quite far.

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Dear KasperVld, and all of squad. I hope you realise you just acted out encouragement to post feature requests here.

This is the only topic that apparently gets some dev-attention. So it's the obvious jump-board to post requests. You just asked someone to post a link to a topic in the requests section. You basically confirmed that suggestions here get more attention than in suggestions and development.

Drop a short line in suggestions and development every now and then. Take five minutes a week to scroll through the top page of requests, and maybe respond to one or two interesting or popular topics. Doing that, you make it a worthwhile platform. This will maybe take 15 minutes of your time a week. And it doesn't need to be the same person every week, or even on an actual weekly basis. Give people a sense that the suggestions and development forum is being actively read, and THEN maybe the suggestions in this topic will lessen.What you basically did was confirm this is the best place for ones suggestions. Since they're actually being read here. Again, not saying you don't read the suggestions and development forum, just that people get a sense you're not, because you post more often in this topic, than in that forum.

Please see my previous reply to this sort of thing - http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/101289-What-is-the-point-of-the-Suggestions-subforum?p=1566451#post1566451

TL;DR we read it but don't have much time to spare in replying to threads and even when we do, we're hesitant to do much other than agree it may be a cool idea. Usually, adding something suggested would be too far down the line to commit to in a post. Additionally, we're not really at the point of exploring new ideas, so aren't following the suggestions forum as much as we usually would - Unity 5 takes a lot of our attention!

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Lol, spoken by a man who had not spent hours and hours hand crafting his labours of love.

Trolling aside, this is a full release. You CANNOT break the game after release. Imagine you spent hours and hours unlocking tanks in warthunder only for an update to wipe all that out.

Would you be happy?

lol. well of course id probably be pretty annoyed and rightly so.

but I would expect in exchange for such a save-game breaking update, players would get a lot of game changing new content, polish, and improved balance.

The very nature if KSPs physics based toy box means that seemingly minor changes in part mass, engine thrust, fuel consumption, drag value, heat tolerance, etc mean that some legacy craft will no longer behave as they did before the update. sadly its just a reality of trying to achieve balance in a wonderfully complex game.

it sucks that intricate, meticulously designed craft break from these kinds of changes. but if the end result its a more polished, balanced and ultimately fun game... then so be it.

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lol. well of course id probably be pretty annoyed and rightly so.

but I would expect in exchange for such a save-game breaking update, players would get a lot of game changing new content, polish, and improved balance.

The very nature if KSPs physics based toy box means that seemingly minor changes in part mass, engine thrust, fuel consumption, drag value, heat tolerance, etc mean that some legacy craft will no longer behave as they did before the update. sadly its just a reality of trying to achieve balance in a wonderfully complex game.

it sucks that intricate, meticulously designed craft break from these kinds of changes. but if the end result its a more polished, balanced and ultimately fun game... then so be it.

That's the rub.

Squad thought the game complete enough to be a full release. You know, a finished game. You cannot release a product and when someone spends time using it, take something away form the player. Name one game that has done that and survived unscathed. It's simply unacceptable after release. If the game is not finished don't release it!

Balancing is fine and dandy. Breaking the game or changing it enough to significantly change gameplay after a 1.0 release is not acceptable.

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Not disagreeing with you, but I can see the "This will maybe take 15 minutes of your time a week" part as demotivating and even belittling of one's efforts, depending on how far from reality the number is. And I can easily see it being quite far.

This. Also, 'Fifteen minutes of time per week' spent reading forums potentially leads to 'six hours' of time per week spent reading forums, which is perhaps not the best use of development time while the team is crunching out a major engine overhaul. What level of depth of context can you possibly achieve in fifteen minutes?

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Maybe we could have a movable and sizable navball, much like how Enhanced Navball handles things? Looking good overall.

Any word on crawling the entire craft part tree on every resource request?

Do you have a link to the topic? I'll see if we can squeeze it in for next week

In case you were actually talking about the second half of the statement, the bug is documented here: http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/5136

(note: this post may be delayed. Long time lurker, it's my first post and has a link in it...)

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Wallygator: actually, you can. Edit GameData/Squad/Parts/Resources/FuelCell/FuelCell.cfg and change the two FlowMode lines.

I am fully aware of that. Actually figured it out for myself many weeks/months ago. Still...

EDIT: sadly, every week, i read the notes, and read the responses and see the devs responses and every week it eats away little by little at my motivation to continue to participate in the discussions. I'm not totally disillusioned, but there are moments... this week is one of them.

Edited by Wallygator
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This is the reason why some parts should've been removed earlier.

Just because you don't use a part, doesn't mean others don't use it either. With Unity 5 slated to bring us into 64 bit mode, the memory limitations will soon be lifted. I'd rather support an in game method of de-selecting parts in the configuration menu, if you feel you don't need it and want to lighten your memory footprint and startup times, rather than simply take away parts. I'd rather a dozen similar parts, rather than not find the part I need.

Don't forget, Kerbal Space Program is a full release. Making that claim adds all new responsibilities.

With the game having been officially "released" as a full version, that puts a vastly different level of responsibilities on the developer. It's no longer an experiment to develop this game and see were it leads. They can certainly add all they want, but removing and breaking player progress are taboos in the gaming world. When the game hits consoles, this will be doubly true. Just because you are accustomed to the alpha development process that we both enjoyed and suffered partaking in over the years, does not mean that's even remotely acceptable now...

Edited by richfiles
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I'm not quite sure about the whole "Never break people's creations" bit. I mean, Cities:Skylines just got a massive update (After Dark DLC as well as the accompanying patch) which most certainly breaks creations. (Any city that runs off solar is borked, as well as many other cities due to lack of revenue at night.) Nobody is standing outside Colossal Order's offices with torches and pitchforks. So can someone tell me why KSP would be any different?

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I mean, Cities:Skylines just got a massive update (After Dark DLC as well as the accompanying patch) which most certainly breaks creations. (Any city that runs off solar is borked, as well as many other cities due to lack of revenue at night.) Nobody is standing outside Colossal Order's offices with torches and pitchforks. So can someone tell me why KSP would be any different?
So, wait, Cities: Skylines just got a DLC that added nighttime which messes up saves in the base game from updating? So basically you don't need the DLC to get nighttime to mess up your solar panels? Why would you release DLC content as a base-game update? That pretty much defeats the purpose of a DLC, which is making money off additional content.

That's the difference that is being talked about here: The next update will be a base-game update to a release product. They're not talking about optional content, they're talking about a required update (required as in, future DLCs and content will require it).

Disclaimer: I have no horse in this race.

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I mean, Cities:Skylines just got a massive update (After Dark DLC as well as the accompanying patch) which most certainly breaks creations. (Any city that runs off solar is borked, as well as many other cities due to lack of revenue at night.) Nobody is standing outside Colossal Order's offices with torches and pitchforks. So can someone tell me why KSP would be any different?

It's not any different. The Paradox Plaza forums are ablaze with people complaining about solar power. I posted a thread myself trying to ascertain facts instead of vitriol and you can guess how well that went :D

So, wait, Cities: Skylines just got a DLC that added nighttime which messes up saves in the base game from updating?

No, they got a patch to the game that added day/night cycles, and DLC that adds things you can do to your city to take advantage of (or mitigate some of the problems with) said base-game change. While the DLC is optional (and costs $15 that I happily paid) the game update is as free and required as all Steam updates are. Namely: Unless you go to pretty great lengths it's gonna get installed.

So basically you don't need the DLC to get nighttime to mess up your solar panels?

That is correct. If you have a city that has all solar power (or even a significant amount, over about 25% solar) then parts of your city will run out of power at night. Without ever spending a dime on DLC.

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Balancing is fine and dandy. Breaking the game or changing it enough to significantly change gameplay after a 1.0 release is not acceptable.

And how might balancing look like if it does not change gameplay (for each and every player)?

As far as I know most stats remain the same for crafts/parts already launched, so only saved crafts would need a rework anyway?

That is correct. If you have a city that has all solar power (or even a significant amount, over about 25% solar) then parts of your city will run out of power at night. Without ever spending a dime on DLC.

And let me guess, without the DLC the player has no way to mitigate this other then buiding a coal power plant or similar?

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And let me guess, without the DLC the player has no way to mitigate this other then buiding a coal power plant or similar?

Nope.

There is no way to mitigate it at all, DLC or no. Solar doesn't work at night and you MUST build other power plants. Period.

And even with all the complaining that people have done, no one has (for good reasons) come up with any reasonable nefarious schemes for this DLC. The makers of the game actually made the day/night cycles free so you could get them without buying the DLC, which in my mind is a solid. The DLC adds actual new stuff that is in no way NECESSARY to enjoy the core game.

Edited by 5thHorseman
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I also don't care that much that things get broken on an update. I mean, we agree that KSP has just entered Beta, right?

The To-release-or-not-to-release ship has long sailed, and since I want the game to be as good as possible, I'd rather go with the "it's released but still beta" mentality and have them break it apart until it's really fixed than with the "it's released so don't break it" mentality and have it stagnate.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, also, better memory management might make performance better with more parts, but it doesn't change the fact that the menus are cluttered with redundant tanks.

So yeah, I ask that you give us less parts! The 4 small unfoldable solar panels can be a single part with "3x2 / 1x6" and "shielded / unshielded" tweakables. Same could be said of most tanks. And many others if you get creative.

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No, they got a patch to the game that added day/night cycles, and DLC that adds things you can do to your city to take advantage of (or mitigate some of the problems with) said base-game change. While the DLC is optional (and costs $15 that I happily paid) the game update is as free and required as all Steam updates are. Namely: Unless you go to pretty great lengths it's gonna get installed.
So what you're telling me is that Cities: Skylines is still in beta too?
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Regardless of alpha/beta/release terminology, my point is still the same: I'd rather have the game improved a bit more than have it stay where it is, sold as "released" or not. And by improved I also mean the selection of parts available. In my opinion there's still too much clutter.

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