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KSP Weekly: The Moon Race


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On 10/7/2018 at 1:00 AM, cfds said:

On-going development is a bad thing when it is just done for the sake of doing on-going development.

If any company were to ever do such a thing, then yes, that would be bad.

However... having been in the software industry for a quarter-century, I can say that I have never observed any company doing something "just for the sake of doing it."  I've seen companies do smart things that turned out great; dumb things that were disasters; and nice-sounding things that turned out not to work in practice.  But I've never seen one do something that ill-advised.  It's just not what they do.  Certainly I haven't seen anything that even slightly suggests to me that that's what Squad is doing.

Companies exist to make money, and everything that they do is in service to that goal.  Some of them are better at it than others, but that's what they're all aiming for.  They don't do stuff "just because".  Their reasons might not be apparent to outside observers, since businesses generally prefer to play their cards close to the vest and don't want to let competitors know what they're doing, any more than a general wants to share their battle plans with the enemy.  But the reasons are definitely there, and they almost always make good sense when one is in full possession of the facts (which, as customers, we never are).

On 10/7/2018 at 1:00 AM, cfds said:

And at the moment, it does not look like SQUAD has any larger objective they try to reach in incremental steps

Bear in mind that neither you nor I nor anyone else outside Squad is really in a position to know what it "looks like", because "don't know" means "don't know".  I know that not knowing is galling, and of course we really, really want to know... and it's a natural human tendency to try to see patterns and ascribe intentions when we don't actually have the information we crave.

I don't work for Squad, so I don't have any more "inside information" than you do about their objectives, plans, or strategy.  However, just having been in the industry for a long time in a variety of different companies, I can make an educated guess as to what I expect, based on 1. my observations of Squad and KSP, and 2. my observations of the industry in general.

I expect that their larger objective is to try to make money off of KSP.  They have two ways of doing that.  One is to sell new copies of KSP to new players who don't already have it.  Another is to keep the existing player base engaged long enough to sell them various DLCs.

Shipping a DLC takes a lot of time.  Putting out a major chunk of new content takes a lot of lead time, and my guess is that they won't be super frequent.  I'd be surprised if they put out more than one per year.

Which means, that if Squad wants the established player base to continue buying DLCs, they'll have to keep the existing player base engaged.  A player who gets bored waiting a year for the next DLC, and wanders away from KSP, is a lost source of future revenue.  Plus, Squad presumably also wants to continue to try to make the game more appealing for people who haven't bought it yet.

All of that gives them a good reason to continue working on it and continue releasing new bits, as long as there's still fertile ground to be had.

 

All of which is my long-winded way of saying:  Companies typically are concerned with ongoing revenue streams more than "objectives" of the "reach it and we're done" variety.  It's about a journey, not a destination.  So my own take on it it is:  No, they probably aren't primarily driven by some big "objective" that they try to reach in incremental steps, at this point-- more likely is that they're simply working to try to maintain the appeal of the game over time.

On 10/7/2018 at 1:00 AM, cfds said:

it looks more like they think "Hmm, we need a new update to get KSP back into the news feeds. Let's look what we can cobble together"

Perhaps-- I mean, without actually knowing, it's not possible to prove such a hypothesis wrong.  ;)  Personally, though, I'd guess that it's more about "hand KSP players something reasonably shiny once in a while to keep them engaged while we work on the next revenue-generating deliverable."

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@SQUAD can we get you guys to add another unity layer to internal IVA so kerbals could walk around inside of ship/part they are in? We could then make interactive parts/mods such as living quarters,life support,science stations,navigation,food,maybe electrical/fuel systems overlay,airlocks,switches,etc

EDIT: meh give the kerbals gravity boots or something

Edited by Redneck
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On 10/6/2018 at 6:08 AM, Dafni said:

so something like a "finished game" is not even on the agenda? hmmm, interesting.

KSP will never be finished, they keep on adding new things to the game to make it better

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I like the compromise on the new suit! It looks pretty good and has nice resemblance to the old one.

The new SRB's are kinda bland though. The panel lines and indents could be fleshed out a little and nozzle looks a bit small.

 

All in all though, the new parts are looking good!

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18 hours ago, Redneck said:

@TriggerAuI have a question. I and alot of others know and have heard from mod makers about how hacky the KSP code is in that when you introduce something you make break 10 other things. How thoroughly will you guys be testing before releasing updates? I am asking this because some of us,myself included, have seen in the past when squad releases updates that there are obvious bugs that anybody that plays the game will notice immediately when they start playing the game. I am not talking about rare bugs but bugs that are so obvious it makes a player wonder "How could squad miss this?" Will the dev team do anything different this go round to keep this from happening? 

I think I kinda sorta answered that in one of the previous ones. Its aimed at improving a number of things to give people more time (which includes testers). 

I know I've had fun trying to do stuff in mods (hacky or not), but its always been good to be able to reach out to a dev to look at/ask questions - its one of the great things in our community for a long while

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So are to assume the dev log is coming out of retirement?  And the weekly is going into retirement?

you guys are cracking me up here.  Taking a thing that has been working and replacing it with something that hasn’t been working. 

What exactly are you trying to achieve? Is there a gap in communications? Are folks really complaining? Are you trying to reduce communications overhead? 

Oh well... things change...

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On 10/6/2018 at 9:09 AM, KSPrynk said:

I’m looking forward to all of these improvements, but the 3-month continuous evolution cycle does have me a bit concerned.

I’m the type of player who likes to play Career mode, and when a major version of KSP comes out, I start from scratch.  Not so much because of worries about a saved game getting broken, but because I didn’t get a chance to try out newly added capabilities in their logical progression of availability.  Similarly, simply using Career Options or Alt-F12 to cheat myself an appropriate amount of funds, science, and pre-positioned payloads to catch up where I left off is incredibly unsatisfying - I didn’t earn it.

 

My solution to these problems is that KSP adds a “Civilization Progression” selection for new Mission initializations.  For the sake of simplicity, I recommend the following:

- A ”Kerbin System" level of progression that starts the player off with sufficient Tech (perhaps all of TL4 plus a random selection of TL5 and maybe TL6), KSC facilities, and funding to provide a spring-board for crewed missions to the Mun and Minmus.  Include an appropriate random selection of science reports, and/or evidence of contract fulfillment, with a few randomly positioned satellites and landers - with parts not exceeding the minimum Tech level - around the Kerbin-Mun-Minmus system.

- An “Interplanetary Exploration” level of progression that starts off with more tech (all of TL6; random TL7 - 8), facilities progression, and funding to conduct crewed landing missions to the easier locations, such as Duna, Gilly, Dres, etc..  Likewise, back it up with semi-plausible evidence of progression in the form of more science reports, additional satellites and landers, and maybe a space station (unpopulated, so Life Support modded games don’t start off with starving Kerbals) or two in the Kerbin-Mun-Minmus system.

I think this would alleviate some of the consternation for players who want to earn their way to the top of the tech tree, but also don’t want to get left behind every time KSP and associated mods do a major version jump.

It has been said more than once that the '3 month' release cycle is slower than the historical release rate, so you should be happy that they are trying to take a more measured approach.

 

How are 'starting progression levels' any different than the existing career options?  As far as I can tell, the primary difference is that the player has a finer level of control over just how many science points and how much funding they should start with, and what research they want to spend that starting science on.

Just because some of the science is already 'gone'?  Could that not be emulated by just not collecting that science?

How about you start a game where you just see how much science/funding you can get from Kerbin and the Mun, then for future games you just give yourself that amount of science/funding and refuse to collect anymore data from Kerbin/Mun?  You could even do the initial game in Stock, and then just copy that save into each new version and resume from that point.  There are lots of options for salving your conscience that take exactly as much effort as you think they should, and Squad has already provided the tools to let you choose whichever option suits you best.

On 10/6/2018 at 2:09 PM, klgraham1013 said:

Problem is, these updates aren't just bug fixes.  They always seem to bring new bugs or regressions with their new features.  I get it.  I'm the minority.  I just wish they'd do a few bug fix patches, fix the regressions, and be done with it.

Then management isn't doing it's job.  KSP version 0.7.3 was released on June 24th, 2011.  If a team can't finish a game in over 7 years, then there's a problem.

Indeed, and Oracle is an abject failure as they have not been able to get a 'finished' database working for 38+ years('Oracle v2' was released in '79 and 18c was released this year), or if you are only concerned about games, then clearly NetHack is a complete mess having been released over 30 years ago and being under development(first released in '87 and version 3.6.1 was announced in April)

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Database  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetHack

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I've been a bit inactive here on account of gettin hitched last weekend (woop! :) ) But the parts and suits do look fantastic. Thanks for the nod on the orange booster stripe, its a nice convention. The sputnik looks great too. 

Edited by Pthigrivi
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On 10/7/2018 at 4:17 PM, The_Cat_In_Space said:

Will this stuff be coming to the console version?

Heh, I don't know why you ask. Anytime someone mentions the word "console", that post immediately falls off the radar of the rest of the forum. 

Well, hope you guys enjoy your nice things...

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On 10/7/2018 at 7:07 PM, GrandProtectorDark said:

wTEz0jQ.pngunknown.png
Dunno if it had been mentioned yet, but has anyone beside me, noticed that the Thumper SRB is also getting a reskin, to look more like the shuttle booster?
Because this surely doesn't look the same size as the kickback.

Pretty sure that's just a cutoff view of the Kickback for visual purposes to indicate the use of SRB orange.

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56 minutes ago, LegendaryAce said:

Heh, I don't know why you ask. Anytime someone mentions the word "console", that post immediately falls off the radar of the rest of the forum. 

Well, hope you guys enjoy your nice things...

I hate it how the console version has virtually become a meme. 

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10 hours ago, Lupi said:

Pretty sure that's just a cutoff view of the Kickback for visual purposes to indicate the use of SRB orange.

The top portion looks a bit to clean to be just an example cutoff. It also is a similar size as the bacc. The BACC model is also a leftover from the really early days. 1.5 being a visual part update, BACC getting to look like a cut Kickback, isn't so impossible.

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They've also been quite explicit on the changes made to each part when they've shown them.  Yes, it isn't impossible they've updated the BACC, however @SQUAD has historically been very deliberate in what and how they reveal details of upcoming updates.  It's logical to assume that this was a photo-cropping of the Kickback, simply to compare the new RT SRB's alongside an existing part; much like they've compared other revised parts to existing examples.

As for how clean the Kickback is cut off...if the artists at @SQUAD went to all the trouble to create these blueprint-looking graphics for nothing but a part teaser, I doubt they would have stopped short and lazily cut a straight line across a part that is displayed with a curved surface.  It would take less than a minute to photoshop the Kickback lower half with that curve.

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@GrandProtectorDark, to go with what @Raptor9 said...

The thumper is longer than two sections of the kickback.

XkRmFUK.png

not by much, but by a fair chunk.at least by the width of an i-beam.

all of the revamps shown so far are direct drop in replacements in terms of size and shape. Even the RoveMate, which they rotated and added nodes to, still looks to have had the same geometry as the old.

Edited by Lupi
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8 hours ago, wizzlebippi said:

So do I. But @SQUAD seems to think that no news in the past 2.5 months is keeping us informed, so they've earned it. 

Well, nobody aside from the few of us console lurkers left seem to even notice the comments about us, so I'm not really surprised. As long as they're given flashy new parts, we disappear from the forum radar screens faster than a B-2 bomber. 

Unfortunately, if my KSP game isn't updated by January 18th, then there's little chance I'll be playing it again. 

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On 10/5/2018 at 9:35 PM, SQUAD said:

Finally, we want to let you know that this is going to be the last KSP Weekly in its current format, but don’t you worry! .... The idea here is quality instead of quantity.

With KSP Weekly we all have reason to visit ksp-forum, at least ones a week, even if we not playing some time — to read something new, maybe small amount, but at least something. It is not necessary development news, I can be space news, or some roadmap info, or whatever you think about in the Squad-HQ. 

Look into Factorio Friday Facts (the same Weekly blog) — I didn't play Factorio since, I think, 0.13, but I read FFF because it is interesting. It's very good format — we know when and where to read.

Also who was writing KSP Weekly, one person? On FFF they have different people, from different teams writing those posts — that way they always have something to say.
It's would become more personal — It's not "squad" writing, it is develover Santiago Kerman or designer Mia Kerman or chief of artists Alexander Kerman. In Squad QH you all Kermans, right? :)

Edited by flart
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52 minutes ago, Tyko said:

So, will we be seeing some sort of news release today or not? I've looked forward to my weekly Friday download of new KSP Info. Would be sad to see it go away

I started my (NZ) Saturday morning routine just now... but when I saw this I went uh.  That's right - I remember last week.  Drat it to the kraken's lair. 

In the mean time, the term drat is a 'minced oath' a term which has been basterdised from the original exclamation.   'God rot' which one would say when faced with something that was not just appealing but you wanted to offer to curse it that even your deity of choice has left it to 'perish' (a biblical term which best translates the Hebrew word in Genesis 3 often translated as death in English).  But think perish as in a rubber seal.  So God rot was quickened to 'od-rat and so to drat.  The kraken's lair is should be self explanatory.  A place where the kraken lives, or perhaps constrained to.  Devs may seek to do this constraining with chains of code, again a fairly interesting biblical reference found in Revelation 20.

Apologies for the in game theosophising.  I'll see myself out then. 

Peace.

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32 minutes ago, theJesuit said:

I started my (NZ) Saturday morning routine just now... but when I saw this I went uh.  That's right - I remember last week.  Drat it to the kraken's lair. 

In the mean time, the term drat is a 'minced oath' a term which has been basterdised from the original exclamation.   'God rot' which one would say when faced with something that was not just appealing but you wanted to offer to curse it that even your deity of choice has left it to 'perish' (a biblical term which best translates the Hebrew word in Genesis 3 often translated as death in English).  But think perish as in a rubber seal.  So God rot was quickened to 'od-rat and so to drat.  The kraken's lair is should be self explanatory.  A place where the kraken lives, or perhaps constrained to.  Devs may seek to do this constraining with chains of code, again a fairly interesting biblical reference found in Revelation 20.

Apologies for the in game theosophising.  I'll see myself out then. 

Peace.

I would, of course, expect a person who's screen name is theJesuit to theosophise (is that a word??) occasionally...

Edited by Tyko
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11 hours ago, HansonKerman said:

 

They're almost perfect. The backpack is perfectly proportioned, but the body looks quite thin compared to the helmet. Maybe make the body a bit bigger?

I'm going to make an educated guess and say the model is exactly the same proportions as the old model.

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