What was the barn?

[steve_v]

6 hours ago, I_Killed_Jeb said:

that's just, like, your opinion, man

Everything here is an opinion. Mine happens to agree completely with Bac9's analysis.
There were just too many things wrong with the images we were shown to take it seriously, reactions to the aesthetic were certainly subjective, but the technical problems were not.
 

5 hours ago, Xavven said:

To be honest, I found bac9's critique to be overly pedantic.

Some of his comments were things that only someone who understands modelling and design would notice, others were blindingly obvious to anyone at a casual glance - such as the texture on the tanks (complete with ludicrously large rivets), the completely out-of-place medieval barrel, and that doG-awful plank texture sunk into the grass on the path from the tracking station. You just don't do that in a professional commercial product.
SQUAD are supposed to be professionals, and the barn was anything but. Unpaid modders regularly make far better assets.

 

5 hours ago, Xavven said:

I'm not personally enjoying KSP any less with or without it. I honestly think people have made a mountain out of this molehill.

There's no mountain here, at least not from me. It was a concept that was shown to the community, and the community said hell-no, that's all.
Why some people want to dig it up again every now and then and argue about it is a mystery to me, the barn is dead, let it lie.

[Fraston]

Currently the only person that supports it in their profile that I have seen is @lajoswinkler.

I like the level 0 space center idea. Bargain parts before professional (dubious professionalism for Jeb’s Junkyard anyway) parts. The tech tree supports it, but a lot of the buildings don’t. Professional and incredibly important science is often researched in places that don’t have even common lab equipment. (Think Los Alamos)

[Xavven]

3 hours ago, Fraston said:

I like the level 0 space center idea. Bargain parts before professional (dubious professionalism for Jeb’s Junkyard anyway) parts. The tech tree supports it, but a lot of the buildings don’t.

Come to think of it, there is too big of a jump between the starting level VAB and launchpad vs. the next level up. Having a step inbetween would make sense for the early game phase.

[Superfluous J]

On 3/1/2019 at 11:43 PM, Xavven said:

In the end, does the barn really have that much effect on the game one way or another? I'm not personally enjoying KSP any less with or without it. I honestly think people have made a mountain out of this molehill.

That could almost be - with a tiny little rewording - a quote from those in favor of the idea back in the day.

[lajoswinkler]

The Barn was an extremely good concept, so any complaints about some (truly) lousy textures are meaningless. Textures are easily made and can be replaced.

The general feeling of what stuff was there and how it was positioned reminds us of earliest experimental high altitude rocketry. It's the Kerbal feeling. Sadly, very loud squealing of an edgy minority from Reddit ruined this, as usual with many things that had the potential to improve the game lore and immersion.

Squad rarely ever cared about the opinion of this forum's users, even though this is the mother lode of KSP creativity online, not Reddit or any other site.

[Meecrob]

I think what needs to also be brought up is the general atmosphere surrounding KSP development at the time. Modders were being relied on heavily for new features...Fine Print (contracts) and Porkjet's MK II spaceplane parts jump to mind. It seemed that Squad was coasting to KSP V.1 release on fumes and many heated arguments were had on this board. Then they dropped the tier 0 art and it seemed confirmation that Squad was just phoning it in. The debate about whether the barn is a good idea or concept or whatever cannot be had without the context of development at the time.

Edited March 11, 2019 by Meecrob

[cfds]

On 3/9/2019 at 11:58 PM, lajoswinkler said:

The Barn was an extremely good concept, so any complaints about some (truly) lousy textures are meaningless. Textures are easily made and can be replaced.

The general feeling of what stuff was there and how it was positioned reminds us of earliest experimental high altitude rocketry. It's the Kerbal feeling. Sadly, very loud squealing of an edgy minority from Reddit ruined this, as usual with many things that had the potential to improve the game lore and immersion.

Squad rarely ever cared about the opinion of this forum's users, even though this is the mother lode of KSP creativity online, not Reddit or any other site.

Calling anything behind the barn a "concept" is rather generous. There were no plans to follow up with anything justifying the barn level of KSC (like sounding rockets). The whole episode sounded very much like someone at SQUAD threw together something in his 3D drawing program and then SQUAD wanted to drop it as it were into the game. That's why the topic was dropped very quickly when, despite differences viewing the use of a tier 0 level, pretty much everyone agreed that the models and textures were very much "non-placeholders" even by SQUAD's standards.

[lajoswinkler]

11 hours ago, cfds said:

Calling anything behind the barn a "concept" is rather generous. There were no plans to follow up with anything justifying the barn level of KSC (like sounding rockets). The whole episode sounded very much like someone at SQUAD threw together something in his 3D drawing program and then SQUAD wanted to drop it as it were into the game. That's why the topic was dropped very quickly when, despite differences viewing the use of a tier 0 level, pretty much everyone agreed that the models and textures were very much "non-placeholders" even by SQUAD's standards.

And you completely missed my point.

[cfds]

12 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

And you completely missed my point.

Then what is your point? To me it sounds like "The barn is absolutely great, just disregard the actual implementation." It's a bit like saying "The mission designer is brilliant, since it would be very useful if it were interfacing with career mode."

 

Edited March 14, 2019 by cfds
typo

[lajoswinkler]

On 3/14/2019 at 7:12 AM, cfds said:

Then what is your point? To me it sounds like "The barn is absolutely great, just disregard the actual implementation." It's a bit like saying "The mission designer is brilliant, since it would be very useful if it were interfacing with career mode."

 

I said crappy textures (and obviously quality of models) could've been repaired later, but the fact there are such things as blast bunker, trailers, sandbags, freaking BARN, that's a splendid idea.

[Meecrob]

9 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

I said crappy textures (and obviously quality of models) could've been repaired later, but the fact there are such things as blast bunker, trailers, sandbags, freaking BARN, that's a splendid idea.

It is a splendid idea. Problem is it was an at the moment work in progress and kinda crap to be honest. You had sandbags bigger than Kerbals. It was probably too early to release, but us rabid fans demanded so much, they posted something that wasn't ready.

[Kernel Kraken]

On 2/25/2019 at 10:16 PM, adsii1970 said:

Come to think of it, I'd buy it, too... that could really be fun!

Maybe if they bundeled it with Making History, or as a stand alone expansion, but of course with high-res textures and models instead of the concept art we all know and love. Maybe if it was something like an 'early career' update, with solid fuel, sounding rockets, tiny launch towers, and a physicist picking locks in the laboratory.

Edited: phone is autocorrecting of and or to if and it? This or dumb.

Edited March 16, 2019 by Kernel Kraken

[adsii1970]

1 hour ago, Kernel Kraken said:

Maybe if they bundeled it with Making History, or as a stand alone expansion, but of course with high-res textures and models instead of the concept art we all know and love. Maybe if it was something like an 'early career' update, with solid fuel, sounding rockets, tiny launch towers, and a physicist picking locks in the laboratory.

Edited: phone is autocorrecting of and or to if and it? This or dumb.

No, too complex...

Think bottle rockets to model rockets, remote control tiny planes, and weather balloons - and that would work with level 0.

[razark]

1 hour ago, Kernel Kraken said:

Maybe if it was something like an 'early career' update, with solid fuel, sounding rockets, tiny launch towers, and a physicist picking locks in the laboratory.

Now, this would fit with a "barn" concept.

[Bill Phil]

I liked the aesthetic, but there were flaws.

Really I kind of liked the industrial look to it. 

[Lisias]

This is Robert Goddard, the rocketry pioneer on America.

Behind him, one of his rockets.

Behind his rocket, a... Hummm. Barn or something?

 

 

[razark]

47 minutes ago, Lisias said:

This is Robert Goddard, the rocketry pioneer on America.
...
Behind his rocket, a... Hummm. Barn or something?

Yeah, a pioneer.

Small rockets.  Sounding rockets.  Even captured V-2s at White Sands would fit a barn.

 

And here are Mercury capsules (equivalent to the starting level of KSP) being constructed:

That ain't no barn they're in.

 

Spoiler

Boeing in 1917:

 

 

Boeing in 1928:

 

Barns very quickly become out of date, and don't belong at the tech levels KSP starts with.

 

Edited March 16, 2019 by razark

[Lisias]

25 minutes ago, razark said:

Small rockets.  Sounding rockets.  Even captured V-2s at White Sands would fit a barn.

And here are Mercury capsules (equivalent to the starting level of KSP) being constructed:

You ever considered that they would trying to add another level on the tech tree and make it a more historical accurate game, did you?

You just saw one step of the task, and took it as a whole without further considerations. Do you really have the Squad team in so low regard to tacitly think they would plain add a Level 0 KSP to the game without any changes on the gaming?

[klgraham1013]

3 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Do you really have the Squad team in so low regard to tacitly think they would plain add a Level 0 KSP to the game without any changes on the gaming?

Have you played career mode?  The entire thing is a series of half baked systems with little consideration for how they'll play together.

[razark]

3 minutes ago, Lisias said:

You ever considered that they would trying to add another level on the tech tree and make it a more historical accurate game, did you?

Nope.  Because they never gave any indication that was going to happen.

Had they ever given any sign that they were doing that, it would might have been different.  But of course, remember when they claimed that multiplayer would never be added, then said multiplayer would be added, and then never said anything about it again?  Squad has a history of having a problem with communicating a consistent plan or their intentions.

 

However, considering they hired the guy that made the Sounding Rockets mod and have not added it to the game, I feel quite confident about it.

[klgraham1013]

4 hours ago, razark said:

Squad has a history of having a problem with communicating a consistent plan or their intentions.

It's probably a fair guess that they have problems with consistent plans and intentions internally too.  We've been following KSP for a long time.  How many systems and additions have we seen added which then go no where?  The art revamp seems to be the one feature that has had any development longevity.  The Barn was just another addition to a system of arbitrary unlocks, ill considered to any form of reasonable progression.  The art being amateurish is only half the problem.

[Lisias]

18 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

Have you played career mode?  The entire thing is a series of half baked systems with little consideration for how they'll play together.

There're vast space for improvements on the Tech Tree (a Robert Goddard style level would be welcomed by me), but your statement is way exaggerated on my opinion.

— — — — Reworking my argument after a night of good sleep.  — — — — — — --

18 hours ago, razark said:

Nope.  Because they never gave any indication that was going to happen.

They never do any indication about what was going to happen. They sign a thing called Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) that explicitly forbids them to talk anything about the product or the company without previous and explicit authorization - and if you are smart, you demand that such authorization is recordable and recoverable, just in case things goes through the tubes and someone tries to wave his responsibilities.

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Carl Sagan was an utter loss - that guy managed to shove some scientific thinking on the general population.

 

18 hours ago, razark said:

Had they ever given any sign that they were doing that, it would might have been different. 

I doubt it. History on this forum says exactly otherwise - sometimes I have the feeling that there was a determined intent of a small group on undermining Squad, on an apparent attempt to pull off KSP from them.

Every single attempt to revamp the game are greet with some criticism that apparently could only be correctly answered by breaking the terms of such NDA (and yeah, I had signed some myself, I'm not puling histories from my SAS). And their standard response, silence, is exactly what I had to do in similar situations - we weren't allowed even to defend ourselves, more than once my team had to accept a fallout from other team's mishaps because we just could not talk about the problem at all - no even for colleagues from the same company working on different projects from different customers.

I don't have any inside information on the case, so, obviously, I can be wrong and you right - but the similarities are remarkable sometimes.

Edited March 17, 2019 by Lisias

[Lisias]

18 hours ago, razark said:

But of course, remember when they claimed that multiplayer would never be added, then said multiplayer would be added, and then never said anything about it again? 

Again - standard industry procedures. Things change overtime, product owners are replaced, and so on.

Building things, testing things, solving puzzles - these are individualistic tasks. The only Add-On I'm aware where multiplayer would make sense is BD-Armory, but this twists KSP into a war game, what's essentially what's KSP is not intended to be.

Multiplayer gaming also demands a layer of security that it's essentially incompatible with modding - everybody must share the very same codebase (including glitches and bugs) in order to keep the competition fair - and there's always a competitive element on multiplayer.

Thinking on it - perhaps a BBS style of gaming would make more sense for KSP, something like the DARPA calls for proposals. That would make things interesting too.

 

18 hours ago, razark said:

Squad has a history of having a problem with communicating a consistent plan or their intentions.

On that, I can agree. P/R is a nightmare, and they needed some serious professional P/R on many subjects.

On the teams I had worked with/on , we plain shielded the developers from the stakeholders to the point of imposing fines to any stakeholder that would attempt, and to fire any developer that had allowed. And given the backslash Squad is facing here, now I can see the reasons.

 

18 hours ago, razark said:

However, considering they hired the guy that made the Sounding Rockets mod and have not added it to the game, I feel quite confident about it.

Well, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. That was the phrase the triggered me off last night.  

Being picky, your argument is a False Cause Fallacy - there're no logical connections between the facts that would allow you to make a logical inference on the thing. My error was not being able to calmly explaining it to you, and sometimes I think this is a diret consequence from my past on some professional circles. Well, sorry for that (even if you didn't had read it).

You assumed that Squad hired the guy to incorporated Sounding Rockets, and not by the competence he showed by making Sounding Rockets. The guy could had be hired to to anything completely unrelated to modding at all - companies hire people for what they expect him to do in the future, not due what he had done in the past (this last one is just hints about what can be expected from him).

 

13 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

It's probably a fair guess that they have problems with consistent plans and intentions internally too. 

It's a good guess. I think this is at least one of the main components of the problem.

 

13 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

 We've been following KSP for a long time.  How many systems and additions have we seen added which then go no where?

Dirty secret of the industry: half of the things I do goes to the trash bin. From the that half, half is trash. I make my money with the remaining - but only half goes to my pockets.  

Standard business procedures. Real Life is dirty, messy, convoluted and unforgiven. We err more than we do right - and anybody that tells you otherwise is one that earns his living from other's people works, and not from his own work.

This industry still lacks some competence on predicting the future.   

 

13 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

The Barn was just another addition to a system of arbitrary unlocks, ill considered to any form of reasonable progression.  The art being amateurish is only half the problem.

PROTOTYPES. They had the bad idea to show us a prototype of what they were doing. They had the illusion that this community had the willing to see the game thrilling, and decided to shared with us their thoughts. Not being allowed to explain with details the road map made things worse, but was not the root cause of the mess.

Bad move, as we can easily conclude by now.

Edited March 17, 2019 by Lisias

[razark]

So, you don't have any evidence that your speculation is true, either?

[Lisias]

3 minutes ago, razark said:

So, you don't have any evidence that your speculation is true, either?

Of course not. As much I don't have any evidences that your speculations are true.

All I have is my past experience on the field, my present experience on some feelance jobs I took, and my observations from one year of Forum and Game participation.

And, of course, some ethics while arguing with the fellow Kerbonauts, as I try to always mention my interlocutor so he have a chance to answer me quickly by being notified by Forum.