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Ksp 2 as an update


qwerbo

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8 minutes ago, qwerbo said:

Can KSP 2 be an update to KSP instead of an independent game?

Here's the short answer:

4 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

No

The long answer: KSP was first made almost a decade ago by inexperienced indie developers. Having been worked on by many different people since then, it's a mess of inefficient spaghetti code. It'd be so expensive and time consuming to bring vastly improved performance and all of the other features meant for KSP 2 to the original that they'd have to charge $60 for it, and at that point it may as well be a separate game.

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7 minutes ago, K^2 said:

It's also a case that Take Two wants to make money by selling a new game. But all of the above reasons definitely hold as well, so it's a case of financial and creative interest coinciding.

Sir, if you were developing KSP 2 instead of Take Two and didn't care about the money, just, why would you build KSP 2 on top of KSP 1!?

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11 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Sir, if you were developing KSP 2 instead of Take Two and didn't care about the money, just, why would you build KSP 2 on top of KSP 1!?

I wouldn't. I'd still make it completely clean code base, maybe copying a few files over when it makes sense. But if I didn't care about money and had some other way to fund it, I'd release it as a patch for the original that basically replaces everything, and keep the old version available as an opt-in branch as "legacy version", or something like that. If all of the original parts are present in the updated version, and I wouldn't see reason not to, and all of the planets of Kerbol system are there, you'd be able to convert save files and really have it be an upgrade.

Naturally, there is little reason to go to all that effort if you can't fund it, and nobody's going to fund it if it won't sell like a new game, but if we were talking purely hypothetically, you could keep it all under the KSP label.

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20 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

The devs deserve the to get paid for making a good game. $60 isn't that bad for what anyone can get out of it... That's like 1/3 the cost of a couple of nice beers and a burger at a bar

What

If you mean that 1/3 of $60 is a cost of beers and a burger, I understand.

Guess depends on the country.

$60 is a lot to ask for a game, at least here, but one - I paid that amount once already, did not regret it, as the game was epic and I see that time well spent; two - playtime is infinite, so players will end up paying less that a dollar per hour after two weeks or so, and after a while some hardcore people less than 10 cents per hour. So it's an investment, worth more than typical AAA title where one can spend the same amount of money on 30h of gameplay and throw it away. So it's good, and the price is fair.

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57 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

$60 is a lot to ask for a game

1 minute ago, pandaman said:

$60 can be a much more significant outlay for some than others, and (afaik) that is not an uncommon price point for new games these days.

That's been that standard cost for a non-indie game since like the year 2000. I'm honestly shocked that AAA games today aren't $150 seeing as how much larger dev studios have gotten and the amount of work that goes into them  now compared to then.

Edited by mcwaffles2003
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1 hour ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

The devs deserve the to get paid for making a good game. $60 isn't that bad for what anyone can get out of it... That's like 1/3 the cost of a couple of nice beers and a burger at a bar

Value for money is subjective, of course, and yes $60 can be a much more significant outlay for some than others, and (afaik) that is not an uncommon price point for new games these days.  Assuming I will play KSP2 a similar amount as I have KSP1 that is  an incredibly low, cost per hour.

I am surprised so many people pay around half that, or more, every month to subscribe to sports TV channels just so they can watch other people playing it.  But they presumably consider it suitable value for them.

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54 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

I'm honestly shocked that AAA games today aren't $150 seeing as how much larger dev studios have gotten and the amount of work that goes into them  now compared to then.

Broader markets, fewer exclusives, digital distribution, and a lot of additional monetization. There are a lot of the games with full price tag that make something like 2/3 of profit from micro transactions. So that can average out to $180/game. Obviously, that's not all games, but so long as you can push more copies, price point isn't really the issue.

A lot of games would probably actually do better at a lower price point, simply because it's a fairly elastic demand, and with digital distribution extra copies cost you nothing. Not even bandwidth, because distributors like Steam take a flat percentage cut, and all maintenance costs are on them. So dropping price on release can actually generate you more revenue. Except, people are so used to $60 price that anything shipping under $60 is perceived as lower quality, or at least, lower value game. So some games get released at $60 and then pretty much instantly go for a discount. Because $60 game with 25% discount is perceived a lot better than a $45 game.

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14 hours ago, K^2 said:

But if I didn't care about money and had some other way to fund it, I'd release it as a patch for the original that basically replaces everything, and keep the old version available as an opt-in branch as "legacy version", or something like that.

Heheh. Brilliant plan, maybe that'll knock off a tiny bit of lag and make things a bit shinier. It'd only take a few centuries to clean up the code and get started.

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On 11/14/2020 at 5:52 PM, RealKerbal3x said:

Here's the short answer:

The long answer: KSP was first made almost a decade ago by inexperienced indie developers. Having been worked on by many different people since then, it's a mess of inefficient spaghetti code. It'd be so expensive and time consuming to bring vastly improved performance and all of the other features meant for KSP 2 to the original that they'd have to charge $60 for it, and at that point it may as well be a separate game.

But can it be cheaper for those who already have KSP?

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1 hour ago, qwerbo said:

But can it be cheaper for those who already have KSP?

Yes, it certainly could.

It could be cheaper for people who buy on PC, rather than console.  It could be cheaper for people that purchase it on Steam than other sources.  It could be cheaper for people who have red hair.  It could be cheaper for people who vow they will eat nothing but fried cheese and drive Ford Pintos in reverse down the highway.

 

But, can you give one viable reason why it should be cheaper for anyone, rather than allowing the company to charge full price for a product it developed?

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  • 1 month later...

The original KSP is brilliant as a concept, but a poorly made games. When played in stock, the lack of information and computer assisted guidance made it an infuriating experience for beginners; and the many glitches often ruins your mission and your day. In fact there are already some people exploit these glitches for entertainment, an uncommon sight for games developed for 10 years... These are caused by some fundamental mechanics of the game, such as floating point precision problems, and originally build to run on a 32 bit system than a 64 bit system. And not very optimized too, since every part have to be simulated seperately, its quite CPU intensive too.

These would not be fixed by an update, since the fundamentals have to be reworked, then the devs rather build a new game from the ground up that runs far more efficiently.

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7 hours ago, SynX said:

The original KSP is brilliant as a concept, but a poorly made games. When played in stock, the lack of information and computer assisted guidance made it an infuriating experience for beginners; and the many glitches often ruins your mission and your day. In fact there are already some people exploit these glitches for entertainment, an uncommon sight for games developed for 10 years... These are caused by some fundamental mechanics of the game, such as floating point precision problems, and originally build to run on a 32 bit system than a 64 bit system. And not very optimized too, since every part have to be simulated seperately, its quite CPU intensive too.

These would not be fixed by an update, since the fundamentals have to be reworked, then the devs rather build a new game from the ground up that runs far more efficiently.

I mean hypothetically, like K^2 basically said earlier. You could just make "KSP2" and then release an "Update" to KSP1 that deletes it and adds the new game. Then you could opt in to the KSP1 branch via betas on steam or DL directly, but hypothetically you could also just build most of these rockets given unlimited time and funds IRL and wouldn't you rather blow excrements up IRL than on a monitor?

It's not really about the ability to do it, yes KSP1 is not the best made game,  yes you probably couldn't get very far with KSP1's code compared to starting fresh. But at the end of the day, programmers have to be paid, their machines they work on bought, the power that runs them and the lights kept running, the lease on the building it's all in kept current, and that's been going on for years.

That's years they could've been working on other projects, a massive risk and one they might very well have gotten themselves bought out for not delivering the first time.  60 USD isn't too high of a price when you take it all into consideration. So if we only look at "What could be", we fly right over the other massive point which basically comes down to

In life, or Physics. There is no free lunch, you will pay someone something at some point to do whatever it is you're wanting.

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On 11/15/2020 at 4:34 AM, mcwaffles2003 said:

The devs deserve the to get paid for making a good game.

I'm continually amazed this is still a question.  Ten years of "give us more stuff for free".  Then "I know KSP2's an especially big update, but, can it be free too?"

Edited by Corona688
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