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Developer Insights #14 - Part Creation


Ghostii_Space

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1 hour ago, t_v said:

Infinite times, until the game comes out and they admit that “oops, I made an innocent mistake by sticking to an unsupported opinion for two years” or just say that they were trolling. The best thing to do is to just not respond, as nothing anyone can say will change their opinion

I predict delay to 2023. So no mistakes here.

And repeat:

They ALREADY planned release to march 2020 when show the preview on gamescom. Before any sign of plague. So if we accept the hypothesis that they not lied to us preemptively - game would be almost ready, cuz obvious to anyone that you cant make such a game from scratch to release in 6-7 months. And there is no ANY single explanation why this "almost ready" state stretched for ~4 years

COVID can't affect it so hard. If, IF(!!!) They arent lied to us preemptively.

Simple.

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28 minutes ago, Vegatoxi said:

I predict delay to 2023. So no mistakes here.

And repeat:

They ALREADY planned release to march 2020 when show the preview on gamescom. Before any sign of plague. So if we accept the hypothesis that they not lied to us preemptively - game would be almost ready, cuz obvious to anyone that you cant make such a game from scratch to release in 6-7 months. And there is no ANY single explanation why this "almost ready" state stretched for ~4 years

COVID can't affect it so hard. If, IF(!!!) They arent lied to us preemptively.

Simple.

I shouldn’t have to repeat why you are incorrect after you used the exact same arguments that have been debunked several times. So I’ll summarize. 
 

Predicting correctly once does not mean predicting correctly for your entire hypothesis. You have made incorrect predictions, even if the 2023 delay one was correct. 
 

There is immense confirmation bias here, and the worst part is that your cherry-picked evidence is not even good evidence for your hypothesis. You intentionally ignore all of the great evidence that the game is actively being developed into a finished product, which is why nothing can change your mind, aside from you getting a finished copy of the game. 
 

You present a single explanation to events as if none others exist and don’t explain how others are disqualified, and you even misconstrue events to fit your explanations. 
 

In short, it is simple. I won’t go trying to convince you because we are seeing the same things entirely different ways. 

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I’m sorry; that was a rude reply that focused more on the unpleasantness of discussing this topic with you rather than on things that pertain to the points discussed on this topic. First though, I’d like to note that being incorrect and sticking to that opinion isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless it negatively affects others, as it would if you consistently posted things like these. This post is only for if you want to see things that oppose your viewpoint, which you might not want to do. So, a real summary:

In 2019, the development time was looking at around 1-2 years, plus 6 months for testing. The game would have looked like a really big expansion on top of KSP 1, and would probably have the same technical debts and issues as the original. The reason that KSP 2 seems to be half-finished or more is because it really was, but the scope keeps on expanding. This is called feature creep, and it is generally a negative thing in game development (because it rarely results in a success) but it isn’t the same as a game not being developed. If anything, it is the opposite. 
 

the dev diaries and show and tells actually do tell us that the game is being developed and is getting closer to completion, and we can trust the information that the developers are giving us. Why? Firstly because of economics, it makes no sense for anyone but the coders to pretend to develop something, and even if you think the devs can trick the public, there is no way that Take Two wouldn’t monitor where this much money is going towards. The team is still hiring, and why would they do that if they were trying to keep the money for themselves? Beyond ecomonics, there are several well-respected community members working on this project who would stand up against actions like this. A lot of things would be different if the developers were really trying to produce vapor ware, or were trying to sell their game as more finished than it really is. 

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If it helps, I've kind of stopped taking anyone's word (for things other then KSP2 as well) on even the year of the release date so long as the words 'pre-alpha' flash on any developer previews, game-play trailers, w/e.
Pre-alpha being the stage of (We have a general idea of the game/set of features but there still can be alot of scope creep and features added).*
When it hits Alpha (We have the major features locked down, but still not too sure on minor ones)*
or Beta (We know and have basically all the features needed prior to release, they are locked down and we are just making them presentable),*
then I'll start taking note of the year or month of the release date. Before then any 'release date' is just for marketing purposes and is more speculation then estimation.

Working in the games industry its kinda funny how much stuff is added basically last second as planning goes, there's always something you missed, more things to live up to. Tripling a time estimate to pad for unexpected developments isn't too uncommon ('bad practice' sure, but when you're in under explored territory or a new studio its more of a given). Perhaps the people at the newly founded intercept games had underestimated their public release time by just removing the 'padding' for an optimistic schedule or underestimated the cost of essentially building an engine from scratch again, but in the end their (speculative) legal agreement with Take 2 reflected that immense padding and this is what the fiscal 2023 release disclosed in T2's meeting likely entails. Depending on what is stipulated in the publishers contract, if they wanted to delay again there may be legal repercussions resulting in pay being withheld or more extreme measures.
I would personally take KSP2 as a case study of whether to propose a more risky but tangible release date, as opposed to a further out but much safer one and which one generates more 'healthy' hype in the long run. 
But this is going a bit off topic so ill just leave it at that c: 

*Features as in features prior to first release candidate  (RC1) or just 'initial release', some games (esp indie) are released in alpha for financial purposes if their scope is too big and the sales money is needed to fund the remaining development cycle. I dont think KSP 2 will be one of those but that remains to be seen.

Edited by Xelo
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1 hour ago, t_v said:

the dev diaries and show and tells actually do tell us that the game is being developed and is getting closer to completion, and we can trust the information that the developers are giving us. Why? Firstly because of economics, it makes no sense for anyone but the coders to pretend to develop something, and even if you think the devs can trick the public, there is no way that Take Two wouldn’t monitor where this much money is going towards.

Dev diaries and show & tell too basic and small to give us any real information about possible gameplay and making a ome more model of rocket engine isn't worth 3 delays and 4 additional years. Dont you think so?

Also imagine - oficially canceling such a big release could do much more marketing damage than countless delays and since team under NDA we dont know what they work on in fact. Probably they dont eve know it themselfs.

When as average gamedev employee you ordered to make engine model - you just do it.

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1 hour ago, Vegatoxi said:

Dev diaries and show & tell too basic and small to give us any real information about possible gameplay and making a ome more model of rocket engine isn't worth 3 delays and 4 additional years. Dont you think so?

#1 dev diaries aren't that basic. And #2 they aren't supposed to reveal much they reveal small parts and you put those together to create larger parts about the game. It is real information. And also another thing, they probably have hundreds of parts being modeled and developed right now.

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2 minutes ago, Vegatoxi said:
3 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

The preferred term for "when you understand but can't prove it" is called having incorrect beliefs with no basis in reality :)

3 delays. 4 years. 

That's reality.

You were expecting it to take less time to semi-handcraft a universe and balance all the gameplay? :)

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1 minute ago, Bej Kerman said:

You were expecting it to take less time to semi-handcraft a universe and balance all the gameplay? :)

Read above^

If they planned initial release to mach 2020 - they should have almost ready game on gamescom 2019 There is no any logical explanation how these 8 months streched in 4+ years.

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Just now, Vegatoxi said:

Read above^

If they planned initial release to mach 2020 - they should have almost ready game on gamescom 2019 There is no any logical explanation how these 8 months streched in 4+ years.

From what I know the scope has increased dramatically.

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10 minutes ago, Kerbart said:
1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

You were expecting it to take less time to semi-handcraft a universe (...)

Well according to some books it can be done in less tha 7 days.

Those books are, of course, wildly out of date and based on knowledge that no longer applies (no matter how many astronomers the churches try burning) :D

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10 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Because you say so?

Read Ryaja's comment, games change and between the scope changes, COVID and possible overconfidence from either Intercept or Take Two, delays are to be expected.

Covid stiked AFTER announce. It can be excuse for 1st delay, but cant explain why "almost ready" game became so unfinished that require 4+ additional years.

And no - scope didnt change since the announce. All the scope was shown on gamescom 2019. Multiplayer, planetary bases, interstellar travel. All this was announced in 2019 with target release in march 2020.

So what scope you guys talking about?

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10 minutes ago, Vegatoxi said:

Covid stiked AFTER announce. It can be excuse for 1st delay, but cant explain why "almost ready" game became so unfinished that require 4+ additional years.

And no - scope didnt change since the announce. All the scope was shown on gamescom 2019. Multiplayer, planetary bases, interstellar travel. All this was announced in 2019 with target release in march 2020.

So what scope you guys talking about?

tell me if the game did come out in 2023 (it will) what whould you say

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4 hours ago, Vegatoxi said:

Covid stiked AFTER announce. It can be excuse for 1st delay, but cant explain why "almost ready" game became so unfinished that require 4+ additional years.

And no - scope didnt change since the announce. All the scope was shown on gamescom 2019. Multiplayer, planetary bases, interstellar travel. All this was announced in 2019 with target release in march 2020.

So what scope you guys talking about?

Look, if you want to be pessimistic about KSP 2's (lack of) release, that's fine. But you gain nothing from complaining about it constantly.
Go waste your time on something else, for our sake and yours.

22 hours ago, Xelo said:

Working in the games industry its kinda funny how much stuff is added basically last second as planning goes, there's always something you missed, more things to live up to. 

At this point, KSP 2 should release with something really decent. At the very least, a game that runs well with little in the way of bugs. I'll accept if they move a mentioned feature or two into the future in favour of getting the game out, it's just a horrible idea for them to rush. I appreciate the general concensus that Intercept shouldn't rush, but I feel as though the KSP2 section of the forums is on the verge of snapping like a strand of spaghetti and just begging Intercept to rush anyways. Them rushing means no more delays, but I really don't want KSP2 to end up like Cyberpunk 2077; overhyped and underdeveloped.

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2 hours ago, intelliCom said:

At this point, KSP 2 should release with something really decent. At the very least, a game that runs well with little in the way of bugs. I'll accept if they move a mentioned feature or two into the future in favour of getting the game out, it's just a horrible idea for them to rush. I appreciate the general concensus that Intercept shouldn't rush, but I feel as though the KSP2 section of the forums is on the verge of snapping like a strand of spaghetti and just begging Intercept to rush anyways. Them rushing means no more delays, but I really don't want KSP2 to end up like Cyberpunk 2077; overhyped and underdeveloped.

I would agree that it would at least be surface-level good on release. But the pre-alpha warning stamped on the latest interstellar episode does not instill me with confidence for 2023 at least not something polished to the point of 'really decent with little in the way of bugs'. Alpha watermark? No questions asked, good chance a well polished game and complete experience by 2023 with time to spare, an alpha watermark may even mean closed testing within the month if you are lucky.  But I can only speculate with that dang pre-alpha stage which I'm not sure how to feel about. You could say heck, we don't even know their standard of alpha and beta even is. They might abide (roughly) by my definition taken from my publisher, they might abide by the Wikipedia definition where feature lock happens on alpha, they might say alpha is the release and we will work on it like its an early access game until it is 'complete' (rip).
Nothing was said but things can be inferred so personally I will just choose the lowest denominator and pretend that KSP2 is feature-incomplete right now to avoid letdowns, they have not decided on everything they want (do not quote this out of context!), much less solve every one of our ksp1 gripes.. yet. They were even hiring a senior concept artist? This 'late' in development? Is part creation that big of a bottleneck right now? What else have they not realized they needed extra man power for yet? If they only made half the parts by the time of this post with 600(+) parts, you'd need to make more then a part per day to hit the release 'window' with no time for testing. But I'll definitely give them the benefit of the doubt because that is just crystal ball doomer speculation.
Maybe they have parity with KSP1? everything up to ""KSP1's content"" are polished and ready, they are just going thru the motions of new content for KSP2 in a essentially feature complete beta engine. They could release it today and itll be 'playable' perhaps, just missing most of the fancy tech and a lot of progression gaps. Clearly they hired professional testers earlier, maybe they really are just undergoing internal alpha/beta testing trying to find the last few inconveniences, progression gaps and really delivering on killing the kraken for good. Speculation but its positive.
Maybe their development cycle is per feature, the procedural radiators go from pre-alpha to alpha build and so on and we just get it hot off the press and only see the pre-alpha watermark and I mistakenly assumed it was for the game itself. More speculation.
I don't know, I hope I don't appear to claim to know. I wish i knew, but for now I'm just going to set an alarm for march 2023, anticipate and play other very vaguely related games like Extrapolation, The last starship and Cosmoteer that actually have semi-open alpha testing and pray its enough to distract me from ruminating too much about KSP2's development. XD
Whatever comes come 2023 will come (haha, English) and frankly I feel we're not entitled to anything good because we haven't paid a cent to KSP2 yet. I agree we dont know anything despite as much as Vegatoxi likes to believe there is some concrete evidence for a vaporware case study. If in the off chance, KSP2 wont ever live up to its name then... some other game will perhaps. I can wait.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
On 8/5/2022 at 7:19 PM, Ryaja said:

#1 dev diaries aren't that basic. And #2 they aren't supposed to reveal much they reveal small parts and you put those together to create larger parts about the game. It is real information. And also another thing, they probably have hundreds of parts being modeled and developed right now.

at this rate it will take 10 more years before we can picture the entire game from dev diaries lol

On 8/6/2022 at 12:14 AM, Kerbart said:

Well according to some books it can be done in less tha 7 days.

i see what u did there lol

On 8/6/2022 at 3:15 PM, intelliCom said:

At this point, KSP 2 should release with something really decent. At the very least, a game that runs well with little in the way of bugs. I'll accept if they move a mentioned feature or two into the future in favour of getting the game out, it's just a horrible idea for them to rush. I appreciate the general concensus that Intercept shouldn't rush, but I feel as though the KSP2 section of the forums is on the verge of snapping like a strand of spaghetti and just begging Intercept to rush anyways. Them rushing means no more delays, but I really don't want KSP2 to end up like Cyberpunk 2077; overhyped and underdeveloped.

i think nobody wants them to rush, all we are asking for is more transparency in the development procecss

On 8/6/2022 at 10:19 AM, Vegatoxi said:

Covid stiked AFTER announce. It can be excuse for 1st delay, but cant explain why "almost ready" game became so unfinished that require 4+ additional years.

And no - scope didnt change since the announce. All the scope was shown on gamescom 2019. Multiplayer, planetary bases, interstellar travel. All this was announced in 2019 with target release in march 2020.

So what scope you guys talking about?

i can only agree with this, i work in game dev and im wondering how they can add 4 years of dev time to an almost finished game as shown on gamescom

my best guess is that they are struggling and redesigning the whole game to make it compatible for consoles - cutting down on alot of features to make it run smoothly since a console can handle only so much game logic, its simply an inferior system so the game needs to be limited to run smoothly on it as opposed to PC where u can go nuts on everything if you have a good rack

they are doing this because they dont want a 3-4 years delay between the pc and console release, so they just make everyone wait

i guess thats also the reason for all the NDA and secrecy crap - if people knew the game was finished already they would demand release, because why should we wait for a console port?

Edited by Fullmetal Analyst
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On 8/6/2022 at 3:15 PM, intelliCom said:

At this point, KSP 2 should release with something really decent. At the very least, a game that runs well with little in the way of bugs. I'll accept if they move a mentioned feature or two into the future in favour of getting the game out, it's just a horrible idea for them to rush. I appreciate the general concensus that Intercept shouldn't rush, but I feel as though the KSP2 section of the forums is on the verge of snapping like a strand of spaghetti and just begging Intercept to rush anyways. Them rushing means no more delays, but I really don't want KSP2 to end up like Cyberpunk 2077; overhyped and underdeveloped.

they had 4 years of extra dev and testing time to REALLY polish everything, we should expect a bug-free release - provided that the devs were not struggling with the console port the entire time

Edited by Fullmetal Analyst
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33 minutes ago, Fullmetal Analyst said:

my best guess is that they are struggling and redesigning the whole game to make it compatible for consoles - cutting down on alot of features to make it run smoothly since a console can handle only so much game log....

Bling bling bling!

We have a new conspiracy theory on the forum guys, let's all politely and respectfully try to explain in 10 or 15 pages why this is all a load of crap!

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