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Week One Adventures


Nate Simpson

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18 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

Since I have asked similar questions about other games in the past, I have a lot of empathy for this perspective. Now I must do my penance by explaining what it looks like from the other side!

I'm sure one of our producers could give you a more precise answer, but here's the general idea: every time we release an update, we essentially take a snapshot build of the game and then test it like crazy. That uses up a huge amount of QA bandwidth, and for a game like KSP2 it really is a non-trivial amount of work to test it in a way that approximates the range of activities that the entire community might get up to in the game. As they test that snapshot build, they sometimes discover bugs. Many of them (hopefully most of them) will be known bugs that are already tracked and that we're already working on. But some of these bugs might actually be new bugs that have emerged since the last update. Those point to unintended outcomes related to recent checkins -- i.e. by fixing one problem, we have created a new problem. We are trying very hard to hold ourselves to the standard of "the game should get better with every update," and that means that we take this sort of bug very seriously. This means that when such a bug arises, production and engineering go over these issues with a fine-tooth comb and figure out what broke, and then additional fixes are applied to the build until it's in a good state.

Now, as you may have noticed, getting a candidate build to a level of quality that it's safe to release involves a lot of coordinated activity among a lot of people who also need to be advancing other areas of the game (for example bringing about perf improvements or working on roadmap features). Our update cadence is therefore carefully balanced against our need to keep pushing the entire game forward toward 1.0.  Of course I would love to drop an update every day like the update Easter Bunny, but the reality is that each update comes with a cost, and we want to have the bandwidth to work on cool stuff like Colonies and Interstellar too. With that in mind, and because we want each update to contain lots of meaningful improvements, we can't release rapid-fire updates. HarvesteR was amazing and deserves his godlike status in this community, and I remember hanging on to his every post back when he was updating KSP. But I suspect that he was also constrained by similar production realities. 

All that said, I think it's safe to say that our key focus today is to correct issues that affect the quality of gameplay, which means performance bugs, bugs that stop some players from being able to play the game at all, bugs that result in loss of vehicle, bugs that result in mission failure, bugs that result in the game crashing, and bugs that ruin campaign saves. When such fixes are complete, we do not intend to sit on them for a long time. One of life's great frustrations is to read a complaint about a bug online and know that it's been fixed internally. As long as the wait between updates may feel on the outside, let me assure you that it feels even longer on the inside! 

Now @nestoris going to yell at me for speaking about this topic in a sloppy fashion, and I encourage him to join me in this thread if he'd like to add more to my explanation. I hope this at least gives you some sense of the environment within which our task assignments take place. :)  

Has a closed test group been considered? For those of us that love ksp and have a fondness for EA QA testing we'd love to get our hands on the in development builds and help the QA team with bug reports. Maybe its the 5 concussions, but I love finding new bugs in EA games, and I hate running into old ones, so QA testing on candidate builds is fun.  

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13 hours ago, RaccoonRonin said:

Yeah this is BS. The game as it is requires you to use copious amounts of struts without autostrut or some similar system in place. Almost every part when placed onto another part flops around like a fish, and even when strutted up, it still flops. The worst is boosters attached radially, they flop when you load the craft in, and pretty much fling into your rocket when they're activated. So I tried making a similar rocket without boosters, and wouldn't you know, as soon as I did my gravity turn the thing just disassembles itself.

I assure you, this is not a case of needing to have patience, and learn. I know how this works, I'm more or less a veteran of the first game. I wonder if people being dismissive of this issue like this are the reason it's not being addressed in this blog post, because that has been mine and many other people's single biggest complaint about why this game is unplayable in its current state.

I’ve had no trouble with radially mounted 1.25m boosters with the nosecones mounted on the radial decoupler, tank then attached to the nosecone, engine to tank, and two struts per booster; 1 from the tip of the nosecone and one from the base of the tank.  Stick a separatron pointed upwards on the nosecone staged with the radial decoupler.  Run your fuel lines to the center tank.  Works fine.  And on a 2.5m direct ascent Mün craft, those two struts per booster are all I’ve needed.

KSP2 isn’t KSP1, and we can’t assume that everything we learned in the first game is going to work in this one.  The current version seems to reward simple, conservative minimalist designs and punish large complicated ones.  Starting small and progressing incrementally and carefully, with attention paid to flight reports on crashes, as opposed to building giant Kraken lures, is a play style that’s very much playable.  And things can only get better…

 

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5 hours ago, RockyTV said:

I just checked the KSP1 version history. Correct me if I'm wrong but HarvesteR was the single dev back then when KSP1 was released. A single person. According to the wiki https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Version_history#v0.0
 

Initial release on June 24 2011
First patch 13 days later, correcting bugs and adding new features
Another patch 6 days later with bug fixes and new features
Another patch at the same day to fix some bugs
Another patch 4 days later adding more content, features and fixing bugs

Since its initial release on version 0.7.3, to 0.8.5, the dev team back then managed to correct tons of bugs whilst still adding new features during a course of 23 days. Probably HarvesteR was the only one doing QA back then, so imagine how it would be to deploy a fix and test it to check if the bug was actually fixed.

I just think you're comparing apples not even to oranges, but to, idk, lawnmowers. The game that HarvesteR was releasing patches for was basically a tech demo at that point. It's super unfair to say that, if one person could release patches semi-weekly for a tech demo, then a whole team should be able to do the same for a real no-kidding alpha. The levels of complexity are just orders of magnitude apart.

5 hours ago, RockyTV said:

If the game wasn't ready to be released, why release in early access then?

This is, like, literally the point of Early Access. An open alpha/beta. Right?

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19 hours ago, Nuggzy said:

I have played this since the launch of KSP 1 before it was even available on Steam. It was never this bad. There are dozens of videos on youtube showing exactly what I am saying so don't act like it's a perfect game, it's far far from it.  

Take the rose tinted glasses off.... I too got it in early beta from the ksp website. It absolutely was this bad. With the caviat that you vould only orbit kerbin, no mun or anything.

 

The devs built ksp2, completely scorched earth in a new engine, and effectively replicated the functionality of a game that had 10 years worth of updates done to it.

 

Bad performance and bugs is to be expected in early access. Either I won the silicone lottery on a 3050 and i58600k and have fluked 25-30fps, or you have unrealistic expectations of what you were getting.

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46 minutes ago, whatsEJstandfor said:

I just think you're comparing apples not even to oranges, but to, idk, lawnmowers. The game that HarvesteR was releasing patches for was basically a tech demo at that point. It's super unfair to say that, if one person could release patches semi-weekly for a tech demo, then a whole team should be able to do the same for a real no-kidding alpha. The levels of complexity are just orders of magnitude apart.

This is, like, literally the point of Early Access. An open alpha/beta. Right?

Except they don't seem to understand this and just want to get as many fixes in one patch as possible.

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Calling people liars for what seems to be more of an oversight is out of line to me.

Fact is, he mentioned it was deleted from the website, he did not mention the forums. And he's right that the old links to the website are broken and that specifically insights 2 to 4 are no longer linked from

https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/dev-diaries

 

Edited by MarcAbaddon
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29 minutes ago, RockyTV said:

Except they don't seem to understand this and just want to get as many fixes in one patch as possible.

They just have a different way of vetting bugfixes than HarvesteR did. One is not inherently better than the other, and you're insisting that HarvesteR's way was the only way to do it well.

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3 hours ago, RockyTV said:

Maybe their QA team needs to realize they actually need to play the game instead of just checking if the game "works".
 

According to them they can't stop playing it to do any actual work. I call major BS on that one. Them playing the game, not the lack of production, because we definitely have that.

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1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

I’ve had no trouble with radially mounted 1.25m boosters with the nosecones mounted on the radial decoupler, tank then attached to the nosecone, engine to tank, and two struts per booster; 1 from the tip of the nosecone and one from the base of the tank.  Stick a separatron pointed upwards on the nosecone staged with the radial decoupler.  Run your fuel lines to the center tank.  Works fine.  And on a 2.5m direct ascent Mün craft, those two struts per booster are all I’ve needed.

KSP2 isn’t KSP1, and we can’t assume that everything we learned in the first game is going to work in this one.  The current version seems to reward simple, conservative minimalist designs and punish large complicated ones.  Starting small and progressing incrementally and carefully, with attention paid to flight reports on crashes, as opposed to building giant Kraken lures, is a play style that’s very much playable.  And things can only get better…

 

KSP 2 is going interstellar. That means things will get a LOT bigger, not smaller, and will definitely get a lot more complicated. It's also going multiplayer, which means part count will be critical, so the current style of "MORE struts!!"  is only going to cause tons of lag.  The things they are doing are very counter-productive to the end goal. We need the minimalist designs for multiplayer but that means we have to break from reality a little. And after all, this is "Kerbal" Space Program, not "Human" Space Program, reality isn't real...

unmodded KSP 1.0.5

ksp1_0_5_tank_demo.png

ksp 2 - every joint is compromised, some of them severely. The uprights are compressed into each other.

ksp2-tank_demo.png

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2 hours ago, FlickAndSnorty said:

Take the rose tinted glasses off.... I too got it in early beta from the ksp website. It absolutely was this bad. With the caviat that you vould only orbit kerbin, no mun or anything.

 

The devs built ksp2, completely scorched earth in a new engine, and effectively replicated the functionality of a game that had 10 years worth of updates done to it.

 

Bad performance and bugs is to be expected in early access. Either I won the silicone lottery on a 3050 and i58600k and have fluked 25-30fps, or you have unrealistic expectations of what you were getting.

So, tell me, in what game has it ever been ok to launch a version 2 that is just as bad(worse) then version 1??? Did they learn nothing from the years of bug fixes through community developed mods? And no, it wasn't this bad, at least you could get the noodle into space, here you are lucky to get it standing on the launchpad. This isn't even a quality remaster in an environment that is LOADS easier to program in than KSP 1 was developed. The tools we have today are much better. Not only that, but Indy vs AAA. What we paid 5 times the price for what isn't 1/5th the value in MHO, this should have been a limited time free access Alpha release.

Edited by Nuggzy
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1 hour ago, whatsEJstandfor said:

They just have a different way of vetting bugfixes than HarvesteR did. One is not inherently better than the other, and you're insisting that HarvesteR's way was the only way to do it well.

HarvesteR's way worked for their limited resources. IG has an infinitely amount of resources at their disposal and still manage to be worse than the small team that made KSP1.

 

Anyway, it's difficult to convince people that had lots of copium doses that what's going on is unacceptable for a company this size and with lots of resources and new tech at their disposal compared to 12 years ago when KSP1 released. I'm waiting for the first patch and if there are still game breaking bugs and the second patch will be released 2-3 weeks later I'm fighting my way for a refund on Steam.

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1 minute ago, RockyTV said:

Anyway, it's difficult to convince people that had lots of copium doses that what's going on is unacceptable for a company this size and with lots of resources and new tech at their disposal compared to 12 years ago when KSP1 released. I'm waiting for the first patch and if there are still game breaking bugs and the second patch will be released 2-3 weeks later I'm fighting my way for a refund on Steam.

That's such a childish way to look at things that disregards the game's complexity and overall development story. I honestly don't know anymore what else to tell you at this point. You're treating the game like it's supposed to be finished right now and pretend either that the development is happening to slowly for your likings or that there is no development at all.

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17 minutes ago, Delay said:

That's such a childish way to look at things that disregards the game's complexity and overall development story. I honestly don't know anymore what else to tell you at this point. You're treating the game like it's supposed to be finished right now and pretend either that the development is happening to slowly for your likings or that there is no development at all.

No, I'm treating the game they way it should be: it's unacceptable that there are several game breaking bugs at this state and the least we get is a dev saying it will take up to 3 weeks for the first batch of patches to be released when I've paid 50 euros for a broken, open-beta game.

EDIT:

zRSlPgK.png

in case it's not obvious, thanks to this, ahem, high game complexity and development story, the game is losing players day by day, for the past 4 days it couldn't even maintain an average above 4k players, while KSP1 has 2x the amount of players.

Edited by RockyTV
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9 minutes ago, RockyTV said:

zRSlPgK.png

in case it's not obvious, thanks to this, ahem, high game complexity and development story, the game is losing players day by day, for the past 4 days it couldn't even maintain an average above 4k players

I don't know, looks parabolic to me. Look at the last three local maxima!

Also, it should be obvious at this point that this upcoming update will not just fix game-breaking bugs, but also all kinds of other improvements. I'll simply wait for those, observe the first few versions of the game, and then decide whether to buy the game or not.

The same kind of words have been spoken of KSP 1 several times. I feel I know what will happen next.

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9 minutes ago, RockyTV said:

No, I'm treating the game they way it should be: it's unacceptable that there are several game breaking bugs at this state and the least we get is a dev saying it will take up to 3 weeks for the first batch of patches to be released when I've paid 50 euros for a broken, open-beta game.

You tell’em. If this doesn’t fill the entire IG crew with fear, I don’t know what does. Unlike anything, anything else, NOW Nate and his slimy band of villains will finally see the terrible, wrong thing they did, beg for mercy and pump out a bugless version in two week. Thank goodness, the nightmare is over!

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5 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Nah, that's just the same 10 people club that are chronically in the forums thinking they know some magic context they refuse to mention whilst calling you names under the mod's eyes.

Most people look at the steam store page, and then at the website, which is where the posts were deleted from. This forum is barely a wasteland of the same 100 people and has been that way for the past 5 or so years since the KSP1 modding scene fell off.

No, you were wrong. People pointed that out, and you refused to admit it.

"since the KSP1 modding scene fell off".

As far as I'm aware, the KSP1 modding scene is stronger than ever.

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If anyone is looking for a subject for their consumer psychology doctorate, the relationship between gamers expectations and the economic realities of software development would be a great thesis. You’d only need this forum as a source…your research would be a piece of cake. -_-

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Could we possibly get back on track here and talk abut it the actual fixes Nate mentioned?  Or perhaps ask Nate our questions again considering they have now gotten lost in pages of arguing?  I'll start (partly because the question is buried, partly because I may have tagged the wrong person).

@Nate Simpson

One thing I don't see mentioned is the broken SAS controls.  Ships spinning uncontrollably during flight, and/or SAS not being properly held when performing maneuvers.  Has this been discussed by the team?

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2 hours ago, Nuggzy said:

KSP 2 is going interstellar. That means things will get a LOT bigger, not smaller, and will definitely get a lot more complicated. It's also going multiplayer, which means part count will be critical, so the current style of "MORE struts!!"  is only going to cause tons of lag.  The things they are doing are very counter-productive to the end goal.

This is the thing that really makes me skeptical about the future. I can accept an early version having serious framerate issues in limited and particularly stressful situations. For example, another EA game I've played (much more of), Planet Crafter, performs very badly in one specific area (my hardware gets about 15-20fps versus easily over 60 in most areas, player constructions notwithstanding). Big whoop. It's just one area; it will probably be optimized at some point, and that'll be the end of that.

KSP2? Just building a conceptually simple rocket meant to go to Duna and back, using radial tanks (hello terrible crossfeed performance) but generally just an uncreative vertical stack. Ascent clocked in at about 8fps. Dropping the first stage, up to about 15fps. Last stage approaching Duna was getting about 35fps.

Now, if the end-game for KSP was to build this simple Duna rocket I wouldn't be worried, because these numbers will improve. But the goal isn't a Duna rocket. We're supposed to be scaling to space stations. Motherships. Mining outposts. Colonies. Interstellar. And multiplayer on top of all that. The Duna rocket is baby stuff. I don't need my game to run at 4k/120fps to enjoy it, but if we can't achieve solid performance at this tiny scale then what hope is there for the lofty goals that actually go beyond what's already in KSP1?

Rebuilding from a more stable and performant base seemed like KSP2's raison d'être, yet it seems just as unstable (in all the same ways and more) and certainly not more performant. Can we really get from here to where we all want the game to go? I'd love to see it, but we're going to need to see dramatic improvements to the game's core functionality to make any of it achievable.

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3 hours ago, RockyTV said:

I'm waiting for the first patch and if there are still game breaking bugs and the second patch will be released 2-3 weeks later I'm fighting my way for a refund on Steam.

I got bad news, there will still be many game-breaking bugs after this first patch. The devs aren't miracle-workers, despite their "infinitely amount of resources". Whether or not we knew this was the state the game would be in 2 weeks ago is irrelevant, because we know it now. If that's not your speed, then why wait for the first patch? You're going to be disappointed. Just get a refund now.

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