Week One Adventures

[atomontage]

8 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

There were never any promises, let's start with that.

Whether something was deleted or not, I can't tell, don't care.

When I say I will give you money, that actually is a promise.
When devs say there will be colonies in KSP 2, that is also a promise.

When devs say they needed more time to polish this complex game and then they release THIS. Well technically no, its not a promise, but come on!

[Xelo]

35 minutes ago, ski23 said:

At most software development companies I’ve worked at, the answer to this is a crap ton of automated tests that ensure new changes don’t break existing features. This means that you have hardly any manual/smoke testing that needs done. Do you not have any automated testing in place? It would probably help avoid a lot of regressions and human time spent testing. 

Games are rather difficult to write automated tests for, compared to 'business logic' especially for a sandbox game where the possibility space is large enough that edge cases are nigh impossible to completely cover. Things like graphical and physics bugs are also difficult to cover as the underlying systems are rather opaque to unity's scripting code ontop of the possibility space being too big, writing an assertion that the sky is blue is not worth the dev time a qa tester can discern in half a second for example. Which programmer would think of the test case where the KSC follows them around? How does one automatically test for a bugged animation? Many things can only be reasonably validated by humans in games. One thing that may see good use of automation tests is the serialization bugs that are prevalent in the game, but from what I saw these bugs are all edge cases with difficult patterns of reproduction, likely automated testing would cover the most obvious ones, but beyond that has to be the QA's job of finding the specific series of interactions that'll break a thing. 

[JeanRenaud]

I think people have misunderstood "performance". They were talking about performance of the engines, because you all know it, engines are so performant that you can launch the entire KSC to space.

[RockyTV]

13 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.   

I appreciate the insight on in but unfortunately I'm not as naive as the others to believe this is how it's going to work out. As I said, I appreciate you taking the effort of answering our concerns but still, is this exactly what's going on?

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.

You guys have the resources at your disposal, and as someone mentioned, how come your QA team didn't pick up the issues that roughly 70-80% of the players are having right now? Also, I think it's important to notice, this game was released in Early Access. It's an open beta, sort of. It's okay if things break (they are broken already). I'd expect the team to be working on fixing game breaking bugs from day-1, but it doesn't look like it. It feels like the team has relaxed after EA release and are just taking things slow, as if the game has been released to an actual released state, instead of EA.

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

Edited March 4, 2023 by RockyTV

[atomontage]

12 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

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

You do realise that KSP 2 is almost unplayable in its current state don't you? Ppl fight bugs, not gravity. That means it loses its playerbase every day.
We don't need colonies or interstellar now. We don't have a game we've dreamed of - we can't play it at all without constantly fighting bugs and performance.

Shouldn't devs throw everything they have to fix stuff first? Everything else comes later. Am I not right?

Please hear us out: WE CAN'T PLAY THE BASE GAME.
Here will come ppl that fly aircraft on Kerbin and say the game is fine. Meh.

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, atomontage said:

Wait.. what? They deleted threads with promises?!

 

28 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

These all still seem to be here, no indication that they were deleted.

My bad, not threads, but website blogs:

You can check here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211214032627/https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/dev-diaries/developer-insights-4-ksp2-engineering/

https://web.archive.org/web/20211021083259/https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/dev-diaries/introducing-intercept-games/

They deleted the dev diaries off the website completely IIRC.

[MechBFP]

3 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

 

My bad, not threads, but website blogs:

You can check here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211214032627/https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/dev-diaries/developer-insights-4-ksp2-engineering/

https://web.archive.org/web/20211021083259/https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/dev-diaries/introducing-intercept-games/

They deleted the dev diaries off the website completely IIRC.

Tada https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/forum/110-dev-diaries/

 

Edited March 4, 2023 by MechBFP

[Kerbart]

3 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

They deleted the dev diaries off the website completely IIRC.

You mean these? https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/forum/110-dev-diaries/

[PDCWolf]

1 minute ago, MechBFP said:

Tada https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/forum/110-dev-diaries/

Just now, Kerbart said:

You mean these? https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/forum/110-dev-diaries/

You guys do realize I linked web.archive URLs that link to kerbalspaceprogram.com and not forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com

The dev diaries were deleted off the website, which I clarified was my mistake.

[The Aziz]

9 minutes ago, RockyTV said:

I appreciate the insight on in but unfortunately I'm not as naive as the others to believe this is how it's going to work out. As I said, I appreciate you taking the effort of answering our concerns but still, is this exactly what's going on?

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.

You guys have the resources at your disposal, and as someone mentioned, how come your QA team didn't pick up the issues that roughly 70-80% of the players are having right now? Also, I think it's important to notice, this game was released in Early Access. It's an open beta, sort of. It's okay if things break. I'd expect the team to be working on fixing game breaking bugs from day-1, but it doesn't look like it. It feels like the team has relaxed after EA release and are just taking things slow, as if the game has been released to an actual released state, instead of EA.

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

Earliest versions of KSP1 had barely any content. Maybe you didn't notice the difference.

1 minute ago, PDCWolf said:

The dev diaries were deleted off the website

And? The content is still available in unchanged form, in different place. I'm guessing it was more of an oversight rather than deliberate attempt at, idk, hiding something? Because the KSP page changed in the meantime and most links went with it, they had to replace them.

[MechBFP]

5 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

You guys do realize I linked web.archive URLs that link to kerbalspaceprogram.com and not forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com

The dev diaries were deleted off the website, which I clarified was my mistake.

So why did you bring it up in the first place?

[Delay]

14 minutes ago, RockyTV said:

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

Sure, but if I remember correctly, the first version of KSP 1 had a... dare I say, pathetically tiny scope in comparison to what the game evolved into.

It's much easier to fix bugs related to interplanetary travel when interplanety travel doesn't even exist!

[PDCWolf]

1 minute ago, The Aziz said:

Earliest versions of KSP1 had barely any content. Maybe you didn't notice the difference.

And? The content is still available in unchanged form, in different place. I'm guessing it was more of an oversight rather than deliberate attempt at, idk, hiding something? Because the KSP page changed in the meantime and most links went with it, they had to replace them.

Just now, MechBFP said:

So why did you bring it up in the first place?

Well, deleting them from the front page makes a lot of sense when you can read stuff like these from them (#4 specifically):

[Delay]

1 minute ago, PDCWolf said:

I like how the highlighting dismisses the overall context of the quote. Way to go.

[TFA3393]

We love you Nate keep up the good work!

[LameLefty]

Thanks for the updates, @Nate Simpson

 

As for all the other noise, sheesh ... So. Much. Angst. Life's too short to waste time posting and rehashing the same anger over and over again. Let it go for a few days, wait for the first patch, reevaluate. Spring is around the corner in the northern hemisphere and there's more important things in the world to worry about and to look forward to. 

[MechBFP]

2 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Well, deleting them from the front page makes a lot of sense when you can read stuff like these from them (#4 specifically):

Congrats, you caught them red handed having lofty goals. Shameful. 

[Kerbart]

22 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

You guys do realize I linked web.archive URLs that link to kerbalspaceprogram.com and not forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com

The dev diaries were deleted off the website, which I clarified was my mistake.

You mean they moved it to a different part of the website? It's still on kerbalspaceprogram.com

I'm sorry, I don't buy into the "evil corporation wiping out previous claims" coverup narrative here.

[Vl3d]

10 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

Congrats, you caught them red handed having lofty goals. Shameful. 

Oy, leave Paul Furio alone! Every EA game has bugs and you have not yet seen the true work and genius of the dev team. It will all be revealed as features roll out. Support the devs!

[Bej Kerman]

21 minutes ago, Delay said:

22 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

I like how the highlighting dismisses the overall context of the quote. Way to go.

Before, forum users were blatantly misquoting "Our ultimate goal is to slay the Kraken!" as "We killed the Kraken", now the naysayers have evolved to do what Flat Earthers have done since the dawn of Wikipedia, take what people say completely out of context using the highlighter tool and leave all the context in frame as if people won't catch onto them cherrypicking stuff. I wonder what people are going to do next. Just make stuff up, perhaps?

[jacksawild]

2 hours ago, nablabla said:

  

 

Hi, I am also missing three things from the dev's wanna-fix-list that totally spoiled the experience for me, those are the first two of you list. >>Building interstage fairings is impossible>>. And >>when using a fairing it often explodes on launch<<. And then there is the stuff-falls-out-of-the-sky issue when undocking. All of these three things were visible on many famous youtubers (matt lowne had all three of them).

Have you seen the new Tube parts in the structural tab? Could be the new interstage meta, but I haven't really played enough with them to know.

[PDCWolf]

24 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Oy, leave Paul Furio alone! Every EA game has bugs and you have not yet seen the true work and genius of the dev team. It will all be revealed as features roll out. Support the devs!

Hail.

24 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

You mean they moved it to a different part of the website? It's still on kerbalspaceprogram.com

I'm sorry, I don't buy into the "evil corporation wiping out previous claims" coverup narrative here.

That's such a cop-out lmao. "It's still on the website", yeah sure it is buddy, just not on the front facing part of it anymore, only where the diehard fans are. I'm not saying they're evil, I'm saying they clearly realized they uhm... have "overstated" a lot in their dev blogs and it'll be better to take some of that stuff off a place that was 1 button away from the front page.

 

15 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Before, forum users were blatantly misquoting "Our ultimate goal is to slay the Kraken!" as "We killed the Kraken", now the naysayers have evolved to do what Flat Earthers have done since the dawn of Wikipedia, take what people say completely out of context using the highlighter tool and leave all the context in frame as if people won't catch onto them cherrypicking stuff. I wonder what people are going to do next. Just make stuff up, perhaps?

A risk of the job. That's why you hire PR people to manage the communication with your fanbase.

I fail to see any further context other than Paul describing his job, which he hasn't yet fulfilled based on what's publicly available. KSP2 is not performant, stable, neither did it arrive on time. The second quote has even tighter context, as it directly states their view for the launch product, which they've completely failed to meet.

Saying "muh context" without providing what you understand as the context doesn't make a very clear argument, specially because I took the job of quoting the previous and following sentence and not just the highlighted bit.

[Bej Kerman]

8 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

I fail to see any further context other than Paul describing his job, which he hasn't yet fulfilled based on what's publicly available. KSP2 is not performant, stable, neither did it arrive on time. The second quote has even tighter context, as it directly states their view for the launch product, which they've completely failed to meet.

Saying "muh context" without providing what you understand as the context doesn't make a very clear argument, specially because I took the job of quoting the previous and following sentence and not just the highlighted bit.

I'm pretty sure I've seen a few Flat Earthers before also wave off context as something that's not important, as if it's not a foundation of most human languages. Furthermore, it's become clear you've highlighted these bits to draw attention from some of the people here with more incendiary opinions on the developers while leaving the context in the image, albeit unhighlighted, so you can cop out of admitting you're using these tactics to misrepresent what Paul is saying.

Again, I've seen enough Flat Earthers use these specific techniques to see it when it happens

18 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

I fail to see any further context other than Paul describing his job, which he hasn't yet fulfilled based on what's publicly available. KSP2 is not performant, stable, neither did it arrive on time. The second quote has even tighter context, as it directly states their view for the launch product, which they've completely failed to meet.

Yes, PDC. They failed to meet the launch expectations for a pre-launch release.

[Delay]

38 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

I fail to see any further context other than Paul describing his job, which he hasn't yet fulfilled based on what's publicly available. KSP2 is not performant, stable, neither did it arrive on time. The second quote has even tighter context, as it directly states their view for the launch product, which they've completely failed to meet.

Saying "muh context" without providing what you understand as the context doesn't make a very clear argument, specially because I took the job of quoting the previous and following sentence and not just the highlighted bit.

Early Access != Launch.

Early Access provides an opportunity for the devs to ensure that their launch goals are met. Let's be honest, no matter how crazy their QA testers are, the community at large beats that. Having us be able to point out these issues now means they won't have to deal with them then, that is, at the actual, real, true game launch.

I'm not trying to excuse the current state of the game as presented, but if you misinterpret quotes and then pretend that's what they meant all along then I'm not going to sit around twiddling my thumbs, either.

[Temeriki]

Ksp1 early access:  Hey guys heres our buggy game at a reasonable price, please break it and let us know how you broke it so we can try to fix it, we will most likely break it more trying to fix it and repeat over and over while we all have a blast so please be patient.  Since you helped us fund the game super early were gonna give you all future dlc for free cause you guys are awesome and we love our community.  Hey modders, heres some early release update candidates so you can try to get your mods current when a new update drops so everyone can have as much fun as possible.

Ksp2 early access:  Heres a AAA priced pile of poop, youll get updates when we think their ready, so just shut up and pay us to QA our releases whenever we get around to them cause despite us saying we wanted to recreate the amazingness that was ksp1 community engadgement we have no plans on actually doing so.  Hey modders, theres no sdk and no documentation, well get around to it whenever, deal with it.



Something something money changes people I guess.