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Parts and Circumstance


Nate Simpson

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6 hours ago, Delay said:

Parts are the things that implement the features.

Can't fly without wings or do science without science parts, right?

Sure - but there's a difference between a feature that already has parts that implement it - eg: a new engine - and what you're citing.  That's why I explicitly pointed out that the parts that are mentioned in the post are not demonstrating a new feature.

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On 5/28/2023 at 9:44 AM, The Aziz said:

You're an high level employee in a company that answers to a company that answers to a bigger company that decides that the game must be out before certain date, even if it means early access. You plan your next steps including stripping the game out of unfinished features to meet release date few months prior because you have to, and all the fluff that's related, including events, marketing etc.

In the meantime, software, being software, doesn't cooperate as nicely as you would want it to and your target deadline slips. You're not allowed to pull a CDProjektRed and post yet another apology letter explaining why it's late because it must be out there and then. What do you do? Make the right call.

you do the right thing and delay it until it is in a more presentable state. Thats how you do that.  You push back against them and say "no, its not ready!" If that means your job then so be it.  in other words you do the right moral thing

Edited by Redneck
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12 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

Sure - but there's a difference between a feature that already has parts that implement it - eg: a new engine - and what you're citing.  That's why I explicitly pointed out that the parts that are mentioned in the post are not demonstrating a new feature.

A minor feature is still a feature, however. 

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1 hour ago, Redneck said:

you do the right thing and delay it until it is in a more presentable state. Thats how you do that.  You push back against them and say "no, it’s not ready!" If that means your job then so be it.  in other words you do the right moral thing

Really, releasing a buggy EA for $50 is hardly a hill to die on.  Sure, the initial release was a bit disappointing, but still playable, we had plenty of warning that it was going to be a feature incomplete EA, and we had footage of the state it was in from the ESA event.  
 

I think that the worst IG did here was to assume that a fan base as devoted to the game as we are would have been able to manage its own expectations realistically and assume that IG would run the remaining development work competently.   In that light, and with better knowledge of the actual state of development, the big fix process, and the long term plans for the game than you or I have, throwing oneself on one’s sword at that point would be silly and over-dramatic.

A more detailed approach to comms would have been nice, and I hope they keep it up, but fixing the bugs and advancing the roadmap is far more important.  Luckily, that sort of clarity and transparency, recognizing that we’re a bit (in some cases massively) more emotionally (over)invested in the game than your average fanbase, shouldn’t conflict with or delay the important work.

I’m really pumped about the new engines - I think the most fun I’ve had in the EA (aside from enjoying the new scenery, graphics, VAB/KSC, and exploring all the other new stuff) has been the new parts.  Stock KSP1 gets to be a known quantity after 5k hours…

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2 hours ago, Redneck said:

you do the right thing and delay it until it is in a more presentable state.

While I would agree with this, think about it like this - given the number of game-breaking bugs even three versions in, how long would it have taken if the game wasn't EA?

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2 hours ago, Redneck said:

you do the right thing and delay it until it is in a more presentable state. Thats how you do that.  You push back against them and say "no, its not ready!" If that means your job then so be it.  in other words you do the right moral thing

That is easily the funniest thing I have read in this sub forum. I actually laughed out loud. Thank you. 

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16 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

That is easily the funniest thing I have read in this sub forum. I actually laughed out loud. Thank you. 

im glad you were amused. let me know if you ever create a game ill make sure i think twice before buying it

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3 hours ago, Redneck said:

you do the right thing and delay it until it is in a more presentable state. Thats how you do that.  You push back against them and say "no, its not ready!" If that means your job then so be it.  in other words you do the right moral thing

People generally don't do that, quitting a job is usually a more personal decision.  The amount of control that a publisher or upper management exerts to push out a bad game - and often the amount of mismanagement that leads up to such a decision - tends to drive good developers away and instead keep the 'yes' men around who are more concerned about managing up than building a good product.  It's kind of odd that KSP2 is having such a huge problem with keeping/attracting good engineering talent - mostly you'd expect this to be the sort of project a game dev would love to dive into vs FPS #3538.   But they lost multiple engineering leads, a whole engineering team at star theory, their physics programmer, their multiplayer lead, etc.  Engineering seems to have seen BY FAR the most turnover on the project.  And they've had engineering hires up on their page for ages.   Fortunately they got an influx of engineers from Squad - though it also seems the lead designer from KSP1 decided not to move over to work with Intercept.

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On 5/26/2023 at 11:45 PM, Nate Simpson said:

image.png.2ecbf49af7003579f762847848787a

Good afternoon, Kerbonauts.

This past week has been a learning experience. My last post here received a lot of comments, many of which expressed doubt, frustration, and in some cases even anger about either the seeming lack of progress on KSP2 or the perception that I am concealing some dark reality about the state of the game. Our team has been reading your comments and asking one another if there’s some way we can do better.

In the past, every item in these forum posts has had to cross a threshold of certainty - I don’t want to announce some new feature or target date, only to experience a trust-eroding failure to follow through. I feel this burden especially keenly because in the past I have personally announced dates that turned out to be incorrect. For that reason, I have avoided talking about features in progress, bugs under investigation, or internal delivery deadlines. With a game this complex, nothing is ever assured until it has been thoroughly tested by QA. When you combine this "stay quiet until you’re absolutely sure" ethos with a more dispersed update cadence, what you get is long periods of silence.

Now, of course I haven’t gone literally silent. I still post here every week. Before each post goes out, I meet with the production and community teams to review the past week’s progress, and a great many exciting developments are discussed. They often take the form of "we’ve made great progress on x category of super annoying bug" or "this feature looks good but we haven’t had time to fully validate it yet." By my standard of "don’t talk about it until it’s truly done," neither of those scenarios yields anything that’s safe to post about. What is safe, then? Well, for the most part, content updates (new art, new parts, new graphics improvements) come along in nice, neat little parcels that are not only visually pleasing, but also unlikely to generate an unmet expectation. They’re fun and they’re safe, and artists are always creating new content. So you see lots of that.

But the other thing you see lots of is some variation on "improved stability and performance." That’s my catch-all term for that very meaningful category of progress that, because of my reluctance to write bad checks, can’t yet be talked about in detail. When I hold back on such items, I comfort myself that the less I reveal now, the more surprising the patch notes will be when we finally release them.

Still, I’m questioning my choice to withhold information about systems in progress. Yes, there’s always the chance that when we talk about a feature in development, that we’re also creating an expectation that the feature will be present in the next update. Similarly daunting is the possibility that we’ll announce that we’re working on something that the community perceives as "easy" (an especially common situation when we’re working on a feature that is already functional in the original KSP), and then take such a long time delivering that feature that people may decide we don’t know what we’re doing. In such cases, we then need to take the time to explain in technical detail why the implementation of such and such a feature is non-trivial in KSP2. Increased transparency carries costs, and those costs always have to be balanced against other feature-facing work we could be doing.

So what I’m going to try to do right now is to extend some trust to you. I’m going to talk about a few things that are not yet complete so that you can at least see some of the ropes we’re hauling on every day - some of which may prove to be long. This list is not exhaustive (there are dozens of people working on dozens of items simultaneously, and there are some features that we really do want to be surprises), but it will hopefully give you some visibility into the breadth of issues we’re tackling. Please do not assume that if a bug didn’t get mentioned in this list that it is unknown to us or not being worked on — this is a top-ten list.

Our bug prioritization is broadly guided by the following logic:

  • Category A: any bug that causes loss of a vehicle in flight (physics issues, trajectory instability, decoupling instability, loss of camera focus, unexpected part breakage/RUD)
  • Category B: any bug that affects the fidelity or continuity of a saved game (rigidbody degradation, save file inflation, loss of vehicle or Kerbal during instantiation or focus switching)
  • Category C: any bug that negatively affects the expected performance of a vehicle (drag occlusion, staging issues, thrust asymmetry, joint wobbliness, landing leg bounciness)
  • Category D: any VAB bug that prevents the player from creating the vehicle they want to make (symmetry bugs, fairing/wing editor bugs, strut instability, inconsistent root part behavior)

While there are many bugs that live outside these four categories (and in some cases, such bugs end up getting sorted out during normal feature development), the four categories above are the biggest fun killers. Until a player can envision a vehicle, create it without being impeded by VAB issues, fly it with a reasonable expectation that physical forces will be consistently applied, and save their progress at any point without worrying about the fidelity of that save, the KSP2 experience will be compromised. Obviously, now that we are layering in progression mechanics (Science gathering and transmission, missions, and R&D tech tree) in preparation for downstream Roadmap updates, the importance of addressing these issues only increases.

Therefore, here are a few of the biggest issues we’re wrangling with right now:

  1. Vehicles in stable coasting orbits sometimes experience orbit instability/decay - Status: possible fix in progress
  2. Trajectories change when vehicles cross SOI boundaries - Status: fix in progress (see below)
  3. Certain inline parts cause aerodynamic drag numbers to spike - Status: under investigation
  4. Returning to craft from VAB causes craft to go underground (possibly related to Kerbals and landed vehicles dropping through terrain while being approached) - Status: possible fix being tested
  5. Decoupling events result in various issues including loss of control, incorrect controllability of decoupled subassemblies, loss of camera focus, and other issues - Status: may have many causes, but some fixes in progress (see below)
  6. Save files get bigger over time (TravelLog experiencing "landed" status spam) - Status: fix being tested
  7. Opening part manager causes major frame lag - Status: experiments ongoing
  8. Major post-liftoff frame rate lag immediately above launchpad (associated with engine exhaust lighting) - Status: fix being tested
  9. Root parts placed below decouplers cause issues with stage separation - Status: under investigation
  10. Vehicle joints unusually wobbly, some part connections unusually weak - Status: under investigation

We’re tracking down some strange vehicle behaviors associated with spurious autostrut errors. As we’ve discussed here before, some radially-attached parts are reinforced by additional invisible autostruts to improve their stability. It turns out that these autostruts don’t always break cleanly during decoupling events, and may be the cause of some of our more frustrating decoupling issues (including those where detached vehicle elements appear to still affect one another’s behavior). We’re still investigating this one, but we have high hopes that its correction will result in a reduction of mission-killing errors.

Finally, we have zeroed in on the cause of some of the trajectory errors we’ve been seeing - especially the situation in which a trajectory changes spontaneously when crossing an SOI boundary. This one is deep in the code and its correction may end up fixing a few other downstream issues. This is a complicated problem, however, and we may not solve it in time for the June update. We should know more about this one soon.

I’ve provided the list above as a stopgap. We have been discussing internally how best to improve bug status visibility so that you have a better idea of what we’re working on. We’re looking at a lot of options right now, and I’ll update you when we’ve settled on something. We recognize the need for this transparency and we’ll come to a solution soon.

ANYWAY... we have some nice content news! Update v0.1.3.0 will be the first KSP2 update to contain not only bug fixes, but a few new parts. Right now, we can confirm the arrival of the following:

  • A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E
  • Clamp-O-Tron shielded docking port
  • Clamp-O-Tron Inline Docking Port
  • MK2 Clamp-O-Tron Docking Port
  • Cornet Methalox Engine (new small extensible-nozzle orbital engine)
  • Trumpet Methalox Engine (new medium extensible-nozzle orbital engine)
  • Tuba Methalox Engine (new large extensible-nozzle orbital engine)
  • S3-28800 Large Inline Methalox tank (longer version of large methalox tanks)

Here’s some video of those new engines in action. The Tuba has individually-swiveling mini-nozzles that might be one of part designer Chris Adderley’s coolest ideas yet (final parts built by Pablo Ollervides, Jonathan Cooper, and Alexander Martin):

We are still testing the new grid fins. Because these parts require some special part module support, engineering work is ongoing. Due to the complexity of this work, we don’t believe grid fins will make it into the v0.1.3.0 update.

Last week’s challenge produced a few spiffy designs. Check out this rocket, with which user Well braved the Kraken and managed to deposit a lander at the bottom of the Mohole:

image.png

Gotta respect the ingenuity of using antennae for landing legs:

image.png

Thanks to those who participated!

Next up, at the suggestion of @RyanHamer42 on Twitter, we’re building space stations! Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

  • Primary goal: build a station by docking at least two Wayfarer habitat modules together in orbit above Kerbin
  • Secondary goal: add a deployable solar panel truss and a fuel depot tank to your station
  • Jeb-level goal: dock a transfer tug to your station and place the station in orbit above another planet
  • Val-level goal: send a lander to your station that can be reused for down-and-up flights to the surface of the planet below

Thanks for the suggestion, Ryan! Good luck, everyone!

Finally got to reading this, real life has kept me away from KSP (1 and 2) a lot lately...

Thanks for the update and the details given (as far as you could give them). Really looking forward to testing the new "brass band" engines, those small nozzles for thrust vector control on the Tuba are a nice touch!

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54 minutes ago, RaBDawG said:

HA. Y'all falling for a bunch of words all over again.  Smh.

Not all. Still, interesting to watch how the tide turns, based on snow-job rhetoric. Problem is, eventually the piper will be paid, because words alone will once again bring out the pitchforks.

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In situations like KSP 2's, I've usually noticed that there are two schools of thought on the approach to community communication. Either 1) communications are candid and transparent and clearly communicate how a situation will be resolved, or 2) there is radio silence as the problems are meaningfully fixed, and people understand that silence means people are hard at work.

Until now, KSP2 and IG has been trying to run this really awkward middle ground as far as I've observed, where they continue to communicate as if nothing is wrong, and whenever there's pushback on their ostrich-like behavior fall back they go and pretend as if they've been doing #2 the whole while. That's what I got out of Nate's post here basically, and that they are acknowledging things need to change in how they communicate.

In that sense, I'm looking forward to seeing how the communications actually do change going forward, since they seem to be wanting to move towards Approach #1 I outlined above. I'm cautiously optimistic that they follow through on this, but I'll withhold actual judgment on it all for another 3-4 weeks, as well as how they handle the actual patch announcement/release when that finally comes around whenever that might be in June. Let's see how they actually follow up with their communications in the future, and how they continue on in a month's time before we pass any judgments.

Edited by Geredis
small grammatical hiccup corrected
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20 hours ago, RaBDawG said:

HA. Y'all falling for a bunch of words all over again.  Smh.

Besides going open source there's nothing that can be done further than words and images to show progress. This comm, however, shows a proper change of tone, which was a very needed step in righting the many wrongs. This particular post shows more compromise, realism, acknowledgement of issues, and professionalism than the 3 and so years of rancid hyping. Of course, we still need actions from here on out to match words, but I'd rather have this first step than continue the tone-deaf PR. Plus, this is something part of the community was asking for, and has finally been delivered, thus we hope further comms follow this standard.

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On 5/29/2023 at 10:38 AM, Delay said:

While I would agree with this, think about it like this - given the number of game-breaking bugs even three versions in, how long would it have taken if the game wasn't EA?

I have to agree on this, as annoyed as I was when I opened the EA box a couple of weeks ago. There is nothing more motivational for addressing nasty bugs that you've been sweeping under the rug than a bunch of angry villagers with pitchforks and torches at your gates.

On 5/29/2023 at 4:30 PM, RaBDawG said:

HA. Y'all falling for a bunch of words all over again.  Smh.

Applauding a much-needed change in the outward-facing attitude of the dev team is not falling for anything, it is giving due credit for a significant step in the right direction. Besides, short of suing to get my measly 50 bucks back, which would be a massive and probably fruitless pain in the end that should not point towards space, there's really nothing to be done besides to hope for the best and keep asking for what I want.

Edited by herbal space program
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5 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Besides going open source there's nothing that can be done further than words and images to show progress. This comm, however, shows a proper change of tone, which was a very needed step in righting the many wrongs. This particular post shows more compromise, realism, acknowledgement of issues, and professionalism than the 3 and so years of rancid hyping. Of course, we still need actions from here on out to match words, but I'd rather have this first step than continue the tone-deaf PR. Plus, this is something part of the community was asking for, and has finally been delivered, thus we hope further comms follow this standard.

Agreed. Let's hope there's no reversion to form when the community isn't a raging bonfire of discontent.  It'd be nice to get more insight into progress on actual features as well.  If they were committed to transparency, we'd know more about science now besides a couple of blender renders. 

Though I don't think community feedback means much to them until it reaches fusion temperatures, the community strongly disliked wobble rockets since it was visible the 2019 gameplay video, but only now have they listened.

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2 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

Though I don't think community feedback means much to them until it reaches fusion temperatures, the community strongly disliked wobble rockets since it was visible the 2019 gameplay video, but only now have they listened.

They are still going to have wobbly rockets and they have mentioned they are much more wobbly than intended.

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25 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

They are still going to have wobbly rockets and they have mentioned they are much more wobbly than intended.

I admit to being baffled by this situation.  On the one hand is a team saying something to the effect that wobbly rockets are what gave KSP1 its charm and virtually all of the long time user base finding it anything but charming. 

I've never seen a post from someone who likes the wobbly rocket thing.  [ Cue  post from out of the blue stating a like for wobbly rockets ]

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6 minutes ago, darthgently said:

I admit to being baffled by this situation.  On the one hand is a team saying something to the effect that wobbly rockets are what gave KSP1 its charm and virtually all of the long time user base finding it anything but charming. 

I've never seen a post from someone who likes the wobbly rocket thing.  [ Cue  post from out of the blue stating a like for wobbly rockets ]

It's likely because they did the opposite of listening to the community.  They listened to their one guy on the team who's the superfan and got what they got.  Dunno how else you go ~4 years from that gameplay trailer with a core system - how the literal parts are glued together - in the same state and only now investigate making things better.  Just baffling.  Oh well, I guess that's considered a 'dark conspiracy' now, something we shouldn't even think about because anyone who worries about the state of KSP2 is a conspiracy theorist.

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While I also appreciated the more specific discussion about known bugs and their relative prioritization, I also agree with people saying that feature-wise there was little of substance. There are some new parts, which is welcome, but where Intercept is still very opaque is in regards with anything to do with gameplay systems. We still know very little about how science, colonies or multiplayer (specifically with time warp) will work. 

A lot of the time (not always to be sure) devs like to share the basic idea behind the new features and systems. That's especially the case when we have a successor where one of the main draw is adding new gameplay mechanics. Compare any MMO or one of my favorite games: Civ 4. Or even board games like Spirit Island. They were happy to communicate the basic design for new features like great people and religions would work. It's a slightly pessimistic take but with Intercept I often have the impression they are just adding systems as they go along, sometimes even creating the parts first. Speaking for myself, I was definitely not happy that the science post from a few weeks ago just showed off a part, instead of even talking a little bit about how the gameplay systems would work.

I've mentioned elsewhere that with one of the new gameplay features we have - burning while in time warp - I was disappointed that the implementation was very minimal and is currently not sufficient to support the kind of gameplay I would have liked to get out of that feature. It would help me set expectations on the future of KSP 2 if I had the feeling they were on track with e.g. the science system, but there's simply no real info there. In contrast,  Likewise, it would be good to get an update on reentry heating. It sounded like it was supposed to be a very temporary omission, but it has been dragging on since release now.

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On 5/29/2023 at 5:32 PM, Redneck said:

you do the right thing and delay it until it is in a more presentable state. Thats how you do that.  You push back against them and say "no, its not ready!" If that means your job then so be it.  in other words you do the right moral thing

Well people have bills to pay. I think it's quite entitled to assume that people would risk their job because of such a thing.

Edited by jost
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3 hours ago, jost said:

Well people have bills to pay. I think it's quite entitled to assume that people would risk their job because of such a thing.

Yes! Working in gamedev can be incredibly fun and rewarding because we actually really do care about what we're doing, but even so it is also a job! It's really unfair to expect people to walk out on it because they disagree with something about the game they're making or the way it's being made or the way it's being marketed. There are always differences of opinion and if everybody had to agree about everything all the time then it wouldn't be possible to do anything collectively at all! :joy:

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Why not have a public trello roadmap and tracker? Like oh I don't know Epic or even small indie companies like Heatblur Simulations etc do? you can set it up literally with a list of items for 'Delivered' 'Known delivering next patch', 'Coming in the near future', 'Coming in the distant future', etc. It allows for anyone to see what your up to, it allows for you to give information in a nice visible form, but also to have some accountability to the public. 

I want to believe you guys are going to 'do better', 'communicate better' etc but things like the update post (and reasons), the last post, that none of you seem to understand why at least a very large chunk of the KSP community is upset at the pricing etc makes me wonder at the same time. 

but here two examples of how trello can be used:
Heatblurs: https://trello.com/b/HsMiJggJ/heatblur-public-roadmap?fbclid=IwAR249hUEWejnE5_jlDJmfCvN_n2Sp6TprnyhJau3MG6P_hj-eoOy3WF17XQ

 

Epics https://trello.com/b/GXLc34hk/epic-games-store-roadmap
 

 

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9 hours ago, MechBFP said:

They are still going to have wobbly rockets and they have mentioned they are much more wobbly than intended.

Yeah - 'wobbly' is a feature, up to a point.  It forces you to move along from the skinny parts when playing the progression system - at least in KSP.  So in the aspect of 'you can only go so tall for a given diameter', I like wobbly rockets. 

But they should not be wobbly just for the sake of wobbly. A medium diameter rocket of the same length /part count of a small diameter rocket should be rock solid.  

 

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