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Devnote Tuesdays: The "It Might Be Wednesday" Edition


SQUAD

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You can already see some of this "internal achievement tracking" by going into your persistent.sfs save file and looking through the entries there. The game tracks such things as the moment you first achieve orbit and the name of the vessel that did it. That kind of stuff.

The description in this week's notes is a little vague, but earlier dev notes have stated more clearly that this is something that is going to be used by Squad to track player progress, not something that will affect things on the player side (though maybe there is some plan for that too). By "internally" I think they mean it is being used only by Squad, not something used by the backend on the player side of things.

I'm guessing that, as you noted, this is partly based trip logger information already available in the persistent file and probably several other things as well, like unlocked tech nodes, maybe part usage, etc...

They already have some kind of data collection system available (that window that pops up the first time you run KSP asking for anonymous reports), but I'm not sure what that sends, probably only error logs. So I'm guessing this new system will build off of that.

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That could not just mean it, that has been outright stated as being the case :P

What DMagic meant is, he thinks the tracking system being currently implemented is for collecting player statistics by Squad on a large scale, and not something to support the contract system. This is of course possible. Maybe it's a bit of both? Ultimately though we're probably never going to see any of it, so what counts is whether the contract system works well in the end.

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I don't doubt that the stats collected for the user side will be expanded, but they were pretty clear about what the achievements system they are developing now is for. Increased user stats could be really useful for the user, even if they aren't directly visible (ie they are somewhat cryptically stored in the persistent file), all of that information can still be used for mods or other purposes, so I hope they do add more data.

From a few weeks ago:

Alex (aLeXmOrA): I’m still working on the in-game stats page in the website that will let us know how far the players are going in the game (it will only be available for us to see it, I just have to make that clear.)
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Stats tracking would be awesome if instead of capturing the name of the vessel that first got you to orbit... it took a screenshot of every launchpad disaster and uploaded it to a huge, public tinypic gallery.

One for the mod devs, perhaps?

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I have to make the in-game achievement stats thing clear.

This is only for internal usage, I mean... it's only for us here at the office, so we can know how far the players have gone through the game.

It's valuable information for us, the developers.

Cheers.

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I have to make the in-game achievement stats thing clear.

This is only for internal usage, I mean... it's only for us here at the office, so we can know how far the players have gone through the game.

It's valuable information for us, the developers.

Cheers.

I'm really hoping for an in-game statistic system. Total distance travelled across all saves, max speed reached. What bodies you have orbited/landed. Maybe this can be adapted to give us the "user" something similar?

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Yet another new member :) looks like they have 1.5 times as many members as when I first played. :D

btw : we if you devs are looking at this post, do me a favor and give me an option to turn back the feedback thingy on. PLEASE !

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I have to make the in-game achievement stats thing clear.

This is only for internal usage, I mean... it's only for us here at the office, so we can know how far the players have gone through the game.

It's valuable information for us, the developers.

Cheers.

If we set the settings for first time load up to not send information and IP address, will you developers then not receive the information?

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I have to make the in-game achievement stats thing clear.

This is only for internal usage, I mean... it's only for us here at the office, so we can know how far the players have gone through the game.

It's valuable information for us, the developers.

Cheers.

I'm OK with that, as long as this feature is optional. Otherwise I will simply firewall it.

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<p><img src="https://31.media.tumblr.com/0ff9377afa68dc3ad3fe6844aaf1bd38/tumblr_inline_n4gkybAOCs1rr2wit.jpg"/></p>

<p><strong id="docs-internal-guid-95ae56c8-8c0f-67d6-0008-6c5eed21a033"><span>Miguel (Maxmaps): </span></strong>Had a lovely vacation in Ottawa, now back at the office, setting up all the media stuff again. Making sure youtubers get the proper attention and planning some shaking up for KSPTV.</p>

Eh? I assume you mean Ottawa, Ontario, Canada? What brings you to our (freshly-thawed) Capitol?

/doing my part to spread KSP love

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I see that a few people are concerned about SQUAD tracking how far players get into the game. To them I say... why? I mean, you probably share more information on the forums about what you do in KSP than SQUAD would ever know. They probably want to know that information for balancing reasons - if almost nobody has completed the tech tree, then they'll know it's too hard, and vice versa.

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I see that a few people are concerned about SQUAD tracking how far players get into the game. To them I say... why? I mean, you probably share more information on the forums about what you do in KSP than SQUAD would ever know. They probably want to know that information for balancing reasons - if almost nobody has completed the tech tree, then they'll know it's too hard, and vice versa.

People are often worried about opening up permissions for a program to send usage information to the company that wrote it because said company's claim that only such-an-such data is being captured is pretty much a matter of trust on the honor system.

It's not "people are concerned about SQUAD tracking how far they get into the game." It's "people are concerned that SQUAD might be lying about that and they're getting other information from your computer too." For the most part, unless you're a good network programmer yourself and have a lot of spare time to waste on reverse engineering what the software is sending by peeking at the data stream byte-by-byte, you're pretty much just operating on the honor system. You hope SQUAD is being honest and doing only what they say they're doing and nothing more, when you open up permission for their software to send whatever data it feels like back to SQUAD.

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People are often worried about opening up permissions for a program to send usage information to the company that wrote it because said company's claim that only such-an-such data is being captured is pretty much a matter of trust on the honor system.

On the other hand: If you think about the destruction it would cause to SQUAD's image if someone found out they were doing bad stuff.. it's more likely they have no interest in lying about the data they gather.

But indeed someone with some spare time and a packet sniffer could take a look at the data. First thing I wonder is if the data will be encrypted or not (when it leaves your computer). Though that might not mean anything because it could be a security measure to protect your privacy.. on the other hand, you can't see what they are sending.

Ah well. So I wonder what kind of KPI's have been developed. Anyone any idea?

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On the other hand: If you think about the destruction it would cause to SQUAD's image if someone found out they were doing bad stuff.. it's more likely they have no interest in lying about the data they gather.

It definitely would hurt their image, but companies have been known to do things like this in the past, betraying their customers. Anyone remember the Sony CD rootkit scandal, for example? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_CD_copy_protection_scandal

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