Devnote Tuesdays: The Insanity Edition

[semanticman]

Would someone explain, please, what the "KSPM system" is?

[Virtualgenius]

Just finish your projects and use any cool new parts that might be added in new projects after those? If you're going to wait for new parts to arrive before finishing projects, you'll wait forever. It's like waiting for faster CPUs to arrive in stores.

Just like the 64bit windows client for KSP "it wont happen overnight but it will happen"

[The Destroyer]

I mean, G+ isn't exactly a bad thing, It's what it did to youtube that's bad

[Alephzorg]

<p><span><strong>Bob (Calisker):</strong> </span><span>Last week, we worked with Nassault on a project he did for the International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles. His videos of </span><span>KSP </span><span>were used for some educational classes at the conference focused on 3D printing. They’ll be online later and I’m sure we’ll make sure everybody can check them out. This week, I’m working on brand guidelines for </span><span>KSP</span><span>, which is a fancy way of saying logo treatment and making sure that everything we do treats </span><span>KSP</span><span> with the proper respect. And if I have time, I’m prepare a few more surveys to help us learn. </span></p>

Speaking of logos, will we get to see the winners of the logo competition before 0.24 comes out or will we discover them in the game?

By the way, will they be in 0.24?

[Endersmens]

Would someone explain, please, what the "KSPM system" is?

Kerbal Space Program Multiplayer System.

[Lohan2008]

Strategy Tip: Abandon Google+ like the rest of the world has

No seriously, GIVE up on Google +

[Ucender]

<p><span><strong>Bob (Calisker):</strong> </span><span>Last week, we worked with Nassault on a project he did for the International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles. His videos of </span><span>KSP </span><span>were used for some educational classes at the conference focused on 3D printing. They’ll be online later and I’m sure we’ll make sure everybody can check them out.</span></p>

Actually the three videos are online on the homepage of http://oooojoooo.com/

Am I the only one disappointed that it is too late for us to participate in the contests ?

[DaserTheGamer]

No seriously, GIVE up on Google +

Again, i created the KSP google+ comunity about a year and half ago.

[aLeXmOrA]

Alex (aLeXmOrA): Testing last things of the new version of vBulletin 5.1, so I can do the KSP Forums upgrade next Thursday. Everything seems to be working fine, so it won’t have issues.

Careful Alex, the Kraken is listening......

Haha, yeah... That's why we decided to postpone it for next week. I don't want any problems during the weekend

[blizzy78]

I hope you put up a proper maintenance page this time instead of some cryptic error message

[aLeXmOrA]

I hope you put up a proper maintenance page this time instead of some cryptic error message

Yeah. The Forums will be in maintenance mode while I run the upgrade script.

You will see them as they are right now, but with a main message of maintenance and you won't be able to login.

That's all.

[blizzy78]

You will see them as they are right now, but with a main message of maintenance and you won't be able to login.

Sweet, that's an even better move.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Where is mu/Mike?

[RedPine]

It's ok to invest some time in Google plus for short term advertising.... but don't get too attached to it. One day, Google will collapse under the weight of bureaucracy, alienate their users, and have competitors better than they are. Also realize that any social media you invest in will be replaced by a new medium within 5-10 years (who uses MySpace anymore?)

They took a perfectly good YouTube then gave it a new UI that is clunky, unwieldy, unintuitive, and insists upon using real names. They treated youtubers like idiots, replacing the 5 star system with a mere "thumbs up/thumbs down", and completely screwed up the playlist UI. They took a perfectly good GMail and gave it a new UI that uses smaller reply boxes and scrambles which features are found under which tab.

[matts73]

Next to the discusion on g+ I wanted to come back a little to the current development and how I see it...

If it takes longer, no problem.

I play your game anyway only rarely, since I lack basic functions, such as eg halfway realistic life support, a logical technology tree, a useful integration of planes, iva for all manned modules, unbalanced parts, sometimes horrible editor, no drag, no rescources, economy etc.

As you can see for yourself the list is long and I think even longer if I would think longer ...

I will not say the game is scrap, quite the contrary, it is only at the moment simply boring and in a lot of parts illogical - in career mode for example, why should I ever build a space station if I only get a fraction of the science points than if I send unmanned probes with the ability go come back?

Ok, some will say: "use mods..." but thats way to simple to release the developer from the responsibility to bring in important parts into the game.

And when I read that the multiplayer is now just a bit higher on the agenda, I ask you why and for what? The game has indeed no competition as planned for example in "Buzz Aldrin's Race to space" therefore is between Americans nd Russians and I think it would be a little bit complicated to implement (also it would be nice but how would you implement this as there are only kerbals and they are all the same - no political fractions, no countrys, no nations...) and only to teach others how to play - how boring... .

Or is there another reason why multiplayer, the hope to attract a little more players to buy the game?

Please focus yourself more on the lots unfinished things that are around for a while than on things like mutliplayer...

Sometime when I read the dev notes I think that there is only chaos in the development and you realy don´t no what to do next last example contracts - oh let´s push them back we forget the money , ok the game is alpha ( for how many years ?) but realy its there a plan or roadmap where you want to go ?

[Linear]

Next to the discusion on g+ I wanted to come back a little to the current development and how I see it...

If it takes longer, no problem.

I play your game anyway only rarely, since I lack basic functions, such as eg halfway realistic life support, a logical technology tree, a useful integration of planes, iva for all manned modules, unbalanced parts, sometimes horrible editor, no drag, no rescources, economy etc.

As you can see for yourself the list is long and I think even longer if I would think longer ...

I will not say the game is scrap, quite the contrary, it is only at the moment simply boring and in a lot of parts illogical - in career mode for example, why should I ever build a space station if I only get a fraction of the science points than if I send unmanned probes with the ability go come back?

Ok, some will say: "use mods..." but thats way to simple to release the developer from the responsibility to bring in important parts into the game.

And when I read that the multiplayer is now just a bit higher on the agenda, I ask you why and for what? The game has indeed no competition as planned for example in "Buzz Aldrin's Race to space" therefore is between Americans nd Russians and I think it would be a little bit complicated to implement (also it would be nice but how would you implement this as there are only kerbals and they are all the same - no political fractions, no countrys, no nations...) and only to teach others how to play - how boring... .

Or is there another reason why multiplayer, the hope to attract a little more players to buy the game?

Please focus yourself more on the lots unfinished things that are around for a while than on things like mutliplayer...

Sometime when I read the dev notes I think that there is only chaos in the development and you realy don´t no what to do next last example contracts - oh let´s push them back we forget the money , ok the game is alpha ( for how many years ?) but realy its there a plan or roadmap where you want to go ?

Multiplayer is being worked on by a single-developer at the moment, and it's there because it's something the lead devs have always wanted to do, and was heavily requested by the community - this early on how can any of us guess which way it's going - that would be stupid.

Development is chaos a lot of the time, no matter how detailed your plans are. Development isn't just programming, it's design etc too - when you have a lot of incredibly passionate people doing the best at the fastest they can for us players - it's going to get crazy, embrace it; it's one of KSP's founding principles.

Try not to make too many comments when you obviously don't understand the background too much. Something like multiplayer is hard enough for most games, let alone something like KSP. It's in incredibly complex game, and it took some of the forums brightest minds years to get something 'playable' - this implementation must be industry-grade. It's better to start slow and early, than rush.

[Linear]

They'll always have their search engine, and no one will ever beat it. Also, they must be doing something right, they're more valuable than Apple.

[HafCoJoe]

Going on in a less harsh tone then matt73 (though I agree with pretty much all his points), I would appreciate it if update .25 is used to fix the basics that haven't been added like IVA for cockpits and a better split of science for manned missions.

[Darion]

I agree that KSP could use a little fleshing out as far as a storyline or goal is concerned if you look at it as a general game, as it stands now the goal, or the point of the game is to build a rocket or plane and have fun seeing how far you can go. multiplayer is being added, not just because people want to race to the moon in a good old fashion space race, and not just to attack eachother with improvised weapons, but to share the experience of playing this game with a friend. building a rocket and flying to the moon together. playing among the stars! seeing what spring is like on Jool and Duna!

It may be that you do not find KSP to your liking right now. It certainly isn't like other games on the market today, it is it's own game, and I personally like where it is going. It has my full support, and I trust the dev team to keep up the excellent work that they have been doing for the past few years. Yes the game is still only in alpha, and it has been a while, but KSP was released VERY early and with only a small team of developers building it from the beginning. it is to be expected that alpha will last for a good deal of time. But when the game is finally fully released, it is going to be grand!

[Andrew Hansen]

I like where KSP is going. I think multiplayer is going to be awesome! But I also think that implementing a few mods into the game would really speed up the development process.

What SQUAD has done is decided to focus on multiplayer instead of in-situ resource utilization. This is perfectly fine, and I think that multiplayer will benefit players of all skill levels, rather than ISRU which would only benefit more advanced players.

But I still think that there's a lot of mods that could be tweaked a bit and implemented into the stock game. Kethane has well-balanced parts, is quite simple, and implements very well into the stock game. The only thing that might be changed if it became stock would be to put the "Kethane Scan Map" pop-up window into the actual GUI of the game.

Another mod to consider implementing would be Environmental Visual Enhancements. KSP could include an option in the settings menu to enable or disable volumetric clouds.

Yet another mod could be Engineer Redux. Just remove the parts that you have to strap on to the rockets, and make the read-outs available for all rockets. Also, instead of having a pop-up window with that information, you could have an Info tab that you could pull out (sort of like in Map View) that would show the delta-V and other information for the rocket. Implementing this mod might be a bit more difficult, though.

Anyway, I think that there's lots of great mods out there that could really speed up the development process.