Phawks

Edit: let's not get side-tracked, please.-- Vanamonde Returning to the topic at hand; judging by Maxmaps's posts on Reddit, Squad is pulling out all the stops and going balls to the wall with this, community opinion be damned. https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/2zbd54/maxmaps_on_twitter_now_considering_that_adding_as/cphdfr2 The next release will be 1.0, it's a milestone we (as a team) are holding ourselves towards. Even if we don't have a publisher, even if we can set our deadlines to whenever we please, to do so just to make sure we can add every cool feature we think about is irresponsible and a bad practice for our development in general. You guys deserve the best we can make as a team. It is deciding what is best that we're working on. Thus the feedback request. Maybe it's best for some stuff to wait til 1.1.-Maxmaps Squad, listen to your damn players and tell your puppetmasters at Squad HQ to screw off and let you do your job properly. I'm really hoping these stupid decisions are coming from someone higher than HarvesteR, because I really don't want to believe this dev team is actually as stupid as they're appearing to be. If you continue this course of action, you will fail miserably and the majority of this community would have every right to abandon you and your work as a result. If I was a prospective customer and was following these events, I wouldn't touch KSP with a ten foot pole. KSP is about to end up on a list with Watch Dogs and Squad is about to end up on a list with Ubisoft. Toss some shoddy DRM in while you're at it; go big or go home, right guys?

This is my second post in almost two years. I'll firstly say that I do not like much (if any) of this community, and I disagree strongly with Squad's [lack of] direction. That being said, the TL;DR of the rest of this post is this: KSP is not ready for Beta, let alone full release. Squad, if you go through with this, objective reviewers who don't already fondle themselves to KSP will tear you a new one and you will go back to being an unknown, run-down marketing unit. KSP is already known for being a [comparably] polished product among Early Access games and there is no external reason for such a sudden and rushed release; whatever is pushing you to shove KSP out the door is not the community or the [potential] playerbase, it's either internal BS (which has plagued your team since 0.15 and cost you both key developers and your best creative talent) or some tainted and otherwise misguided perception of the community's desires. I've played KSP since version 0.11 and joined the forums when I bought it at version 0.14. I'm one of the earliest players in the community. I've played every version on the day of its release. I don't believe that gives me any authority here, but I figure it qualifies me as someone other than a 12-year old who just picked the game up yesterday. You just went into Beta. Beta is typically when the game goes on feature lock and subsequent releases are focused on tuning and optimizing. 0.90 didn't optimize anything. I run the game on an i7 with 24 GB of RAM and a GTX 780, and I still get 10-40 FPS depending on the segment of the launch I'm in and what craft I'm using. That is far from acceptable. You cannot add entirely new systems for the 1.0 release and expect to have a positively reviewed product. Every release since version 0.15, when experimentals went behind closed doors, has released with major bugs, some of them game-breaking and requiring day 1 fixes. I don't give a damn how much time you spend in QA and experimentals, your testing team simply isn't large enough and diverse enough to beat the size and diversity of the community. If you release 1.0, it will be played immediately and reviewed on those immediate playthroughs. Those reviews will be bad and they will sink your project and any future projects of your team. Granted, said team seems to be mostly hired-modders-of-the-month and changes often, but whatever future team operates under "from the makers of Kerbal Space Program" will already be viewed negatively. Unity 5 just came out. You have an opportunity to finish these major new additions (aerodynamics and resources are fundamental systems, not just content), release another beta (0.91), fix the bugs that break everything on the first day (there will be some, I will bet on it), and spend an entire update upgrading KSP to Unity 5. I know it isn't a magic fix-all, but it's damn close. There will be plenty of improvements in graphics, performance, et cetera, and once THAT is polished up, then you can think about releasing a finished product. What do I expect from a final product? Glad you asked. I want an optimized product free of bugs and that will perform as expected on my hardware. If I have a $2000 computer that can run most current AAA games at high settings, I expect equally high performance for this product. I would like something that isn't outdated at release, particularly referring to Unity 4. I would like a product worth the $60 you're probably going to try squeezing from it. I would like a 64 bit executable so I can use all the mods I need to make your game feel complete. Speaking of which, what's the KSP endgame? What's the objective of career mode? To unlock the whole tech tree? Then what? Explore? Why? Is there anything to discover, now that Nova is gone and with him the mystery of the anomalies and their backstory? Is there anything to do besides fly there, drive around there, plant a flag there, and leave? Is there another "there" when all the "there"s in the solar system have been visited? Saying "it's up to the player" is a cop out, but I'll give it to you. Still, you don't give the player much of anything for colonization or even an interesting story or mystery to uncover. So in closing, Squad, don't be stupid. Wisen up. Focus on the product and not the money. You listened when the community told you to be more transparent. Listen now when they're telling you to polish your product before you throw it away. And if you choose to barge straight ahead, well, that's your own problem. I will make a bet with you, though. I want a dime for every review that says "Don't let the exit from Early Access fool you, Kerbal Space Program is still very much unfinished and in need of work," or some variant thereof. I should make back the ten bucks I gave you awful damn quick. You still have my card on file, since I bought the game before you ever even talked about a Steam release, so you can just credit the funds there.

I haven't posted to the forums for almost a year. I personally hate what the community has become and the change in direction (or lack of direction) I've seen in the development process. Don't get me wrong. I love KSP. I've been playing a lot lately because I found mods that made it fun again. But every time I come here to lurk, I get pissed off. Squad, I understand game development is an arduous task. I get that. I can't argue with that. But from the weekly development logs, I have one key thing to say: stop marketing the game and just build it already. I know Squad is an advertisement company (and judging from its website KSP is the only reason it still exists) first and foremost but this development team needs to get with the program. I know C7 leaving was a major blow to development. And I know the circumstances surrounding that departure were probably a lot darker than was let on. Whatever beef is being ground up behind the scenes needs to get grilled and eaten. This is too good of a thing for you all to be stupid and waste it. Get some direction and get some transparency. You don't have to go open source, although that would make KSP even better than it ever could be otherwise, but you need to communicate with the community. Not these devblogs that are a chore and superficial in nature, although I do admit that they are far better than what was going on previously, but rather opening up the repositories and commit histories. Let us see the actual progress being made even if you think it'll just bore us. There are plenty of technically fluent people around here to translate them for the uneducated masses that now dominate the community. The only reason a majority of your paying customers don't regret their purchase is because of the mod community. I'm glad I bought KSP back at 0.18. I wouldn't buy it now having seen what I've seen. TL;DR 1) Stop marketing a product and just make the damn product. 2) Get your priorities straight. 3) Share those priorities and your progress with the community. 4) Stop acting like you're EA and have to focus on PR and project secrecy. You're an indie developer with a product that already has the eyes of the world. Go look at teams who don't alienate chunks of their communities and learn some things. Go look at a game called Tremulous if you want to see what happens when you split the community and start losing key developers.

One way it might work would be to use asynchronous time warp where all players are logged into a central persistence tracker which is then disseminated to the clients at appropriate times. Basically, the server starts and is always ticking. All the players are free to come and go as they please and time warp however they please. However, all their telemetry data is logged into the server with timestamps and then sent to the clients at the appropriate time. For example: (Format DD/MM/YY HH:MM) Server Start: 01/01/01 00:00 Player One: Craft One: Launch!: 01/01/01 00:00 Player Two: Craft Two: Launch!: 01/01/01 00:07 Player One: Craft One: Orbit: 01/01/01 00:13 Player Two: Craft Two: Orbit: 01/01/01 00:20 Player One: Craft One: Crash! 01/01/01 00:21 Player One: Craft Three: Launch! 01/01/01 00:30 Player Two: Craft Two: Landed (Mun) 01/01/01 03:49 In the above case, the server logs these events (and the data between them) and then sends that data at the appropriate time to the client. For example, when Player Two's client is at 01/01/01 00:21, he'll see Player One crash. When he gets to 00:30, he'll see the next craft launch. Likewise, when Player One is at 01/01/01 00:20, he'll see Player Two in orbit...assuming Player Two has gotten to that point himself as well. If Player Two's client hasn't yet made it to 00:20, then Player One will be "leading" in the future; he'll be under the impression he's alone in that time realm. There would be an option for full-server sync, where everyone is timewarped to the furthest-forward position to "catch up" (which might be done on a regular basis as maintenance), as well as an option for client-client sync, where two players agree to sync at a set time in order to play in real-time together. While in "partner" mode, timewarp acts in unison for everyone within that partnership. Players can leave the partnership at any time and break the synchronization to timewarp as they see fit, then resync at another point. TL;DR - Make everyone's client write in a big history book and then tell the history stories to everyone as they get to that point.

I haven't had too many issues with it. I haven't paid anything for it at all and it doesn't feel too heavily pay-to-win. It just takes a little more time and effort to unlock everything naturally. The premium planes aren't too overpowered. My Airacobra makes short work of free and premium players alike. As with all games, check its wiki and search YouTube for it to get a feel for how it works. I play keyboard and mouse fairly well, but joysticks are a viable option and probably recommended.

1) Go with Unity. It's arguably the easiest to spread across platforms and broaden your audience. 2) I am an experienced writer and I can do storylines quite well. However, with school starting two weeks from today, I can only give very little time commitment. If this takes off and begins to commercialize, I would be willing to appropriate a larger commitment if compensation becomes available. 3) Go play The Swapper. That's a lesson in minimalist design, art direction, and atmosphere. A team smaller than Squad turned that game out and I'll say it was one of the greatest I've ever played. There are a lot of good lessons to learn from their work. 4) Be careful about your ambitions. I'm worried that this is one of those cases of "I'm making a game, I just need coders, writers, modelers, and people to come up with ideas," otherwise known as "I'm making a game, I just need people to make it." Without some form of existing prototype, you will have a hard time getting people on board and an even harder time stating motivated. Search the GameMaker forums from YoYo Games and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. Get a rudimentary proof-of-concept build constructed and demonstrated. It shows not so much that you're making progress, but more so that you're committed to the project in terms of time and effort. Games as ambitious as you plan aren't made overnight. Indie developers spend years on a single project depending on their experience, skills, manpower, and the scope of the project itself. Be ready to commit to that. You marry the project in a way.

Steam transfer is a great option. You get automatic instant updates as soon as they're published and you avoid massive server loads. I was playing 0.21 about a minute and a half after the new website came online. Otherwise, I think there is a plan to upgrade the proprietary update system.

Create hierarchies within the community. Limit newer members to specific forums and heavily moderate them. After a few months, grant them access to more "sophisticated" forums. Funnel the crap into one in particular. Most of all, be comfortable in the fact that you said you were working on a feature, then explained why it was pushed back if that becomes the case. Most of the problems in this community stem from 1) uneducated members (i.e., those having not researched their question), and 2) the lack of any cohesive knowledge base to refer those of category one to. Resources were planned for 0.19 before the announcement for smaller and faster updates instead. I have yet to see the "faster" part of that... That's a matter partially of semantics, but I'll give it to you. Alpha funding is a gray area when it comes to investment. The weekly updates are vague summaries at best. Granted, that's better than it was immediately before, but I'm one of the types that enjoys looking at the guts. I want public access to the bugtracker. Maybe limit it to the length of time you've been in the community. Only six-month and older members have access to the bugtracker or nightly/milestone builds. Create an established update cycle and stick with it. Look at Android ROM development or all the good indie developers out there. Granted, part of that is open source. I understand the "not getting anyone's hopes up" part of censoring the bugtracker screenshot yesterday. I discussed it with Ted on IRC. Still, I would greatly appreciate the philosophy of "you have access to all the information, if something makes it or doesn't make it, you know why and you can't really complain." Well, we currently have 76,965 members registered. I'm going to assume 60,000 have purchased the game. Of that, I'll assume half bought it at $23. That's $690,000. The other half, I'll assume bought it at an average of $15 earlier in development. That's an additional $450,000. Now, I'll venture to say Steam sales not registered to the forums account for an additional 100,000 sales, at $23 each minus a 30% cut to Valve. That's an additional $1,610,000. At a bare minimum, Squad has made $1.5 million so far. By the speculative math I just did, they've made $2.75 million. That's about half a million more than the Planetary Annihilation Kickstarter. Granted, that was a team of professionals with considerable experience, but that's a lot of money. And yes, they're free to do whatever the hell they want with their money, but, as a symbol of respect and common human effing decency, they listen to their backers. They're not required, but see my above mention of common human decency. It's not equal, but it's highly correlated. More money provides faster/more numerous systems, as well as financial motivation for the team and the expansion of the team. I'm not underestimating infrastructure, but how much of that infrastructure have they actually let us see? I would love for the codemonkeys to be able to see what's going on instead of just being told about it. They could and they regularly do for maintenance. However, it's supplementary to the product. Do you think they'd have $1.5 million or more if they had a reputation for completely f***ing the playerbase? No. Piracy would be much, much higher. Even now, last I checked, torrents of .20 had 600 current seeds and half as many leeches. Studios known for less-than-stellar customer appreciation have massive piracy rates. Right now, independents (games/movies/books/etc.) benefit from piracy for the exposure. That's another debate for another thread, though.

The ISP rating for each engine is a measure of its efficiency. Higher ISP = higher efficiency. You need to balance your outright thrust requirements with your desired fuel efficiency. For example, Mainsails are incredibly powerful. Efficient, not so much. Ion engines are the exact opposite; they take forever to move a fork across the table, but you can run them for an incredibly long time. Generally, you need more thrust for launch stages and more efficiency for extraplanetary stages. NERVAs are usually your best bet for the latter.

1. That's remind, actually. 2. Sony is a massive corporation whose financial structure is built upon shareholders, then customers. Squad is a small Mexican marketing firm with an experimental game development branch. It's safe to say that the customers are providing most of the funding for development; we're unofficial shareholders, in essence. But then again, if development was seeing the entirety of the millions of dollars KSP is making at the moment, we would have a much larger team and much faster development. The head company is still writing everyone's paychecks and controlling development. That's why there's been so much hype this release cycle; they're baiting people in through Steam and the YouTube media releases to make a ton of money. I don't have a problem with that so long as it goes all toward development, but from what I can tell, it's not. I'm pretty sure that's also a reason for the obscene amounts of censorship and secrecy surrounding development. Also, ask Microsoft and the Xbox One(Eighty) how they feel about customers being "positioned in any way to tell [them] what to do." I think you'll revise that statement.

Okay. Well, in that case, I'll watch this topic in case you can provide some answers later. Otherwise, I can't really give you much more information than I already have.

I originally thought Squad was getting really serious given how quickly this update cycle went to QA; it was just under a month after the 0.20.2 bugfix and just a month and six days after the release of 0.20.0. However, QA ended up lasting a day shy of two weeks before going to experimentals. Experimentals will have been going for two weeks this Tuesday. Of course, I fully anticipate a release tomorrow, given 1) the amount of time 0.21 has been in testing, and 2) the media release on Friday. Internally, I guarantee you it went into Release Candidate phase Friday morning following bugfixes from the previous experimental version. RC bugfixes are likely being tested over the weekend and committed to the repository, where they will be fixed during the day Monday before a general public release Monday afternoon (as is the tradition with the last several releases) or Tuesday, depending on how much work is ultimately required after this weekend's playtesting. Yes, yes, I'm speculating. Whatever. While I appreciate the "Milestone Reached" announcements, which are a great step forward in addressing the transparency issues that have become an issue the last few months, they could be improved by either opening the repository to public viewing and/or posting more documentation following the experimental releases. I understand the NDA everyone higher than the sheep is required to sign, but is this much secrecy really necessary? I don't intend to derail the thread into that argument again, but I think it's worth repeating. Yes, I understand the protection of IP. Yes, I understand we should let the developers focus on what they're doing so we can get a quality release as soon as possible. But there should be at least one eyeball in the mess that can give us a play-by-play. When threads pop up on release speculation, lock them like normal. Maintain the new user probation/moderation review system. It can be done without harming development while giving the playerbase additional information. One thing independent developers are known for is not being evil corporations that keep the players in the dark with the exception of teaser trailers every six months. I think Squad could learn from other developers in this respect. I'm not calling for open-source transparency, but at least being able to watch the ballgame would be nice.

Did you test one-on-one with a counselor/proctor? I was administered the WISC in elementary since my test scores were unusually high for my age and it served as an entrance exam for the gifted program. I scored a 175 on it, while the minimum for acceptance was 135. Any test that isn't administered, monitored, and evaluated by a trained professional is useless. I've taken individual/unmonitored exams both online and in person and have varied from 98 to 276. IQ tests generally max out around 200, although there really isn't an upper limit (theoretically speaking) at all. I'm curious as to what specific test you took. There's no such thing as a perfect or exact score. It's a generalized measure of speed and accuracy in a series of areas. Also, I'm assuming you're referring to twelve subtests as part of the overall test, not twelve different IQ tests. If it was in fact a series of twelve different tests (not individual subtests on specific areas), then I definitely call bogus because it's not possible to score the exact same numbers on every test out there; every test is adjusted and scored differently, resulting in scores as close as five points or less at times or scores more than twenty points in discrepancy at other times. That's why they have to be administered and I'm also especially suspicious of the certificate. Every instance of legitimate IQ testing I've seen gives a results sheet, much like an SAT or ACT, that has a lot of information and numbers on it. I've never seen a test come back with a gold star and "I scored a 9001 on the GoodOldTests.com IQ test!" sheet. I've also never seen them come back the very next day. Mine took about a week, even though the counselor that administered it evaluated it himself. I could definitely comment more if you could provide more information. Scans of the papers uploaded to imgur would be especially informative. IQ testing is up there with Nigerian princes in sheer amounts of fraud, and it's something that should be taken very seriously. People should have accurate results, not something churned out by a flawed automatic system. I've seen so many arguments between people about their 192s and 215s online and their disappointment of getting a 106 on a legitimate test. EDIT: I completely neglected to comment on the rest of your post. The shorter than average memory is a common symptom among intelligences outside of one or two standard deviations (less than 85 and more than 115), although it isn't indicative of such intelligence. I personally have a similar issue with memory, although it's hardly noticeable. I do find myself forgetful at times, especially when in flow or tired. It's possible for me to go for hours and then have no memory of any of it immediately afterward. Also, IQ tests are worthless in judging your "fate". If your brain is a sponge and knowledge is water, IQ is the sponge material. Lower IQs are less porous, resulting in lower absorption and a lower rate of absorption. Higher IQs are more porous, resulting in better absorption and overall carrying capacity for knowledge. What determines your fate is your work ethic and your natural talents. Assuming both of our IQs (my 175 and your 154) are entirely accurate, that makes us geniuses. Are we therefore destined to become astrophysicists? No. I know plenty of men and women with high intelligence that are doing vastly different things. Clary made the gifted cut at 137. She's starting her second year at Harvard this fall. Colby had a 149. He had a 2.1 GPA, worked at McDonald's for two weeks before quitting, then killed himself a month before graduating high school. Jonathan wasn't in the program, but was tested and actually had a 93 and was diagnosed with dyslexia (or lysdexia, as he jokingly calls it at times). He did six months in an Oklahoma technical school and now welds motorcycles for Honda and makes close to $75K a year working a nine-to-five Monday through Friday. I myself am getting my Master's in Architecture, a program that takes five years at my university. Is there a correlation between intelligence and annual salary? Hell yes there is. Research has shown that lower IQs generally make less than higher IQs. It's not a causal relationship though. You have to 1) work hard at whatever you decide to do, 2) have a natural affinity for it, and 3) enjoy doing it. I took calculus my senior year of high school in preparation for college as an electrical engineer. It was challenging, yes, but the ultimate reason why it was the only D I ever made in high school was because I hated it. I can do math. I can do logic. The problem is that it ultimately bores the hell out of me. It literally gets into my head and pains me. When I discovered this halfway through my senior year, my wife suggested I check out architecture because creative video games (The Sims, Minecraft, KSP) were all that I played and she saw that I enjoyed making things. I'm about to start my second year of school now. Yes, it can be difficult. It's no easy task to intelligently design a building while weighing factors ranging from structural stability to cultural impact and juggling the whole thing at once. But I ultimately love it. It's one of the few things that induces flow in me. Without getting into life views (I'm a Christian), I believe that my place in the world is being creative and using my natural talent (and love) for creativity to help people and improve their lives. With that all in mind, you're only destined to be who you discover yourself to be. You sound young, and you have a lot of life to live before you can really figure out what class you're playing. Some people start tracking from birth. Others die after ninety years on this planet never having figured out what they wanted or were good at. It's as variable a thing as individuals are themselves. That's the best advice I can give you.

Check out IndieDB and Desura. Desura is essentially Steam minus DRM and evil corporations. It's really nice. Project Zomboid is a great in-development title, the incredible indie horror Paranormal is there, and a number of other really awesome games. There was a forum post a long time ago about Ace Combat that ended up with someone mentioning a then-pre-alpha PC game titled Vector Thrust. It's matured into a very interesting cel-shaded PC Ace Combat of sorts, and it's a Desura title. Otherwise, as previously suggested, check out forums around the internet. Look at YouTube comments for other indie titles to discover new ones.

Let's be realistic; if that was even remotely true, we'd still be waiting for 0.14 and persistence. 0.21 should be out within a week given the history of updates so far.