RocketRockington

I don't think science can save the game either. I'm not sure how many people really think that. What I think is that science, depending on how/how well it's done - and I'm not sure if your version is the intended one or not - could keep KSP2 on life support until they get to other features to actually generate interest. Or if it sucks too much, it could be the last real nail in the coffin, as people can no longer hide behind fan theories of how long Intercept actually had to build KSP2, but see for a fact how long it took to build whatever they release. It will also demo the actual first example of game play design in the game - so we'll get a view on whether Intercept is any good at that or not.

That's not true. The games that tried to follow in KSPs footsteps reached quality levels that were significantly better than early KSP without attracting anything like the same amount of interest from players or media sources that would help advertise them for free. What you're basically suggesting is that if those games were as good as KSP, right now, they could attract an audience - but KSP got a lot of funding + attention + mod support + player feedback along the way to get where they got, and other games aren't getting that. And no external party, like a big publisher, is stepping in to provide the funding. All we can hope for now is for a Cities Skylines sort of thing to happen - after EA screwed up SimCity and stopped developing it, another developer saw value in building a new version. But that cycle took a long time to happen.

I don't think there's any hard data out there of the sort you're looking for. PDCWolf has already pointed out that they haven't really promised specifics, besides (afaicr) allusions to improved physics or overall 'meeting a high quality bar'. I think you know all that stuff so I won't rake over those coals. What I can say is to just apply some logic here. We already have info from Gotmachine's and others looks at the current code base, which is where a lot of your info comes from. PDCWolf talks about 'where will they find the perf budget for new features'. Another question would be 'where will they find dev budget to rework old features'. When would time be found to rework aero, for example, when the game is already so far behind where anyone reasonable would expect it to be, when it needs content to actually generate sales and pay for development, etc. I think the worst offense of all though is the lack of mod support. Having a modding interface present would force them to be more transparent about the state of the games functionality, and let modders maybe make up for some of the lack of content while they work on providing better under-the-hood features to the mod team. Mod support often forces a game to be cleaner and more functional, because modders will always find the grime you were trying to hide under the carpet.

This is a pretty classic case of First Mover Advantage

If it was easier to do another kerbal-style game than do another FPS, why is reality the opposite of that?

Yes, but sometimes a franchise fills up a niche and no one manages to dislodge it, or bothers trying. Example: The Sims. Very few similar games have ever been tried, none with anything like the amount of money to mount a serious challengr, despite The Sims being a multi-billion dollar franchise. Kerbal is smaller but does the same thing in this niche

Same. Tbh whatever story is in KSP2, I'm going to pretend isn't in any way canon.

Well they did post a screenshot so everyone could see how many they recognized.

Obviously. It's a niche product and no large publisher would touch it without an IP to back it up. Which is why it's even MORE regrettable that the one shot at it was wasted. I don't waste my time being upset over bad FPS's because there'll be a new one right around the corner. Thanks for reinforcing my statement. I guess I'll have to hope Juno does really well.

These challenges seem somewhat unaware of the state of the game. I've seen no one on reddit or the forums post anything about doing this one. Maybe discord?

Gotcha. Ok yeah I know what you meant now. And I expect they will continue to mess with the look of the game. I think that's they're forte, inasmuch as they have one - it was again why I was surprised they're still having to build assets for science in recent times.

Have we seen decently sized graphics changes in the first 3 months? We've seen a lot of big fixes, because the game was buggy as heck. But other than some changes to lower the bottom end of graphics by removing ground clutter, what are you citing here? Genuine question.

New stat: KSP2 has its first week where it never reached 500 simultaneous users on steam. The nope train keeps chugging along!

My expectations were set by early reviews and a distinct air of male cow feces from all the early hype. Which is why I refunded it after a quick confirmation of how bad it was. My disappointment, and why I'm hanging out here, is based on my love of KSP1 and all the potential that was cut off by shutting down Squad, and all the wasted potential that was poured down the toilet by giving Uber Entertainment KSP2 to develop - and then rehiring the same project management and giving them a chance to mess it up twice/continue to mess it up. Imagine what a competent developer - or even just another amateur but larger team could have done with the mountain of time and money Uber/Star Theory/Intercept has burnt at this point. Well, we all spent 4 years since the KSP2 announce imagining that, and here's where we are. I imagine what happened was Nate gave T2 the same snow job he gave the fans - about how he's an huge fan, that Uber is totally committed, that the project is going well, that morale is high - yadda yadda yadda. Which it turns out is what he says about every project he's connected with. That he's still giving now.

Peak interest - both in player count and twitch streams - just shows how dumb the publisher/devs were to overhype and underdevelop the game. Showing people a game when it's at its worst is clearly not the big brain move they hoped it would be - instead of catching that wave of free word of mouth and interest, they turned it into a wave of negativity that will have lasting effects on the long term sales of the game. How many people out there will say to themselves "oh look at that new (expensive) ad I just saw - but it was such overhyped crap before, I'll just wait, it'll go on sale some day". And then forget about it. First impressions are very difficult to undo. Now you'd normally say this is all T2's fault - but after reading Nate's posts about PA and human resources, the Uber team's prior projects, whose management they brought to Intercept, it seems overhyping and under delivering seems to be a repetitive theme on everything theyve touched.

Magicka 2 was kinda fun, though it didn't really add much worthwhile to the first one. Agree that Riftbreaker is pretty awesome, especially for a 1-developer game (if memory serves). I hope it keeps getting support. I heard Ender lilies is pretty good too.

My own guess is that they're attempting to address the problem with science spam by limiting the # of parts and dumbing down the gameplay, rather than making the science game more interesting. Only based on looking at these silly(to me) parts - especially whatever than thing that looks like a coke can and a Swiss army knife had a baby that got beat withe the ugly stick.

[snip] That's an optimistic viewpoint. If the have the other parts as separate pieces sure, maybe, but typically all science parts are one-offs and need to fit well with the tuning of the game, rather than being able to add more like you'd add another wing or tank or engine. We'll have to wait till release to see.

How dare you! Papa's Freezeria Deluxe released on March 31st, and therefore has a huge advantage because it released a whole month more recently. Nevermind that it looks like its based off a free flash game made by 2 guys in 2007. (because it is). Oh wait - KSP2 is based off a free game made by 1 guy released in 2011 - well, nevermind, KSP2 is better! Also it has overwhelming positive reviews, while KSP2 is sitting at mixed - in fact, KSP2 had its first day of only-negative reviews on May 9nth. [snip] Now I'm hungry though...

Chris Adderley, the person cited as the designer, didn't start working AS a designer at Intercept till 8 months ago - and didn't join intercept until 14 months ago, when they started as a concept artist (I guess they needed systems designers more than concept artists? Weird leap). So... if that's the designer, the part is at most 8 months old. Maybe he's counting the 'designer' as having done the concept design - and that still doesn't make it that much further back. Definitely nothing related to 2020. The modller on the part cited hasn't been at Intercept that long either. I think my rule of 'the most pessimistic interpretation of how things work at Intercept is not pessimistic enough' keeps being proven right.

Is anyone else surprised that it seems they're working on science assets right now, btw? It did me. As negative as I have been about the game - for good reasons to me - even I thought they'd have the assets done already, and would have had for a while. I assumed most of the massive issues with the delays were with technical challenges and poor scheduling around them, as demonstrated by the build. But that, given the wealth of bullshots created, that the artists had at least thier end of the project well in hand, and the assets and design would have been ready to go ages ago. So either they redesigned recently and found they needed new parts, or they're behind on art as well as engineering.

This isn't necessarily a new way to approach science. It could still be the same way, for all we know. It's just a part you slap on a rocketz having tons of extra deedly bobs that animate out of it doesn't meaningfully change that. Cramming more instruments into one model doesn't matter if there are just as many different science parts. And if there are only 2-3 different science parts, which does streamline things, it only does so in a :dumbing it all down's way. Tbh I don't like this approach either. It's far less Lego and much more pre built. I can't make a variety of different looking probes with that, everything goes exactly one way. There are many posts like that one on this thread, or in the forum. Posts with little to add to the discussion, The first post in the thread was just the word 'thanks'. It's a non transitive argument to equate posts that don't like KSP2 with posts that are low content. [snip]

PhysX related, which is Unity's default physics engine. (tbf, many real time physics engines share these issues) You can swap out physics engines, but that's a bit more work, and means you can't copy KSP1 as closely. The primary issue is deciding to use spring-system joints to connect parts.

Glad we agree on something Note that I wouldn't mind some sort of life-sciences based exploration - extraterrestrial alien fauna or flora would be a-ok with me. Going out to research it, fantastic. Doing so because the alien precursors left me a bunch of hints w/their arches or star gates or w/e - no thanks.

I'm expecting it's a dumb 'follow the alien breadcrumbs to their homeworld' story, based on the clues they've dropped - basically ditching why we do astro science in the real world, and turning it into a samey sci-fi story like every other soft-science fiction game or story. It's not going to be something along the lines of "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard;" I'm expecting it to be "The aliens told us to explore this planet next! Quest complete! Got some science-XP. Now do the next quest!"