PDCWolf

It'll become both more and less unstable as time goes on. Everything breaks frequently anyways. It's a lot of work now? Imagine the work it's going to be when it's completed, to the point where it looks like a huge one-off task nobody wants to go through instead of a small update or two every 6+ months. It'll end up just like KSP1s API documentation: non-existent. I dare them to develop the game slower. Speed stopped being a concern to anyone about 3 months ago, they're factually, comparatively, universally and by every metric, painfully slow, so that excuse and ship has sailed.

Feature series EP5. "We want your vessels to perform roughly how you'd expect based on your experiences from KSP1" "Under the hood we're making numerous improvements to that experience to make it more performant, more robust, and allow for the scale and scope of vessels that we have here, and allow them to be built without the Kraken getting you. We're killing the kraken- that's a hell of a claim to make, you can edit it out... Our ultimate goal is to slay the kraken [...]" I'm falling more and more in love with how the only arguments are becoming straight up semantics. The game, its advertising, marketing, and communications about it have become so undefendable that we're looking at verb tenses, expressions made when the thing was said, and in some cases straight up hoping people don't remember what was said at all OR, even better, saying it's all water under the bridge. It's such an experience, honestly.

The 2 "unofficial" subreddits all were born of trying to allow only positive content, and they're all promptly dead. The one true subreddit, r/kerbalspaceprogram has gotten sick of the game to the point discussion of it is chased away, because every thread becomes work for the mods, with every user throwing snipes or outright insults at the devs/pub/cm for what is perceived to be continuous borderline lying. Add to that the recent debacle where Dakota insulted Reddit and yeah, they're not gonna be happy to see him. In 4chan, the KSP general has been dead for at least 4 years, since SQUAD/Star Theory failed to keep up their promises regarding KSP1. There was one or two generals about KSP2 but they were so dead nobody even bothers anymore. Steam... yeah, I'd say avoid that, as it's even somehow worse than reddit. The only places where you can read any sort of clearly, majoritarian positive outlook on KSP2 is the Discord and maybe Twitter depending on what is posted. Even this same forum has had a clear degradation in positivity as belief is stretched thin with every single thing they do wrong or fail to do.

It's much more than that. Take a tour of anywhere that isn't the forums, or much less the Discord, and you'll have a good idea of what the public opinion is.

This but for people who post here. Honestly it feels more like "you're arguing in bad faith" is the new "I have nothing to say but I still want to disagree". Subjectively, the art style is deplorable. Everything from Kerbals to rocket engines looks overly plasticky, with blinding levels of bloom. The clouds look disjointed as hell from every system, even lighting, as they're just fullbright white puffs. The only thing that's, subjectively, better is rocket exhaust effects, yet they decided for some reason that they'd give them the wrong shape. It is obvious they're going for cartoony, and even toy-like, but they've overstepped a bit into BabyTV territory, with overly saturated colors and parts that lack any sort of detailing or layering and only have broad, long color lines. In some planets, their color choices are not even questionable, just outright wrong, and I'm sure to be promptly proven right by recolor, remodel and just outright graphical remaster mods coming in. For me, the game just plain and simply looks bad, and thus performance problems are even more unjustified. Now objectively, yet limited by my own judgement and knowledge. PQS+ from space looks great, but it's being overdriven, and deciding to keep the old system is shooting their own foot. PQS already had problems (still has) in KSP1, where you lose performance when going from high to low orbits (or just going fast and low), specially on atmosphere-less bodies where you can really get close to terrain, and it seems they pushed the detail further without even looking at those problems which have plagued KSP1 ever since they left the old proc-terrain system behind. As of now in KSP2, terrain from orbit looks stellar, but anything closer and it looks bad. Not bad as in "I don't like it", but bad as in clearly outdated in terrain technology when compared to literally anything else that's from around the same age. Lighting has a lot of potential, even more so if they actually switch to HDRP. However, if they actually plan to fulfill their statement of bringing requirements down, HDRP might not be the way to go, as it has higher base hardware requirements, which can sour whatever performance headroom they're able to produce. On the other hand, lighting is still severely limited, and doesn't look good in the game when you add the well known overly reflective planetary surfaces, and what seems to be a jarring job at color grading and light balancing. I seriously hope they're not banking on HDR magically fixing their technical problems and/or bad decisions regarding visual design.

Well, that's funny considering the following: He said "or so" btw so we're completely fine. We just expected too much.

I've been publicly slandered and defamed on the discord, for sure, that doesn't mean I'm in it.

You forgot the part where they mention a lot of stuff but we're not supposed to believe them because nothing is a promise, and even then they still fail to live up to anything they say. Credibility isn't black and white, there's levels to it, but they certainly have been actively working to degrade it further and further. Once again, part of the community doesn't believe there's a middle ground between having the magic ball and making 100% accurate, compromised promises and shotgunning statements all over the place that you consistently fail to fulfill.

The discord thing only shows Mike saying no news, can you post the rest? since they clearly can't be bothered.

New bug status should come out today... supposedly. Lack of communication at this point is nothing but lack of professionalism.

And we go back to the circles: You expect people to believe that from the same guys that stated re-entry heating was gonna be in on release, and then "shortly after", plus all of the already sourced claims they failed to fulfill. Good thing we're not supposed to take anything they say at face value since those are not promises, right? Can't have the cake and eat it. Either their words are trustable, or they aren't. So far, facts have more often than not failed to align with anything they say. This is the last bug status report. Of course it doesn't mean that any of those bugs are gonna make it, since compromise is always assumed to be 0.

Transparency for sure: "Our spec is this, we're at this point right now, anything that doesn't make it by around this date won't be part of the final product unless stated otherwise". Considering the normal development process for features (spec > prototype > design lockdown > development > implementation, YMMV), you should definitely know at least what do you want from the feature. After that, a simple "We're aiming for Early [month] at the earliest possible and only if everything goes perfectly". Also I'll just tangentially remind you that nobody got mad at the current delay. Sure, there's the usual questioning of how an allegedly very critical bug goes undetected until 2 weeks before release but that's normal. I'm also gonna repeat what @moeggz said regarding these kinds of ad absurdum replies: "I think such exaggerations are unhelpful and are a big part of the reason the forums are such an unwelcoming place. "

We live in a world where being responsible with communication is sadly an impossibility, or so it would seem.

Lmao. Regarding multi-threading, there's lots of evidence to it already being implemented, specially with the visible racing issues that plagued earlier builds. They also mentioned at least once that part of the performance optimizations down the road include "pushing processes out of the main thread". As a side note, hunting for every bit of information when they seemingly fire it off from a shotgun and it lands wherever gets tiresome. We need a proper compilation thread for all the stuff they've promised said regarding this or other topics.

Well, if you did read the reports, then you'd find out: Nothing indicates KSP2 is a good earner. Save for PD's own 2 slides, it's almost not named anywhere else. The only attribution to the franchise is thanks to KSP1. No KSP2 related numbers. So, as I was saying, you don't mention that stuff to investors, unless they specifically ask. Specially when you waste a comparatively big amount of money versus what went into the original, to get margin-of-error level returns that still don't surpass game 1. Only if and when KSP2 outsells 1, or has a huge sale boost, or a big update coming, or breaks even the investment, maybe they'll mention it.

At least these replies make awfully clear you didn't even bother reading the reports. I'll give you a free clarification: For an indie game, T2 did what no other publisher would've bother doing: Investing in two different studios, including the hiring process for the second, give them 3 deadlines, and an EA launch when those were missed. Comparatively, that's almost infinity more than what any other publisher would've done for any game. This points to them really thinking KSP2 is or has the potential to be a golden egg goose. However, you also have to understand that, for the literal biggest publisher in gaming, who also owns the 3rd or 4th biggest publisher in mobile, that's peanuts, and whether KSP2 thrives or not, it's still less than 1% of their total earnings, it literally fits inside margin of error.

There is no evidence of the opposite either. You don't need to discriminate every little money flow unless specifically asked for it. So long as the numbers at scale are correctly represented, there's no issue in not specifically mentioning KSP2s status. Doesn't it worry you to see KSP2 listed under "labels that drive recurrent consumer spending" and right next to every single one of their MTX scam centers? And no, I'm not being alarmist, just saying you chose a really unfortunate bit to quote. Yes, the KSP2 name shows up, it doesn't show up as top earner or even as a particularly good earner, only for corporate speak and to remind investors that it is a thing.

Funny you'd want that discussion when the evidence you don't is right there. You tell them the franchise is doing great (which it is, listed as one of the 5 million + copies seller), you just don't tell them how the individual games in that franchise are.

You don't mention that stuff to investors. First off because the media does, second off because investors can look at broken up numbers and realize by themselves. Edit to add: You can always check for yourself. Right now, KSP2 is mentioned, and KSP earnings are under the "franchise" denomination. KSP2 clearly hasn't surpassed its predecessor and has to still hide under it for investors' eyes. https://www.take2games.com/ir/quarterly-earnings <<< You can also see PD's other game here, for now set to "Early 2024".

You can blame both sides for that, them for picking the softest, most useless questions, and the community (mostly discord but I saw some here) for asking them, or rather wasting questions and diluting real ones, in the first place.

Look at the bigger project from the money T2 really had to put in: They financed two studios to make this game, including the rehiring process on the second. I highly doubt any other publisher would even bother wasting that much money to sell less than a million copies.

You can find the source for that and other similar claims right in this same thread. I couldn't find the source but I'm 100% (yes, not even 99%) sure they told at least one of the main media event youtubers (SWDennis, Matt Lowne, ShadowZone, Scott Manley, EJ) that heating was gonna be there on release. The problem with comparisons like these is that we'll always fall back on the fact that KSP1 development, with all its ups and downs, was mostly fronted by 5 indie dudes, after being manned by mostly a single one in his spare time after work for 3 years, whilst KSP2 has been in development since 2017, by 2 different professional studios and the literal biggest publisher in gaming financing them. That's why these comparisons don't work, people really need to stop thinking lowering PD/IG/T2 to the SQUAD standard is somehow a justification. If you can make a proper bug report for that in the subforum (or find someone who's already posted it and upvote them) that'd be helpful.

For KSP1 reentry effects there's only 2 parameters: scale of the effect, and color of the effect. Color is driven directly by mach number (might even be just a raw speed value, faster = redder), however that and the scale of the effect are also modulated by altitude. You have to understand that the heating is not scaled but the visibility of plasma is. In real life you wouldn't see plasma until like 3000m/s, which is way above the speeds we orbit Kerbin at, so we'd basically never see the glow. That's why the speeds at which the effects appear in game were reduced, and thus cause the effect to appear on ascent where it instinctively shouldn't.

Such claims that they have everything at certain levels of development and ready to go falls apart when you look at 0.1.4 getting a performance destroying bug two weeks before release, or re-entry VFX being on their second iteration, or the fact that heating itself is going to come in little steps... Jesus, imagine how fun integration tests are going to be when you want to add incomplete pieces of many different features on each update...

Yes, definitely, and not just a little. There's 2 things that are pretty much the main drivers of our pace in exploring space: Safety and cost. KSP2 fails hard at portraying either: You kill kerbals? here's more, you can even set them to respawn after a while. Leave them stranded or put them unattended on centuries long missions? no issue. Uncommunicated and cramped? no worries. Orbiting the sun with a window to check outside? just close your eyes lol. High radiation orbits? not a dent in that DNA. Badly designed rocket? you can bruteforce anything into anywhere, save for wobbly stuff (unless you have the supercomputer required to simulate the needed amount of struts). Wanna set down a colony on the sun? just add more radiators. Coming back from the mun? just dive straight into the atmosphere. Wanna make a spaceplane? Here's the most overpowered, unbalanced jet engines ever to feature in a videogame. I could go on, but really the only challenges remaining are physics and piloting. A bit of googling (or the new tutorials) solves the former, and worst case scenario mechjeb solves the later. Add to that the fact that the current state of the game is just an incomplete KSP1 alpha remaster and the returning player experience is pretty much dead unless you really like to torture your computer or telling yourself that you're somehow playing a better game.