Unity 5 to release today?

[ColourOfFire]

You make it sound like Unity 5 is a completely new engine and not a re-work of Unity 4... it's an update ffs. The engine developer is specifically intending projects made on Unity 4 to be ported to 5...

Besides, Unity 5 has had months of beta testing. It's ready. You aren't a software dev by the sounds of it with your naive speculation that everything is going to be completely broken and hard to port.

>With the stock game being as stable as it is now

LMFAO

I am not a software dev, but I do work with coding and writing basic software a lot. As I don't make games I've never worked with Unity though.

Probably Unity will do their best to make the transistion as smooth as possible, but the fact that it's released as a 5.0 and not a 4.whatever is a very clear sign that it's not just a simple upgrade.

If it turns out to be so, all the better, but I'm not going to get my hopes up just because the company that sells the engine says there should be an easy transition. I've heard that one before...

Edited March 3, 2015 by ColourOfFire

[Nitrous Oxide]

I am not a software dev, but I do work with coding and writing basic software a lot.

Probably Unity will do their best to make the transistion as smooth as possible, but the fact that it's released as a 5.0 and not a 4.whatever is a very clear sign that it's not just a simple upgrade.

If it turns out to be so, all the better, but I'm not going to get my hopes up just because the company that sells the engine says there should be an easy transition. I've heard that one before...

It's a major upgrade because they've added things like native x64 Windows support, meaning KSP wouldn't have to use some community hack anymore, Squad could compile an .exe that can actually use more than 3.5GB of RAM. That is single-handedly the biggest issue plaguing KSP right now (OOM crashes), and it's absolutely worth delaying a "1.0" release to fix. Have you ever seen what people outside this forum and the subreddit think about KSP as a piece of software? It's not blind fanatic love like many of you have for Squad. Rushing an incomplete "1.0" is not going to help that.

Edited March 3, 2015 by Nitrous Oxide

[Iron4venger]

Although I think porting the game to U5 is for the better. The logical thing to do is release 1.0 THEN port.

This way they could port while not in a rush and we the players are happier playing the latest version.

[kujuman]

I'm too lazy to do it, but for some context of how much work transferring to a major new Unity release y'all might want to find some of the devblogs and such from around 0.18.3 - 0.19, which is about the timeframe I believe they switched from Unity 3 to Unity 4 I think during this time they also switched over to a git for development so some of that discussion might be mixed in as well.

[Linear]

It's a major upgrade because they've added things like native x64 Windows support, meaning KSP wouldn't have to use some community hack anymore, Squad could compile an .exe that can actually use more than 3.5GB of RAM. That is single-handedly the biggest issue plaguing KSP right now (OOM crashes), and it's absolutely worth delaying a "1.0" release to fix. Have you ever seen what people outside this forum and the subreddit think about KSP as a piece of software? It's not blind fanatic love like many of you have for Squad. Rushing an incomplete "1.0" is not going to help that.

And you're a software developer?

[Iron4venger]

Porting this game to U5 can take an indeterminated amount of time sice I'm pretty confident the game is almost 90% developed with U4 hacks that are gone in U5 and require almost a total sourcecode refactoring.

Let's say 95% sure.

[Mipe]

And you're a software developer?

As an actual game developer I am in agreement with Nitrous Oxide. However, there are costs associated with engine upgrade, which Squad may not be willing to take. You'd have better luck hoping for a competitive title.

[Benaiah]

Much speculation, such informative, much enlightened.

[Minarkhaios]

[klgraham1013]

Much speculation, such informative, much enlightened.

I chuckled.

[kujuman]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/108346-A-question-regarding-KSP-and-Unity5%28b%29?p=1698103&viewfull=1#post1698103

Jan 27, 2015

I think it's important to make it clear that Unity 5 is very unlikely to be the magical silver bullet people are making it out to be.

When we moved from unity 3 to 4, we had to deal with a LOT (and I do mean a LOT) of upgrade-related bugs which we didn't expect. Furthermore, the earlier versions of Unity 4 had quite a few bugs of their own which we had to work around (or hang tight) until fixes came along.

My point is, moving to Unity 5 is very unlikely to be a straightforward transition, and by no means I expect KSP to be stable or even playable (let alone improved) after simply upgrading the project over. I would be very happy to be wrong in that one, I must add, but historically, every time we upgraded to a new major version of unity, we came across new issues we had to contend with, so please don't get overexcited about Unity 5 just yet.

This late in a project, most games tend to freeze engine versions when they find something stable that fits their needs. Regression issues is in fact the main reason why Unity stuck with PhysX 2.8 until now. If breaking mods and saves is an issue for us, imagine their case, where instead of mods and saves, they risk breaking hundreds of commercial projects. We have it easy by comparison really...

Anyhow, we don't plan to freeze engines, but I just wanted to clarify that moving to Unity 5 may not be as simple and so immediately beneficial as it may seem. At the very least, we don't plan to upgrade until A: The 1.0 release is out, and B: Until U5 is out of beta and confirmed stable.

Cheers

Porting this game to U5 can take an indeterminated amount of time sice I'm pretty confident the game is almost 90% developed with U4 hacks that are gone in U5 and require almost a total sourcecode refactoring.

Let's say 95% sure.

Assumes facts not in evidence. First off, there's no objective way to measure "90% developed with U4 hacks", but by any reasonable interpretation that just isn't so. Otherwise, how could the earlier versions have existed on U3?

Edited March 3, 2015 by kujuman

[Eric S]

You make it sound like Unity 5 is a completely new engine and not a re-work of Unity 4... it's an update ffs. The engine developer is specifically intending projects made on Unity 4 to be ported to 5...

Ported, yes. You can port Unix software to windows, but unless it's a trivial program, it's a major rewrite. Unity 5 is not intended to be a drop-in replacement for Unity 4. They didn't change things for no good reason, but there were things that got changed, and those could potentially have profound effects on developers. Some will probably transition easily, some won't. I don't know where KSP will fall in that spectrum.

Besides, Unity 5 has had months of beta testing.

As did Unity 4, and some of the bugs that got fixed after the U4 release, especially in regards to 64-bit environments, were quite drastic.

As for KSPs stability, I can't remember the last time KSP crashed on me. I've heard claims that 32-bit KSP still runs better under an x64 version of windows, which is what I'm running, so that may be why we have different views on the stability of KSP.

It's a major upgrade because they've added things like native x64 Windows support, meaning KSP wouldn't have to use some community hack anymore.

You misread the announcement. While I suspect that U5 had more developer time spent debugging x64 mode than U4 did, x64 was an officially supported target of U4, not a hack, and the x64 KSP executable was a use of that official target. The x64 announcement related to the developer kit shipping with an x64 mode editor.

Personally, I think that U5 will be at least a small improvement, potentially a significant one, and the devs are excited about the possibilities. Until the devs get to spend some time with U5, however, they won't know how much effort it will take to update KSP to use U5 or how it will affect KSPs stability, and we sure as heck don't know either. I'm fine with them focusing on U5 after 1.0 is released. By the time 1.0 is released, U5 will have had a lot more hands on it and there will be a clearer opinion of the effort of porting to U5 and the results thereof as well as what pitfalls there might be.

To be honest, I'd rather they keep 1.0 focused on U4 and then do an update after 1.0 where the move to U5 is the major focus of the update. They'd need to throw in some minor content additions so that their noisier fans don't go ballistic on an update "that adds nothing" but I'd rather not see any major features worked on at the same time as the U5 port, just to make sure that any new issues will more easily be determined to be due to the change in engine as opposed to a bug in the new feature causing unintended side effects somewhere else.

[Yakuzi]

I think there's a reason they pushed so quickly to 1.0, and that same reason would keep them from delaying it to much.

My thoughts exactly, any ideas (=wild speculation)?

KSP development and developers behavior changed drastically in the last quarter/half of 2014... which coincides with the time that Squad founders and owners Goya and Ayarza decided to personally manage KSP development (source).

Edit: I described the article in (slightly) more detail here.

Edited March 3, 2015 by Yakuzi

[Abdu]

hello ? is this a dream ?

[klgraham1013]

The Space Lounge - "Off-duty chatter on any topic except KSP"

So this topic isn't KSP related? Ok.

- - - Updated - - -

My thoughts exactly, any ideas (=wild speculation)?

Money.

[Iron4venger]

Money.

/thread

[TeeGee]

Ok I'm gonna to vent a little on this subject.

1st off: KSP has ALWAYS been a notorious underperformer in terms of physics. I don't think ANYONE on this forum has the capability of running this game with phycis calc above 0.04 on the scale bar in the menu. If you CAN'T run a game on max on ANY PC, you have a baaaaad game engine. Unity 4 is NOT GOOD ENOUGH for what Squad wants to do with this game. I'm sorry, its just not.

2nd: Harvester stated that he will not port KSP over to Unity 5 until after 1.0 comes out. This is one of if not THE dumbest things I have ever heard from him. All this time he has passed off all the problems with KSP to the fault or limitations of the Unity engine. Well lo and behold Harvester, we now have a solution to that limitation and you aren't even going to use it until AFTER game launch? If I was a critic of the game that reviewed KSP on a technical stand point after 1.0 launch, I'd rip it apart. You can't release a game in 1.0 that is NOT as good as it could be for the time of release. Unity 4 should be ripped away from this game and never used again. There is no excuse to NOT delay the release of 1.0 until after the game is ported to Unity 5 with all the new features.

3rd: Why is 1.0 being pushed so hard? WHY?? This game has been in alpha state for over 3 years and they are talking about shoving it through beta to 1.0 in 1 update? ...?? The community has stuck with this game and it has only gotten more popular as the years have gone on.

What I would do: Delay 1.0 first. Call the next update 0.95 with all the features they planned on releasing with 1.0. After 0.95 is out, port the game over to Unity 5 and optimize the hell out of it. Then start adding all the extra knick nacks that will make the game truly polished and great. Jeez man my blood is boiling with all this 1.0 crap... it doesn't make any sense to me at all why they are doing this! They have SOOOO much left to do still!

[Engineer of Stuff]

I don't think anyone here said that. I was just pointing out that it might be released today. Nothing more.

I was just commenting on the general community.

[[ Jeremy ]]

If there's any doubts, here's the link to the launch page on Unity's site:

http://unity3d.com/5?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=unity_5_launch_4_5&utm_content=launch

[Martijn404]

As a port to Unity 5 is necessary *eventually*, the question is when to take that pain, before release 1.0 or after.

My opinion would be to seriously investigate the work to port it before release 1.0, spend even a few weeks (QA cycle) on it. Major consideration is that Unity 5 will likely break all mods and that would be a bad thing after 1.0.

If it is much more work than that (and or undeterminable) release 1.0 on Unity 4 and make a KSP-2.0 on Unity 5 somewhere in 2016.

[Brofessional]

Ok I'm gonna to vent a little on this subject.

1st off: KSP has ALWAYS been a notorious underperformer in terms of physics. I don't think ANYONE on this forum has the capability of running this game with phycis calc above 0.04 on the scale bar in the menu. If you CAN'T run a game on max on ANY PC, you have a baaaaad game engine. Unity 4 is NOT GOOD ENOUGH for what Squad wants to do with this game. I'm sorry, its just not.

2nd: Harvester stated that he will not port KSP over to Unity 5 until after 1.0 comes out. This is one of if not THE dumbest things I have ever heard from him. All this time he has passed off all the problems with KSP to the fault or limitations of the Unity engine. Well lo and behold Harvester, we now have a solution to that limitation and you aren't even going to use it until AFTER game launch? If I was a critic of the game that reviewed KSP on a technical stand point after 1.0 launch, I'd rip it apart. You can't release a game in 1.0 that is NOT as good as it could be for the time of release. Unity 4 should be ripped away from this game and never used again. There is no excuse to NOT delay the release of 1.0 until after the game is ported to Unity 5 with all the new features.

3rd: Why is 1.0 being pushed so hard? WHY?? This game has been in alpha state for over 3 years and they are talking about shoving it through beta to 1.0 in 1 update? ...?? The community has stuck with this game and it has only gotten more popular as the years have gone on.

What I would do: Delay 1.0 first. Call the next update 0.95 with all the features they planned on releasing with 1.0. After 0.95 is out, port the game over to Unity 5 and optimize the hell out of it. Then start adding all the extra knick nacks that will make the game truly polished and great. Jeez man my blood is boiling with all this 1.0 crap... it doesn't make any sense to me at all why they are doing this! They have SOOOO much left to do still!

Alpha/Beta/Gold/1.0 doesn't mean anything in today's world. Those old cycles were important back in the day when you couldn't sell an unfinished game and release online updates. As long as the game is making a profit they'll continue to develop updates, so "1.0" is just an arbitrary number. Hence we're still getting major new features like fairings and a major aerodynamics overhaul, even though we're now in "beta".

That said, given the timing of the Unity5 release and the amount of work already done on the upcoming patch, it makes sense to just finish the current update and to the upgrade in a later update. Upgrading to Unity5 will probably introduce a slew of new bugs which would just delay the release of the update. Not to mention it will take time for the developers to learn the new features of Unity 5.

Edited March 3, 2015 by Brofessional

[comham]

If I was a critic of the game that reviewed KSP on a technical stand point after 1.0 launch, I'd rip it apart. You can't release a game in 1.0 that is NOT as good as it could be for the time of release

This is a very good point that squad ignore at their peril. Planetary Annihilation, for example, has improved quite a lot since 1.0 but the initial reviews savaged it and probably ruined the sales.

[cpast]

If I was a critic of the game that reviewed KSP on a technical stand point after 1.0 launch, I'd rip it apart. You can't release a game in 1.0 that is NOT as good as it could be for the time of release. Unity 4 should be ripped away from this game and never used again. There is no excuse to NOT delay the release of 1.0 until after the game is ported to Unity 5 with all the new features.

This is dead wrong. Every software product that reaches 1.0 does so without being as good as it could possibly be; that's because a developer can always think of something they wanted to add. The whole point of a release cycle is that to get the product out at some point, you have to eventually start locking stuff in and not changing it absent very good reason (no, "it could be better" isn't a good reason; a good reason is "it's unacceptable right now"). If Squad wants to ever get a 1.0 out the door, they have to at some point say "no, we have our 1.0 plan and we're not adding anything else until after release." An engine update has the potential to introduce many bugs that will take a long time to track down; that's the exact opposite of what you should do when approaching a release. This is a huge part of the role of producers -- to realize when something you want to do can't be done on a reasonable timeline to get in the game.

[basic.syntax]

Games like Planetary Annihilation and Wasteland 2 both had rocky starts, but have managed to pull through. One game that I was sad about, was Jagged Alliance: Flashback. It had serious funding issues and released with many rough edges, and faced a reviewing public that had high expectations based on previous titles in the series. The developers had fixed a number of things, post release. They begged Steam player/reviewers to take another look at the title, and change their negative reviews, so both the money and chance to finish features and fix bugs players complain about, would not crumble away.

KSP doesn't have a rich history like some other titles do, to live up to quality-wise, except its own previous releases.

I'm struck by the "Beyond Beta" PC Gamer announcement, which was so positive about the game as-is, that barring a disastrous release - that would not get past the Experimental testers - I can't imagine an about-face, in KSP reviews.

...the game will soon be officially releasedâ€â€a somewhat strange designation as it's been both available to buy and brilliant for a long time now.

[RobotsAndSpaceships]

And you're a software developer?

You don't have to be a game developer to know that.