Feedback Requested: 1.0

[JimmyAgent007]

I dont think this thread was supposed to indicate they are slacking or thinking of dropping any particular feature. Just that they wanted to gather some idea as to what is most important to people to help with time management decisions. I still think a .99 release would have been a good idea, then ask this question, then go for 1.0.

That being said, the original question could have been worded better.

[r4pt0r]

All I want Is things to do once I land a kerbal somewhere. We didnt land on the moon for fuel, yet they spent 21 1/2 hours there when they landed there the first time, 2 1/2 hours of which was EVA activities. Let us deploy tiny experiments on the ground around our landing site.

This is the sort of stuff Im talking about : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Surface_Experiments_Package not just a "click and done" science job. let us grab and place experiments on the ground, and be more active in the gaining of science.

you could include some funny animations of a kerbal dropping a rock while holding a stopwatch or something too, things like that.

We went to the moon for knowledge, to advance mankind. Reflect that in your game please.

[Woopert]

We need 1.875 meter stackable SRB parts. 1.25 meter SRB's look plain silly on 3.75 meter parts.

[AlexinTokyo]

Full disclosure: I'm writing this without having read all 10 pages of the thread, so if I repeat something that's already been said, my apologies.

Of the things that have already been publicised as being 'in' for 1.0, these are the ones I feel are most important to deliver on:

New aero - The old system was a placeholder, and the 'end-of-EA, full-release' version shouldn't have a placeholder in a core system.

Fairings, Cargo bays, Aerodynamic Shielding, etc. - anything that's basically required by having a proper, non-placeholder aerodynamic model.

Full balance pass - This also relates to the change in aerodynamics, but even without that a pass over all parts/systems to re-balance them is necessary, even if only to be able to say that 'yes, this is what we intended for this in release.'

Bugfixes and optimisations - This should probably go without saying, but the world hates a bug-riddled release. In this age of permanent internet connections, it is quite common for software to be released with known bugs, and remediation left to post-release patches. That said, if there are too many bugs popular and critical opinion of the game definitely does suffer, and you don't want your first reviews out of EA to be 'Pity about all the bugs that weren't fixed in the 4-year open alpha/beta'.

Information displays/Engineer Report/ÃŽâ€v readout - Rocket science requires calculational aids - I've never understood why you thought relying on others providing them was better.

New wheels and landing gear - The Mk.3 plane parts seem really lonely without accessories to use them properly.

New IVAs for all parts - again, no placeholders in release, please.

Tech tree fix (or adjustment) - Making the tech tree more intuitive, and/or giving players more options of how to progress through it, can only improve the playing experience. Anyway, the balance pass probably requires it.

In addition, things I would like to see in version 1.0 that have not been announced:

Overall better graphic effects (e.g. clouds, planet shine, distant object display, etc.) - Added as options (to cater for machines without the required graphic oomph) these would make for a richer, more immersive experience.

I think that if you hit the above points well, you'll have a great release product. Anything over and above that would be a bonus (and cool and appreciated).

Features that have been announced that I would include here are - for example:

Female Kerbals - An element that genuinely is missing from that game now, but one that wouldn't (IMHO) detract too much from the release version if it didn't make it.

Atmospheric heating - probably so closely tied up with the new aero model that it can't be separated, but if it can I know which one I'd rather see make it. Include here heat shields and any other changes that its inclusion would require.

Time warp to point (KAC functionality) - This function does really need to be included in stock, but I guess I wouldn't be too upset if it didn't make it to 1.0.

ISRU could be left for a post-release upgrade. It's an (almost) entirely self-contained system that (again, IMHO) changes and adds to gameplay, rather than necessarily enhancing it. It's somewhat a parallel of the asteroids from ARM; you can ignore (or even deactivate) the feature entirely and still have a full and complete gameplay experience. As such, it could fairly easily be released as 'free DLC' or 'The ISRU update' without losing anything, or causing too many changes to the already-released game.

One upgrade after release should be devoted in it's entirety to porting the game to Unity 5 (assuming this is in any way beneficial). A port release doesn't need distraction from features and changes, and features don't need to be released to the public on an untried engine. When/If this happens at all is, of course, dependent on Unity 5 development and release timing, and on whether any benefit is actually to be had from it (I thought it was worth saying that twice).

[Richy teh space man]

Wouldn't it be better to add Unity 5 to 1.0, as I suspect there is a potential for it to be save breaking, and having 1.1 break the saves from 1.0 could be a bad thing for people thinking they have a finished product.

As to features, it really depends on what kind of time scale you're looking at with 1.0. Do you have a couple of months, 6 months, a year before the release date ? If you can take time then do so and pack 1.0 with as much as possible, like clouds, more planets, parts, etc. If not then I do think that bug fixing, aerodynamics and balance should be the priority.

[Norpo]

We've decided that the next release will be 1.0 because it accomplishes the goals we've set up with the development of KSP from the very beginning, my question to you is whether you'd prefer we try and add more features, or focus more on things like the aero overhaul, bugfixing and balance?

-Note, I am not *exactly* a game developer-

Bugfixing and balance. Yes. THIS.

A lot of the game needs some patching up, mainly memory leaks from the tweakable menus, (I doubt it could be easy, but possibly the Hell Kraken), and balance, for sure. The rockomax 48-4S or whatever it's called (the small orange engine) is just really overpowered (low mass means ridiculously high TWR and it's isp is good to boot, high delta-v for just about any small craft)

I recommend putting more features in 1.1, though, but with an equal balance of features and extra polish, but a few extra features might get people excited and realize that the game is constantly being updated

[SickSix]

Disclaimer: I haven't read all ten+ pages. I don't know what all is planned for 1.0

1. Something small that can really ruin your day: no ability to adjust braking force in rover wheels. This has made me quick-load so many times over the past few days. Braking force slider on wheels is a must.

2. Transferring Kerbals through docking ports. Seriously why do i have to EVA to move Kerbals around connected compartments?

3. Engineers Report: should show delta-v and there should be a place in game to see required delta-v for each planet.

4. Do not delay 1.0 features like the aero overhaul!

[CptRichardson]

2. Transferring Kerbals through docking ports. Seriously why do i have to EVA to move Kerbals around connected compartments?

Uh, you don't. You can click on the cabin door and transfer kerbals now without EVA's. Been in for two or three releases now.

[cantab]

In my view: Fix the existing bugs. I for one will tolerate bugs in new features but will be Really Rather Cross Indeed if bugs that plague 0.90 are still in 1.0. Reviewers and new customers and potential customers won't draw that distinction though, and will see all bugs as problems. And "the fix would be made obsolete when we update to Unity 5" is not going to wash as an excuse at all. Neither, for that matter, is "It's a Unity problem" really going to wash as an excuse for any bugs either; if there is a Unity problem, it's Squad's job to work around it, like they already did to deal with floating point precision issues.

Specific incredibly annoying bugs:

User interface clickthrough. Apple, Microsoft, and others worked out how to handle this in the 1980s. There is no excuse for clickthrough in 2015 and for that reason it's my single most hated bug.

The every few seconds stutter. This seems to affect some players more than others and some situations more than others; I've found the best test is to get into low Mun orbit, look down, and go to 10x warp and the stutter in what should be a perfectly smooth motion is very apparent. It totally breaks immersion in the game. Speculation is the stutters are due to Unity's garbage collection.

The infamous memory leak. I think that might only affect certain builds, I've not suffered it myself on Linux 64-bit, but for those it does affect it's a major issue making the game sure to crash in major playing sessions.

Ridiculously slow load times - as in, way way slower than is normal even for KSP - with certain network configurations. IMHO this needs fixing because it's so downright weird and non-obvious players are going to struggle to work around it. Reviewers who happen to be affected may well review the game with "The game took fifteen - yes, one five - minutes to load on our $6000 Dream PC. The game might be playable on slower computers, but it won't be loadable on them."

As for other things, ISRU and newstock aero want to be in 1.0 to support balancing the game better. None of ISRU, aero, or the game balance need to be perfect, but they need to basically work and be as bug-free as is reasonable.

[White Owl]

...so we're maybe better off leaving some stuff for 1.1...

We've decided that the next release will be 1.0 because it accomplishes the goals we've set up with the development of KSP from the very beginning...

If it won't accomplish the goals - which is what the OP strongly implies - why is it 1.0?

I'm so worried about this. KSP is the only game I really love. The only game I'm genuinely dedicated to. And I just don't understand these decisions. Sitting on the outside looking in, it looks like you're inexplicably committed to a course of action contrary to the best launch of the game. I don't know why. I know Squad is more dedicated to the success of KSP than I am, obviously... Why are we considering an official launch with the game not at its best?

But if the choice is either add new features or fix the aero, bugs, and balance, I definitely vote for fixing the aero, bugs, and balance.

Edited March 17, 2015 by White Owl
forgot a letter

[Wjolcz]

But if the choice is either add new features or fix the aero, bugs, and balance, I definitely vote for fixing the aero, bugs, and balance.

Same. Balancing and fixing first. New stuff later.

[TheMoonRover]

Transferring Kerbals through docking ports. Seriously why do i have to EVA to move Kerbals around connected compartments?

Left click the crew hatch, click transfer, then click the destination. This was implemented in 0.90 (pay attention )

Bugfixing, optimisation and balance are obviously the most important for a 1.0 release. If all the features are included without significant optimisation, people with lower end computers will not be able to run the game at all, due to the RAM limit on Windows and Mac 32-bit. One of my friends has noticeable lag flying the stock Kerbal X running a stock game (plus MechJeb) on a brand new (albeit low-spec) computer.

Since the current aero is a placeholder, the aero overhaul should definitely be included, as shoukd any features which would massively affect ongoing saves, for example reentry heating would make it harder to return ongoing missions which had not planned for it.

Resources is a completely separate system from anything else, much like the NASA parts and asteroids added in 0.23.5, and it would therefore be fine to add them later.

[Tex]

Include the aero overhaul and fix bugs. Perhaps add the complete new parts that are already done, but definitely wait until the future for new parts and mechanics.

[sal_vager]

There's lots of suggestions in this thread for more features, minor things, unnecessary things, things that can wait and that players have managed without.

But if you want to make what you have as good as you can, you need to concentrate on what you have, to the exclusion of everything else.

I'm guessing aero is at least party done, you have to finish it because it's too big a thing to only do half way, it'll affect too many other parts of the game so once aero is sorted, fix whatever aero broke, and it will break other stuff, changing something as fundamental as how air works isn't some magical fix for the rest of the game.

Once that's done finish whatever else is mostly there, be it fairings or whatever, and for anything else on your 1.0 wishlist that isn't already mostly complete, cross it off the board and leave it for later.

After that, no more work on features for 1.0, even if it's delta Vee, even if it's new contracts, even if it's new parts.

No matter how much players want X or Y or Z, cross it off the board for 1.0

Once that's done you look at the bug tracker, it's got up and down votes so the players can tell you which bugs they think are important and which they think aren't, they can do this while you're fixing whatever new aero broke so it's ready when you're ready.

Then just fix what you already have, no feature request, no feedback, just the bugs.

Then you'll be ready for 1.0

[Mister Dilsby]

Most important thing IMO is to make it (1) totally fun and (2) reasonably realistic. As of v0.90 (and much earlier) the game is already totally fun. What's missing for reasonable realism is,

1) aero overhaul -- lift and drag physics model correction will be OK, do not have to go full-scale FAR.

2) end some (but not all) part abuse -- SAS gyros are powerful enough to shift mid-sized asteroids. Turbojets operate perfectly well at mach 6. The team probably already has a list of what to nerf, and whatever you do will anger some users. I encourage you to stick to your guns/launch clamps.

3) atmospheric heating -- burning up on re-entry isn't just a hazard in real life, it's a classic sci-fi trope.

Most important addition to making it even MORE totally fun IMO is simply to continue fine-tuning the tech tree and career mode. Make it a logical progression that gives players a story-driven reason to go on missions. Any perusal of the "mission report" section of this Forum will show that we don't need much provocation to make up our OWN stories--I would think of the Contract generator as a writing prompt. In other words: make it make sense, and give us just the flimsiest excuse to be awesome.

And thank you for soliciting input, the relationship between creators and the player community is one of the things that makes KSP great.

[Monger]

It's hard to tell until we can try out 1.0 ourselves, and evaluate it properly.

My feeling is: for such a small team, this is already an enormous amount of features. Additional features will create additional maintenance, and you have to decide if you can handle this.

On the other hand, I think the KSP experience may improve a lot through careful balancing and bugfixing. Some parts are redundant, some parts may be more versatile with slight modifications. Fixing bugs reduces technical debt, and may free up resources for features later on. Also: never underestimate how much bugs may hurt your reputation! Once that KSP is released, other players will get attracted - and frustrated - if their game experience is disturbed.

So I recommend to spend 80% on balancing and bugfixing, and 20% on evaluating (carefully!) new features.

[Capt Snuggler]

Why oh why must the next release be called v1.0?

its not done. its not nearly done. a blind man could see that pushing KSP to v1.0 was a bad idea.

make .91 and .92 and .93 if you have to.

with out the planned features, KSP is an incomplete game.

with the nasty bugs, KSP is an incomplete game.

you've created a great thing! you have a huge dedicated fan base. Your teaching people things, making people think. don't ruin everything you have built by slapping a *DONE* sticker on it and "shipping" KSP with massive gaping holes crawling with bugs.

get modders involved for art polish. many would live to have art assets included in stock.

• aero update v.91
  
• resource update v.92 (ISRU & life support)
  
• career and contract polish v.93
  
• art polish v.94 (replace crummy models & add detail to planets)
  
• bug fix v.95
  
• release v1.0
  
• second pass bug fix v1.1
  
• mutiplayer v1.2
  

Edited March 17, 2015 by Capt Snuggler

[Wallygator]

In my view: Fix the existing bugs. I for one will tolerate bugs in new features but will be Really Rather Cross Indeed if bugs that plague 0.90 are still in 1.0. Reviewers and new customers and potential customers won't draw that distinction though, and will see all bugs as problems. And "the fix would be made obsolete when we update to Unity 5" is not going to wash as an excuse at all. Neither, for that matter, is "It's a Unity problem" really going to wash as an excuse for any bugs either; if there is a Unity problem, it's Squad's job to work around it, like they already did to deal with floating point precision issues.

Specific incredibly annoying bugs:

User interface clickthrough. Apple, Microsoft, and others worked out how to handle this in the 1980s. There is no excuse for clickthrough in 2015 and for that reason it's my single most hated bug.

The every few seconds stutter. This seems to affect some players more than others and some situations more than others; I've found the best test is to get into low Mun orbit, look down, and go to 10x warp and the stutter in what should be a perfectly smooth motion is very apparent. It totally breaks immersion in the game. Speculation is the stutters are due to Unity's garbage collection.

The infamous memory leak. I think that might only affect certain builds, I've not suffered it myself on Linux 64-bit, but for those it does affect it's a major issue making the game sure to crash in major playing sessions.

Ridiculously slow load times - as in, way way slower than is normal even for KSP - with certain network configurations. IMHO this needs fixing because it's so downright weird and non-obvious players are going to struggle to work around it. Reviewers who happen to be affected may well review the game with "The game took fifteen - yes, one five - minutes to load on our $6000 Dream PC. The game might be playable on slower computers, but it won't be loadable on them."

As for other things, ISRU and newstock aero want to be in 1.0 to support balancing the game better. None of ISRU, aero, or the game balance need to be perfect, but they need to basically work and be as bug-free as is reasonable.

All Hail Cantab!

Yes - another vote for fixing bugs and improving overall stability as a priority

[soulsource]

In my humble opinion:

The only feature that's really missing is a proper aerodynamics model. Apart from that, the game would be ready for 1.0, if there weren't the balancing issues and the outstanding bugs.

Therefore, I'd prioritize the following way:

1. Fix the aerodynamics
   
2. Balance the game for the fixed aerodynamics and keep in mind the to be added possibility of deep space refueling (regarding that: I'd balance the game in such a way, that deep space refueling is hardly ever necessary, but makes things a lot easier)
   
3. Fix as many bugs as possible
   
4. If there's time left, improve performance. I know that's boring, but currently the game is only running well on high-end hardware (or more precisely: on hardware that has extraordinary single core performance). The more computers the game runs on, the more customers, right? I know that we cannot expect big leaps like multithreaded physics (that would delay the release date of 1.0 beyond reason), but maybe by carefully re-reading the code, you might find still the one or the other thing inside a loop that could be factorized out.
   
5. Postpone any other features. I already see the label: KSP 1.1: Planetary refinement
   

[Wallygator]

Oh and one more thing...

For any public product release...

The Producer, the Release Manager, and the Communications Manager should NOT be combined into one role (just for future reference - Max you seem to be doing all of them at times)

And... the processes and policies by which the above roles interact should be well established and followed verbatim. Otherwise there is risk that the customer/user/community will misunderstand the comms vector by which core and critical communications emanates from. It just leads to confusion and unnecessary expectation setting.

[klgraham1013]

Read up to page 5. I'll finish the thread in a moment.

There needs to be more discussion about water. The 1.0 release of a "simulation" space flight game should have water that's safer to land on than...land. I'm sure most average joe's who've seen a pod splash down have seen it splash down in water. Hence the name. Landing in water will most likely be the first thing a new player tries. To have their rocket spontaneously combust on water when they may only break an engine on land is not acceptable.

[Robotengineer]

Here are some ideas.

Optimization

1. Use DDS texture loading, it would help alleviate the ridiculously long load times.
   
2. Fix the memory leak, allowing it to run on lower end computers, and hopefully allow people who can't play .90 to play 1.0.
   
3. Other assorted optimizations, you (Squad) know more about KSP than we do, so you should be able to rework some things to be faster and have less of a footprint.
   

Bugfixes

1. Fix the decoupler bug.
   
2. Fix the clickthrough issues.
   
3. The aforementioned memory leak.
   
4. Other bugs that I don't have time to look for room to mention.
   

Gameplay

1. Balancing, including, but not limited to, impact tolerances, engine TWR's and ISP's, masses, tank wet:empty ratios, contracts, strategies, etc, etc.
   
2. Graphics, at the very least a decent skybox for release. Ideally, redo all the parts, buildings and celestials.
   
3. ISRU can wait for 1.1 IMO, it's not as essential as aero overhaul or female Kerbals.
   
4. Aero overhaul is a necessity, it would be a tragedy for a bunch of new KSP players to learn the accursed 10km/45Ëš gravity turn.
   

Things that irk me when I play stock now

• Performance issues, I should not have to run the game at 1/4 resolution to be able to play on OS X.
  
• Graphics, the fact that the skybox does not dim irks me particularly, as well as the lack of interesting terrain outside of the Kerbin system.
  
• Bugs. If the game takes 15 min to load, and you crash twice an hour, thats half of your game time gone.
  
• Moddability, I would really, really, really like to see an official API. The community .xml files are outdated and not that useful to a noob programmer.
  

TL;DR, focus on what you already have to do (read: aero, bugs and optimization) and let the new features wait.

[r4pt0r]

Why oh why must the next release be called v1.0?

its not done. its not nearly done. a blind man could see that pushing KSP to v1.0 was a bad idea.

make .91 and .92 and .93 if you have to.

with out the planned features, KSP is an incomplete game.

with the nasty bugs, KSP is an incomplete game.

you've created a great thing! you have a huge dedicated fan base. Your teaching people things, making people think. don't ruin everything you have built by slapping a *DONE* sticker on it and "shipping" KSP with massive gaping holes crawling with bugs.

get modders involved for art polish. many would live to have art assets included in stock.

• aero update v.91
  
• resource update v.92 (ISRU & life support)
  
• career and contract polish v.93
  
• art polish v.94 (replace crummy models & add detail to planets)
  
• bug fix v.95
  
• release v1.0
  
• second pass bug fix v1.1
  
• mutiplayer v1.2
  

seconding for this. 1.0 implies complete. You say you will continue development after 1.0 and thats great, but that means it really wasnt 1.0. the reviewers will review 1.0 and assume the game is finished. the consumers who arent here or on the reddit thing or otherwise following the game will assume 1.0 means finished. thats how the world works in almost all cases.

Edited March 17, 2015 by r4pt0r

[nightingale]

Once that's done you look at the bug tracker, it's got up and down votes so the players can tell you which bugs they think are important and which they think aren't, they can do this while you're fixing whatever new aero broke so it's ready when you're ready.

Then just fix what you already have, no feature request, no feedback, just the bugs.

This.

I've raised bugs on the bug tracker that have shown no evidence of being looked at (and if someone actually is looking at it, then it would be nice if it at least got a comment, status change or something showing that there's a point to me raising issues there...).

Sal, you must have a different profile than me on the bugtracker... I don't have any option for up/downvoting (or even seeing a score/votes on issues....).

[FleetAdmiralJ]

So my impression is that things that you originally planned on being in the game (fixed aero, resources, etc.) are going to be in 1.0 (or else you wouldn't be calling it 1.0) so I'm guessing we're talking about additional features that you have thought about adding but haven't really officially announced vs. polish and bugfixing.

If this were another Beta release, I might say more features now and bugfixing later might be about equal. But I think considering this is "1.0" that bugfixing and polish are a must, and are a priority over adding other not-necessary features that can be pushed to a 1.1 release.

- - - Updated - - -

reviewers will review 1.0 and assume the game is finished.

In the age of DLC and after release updates, will anyone actually believe and do this. Yes, they will evaluate 1.0 as if it is a release quality game (which is essentially what you are announcing if you're making it 1.0), but that doesn't mean reviewers or players are going to assume that nothing more is being added to the game in the future. I mean, look at all the content that a game like GTA V has continually added to their game post-release in a non-paid DLC fashion. I don't think anyone believes anymore that "1.0" means "the end" anymore.

That doesn't mean 1.0 shouldn't be a quality product. It should. You're saying that this game is good enough TO BE a final product. But it doesn't mean there will be no more updates.