Feedback Requested: 1.0

[Xavven]

Guys, most developers are under pressure to release games by a certain date. You have to pay your staff a salary, after all, and you usually have only so much money to devote to your game's development. Not everyone gets to work for a huge studio like Blizzard that can give you the luxury of an extra 6 months of dev time and $500,000 to polish up everything and add all the features you want.

As much as we would prefer Squad release additional beta version(s) and make the game "just so" before the reviewers have a go at it, there's no doubt that it takes time and therefore moneyto release additional betas -- time better spent on actual development towards 1.0 since their publisher is likely pressuring them to release.

So Squad has to pick: new features or bug fix what's already there. Personally, I'm grateful we're even being asked to give input on that decision.

[r4pt0r]

Guys, most developers are under pressure to release games by a certain date. You have to pay your staff a salary, after all, and you usually have only so much money to devote to your game's development. Not everyone gets to work for a huge studio like Blizzard that can give you the luxury of an extra 6 months of dev time and $500,000 to polish up everything and add all the features you want.

As much as we would prefer Squad release additional beta version(s) and make the game "just so" before the reviewers have a go at it, there's no doubt that it takes time and therefore moneyto release additional betas -- time better spent on actual development towards 1.0 since their publisher is likely pressuring them to release.

So Squad has to pick: new features or bug fix what's already there. Personally, I'm grateful we're even being asked to give input on that decision.

this implies that they have to meet a deadline because development will stop. they have said it wont, so why the rush to call it 1.0?

[SickSix]

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.

Oh well i couldn't figure it out. Ha. I clicked on everything but the cabin door. Thanks.

[FleetAdmiralJ]

Stuff

What sal_vager said!

Edit:

Arggghh I was hoping this would just be appended to my last message (since it was the lastest one in the threat) but oh well

----

this implies that they have to meet a deadline because development will stop. they have said it wont, so why the rush to call it 1.0?

Given how long this update has taken, I would hardly call it a rush. But I wonder if it is taking them longer than they anticipated and they're risking either getting off their timeline or are already off their internal timeline for getting the release out. (I don't think there is any drop dead date or anything, but I think they would like to not have TOO much time between releases if possible). My guess is that this is to gauge what the community would prefer - more feature or more polish or even waiting even longer for everything. I mean, we like it when they ask us what we would prefer, right?

Edited March 17, 2015 by FleetAdmiralJ

[klgraham1013]

POV from a newbie here, who has played for ~25 hours but hasn't yet been to the Mun (playing Career on Hard exclusively at the moment).

Here's some things that bothered me:

* Tutorials/GUI. On several occasions I've had to leave the game to google how some of the GUI worked. That's not the sign of a good GUI. For example, I didn't understand how some of the contract requirements worked, and couldn't figure out why I wasn't completing missions. Some terminology is foreign and never explained, like suborbital vs height requirements in the contracts. Again, I had to google it to find an explanation.

* Science. What the heck is it? Where do I get it? Science painfully trickled in until - after googling (again) - I discovered you could do other things to gain science, like right clicking the command pod and selecting 'Crew Report'. Who knew? Not me!

* Tooltips. If I hover over a button with my mouse, like SAS, I'd *love* if a tooltip could appear that would show you a little explanation of what it does, and maybe its hotkey. SAS? What the heck is SAS? Oh, it's stability assist, and I can turn it on and off with 'T'. It'd be really helpful if that was in the game, instead of having to search google for these things.

* Automatic hints could go a long way to help teach players. For example, the first time the player attaches a jet engine, why not have a little popup to tell them that Jet engines will require the addition of 'air intake' parts to function?

KSP has a really big learning curve, and that's ok - but players need to be given tools and help to scale that mountain. If new players routinely have to google for help or controls it'll drive a lot of people away.

Condensed to the points many of us have been harping on for quite some time now. Glad to see a new player confirming my opinions on the matter.

[Majorjim!]

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
  

I totally agree with this. In anyones eyes, version 1.0 means a complete and coherent product. What Squad are proposing for 1.0 is not.

Why the massive rush to push out version 1.0?

Stagger the release to make sure all the features are in. Aero, farings, reasources. And also to make sure most of the major bug have been squashed.

You are setting yourself up for a consumer backlash by not doing this.

Edited March 17, 2015 by Majorjim

[monstah]

Whoa, lots of pages fast.

I'm all for fixing what you got first, only then adding new content. The game was interesting enough to buy three years ago, it's still interesting enough to buy now. Just polish it and it will shine

Then, sure, add stuff away.

[klgraham1013]

• 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
  

Sounds good to me.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh well i couldn't figure it out. Ha. I clicked on everything but the cabin door. Thanks.

I don't think the game actually tells you this is an option. So, I don't blame you for not knowing about it.

- - - Updated - - -

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.

I see this argument a lot, but I don't buy it. GTA DLC is story based, not feature based. EDIT: GTA did add multiplayer post release, though it was meant for release. I'd wager, the amount of actual feature updates post 1.0 is quite low. Exceptions I can think of being XCOM and Civilization 5. (There are more, but even naming tens of games would still be a drop in the bucket in a sea of releases.)

I don't consider new maps or weapons as new features. Those are expansions to existing features.

Edited March 17, 2015 by klgraham1013

[nohelmet]

I understand the question as "after we get in the features we promised for 1.0, what should we focus on?"

Polish, definitely. I forgive a lot from a beta, but far less from a released game.

Here are the things I would most like to see fixed:

- a keyboard shortcut for "next page" in the VAB

- remove orbit wobble, when I'm in map view.

- make sure I can always click a new nav node in map view (not sure if already fixed)

- better handling of the case where many things are near. I often end up with a few peri numbers shown, or if I want to show them I get nav nodes instead.

- change the shift-tab shortcut to something else. Too many accidents.

- a keyboard shortcut to toggle navball in map mode

- in VAB, when I use the offset tool to move something it first jumps a bit to a new position. It shouldn't.

I would like a keyboard way to flip every button visible on the screen, but somewhere someone wants to be able to click (or touch) every button shown on screen. Ideally we would both get our wishes.

Thank you for all you have done already!

[Voculus]

The biggest thing you need to do, Squad, is reduce the memory footprint. How many new parts do you think you'll be able to add, before the game no longer loads up?

I would humbly ask that you find and work on a way to load and unload game assets as required.

[J.Random]

I recall Maxmaps asking when did Squad ever failed to deliver on what was promised.

Now the very same Maxmaps is asking players if Squad should drop something from the 1.0 release, while players have no idea what 1.0 actually looks like right now, apart from a couple of screenshots.

If you're asking this question - you're not ready for 1.0, and there may be only one answer: stay in Beta.

What the hell is going on, guys? Open up.

[Justin Kerbice]

For what it's worth, I believe no feature should be added but be focused on issues and optimization/cleaning.

- it's in unbelievable/unacceptable/disappointing to see NO Claw's fixes AT ALL has already been included in stock game,

- if feature/mod integration are done like it has been done before (quite poor mimic of Enhanced navball in 0.90, not enough example of ships when SPP has been integrated), new announced ones could lead to a disaster, example: new aero, either a FAR/NEAR integration or (again) a poor copy of it + NO public doc = nothing (no prior experience, no knowledge) will be ready for release and noone would know how to build a proper plane BEFORE and to make mods compatible for it (as usual, some people will do the Squad job more or less well as guessing how it's works is no equal to actually exactly knowing how it's works), except maybe in QA team (not so much people I guess), comparing to all knowledge related to FAR/NEAR which is already available to anyone who know how to find it.

- the current state of the game is not very something to be proud of (too slow, too limited, too messy), nothing destined to last can be build on a swamp (just looking at how the part list is displayed in 0.90, it's really looks like a dirty hack made in the UI), so adding more stone to the tower could lead to it's collapse sooner or later.

[Cydonian Monk]

When you set artificial deadlines and hard release dates, as has seemingly been done with KSP v1.0, there comes a point when you just have to release what you've got, bugs, warts and all.

The beauty of modern software publishing is that we can patch nearly any running system or any program after it's been shipped. Gone are the days of cartridges with the code burned into them, and floppy discs with the game-critical v1.1 patch riding on them. Since patches, new content and bug-fixes are all of an equal friction for deployment, and a deadline is present, you have to make sure all the "required" features as present. They don't need to work 100%, but do need to "work" to the point where they don't break the main product. Everything that isn't a required feature? Drop it, come back to it once you've finished the parts that are required for release. If they're done in time for release? Good. If they're not? That's what v1.1 is for.

Without knowing the state of the internal, unreleased code, it's impossible to say how you should spend your remaining time. Existing bugs from 0.90 are mostly minor annoyances, so if severe bugs are present from the new features, focus on those first.

In the end, this isn't really the end. Calling it v1.0 was both inaccurate and premature, but it's just a number.

Right?

[passinglurker]

There is no point in 1.0 having all the features under the sun if the game isn't polished, bug fixed, and optimised. BUT you can't really call it 1.0 without the features you have promised so far. People who are curious about the game after the release will come snooping around and see the feature flip flopping and it will hurt their confidence in this game which will then translate into hurt sales no one here wants to see that. If you are gonna go back on your word about promised features then why can't you go back on your word about "The next version will be the 1.0 release" and make more beta releases to insure the game is ready?

[AbhChallenger]

Just to try and guide the conversation here guys, as much as we're committed to moving the game to Unity 5, it is by no means a small task and would add a massive amount of overhead to any update it is part of, to the point where it would likely almost be an update of its own.

This is regarding the current feature list for 1.0, as adding more stuff like specific parts, new systems and what have you would most likely just complicate any issues we may have about dedicating enough time to every feature to make sure we're happy with its quality.

As I have said Unity 5 should be the project for 1.1 not 1.0 What I am saying is that you should finish what you had planned for 1.0 to not make the already hard task of moving to Unity 5 harder by trying to play catchup.

[Linear]

Stop after everyones current assignment is done, don't continue.

Get everyone together and get a big list of everything that's really annoyed you guys playing, or what you think the game is lacking - and work on those.

By putting this thread up you all realize something isn't quite right, so maybe sit back and actually play the game a bit.

[ZodiaK]

texture pass

[haltux]

Imagine you are new to KSP, what feature would you think are required to make the game "finished", to give the feeling that it is not some work in progress but a real, finished, game?

There is only a single one : aero. No one would argue that the game is not finished without MP or resources. But a decent modeling of aero is a must.

[pincushionman]

I'm going to revise my earlier post and poke at several particular features that I remember are being worked on, in order of importance:

1) AERO OVERHAUL. Impotant. All craft are affected by the current placeholder system, to the point where intuitive designs suffer. A reviewer, who has no gameplay experience and possibly no science or engineering background, is confident that a pointy rocket with a nosecone and fins is the way to go, and s/he needs to be right.

2) BUG FIXING. Impotant. The big ones, and what you can't push off to U5. The docking ports failing, Kerbals getting rigor mortis, bad memory stuff.

3) BALANCING AND TECH TREE. Impotant. It doesn't have to be mirror-polish, but it does have to make sense, and every part needs to have its dis/advantage. Aero will strongly affect this.

4) TURORIALS. Impotant. Engineer's Report may display your craft's dV, but Joe Schmoe on the street is not getting to orbit without some basic theory about orbital mechanics and staging.

5) ENGINEER'S REPORT. Less Impotant. We advanced players complain about this, but as long as you at least have a pod, a tank, an engine, a chute, a decoupler, and a basic grasp of staging, you can at least play the game. dV can come later. Hard to evaluate this, as we have yet to see how you plan on implementing it.

6) RE-ENTRY HEATING. Less Impotant. Depends on how closely it is tied to the greater aerodynamics feature. Everybody knows that spaceships burn up if they come in too fast, but that's pretty much the extent of the layman's knowledge. I say we can get away with handwaving "our materials are really good; you don't need to worry about it right now" like we're doing now.

7) WARP-TO. Not Impotant. Would be nice to have, but nothing more.

8) LIFE SUPPORT. Not Impotant. Will add all kinds of interesting game mechanic limitations, but from a gameplay perspective it's just another resource/payload we HAVE to carry. I'm not even sure it's an already-planned 1.0 feature; if it's not, ignore.

9) ISRU. Not. Impotant. opens up gameplay opportinities, but the gameplay difference between "send extra fuel to X, re-fuel Y" "send a miner to X, collect fuel, re-fuel Y," and "send extra fuel along with Y" is not actually that big. Just a matter of mission complexity, and more/less/different payload to carry.

10) ***FEMALE KERBALS***. Very, VERY Impotant. There, I said it. This has ZERO gameplay impact. But it DOES have a PR and marketing one. You've already committed to having this, and the public that doesn't even play the game is going to hold you to it.

Edited March 17, 2015 by pincushionman

[Jouni]

I have three priorities for 1.0:

1. Make the game work on a Mac. Everything else mentioned in this thread is secondary to this. Until 0.25, KSP was very stable. The upgrade to 0.90 made it less stable, while upgrading to Yosemite made the game unplayable.
   
2. My list of "must have" mods includes MechJeb, FAR, DRE, and Docking Port Alignment Indicator. I don't find the game fun without them. Include enough of their features in the stock game that I can demote them to the "nice to have" category or lower, and I'll be happy.
   
3. Finish all stuff that significantly changes existing gameplay. 1.0 is going to be the definitive version of KSP, and making major changes after that will be much harder. If you're going to make the planets bigger, now it's the time. If jet engines shouldn't be vastly superior to rockets, nerf them now. Right now everything is trivially (almost) 100% recoverable. If you're going to change that, do it now. Current career mode is based on expensive buildings and cheap rockets. If that's not how it should be, change it now. Later patches can easily add new gameplay (such as ISRU) or make minor tweaks (such as making the 48-7S 3x more or less efficient).
   

[BagelRabbit]

Okay. Time for a really long rant. Sorry...

I don't want 1.0 to be buggy.

Like, it's possibly the most important thing that SQUAD has to improve, IMO.

Every time an update to KSP comes out, in general, it's buggy. I don't mean any disrespect to SQUAD, and I'm really fine with the fact that new updates aren't quite as stable initially, and may require patches and hotfixes.

However, when 1.0 comes out, everyone will expect it to be stable. After all, this is the first really "official" release to the game. If it's as buggy as any of the previous updates, then people just joining KSP may be irritated at the problems that crop up. It's not only going to need to eliminate many bugs that KSP currently has, but it's also going to have to add in a number of features that are nearly completely bug-free.

In the past, it seems as if squashing bugs hasn't been a tremendous priority for SQUAD:

• The radial decoupling bug has been present and extremely damaging for the last several updates. While SQUAD thought they squashed it, it just appeared in a different form.
  
• Kerbals falling off External Command Seats and being considered debris has been a thing ever since command seats were introduced, back in 0.20.
  
• There have been significant problems with docking ports not docking or undocking that have persisted for several versions.
  
• The Claw has introduced a number of game-breaking bugs that have yet to be fixed.
  
• You often can't set up maneuver nodes whilst on hyperbolic paths, which has persisted since maneuver nodes were introduced.
  
• Craft occasionally "collide with buildings" several kilometers away from the KSC; this has been a rare but known issue for several versions, and it hasn't yet been fixed.
  
• Occasionally, the VAB/SPH won't allow you to click on the buttons in the top right, so you can't launch or really do anything else.
  
• Kerbals climbing ladders still generates a phantom force, as it has since ladders were introduced.
  
• Many people have trouble even loading the game, for various reasons caused by bugs.
  

...and there are many, many more significant issues with the game as it is now, that haven't ever been addressed.

So, what should be done about this?

I would say that if KSP 1.0 absolutely needs:

• Immense amounts of bug-squashing. As mentioned above.
  
• Retexturing parts. The parts in KSP are of a variety of different quality levels, and they often don't "work" together aesthetically. This should definitely be fixed before 1.0, and it adds no bugs.
  
• Rebalancing parts. Some parts are ridiculously overpowered, while others quite underpowered. This does need to be fixed, and it shouldn't add any bugs either.
  
• Renaming parts. The descriptions of the new wing bits, for example, are placeholders. This should probably be fixed before 1.0.
  
• An aerodynamics overhaul. As worried as I am about this introducing new bugs, it most certainly needs to be done before the game can be considered finished.
  
• A water overhaul. Water in KSP is currently really ugly and more dangerous to land on than terra firma. Changing the water might introduce new bugs, but it wouldn't be that difficult to handle (I think).
  
• A sound overhaul. The sound in KSP isn't all that great, and it could easily be made better, from rocket noises to music to that really nasty bird-chirping noise while you're viewing the space center.
  
• A visual overhaul. KSP isn't a bad-looking game, but it would look even better with improved rocket flames, clouds, different ground textures for different biomes, and the like. Just as long as it's not too hard on your CPU.
  
• Keep the female Kerbals! It's good to make people of both genders feel empowered and welcome.
  
• Update tutorials. It's not that difficult to do, and the current tutorials seem limited and often have grammatical errors.
  
• Maybe other stuff. I wouldn't do it if I were you though. No ISRU, please. It's really not needed, it's buggy, and it distracts y'all from more important stuff.
  

You can add other stuff, but I personally wouldn't. There's no real reason to, in my opinion. It's better to have a strong foundation going into 1.0 than it is to build a bunch of fancy stuff onto a weak base.

And that's my two cents.

By the way, thank you for seeking our opinions on this matter! I really appreciate that you're trying to make a connection with us and seeing what we want.

-Upsilon

Edited March 17, 2015 by UpsilonAerospace

[HafCoJoe]

I don't want 1.0 to be buggy.

Like, it's possibly the most important thing that SQUAD has to improve, IMO.

Every time an update to KSP comes out, in general, it's buggy. I don't mean any disrespect to SQUAD, and I'm really fine with the fact that new updates aren't quite as stable initially, and may require patches and hotfixes.

However, when 1.0 comes out, everyone will expect it to be stable. After all, this is the first really "official" release to the game. If it's as buggy as any of the previous updates, then people just joining KSP may be irritated at the problems that crop up. It's not only going to need to eliminate many bugs that KSP currently has, but it's also going to have to add in a number of features that are nearly completely bug-free.

I'd agree with Upsilon in this point. Not in the fact that I mind 1.0 being buggy at first, but I agree that the general public and definitely newcomers will get frustrated/confused/disappointed if there is any amount of substantial or repeatable bugginess in the 1.0 release.

[passinglurker]

To all the people saying ISRU is not needed...

The new ISRU system is more than just mining it overhauls how resource consumption is calculated it makes the current system look like a placeholder there is no place in a 1.0 release for a place holder.

[Capt Snuggler]

To all the people saying ISRU is not needed...

The new ISRU system is more than just mining it overhauls how resource consumption is calculated it makes the current system look like a placeholder there is no place in a 1.0 release for a place holder.

good point.

[pincushionman]

To all the people saying ISRU is not needed...

The new ISRU system is more than just mining it overhauls how resource consumption is calculated it makes the current system look like a placeholder there is no place in a 1.0 release for a place holder.

If you mean "fixing resource flow and consumption", then I agree, but it falls into the "bugfix" category. But that should be a transparent change to the casual user, other than the "now it works like you think it should" aspect. Any resource-collection work (the visible aspect; extractors, resource maps, sensors) should be halted until it can get the attention it deserves.

I'll note that I haven't experienced any issues with resources while playing, besides the intake air bug. But I am aware there are bugs. Again, bugs is #2 on my list. A new system to squash a bug or set of bugs is different from a new gameplay feature.