Opinions on 1.0 release

[Explorator]

First of all let me say I am so excited for the final release of 1.0.

The final release seems to be fitting of the basics we require for the game and what lacks thereof can be accommodated with mods. What I don't like is this:

"This has only been made possible by the astounding, incredible support we have gotten from you all. Consider everything that will come after 1.0 as our way of saying thank you, for believing in our crazy little rocket-launching game, for supporting us through four incredible years, for sticking with us all the way here, and in advance already for staying around for 1.0 and beyond."

I'm ok with the finished product but what I'm not ok with is anything after 1.0 being under-developed and ill-thought out. This will likely not be an issue but if it is then I will be angered in the Squads development if anything post 1.0.

What do you think?

[Moss]

What makes you think that anything beyond 1.0 will be under-developed?

[_jack]

Squad isn't going to under develop anything after 1.0, I think it's going to be the same if not better. My guess is a lot of popular mods will be slowly put into vanilla KSP. And more planets! (I need more places to go...)

[Daze]

They refer to updating KSP in future, after 1.0 we will see every some months other update, they already stated it.

1.0 for them is just = "Ok now in the game there's all i wanted when i got the idea for KSP"

[r4pt0r]

KSP won't be 1.0 for me until clouds are stock. It still looks unfinished.

[Wallygator]

I see your suppositions as illogical - but only for the moment.

I think you might be over reacting a bit to early. I suggest a week of patience. After that there will either be joy all around, or a number of specific items to discuss and debate regarding product quality and development plans.

[magnemoe]

They refer to updating KSP in future, after 1.0 we will see every some months other update, they already stated it.

1.0 for them is just = "Ok now in the game there's all i wanted when i got the idea for KSP"

Yes, first its bugfixes then its update to unity 5. Later is needed to get more stuff into the game.

[SkyRender]

No product has ever released perfectly into 1.0. There's always shortcomings, bugs, glitches, oversights, and content that didn't make it into the final build. Be thankful that we live in an age where updates to software are not only possible, but also phenomenally easy to do and highly accessible as well. Back in the cartridge-and-casette days, if you wanted an updated version of software, you were usually out of luck entirely or had to buy a new copy altogether to get it. Even as recently as the CD era, getting an update for software was often tricky and required either a then-uncommon internet connection or a subscription to a service like Walnut Creek CD-ROM. My point is, 1.0 is not the end any longer; it's just the beginning.

[r4pt0r]

My point is, 1.0 is not the end any longer; it's just the beginning.

This is not at all a good precedent.

Games used to be released when they were finished. Now developers use post release patches as a crutch. Heck, the 'Master Chief Collection' had a 20gb day-one patch, and still has broken multiplayer. Games like Skyrim are almost unplayable out of the box and require the patches out of necessity. That mindset that we can just ship a broken product and fix it later is so wrong.

What happens 20 years from now when someone buys 'retro' 360 or ps3 games, and the servers with the updates have been off-line for years? My PS2 games will still run perfect, but the 7th and 8th generations of consoles and their games are in trouble.

/end rant, its not a rant about Squad, I look forward to Monday ect.... sorry about the off topic.

Edited April 23, 2015 by r4pt0r

[SkyRender]

This is not at all a good precedent.

Games used to be released when they were finished. Now developers use post release patches as a crutch. Heck, the 'Master Chief Collection' had a 20gb day-one patch, and still has broken multiplayer. Games like Skyrim are almost unplayable out of the box and require the patches out of necessity. That mindset that we can just ship a broken product and fix it later is so wrong.

What happens 20 years from now when someone buys 'retro' 360 or ps3 games, and the servers with the updates have been off-line for years? My PS2 games will still run perfect, but the 7th generation of consoles and their games are in trouble.

/end rant, its not a rant about Squad, I look forward to Monday ect....

Hey, I'm not denying that the ease of updates has its dark side these days. And it is quite a problem for anything that has a physical distribution. KSP does not have a physical distribution as of yet, however. So it can reap the benefits of ease of updating without falling into the pitfalls that come with it.

[nuclearping]

My biggest hope for 1.0 is stability.

I'm with KSP since 0.18.4 and I had the impression that with every release the game became more and more unstable.

I remember when I started I got so fkn addicted that I literally played like 34 hours straight away. Now fast forward to 0.24 ... I couldn't play for more than 1-2 hours without the game starting to do weird stuff, like after quick-loading I had nothing but a black screen with some background noise, the menu wasn't responsive, etc. Or during the game things became unresponsive and then looking in the Console it was filled with red exception messages. Then with 0.25 and also 0.90 I was always crashing to desktop after like 30-45 minutes +/-. Then after restarting it also started happening that my contracts were gone, etc. Really frustrating.

Game was always below 3GB of RAM and in the end I only used a few mods which required less than 500MB in my GameData folder (1300MB total - 800MB Squad folder).

So all thes crashes and instability basically killed the game for me and I didn't play since Dec 2014 anymore. That makes me really sad because I really love the game. But I can't be bothered to play half an hour, than crash, than restart the game again, lose my contracts, start all over again, crash again, rince and repeat ...

[Temeter]

My biggest hope for 1.0 is stability.

I'm with KSP since 0.18.4 and I had the impression that with every release the game became more and more unstable.

I remember when I started I got so fkn addicted that I literally played like 34 hours straight away. Now fast forward to 0.24 ... I couldn't play for more than 1-2 hours without the game starting to do weird stuff, like after quick-loading I had nothing but a black screen with some background noise, the menu wasn't responsive, etc. Or during the game things became unresponsive and then looking in the Console it was filled with red exception messages. Then with 0.25 and also 0.90 I was always crashing to desktop after like 30-45 minutes +/-. Then after restarting it also started happening that my contracts were gone, etc. Really frustrating.

Game was always below 3GB of RAM and in the end I only used a few mods which required less than 500MB in my GameData folder (1300MB total - 800MB Squad folder).

So all thes crashes and instability basically killed the game for me and I didn't play since Dec 2014 anymore. That makes me really sad because I really love the game. But I can't be bothered to play half an hour, than crash, than restart the game again, lose my contracts, start all over again, crash again, rince and repeat ...

Did you use the (now discontinued) 64bit version? That one produce outright bizar crashes. 32bit should be realtively stable.

1.0 is one of the biggest bug-fix releases KSP had up to this date. Max spoke about fixing over 300 bugs.

[nuclearping]

Did you use the (now discontinued) 64bit version? That one produce outright bizar crashes. 32bit should be realtively stable.

Nope, I always used the 32bit version. I attempted to run the 64bit once or twice but I was even worse. As far as I remember it didn't even make it past the loading screen and crashed right away.

[katateochi]

This is not at all a good precedent.

Games used to be released when they were finished. Now developers use post release patches as a crutch. Heck, the 'Master Chief Collection' had a 20gb day-one patch, and still has broken multiplayer. Games like Skyrim are almost unplayable out of the box and require the patches out of necessity. That mindset that we can just ship a broken product and fix it later is so wrong.

What happens 20 years from now when someone buys 'retro' 360 or ps3 games, and the servers with the updates have been off-line for years? My PS2 games will still run perfect, but the 7th and 8th generations of consoles and their games are in trouble.

/end rant, its not a rant about Squad, I look forward to Monday ect.... sorry about the off topic.

I agree with r4pt0r on this. Updates are great when they are in form of "support for some new bit of hardware", but the mindset of it's ok to be buggy and send out patches later is really bad. In theory sending out fixes sounds like a good thing, but as is often the case the original lead dev team has moved on so the patches are done by devs who are less experienced with the program. Again in theory that shouldn't be a problem but it requires two things to ensure that patches don't actually break the program further; 1) thorough, detailed documentation - every single function is documented, most lines of code have comments. 2) Automated tests which ensure functionality isn't broken, every single 'process' should be covered by the test suite (as a rule of thumb, every "IF" needs at least two tests).

These things are requirements for a software system to be considered "production grade" but I think a great many program fail to meet these requirements. Does KSP meet these? I don't know, but it should do if version 1.0 is to be considered the "production grade" product.

[T.A.P.O.R.]

This game is less buggy than most other games I've played and hasn't required that I DL a multi GB patch every time I try to play.

As much as I love those games (COH 1+2, FALLOUT 3 & Vegas... anything on the PS3), the updates stopped me from just playing casually.

KSP's updates are infrequent and rarely take more than a couple of minutes to DL (even in Australia).

I'm looking forward to the next release and was pleasantly surprised to see how fast it loaded on Maxmaps last video.

No more wandering off to make a cup of tea while it loads

[Columbia]

As long as Squad works hard (and I'm sure they did,)I don't have much to worry about.. in all honesty.

[WWEdeadman]

I'm pretty sure they made sure that no incredibly gamebreaking/annoying bugs stay in for 1.0. And any update after 1.0, I consider free DLC, really.

[Fel]

This is not at all a good precedent.

Games used to be released when they were finished. Now developers use post release patches as a crutch. Heck, the 'Master Chief Collection' had a 20gb day-one patch, and still has broken multiplayer. Games like Skyrim are almost unplayable out of the box and require the patches out of necessity. That mindset that we can just ship a broken product and fix it later is so wrong.

What happens 20 years from now when someone buys 'retro' 360 or ps3 games, and the servers with the updates have been off-line for years? My PS2 games will still run perfect, but the 7th and 8th generations of consoles and their games are in trouble.

/end rant, its not a rant about Squad, I look forward to Monday ect.... sorry about the off topic.

Oh this is bull.

I don't know why it keeps being repeated just for the fun of it, but EVERY popular old PC game (even ones that have console ports [not console to pc, pc to console]) has a set of official and unofficial patches. "Not playable out of the box" is a subjective statement often meaning "Not perfect out of the box."

But the problem is, consoles are obsolete. No one in their right mind would play a Bethesda game on a console; it has nothing to do with "spirit of the times" but the fact that Bethesda games have always had patches and unofficial patch sets that cover a large part of the ever increasing content. (And well, the whole modding community, the modding tools, there are even exe patches... it is a PC game dumbed down enough to work on a console.)

As for PC? There are still mechwarrior 2 forums offering support in getting the game running. Old patches should be hosted long enough for you to download them, even long after the official servers no longer even exist. We have sites like GOG which... pretty much just apply every random patch they can find and can break more than they fix... but still, If you're going to sit back and complain about how consoles may or may not handle old games well, then you seriously should be realizing just how big the support groups for old games ON THE PC are. Sony and Nintendo making emulators to support old games isn't a consumer right, it is a "for the customer" practice; and should not be expected to go on forever.

[forenci]

I find it odd the OP took something genuine and well-intentioned and somehow made it seem like it was a bad thing. I'm not worried at all about what comes after 1.0. In fact, I'm excited for the possibilities. If anything, 1.0 has proven that the devs are willing to outsource additional help to add features that may have taken much longer to implement due to lack of developers. I think that's awesome.

Next big thing I'm looking forward to: multiplayer. No idea when that will be, but I'm super excited for it. I think it will change the game completely - in a great way. Can't wait to build space stations with friends.

[gmiddlemass]

Games used to be released when they were finished.

Games also used to be a hell of a lot less complicated but times have moved on. I think it's fair enough to expect a modern complex game especially one from a new publisher to have the odd bug, so long as they're not totally game breaking and fixed in a timely manor I don't really have a problem with it.

[Endersmens]

Here is my personal, official, unbiased, professional opinion on 1.0.

GIMME GIMME GIMME NOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW I WANT I WANT BAD PLZ SQUAD D:

[Wolf Baginski]

I reckon that v0.90 is already better than the initial releases of some games. There's going to be some time needed to settle down, some Mods that need checking and some made redundant by new stock features. By my count, there are three main large-booster mods, and I have only needed one of them. Get through the transition, and maybe the best choice will change.

We can expect bug-fixes. What scares me a little is the prospect of gameplay changes, but nothing looks critical. I think I want the time to explore the new world, and maybe a part of that is Squad catching up on the Wiki. If MechJeb and Mod Manager are working, it will be easier for all of us.

My cunning plan is to install v1.0 in a different folder, and leave v0.90 untouched for if I get frustrated.

And here's a sort of challenge for you: whenever you think of Jeb as pilot, substitute Valentina on the crew.

[Flayer]

Honestly, from what SQUAD has released so far, I have no doubts that 1.0 will be a properly functioning product. Every feature they have implemented in previous versions seems to be working without any real issues. They have now revamped various features, optimized and fixed certain bugs. I honestly just have faith in their ability to program and their QA department that they will be able to deliver properly functioning features for 1.0. Now, there may be some things that I would consider are 'missing' from a 'proper' space game (life support, communication networks), but even without those features the game that will be released as 1.0 seems like a solid game to me. There is still a lot of content to be had in the stock game. And again, I feel confident in their ability to deliver quality software.

[Endersmens]

Yeah, what he said ^

[Tex]

KSP is one of my favorite video games of all time, period.

I am a firm believer that SQUAD will make the right choices, and have done so, in regards to their first game, their baby. KSP will certainly have a long ways to go and I see no reason to really think that things will be under-developed or very bad. They've done a fantastic job so far.