Will KSP Suffer an Eternal September?

[Sandworm]

For those old hats out there, can the modding community survive an eternal september? (google it). I fear that many noobs are about to hit these forums, noobs that might have avoided KSP when it was an early-access game. They will demand much higher standards of both KSP and mods. They probably won't distinguish the two. No mod creator wants to listen to people complain about problems they cannot address. Those who aren't modders, myself included, will surely step up to answer the easy questions, but that can only go so far.

Is the community ready? Does it have the energy to become the full-time support staff for a finished, or at least non-beta, product?

[ferram4]

Almost by definition, communities don't "survive" Eternal Septembers in the way that you're defining it. They wouldn't be eternal otherwise. But we've dealt with this before; remember the win64 release and user behavior towards modders following its instability? Yeah, we hit Eternal September a long time ago by my reckoning. So we'll be fine, can't get much worse.

[TMS]

Didn't the sky already fall when KSP was released on Steam?

The forum changed then. I'm sure it'll change again.

[sarbian]

We will deal with the new one as we did with the old one. With patience, humor, sarcasm, animated gif, ignore and the occasional outburst.

[agent_0004]

everyone try not to annoy or fuel the over-common creature that thrives in the unknown environment of KSP (for those who didn't put 2+2 together that is the noob) Its about to be open season. Have fun everyone.

[Octa]

I don't think that it'll be that much. Most interested player already bought KSP and/or played the demo, so the amount of really new player wont peak after 1.0

At least i hope so.

[somnambulist]

/steels self for a flood of "HALP! why u no mudpack guyz?" posts

[Guest]

I think the worst has already passed what with KSP being on Steam. 1.0 isn't going to flood us.

[Sandworm]

"Total new parts 75"

ick. That is really going to eat into the windows ram limit. Granted some are probably replacements, but I doubt 1.0 will take textures down in size. Then we have to add in all the totally new resources stuff which I assume will be deployed as a new texture layer atop planets. I don't mean to speculate about features, just that I see a sort of near-perfect storm on the horizon.

(1) New release that will surely break the majority of mods.

(2) Pile of new parts that will push the ram limits even tighter for windows users.

(3) Host of new players, probably without our patience as this is now a finished product.

(4) Possible partial withdrawal by some modders if, as this is 1.0, they feel that longstanding api bugs/issues will simply never be addressed.

(5) Large number of new features with minimal testing = large risk of game-killing bugs for some segment of the community (a la linux mousewheel).

I hope it arrives relatively bug free and that modders do not loose heart. A ray of hope for me are the horrible view numbers for the teaser vids. Less than 100k after four days is probably a record low for a pre-release KSP vid. So perhaps there aren't legions of new/noob customers waiting in the wings. I doubt Squad would be happy, but a softer sales peak is probably best for the community.

[passinglurker]

/steels self for a flood of "HALP! why u no mudpack guyz?" posts

/steels self for flood of aspiring "project leaders" who have no idea how to make mods themselves pitching their ideas in the development and release forums.

but really despite how it could all go wrong I'm gonna stay positive until hell actually breaks loose... its not like I can actually do anything to prepare for when it does...

So who's looking forward to getting fresh blood to guide down the path of coding modeling and texturing? (guiding may or may not involve large whacking implements like sticks, large spoons, and spare eva flags)

[Superfluous J]

Hey I'm an ideas man. You all could code this up you'll be super famous. What if it wasn't Kerbal SPACE PROGRAM? What if it was Kerbal PROGRAM SPACE where you were like in TRON world and stuff explodes it becomes energy and you have to suck that energy up and multiplayer pew pew pew and I think this game needs dogs.

Don't thank me. Just mod it in guys.

More seriously, no, I don't think it'll be all that bad. Having survived through the real Endless September (which did end BTW) it was about 1% as bad as everybody said it was.

[Ippo]

What we really need is 4chan-style moderation.

See example below:

[Whirligig Girl]

"Total new parts 75"

ick. That is really going to eat into the windows ram limit..

Dude have you not heard of the extreme amazement of the optimizations? For instance, KSP's load time is 13 seconds in 1.0, 30 on 0.90 (Maxmaps' computer). Additionally, everything is DDS. I wouldn't expect any RAM issues.

[Beale]

/steels self for flood of aspiring "project leaders" who have no idea how to make mods themselves pitching their ideas in the development and release forums.

This already happens way too much (Especially considering the mountain of tutorial available), I dread to think it worse...

In all honesty, a "You must have done something" rule for posting in development forum would be helpful.

Dude have you not heard of the extreme amazement of the optimizations? For instance, KSP's load time is 13 seconds in 1.0, 30 on 0.90 (Maxmaps' computer). Additionally, everything is DDS. I wouldn't expect any RAM issues.

It will load faster because they've removed on-the-fly conversion to .DDS as far as I know, meaning the game will still use the same amount of RAM (And even more, with the new parts).

That being said, most of the new parts (if not all) are made by Porkjet and RoverDude (I think?) - Very good with texture sharing and minimizing footprints. So I don't worry too much.

A huge amount of RAM could be saved with the cleaning up of a few old stock parts, the IVA spaces don't need 2048x2048 sheets surely?

Also some the NasaMission parts use the same texture, but don't share it, just keep separate copies (Why.... Why!?)

Edit:

Some of my grumbles, wastefully large textures everywhere.

Not a problem when game was young, but 32-bit is sticking around and it should be smoothed down a bit.

Many many large texture files everywhere (With accompanying large normal map files).

Edited April 25, 2015 by Beale

[Suicider]

38 not 75. Everyone remain calm! (Why are you being calm? 1.0 is around the corner, GO NUTS!)

[Commander Jebidiah]

Didn't the sky already fall when KSP was released on Steam?

The forum changed then. I'm sure it'll change again.

Just realised that when KSP released to Steam in march 2013 one month later the forum crashed. The same could happen again.

[SGCam]

Just realised that when KSP released to Steam in march 2013 one month later the forum crashed. The same could happen again.

Brace yourselves, Y1.0 is coming.

[Streetwind]

Instead of worrying about "the noobs", how about we actually hold ourselves to the same standard we seek to measure those new community members by? You know, being mature and intelligent and polite, that sort of thing. If we were actually making an effort to conduct ourselves that way, we'd discover that denouncing people as "the noobs" when they aren't even here yet is simply hypocritical prejudice.

So, instead of pre-stamping everyone with an artificial label before they had a chance to even register, how about we welcome them into our community in a friendly manner, and show them how it's done through our own example? Because if we're creating an atmosphere of elitism and disdain towards new users, we should not be surprised when they respond in kind. After all, they're only following the examples they see.

[Jashin]

Instead of worrying about "the noobs", how about we actually hold ourselves to the same standard we seek to measure those new community members by? You know, being mature and intelligent and polite, that sort of thing. If we were actually making an effort to conduct ourselves that way, we'd discover that denouncing people as "the noobs" when they aren't even here yet is simply hypocritical prejudice.

So, instead of pre-stamping everyone with an artificial label before they had a chance to even register, how about we welcome them into our community in a friendly manner, and show them how it's done through our own example? Because if we're creating an atmosphere of elitism and disdain towards new users, we should not be surprised when they respond in kind. After all, they're only following the examples they see.

This is what I found when I entered the world of Kerbal about two years ago, a mature and friendly community and the most generous I've seen in gaming. I got guidance on Reddit when my creations failed and I did not know why. I got help here when I jumped head-first into mods and things inevitably broke. Of course we had our times of trouble and drama, for instance when the 64 bit "hack" pressured modders into trying to fix problems that weren't theirs and so on. But in my opinion this has not changed our community.

This is not our "Eternal September". It is the fabulous opportunity to welcome new people and help them enjoy the hell out of the game we love. Let us not cling to our respective memories about version XX.x and the good old times instead.