Squad how do my tears taste?

[KerbonautInTraining]

I've played a bit of the pre-release, ofc there were bugs.

I feel like I just did a dine and dash because I haven't reported them yet. (That is, I feel guilty)

[Corw]

12 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Ouch. Gotta love that arbitrary segregation of your customers, makes people real happy and all.

Wow, the tears... There is no conspiracy here, people. None was planning to have difference between Steam and KSP store. None was planning to have pre-release available to anyone ever. The next patch is major under the hood change and dedicated test team could use some help from general public and Steam was an option that could provide it without any additional resources on Squad's part.

2nd rate customers? Really? Really? I can understand you don't like that you can't access the buggy version (check the bug tracker) that is currently out there, but the only major new feature you are missing is performance improvement. Because the majority of the changes were under the hood in the first place. Wow, you are missing a 64bit version that you probably can't even use because the mods are not ready for it yet.

This is first pre-release ever, if there are more to come I'm sure Squad will finally provide a usable patcher. Maybe If you want it, get a new Steam copy. If you don't want to buy new copy, wait it out this time. It is not like world is ending or something. Try to take an objective look at the things that are happening instead of "oh, somebody is playing with toys I can't right now, I'm so mad about it".

[steve_v]

45 minutes ago, Plusck said:

point me to examples of multi-platform 5mb code patches which did more than fix a couple of bugs on a third-party game engine without going through Steam.

If you say so, not 5MB, but bear in mind this is a 6.8GB game:

Patch 3.00   2.03 (gog-13) -> 3.00 (gog-14) 593 MB <-- major release

Patch 3.01   3.00 (gog-14) -> 3.01 (gog-15) 16 MB <-- bugfixes

Patch 3.02   3.01 (gog-15) -> 3.02 (gog-16) 35 MB <-- bugfixes

And that's a Unity game too.

If you're still not convinced, I could xdelta KSP... say 1.0 to 1.05? I'll put money on it being significantly smaller than the 5x ~600MB it would take to DL each version complete.

[John FX]

How do your tears taste?

Delicious, like unfathomable sadness should taste.

[Technical Ben]

7 hours ago, steve_v said:

Thanks SQUAD, for rewarding my faith in your little store.

Remind me not to buy games from indie stores again, clearly doing so makes me a second-rate customer.

I have a day job too, but testing and debugging new software is something I'll often find time for - if given the opportunity.

Shame, I would have liked to spin up the 1.1 prerelease (RC1?), even have a few different rigs/OSs to test on atm. Oh well.

Don't worry. I keep to the Squad Store as I can control versioning and DRM (though KSP has little/none) better than through Steam. Games AAA and without modding I'll get through Steam. Everything else I'm heading to direct purchase. May even switch to Linux at some point too...

[dr.phees]

Remember, this is prerelease beta. Just see the Steam users as a horde of cheap beta testers, put at work singularly to comfort us old-timers and give us the bug-free experience at release, that we deserve!

 

Currently I wouldn't want to play the game, just use it to make my few mods compatible.

[steve_v]

18 minutes ago, Corw said:

I can understand you don't like that you can't access the buggy version

Indeed, this is most irritating.

18 minutes ago, Corw said:

(check the bug tracker)

I have, and I'm more irritated that I cannot participate there.

18 minutes ago, Corw said:

This is first pre-release ever, if there are more to come I'm sure Squad will finally provide a usable patcher.

Key word: Finally. My point is that this should have been fixed quite some time ago, if it had been we wouldn't be having this discussion, nobody would be left out, and I would not be irritated at all.

Just as the savegame checker/updater was only implemented after a rush patch full re-download was needed to fix save breakage, the patcher will be fixed after it's brokenness has already forced the opt-in to be steam only.

Do these people do any forward-planning at all?

Edited March 30, 2016 by steve_v

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Plusck said:

...the entitled crowd...

Correction: We're the unentitled crowd.

Like, as literally as is possible. We are literally not entitled to it.

Edited March 30, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[Plusck]

30 minutes ago, steve_v said:

If your game patch does any of the above, especially "mess around with files on your OS", get out of software development right now, you're a hazard to all and sundry.

Funny how "running as administrator" is necessary to install most games, patch most games, get Steam working properly... and is commonly cited (including by PoE developers, I see) as standard recommendation to get failed patches to work. I guess virtually everyone in the software industry should be doing something else entirely.

Taking OSX as an example, about three quarters of the KSP install is contained within the KSP app package. No software should ever be allowed to mess around inside another .app package without administrator privileges. Kinda makes a patch that doesn't "mess around with files on your OS" impossible, huh?

38 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Ooh look, a patch for PoE on GOG... game size: 6.8GB, patch size: 593MB. Smooth install, system and game unharmed. I rest my case.

So a patch for a Unity game which is almost exactly the same size as the full install of KSP, which is also a Unity game, is somehow an argument in your favour?

[Columbia]

4 hours ago, steve_v said:

Now there isn't, this particular horse has already bolted. But please, stop leaving the stable door open.
SQUAD set themselves up for this, and get no sympathy from me. Sharpen those pitchforks folks.

Or give store purchasers a steam key. Anyone have a valid technical reason for this "Only if purchased before x/y/z date" BS?

Good god.

Set themselves up? Once again, you really think Squad is completely at fault just because the KSP Store users really can't have the pre-release? It is true that the patcher is completely borked and that is Squad's own fault, but other than that there's not much else.

The Steam key, as said by others, if implemented, is really going to impact Steam's profit from the game, because anyone who gets it from Steam gives it a percentage of the profits. The website of the game's company, as said as one of the users here, could easily just get a copy from the website then everyone who does so has the free option to transfer to Steam. Steam gets none of the profits.

That is why Squad and the customers planning to get it have to pay. That's understandable -- in 5thHorsman's words -- "they're not a charity." Correct me if I was wrong, but Squad can't just hand out Steam Keys like candy. 

My god. There's nothing wrong with being liquided at Squad for this because it's agreeably somewhat annoying, but there's a bigger picture to it. Do you think Squad would leave out nearly half of their userbase out of this if they had other better options?

[steve_v]

Just now, Plusck said:

Funny how "running as administrator" is necessary to install most games, patch most games, get Steam working properly... and is commonly cited (including by PoE developers, I see) as standard recommendation to get failed patches to work. I guess virtually everyone in the software industry should be doing something else entirely.

Who's this "administrator" guy anyway? Sounds like he has a lot to answer for.
A patch should only mess with files belonging to the game in question... and there's certainly a distinction between game files and OS files, at least on any system I've ever used.

3 minutes ago, Plusck said:

Kinda makes a patch that doesn't "mess around with files on your OS" impossible, huh?

Really? I've sure never needed to run any of GOGs patches as root, nor let them muck with anything outside the game directory... I'd certainly not be running a patch that buggered about with the OS.

 

5 minutes ago, Plusck said:

So a patch for a Unity game which is almost exactly the same size as the full install of KSP, which is also a Unity game, is somehow an argument in your favour?

Work the game:patch ratio dude, it's not rocket science.

[Corw]

12 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Key word: Finally. My point is that this should have been fixed quite some time ago, if it had been we wouldn't be having this discussion, nobody would be left out, and I would not be irritated at all.

I can agree with that, but until now it wasn't that big issue. You could deliver same version to all platforms at same time. Now, what it became an issue, they don't have the time or resources to dedicate to non-essential development.

Take a step back: you are HarvesteR. You have new version that needs some hammering by real players. You have 2 options:

- make a patcher that can handle several versions at the same time (release and pre-release), handle hosting and add additional part of software that can cause issues (patcher is likely to have bugs too) and delay everything until the patcher is ready

- add pre-release on stable 3rd party platform right now and continue working on the peace that matters the most, the game.

What would you do?

It is a problem they didn't had before so they have imperfect solution that works for some. Their main goal are bug reports and this way they are getting them at least from part of the community and they have achieved that main goal. Live and learn, they'll have a better solution for the next time.

Edited March 30, 2016 by Corw

[steve_v]

2 minutes ago, Columbia said:

Set themselves up? Once again, you really think Squad is completely at fault just because the KSP Store users really can't have the pre-release? It is true that the patcher is completely borked and that is Squad's own fault, but other than that there's not much else.

Set themselves up for not being able to handle frequent builds, due to a non-working patcher? Sure they have.

[Plusck]

19 minutes ago, steve_v said:

If you say so, not 5MB, but bear in mind this is a 6.8GB game:

Patch 3.00   2.03 (gog-13) -> 3.00 (gog-14) 593 MB <-- major release

Patch 3.01   3.00 (gog-14) -> 3.01 (gog-15) 16 MB <-- bugfixes

Patch 3.02   3.01 (gog-15) -> 3.02 (gog-16) 35 MB <-- bugfixes

And that's a Unity game too.

If you're still not convinced, I could xdelta KSP... say 1.0 to 1.05? I'll put money on it being significantly smaller than the 5x ~600MB it would take to DL each version complete.

If I were to take a stab in the dark, I'd say that most of that 6.8GB is eye candy. So sure, you don't need to touch any of that bloated 5.5GB when making significant changes to the game mechanics. Making significant changes costs the same as a full KSP install because KSP is very very low on eye-candy.

The first 1.0.5 download and the build 1028 download could well have been "patchified", and would probably have been euivalent to those 3.01 and 3.02 bugfixes, but at that early stage I expect it really wasn't worth the effort of coding and testing a patch.

For the rest of the updates from 1.0 to 1.0.5, I'm sure you could save a third or more of the space each time. However, that is nowhere near the 5.5GB saving that PoE makes by going the patching route. It's incomparable.

[Corw]

Just now, steve_v said:

Set themselves up for not being able to handle frequent builds, due to a non-working patcher? Sure they have.

They have set themselves up, that is for sure, but there was no malice in it.

[steve_v]

16 minutes ago, Plusck said:

The first 1.0.5 download and the build 1028 download could well have been "patchified", and would probably have been euivalent to those 3.01 and 3.02 bugfixes, but at that early stage I expect it really wasn't worth the effort of coding and testing a patch.

Well, yeah. But I ended up downloading that update (or what I thought was the update) 3 times, because the filename and version number didn't change, and we were told it was up when it wasn't. More aggro steam users don't get, because the patcher is broken.
On "coding" a patch - the tools both to create and to apply a binary patch are free. Sure there's code involved in sanity-checks, automation and a shiny wrapper, but once you have a working patcher you just feed it a new delta for each update.

If the patcher was working this would have been a trivial fix to deploy, and it wouldn't have created the "What version have you" confusion that this particular update did. Not only that, It would have been a ~100MB DL at most, not the ~1.2GB I wasted on it.

16 minutes ago, Corw said:

They have set themselves up, that is for sure, but there was no malice in it.

Indeed, I never suggested it was malice. I'm just applying Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Though in this case I'll happily substitute apathy for stupidity.

Edited March 30, 2016 by steve_v

[dr.phees]

Can we keep this civilised, please?

 

I agree with the general comments about the so called updater etc., but don't get personal. I think Squad are already discussing how to do this next time. Let's wait this out and see how they react.

Edited March 30, 2016 by dr.phees
is -> are

[John FX]

32 minutes ago, Columbia said:

Good god.

Set themselves up? Once again, you really think Squad is completely at fault just because the KSP Store users really can't have the pre-release? It is true that the patcher is completely borked and that is Squad's own fault, but other than that there's not much else.

The Steam key, as said by others, if implemented, is really going to impact Steam's profit from the game, because anyone who gets it from Steam gives it a percentage of the profits. The website of the game's company, as said as one of the users here, could easily just get a copy from the website then everyone who does so has the free option to transfer to Steam. Steam gets none of the profits.

That is why Squad and the customers planning to get it have to pay. That's understandable -- in 5thHorsman's words -- "they're not a charity." Correct me if I was wrong, but Squad can't just hand out Steam Keys like candy. 

My god. There's nothing wrong with being liquided at Squad for this because it's agreeably somewhat annoying, but there's a bigger picture to it. Do you think Squad would leave out nearly half of their userbase out of this if they had other better options?

Not only that but SQUAD have said they will work towards everyone having early access in the future so it`s only this one time anyway.

EDIT :

9 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Indeed, I never suggested it was malice. I'm just applying Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Though in this case I'll happily substitute apathy for stupidity.

 

There is an extension to that. "Never attribute to stupidity or malice that which can be adequately explained by bandwidth problems"

Edited March 30, 2016 by John FX

[steve_v]

35 minutes ago, Columbia said:

The Steam key, as said by others, if implemented, is really going to impact Steam's profit from the game, because anyone who gets it from Steam gives it a percentage of the profits.

Why, pray tell, should I miss out so steam can make more money out of this? What exactly does steam have to do with my purchase from the KSP store... that in no way involved steam?

Edited March 30, 2016 by steve_v

[Stoney3K]

2 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Why, pray tell, should I miss out so steam can make more money out of this? What exactly does steam have to do with my purchase from the KSP store... that in no way involved steam?

In a different perspective:

Do you pay the EXACT same amount, dollar for dollar, for the game in the KSP store as you do from Steam?

If not, then the Steam users paid extra for it to compensate for Steam's profit on the game, and this extra money gives them access to perks like the 1.1 beta.

I suspect Squad could strike a deal with users from their own store to pay the difference and get a Steam key, so Steam can earn their share instead of giving away the keys for free.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

1 minute ago, steve_v said:

Why, pray tell, should I miss out so steam can make more money out of this? What exactly does steam have to do with my purchase from the KSP store... that in no way involved steam?

Nothing, they have nothing to do with your purchase, which is why you won't be getting a steam key for free.

So anything that happens on Steam related to KSP, such as early patch access won't have anything to do with you either.

I didn't buy KSP through Steam but I don't have a problem with Steam, they provide a service, and they expect to get paid.

[Superfluous J]

3 minutes ago, Stoney3K said:

Do you pay the EXACT same amount, dollar for dollar, for the game in the KSP store as you do from Steam?

No. With all the Steam Sales, I would assume I paid more. It's been years though and I don't have data on what the game cost on Steam when I bought it from the store.

3 minutes ago, Stoney3K said:

If not, then the Steam users paid extra for it to compensate for Steam's profit on the game, and this extra money gives them access to perks like the 1.1 beta.

Unless they paid less, which they likely did. So they paid less, gave Squad (even) less money, and are getting a benefit for it.

5 minutes ago, Stoney3K said:

I suspect Squad could strike a deal with users from their own store to pay the difference and get a Steam key, so Steam can earn their share instead of giving away the keys for free.

Tell you what, while I would appreciate the check Squad can keep the difference and just give me the key. It's a win-win!

[Rocket In My Pocket]

1 minute ago, 5thHorseman said:

No. With all the Steam Sales, I would assume I paid more. It's been years though and I don't have data on what the game cost on Steam when I bought it from the store.

Unless they paid less, which they likely did. So they paid less, gave Squad (even) less money, and are getting a benefit for it.

Steam price: 39.99$

KSP store price: 40.00$

Wow...what a deal!

[dr.phees]

By the way: In the KSP store I have a "transfer purchase" button next to the game in "my account", which seemingly allows me to transfer the license to steam.

Doesn't everyone have that?

[Starhawk]

Just now, dr.phees said:

By the way: In the KSP store I have a "transfer purchase" button next to the game in "my account", which seemingly allows me to transfer the license to steam.

Doesn't everyone have that?

No.  Only if you purchased before the Steam option was available as far as I know.

Happy landings!