Demo VS Final Product

[Psychokiller1888]

Hi all!

I will start by saying that I'm new here and on Kerbal. What an awesome game

Please don't take what is  following badly, but if I'm here it's by luck I must say...

I downloaded a while ago the demo of the awesome game. Well, I played it for an hour and was totally disapointed.... So I dropped the idea of buying it. It's only yesterday, after seeing some nice conversations on a Skype group I'm in, that it somehow woke me up and that I decided  to give it a try again. Went Youtube, read a little about it, took a look at the reviews etc etc. I decided to go forit and bought it on Steam. And I have to say I don't regret a cent I invested into that game! It's awesome guys!

So my story might reflect other user s stories, but maybe they won'tgo as farasbuy the game. The demo is abit outdated and based on an old version? You should, if you have time, invest a bit on updating it, that's all for you good

 

Sincerly, Psycho

[Alshain]

The demo is outdated but not enough that it should matter.  As I recall, the demo was updated to v1.0 (I think so anyway), so it shouldn't be that far off from the current release, except it's on Unity 4 and can be sluggish.  I'm sure they don't want to update it to 1.1, it's kinda the worst version we've seen because they changed the entire game engine and now they have to clean it up.

The game is certainly not one I would recommend buying right away.  Some people will love it and others will hate it.  That's it's nature.  The demo of this game is very important IMO (as are the Youtubers and Streamers) in making the decision to buy.

Edited August 5, 2016 by Alshain

[pandaman]

Hi, and welcome.

As @Alshain said above, the demo isn't far behind the current release version.  Was it the latest demo you tried?

 

[Scientia1423]

I would say the demo be atleast 3-5 versions behind (Eg, 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, etc) however have some features removed if the devs have any spare time.

[Alshain]

58 minutes ago, Scientia1423 said:

I would say the demo be atleast 3-5 versions behind (Eg, 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, etc) however have some features removed if the devs have any spare time.

Those aren't versions.  They are patches.  1.0.5 could be considered a version, KSP's numbering system has never been very intelligent, however 1.0.5 mostly added parts that would be beyond the demo anyway .  That would make it at most 2 versions behind, 1.0 to 1.0.5 to 1.1.0  (1.1.1, 1.1.2, and 1.1.3 are all patches) but if you eliminate 1.0.5 for the above reason, it's really only 1 versions.

Edited August 8, 2016 by Alshain

[Scientia1423]

10 hours ago, Alshain said:

Those aren't versions.  They are patches.  1.0.5 could be considered a version, KSP's numbering system has never been very intelligent, however 1.0.5 mostly added parts that would be beyond the demo anyway .  That would make it at most 2 versions behind, 1.0 to 1.0.5 to 1.1.0  (1.1.1, 1.1.2, and 1.1.3 are all patches) but if you eliminate 1.0.5 for the above reason, it's really only 1 versions.

If 1.0.5 was counted as a version, then KSP would be at least in the 0.24/0.25 range. Then again, the development of 1.1 has probably reduced it's popularity since it's nearly a year they haven't updated, and the demo is usually done in spare time (and as far as I know, the demo is 0.18.3) which would mean they probably won't have time to release the demo because of a desperate audience.(Those people who say 'whens it out, when it's out')

I would suggest KSP to use the 'trial' demo, where you'll have 15 days to play until the game is locked from further playing so people will definitely think about buying the game. There is a fail-safe of course if hackers do their thing, the code will tell the game to permanently delete Gamedata & non launcher stuff in KSP_Data(64x) so hackers and Jack sparrow will have to donate the loot to squad for the treasure.

The other method (what Squad is doing now) seems to be time-consuming as in my opinion, they have to delete stuff from the game, then sacrifice Kerbals and machines to the Kraken then blow up the Kraken with a patch. I don't know what they're thinking but if they stick to this method, it is best they delete what they want, then ask the community to help bug-track and maybe incorporate modders to fix these bugs and send their mods to Squad to see what they think. This worked with 1.1 as the community helped KSP be released 8 days before the anniversary of 1.0 which doesn't seem like much, but it's a lot.

[Psychokiller1888]

I didn't want to start a huge thing, just dropping my thoughts. I bought the game and it's awesome. I do think that the above answer is correct, including the community in bug tracking is a good idea as well as a locked game as demo

[Alshain]

23 minutes ago, Scientia1423 said:

If 1.0.5 was counted as a version, then KSP would be at least in the 0.24/0.25 range. Then again, the development of 1.1 has probably reduced it's popularity since it's nearly a year they haven't updated, and the demo is usually done in spare time (and as far as I know, the demo is 0.18.3) which would mean they probably won't have time to release the demo because of a desperate audience.(Those people who say 'whens it out, when it's out')

I would suggest KSP to use the 'trial' demo, where you'll have 15 days to play until the game is locked from further playing so people will definitely think about buying the game. There is a fail-safe of course if hackers do their thing, the code will tell the game to permanently delete Gamedata & non launcher stuff in KSP_Data(64x) so hackers and Jack sparrow will have to donate the loot to squad for the treasure.

The other method (what Squad is doing now) seems to be time-consuming as in my opinion, they have to delete stuff from the game, then sacrifice Kerbals and machines to the Kraken then blow up the Kraken with a patch. I don't know what they're thinking but if they stick to this method, it is best they delete what they want, then ask the community to help bug-track and maybe incorporate modders to fix these bugs and send their mods to Squad to see what they think. This worked with 1.1 as the community helped KSP be released 8 days before the anniversary of 1.0 which doesn't seem like much, but it's a lot.

I don't understand your logic in the first sentence, but the demo is definitely 1.0, not 0.18.  I installed it to find out.  15 days to play doesn't work on a game that doesn't leave any trace behind when uninstalled.  KSP is DRM free, it doesn't write to the system registry (or other OS equivalent) so all they would have to do is uninstall it and reinstall it and then you have 15 more days to play.  Copy out your save files first and why buy the game at all?

The way they are doing the demo now with a fully locked down executable that doesn't even include all the part files is the best way.

As for the 1.1 testing, it clearly didn't work as well as they had hoped as indicated by the worst release we have seen.  I'm not sure if we will really ever see them try that again after the 1.1 disaster, but hey I guess anything could happen.

Edited August 9, 2016 by Alshain

[Scientia1423]

1 minute ago, Alshain said:

the demo is definitely 1.0, not 0.18.

Huh, I checked around the forums and they said it's still 0.18. 

2 minutes ago, Alshain said:

15 days to play doesn't work on a game that doesn't leave any trace behind when uninstalled.  KSP is DRM free, it doesn't write to the system registry

Oh, I thought it would write to the registry. Ah well.

But like I said, with what their doing now, they should consider the community to help them search and destroy bugs for the demo (but then again, it's a demo. Why bother? I'm really confused...)

[Alshain]

11 hours ago, Scientia1423 said:

Huh, I checked around the forums and they said it's still 0.18. 

Oh, I thought it would write to the registry. Ah well.

But like I said, with what their doing now, they should consider the community to help them search and destroy bugs for the demo (but then again, it's a demo. Why bother? I'm really confused...)

I think you are confused.  The demo is based on the full game, it uses mostly the same code.  Very few bugs would be introduced just from adding demo restrictions.  Bug fixes to the full game would affect the demo, assuming the bug affected something available in the demo, and assuming they updated the demo after fixing that bug.  There isn't really much need for a lot of specialized testing on the demo.

[The_Rocketeer]

@Psychokiller1888 welcome to the forums. Don't take the intellectual pugilism as a reflection on your post, it's pretty common round here for particular people to pull the proverbial legs off each others' posts.

As for the demo, how long ago was it that you tried it? If we're talking a year or more, the demo has probably already seen a major overhaul since then. If it's more recent, I guess it's also possible that you got an outdated demo version from somewhere. On the other hand, maybe you're right - I haven't played the KSP demo since 2013!

Anyhow, you're among fellows here in that we all love KSP too. Hope to see you posting elsewhere in the community soon - if u have questions, there are many great sages of Kerbal knowledge hereabouts, not to mention the devs themselves who grace our threads from time to time.

[pandaman]

@Psychokiller1888@Alshain

Ignore this _  the stupid text editor thingummy wont let me edit the user names on my tablet. And I can't delete the post.

(see my sig below)

Edited August 9, 2016 by pandaman
Stupid forum text editor won't let me delete or edit names or the message

[pandaman]

OK, let's try again.....

@Psychokiller1888, as @The Rocketeer oh this is getting silly now I can't put the _ in @The_Rocketeer   -. that's better. (Note to self - stop being such a fat fingered Muppet and type carefully)

Right, as I was about to say, the guy who just posted above me sums it up nicely, the community on these forums is awesome, there will always be someone who can, and will, help if you have any questions so never be afraid to ask.  Naturally we get the odd heated disagreement, but the moderators are a good bunch and point us in the right direction when needed.  Enjoy KSP as we all do, and enjoy joining in with us all on here too.

@Alshain and the other guy I just mentioned are right about the demo version, if you have one before 1.0 then you definitely don't have the most recent.

...And I'll stop writing now in case I screw it up again.

[Scientia1423]

3 hours ago, Alshain said:

I think you are confused.  The demo is based on the full game, it uses mostly the same code.  Very few bugs would be introduced just from adding demo restrictions.  Bug fixes to the full game would affect the demo, assuming the bug affected something available in the demo, and assuming they updated the demo after fixing that bug.  There isn't really much need for a lot of specialized testing on the demo.

Yep, I'm definitely confused, and I've wasted my time commenting here as I made an invalid point.

I'd thought deleting things from stock would ruin the game. Maybe I'll review the demo and take a look at the difference...

[ZooNamedGames]

18 minutes ago, Scientia1423 said:

Yep, I'm definitely confused, and I've wasted my time commenting here as I made an invalid point.

I'd thought deleting things from stock would ruin the game. Maybe I'll review the demo and take a look at the difference...

They only delete things that are outside of the base concept of the game (building rockets). Planes, rovers, and other such craft parts are removed as they are considered part of the larger game. So the game itself is still perfectly fine and it gives the player a fair demonstration of what the game is and how it works.

Many will initially disagree with this comment, but let me fully explain it. I feel the demo would fair better if updated to 1.1, as all the frequent bugs are experienced outside of standard rocket building (especially beyond the features of the demo). So it would be a better demonstration of what it can do, especially on more powerful machines, not to mentioned the updated UI.

As to what version the demo is, it's 1.0 at a minimum. With the full release of KSP, they made sure to tie up loose and old ends like the demo. Now it's running (decently) on par with the full game. It was, for a long time left at .18, but it is no longer.

[Alshain]

@ZooNamedGames  Except 1.2 is probably nearing completion now.  Why update it to 1.1 at this point.  Best educated guess (based on past experience not including 1.1) is we should see it in a few weeks at most..  Unity 5.4 was finally released, so maybe a bit longer, but upgrading minor unity versions shouldn't take that long.

Edited August 9, 2016 by Alshain

[ZooNamedGames]

2 minutes ago, Alshain said:

@ZooNamedGames  Except 1.2 is probably nearing completion now.  Why update it to 1.1 at this point.  Best educated guess (based on past experience not including 1.1) is we should see it in a few weeks at most..  Unity 5.4 was finally released, so maybe a bit longer, but upgrading minor unity versions shouldn't take that long.

Fair point- they will likely upgrade the demo straight to 1.2.

[pandaman]

Yes, with 1.2 seemingly heading towards the 'SOON tm' barrier quite quickly now, and there being numerous changes and additions with it, it would make a lot of sense to create an updated demo for it.

[Scientia1423]

 

On 8/10/2016 at 0:44 PM, pandaman said:

Yes, with 1.2 seemingly heading towards the 'SOON tm' barrier quite quickly now, and there being numerous changes and additions with it, it would make a lot of sense to create an updated demo for it.

Well, I'll be hyped.