Let's make a kickstarter to buy the KSP source-code

[p1t1o]

What on earth makes anyone think that Squad would have any interest in selling their source code? Yeah it happens, but it is exceedingly rare.

 

[cfds]

48 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

What on earth makes anyone think that Squad would have any interest in selling their source code? Yeah it happens, but it is exceedingly rare.

 

Especially since they have entered the "milk it dry" phase where every sold copy is nearly entirely profit...

[Rath]

WHO SAID THAT KSP IS DYING!  

---

How about this: until the devs say explicitly that they are discontinuing development, the game IS NOT DEAD.

Why do these threads always seem to pop up in groups?

I saw KSP is DEAD ERMYGHERD!!!11!! Threads in .25.

Edited December 13, 2016 by Rath

[Ser]

Yeah, right. No one could perform better than a developer that isn't paid.

Let's see how the community performs: how much time passed since KSP 1.2.0 release to KER update? FAR? Real fuels? Realism overhaul? A.S.E.T.? I don't in any way mean any reproach to the authors of those mods, and I can confess that I have my own mod that I only promise to update since 1.1.2. Just imagine: there are mods that community surely would want to be integrated to the open sourced KSP but there's only one person per some of such mods in the whole world that is able to maintain them. And this person doesn't owe anything to anyone. So making KSP open sourced means that there'll be no one to address any complaints. Is community ready for that?  

There's an example of a project with a source code obtained by community and continued development - the BMS Falcon 4.0. Series started in 1984, official release of subject version was in 1998, first mod-based community release was in 2005 and it is maintained up to the present day. It's still an epic and realistic game. So realistic that it gets boring time to time. Do you know how often it is updated? Its graphics and physics still feel like 2005, GUI... like 1984 1998. 

Let's return to KSP. If Squad performs so badly as you say, why would you need their source code? May be a better approach is to make your own open sourced game about space program? Choose the right engine, make right decisions, treat community right. But I'm sure that it would take more involvement than 12 hours per day and your wife yelling "What the hell are you doing sitting on your cheeks whole day? Where are the money to buy food and pay bills?"  So it would not be free anymore. Then you'll need employees and choose a management strategy. And then gradually you'll get your loving community yelling "Why do you do all this crap? Give us moar parts! Or give us the source code and get off, we'll make everything by ourselves."

So, I suppose, the only possibility that Squad would give away the source codes is the death of KSP as a commercial project, which is imminent if no miracle happens to Unity or the game doesn't migrate to another, more advanced, capable and expensive engine, and that would be the birth of KSP 2 (which we would have to pay for once again). As for communities, as the practice shows, they are basically capable to maintain their modifications based on existing engine, not so intensively and reliably as we all would want. Otherwise it is more feasible to create your own game. And if you want it to be good enough then it would cost enough. No miracles happen.

Edited December 13, 2016 by Ser

[NoMrBond]

Keen Software House had success putting the whole codebase for Space Engineers up on GitHub and accepting patches (pull requests) from the community, this didn't happen immediately or fully, but it did eventually become full open access (not open source).  Maybe Squad could talk to Keen and see how's it working for them, and if they could gain any similar advantages?

[DoctorDavinci]

In order to purchase something (in this case the KSP code), that something must be for sale (which the KSP code is not)

End of discussion 

[ErgionThorn]

3 hours ago, DoctorDavinci said:

End of discussion

maybe for you <MODERATOR REDACTED>

4 hours ago, NoMrBond said:

Keen Software House had success putting the whole codebase for Space Engineers up on GitHub

exactly my first thought when i saw the title. you shouldnt have to buy it. for all the naysayers, opening up the gamecode wouldnt necessarily mean any change at all. the game should be still squad's property, they should be the only ones to edit and release the STOCK game, but as with SE it could give a better insight for the modders who could bring in even better and stronger mods, give advice on fixing issues or might even give complete solutions.

On 12/10/2016 at 3:28 AM, 5thHorseman said:

This proposition begs the question: Would making KSP open source cause it to be more quickly developed in a good direction?

 i have a better question: Would making KSP open source cause it to be any worse then it is? looking at the commitment of a great modding community I can hardly imagine such thing...

Edited December 14, 2016 by Frybert

[Superfluous J]

9 minutes ago, ErgionThorn said:

Would making KSP open source cause it to be any worse then it is?

The argument to change something should never be made with "It probably won't make anything worse." Changing the status quo needs a GOOD reason, and I don't see it for this.

If you think all the modders will band together in some glorious team of happiness and togetherness and bang out the best game ever in a single update - or at all - then you are far more optimistic than I. I see maybe a half dozen modders teaming up, all of the rest (myself included) doing nothing at all, and those that team up giving it a try and then abandoning the project due to infighting, realizing that they need to work their real jobs instead, or both.

No, it's far better to leave this in the hands of professionals with a management structure and financial motivations.

EDIT: To directly answer your question: Yes. I do think it would be worse than it is.

Edited December 13, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[ErgionThorn]

1 minute ago, 5thHorseman said:

The argument to change something should never be made with "It probably won't make anything worse." Changing the status quo needs a GOOD reason, and I don't see it for this.

If you think all the modders will band together in some glorious team of happiness and togetherness and bang out the best game ever in a single update - or at all - then you are far more optimistic than I. I see maybe a half dozen modders teaming up, all of the rest (myself included) doing nothing at all, and those that team up giving it a try and then abandoning the project due to infighting, realizing that they need to work their real jobs instead, or both.

No, it's far better to leave this in the hands of professionals with a management structure and financial motivations.

lol. again: 

10 minutes ago, ErgionThorn said:

opening up the gamecode wouldnt necessarily mean any change at all. the game should be still squad's property, they should be the only ones to edit and release the STOCK game, but as with SE it could give a better insight for the modders who could bring in even better and stronger mods, give advice on fixing issues or might even give complete solutions

why would the modders band together in a glorious team? the status of the game wouldnt even change at all, it would just give access to the public to look into the base code now we can only imagine how it works...

[Superfluous J]

Just now, ErgionThorn said:

it would just give access to the public to look into the base code now we can only imagine how it works...

Oh, I apologize. I was arguing against buying the source code from Squad and handing it to modders hoping they will magically make things better, which is what the OP is about. I missed this "just make it open source" spur.

Sure it'd benefit us if it was open source. Would it benefit Squad? I don't know. That's up to them.

[ErgionThorn]

2 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Oh, I apologize. I was arguing against buying the source code from Squad and handing it to modders hoping they will magically make things better, which is what the OP is about. I missed this "just make it open source" spur.

Sure it'd benefit us if it was open source. Would it benefit Squad? I don't know. That's up to them.

ahh, i see, to be honest, i read OP-s post rather like offering money to make it open source, i dont think he actually want to take the entire development off the hands of squad though i might be wrong

[Frybert]

Some posts have been removed and/or edited.

[Arugela]

If it makes the product better and gets them more resources for less it is better for squad. The point of open source is full blown resources and use of time/energy. They would still be selling it and it would be done with more resources/minds so it is of greater quality. Hence better for squad.

[Superfluous J]

22 minutes ago, Arugela said:

If it makes the product better and gets them more resources for less it is better for squad. The point of open source is full blown resources and use of time/energy. They would still be selling it and it would be done with more resources/minds so it is of greater quality. Hence better for squad.

And then 500 clones of KSP would show up on Steam, using their source code legally. Which is worse for Squad.

Some of those would be better than KSP, and we'd benefit from that. But Squad wouldn't and they think about that when they consider opening up their source code.

[Arugela]

Open source doesn't mean they can't license it so others can't sell it... It would be illegal to copy it directly. And if they needed to look at it in that matter to make the game they are not going to do that well. I doubt anything in their code is beyond what is already known and used elsewhere.

[p1t1o]

Point of note: KSP has a rather uniquely (IMO) varied fanbase, there are multiple large groups of players that play the game completely differently from one another, they essentially want different things from the game.

This would be a problem I think, for the kind of open programs being discussed. Too many cooks.

And being in the "vanilla-playstyle-but-heavily-modded" group, I would fear for the available modlist as various updates fly around. I should say I would fear more than I do already.

[ErgionThorn]

12 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

And then 500 clones of KSP would show up on Steam, using their source code legally. Which is worse for Squad.

Some of those would be better than KSP, and we'd benefit from that. But Squad wouldn't and they think about that when they consider opening up their source code.

there are no 500 clones of spaceengineers either... it was actually you stating that this is a big job and ppl have better things to do. dont even mention that giving out the codes under a licence doesnt mean others have the right to release it and im sure no distributor would ever sell its modified copies... you are worrying too much.

[Superfluous J]

28 minutes ago, ErgionThorn said:

there are no 500 clones of spaceengineers either... it was actually you stating that this is a big job and ppl have better things to do. dont even mention that giving out the codes under a licence doesnt mean others have the right to release it and im sure no distributor would ever sell its modified copies... you are worrying too much.

It's a big job and nobody will want to do it for free. But if they can do it for money?

And one of the reasons there aren't 500 clones of SE is because SE is Minecraft in Space. There are already 500 Minecraft clones and a lot of those are already set in space.

Edited December 14, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[ErgionThorn]

3 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

It's a big job and nobody will want to do it for free. But if they can do it for money?

And one of the reasons there aren't 500 clones of SE is because SE is Minecraft in Space. There are already 500 Minecraft clones and a lot of those are already set in space.

nope, there are no 500 clones because they have no mean of selling it. no official channel will ever take it on and on illegal channels nobody pays for it... its so easy to decompile the game even right now, its just illegal and most would not even take the time. ppl are not as bad as you think they are.

Edited December 14, 2016 by ErgionThorn

[sarbian]

On 13/12/2016 at 1:51 PM, Ser said:

which is imminent if no miracle happens to Unity or the game doesn't migrate to another, more advanced, capable and expensive engine,

Ah, an other amazing argument against Unity. Oh wait, you did not explain what is the problem with Unity. Please enlighten us on the advantage of those expensive engine (Btw, Unreal and CryEngine are free).

[Ser]

45 minutes ago, sarbian said:

Ah, an other amazing argument against Unity. Oh wait, you did not explain what is the problem with Unity. Please enlighten us on the advantage of those expensive engine (Btw, Unreal and CryEngine are free).

Advantage of those expensive engines (e.g. self-written) is that such an engine might be optimised for KSP needs. I mean the approach used for GTA V, Metal Gear Solid V, Elite: Dangerous, with quite impressive visuals and fair performance at the same time.

Problem with Unity is that it's buggy like hell. Messing with sounds time to time I run into various bugs in the engine's features I have to work around by hands every god damn release. And... when Unity finally had a 64-bit capable release? I have a feeling that CryEngine had it much earlier. All that just gives impression that Unity isn't quite out of beta yet.

From a very old but interesting thread:

2/17/2014 at 4:26 PM, Arran said:

From the Developer of FortressCraft :

Quote

Unity is great at what it does well. But as a developer, I cuss at Unity regularly. One of my favourite sayings has become '...because unity.'

If you want some tech talk:

We're using unity only for the bits we have to: Rendering the world, processing user input, playing sounds, limited phyics engine interaction. But we realised pretty early on that Unity just could not cope with everything we needed for FC.

 

[sarbian]

30 minutes ago, Ser said:

Advantage of those expensive engines (e.g. self-written) is that such an engine might be optimised for KSP needs

If KSP used a self written engine we would not have half the features the game currently have. Writing an engine take a colossal amount of time and those AAA games uses the same engine for multiples games in their studio.

32 minutes ago, Ser said:

Unity is great at what it does well. But as a developer, I cuss at Unity regularly. One of my favourite sayings has become '...because unity.'

You could say the same with most Engine. I cursed against Unity more than few time myself. That does not make it a terrible engine. And a quote about a game made in 2010 is hardly relevant to current state of Unity. The quality really got higher since the last few release imho.

Yes, they got 64bit stable late. That is a side effect of their priorities than had them working on mobile features first. It seems it changed in the last few years, after they changed the engine pricing.

 

As for your sound problem my guess is that as a modder there are thing that are just way harder to do than when you have the whole game sources and can just add the components you need.

[Ser]

2 hours ago, sarbian said:

Writing an engine take a colossal amount of time and those AAA games uses the same engine for multiples games in their studio.

Nothing to say, that's true. But something really needs to be done. In the current state KSP gets obsolete in visuals and physics. Yes, there are improvements since 1.0 but that was just a step forward from 2011 level that, needless to say, should be done at least a couple of years ago. In 2016 you can't impress anyone with cloudless planets, basic AA, texture-made tile grass and terrain made of flat planes. Attempt to improve visuals (scatterer, EVE) hits FPS really hard, so there's an obvious limit they could reach. Squad's point that the game should not be overloaded to relax hardware requirements - what are they targetting? I've demonstrated that the game can barely run on low-end laptops. Cellphones? I really doubt. For a game getting obsolete it will get harder and harder to attract new players. What it still has is a brilliant idea. But one day someone would just create a game with the same idea + impressive visuals + interesting campaign out of the box. It's better for Squad if it were them who would do this.

2 hours ago, sarbian said:

Yes, they got 64bit stable late. That is a side effect of their priorities than had them working on mobile features first.

That. That could just leave Unity in the rear of a train in PC world (I don't speak about consoles, as we all hate 'em ).

2 hours ago, sarbian said:

As for your sound problem my guess is that as a modder there are thing that are just way harder to do than when you have the whole game sources and can just add the components you need.

No, just basic engine functions, nothing special. Unity 4 had a trouble with determinig if a sound is playing, so I had to implement my own unreliable flag logic. Then, in Unity 5, they've proudly included in their release notes that they've fixed that. Christ! What that little thing deserved was a quick fix, not a mention in the major update's release notes. But that update killed the AudioLowPassFilter, it just stopped working. Now, with the next Unity version, I experience troubles with their new AudioMixerGroups feature: seems like assigning a playing audio source to an AudioMixerGroup with filter on it makes a chunk of data to be played in both channels, doubling the volume for a fraction of second and causing an annoying clipped click. A ritual dance required again.

Edited December 19, 2016 by Ser

[sarbian]

1 minute ago, Ser said:

In the current state KSP gets obsolete in visuals and physics.

Sorry but this has little to do with the engine choice. Unity is perfectly capable to render AAA level graphics. You just have to look at something like the Adam demo to see it (the asset are also available)

[Spacetraindriver]

You do realize that releasing the source code for a healthy and alive game means other "devs" can use it to make a "new game" without not much work right? Said games have the possibility of getting more attention due to it being "new" therefore hurting the original. You'll need TRUSTED connections to Squad in order to have even the SLIGHTEST chance of getting a minuscule part of the source code.