Development Update for Consoles!

[LegendaryAce]

Just now, Mako said:

The thing is Squad no longer owns or controls KSP. Squad is still currently handling development, but Squad sold ownership of KSP to Take-Two Interactive. I'd have to imagine they're the ones who actually make decisions on what work is or isn't done from here on out.

At this point Squad is an independent, third-party development team that for the time being is hired by Take-Two to work on KSP. There is nothing to suggest that will change, but presumably Take-Two could stop development (of any version) or switch development teams at any time with or without Squad's permission.

I find in interesting that Squad is now a software development team that owns no products and currently consists of people who, since being hired by Squad, have only released updates for a product made by former employees. I think Squad shows some promise, but I'm very curious to see what comes after console and PC updates and Take-Two's first expansion to KSP. (I suppose that's a topic for a different thread.)

Eh, I still support my previous statement. Take-Two in my opinion is no better than Rockstar. I used to be a huge fan of them, especially in the Bioshock days. But money and greed took over, and freemium games run rampant in T2's repertoire. So again, if we don't get continued updates, I'll add T2 to that list of devs and publishers to avoid.

[Finno12307]

Day 278987...

Status update, console update still coming soon, last i heard it was early this year but its now nearing October. 

[AndyChilly]

Whats the general consensus on current saves...do you think we will lose the current saves as the game is being started from scratch...id like to keep my save if possible but its a sacrifice i would make for a working game.

[Terwin]

1 hour ago, AndyChilly said:

Whats the general consensus on current saves...do you think we will lose the current saves as the game is being started from scratch...id like to keep my save if possible but its a sacrifice i would make for a working game.

Since 1.0(which I believe the original port was based on) SQUAD has been careful to ensure backwards compatibility for older save games on newer KSP versions.

While this does not guarantee backwards compatibility on consoles, I would be surprised if the new console release could not load games from the previous console release.

Of course if the upgrade process needs to remove all existing files for some reason, that could include old save games, so be sure to back them up(if you can) before upgrading, just in case. 

[OrganizedChaos]

3 hours ago, AndyChilly said:

Whats the general consensus on current saves...do you think we will lose the current saves as the game is being started from scratch...id like to keep my save if possible but its a sacrifice i would make for a working game.

I honestly wouldn't not mind either way.  Hopefully we will find out soon enough.  It sounds like they have ironed out most of the bugs and are concentrating on getting the controls perfected.  Doesn't sound like there is much left for them to do to get it ready.   At least that is my impression, but it has seemed that way before and that was months ago so I'm not holding my breath.  Just trying to be optimistic.

[AndyChilly]

Do we expect them to do something about the frame rate drop too? when there is too much going on? I mean i know there would still be a limit to how  much you can have loaded before the frame rate drops but at the moment the tiniest space stations struggle to keep up.

[Deddly]

@AndyChilly I don't have time to dig up the reference now, but they have said that performance is improved in the new version. It has improved enough for them to up the visual quality (e.g. real shadows).

[LegendaryAce]

42 minutes ago, AndyChilly said:

Do we expect them to do something about the frame rate drop too? when there is too much going on? I mean i know there would still be a limit to how  much you can have loaded before the frame rate drops but at the moment the tiniest space stations struggle to keep up.

I know what you mean. When you start the game and all you have is a Mark I Capsule and a Flea booster, the game runs at a beautiful 60fps. But launch more than 3 or 4 satellites, and you'll be lucky if you get 15fps.

I'm assuming (and hoping) they'll fix this, as I personally like using SSTO and air launched craft, since they're way more intuitive on the build.

[Mako]

Speaking of performance, I'm curious whether KSP will support/utilize the upgraded console versions. Will KSP run better on a PS4 Pro? How about the upcoming Xbox One X?

I may have missed some news, but I don't recall any mention of Squad/Blitworks working on support for those console versions. That being said, I don't really know if it takes much work at all for a dev to utilize the upgraded hardware of those newer versions. Maybe it's quick and easy and/or maybe they're going to take care of that after bugs get fixed and control schemes get finalized so it just hasn't been mentioned yet.

[LegendaryAce]

Just now, Mako said:

Speaking of performance, I'm curious whether KSP will support/utilize the upgraded console versions. Will KSP run better on a PS4 Pro? How about the upcoming Xbox One X?

I may have missed some news, but I don't recall any mention of Squad/Blitworks working on support for those console versions. That being said, I don't really know if it takes much work at all for a dev to utilize the upgraded hardware of those newer versions. Maybe it's quick and easy and/or maybe they're going to take care of that after bugs get fixed and control schemes get finalized so it just hasn't been mentioned yet.

I would assume that it would be supported by default, since the underlying hardware is for the most part the same. I wouldn't count on 4K support though. And as for performance, that's not a console issue, it's a game issue. You could have 256GB of RAM (supercomputer levels), but if the game is still buggy, it's gonna lag.

[Mako]

Just now, LegendaryAce said:

You could have 256GB of RAM (supercomputer levels), but if the game is still buggy, it's gonna lag.

Performance of KSP, however, is almost entirely limited to speed of the CPU. So bugs or no bugs, a faster processor will handle all the physics calculations more quickly which generally results in a higher framerate. I can see the processor being the bottleneck even more on consoles than PC, since you can better optimize the graphics performance when you know exactly what graphics hardware you're running on. On PC, performance is can be limited on your graphics hardware if that hardware is older or lower spec.

I know work has to be done for 4k and HDR, but on the performance side of things do games just run better because the hardware is more powerful? Do the devs have to do any work for that to happen? I don't have any of the consoles, so I don't have any experience with the software or the hardware. I've been curious how all that has worked out so far.

[LegendaryAce]

23 minutes ago, Mako said:

I know work has to be done for 4k and HDR, but on the performance side of things do games just run better because the hardware is more powerful? Do the devs have to do any work for that to happen? I don't have any of the consoles, so I don't have any experience with the software or the hardware. I've been curious how all that has worked out so far.

I still believe that it depends on the game, rather than the system. Back on Xbox 360, I played Halo Reach incessantly, and the game ran at a stable 30fps. 

Now that I play it on Xbox One, I haven't seen any appreciable gain in the graphics or framerate, even though the Xbox One has a way better processor. I've even tried it on an Xbox One S, and there was still no difference.

[Ineedaweapon]

I'm no computer expert or anything, but from what I've read about the xbox one x so far, they're saying that all older xbox games will run smoother, have better framerate and shorter loading times on the new console.  Supposedly it will eliminate any jagged egdes on things, have better colours and just generally look slightly more nice than on a standard xbox.  To make full use of the extra power the games require extra input from the developer to make it a 'xbox one x enhanced' title.  That will involve things like 4k and HDR etc.

1 minute ago, LegendaryAce said:

I still believe that it depends on the game, rather than the system. Back on Xbox 360, I played Halo Reach incessantly, and the game ran at a stable 30fps. 

Now that I play it on Xbox One, I haven't seen any appreciable gain in the graphics or framerate, even though the Xbox One has a way better processor. I've even tried it on an Xbox One S, and there was still no difference.

I believe that 360 games run on some kind of emulator, so that could be why they dont run any better on more powerful hardware.  In fact, I'm pretty sure some games run worse, I remember reading about it somewhere.  I could be wrong though.

[LegendaryAce]

9 minutes ago, Ineedaweapon said:

Supposedly it will eliminate any jagged egdes on things, have better colours and just generally look slightly more nice than on a standard xbox

Truthfully, I'm not sure that justifies the $499 price tag. Just for 4K gaming, slightly better visuals, and improved performance. 

I already spent $500 on a Forza 6 Xbox One, so another $500 is a lot to ask for when I'm not getting too much more.

[Curveball Anders]

Unless I'm misinformed then KSP on Consoles runs under Unity just as it does on Win/Mac/Linux.

Which might restrict the number of cool new features that KSP can use.

The performance of W/M/L-KSP right now is very depending on raw single core CPU performance, with some help from extra cores and some help from powerful GPU.

[OrganizedChaos]

51 minutes ago, LegendaryAce said:

Truthfully, I'm not sure that justifies the $499 price tag. Just for 4K gaming, slightly better visuals, and improved performance. 

I already spent $500 on a Forza 6 Xbox One, so another $500 is a lot to ask for when I'm not getting too much more.

Yeah, I'm out on the mid gen console upgrade.  It's just not worth it unless I had to buy a new one for one reason or another, but my PS4 is just fine for now.

[Vanamonde]

@Finno12307, your question has been merged into the master thread for this discussion. 

[klesh]

"Early next year" 

Its absolutely ridiculous that the end of September is upon us and still Squad has left their customers high and dry.  Some seriously shameful situation here.  They never should have attemped the console money grab. 

[OrganizedChaos]

2 hours ago, klesh said:

"Early next year" 

Its absolutely ridiculous that the end of September is upon us and still Squad has left their customers high and dry.  Some seriously shameful situation here.  They never should have attemped the console money grab. 

As frustrated as I am that we are still stuck with the game in its currant state, they really haven't left us high and dry.  They are rebuilding it with a new developer.   Their biggest mistake was hiring a developer that was inept and couldn't handle the task given to them.  They could have thrown a few bandaid patches and been done with it, but they didn't and hopefully they will continue to support the game after 1.2 finally does drop.

My biggest gripe with this ordeal is their lack of being up front with us from the beginning.   As well as their refusal to put time frames on their progress leaving us pretty much in the dark to any remote idea as to when we will get the update.

Edited September 27, 2017 by OrganizedChaos

[StrandedonEarth]

No really, it'll be early next year. As in 2018. They just got which year wrong

/sarcasm

[Ineedaweapon]

Weekly time...

Quote

Moving on to the console versions of KSP, this week saw some considerable progress as a couple of critical issues were resolved and a few other minor ones were tackled as well. One of the critical issues involved an exception error thrown when entering MiniSettings from the Pause menu, which locked up the game until it was rebooted. The other one was a bug that made the game crash/freeze after a while when the player launched several vessels into orbit around Kerbin. Once one crash occurred, more frequent crashes would follow even when not yet in orbit. In addition to those critical bugs, there were also minor fixes, including an input device issue, which prevented presets changes on horizontal movements after selecting the controller presets in the settings screen. Luckily, these issues will never see the light thanks to the QA team and our friends at Blitworks.

 

[LegendaryAce]

Well, it's nice to see that we won't be getting ANOTHER game breaking bug...

[razark]

3 hours ago, LegendaryAce said:

Well, it's nice to see that we won't be getting ANOTHER game breaking bug...

Yeah, imagine if they had rushed the release and let this slip through.

[steve_v]

7 hours ago, razark said:

Yeah, imagine if they had rushed the release and let this slip through.

No imagination required, that's what happened with the first console port, no?

Imagine if SQUAD had listened when so many of us pointed out Flying Tigers (non-existent) track record...

Imagine if SQUAD had put quality before cost, and hired an experienced porting house...

Imagine if this was done properly to begin with, instead of rushing out a half-baked pile of garbage and having to start from scratch to fix it... Those who gave SQUAD their money would have a working product  right now.

If freezing when menus are opened and crashing when going to kerbin orbit are only being found now, after all this time supposedly working on the new port, either we're still in early development and looking at a long wait... or nothing was learned from last time.
These don't sound like obscure, hard to trigger bugs that require months of QA to isolate to me, more issues that would be encountered in even cursory playtesting.
Granted I don't know all the details, but this is not particularly encouraging.

I'm still waiting to see that sincere apology, admission that it was a screwup, and refund for everyone that purchased this disaster in good faith.
Until such time, I'll continue ragging on this money-grab console-port debacle. I'm still not seeing anything to convince me it was anything else.

[Terwin]

On 9/30/2017 at 4:36 AM, steve_v said:

If freezing when menus are opened and crashing when going to kerbin orbit are only being found now, after all this time supposedly working on the new port, either we're still in early development and looking at a long wait... or nothing was learned from last time.
These don't sound like obscure, hard to trigger bugs that require months of QA to isolate to me, more issues that would be encountered in even cursory playtesting.
Granted I don't know all the details, but this is not particularly encouraging.

The issue has been fixed now, there is no reason to think it was not known earlier but either difficult to fix or dependent on other issues being fixed first.

I know Console users have little reason to be optimistic at this point, but there are any number of reasons why a major bug may not be fixed until near the end of the development cycle (aside from being newly discovered).