Bugs and KSP

[MaximumThrust]

@An old fan As much as I agree with you, we already had similar topics recently, including the same video you posted, that were already pointed out. If spamming the same thing will help or not, it's not up to me to judge.

[DAL59]

Bugs in KSP are part of the fun though...  

lag isn't though

[RealKerbal3x]

As much as I like the new part revamps (shiny ), I think that SQUAD should spend a release cycle really ploughing through some of the annoying bugs still plaguing the game.

And it looks like the mods have silently merged two of these 'FIX THE BUGS' threads. We need a version of 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town' but for the moderators

Edited December 13, 2018 by RealKerbal3x

[Snark]

19 hours ago, An old fan said:

We need bug fixes.

New "fix bugs please" thread in Suggestions merged into existing "fix bugs please" thread in Suggestions.

My own take on the matter:  We need bug fixes, sure.  On the other hand, though, players also want new features-- e.g. the new dV meter that people have been requesting for years, for example.  So when a company like Squad is deciding how to scope the next release-- e.g. "should we add <proposed new feature>, or should we spend that time on bug-fixing instead?", it's a balancing act.  Either approach provides a certain amount of benefit to a certain number of players.  So when weighing one against the other, whichever one is "best" should win.

Sometimes that might be bug fixing, sure-- but it's not a slam dunk.  Totally depends on the features and bugs under consideration.

19 hours ago, An old fan said:

This game is getting to a point where it is nearly unplayable.

This is patent nonsense, at least when made as a general statement.  Plenty of people play the game without any major problems, and either rarely run into bugs or don't have "game-breaking" problems with them.  Lots of people play the game, and lots of people have fun with it.  If it were "nearly unplayable", then everyone would quit and it would be a seismic clobbering of Squad's business model and they'd be on it faster than you can shake a stick.  Which is clearly not the case.

I don't mean to make light of bugs.  Fixing them is good.  And since different players do different things in-game, I can certainly imagine that it might be "nearly unplayable" for some players.  Suppose there's some particular bug which is really severe but triggers only in certain specific circumstances.  Even if it's something cataclysmic that crashes or hangs the game... "how bad is it" depends on how much it's encountered in the player's gameplay.  Which totally depends on the player.  For example, imagine if a bug got introduced that crashes KSP as soon as you try to place more than N parts on a ship, where N is some fairly large number.

• The large majority of KSP players never make ships that big, and so for them the bug effectively doesn't exist, and they're happy.
• Another group of players may sometimes try to build ships that big, and they stub their toe on the bug once in a while-- for them, the bug may be annoying, but can be worked around and isn't a gamebreaker. 
• A few players routinely make ships that big-- in fact, that's what most of their gameplay is about-- so for those few players, the game is totally broken and they are understandably upset.

So it's perfectly fair to say "the game has more bugs than I'd like".  (I'd agree with that statement, myself.)  You could even say "Here are some specific bugs that make the game nearly unplayable for me."  (Which would be perfectly correct for you, but of course wouldn't necessarily apply to other folks).  But trying to make generalizations about the community generally isn't productive-- it's an unsupported assertion.  Vehemence doesn't persuade anyone-- it's more likely to get people to tune you out.  In my experience, grandiose phrases like "unplayable" (when most players clearly are playing the game), or disrespectful insults like "steaming pile of garbage" (which is what the video opens with), no matter how sincerely believed or how passionately felt... don't persuade anyone or get constructive work done.  They just make folks stop listening, which is counterproductive if the actual aim of making the statement is to make things better.

 

8 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I think that SQUAD should spend a release cycle really ploughing through some of the annoying bugs still plaguing the game.

Oh, I'd certainly agree that it would be worth spending some time to pay down some technical debt, sure.  Speaking as a professional software developer myself, though, I can say there are productive ways to engage, and then there are ineffective ways that just make people stop listening.

Posting an openly insulting video that begins with calling a product a "steaming pile of garbage", as the video does, is a good way to get oneself immediately relegated to the latter category-- people are going to mentally categorize you as a crank and will stop listening.

8 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

And it looks like the mods have silently merged two of these 'FIX THE BUGS' threads.

Merged, yes.  Silent, no.  See above.  We generally post some form of public notice when we take action, but it's not instant (posts take time to write, after all), so if you jump in a minute or two after the merge and haven't seen anything yet... just wait a bit. 

[RealKerbal3x]

5 minutes ago, Snark said:

Merged, yes.  Silent, no.  See above.  We generally post some form of public notice when we take action, but it's not instant (posts take time to write, after all), so if you jump in a minute or two after the merge and haven't seen anything yet... just wait a bit.  

Of course, yeah. I'm just used to seeing threads that have been merged along with a note from a moderator, and I guess I jumped the gun with that one

[Rover 6428]

15 hours ago, Snark said:

New "fix bugs please" thread in Suggestions merged into existing "fix bugs please" thread in Suggestions.

What? The treads have been merged? I haven't noticed at all. BTW, did his thread get absorbed my mine or vice-versa?

[RealKerbal3x]

1 hour ago, Rover 6428 said:

 What? The treads have been merged? I haven't noticed at all. BTW, did his thread get absorbed my mine or vice-versa?

I think his thread was absorbed by yours.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

On 12/7/2018 at 7:45 PM, ShadowZone said:

How about we skip the ad hominem and get to the facts:

Too late, I already watched your video. 

I'm sure making exaggerated, sweeping statements and over generalizing the issue works well for you over on YouTube though, so you keep on doing you.

1,000 bugs on the tracker? More like 100 or so bugs, and 900 something non issues/players who don't understand the game/hardware issues players don't understand/player misunderstandings about updates/old issues. Myself and plenty of others play KSP every single day just about and hardly ever run into a serious bug. Your video is not a fair representation of the current state of KSP, and I resent you sensationalizing it for your own purposes to be perfectly frank.

Edited December 14, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[RealKerbal3x]

On 12/14/2018 at 1:24 PM, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Too late, I already watched your video. 

I'm sure making exaggerated, sweeping statements and over generalizing the issue works well for you over on YouTube though, so you keep on doing you.

1,000 bugs on the tracker? More like 100 or so bugs, and 900 something non issues/players who don't understand the game/hardware issues players don't understand/player misunderstandings about updates/old issues. Myself and plenty of others play KSP every single day just about and hardly ever run into a serious bug. Your video is not a fair representation of the current state of KSP, and I resent you sensationalizing it for your own purposes to be perfectly frank.

^^This.

Though it's not his video, it's @ShadowZone's.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

6 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

^^This.

Though it's not his video, it's @ShadowZone's.

Which Is why I quoted him, hopefully that was clear to @Rover 6428 whom I have no particular issues with.

[RealKerbal3x]

1 minute ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Which Is why I quoted him, hopefully that was clear to @Rover 6428 whom I have no particular issues with.

I missed that . I do agree that 1000 bugs is definitely an exaggeration too.

[Rover 6428]

On 12/14/2018 at 5:38 PM, RealKerbal3x said:

I think his thread was absorbed by yours.

YEAS!!! DEVOUR EVERYTHING!!!

On 12/16/2018 at 1:48 AM, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Which Is why I quoted him, hopefully that was clear to @Rover 6428 whom I have no particular issues with.

I'm glad you think so 

[SeanOfTheDead]

Bump!
I created this account just to comment on this because the game feels broken and @ShadowZone nailed it. I've been playing since 2012ish so I've seen the ups and downs. The physics needs to be fixed, period. There will always be a limit to how many parts you have but this is still something that can be improved upon. Build a basic rocket, no problem. Build a space station with 6000 liquid fuel to send to Duna(as the career mode mission requires) and the game is brought to it's knees. Of course I use mods, but they have little to do with the massive memory usage and physics lag. Simply put, the game is becoming unplayable even stock. This is much more important than new features and content. They just add to the problem. The video refers to this as technical debt, and ShadowZone isn't wrong.

[The Aziz]

56 minutes ago, SeanOfTheDead said:

Of course I use mods, but they have little to do with the massive memory usage and physics lag. 

Oh but they have much to do with that. See, I have two installs, one is heavily modded 1.3.1 (visuals, parts, mechanics etc), second is stock, currently 1.5.something, whatever is the newest. Modded can lag and freeze on simple rocket, stock works without a problem even with 600-part orbital monster. One thing that actually is a bit annoying is landing gear.

Now, 'bout the bugs, and forever mentioned bugtracker. If said bug is to be solved, it needs to be reproduced (and player should give an explanation how to do it). If bug hunters cannot reproduce a bug after many tries, the issue is probably on player's side. Like weak specs, outdated drivers, conflicting mods (you know, the more mods one have, the harder is to find the cause of a bug, it could be any of the 70 one has installed). Better do some troubleshooting by yourself first, then you can bother the devs, if nothing on your side give effects.

[SeanOfTheDead]

17 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Oh but they have much to do with that. See, I have two installs, one is heavily modded 1.3.1 (visuals, parts, mechanics etc), second is stock, currently 1.5.something, whatever is the newest. Modded can lag and freeze on simple rocket, stock works without a problem even with 600-part orbital monster. One thing that actually is a bit annoying is landing gear.

Now, 'bout the bugs, and forever mentioned bugtracker. If said bug is to be solved, it needs to be reproduced (and player should give an explanation how to do it). If bug hunters cannot reproduce a bug after many tries, the issue is probably on player's side. Like weak specs, outdated drivers, conflicting mods (you know, the more mods one have, the harder is to find the cause of a bug, it could be any of the 70 one has installed). Better do some troubleshooting by yourself first, then you can bother the devs, if nothing on your side give effects.

@The Aziz, I didn't want to go into specs and all that but I guess I have to. Not all specs but the ones that matter:
nVidia GTX 1060
Intel i7
16GB RAM
512GB SSD
Play all games at 1080p because of diminishing returns on performance vs visuals. This is all overkill just to play KSP, or at least it should be.

I duplicated issues without mods. Graphic mods make a huge difference, but the mods that have little impact are things like Mecjeb, Kerbal Engineer, and Kerbal Alarm Clock. I've been PC gaming and building computers since 95,  troubleshooting others in 96(win95 MS Dos 6.2), and coding/scripting since 97. I'm not new to the nuances that effect game performance. I give credit where it is due and try hard not to be a fanboy. KSP is a great game, but it has some core issues that need to be addressed. You should be able to admit when there is a problem even if it's about something you really like. That's kinda the point of the original post and the video by @ShadowZone.

[KerbolExplorer]

On ‎12‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 10:59 PM, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Wanting it is one thing, making it happen is another. Bugs are constantly fixed, but more are created at the same time. It's unavoidable, no one likes it; least of all Squad but it's part of life.

I understand your point with this.But in the 1.5 update we had a clear site that @SQUAD is  not  their releases.The aerodinamic bug is a clear site of this,The bug was found in less than hours after the update release,That wasnt a bug like finding a gap on minmus poles.That was a CLEAR bug that could have been easily found if the devs tested this release.

And i must say since 1.3 KSP has gone directly down hill.The game each update has more bugs and bugs and lag.And then here we are,the devs are adding more part revamps when most of the comunity is shouting for bugfixes....And im sure that there will be bugfixes.But i can asure you that most of them are going to be insignificant bugs that no body cared about.

And the worst part of this is the dev team.The dev @UomoCapra has been mentioned countless of times here and he didnt respond(A clear example being this thread).Im sure that this section of the fórum is  the place that no dev reads.I hope im wrong.

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

26 minutes ago, KerbolExplorer said:

I understand your point with this.But in the 1.5 update we had a clear site that @SQUAD is  not  their releases.The aerodinamic bug is a clear site of this,The bug was found in less than hours after the update release,That wasnt a bug like finding a gap on minmus poles.That was a CLEAR bug that could have been easily found if the devs tested this release.

And i must say since 1.3 KSP has gone directly down hill.The game each update has more bugs and bugs and lag.And then here we are,the devs are adding more part revamps when most of the comunity is shouting for bugfixes....And im sure that there will be bugfixes.But i can asure you that most of them are going to be insignificant bugs that no body cared about.

And the worst part of this is the dev team.The dev @UomoCapra has been mentioned countless of times here and he didnt respond(A clear example being this thread).Im sure that this section of the fórum is  the place that no dev reads.I hope im wrong.

It was hot fixed literally 2 days later, that's pretty darn good in my book.

I feel the exact opposite, my experience with the game has only improved since 1.3 days. I have encountered very few bugs in my many, many hours playing the game, and even fewer serious ones. Yes, they exist, all games have them, all games will always have them, till the end of time. I have seen very few people "shouting" for bug fixes, so that's a really generic and sweeping statement with no facts to back it up. (Tbh I see more people shouting for multiplayer than anything else, lol.) Does KSP have more bugs than the average run of the mill cookie-cutter 1st person shooter? Of course, it's more complicated and ambitious. Similarly to games like Skyrim/Fallout, whom I would say have just as many bugs if not more, and still manage to be great games.

I'm sure he has better things to do than come in here and say "Yup there are bugs, and yup, we are working on them as best we can."

 

Edited December 18, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Rocket In My Pocket]

On 12/17/2018 at 11:50 AM, SeanOfTheDead said:

Intel i7

This is the only spec that matters with KSP.

Xeon or 7700k? Totally different CPU's and KSP hates Xeon as it has too many cores and KSP is heavily single core performance bound as with any physics heavy game.

Also your description of your problem causing rocket is a bit lacking, 6,000 fuel doesn't matter at all, how many parts is it and what FPS do you get while it's active?

[Tyko]

2 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

It was hot fixed literally 2 days later, that's pretty darn good in my book.

I feel the exact opposite, my experience with the game has only improved since 1.3 days. I have encountered very few bugs in my many, many hours playing the game, and even fewer serious ones. Yes, they exist, all games have them, all games will always have them, till the end of time. I have seen very few people "shouting" for bug fixes, so that's a really generic and sweeping statement with no facts to back it up. (Tbh I see more people shouting for multiplayer than anything else, lol.) Does KSP have more bugs than the average run of the mill cookie-cutter 1st person shooter? Of course, it's more complicated and ambitious. Similarly to games like Skyrim/Fallout, whom I would say have just as many bugs if not more, and still manage to be great games.

I'm sure he has better things to do than come in here and say "Yup there are bugs, and yup, we are working on them as best we can."

 

I'm sure bugs ebb and flow as does our impressions of what's "serious". I do have to agree with @Kerbol Explorer that it feels like QA went downhill after 1.3.

The most shining examples for me are the Making History parts. Just stack the little 1.25m -> .625m service bay on top of a Mk1-3 capsule and it's pretty clear that they don't fit together. Or the off-center mass on the Soyuz style side tanks. Or that the new 2 person lander's RCS are off-center in every axis. All of these should have been caught in QA by simply snapping the parts together and launching a test rocket.

Edited December 18, 2018 by Tyko

[Rocket In My Pocket]

2 hours ago, Tyko said:

I'm sure bugs ebb and flow as does our impressions of what's "serious". I do have to agree with @Kerbol Explorer that it feels like QA went downhill after 1.3.

The most shining examples for me are the Making History parts. Just stack the little 1.25m -> .625m service bay on top of a Mk1-3 capsule and it's pretty clear that they don't fit together. Or the off-center mass on the Soyuz style side tanks. Or that the new 2 person lander's RCS are off-center in every axis. All of these should have been caught in QA by simply snapping the parts together and launching a test rocket.

Well, let's be honest with ourselves; the game is getting on in years and I'm sure the cash flow from sales isn't what it used to be. Some of this comes down to money, I'm sure.

Squad has never been the best with QA prior to launches, but at least they are getting better at hotfixing things in a shorter time frame.

I try to temper my expectations with the reality that this game by all rights should have died years ago, lol.

Edited December 19, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Tyko]

1 hour ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Well, let's be honest with ourselves; the game is getting on in years and I'm sure the cash flow from sales isn't what it used to be. some of this comes down to money, I'm sure.

Squad has never been the best with QA prior to launches, but at least they are getting better at hotfixing things in a shorter time frame.

I try to temper my expectations with the reality that this game by all rights should have died years ago, lol.

LOL...all fair points.. I guess it was particularly painful for Making History since it was money generating -  we paid $15 for those parts (I couldn't care less about making Missions)

[Loskene]

Can we please stop making the "money/indie dev" excuse? It's been years since squad was that small or poor, and they've since been picked up by Take Two, a literal triple-A publisher, after their game became hugely successful. They are neither strapped for cash nor indie by definition, so if whoever's in charge doesn't want to spend the money on a functioning QA department, that's on them.

We can have a back and forth about the complexities of game development but we can likewise admit that gamedev as a whole is the worst offender in the field of software development for shoddy practices and cutting corners for the sake of profit, while simultaneously having some of the most forgiving audiences who will overlook or handwaive away obvious self-serving moves that have no benefit to the customer. Squad haven't been the worst offender in taking advantage of the lack of scrutiny that usually afflicts video games, but they're not exactly squeaky clean either.

There is only a certain amount of "there's no money in bugfixes" a studio can get away with before the whole thing falls apart under them though, so let's just hope squad know not to push that too far. It would be a shame to see this game driven into the ground out of greed, laziness or simple disorganisation.

[HebaruSan]

Interesting follow-up video by creator of the one in the OP:

 

[klgraham1013]

I mean.  Let's at least give the community a few days to find what QA missed.