Where's Star Theory?

[mcwaffles2003]

They announced in late august, did interviews through early september, ever since then... radio scilence. Sorry, I know I'm impatient, but they said they would be in contact with the community and I haven't heard or seen anything from them since their interview with ShadowZone. It's been almost 2 months since we have heard anything.

[Cleperli]

For me, it’s not a problem if they are busy working on the game.

Time spend on posting news on the internet is also potential time spend on developing ksp 2

Although keeping the community aware of the game development is also important.

[shdwlrd]

I have a sneaking suspicion they are lingering around. They haven't decided to announce their presence yet. Most of star theory play KSP, I'm sure they are members on the forum. We can be discussing topics with them right now.

Edited October 24, 2019 by shdwlrd

[Seanburg2006]

They could be any one of us

[mcwaffles2003]

1 minute ago, Seanburg2006 said:

They could be any one of us

IS IT YOU??!

7 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

I have a sneaking suspicion they are lingering around. They haven't decided to announce their presence yet. Most of star theory play KSP, I'm sure they are members on the forum. We can be discussing topics with them right now.

OR YOU?!?!

23 minutes ago, Cleperli said:

For me, it’s not a problem if they are busy working on the game.

Time spend on posting news on the internet is also potential time spend on developing ksp 2

Although keeping the community aware of the game development is also important.

OR EVEN YOU?!?!?!??!?!

 

Do I work at star theory? how would I know?

[Unixsystem]

While 2 months isn't all that long in game dev terms, it is a bit strange to have this big media push and then immediately go dark. 

I'm hoping that the reason for announcing it at all was to gauge the reaction and get feedback from the community in an effort to better tune and balance the game, and their outreach to modders and Youtubers somewhat supports that. 

The more cynical side of me still thinks it's awfully weird not to even have any sort of basic monthly "here's what we're working on" status update to keep a low level hype train rolling. 

It's possible that they are just heads down trying to work with and implement the books of feedback that they got from the community, or maybe they planned to continue providing media and hit some development snag and don't have anything new to show. 

 

Either way, I think 2 months is way too little time to get too worried about the state of the game, especially given that it was only just announced and isn't coming out for potentially a year or more. 

[Superfluous J]

8 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

IS IT YOU??!

OR YOU?!?!

OR EVEN YOU?!?!?!??!?!

I don't know about them but I steadfastly deny any affiliation with Star Theory.

[mcwaffles2003]

45 minutes ago, Unixsystem said:

Either way, I think 2 months is way too little time to get too worried about the state of the game, especially given that it was only just announced and isn't coming out for potentially a year or more. 

Its supposed to come out in about 6 months (spring 2020) which leaves me wondering because as you said:

45 minutes ago, Unixsystem said:

While 2 months isn't all that long in game dev terms

6 months isn't either

36 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

I don't know about them but I steadfastly deny any affiliation with Star Theory.

This just makes you more suspicious

53 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

I have a sneaking suspicion they are lingering around. They haven't decided to announce their presence yet. Most of star theory play KSP, I'm sure they are members on the forum. We can be discussing topics with them right now.

This is why I made my other 2 threads with polls about career and science mechanics, hoping they might see them and use the data to possibly help plan their course of action on these mechanics. At the very least I hope these mechanics will be changed as that seems to be the overwhelming position on both fronts

Edited October 24, 2019 by mcwaffles2003
typo hoiping -> hoping

[SpaceFace545]

1 hour ago, shdwlrd said:

I have a sneaking suspicion they are lingering around. They haven't decided to announce their presence yet. Most of star theory play KSP, I'm sure they are members on the forum. We can be discussing topics with them right now.

Can't trust anyone

[Kerbart]

Star Theory works instead of posting updates: Y U NOT POSTING UPDATES

Star Theory post updates: Y U NOT WORKING

[mattinoz]

1 hour ago, Seanburg2006 said:

They could be any one of us

Although I'd be more suspicious about long term modders and sometimes staff members of Squad being lurking members of the new team than your day to day player.

2 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Star Theory works instead of posting updates: Y U NOT POSTING UPDATES

Star Theory post updates: Y U NOT WORKING

This is modern business, work just gets in the way of marketing.

[mcwaffles2003]

 

3 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Star Theory works instead of posting updates: Y U NOT POSTING UPDATES

Star Theory post updates: Y U NOT WORKING

1 minute ago, mattinoz said:

This is modern business, work just gets in the way of marketing.

I just feel like an update would be nice, y'know? Theres a LOT of speculation going around and I hope they could clear a bit of it up since we have so little to go on so far.

Even a monthly update would be nice, even 343i is putting those out for Halo MCC. 

I guess the factorio dev team has spoiled me with their FFF posts

[JadeOfMaar]

1 hour ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

They announced in late august, did interviews through early september, ever since then... radio scilence. Sorry, I know I'm impatient, but they said they would be in contact with the community and I haven't heard or seen anything from them since their interview with ShadowZone. It's been almost 2 months since we have heard anything.

If Star Theory posted as frequently as people are demanding, they'd quickly spoiler the entire game then you're no longer care about it when it arrives. The whole discovery element of the game would be destroyed. The fanbase has already been given a great serving of knowledge of what's inside and what to expect. Software development involves very granular work to build and to test. With that kind of thing in mind, asking for a news flash after not even 2 months is kind of greedy.

[mattinoz]

5 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

 

I just feel like an update would be nice, y'know? Theres a LOT of speculation going around and I hope they could clear a bit of it up since we have so little to go on so far.

Even a monthly update would be nice, even 343i is putting those out for Halo MCC. 

I guess the factorio dev team has spoiled me with their FFF posts

The speculation happens because people enjoy speculating. To much info is just spoilers.

[mcwaffles2003]

4 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

If Star Theory posted as frequently as people are demanding, they'd quickly spoiler the entire game then you're no longer care about it when it arrives.

I dont see how knowing what is in the game will make me not care to play it when it releases, its not like were playing an RPG and I'm asking them to tell us how the story goes, I'm curious to their approach of core mechanics fundamental to how the game is to work. Particularly, for me, I'd like to know how theyre trying to approach campaigns, seeing as I feel that's a bit of a failure in KSP 1 with the contract progression model. I know in the end modability will make up for just about any shortcomings there but a good base career to the game can either bring in or push away newcomers to this game and I'd like to see its fanbase grow (not at cost to the games mechanics)

5 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

The whole discovery element of the game would be destroyed. The fanbase has already been given a great serving of knowledge of what's inside and what to expect. Software development involves very granular work to build and to test. With that kind of thing in mind, asking for a news flash after not even 2 months is kind of greedy.

It's not like it has been 2 months since they've begun development, based on certain aesthetics we can tell it's been in development for a while, we're about 6 months from launch at this point.

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

This just makes you more suspicious

I deny this as well! I am not suspicious at all!

32 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

I guess the factorio dev team has spoiled me with their FFF posts

You gotta admit they're an outlier.

In pretty much every single way.

For the better.

[mcwaffles2003]

3 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

I deny this as well! I am not suspicious at all!

Then stop repeatedly making yourself even more suspicious

JUST CONFIRM IT!

YOU WORK FOR STAR THEORY!

TELL US WHAT YOU KNOW!

SIGN THE CONFESSION!

 

D:<

Edited October 25, 2019 by mcwaffles2003

[Superfluous J]

1 minute ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Then stop repeatedly making yourself even more suspicious

There, I just updated my Location to make it explicitly clear that I am NOT on the Star Theory team.

[mcwaffles2003]

2 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

There, I just updated my Location to make it explicitly clear that I am NOT on the Star Theory team.

How would you know where the Star Theory team is to know you're not at their location unless you worked for them?

You just outed yourself my friend, now spill it.

[Drakenred65]

I just assume unless they say otherwise that it’s pushed back one month for every month they don’t say anything. That way I’m pleasantly surprised when it either    launches on time or shortly thereafter.

 

realistically though, it does take time to get to a place where they can talk about it. Because doing a show and tell takes time to get set up to do the show and tell, then determine what exclusive tidbit goes to who., And all the interviews and presentations and web sight that basicaly take place off sight, because ironically it’s less disruptive to send a few people away for publicity than to do publicity in house with various games journalist trooping all over the place.

[Drakenred65]

Realisticly we already know what’s in Kerbin system, and what’s in a large part of the tech tree up to the interstellar bit.

 

 

thats literaly dozens of hours of gameplay we already know.

[mcwaffles2003]

2 minutes ago, [email protected] said:

Realisticly we already know what’s in Kerbin system, and what’s in a large part of the tech tree up to the interstellar bit.

 

 

thats literaly dozens of hours of gameplay we already know.

Not necessarily, they've confirmed theyre getting rid of "career" and "science" campaigns to make a new "progression" campaign, I'd like to know something about that but all we know is it's changed

[Drakenred65]

3 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Not necessarily, they've confirmed theyre getting rid of "career" and "science" campaigns to make a new "progression" campaign, I'd like to know something about that but all we know is it's changed

What I meant is that basicaly we are getting almost all of the existing parts, (and a few higher tech parts that we don’t get  in the current game) and really that’s it. There has been a couple of attempts at alternative paths to fund the game progress, but really, I think most of us realized early on how munch of a kludge job Science and Carrier is as it is. 

[mcwaffles2003]

53 minutes ago, [email protected] said:

There has been a couple of attempts at alternative paths to fund the game progress, but really, I think most of us realized early on how munch of a kludge job Science and Carrier is as it is. 

Right, thats why I'm curious to how Star Theory plans on carrying it out differently than before and I dont think it would be so much a spoiler for giving small clues for asking the community as a whole of their opinion on the new alternative.

Edited October 25, 2019 by mcwaffles2003

[Snark]

3 hours ago, Cleperli said:

For me, it’s not a problem if they are busy working on the game.

Time spend on posting news on the internet is also potential time spend on developing ksp 2

Pretty much this.  I suspect they're ferociously busy, and/or don't have anything in particular to share.

Bear in mind that the large majority of development time is spent on stuff that would be utterly un-interesting to anyone who's not a programmer working on the project.  Stuff that players would actually be interested in and/or be able to see (e.g. game features) tends to come later in the cycle.

Also, bear in mind that any time they want to release some info, it's not just a simple matter of "okay, take five minutes out of my day to write up a post and fire it off".  It takes a lot of prep time and decision-making before choosing to release such a thing.  It's non-trivial.

3 hours ago, Cleperli said:

Although keeping the community aware of the game development is also important.

Sure, but you can't "keep the community aware" of development if the development is a bunch of stuff that would be boring and/or incomprehensible to 99%+ of the prospective audience, which is what about 99% of the work in producing software is like.

3 hours ago, Unixsystem said:

While 2 months isn't all that long in game dev terms, it is a bit strange to have this big media push and then immediately go dark.

I don't think it's even slightly strange.  I think they had the "big media push" because PAX is a big deal and they wanted to have something out for that, and they put a lot of effort into getting something presentable for public consumption.

And then go dark because they're, well, busy, and also likely haven't come up with anything demo-able during that time.

3 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Do I work at star theory? how would I know?

You'd know because you'd be too busy to post on the forums for the time being. 

3 hours ago, Unixsystem said:

The more cynical side of me still thinks it's awfully weird not to even have any sort of basic monthly "here's what we're working on" status update to keep a low level hype train rolling.

Have you ever been part of a software development project?  Here's what the typical monthly update would look like:

• "Spent weeks ironing out <list of obscure bugs, described in terms that make no sense to you>."
• "Well, we worked on the physics calculations, and managed to optimize <gibberish> so that the <jargon> is now <cryptic number> better than <other cryptic number>."
• "Refactored <thing you'll never see> so that <obscure internal development process> will be <better in some way that makes no sense to you unless you're a developer>."

Seriously, there's nothing interesting or readable for most of this stuff.  Ever watched a big skyscraper being built?  For the first two-thirds of the construction period, it's just "dig a big hole in the ground".  Important and labor-intensive, but not especially watchable. "Oh, today the hole got <small amount> deeper."  Software's kinda like that, too.  A few bits are very interesting to watch, but most of it isn't.

2 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

I just feel like an update would be nice, y'know? Theres a LOT of speculation going around and I hope they could clear a bit of it up since we have so little to go on so far.

Okay, so suppose they did post an update.  There's an excellent chance that it would basically just be:

"UPDATE:  We're doing a whole bunch of programming.  The end."

There's an excellent chance that there simply isn't anything that would be at all interesting or meaningful to anyone who's not working there.

2 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

If Star Theory posted as frequently as people are demanding, they'd quickly spoiler the entire game then you're no longer care about it when it arrives. The whole discovery element of the game would be destroyed. The fanbase has already been given a great serving of knowledge of what's inside and what to expect. Software development involves very granular work to build and to test. With that kind of thing in mind, asking for a news flash after not even 2 months is kind of greedy.

^ Also this. 

 

1 hour ago, [email protected] said:

realistically though, it does take time to get to a place where they can talk about it. Because doing a show and tell takes time to get set up to do the show and tell, then determine what exclusive tidbit goes to who., And all the interviews and presentations and web sight that basicaly take place off sight, because ironically it’s less disruptive to send a few people away for publicity than to do publicity in house with various games journalist trooping all over the place.

^ Also this.