Kerbal Space Program 2 to be released in 2022 [Discussion Thread]

[sh1pman]

Release date escape velocity: when for every month of real time, KSP2 release date gets pushed back for more than one month.

[ArtemisAZ]

[Removed for reasons]

Edited November 26, 2020 by Krulliam
REASONS

[ArtemisAZ]

[Removed for reasons]

Edited November 26, 2020 by Krulliam
Mind the language, please.

[K^2]

4 minutes ago, Krulliam said:

the fact nobody bothers to take a moment and think "You know maybe there's a valid reason on why this is happening and just maybe I should just learn to suck it up and deal with waiting a little bit longer because that's just being an empathetic human being".

There are two sides to that. On one hand, I agree, people need to learn to chill a bit. The vitriol that got posted addressing Cyberpunk devs is not acceptable.

But also, simply saying, "Games will take however long they take," isn't constructive. Even if nobody is harassing you, working on a project that keeps getting longer is excrements, trust me. It's extremely demoralizing when you were supposed to be finished with the game, but the schedule keeps getting longer and longer. And honestly, there needs to be a little bit of an external pressure from the fans to get the games released on time.

We should be striving to find a balance where there is no harassment, no crunch, but also isn't a "take however long you need."

The best thing you, as a fan, can do is ask for updates. Not demand. Not remind PR that you haven't seen an update since whenever. But genuinely, curiously ask if there have been any cool developments. If there's anything to share. It's a way of rushing developers along without creating negativity. And even when there are delays, and even if there is some secrecy around the project, there are usually some things devs can share.

[kerbiloid]

KSP-2 was announced in Aug 2019. 
So, they gave time till the Jan 2024 before the news reach the habitants of Alpha Centauri and they start bombing the developers with interstellar spam.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

Eh. It kind of makes sense. I did think they were entirely too optimistic about how much of the team and project they are salvaging when Private Division took development away from Star Theory and gave it to Intercept. Whether or not it was the right decision at the time, it is guaranteed to be extremely disruptive, and given that they were still looking for graphics and physics engineers well into when game was supposed to be approaching later stages of production on the original schedule... Pragmatic thing would have been for Intercept to treat the game as if in pre-production for the first time. And yes, nobody likes that, not the developers who already worked on the game, and not the publishers who already funded said development, but it's even worse if you keep trying to do production without resources on a schedule that makes no sense.

Well, better late then never, in more ways than one. Best of luck to them.

i do hope they're documenting the development process, because I'd love to see a breakdown of just exactly how wrong it all went.  Because while i initially even thought the first timeline was achievable; it seems either that the initial prototypes hit a major technical snag that required a complete rebuild. Or the move threw them into development hell, with so many unresolved issues having to be tracked down and indexed before they could even begin working on it due to the people who knew about them leaving.

Feature/Scope creep might have also played a major factor, and compounded on top of whatever issues they had. Either way; I'm sure there's a heck of a story somewhere.

[K^2]

9 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Either way; I'm sure there's a heck of a story somewhere.

Yeah, I hope there's an honest post-mortem they can share at some point.

[3EP]

Why not get some help from modders of the original game? Like the creator of Parallax, Scatter, AVE, SVE, BH, BK. Really talented people! Why not get help from them???

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

i do hope they're documenting the development process, because I'd love to see a breakdown of just exactly how wrong it all went.  Because while i initially even thought the first timeline was achievable; it seems either that the initial prototypes hit a major technical snag that required a complete rebuild. Or the move threw them into development hell, with so many unresolved issues having to be tracked down and indexed before they could even begin working on it due to the people who knew about them leaving.

Feature/Scope creep might have also played a major factor, and compounded on top of whatever issues they had. Either way; I'm sure there's a heck of a story somewhere.

It's entirely possible that something changed so much with the prediction about popularity and sales figures that Private Division* decided to expand the scope of the game and grant a bigger budget to Intercept and, with how these things work, bigger budget = more time.

Except for the longer wait this is a good news, they just granted at least 6 more months (from Fall 2021 to the start of FY 2023 in march 2022) of budget to the studio, Intercept isn't funded with our donations, kickstarter, patreon or preorders, it has a publisher, one that's investing more and more money in the development and that will see no return if the game is not a success.

_{* Yes, I know, Private Division is T2, but nobody uses T2 for GTA or Borderlands, everybody always say Rockstar and Gearbox (not even 2K) and I'll do the same for KSP.}

[Novak]

[K^2]

22 minutes ago, 3EP said:

Why not get some help from modders of the original game? Like the creator of Parallax, Scatter, AVE, SVE, BH, BK. Really talented people! Why not get help from them???

Making big games isn't that simple. You can't just take a bunch of people who are good at making this kind of content and code together into a team and say, "Ok, make a game." You need all of the pieces to fit together, and that means team structure. For every 3-5 developers you need a lead or sub-lead. For every 3-5 leads you need a director. And then you need a production team to keep it all on track. If you wanted to add 10 developers to your team and you managed to hire just 20 people to achieve it, you're being rather efficient. And then all of these people need to be ramped up on tools, best practices, various details of the project... So for the first few months, these new people are mostly just learning what's there already. And this is assuming they all have some prior experience working with teams, because otherwise, there is no guarantee they'll be ramping up fast enough.

And then we get into costs. The studio is in US, so even with everyone working remotely, Intercept would have to hire people who can legally work in United States. Game development in US is rather competitive. Yeah, you can take a chance on a budding developer who's making mods, but if you don't offer them a competitive salary, six months down the line, just as they're starting to contribute, they're likely to ditch you for another job. In Bay Area, an entry level games engineer costs company about $100k/year. It's a bit cheaper in Washington, but still, high 5 digits. More senior individuals cost more, and as we've discussed, you'll need management and production. So very conservatively, the addition of the above 20 people to increase your dev team by 10 developers is costing you something like $2 million per year. And as we've discussed, first 6 months are basically ramping up.

Private Division tried to have their cake and eat it. They were unhappy with Star Theory, whether because of scheduling or some other conflict, doesn't matter. Private Division decided that if they torpedo Star Theory, they can staff Intercept with existing developers, patch some losses, and get everything on track. That very clearly didn't work. Maybe they lost more core people than they thought they would, or maybe the project outgrew the existing team. I think it was actually both. Regardless, they ended up short, and are now trying to recover. The dilemma for Private and Intercept is whether they pull everyone back, re-scope the game, and start production with a new scope; or they hire and train up new people to meet the scope they inherited from Star Theory. Either way, this results in delays and additional costs. Hiring new people costs a lot more, however, as it increases the burn rate while still having the same delivery date. And looking at current openings for Intercept, it looks like Private Division decided that this would cost too much. So if I was betting, my money would be that they are re-scoping, narrowing down some ambition, while merely restructuring some of the rest to fit the team and the budget they get to work with. And that means they will be making somewhat different game than they were trying to make this spring.

And even if the game doesn't end up quite as big in some aspects, that might be a good thing. Because the modders will still be around, and so long as Intercept delivers a solid foundation, there will be ways to expand on it. They just have to make sure the core game is worth playing.

[Grimmas]

So long as it gets released before Star Citizen, I'm fine with this. More frequent updates / dev diaries would be appreciated though. 

[Incarnation of Chaos]

3 hours ago, Master39 said:

It's entirely possible that something changed so much with the prediction about popularity and sales figures that Private Division* decided to expand the scope of the game and grant a bigger budget to Intercept and, with how these things work, bigger budget = more time.

Except for the longer wait this is a good news, they just granted at least 6 more months (from Fall 2021 to the start of FY 2023 in march 2022) of budget to the studio, Intercept isn't funded with our donations, kickstarter, patreon or preorders, it has a publisher, one that's investing more and more money in the development and that will see no return if the game is not a success.

_{* Yes, I know, Private Division is T2, but nobody uses T2 for GTA or Borderlands, everybody always say Rockstar and Gearbox (not even 2K) and I'll do the same for KSP.}

Yeah i said that in a previous post in this thread, bit abridged though.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

2 hours ago, K^2 said:

Making big games isn't that simple. You can't just take a bunch of people who are good at making this kind of content and code together into a team and say, "Ok, make a game."

Another point is how much of KSP1 would honestly be applicable to the development of KSP2, them being familiar with unity would be a plus. But all of KSP1's API's are gone, and the Unity version is more recent. So unless Intercept already had a decent amount of API code written, or the individuals were already familiar with using C#/C++ then it's really not something you couldn't find somewhere else. Modeling? DX11 changes what texture layers are required, and their individual complexity in some places. Now there are mods that use these type of textures and models in KSP, so i guess you might headhunt the 5 people who develop for them (I'm exaggerating for effect, but still).

So at the end of the day, the total cost of training you'd save is basically none. Potentially it might actually cost more to train someone who's had the bulk of their experience modding KSP1 than just a normal Software Developer straight out of College, due to KSP1 modder hires potentially having to unlearn so much while also dealing with significant gaps in their own understanding.

I can think of a few people here, who might be exceptional enough to meet that bar and not require more training (Myself not included in that set, I'd fall flat on my A$$ day 1. The set would include GamesLinx for instance though). But anyone like this probably had already gotten offers and an NDA had prohibited them from talking, or they already have a job in the field or similar. 

There's a lot of exceptionally talented people here in general, but talent in one area rarely translates to very broad areas (Like ya know, building an entire game from the ground up).

Ps. I only gave one example, it's not to be taken as literally the entire set of people. I just didn't want to write an excel sheet xD

[MechBFP]

15 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

KSP 2 is going to run better than KSP 1 as it has been optimized for newer (but not necessarily killer) hardware. If it does run only on killer hardware, that's too bad, games can't be dragged behind for users with older tech.

Exactly. The previous gen of consoles are REALLY bad for a game like this. If it was optimized to run on them, they would have to cut things or not do the things they want to. Now that it is getting pushed a year they can ignore those consoles and make the game they actually want to. 

[TheLiquor]

Take all the time you need, it will be worth the wait in the end.

[TheoBrandt]

I agree with the majority. A solid game release that works and is polished is a priority. But I think it would help a lot of peoples patience if we had even a sliver of more clarity. @Nate Simpson I don't feel like you're being disingenuous, or rattling off an excuse, but your post boils down to "game good, another year" with no tangible crumb to hold. You can go into detail about problems you're facing without specifics, the dev diary about distance calculations between solar systems was really good. More of that please.

[Bej Kerman]

35 minutes ago, TheoBrandt said:

I agree with the majority. A solid game release that works and is polished is a priority. But I think it would help a lot of peoples patience if we had even a sliver of more clarity. @Nate Simpson I don't feel like you're being disingenuous, or rattling off an excuse, but your post boils down to "game good, another year" with no tangible crumb to hold. You can go into detail about problems you're facing without specifics, the dev diary about distance calculations between solar systems was really good. More of that please.

Yes, there's not enough transparency. This community isn't stupid enough to treat 'might be in game' posts as confirmations.

[Lewie]

8 hours ago, Yellowburn10 said:

I'm willing to create a little wager: let's see what happens first, KSP2 is released, or Starship gets into space for the first time. Place your bets now.

My money’s on Starship reaching orbit first.

In all seriousness, I hope the team stays safe, and that the rest of the development goes smoothly.

 

[Stingray]

Meh, no big deal for me personaly, i rather have no crunchtime for the devs and a more polished game. I still have many hours to play with 1.10 now that i have most of my mods updated. Stay safe everyone.

[Superfluous J]

7 hours ago, 3EP said:

Why not get some help from modders of the original game? Like the creator of Parallax, Scatter, AVE, SVE, BH, BK. Really talented people! Why not get help from them???

Because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

35 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

This community isn't stupid enough to treat 'might be in game' posts as confirmations.

I have never, ever seen proof of that.

[SpaceFace545]

Yep, this game won’t come out, no offense but if professional devs can’t remake an existing game then no one can.

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, SpaceFace545 said:

Yep, this game won’t come out, no offense but if professional devs can’t remake an existing game then no one can.

That makes no logical sense. Where did the original KSP come from then? Down from the gods or something?

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, SpaceFace545 said:

Yep, this game won’t come out, no offense but if professional devs can’t remake an existing game then no one can.

And you're just going to pretend these things can be done in a snap? They're doing something that no-one else except a few bothers to do. You've seen the trailers, they have the game in a (somewhat) functional state, they've done better than Squad have so far and all the game needs now is lots of polish, bug fixing and pandering to this self-entitled community.

Edited November 6, 2020 by Bej Kerman
Gramer

[ArtemisAZ]

6 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

And you're just going to pretend these things can be done in a snap? They're doing something that no-one else except a few bothers to do. You've seen the trailers, they have the game in a (somewhat) functional state, they've done better than Squad have so far and all the game needs now is lots of polish, bug fixing and pandering to this self-entitled community.

THIS ^
HOW IS IT THAT HARD FOR PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND?