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

[MechBFP]

5 minutes ago, dprostock said:

That's solved with a project leader, a significant number of developers, and the integration of a team of targeted beta testers with clear test goals. 

That’s mostly mitigated with those, not solved.

[pandaman]

1 hour ago, dprostock said:

That's solved with a project leader, a significant number of developers, and the integration of a team of targeted beta testers with clear test goals. 

I admire your optimism, but the end product would almost certainly be an outdated and unjustifiably expensive game.

 Any attempt to integrate the inevitable new advances in tech would introduce potential new bugs.  And that level of work over such a time scale does not come cheaply, any 'investment' needs to be recovered through sales revenue.

1 hour ago, MechBFP said:

That’s mostly mitigated with those, not solved.

This ^. 

 

[Zargon]

Too bad we cant warp to 2022.

 

[Alexoff]

8 hours ago, pandaman said:

I'm no programmer, but I'm realistic, and understand enough to know that if software is 'bug free' then you just haven't found them all yet.

Looks like Poe's law in action - I just mimicked a considerable number of enthusiastic players who forgive and justify any problems, bugs and delays in ksp. The developers show one-second videos from the pre-alpha of the game six months after the promised release, they show videos about friday!!!!11111 and how someone walks somewhere in the city, and many still believe in miracles. I believe that Gameslinx and other modders will make ksp 3 from ksp 1, there are more reasons for this. The surfaces of planets with parallax mod look much better than in ksp 2 for example.

[dprostock]

12 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

Looks like Poe's law in action - I just mimicked a considerable number of enthusiastic players who forgive and justify any problems, bugs and delays in ksp. The developers show one-second videos from the pre-alpha of the game six months after the promised release, they show videos about friday!!!!11111 and how someone walks somewhere in the city, and many still believe in miracles. I believe that Gameslinx and other modders will make ksp 3 from ksp 1, there are more reasons for this. The surfaces of planets with parallax mod look much better than in ksp 2 for example.

It had to be said and it was said!!!!

[K^2]

5 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

Looks like Poe's law in action - I just mimicked a considerable number of enthusiastic players who forgive and justify any problems, bugs and delays in ksp. The developers show one-second videos from the pre-alpha of the game six months after the promised release, they show videos about friday!!!!11111 and how someone walks somewhere in the city, and many still believe in miracles. I believe that Gameslinx and other modders will make ksp 3 from ksp 1, there are more reasons for this. The surfaces of planets with parallax mod look much better than in ksp 2 for example.

I am a game developer, and Intercept's on the right track. There's a lot they're doing that you either can't do in mods, or it would be inefficient and/or inconsistent. Lighting model is getting an update it needs, they've switched to a procedural generation model that's consistent with modern expectations, and so on. There's a reason why things float with parallax mod, and it's because you'd have to go through and change a huge chunk of code that modders simply have no access to to fix that. Intercept hasn't done a high-rez pass on terrain yet, so it's hard to tell if they're aiming for that sort of fidelity, but looking at everything else, I'd guess it's on their road map.

KSP is a relic at this point. Modders can keep adding features, which will inevitably be inconsistent and clash with each other, increasing overall instability, not to mention being horrible for performance. You have to rebuild the core. If any of the modders have real intention of making KSP3, as you've said, they should be making a new game. Except, I've already pointed out why being a good modder doesn't automatically make you a good developer, and even if they all happen to be good developers, you are still missing a huge chunk of project management in the mix. If you just take a bunch of modders and give them time to work on making a new game, you will not get anything good on the other side. Not without them expanding the team to include other talents, and by that point, you are talking about making a new development team with all of the problems that entails.

[Alexoff]

50 minutes ago, K^2 said:

I am a game developer, and Intercept's on the right track. There's a lot they're doing that you either can't do in mods, or it would be inefficient and/or inconsistent. Lighting model is getting an update it needs, they've switched to a procedural generation model that's consistent with modern expectations, and so on. There's a reason why things float with parallax mod, and it's because you'd have to go through and change a huge chunk of code that modders simply have no access to to fix that. Intercept hasn't done a high-rez pass on terrain yet, so it's hard to tell if they're aiming for that sort of fidelity, but looking at everything else, I'd guess it's on their road map.

KSP is a relic at this point. Modders can keep adding features, which will inevitably be inconsistent and clash with each other, increasing overall instability, not to mention being horrible for performance. You have to rebuild the core. If any of the modders have real intention of making KSP3, as you've said, they should be making a new game. Except, I've already pointed out why being a good modder doesn't automatically make you a good developer, and even if they all happen to be good developers, you are still missing a huge chunk of project management in the mix. If you just take a bunch of modders and give them time to work on making a new game, you will not get anything good on the other side. Not without them expanding the team to include other talents, and by that point, you are talking about making a new development team with all of the problems that entails.

I know this Russian expression - order beats the class, a well-organized team of mediocrity is more effective than a disorganized team with geniuses. I would agree with you if I was confident in the current developers. However, I see the transfer of the game for years ahead for dubious reasons, scandals due to a change of developer, rare videos where they show not a game, but a team of programmers and FRIDAY!!! 11111. And we are still shown the pre-alpha version of the game announced for Spring 2020, which by the way will cost as an AAA game. I had a slight suspicion that I was brazenly deceived in August 2019. Don't you have that feeling?

[K^2]

12 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

However, I see the transfer of the game for years ahead for dubious reasons, scandals due to a change of developer, rare videos where they show not a game, but a team of programmers and FRIDAY!!! 11111. And we are still shown the pre-alpha version of the game announced for Spring 2020, which by the way will cost as an AAA game. I had a slight suspicion that I was brazenly deceived in August 2019. Don't you have that feeling?

This is just speculation, but it's based on my experience in the industry. Original plan for KSP2 was basically a remake of KSP with a graphics update and a few new features, like having interstellar built in and adding colonies. That was a very reasonable project for the original schedule that was given to us during the 2019 E3. Based on everything we've heard from the creative director since, I'm guessing he and some other people within Star Theory were already pushing for a larger vision for the game. Success of KSP2 presentation at E3 gave them leverage to start negotiations about expanding the scope. This is where things get hazy. I don't know whether Private Division just got greedy, or Star Theory leadership was unreasonable, but negotiations broke down, PD pulled KSP license from Star Theory and started Intercept. I don't know enough to even guess at whether that was the right decision, but it was certainly handled very poorly, both in terms of how it was communicated to Star Theory and to the community.

Either way, transition of development from Star Theory to Intercept was going to result in guaranteed delays, but it looks like Intercept was still trying to salvage the original schedule with expanded scope. That was a bad idea and clearly didn't work. They needed to step back, completely rescope the game to the new vision and available resources, and build a new schedule with a more realistic timeline. Looking at the current schedule, I think that was finally done. Things Intercept are saying they're planning to do and the timeline finally match up. The progress they are showing is consistent with where they should be on this new schedule, which is early production.

Does it mean that we're done with delays? Unlikely. But they've just said 2022 for now, and they're probably aiming for late summer early fall, and it's probably going to slip to late fall or holiday season. That's quite normal for the scope and the fact that they're effectively in early production now. Intercept is owned by Take Two, so I don't expect more politics to get in the way, and the project they're working on isn't exactly revolutionary, so I don't anticipate great technical difficulties to sabotage the production. Short of disaster, I think the game's more or less on track now.

And yes, more transparency on all of this would be great, but talking about this delay in more detail and explaining why they're rescoping would require talking about what happened between Star Theory and Private Division, and I strongly suspect that Private Division doesn't want this talked about. But again, it sounds like all of that is out of the way now, so I see no reason why this would be a problem going forward.

[DunaManiac]

8 hours ago, dprostock said:

That's solved with a project leader, a significant number of developers, and the integration of a team of targeted beta testers with clear test goals. 

It is often said that there is no such thing as a bug free program.

While that does eliminate most bugs, getting rid of ALL bugs is impossible, especially in something like a game.

[starcaptain]

11 minutes ago, DunaManiac said:

It is often said that there is no such thing as a bug free program.

While that does eliminate most bugs, getting rid of ALL bugs is impossible, especially in something like a game.

In an interesting and possibly ironic comparison, software made to run in space is one of the most rigorously bug-prevented realms of all development whatsoever.

The Operating System for the Space Shuttle is emblematic of this: designed to run extremely fast, extremely efficient, and run without errors as close to 'never' as possible, and be able to check itself for cosmic ray corruption in real time, three layers deep. It only had ~500000 lines of code[1], and fewer than 30 errors in its entire history.

 

Kerbal Space Program of any versions or sequels , as a video game, is likely going to be as buggy in the end as any other. It's a program about flying in space.

[Probro]

On 11/12/2020 at 11:27 AM, Bej Kerman said:

[snip]

if a game that i have been waiting for over a year now because of a delay has been delayed again then i have a right to be mad, ksp was supposed to be out already jeez cyberpunk is gonna come out before ksp does i should be playing this game right now but its been delayed

Edited November 22, 2020 by Gargamel
Portions of Quote Redacted by moderator.

[Meecrob]

3 hours ago, starcaptain said:

In an interesting and possibly ironic comparison, software made to run in space is one of the most rigorously bug-prevented realms of all development whatsoever.

The Operating System for the Space Shuttle is emblematic of this: designed to run extremely fast, extremely efficient, and run without errors as close to 'never' as possible, and be able to check itself for cosmic ray corruption in real time, three layers deep. It only had ~500000 lines of code[1], and fewer than 30 errors in its entire history.

Heh, it also cost ~$200 million and took eight years to develop. So really, the project to create the shuttle software was on the same scale as GTA5. Having said that,  I would gladly pay $500-1000 for a copy of KSP2 to give them enough return on investment to go GTA5-scale, knowing I would get thousands of hours out of it, but I doubt 80-90% of their target audience would feel the same as me.

Edited November 19, 2020 by Meecrob

[mcwaffles2003]

20 hours ago, Alephzorg said:

I wouldn't complain if they released the game without multiplayer at first and gave it to us later with an update.

As a player who's been wanting multiplayer and has been teased by talks of including it in KSP 1 with updates, I would simply find this an admission that multiplayer will not be included ever and that would genuinely affect my rationale to buying the game when KSP 1 does me fine as is

[AlamoVampire]

Ive said it before, and will say it again: while its good to see those who have been clamoring for multiplayer for ages are going to see it in ksp2, i stand by this: every person hour and every resource being devoted right now to what amounts to an optional feature is a person hour and resource being diverted from the development of core critical aspects of KSP2. What effect will this have on the final product? I do not know. I hope beyond hope it does not hurt core critical development. Linuxgurugamer at one point said they could put its hooks in now and return to it post release, an idea I 100% support. During this run up to release I would personally (my opinion) think core critical aspects > optional stuff like (my opinion again) multiplayer. If at the end of the day there is a way to permanently disable multiplayer as a toggle then I will be as happy as a cat in a yarn factory. 
 

this is all my opinion only.

 

044011192020

044111192020

Edited November 19, 2020 by AlamoVampire

[K^2]

45 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

every person hour and every resource being devoted right now to what amounts to an optional feature [multiplayer] is a person hour and resource being diverted from the development of core critical aspects of KSP2.

Doesn't generally work this way. You don't have gameplay engineers write your MP. There's an overlap, of course, and there are some common resources in production and QA regardless, but by the time it gets to the studio scale and over duration of the project, it really comes down to cost of the project. And it's not an either-or proposition. Developers budget out what the core is going to require and what any add-on features would require in terms of costs. The core game has to be built either way, and it will be budgeted for either way. Then the decision is made on any additional feature. Somebody upstairs decided that having multiplayer in KSP2 would generate enough additional sales to be worth the investment, and so additional resources have been allocated by publisher specifically to make this happen.

So if multiplayer wasn't happening, it doesn't mean the rest of the game would be getting more resources. The budget of the whole game would be smaller, because they'd take out the cost of multiplayer from the total. And once the game is underway, because working on multiplayer is such a distinct task, you won't have resources transferred over one way or another outside of any all-hands-on-deck bug fixing sprints. And in terms of QA and bug fixes, I'm pretty sure if it comes to it, Intercept will prioritize core. In fact, I somewhat expect multiplayer to be buggy, limited, or completely disabled on release and fixed with patches. I'll be pleasantly surprised if it's not, but you're right that it's technically an optional feature, and the first to take the fall for the team if there will be significant time pressure.

[dprostock]

Thank you to Kerbol for not owning AI!!!!
Imagine a development like AoE or simulators like SH!!!! The KSP2 would see light in 2070!!!!!

[darthgently]

Quality is paramount.  But the longer it takes the less surprised ppl should be when a competing title comes out that gives KSP 2 a run for its money.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  You can't get a blue ribbon at the county fair if you arrive the day after the fair closes.  I'd be happy if a basic quality skeleton were delivered earlier with more meat added later (but not haphazard, the bones should be designed for the meat and the meat grade A) if only to stave off a big house competitor that starts hiring away your ppl and wooing your customers.  Its been know to happen

[Alexoff]

21 hours ago, K^2 said:

This is just speculation, but it's based on my experience in the industry. Original plan for KSP2 was basically a remake of KSP with a graphics update and a few new features, like having interstellar built in and adding colonies. That was a very reasonable project for the original schedule that was given to us during the 2019 E3. Based on everything we've heard from the creative director since, I'm guessing he and some other people within Star Theory were already pushing for a larger vision for the game.

So, are we now promised something much more? What exactly?

21 hours ago, K^2 said:

I don't know enough to even guess at whether that was the right decision, but it was certainly handled very poorly, both in terms of how it was communicated to Star Theory and to the community.

You see, all your words are based mostly on faith and hope that the developers care about the game as much as we do, and are not trying to keep our attention on the franchise, which is slowly losing fans. I believe that no one was going to release the game in 2020, but the publisher felt that it was necessary to promise the impossible, to stir up our interest until the release in some 2024 year, and this will help recoup the costs of buying the franchise.
The game was promised for the spring of 2020, so it should have been more or less ready by winter. A game with improved graphics and colonies should have been ready. The video recordings, for example, show that the performance of the game is poor. The Mun's surface, for example, looks very primitive, worse than parallax. Was the expansion of the game supposed to lie on this background? KSP 1 is outdated, has bad code and cannot be radically improved with mods, right? How does this differ from the current development situation?

[shdwlrd]

16 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

You see, all your words are based mostly on faith and hope that the developers care about the game as much as we do,

Have you watched any of the interviews with Nate Simpson? All the times he had to force himself from not to talk about what they are working on. I can say he does care about KSP.

Plus I've said this before, we are not entitled to progress reports, what they are currently working on, and internal happenings within Intercept studios. Only Private Division and Take Two can demand that.

[Guest]

48 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

I believe that no one was going to release the game in 2020, but the publisher felt that it was necessary to promise the impossible, to stir up our interest until the release in some 2024 year, and this will help recoup the costs of buying the franchise.

So your theory is that everything is just a lie to cover the need of more time and keep the attention on KSP in fear of some competing game? Have you missed the whole mess that happened with Star.Theory loosing the contract and PD bringing the development in-house opening a whole new studio?

And they did all of that in fear of what, exactly? As of today KSP has no competition in the genre it created and the most promising indie projects trying to make something similar can't keep up with it, let alone a KSP2 made not by an indie studio but backed by a big publisher.

 

[K^2]

2 hours ago, Alexoff said:

So, are we now promised something much more? What exactly?

In terms of gameplay, colonies as integral element of exploration, multiple star systems, rather than just the two, physics overhaul for the rockets, a more coherent replacement for career mode, and I'm pretty sure multiplayer was just an idea and only became a feature post E3 hype the game got.

In terms of visuals, dense biome-specific procedural placements (vegetations, rocks, etc.), PBR, atmospherics, reflections, and based on this trajectory I expect virtual texturing and dynamic tessellation for terrain or something similar. To be clear, some of these things would happen regardless, but based on changes in schedule and reqs, they are pushing across the board.

Some of these things were already promised very early on following the reveal, but given some mixed messaging, it's pretty clear these were new goals, and not yet reflected in the planned release date.

2 hours ago, Alexoff said:

You see, all your words are based mostly on faith and hope that the developers care about the game as much as we do

I'll give you the second part. I do hope Intercept leadership cares about this game as much as fans do, and there is every indication that they do. All of the interviews with creative director show passion for what they are making. It's hard to fake. But ultimately, these are human beings, and I do simply hope it's true.

But your claim that I'm taking anything on faith is entirely without merit. I've contributed to several modding projects before I actually switched career tracks from academia to industry. Since then, I've shipped two major titles and contributed to numerous others. I have worked with teams that make mobile games, contributed to a well-established long running MMO, and even worked on a title that got canceled several years into development. And then there are friends and colleagues who've worked on a myriad of other titles. Game industry tends to be pretty secretive with the outsiders, but devs talk amongst each other very openly. You quickly learn to recognize projects that are a dumpster fire from these that can do alright. Earlier in the year, there have been a lot of red flags with team transition. I consider these mostly resolved. Nobody can anticipate a hit in this business, but I'm not seeing the signs of project heading for disaster in this case, and that tends to be a good indicator.

So how about yourself? What sort of wealth of experience and facts unknown to the rest of us are you basing your claims on?

[DunaManiac]

2 hours ago, Alexoff said:

The video recordings, for example, show that the performance of the game is poor. The Mun's surface, for example, looks very primitive, worse than parallax.

It was worrying back in august when it was less than a year away from a release, but now the game is over 2+ years away from release, which we will probably see a lot of improvement. Honestly, judging the quality of the game this early on is like judging a CGI animated film by the initial renderings.

And based on this:

I think that we have fair reason to expect better final graphics.

[K^2]

Side note, I'm a little upset that this is state of the art for grass. Not a dig against Intercept, anyone else using SpeedTree grass, or even SpeedTree themselves. It's actually pretty impressive what they do with the technique. I'm just upset there isn't a better technique. Rasterized grass always looks bad up close, and the transition to lower LOD is very noticeable, so you only get a great looking grass somewhere in the middle.

[Alexoff]

2 hours ago, Master39 said:

So your theory is that everything is just a lie to cover the need of more time and keep the attention on KSP in fear of some competing game? Have you missed the whole mess that happened with Star.Theory loosing the contract and PD bringing the development in-house opening a whole new studio?

KSP has been losing fans for a long time, the game is still old, children grow up slower than we age. If you do not remind about the game, then the number of buyers in 3 years will be lower.

2 hours ago, Master39 said:

And they did all of that in fear of what, exactly? As of today KSP has no competition in the genre it created and the most promising indie projects trying to make something similar can't keep up with it, let alone a KSP2 made not by an indie studio but backed by a big publisher.

Perhaps the KSP has no competitors among similar games, but there are hardly many people among us who do not have favorite games of other genres. And computer games must also compete with TV shows and social networks in the limited time of consumers.

3 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

Have you watched any of the interviews with Nate Simpson? All the times he had to force himself from not to talk about what they are working on. I can say he does care about KSP.

Plus I've said this before, we are not entitled to progress reports, what they are currently working on, and internal happenings within Intercept studios. Only Private Division and Take Two can demand that.

This means we can think in any direction.

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

So how about yourself? What sort of wealth of experience and facts unknown to the rest of us are you basing your claims on?

I have extensive experience in ordering various works in science, construction and legal support. And I am very familiar with people enthusiastically talking about their interest, showing beautiful pictures and promising incredible terms. However, then, during checks, it turns out that the work begins to take a long time, the result looks rather pale and is demonstrated less and less. And this is very similar to working on KSP 2. I think the animations of kerbals should have been made not in the spring-summer of 2020, when the game was threatened to be released. I'm afraid to even ask - in what year, for example, will we be shown the process of creating or designing a colony? There should be a lot of things in KSP 2 that should be shown to us, this is more than enough to show us vidos once a month until 2025. A bunch of details, a bunch of planets, water from above and below, aerodynamics, physics - but we are shown the faces of the developers.

[K^2]

2 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

I have extensive experience in ordering various works in science, construction and legal support.

I didn't realize that being a home owner qualifies me as an expert in absolutely every product out there. I'm going to ask for a raise!

Seriously, though. That's the problem with consumerism. People start to think that just because they buy things, they somehow have any sort of valuable experience in evaluating anything but the finished product. To know how things are made and to be able to evaluate a process of making things you need to have experience in actually making things. Shocking concept, I know. And it helps to have experience making the very thing being discussed. I'm going to have a lot better understanding of how cars are manufactured than any random person with extensive experience of ordering various cars, but I would still defer to somebody from that industry if their advice is available.

Again, being weary of promises is one thing. That's good sense. But if you aren't prepared to take advice from people who actually work in the field and aren't financially motivated in selling you something, then you aren't even being a good consumer.