Release Date Update from the KSP2 Team

[Kerbart]

21 hours ago, PopinFRESH said:

You mean they had in the Slide "Fiscal Year 2023" which for Take Two is from April 1 2022 - March 31 2023. The slide from the investor presentation for Take Two's Q4 earnings call is now "Quarter 4 Fiscal Year 2023" which is January 2023 - March 2023 (a.k.a "Early 2023").

Yes, thank you for the correction. I always read the "fiscal year 2023" as "early 2023" because if it were 2022 (calendar), why wouldn't they say so?

[Zozaf Kerman]

People were saying March 15th, but where did you get that information?

[Admiral Fluffy]

16 hours ago, PopinFRESH said:

I looked into a crystal ball a few minutes ago which showed me a glimpse of a ouija board that pointed me to the number 315...  So officially it looks like the launch date is March 15th 2023.

@Zozaf Kerman, from this.

Not sure if it’s the most… reliable source.

[Valintena Kerman]

It's actually nice to hear that the game is being delayed because then we know it's gonna be good!

[RealAlexWonder]

23 hours ago, PopinFRESH said:

 

Usually true, other than No Man's Sky which also was eventually good.

I think there is a limit to how much you can change a game once you release it.

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, RealAlexWonder said:

I think there is a limit to how much you can change a game once you release it.

I disagree.

The limit of changes a code base can withhold depends more of the skills of the developers involved on the first implementation than anything else. More experienced developers already knows how things change over time, and try to architecture the code base to allow these changes to happen without too much hassle.

Given the turbulent development of KSP until 1.2.2, with a lot of rewrites under the same team and leadership, I think things may not be ideal, but not that bad neither. Hey, they recently migrated KSP from two Unity releases, being the first migration from a pretty obsolete one (Unity 5 to Unity 2017). And the thing survived relatively well.

What I think screwed things royally are not the changes itself, but a perceived lack of compromising on preventing breaking what was working on the process. I detected methods being shunt to return NULL (completely screwing up code that was relying on the feature), kludges being brute forced on the KSP's Life Cycle (as the Editor since KSP 1.9) and some terrible decisions made on implementing things (as the Robotics). And none of that are related to changing an ageing code base, it's exactly the other way around: these are the actions that were ageing the code base...

The Linux Kernel is an fabulous example for what I'm saying: there are terrible code there (as the floppy drive support), but since the overall architecture is solid, the crapness is confined on its own playpen and can be changed, replaced or just removed without compromising the product.

As long there're will and skill available, things can change almost forever and still be solid.

Edited May 18, 2022 by Lisias
Hit Save too soon.

[Xavven]

12 minutes ago, Lisias said:

I disagree.

The limit of changes a code base can withhold depends more of the skills of the developers involved on the first implementation than anything else. More experienced developers already knows how things change over time, and tries to architecture the code base to allow these changes to happen without too much hassle.

Given the turbulent development of KSP until 1.2.2, with a lot of rewrites under the same team and leadership, I think things may not be ideal, but not that bad neither . Hey, they recently migrated KSP from two Unity releases, being the first migration from a pretty obsolete one (Unity 5 to Unity 2017). And the thing survived relatively well.

What I think screwed things royally are not the changes itself, but a perceived lack of compromising on preventing breaking what was working on the process. I detected methods being shunt to return NULL (completely screwing up code that was relying on the feature), kludges being brute forced on the KSP's Life Cycle (as the Editor since KSP 1.9) and some terrible decisions made on implementing things (as the Robotics). And none of that are related to changing an ageing code base, it's exactly the other way around: these are the actions that were ageing the code base...

The Linux Kernel is an fabulous example for what I'm saying: there are terrible code there (as the floppy drive support), but since the overall architecture is solid, the crapness is confined on its own playpen and can be changed, replaced or just removed without compromising the product.

As long there're will and skill available, things can change almost forever and still be solid.

Just echoing this.  One of the other games I play is Falcon BMS. It's based on a Microprose game from 1998. The code was released and a team of modders have been tweaking it ever since. Its most recent update was less than 1 month ago. It is vastly different from its original form.

 

Regarding the main topic, I don't mind waiting until 2023 at all. I still have more things to do in KSP 1 and will be enjoying it more this year.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

BG3 and KSP2 release in 2023 gives me more time to save up for a gaming rig Maybe some graphics cards will be available by then

[obnox twin]

25 minutes ago, Xavven said:

I don't mind waiting until 2023 at all. I still have more things to do in KSP 1 and will be enjoying it more this year.

Same here bro I am in the middle of a Jool 5 and I still want to land on every planet in stock

[Catto]

16 minutes ago, Waxing_Kibbous said:

BG3 and KSP2 release in 2023 gives me more time to save up for a gaming rig Maybe some graphics cards will be available by then

Baldur's gate 3 is already out... Unless you mean something else. I searched up BG3 and baldur's gate 3 came up.

[Lithobrake]

I kinda hope they delay it just a *little* bit more (12 days) so that it will release on April 12, 2023 (Yuri's Night, an the anniversary of STS-1).

It is kinda sad that the game has been delayed a little bit more, but 3 months really is not too bad.

[MechBFP]

21 minutes ago, Catto said:

Baldur's gate 3 is already out... Unless you mean something else. I searched up BG3 and baldur's gate 3 came up.

Actually finished,  not the travesty that is the current early access. 

[Catto]

12 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

Actually finished,  not the travesty that is the current early access. 

Okay

[PDCWolf]

4 hours ago, Valintena Kerman said:

It's actually nice to hear that the game is being delayed because then we know it's gonna be good!

This means nothing, and every day there's more and more examples that time in the oven does not translate to a better result, or even the originally promised result. Delays don't signify the developer "wanting to do a better job", they signify the developer doing a bad job, where they haven't been able to meet goals inside deadlines. This is probably one of the worst myths plaguing the consumer side in the modern videogame market.

Being right should feel good, but in these cases it just hurts. If the only thing you ever managed to show in your trailers, spanning from PAX 2019 all the way to the very last "Episode 5"  is new parts (and that comes only after you hired the interstellar mod dev), then progress was really not there. Further on, a 3 month delay does not fit development tasks, so either:

1. They're delaying to finish post production, which would also mean they've chosen to not show anything useful on their media. OR
2. There's yet another delay coming further on, but they're going the cyberpunk route of announcing "PR manageable" small delays, instead of incurring the obvious penalty of announcing the real delay needed.

Now, that's not much of a prediction, either they release or they delay, obviously. But just to pick a side, I'm placing myself under number 2.

Edited May 18, 2022 by PDCWolf
Added link to footage compilation.

[DeathRoams]

Really!:( Can yall not get your marketing team and their timing for release on track i mean. Yea okay delaying to make a better product but why keep having short term delay dates(moves back couple months). Like if this game is as complex as yall say and I'm sure it is then. Why not say a much later date than what yall actually want to get it out. Instead of liquiding off people(im one of them) with delay after delay. Make a date that is further out and surprise us with an earlier release with the correct quality everyone's happy. I we can even pre-order it yet like and the game was announced how long ago and how many times have we got close to release dates.

[PopinFRESH]

 

6 hours ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

22 hours ago, PopinFRESH said:

...I looked into a crystal ball a few minutes ago which showed me a glimpse of a ouija board that pointed me to the number 315...  So officially it looks like the launch date is March 15th 2023.

@Zozaf Kerman, from this.

Not sure if it’s the most… reliable source.

 Are you doubting the scientific validity of the ouija board or the crystal ball? I got +8 science when I ran the experiment so it seems reliable to me... Although, it just dawned on me that it might be showing something from a future where they write the date as Year, Month, Day so 315 could mean "May of 2031"  Buckle up its going to be a ride!

[Profugo Barbatus]

40 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

This means nothing, and every day there's more and more examples that time in the oven does not translate to a better result, or even the originally promised result. Delays don't signify the developer "wanting to do a better job", they signify the developer doing a bad job, where they haven't been able to meet goals inside deadlines. This is probably one of the worst myths plaguing the consumer side in the modern videogame market.

Being right should feel good, but in these cases it just hurts. If the only thing you ever managed to show in your trailers, spanning from PAX 2019 all the way to the very last "Episode 5"  is new parts (and that comes only after you hired the interstellar mod dev), then progress was really not there. Further on, a 3 month delay does not fit development tasks, so either:

1. They're delaying to finish post production, which would also mean they've chosen to not show anything useful on their media. OR
2. There's yet another delay coming further on, but they're going the cyberpunk route of announcing "PR manageable" small delays, instead of incurring the obvious penalty of announcing the real delay needed.

Now, that's not much of a prediction, either they release or they delay, obviously. But just to pick a side, I'm placing myself under number 2.

I would propose a third option, actually.

KSP likes to think of itself as a game of discovery and exploration. Much like the other aspects in the sequel, my guess is they want to keep as much of the mystery as possible on as many things as possible. Revealing substantive things in the marketing (mechanical elements) starts to open questions about how they work, what the systems are, progression, etc. Players will naturally start to metagame their way around a lot of the systems in advance. Keeping systems such as Colony Operations under wraps with just peeks into it in other videos about simpler mechanical things keeps that mystique, prevents players from trying to precompute things instead of figuring them out when they first land a colony module on the Mun. The less new parts, the less new planets, the less new systems and mechanics they show off, the more there is to be surprised by and discover at the end. That leaves mostly showing off technical art, or small aspects of pieces of the game.

Its a terrible conflict for me because I do love the discovery and figuring out systems aspect, but I also really want to know whats coming down the pipe. I don't believe this offers much excuse to not talk at all about multiplayer before release though - That is very much a technical system, and not a gameplay one in the sense that you don't really discover what the limits are, you probably want to know "Can two of my friends play with me or only one" well before release for reasons outside the actual gameplay.

[Pthigrivi]

10 minutes ago, Profugo Barbatus said:

I would propose a third option, actually.

Or a fourth option: sometimes solving complex problems just takes a little longer than you originally anticipated. 

[PopinFRESH]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

This means nothing, and every day there's more and more examples that time in the oven does not translate to a better result, or even the originally promised result. Delays don't signify the developer "wanting to do a better job", they signify the developer doing a bad job, where they haven't been able to meet goals inside deadlines. This is probably one of the worst myths plaguing the consumer side in the modern videogame market....

Just as your first point is valid, your second point is invalid.

"time in the oven does not translate to a better result, or even the originally promised result" - valid, a delay does not necessarily mean the end result will be an improved experience or finished product.

"Delays don't signify the developer "wanting to do a better job", they signify the developer doing a bad job, where they haven't been able to meet goals inside deadlines." - Invalid, a delay does not necessarily mean the end result will be a worse experience or an unfinished product.

While I don't know how Intercept Games handles their workflows, I would be willing to bet that like most modern software development they use an Agile development process as opposed to a traditional waterfall approach. Deadlines are nearly the antithesis of an agile workflow, however, because the general public and investors/business managers don't tend to think like developers they still have to guesstimate milestones and timelines for the rest of us. Scrum is about an iterative loop to help elevate your constraints (Theory of Constraints and Agile is a rabbit hole of interesting topics worth delving into if project management is the type of thing that interests you).

Like I've said elsewhere, the last delay they forecasted out a 25 month timeline based on a plethora of speculative estimates of all the various systems and features intended to be included at launch. They've had about 18 months of work to help them narrow that forecast window based on their throughput over that 18 months. Obviously there is the potential for scope creep and feature creep as an iterative process often does result in novel ideas that spring up during that process. This is the constant challenge for the PM trying to balance those constraints.

So in summary, a delay could point toward either outcome. If you view it as a greater potential for one or the other I think tends to be if you are more of a "glass half empty" or "glass half full" type of person.

Edited May 18, 2022 by PopinFRESH

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

This means nothing, and every day there's more and more examples that time in the oven does not translate to a better result, or even the originally promised result. Delays don't signify the developer "wanting to do a better job", they signify the developer doing a bad job, where they haven't been able to meet goals inside deadlines. This is probably one of the worst myths plaguing the consumer side in the modern videogame market.

Being right should feel good, but in these cases it just hurts. If the only thing you ever managed to show in your trailers, spanning from PAX 2019 all the way to the very last "Episode 5"  is new parts (and that comes only after you hired the interstellar mod dev), then progress was really not there. Further on, a 3 month delay does not fit development tasks, so either:

1. They're delaying to finish post production, which would also mean they've chosen to not show anything useful on their media. OR
2. There's yet another delay coming further on, but they're going the cyberpunk route of announcing "PR manageable" small delays, instead of incurring the obvious penalty of announcing the real delay needed.

Now, that's not much of a prediction, either they release or they delay, obviously. But just to pick a side, I'm placing myself under number 2.

So from your point of view a developer who meets unrealistic deadlines is the one who is actually doing a good job?

Heh, I guess from a certain point of view that is true. Certainty not going to be the end user's though, that is for sure.

[PDCWolf]

Just now, Profugo Barbatus said:

I would propose a third option, actually.

KSP likes to think of itself as a game of discovery and exploration. Much like the other aspects in the sequel, my guess is they want to keep as much of the mystery as possible on as many things as possible. Revealing substantive things in the marketing (mechanical elements) starts to open questions about how they work, what the systems are, progression, etc. Players will naturally start to metagame their way around a lot of the systems in advance. Keeping systems such as Colony Operations under wraps with just peeks into it in other videos about simpler mechanical things keeps that mystique, prevents players from trying to precompute things instead of figuring them out when they first land a colony module on the Mun. The less new parts, the less new planets, the less new systems and mechanics they show off, the more there is to be surprised by and discover at the end. That leaves mostly showing off technical art, or small aspects of pieces of the game.

Its a terrible conflict for me because I do love the discovery and figuring out systems aspect, but I also really want to know whats coming down the pipe. I don't believe this offers much excuse to not talk at all about multiplayer before release though - That is very much a technical system, and not a gameplay one in the sense that you don't really discover what the limits are, you probably want to know "Can two of my friends play with me or only one" well before release for reasons outside the actual gameplay.

For that to be true, they'd have to backpedal on what's been the main business policy of the videogames industry: Sending early review/PR copies to big media outlets and youtubers. KSP has been doing this since the "public test branch" outrage. This leaves the average consumer only 2 options: Read and spoil yourself, or be forced to a blind purchase. Now, it is pretty much a given that gaming is the only market where the informed consumer is beaten and looked down on, but listen to this:

People that want to make a blind purchase should be the ones forcing themselves to, and not forcing everyone else to do as them.

3 minutes ago, PopinFRESH said:

Just as your first point is valid, your second point is invalid.

"time in the oven does not translate to a better result, or even the originally promised result" - valid, a delay does not necessarily mean the end result will be an improved experience or finished product.

"Delays don't signify the developer "wanting to do a better job", they signify the developer doing a bad job, where they haven't been able to meet goals inside deadlines." - Invalid, a delay does not necessarily mean the end result will be a worse experience or an unfinished product.

While I don't know how Intercept Games handles their workflows, I would be willing to bet that like most modern software development they use an Agile development process as opposed to a traditional waterfall approach. Deadlines are nearly the antithesis of an agile workflow, however, because the general public and investors/business managers don't tend to think like developers they still have to guesstimate milestones and timelines for the rest of us. Scrum is about an iterative loop to help elevate your constraints (Theory of Constraints and Agile is a rabbit hole of interesting topics worth delving into if project management is the type of thing that interests you).

Like I've said elsewhere, the last delay they forecasted out a 25 month timeline based on a plethora of speculative estimates of all the various systems and features intended to be included at launch. They've had about 18 months of work to help them narrow that forecast window based on their throughput over that 18 months. Obviously there is the potential for scope creep and feature creep as an iterative process often does result in novel ideas that spring up during that process. This is the constant challenge for the PM trying to balance those constraints.

So in summary, a delay could point toward either outcome. If you view it as a greater potential for one or the other I think tends to be if you are more of a "glass half empty" or "glass half full" type of person.

Deadlines are there for a reason: They clamp on the scope and feature creep, and stop a product from entering development hell. Deadlines are a needed part of a project, otherwise nothing would get done in a timely manner, under the excuse of just "making it better" in whatever minuscule way. Whilst you might be a "glass half full" person and agile evangelist, evidence and precedent would be against you in this particular case, specially more modern evidence.

2 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

So from your point of view a developer who meets unrealistic deadlines is the one who is actually doing a good job?

Heh, I guess from a certain point of view that is true. Certainty not going to be the end user's though, that is for sure.

A good job is planned, and executed. A good deadline includes leeway for imponderables inside that ideal good job. This is their 3rd (4th?) deadline change, pointing to a problem somewhere in the process, or in the management of said process. Not only that, you're assuming with no proof that the deadlines were ever unrealistic: It is important to remember that the game was going to launch almost 3 years ago, with a date being published in 2019, before Covid. How a pre-Covid date got screwed over by Covid and pushed back 2 years, then another, and now 3 months, for a product that was ready to release 4 to 5 months from announced back in 2019 is probably something that's going to be analyzed over and over again by their internal teams to never make this same mess again, specially having the fresh example of CDPR losing like 60% of it's shares value over a similar incident.

 

[PopinFRESH]

9 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

It is important to remember that the game was going to launch almost 3 years ago, with a date being published in 2019, before Covid...

But that isn't true. It was announced in August 2019 for a release in 2020, as shown in the announcement trailer. Shortly after that announcement is when Take Two was trying to acquire Star Theory and subsequently established Intercept Games. That obviously would have been very disruptive to production and alongside that disruption they were forced into lockdown at the end of March 2020.

So yeah, announcing a 2020 release and then having to adapt to losing half the staff, onboarding new staff to the project, and doing so with an abrupt shift to remote work I'd say Covid 19 had an impact on the first delay to Q3 2021.

[PDCWolf]

16 minutes ago, PopinFRESH said:

But that isn't true. It was announced in August 2019 for a release in 2020, as shown in the announcement trailer. Shortly after that announcement is when Take Two was trying to acquire Star Theory and subsequently established Intercept Games. That obviously would have been very disruptive to production and alongside that disruption they were forced into lockdown at the end of March 2020.

So yeah, announcing a 2020 release and then having to adapt to losing half the staff, onboarding new staff to the project, and doing so with an abrupt shift to remote work I'd say Covid 19 had an impact on the first delay to Q3 2021.

Let's assume you're right. You'd be saying that Covid turned the last 5 months needed to prepare the game for release into a full year, that's more than reasonable if it actually went down that way. Now, where do the other 2 years come from? 5 months to release means the game was very close to ready, they'd be probably on the beta stage on that timeframe. Further on, let's assume these 3 years have been super good for the development of the game, and they've made strides... They've literally shown nothing to account for that. This is either a very dumb choice (they need the goodwill obtained from showing progress) or there's really little to no progress made.

These sets of assumptions, yours and mine, only open up more avenues to question them, instead of doing the opposite. This is why communication is important, and transparency even more so. A vague video with less than 3 minutes of pre-alpha "gameplay" and literal blender renders every 5 months is nothing, disrespectful even when you look back at the stuff from PAX2019 and see the only new thing they have to show is parts. It is made specially disrespectful if it still ends up in a delay, as you clearly weren't communicating the important stuff, and then the delay is announced with a copypasted "we want to make it good" discourse we've all heard before from many developers, and some from products that still ended in disaster.

If anything, I'll give them credit for not enabling preorders diminished by them not doing so on the basis of knowing the release date was unrealistic.

[Superfluous J]

I am personally of the mind that while delaying the game will not magically make it good, releasing it on time just so it's released on time will certainly make it bad.

But in the end this is all just speculation on our part. The game will be released or it will not be released. It will be good or it will not be good. Nothing we say will affect any of that.

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Let's assume you're right. You'd be saying that Covid turned the last 5 months needed to prepare the game for release into a full year, that's more than reasonable if it actually went down that way. Now, where do the other 2 years come from? 5 months to release means the game was very close to ready, they'd be probably on the beta stage on that timeframe. Further on, let's assume these 3 years have been super good for the development of the game, and they've made strides... They've literally shown nothing to account for that. This is either a very dumb choice (they need the goodwill obtained from showing progress) or there's really little to no progress made.

These sets of assumptions, yours and mine, only open up more avenues to question them, instead of doing the opposite. This is why communication is important, and transparency even more so. A vague video with less than 3 minutes of pre-alpha "gameplay" and literal blender renders every 5 months is nothing, disrespectful even when you look back at the stuff from PAX2019 and see the only new thing they have to show is parts. It is made specially disrespectful if it still ends up in a delay, as you clearly weren't communicating the important stuff, and then the delay is announced with a copypasted "we want to make it good" discourse we've all heard before from many developers, and some from products that still ended in disaster.

If anything, I'll give them credit for not enabling preorders diminished by them not doing so on the basis of knowing the release date was unrealistic.

You very conveniently ignored the half of what you're replying to that tried to remind you that's not only COVID, but a change in studio during COVID that set off the bigger delays.