I was showing KSP to a friend...

[mrdest21]

He wanted to see the game and I was more than happy to oblige. I had been telling him about my rocket design and my attempts at landing on Laythe. I show him the basics, make a tiny rocket, get that thing in orbit. He's getting excited, I figure, someone's buying KSP tonight.

Then I show him my Jupiter rocket... That's when I lost the sale. He saw the insane lag on launch, the impossibility to adjust the throttle because of the lag, the slideshow from 0 to 20,000m. My computer isn't bad, it's not great either. It might not have deterred him at 10$ but at almost 20$, that's all that stayed with him: the lack of optimization.

Kinda sad Was looking to steal his rocket designs.

[Captisaac21198]

My friend hates it because it lacks a goal or storyline. He won't even let me show him any part of it.

[swiftgates24]

Still, such a loss. Imagine when KSP still doesn't have the optimization and there is even more stuff? It will lag more for some people, and they won't pay 18$ for it. Then they fix most lag problems for some people and it costs 25$ They just lost 7$ but not to a bad cause... They might as well buy it now and wait for it.

[mrdest21]

Buying now only makes sense if you think the devs will come through. This new indie business model of selling the alpha mostly works because the devs and their customers are in a "close" relationship where one party asks for the others' money in exchange for the assurance of a good product at the end (at a rebate since the original payment stands forever). If you've never played the game or if the only thing you've seen turned you off, then you have no reason to commit to that relationship.

[TerranCmdr]

More money for the devs really. Once this game is fully complete and optimized, people will be lining up to buy it at full price. Your friend just lost a good deal on this great game in my opinion. I mean it's only in alpha stages and is already providing countless hours of gameplay. If you're running mods that are lagging down your computer by the way, that's not really Squad's fault. Just my $.02.

[spikeyhat09]

My friend hates it because it lacks a goal or storyline. He won't even let me show him any part of it.

I suppose your friend hate minecraft then...

I find people like that to be a bit closed minded and lacking creativity... My favorite games are the ones that are open ended and let you do whatever the h*ll you want. you can make your own goals and storyline. being highly educational is also a big plus. KSP is all of those things... except easygoing on the average computer, sheesh.

[Fendleton]

Well, the game IS pretty dang laggy right now. A guy I know on IRC (who got me into the game) has basically given up even trying to go interplanetary because of the extra lag in 0.17, and I've been having trouble myself. That said....condemning an ALPHA version for having issues is kinda silly. I like the game as is.....even though it'd be a lot nicer with the ability to send up full-sized rockets without random lag, glitches and explosions.

[mrdest21]

I get what you guys are saying but we're viewing it from the perspective of the convinced customers who already paid. We love this game, it was worth our money. We also trust that Squad will make the upgrades and the necessary steps to produce a final game that's playable. As much as we trust in this, it's a gamble. They could very well not do it, by lack of ability or funding or anything. 18$ for the alpha says "pay us now for this unoptimized version and you'll be helping us to make a great game which we'll then give you."

If someone has a limited gaming budget and they decide where their 20$ goes, do they go for the long haul gamble with a present version that's unpolished and sometimes frustrating or do you get a 20$ game off Steam, you might not get the hours of enjoyment but at least you get something finished now? Some people will make our choice and buy it (and enjoy it despite the frustration of lag and random exploding rockets) but I fear a great majority will not because staring at a lagging rocket for 5 minutes while it takes off doesn't sound like a smart move to them.

[Astronomer]

My friend hates it because it lacks a goal or storyline. He won't even let me show him any part of it.

Makes me wonder what he thinks about minecraft...

[szpw]

I'm honestly not sure whether my friends like KSP or not. I don't think any have made an actual orbital flight, much less a flight out of the atmosphere.

[samstarman5]

I would suggest you send a link for the demo to KSP to your friend, and let him try it on his own system to see how it performs.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/download.php

He may get a different perspective once he's able to tweak it out and try it out on his own. Seeing how a game performs on someone else's system can give a false perspective on a few points when you consider there will probably be a number of differences involved between theirs and your own. CPU, GPU, RAM, power supply, the OS, and a lot of other factors can make a world of difference. You might be trying to ask your system for everything its got plus some more with high settings, while he might be someone who doesn't feel the need for high anti-aliasing and texture resolution. It may very well be possible you weren't trying to sell KSP to him, but instead you were trying to sell him your car and insisting nothing gets changed after the sale.

[that1guy]

I explain it as buying stock. It is a risk, but you must be willing to accept the risk that comes with investing. He must decide if he wants to risk 20$ for the promise of a good game.

[zapy97]

i have a friend who realy wants it but he dropped his computer

[TerranCmdr]

Well, the game IS pretty dang laggy right now. A guy I know on IRC (who got me into the game) has basically given up even trying to go interplanetary because of the extra lag in 0.17, and I've been having trouble myself. That said....condemning an ALPHA version for having issues is kinda silly. I like the game as is.....even though it'd be a lot nicer with the ability to send up full-sized rockets without random lag, glitches and explosions.

I suppose it can depend on what system you're playing on, but it shouldn't be impossible to go interplanetary. I've done Eve just fine with almost zero lag, even on the launchpad. As I understand it though, Unity has certain restrictions at the moment so your system can only be so good.

And my system is probably only upper-midrange at best. 8gb of RAM that I'm not sure Unity can even use, and only one core of my 6-core processor. I would say play with some settings to see if you can reduce your lag a bit. I know on my AMD card, AA kills it, so I keep it low.

[mrdest21]

Sadly, I am playing with everything turned down as otherwise, it's unplayable. 1/8th texture, no AA, no nothing, 1024x768 full screen. Anything else and my rockets explode randomly during the chug. It's just really hard to convince someone with "sure, it's hard to play it now but if you pay now, you can get something good later!". Only convinces the true science nerds. Or the saditist who enjoy seeing Kerbals explode.

[phoenix_ca]

I know on my AMD card, AA kills it, so I keep it low.

AA will always kill frame-rate, anywhere. It's one of the most computationally intensive tasks you can ask of a GPU.

Thankfully, I can run KSP at 8xAA with no issues. :3 (At least no issues caused by the GPU. The CPU remains a serious bottleneck, and I have no hope of seeing that problem go away without multi-threading.)

[cardgame]

To anyone with a crappy rig: you shouldn't be convincing anyone with gameplay, show them youtube vids.

[RoboRay]

The performance problems can be completely avoided by simply adding larger parts. I installed NovaPunch simply to get access to the 3m and 5m parts, and the longer 1m and 2m tanks. Even using the stock engines (I deleted all the NP engines, other than a couple of 3m and the 5m one because they are not balanced with the stock engines), I can now launch huge, heavy lander/return craft on interplanetary flights with no performance issues at all during the launch, because I'm doing it with a launcher consisting of 80 big parts instead of 200+ small parts.

I'm not saying optimizations aren't needed. They are. But for now, replacing a huge triple stack of six 2m tanks with two 3m tanks works great as a work-around.

[Pingonaut]

You may want to tell him that the game is in Alpha and it won't have those problems later. (and that it doesn't do that all the time) There are lots of interplanetary rockets (even to Jool) that are really small.

[LukeTim]

I'm honestly not sure whether my friends like KSP or not. I don't think any have made an actual orbital flight, much less a flight out of the atmosphere.

Same here. I know a couple have bought the game, but I have no idea how far they got with it.

[Aescwulf]

I jumped in on this game without knowing anything but build your own rockets and go into space and I'm loving it so far considering its alpha.

What makes me laugh is that people are willingly to jump in on the minecraft train which does lag. But when it comes to a game about going into space in your own creations and at times it lags people go " nope it lags "

[segaprophet]

Minecraft is horribly programmed.

As far as I can tell with KSP, Squad is handling very complex modeling and sim components pretty well with the small team they have.

[Neomatt]

Well, it's definitely not the same thing.

Minecraft physics: "walk in a straight line on the perfectly flat terrain. And if you meet a block, you can't walk in it. It can get laggy."

KSP physics: "simulate as realistically as possible a space ship composed of dozens of parts, flying at around 10km/s, with a set trajectory in an immense universe. It can get laggy."

Also, it bears repeating, but the devs are dependant on Unity and PhysX for performance; until Unity supports good multi-threading (and their version of PhysX does as well), only small performance upgrades are possible.

And no, they won't change the engine. It's so much work that we will all have upgraded our computers when they would be done.

[Ziff]

He wanted to see the game and I was more than happy to oblige. I had been telling him about my rocket design and my attempts at landing on Laythe. I show him the basics, make a tiny rocket, get that thing in orbit. He's getting excited, I figure, someone's buying KSP tonight.

Then I show him my Jupiter rocket... That's when I lost the sale. He saw the insane lag on launch, the impossibility to adjust the throttle because of the lag, the slideshow from 0 to 20,000m. My computer isn't bad, it's not great either. It might not have deterred him at 10$ but at almost 20$, that's all that stayed with him: the lack of optimization.

Kinda sad Was looking to steal his rocket designs.

Just tell your friend it's ok, he can buy the game at it's full retail value (I dunno, $30-$50 I am guessing?) when it is finished and released. Remind him the game hasn't yet been optimized, because again, it is in Alpha development. This is a chance to contribute to a game as it grows, but there are some sacrifices that are made during development (such as not being optimized, and being full of bugs). It's a trade off, but it's totally worth it.

[Qumefox]

The performance problems can be completely avoided by simply adding larger parts. I installed NovaPunch simply to get access to the 3m and 5m parts, and the longer 1m and 2m tanks. Even using the stock engines (I deleted all the NP engines, other than a couple of 3m and the 5m one because they are not balanced with the stock engines), I can now launch huge, heavy lander/return craft on interplanetary flights with no performance issues at all during the launch, because I'm doing it with a launcher consisting of 80 big parts instead of 200+ small parts.

I'm not saying optimizations aren't needed. They are. But for now, replacing a huge triple stack of six 2m tanks with two 3m tanks works great as a work-around.

^^^ This.

It really boils down to physics calculations. There are probably game optimisations to be had, but in the long run.. more parts in a build will always increase the machine load due to the added physics calculations for each part, and this will always be the case. The more complicated the ships, the more CPU cycles modelling all those parts will eat, and the slower the simulation will run.

You have to do some optimisations yourself with your builds to make them as efficient as possible.. and K.I.S.S very much applies to kerbal rocket science.. Generally, the more simple the design, the better it works.