Reading into KSP 2 EA Features/Non-Features

[Jarin]

1 hour ago, Jarin said:

Yeah, we're in a bit of a limbo zone here between the preview and release. Even in a best-case scenario, they're scrambling to clean up what they can before tomorrow. I'm not going to start really crying about the sky falling until a bit after release, to see where we stand with features and hotfixes. I'm just old and salty.

Never been happier to be *immediately* proven wrong. Maybe I dare hope for better communication than in the old days of Squad silence.

[Roostergod]

At around 7:55 Nate says that there will be buxfix updates every few weeks.

[Strawberry]

4 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:

After thinking some more on this, I can't help but return to the following tin-foil-hat theory that I don't really know how to evaluate/assess the validity of.

This is going into massive speculation territory, but the recent Scott Manley dev interview posted on his interview said something that Ill take as evidence towards a theory I've heard (and added upon a bit) and one that I believe. Recently they mentioned early on that they were running essentially a heavily modded version of ksp1 as a testbed for ksp2, going into mostly pure speculation here, I wont be surprised if this prototype build was half intended to just be what ksp2 was. The pre alpha footage from PAX east very much looks like something you'd see in ksp1 graphically, I wont be surprised if it was basically just ksp1. This explains why the initial deadline was so ambitous, because in case a from scratch ksp2 engine failed, they could fall back on the skeletons of ksp1.

Of course, even if they fully committed to going with just a built up ksp1, it would still likely get delayed. Still, from the perspective of the devs, they already had a version of ksp1 that had a good bit of the features working (though likely very much not in a performant and stable state), so how hard can it be finishing that off? Then Take two began taking devs from star theory, and only a third remained for Intercept games, this of course contributed to delays even further. I dont think this was the only factor here though, In the aforementioned Scott Manley interview, Nate Simpson mentions how getting that  90% of a feature done is easy and that 10% is really hard.

I believe that this is one of the largest factors of the delays, I dont doubt that a good chunk of the features are in a working state, the issue is are they in a performant and stable state. I think the devs have been stuck in this state of okay we got the skeletons of a good system, how do we add flesh to it and make it work well, and each time they assumed that the time spent on the previous attempts would make the next go magically easier. So each time they assumed that it would be finished just around the corner, only for each time it being more complicated then they expected. This would explain (and is nearly explicit in the Scott Manley interview) why they're being so aloof about giving specific dates, they've learned from their mistakes and while theyre hoping they can get things along smoothly they know that chances are it wont go that way. 

Edited February 23, 2023 by Strawberry

[J.Random]

16 minutes ago, Strawberry said:

they were running essentially a heavily modded version of ksp1 as a testbed for ksp2

I hope they understand that .Net assemblies are wide open and if the code is the same (or worse, is "borrowed" from mods), it will become known pretty much immediately.

[Strawberry]

5 minutes ago, J.Random said:

I hope they understand that .Net assemblies are wide open and if the code is the same (or worse, is "borrowed" from mods), it will become known pretty much immediately.

Should've clarified, they were the ones making the code for it. They weren't just stealing others code, they were adding code they made onto ksp1 as a testbed to test out features. It sounds like they were adding the code on the backend instead of the way mods add code, but it was still a heavily modified version of ksp1.

[Baleine]

46 minutes ago, Strawberry said:

[…] going into mostly pure speculation here, I wont be surprised if this prototype build was half intended to just be what ksp2 was. The pre alpha footage from PAX east very much looks like something you'd see in ksp1 graphically, I wont be surprised if it was basically just ksp1. This explains why the initial deadline was so ambitous, because in case a from scratch ksp2 engine failed, they could fall back on the skeletons of ksp1.

Let's dive in « conspiracy » and speculation

That is a low probability, I would say, since Nate also said that going interstellar couldn't be done with KSP1 framework (engine?). I don't say I'm right or anything. I just think that if that's true, then that scenario has a very low probability.

But like you, I wonder what happened this last 4 years for having a game that seem in early stages of development.

 

However, I would stress that I've got no experiment in game development (just regular software development), but there is a possibility that they have all the feature they advertise working at a 30-50% percent rate (I hope I'm clear about that, I want to say that the features exists in their development build, but is crippled with bugs and/or limitations, like any new feature), and that they use the early access to streamline those processes in a set order. Maybe I'm optimistic here, dunno. We'll have a better view at that in the coming monthes. If things go real slow, this scenario would reveal flawed as well.

[Strawberry]

Just now, Baleine said:

That is a low probability, I would say, since Nate also said that going interstellar couldn't be done with KSP1 framework (engine?). I don't say I'm right or anything. I just think that if that's true, then that scenario has a very low probability.

I wont be suprised if early on they were like "okay if this proves to be too hard we can just do it similar to ksp1 mods to where its not actually 4 light years apart". But then they realized they had the funding and ability to do that, scope increased, and then it just spiralled out of control from there