Please, give the community KSP1's source code

[Lisias]

52 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

I know that Steamboat Willy was one of the first cartoons to do sound well, which may have had a little to do with it.

Your knowledge falls short of your own expectations.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mickey-Mouse

People didn't made Disney an Empire because Walt Disney was a nice guy, people made Disney what it is because they loved what Walt Disney did, being Mickey one of them - perhaps the most famous cartoon characters of all times.

If you fail to understand the most basic of the branding concepts, I'm afraid there's not much you can add to this discussion other than noise.

https://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2024/01/the-power-of-mascots-brand-narratives/

 

52 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Besides, realistic spaceflight is a niche market, as flight simulators are. Are we to think that Microsoft Flight Simulator and X-plane need cartoon mascots to do well?

Well... Go to youtube, and see how many Kerbals videos are available.

Now do the same for the pilot avatars used by MSFS and X-Plane.

See how many on them have short-movies. How many of them are being playing by kids wishing to learn STEM, how many of them were used on Educational Institutes.

See how many of them have something like this:

Did you noticed the 1.3 Million views? On this single video? Had any Flight Simulator Avatar ever sent to Space, like Jebediah and Snoopy?

It's precisely because KSP is a niche game that Kerbals are important to it. There's no KSP without Kerbals.

And even if this Franchise dies, whatever will end up filling the niche will be forever only a KSP successor. No matter what they do, they will be forever defined by what KSP was in the past, and not by their own merits in the present.

• "Look, better graphics than KSP!!"
• "Look, less bugs than KSP!!"
• "Look, we made default in the game what KSP needed to have add'ons for!"
• "Look, we have more players online than KSP!!"

Do you see a pattern? Even if someone manages to replace KSP, they will merely taking a place that belonged to someone else, and not a place they conquered themselves.

Forever second place.

Edited March 22 by Lisias
Entertaining grammars made slightely less entertaining...

[Bej Kerman]

20 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Your knowledge falls short of your own expectations.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mickey-Mouse

People didn't made Disney an Empire because Walt Disney was a nice guy, people made Disney what it is because they loved what Walt Disney did, being Mickey one of them - perhaps the most famous cartoon characters of all times.

And you do not think that's because it was a technological milestone, I'm guessing.

21 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Well... Go to youtube, and see how many Kerbals videos are available.

Now do the same for the pilot avatars used by MSFS and X-Plane.

See how many on them have short-movies. How many of them are being playing by kids wishing to learn STEM, how many of them were used on Educational Institutes.

See how many of them have something like this:

Did you noticed the 1.3 Million views? On this single video? Had any Flight Simulator Avatar ever sent to Space, like Jebediah and Snoopy?

It's precisely because KSP is a niche game that Kerbals are important to it. There's no KSP without Kerbals.

Is your point that MFS2020 is a failure because search results about it don't yield mascots?

For the record, X-Plane doesn't have avatar customisation. Furthermore, I'm curious why simmers would care about having avatars in the first place.

36 minutes ago, Lisias said:

And even if this Franchise dies, whatever will end up filling the niche will be forever only a KSP successor. No matter what they do, they will be forever defined by what KSP was in the past, and not by their own merits in the present.

• "Look, better graphics than KSP!!"
• "Look, less bugs than KSP!!"
• "Look, we made default in the game what KSP needed to have add'ons for!"
• "Look, we have more players online than KSP!!"

Do you see a pattern? Even if someone manages to replace KSP, they will merely taking a place that belonged to someone else, and not a place they conquered themselves.

Forever second place.

And?

[Lisias]

KSP is by far the most successful game in its genre, par to Doom, Quake and Half Life (to some extent, of course).

Being niche or not, KSP is  a milestone on gaming and it would be a shame to let go abandoned into oblivion due bit rot that unavoidably plagues Software in our modern days.

With development essentially staled, the best outcome to the Franchise is to KSP¹ to become Open Source allowing the Community to legally keep it ongoing as the years pass by, in the exact same way it was done with Doom, Quake, Half Life and, most recently, Team Fortress 2!

Allowing the Source to be Open will keep the game healthy and, believe it or not, protect the IP - most people are able to play the game as the time goes by and hardware changes, less likely it will be forgotten and abandoned.

Some of the heaviest hitters on Steam are open source now! Some of these games have 30 years already? What would be (one of) the secrets for such longevity?

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/440,4000,220,379720

One of them is, surely, the Source Code being available to anyone willing to toy with it. And to fix their problems, and to port it to modern platforms. All of that without infringing any Copyright, and this is also the key: most people don't want to go "underground" in order to play a game!

And besides not being possible to compare KSP¹ with the best heavy hitters of all time, it still performs very well with some of them:

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/379720,220200#All

Interesting enough, something happened last week that kicked Doom way higher then KSP¹ by the first time since 2020.

In a way or another, KSP¹ is still valuable as a Franchise, being able to outperform even some very known and established Franchises on Steam. It's a viable Franchise, and IMHO should not be abandoned to be handled by Black Schemes. Kerbals deserve better.

Repeating ad nauseaum the same arguments is... well... nauseating... so I will instead link the reader to my past posts about the subject:

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/search/?q=Source&quick=1&item=212694&type=forums_topic&author=Lisias&sortby=newest&search_and_or=or

And given the current status quo,  releasing the Source can be even condition sine qua non to a surviving and healthy KSP modding Scene, as explained on this post.

 

Edited March 23 by Lisias
Entertaining grammars made slightely less entertaining...

[roxik0]

@Lisias I will agree 100% with you till KSA was announced. Now I think they will be a big competition between KSP 2.X and KSA.  however KSP still have potential especially when(if)T2 sold franchize  why?

Today for T2 KSP is a failure.. they spend a lot of many on sequel and had to abandon project. And always if they will go with continuation they will have this -X millions in their excel. 

For new publisher who will buy it it will be a new investment with new budget.. however they need to stick to original plan of T2. to make better but original KSP.. not go to much on big plans and vision they cannot deliver.. in KSP world everything else will be done by community and what community needs is good parts + good framework. 
Also the new KSP need to find a new however easy to skip challenges maybe more into tycoon part of space program(better contracts a goal based founding and possible to customize launchpads)  or maybe into engine creation it's super interesting topic. For sure not interplannetary bases it was IMHO strange idea and on building based games we have to many competitors like No One Sky to simply name  one.

However I know that making success like KSP will not be easy..  but I hope that or KSP 2.X or KSA will deliver and we once again will be able go into every 3 months changes into framework and need to rebuild all mods for next game

 

[Lisias]

6 hours ago, roxik0 said:

@Lisias I will agree 100% with you till KSA was announced.

Please understand that this thread is about releasing the Source for KSP¹, KSP2 is not part of the deal and KSA is completely off-topic.

I just don't care about KSA on this thread.

 

6 hours ago, roxik0 said:

Today for T2 KSP is a failure.. they spend a lot of many on sequel and had to abandon project. And always if they will go with continuation they will have this -X millions in their excel.

T2 is not here anymore. There're these new kids in the block, Haveli and the ex-Annapurna Gang , that footed some money on the whole P.D. , hired the "Gang" (literally yanking them from Annapurna Interactive - the whole staff!) and now are figuring out how to make money from what they have in hands, KSP included.

 

6 hours ago, roxik0 said:

however they need to stick to original plan of T2.

HELL, NO!! They do what T2 was doing, they will get the results T2 got.

 

6 hours ago, roxik0 said:

in KSP world everything else will be done by community and what community needs is good parts + good framework.

Exactly, and, to achieving that, having the Source code available will be hugely beneficial - and there's the legal problem now.

See this post for datails, but TL;DR: decompiling was already against the EULA but now it was criminalized and, worst, changing in memory bytecode is now formally a Copyright Infringement in USA, and anyone doing it (theoretically, including users) are since August 2024 subject to a Copyright lawsuit in the same sense it happened in past when RIAA gone predatory to even kids listening MP3 in their homes.

Things keep going this way, KSP¹ will be reduced to a Warez sub-culture, where Educational Institutes and Space Agencies will do whatever they can to erase their presence from the Scene (no Company wants to be associated to illegal stuff) and the main source for modding will be the Dark Web - kiss baby bye-bye to CurseForge, SpaceDock et all because they would be violating their Country's laws by publishing "warez".

Keep in mind that the tragic drama started by RIAA in the past was using Napster as conduit, Napster users were systematically tracked down and sued using a thing called "vicarious copyright infringement" - no one will be safe from it.

 

6 hours ago, roxik0 said:

However I know that making success like KSP will not be easy..  but I hope that or KSP 2.X or KSA will deliver and we once again will be able go into every 3 months changes into framework and need to rebuild all mods for next game

Again, I don't care about KSP2 and KSA on this thread. No matter what they will deliver, I want KSP¹ to be still available and moddable. Safely moddable by anyone, and not only by some people hidding behind nicks that can go rogue at any time without consequences - essentially, the development model we have on Warez.

I will say again: KSP¹, since August 2024, is risking being reduced to a Warez Scene where only rogue 3rd parties will be able to make some money at expenses of the Scene. Things are risking going that way, it's really as bad is it can get.

This crap will contaminate the whole niche - make no mistake, the splash damage will hurt everybody, including KSA that decided to formally hire one professional that openly does exactly what the lawsuit won by Bungie says are Copyright Infringements now and used this material on KSA.

Remember the Berne Convention, and how Copyright owners have 70 years to do something, essentially putting an axe over KSA's neck for life, to be set in motion as soon as KSA makes any money,

Edited 15 hours ago by Lisias
Hit "Save" too soon