Approaching Patch One

[FlickAndSnorty]

12 minutes ago, tg626 said:

No

Fair point on Discord

Think the way the information has been presented as well, has been brilliant. They've not gone "here" *slam* read this wall of text about everything done with the game.
It's been routine posts, clear information, minimal jargon unless necessary so more users can understand, and their community management allround has been spot on.

At least there weren't any canvas bags or custom bottles sold as merch.... that would've gone down well /s

[tg626]

4 minutes ago, FlickAndSnorty said:

At least there weren't any canvas bags or custom bottles

Fellow Vault Dweller? That was a grade A [redacted]

[Stoup]

1 hour ago, eagleswing12 said:

Seriously - this is a genuine question-

why was this build approved for early access? It was broken, buggy, and borderline unplayable on ALL hardware. How did the team think this was worth of release, let alone a 50$ price tag? I genuinely hope either the price decreases or the quality significantly increases. I can feel the love that has been added, but- keeping the same physics engine as KSP 1?? how do you possibly expect to have performance improvements if it’s on the same engine! Seriously- how was this game released?

I mean, consider the alternative timeline. KSP is delayed a year or two from its early access date in 2023, to let's say, 2025. It releases, and... the performance is comparable to how the performance is right now, cause they weren't able to receive the kind of feedback they needed to realize that the systems they had were seriously not going to fly.

I'm dubious of the fact that it took early access for that decision to be made, but, it could be worse! We could have all the roadmap content, only piled onto a totally untested foundation.

[Periple]

5 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

including a fairly high-impact resource flow optimization

This makes me happy if it's the one I think it is. Should make much bigger and more complex vessels possible! 

[mcwaffles2003]

5 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

We have done a fair amount of hand-wringing around whether we should announce the target date for this patch when there is a non-zero chance of a delay, but we know this topic is very important to you all, so we're doing our best to keep you all in the loop. We’ve also already completed a nice queue of fixes to go into the second patch, but we’ll talk more about that after we’ve got the first one out the door.

I just want to say I appreciate the transparency and understand time tables slip, this is life and things aren't perfect. I think if the audience is kept in the loop with a bit of frequency then surprises and changes would lead to a softer or at least more understanding reception. A lot of us believe that you guys are working hard and know we don't have all or even many of the details. But that said, I can empathize with the people throwing serious doubt since launch since the dev process updates kind of went dark long before release happened.

I don't know if you've ever followed factorio's FFF posts, but every Friday they would throw the community a little tidbit of something they did that week and it felt to me like the community was really in the know of the dev processes and it helped build  a trusting environment between the community and the devs. Here's what I feel was a good example of a decent FFF post https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-176

This said I'm happy to see another dev blog finally come out and I hope they make more frequent appearances to kind of quell the fears and doubts as those thrive in places of uncertainty.

4 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Hell yeah they do. Don't you know the 

The best advice is in your signature  

[Navoan]

Positive attitude, content the fans want, realistic timeframe. What moar (boosters) could we want. 

If the timing slips, it slips, I still like knowing the internal goal, so thanks. 

[Periple]

13 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

This said I'm happy to see another dev blog finally come out and I hope they make more frequent appearances to kind of quell the fears and doubts as those thrive in places of uncertainty.

Only if the devs want a break from devving to write one!

[Dakota]

1 hour ago, tg626 said:

No

Challenges will continue to be shared on the forums and socials, as well as Discord. Totally respect if it's not the platform for you, so we're doing our best to make sure information/content is spread everywhere.

[Spiffa]

6 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

including a fairly high-impact resource flow optimization.

How big are we talking 10%,20%,50%?

[Lekiffer]

7 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

Good afternoon, fellow Kerbonauts!

We continue to make good headway on performance improvements and bug squashing. In fact, we managed to sneak a few additional fixes into the first patch, including a fairly high-impact resource flow optimization. We also fixed the "Kraken drive" bug that created insane reverse thrust when an engine’s nozzle was obstructed - so if you’re working on a Kraken ship, the "unique" physics on which it depends are about to go away forever. We may not in fact have killed the Kraken yet, but we have definitely stubbed its tentacle.

As to the timing of Patch One... QA is thoroughly testing the build right now, and as soon as they give us a thumbs-up, we’ll release it. Right now, our goal is to release that patch next Thursday (March 16th). Provided QA does not uncover any show-stopping bugs over the next few days, that date should hold. If they do run into something unexpected that needs to be fixed, that date will slip. We have done a fair amount of hand-wringing around whether we should announce the target date for this patch when there is a non-zero chance of a delay, but we know this topic is very important to you all, so we're doing our best to keep you all in the loop. We’ve also already completed a nice queue of fixes to go into the second patch, but we’ll talk more about that after we’ve got the first one out the door.

To help tide you over until then, we’ve got a new performance-focused dev blog post from Mortoc, our senior graphics engineer. If you’ve been wondering how we test performance and what we’re doing to improve it, this one’s definitely worth a read.

Finally, I just wanted to give a holler of support to the many people who have undertaken the weekly challenges - last week’s air-launched rocket challenge was a sight to behold, and we’re on the edges of our seats to see what mayhem will take place during this week’s Minmus challenge. If you want to take part (or just bask in the ingenuity and/or madness of our community), check out the Weekly Challenge Discord channel. Our Community Team has also picked out a few choice gems from the last week and added them to a Community Highlights post here. Yes, the shopping cart is in there. The shopping cart that flies.  

See you on Minmus!
 

You've took so much money and given hardly anything back ,this date will slip I'm sure.

[Kalessin1]

Hurrah, in a matter of patch I only hope is for those who choose PD not Steam or Epic, that there will be simple update file posted on PD page, and I will not need to download the whole game again. FYI I'm now in the middle of Pacific and Earth CommNET has much lower bandwidth than in KSP  I may run out of EC before I downloaded whole game again

[Matt_In_Oz]

Great news, thanks Nate. Re: the hand wringing... I for one am really grateful for the heads up as I know many other players are. Of course there'll always be the few who will say "aww but you PROMISED..." if the date slips, but they'll complain no matter what happens so ignore them. The vast majority of us understand that the E in ETA means "estimated".

[LoSBoL]

1 hour ago, Lekiffer said:

You've took so much money and given hardly anything back ,this date will slip I'm sure.

Maybe thats a bit up to personal perception? I've spent 50 bucks on KSP2 and will be getting a very long time of continuous development and updates for it, not needing to spend another dime.

[LoSBoL]

I'm really looking forward to the patch notes, I only see performance and bugs stated as being worked on, I'm also very interested if it also brings QOL updates. 

I think it was the either the Scott Manley or the Matt Lowne interview which mentioned that it is prognosed that KSP2 would have 2 QOL updates before taking the first step into the next big future update bringing science and progression. 

Naturally I would like to know if the patch we are getting is within that prognosed update cycle?

 

[TheArturro]

I can't wait! It's great to see that there is work being done on the game!

[bwheatley]

10 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

Good afternoon, fellow Kerbonauts!

We continue to make good headway on performance improvements and bug squashing. In fact, we managed to sneak a few additional fixes into the first patch, including a fairly high-impact resource flow optimization. We also fixed the "Kraken drive" bug that created insane reverse thrust when an engine’s nozzle was obstructed - so if you’re working on a Kraken ship, the "unique" physics on which it depends are about to go away forever. We may not in fact have killed the Kraken yet, but we have definitely stubbed its tentacle.

As to the timing of Patch One... QA is thoroughly testing the build right now, and as soon as they give us a thumbs-up, we’ll release it. Right now, our goal is to release that patch next Thursday (March 16th). Provided QA does not uncover any show-stopping bugs over the next few days, that date should hold. If they do run into something unexpected that needs to be fixed, that date will slip. We have done a fair amount of hand-wringing around whether we should announce the target date for this patch when there is a non-zero chance of a delay, but we know this topic is very important to you all, so we're doing our best to keep you all in the loop. We’ve also already completed a nice queue of fixes to go into the second patch, but we’ll talk more about that after we’ve got the first one out the door.

To help tide you over until then, we’ve got a new performance-focused dev blog post from Mortoc, our senior graphics engineer. If you’ve been wondering how we test performance and what we’re doing to improve it, this one’s definitely worth a read.

Finally, I just wanted to give a holler of support to the many people who have undertaken the weekly challenges - last week’s air-launched rocket challenge was a sight to behold, and we’re on the edges of our seats to see what mayhem will take place during this week’s Minmus challenge. If you want to take part (or just bask in the ingenuity and/or madness of our community), check out the Weekly Challenge Discord channel. Our Community Team has also picked out a few choice gems from the last week and added them to a Community Highlights post here. Yes, the shopping cart is in there. The shopping cart that flies.  

See you on Minmus!
 

woot, teamwork makes the dream work.

[Periple]

3 hours ago, Spiffa said:

How big are we talking 10%,20%,50%?

If it's the one I'm thinking of, it'll be anywhere between 0 and an order of magnitude or two!

It wouldn't have much discernible effect on single-engine craft, but if you've got, say, a methalox core with methalox boosters strapped on, you should see framerates shoot up from single digits to whatever the GPU can handle. I hope it's that one!

[theonegalen]

11 hours ago, RaBDawG said:

I'm genuinely curious, Nate.  How did the Team play this game and think:

1. It was ready for EA. 

2.  It should carry a $50 price tag.

If you think either of these were Nate's decision or in the hands of anyone at Intercept Games, then you may not understand what it's like for a small studio to work for a big publisher. Also, if it *was* the publisher's fault (as I believe it likely was), then there will be contractual limitations on what Nate can share with us if he wants to keep working on the game and not get fired.

8 hours ago, eagleswing12 said:

Seriously - this is a genuine question-

why was this build approved for early access? It was broken, buggy, and borderline unplayable on ALL hardware. How did the team think this was worth of release, let alone a 50$ price tag? I genuinely hope either the price decreases or the quality significantly increases. I can feel the love that has been added, but- keeping the same physics engine as KSP 1?? how do you possibly expect to have performance improvements if it’s on the same engine! Seriously- how was this game released?

It actually does work fine on my hardware. I guess I'm just lucky.

Also see my other response above.

[RockyTV]

12 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

As to the timing of Patch One... QA is thoroughly testing the build right now, and as soon as they give us a thumbs-up, we’ll release it. Right now, our goal is to release that patch next Thursday (March 16th). Provided QA does not uncover any show-stopping bugs over the next few days, that date should hold. If they do run into something unexpected that needs to be fixed, that date will slip.

In other words: we can expect patch 1 to be as buggy as the EA release because the same QA team that, for some reason, didn't find the game breaking bugs we've reported since release, is doing the QA for the patch, and back then those findings didn't allow for the release date to be pushed back.

34 minutes ago, theonegalen said:

If you think either of these were Nate's decision or in the hands of anyone at Intercept Games, then you may not understand what it's like for a small studio to work for a big publisher. Also, if it *was* the publisher's fault (as I believe it likely was), then there will be contractual limitations on what Nate can share with us if he wants to keep working on the game and not get fired.

It's not like IG is a contractor hired by Take2. They are owned by Take2. They aren't a small studio. Anyone with a multi-billion dollar company behind their funding and resource management is not "small".

6 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

I don't know if you've ever followed factorio's FFF posts, but every Friday they would throw the community a little tidbit of something they did that week and it felt to me like the community was really in the know of the dev processes and it helped build  a trusting environment between the community and the devs. Here's what I feel was a good example of a decent FFF post https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-176

This said I'm happy to see another dev blog finally come out and I hope they make more frequent appearances to kind of quell the fears and doubts as those thrive in places of uncertainty.

If you'd ask people in these forums they would say it's not fair to compare Wube Software with KSP2 devs and they might even say Wube is not a small indie company. Because yeah Wube has a multi-billion publisher behind them and they can use their resources whenever they want, right?

8 hours ago, FlickAndSnorty said:

Intercept also very clearly have their hands tied. They can't outright tell everyone "Hey guys, the folk at take two that own our publisher, and have funded this games development set unrealistic time scales for the budget they gave us, and also rinsed you for $50 are at fault, here's footage of gameplay on our dev build that shows what's coming".  They'd get dropped instantly by TakeTwo and the game would be given to a new studio, or worse, would just get dropped entirely.

Yes they can. David Vonderhaar from Treyarch went public saying it wasn't their fault (3arc) that Black Ops 3 (or 4) was riddled with loot boxes. They went public saying those decisions weren't theirs, but Activision's. So yes. Unless IG is actually scared of being removed from KSP2 development, there's no reason to think they aren't accomplices to this excrementsty behavior in the games industry. Let's not forget that Take2 "fired" the original KSP2 devs and poached them to work for Take2 instead: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/2k-allegedly-pulled-ksp2-from-its-developer-then-poached-its-staff/

The thing is, they can be public about it to a certain extent, I agree with you they must have a NDA or something. But Take2 taking "revenge" on them for revealing the excrementsty publisher practices would just look bad for them. I started to question whether it would be a good thing that KSP was bought by Take2 (and I expressed my opinion here) and now we can see that it's definitely not a good idea.

Edited March 11, 2023 by RockyTV

[Centaury42]

Ohh really nice, can't wait to have better performance on my computer. 

[FlickAndSnorty]

43 minutes ago, RockyTV said:

Yes they can. David Vonderhaar from Treyarch went public saying it wasn't their fault (3arc) that Black Ops 3 (or 4) was riddled with loot boxes. They went public saying those decisions weren't theirs, but Activision's. So yes. Unless IG is actually scared of being removed from KSP2 development, there's no reason to think they aren't accomplices to this excrementsty behavior in the games industry. Let's not forget that Take2 "fired" the original KSP2 devs and poached them to work for Take2 instead: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/2k-allegedly-pulled-ksp2-from-its-developer-then-poached-its-staff/

The thing is, they can be public about it to a certain extent, I agree with you they must have a NDA or something. But Take2 taking "revenge" on them for revealing the excrementsty publisher practices would just look bad for them. I started to question whether it would be a good thing that KSP was bought by Take2 (and I expressed my opinion here) and now we can see that it's definitely not a good idea.

I think it's fair to say the scope of what they can say, is by what they're doing now to prove dedication the video game, now that Take Two have got the EA build launched.

I'm also not too sure if take two would be that concerned about negative press over punishing the devs for speaking out about launch condititions.

It's well known the crunch on the lead up to any release is brutal on the devs, and publishers continue to push those unfair deadlines on devs just because they can eat the negative press with the profits they set from such high prices like we have with KSP 2.
I don't think it would be too far of a stretch to imagine they wouldn't be afraid to push the big red self destruct button. Take two are a company that's already sacking its admin and other pre-release staff in the current employment market, and are known for their unethical practices.

I'd also reckon that due to treyarch having such a well known reputation for being top shelf developers for the CoD franchise, that they would be able to 'get away' with a lot more than intercept, who were assembled for the purpose of making this game. 

That said, I think Intercept are handling this with a lot of grace. Think it's even more telling that they're just rolling with the punches and proving the point that this game is going to be a cult classic come v1.0 without throwing anyone under the bus. they're handling it with class, despite a lot of the unfair comments they're getting from likely just uninformed players that expected a lot more than what they got.

 

Quote

I started to question whether it would be a good thing that KSP was bought by Take2 (and I expressed my opinion here) and now we can see that it's definitely not a good idea.

I think you're absolutely spot on. Take Two really aren't a good publisher. Rockstar is fortunately big enough to work around the flaws of Take Twos leadership. You don't need to look hard to find out how poorly the 2k games are going either... NBA 2k has been just a copy and paste with additional monetization thrown in for years now. I don't doubt intercept will manage to produce a fantastic v1.0 when the time arrives, it's just a shame they've had so many of the flaws at launch reflecting on them as a developer, and not on Take2 as the publisher. Maybe we'll get to learn more about the internal discussions before launch one day.... I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall in some of those meetings....

5 hours ago, Lekiffer said:

You've took so much money and given hardly anything back ,this date will slip I'm sure.

*Take Two set the price and deadlines, Intercept are doing what they can to fix their publishers errors. Give them time to do so instead of kicking them while they're down.

8 hours ago, tg626 said:

Fellow Vault Dweller? That was a grade A [redacted]

Honestly.... that was the first and only game I've refunded as well as I can remember... Think it's safe to say EVERYONE learned from that mess of a launch 

[DavidAF]

Exciting update! Thank you for continuing to deliver both the good and difficult news.

I am also in the 99.99% of typical non-responders, but coming out of the woodwork to say that I hope the general population of misguided voices isn't getting you down.  If I were to give them the benefit of the doubt, I would wager it's because of broken hearts, damaged pride, or perhaps a degradation of trust; that no matter how incendiary, it's because we care so much.  I also hope that all of you at PD have a discipline on these forums to view only the first page of comments. Anything beyond that seems to be an indictment of human devolution and has little in common with the original post; you know, really morale destroying stuff - nobody seeking progress wants that.

I'm looking forward to all the amazing things you and the modding community will do with KSP2. Love the direction, obviously don't like the bugs, but as a software engineer with +20 years XP, these are symptoms of a problematic process that will (I believe) be formalized and improved upon going forward.  Developers make bugs, nobody's perfect, this isn't trivial work, and so we change how we evaluate - we adapt, we teach, and we learn.

 

[Delay]

1 hour ago, RockyTV said:

we can expect patch 1 to be as buggy as the EA release because the same QA team that, for some reason, didn't find the game breaking bugs we've reported since release, is doing the QA for the patch, and back then those findings didn't allow for the release date to be pushed back.

If you read a little past the section you marked in bold you'd understand that this release date is not set in stone and will be subject to change if massive problems arise during testing.

As for the bugs in the current release, I think I, as well as plenty of other people, will have to re-evaluate our stances a bit. It turns out @ShadowZone interviewed Nate a week prior to release. This reveals that the devs most likely knew about the state the build is in, which among other things also implies that QA is indeed doing their job sufficiently well.

The interview changes quite a lot about what we thought of the history of this build. I'm honestly surprised it doesn't seem to have been mentioned before!

[LameLefty]

You know, the performance improvements are great and all, but for those of us using relatively capable hardware/non-potatoes,  it’s more fundamental issues that *really* need  addressing. Legs falling off landers when you load into a scene; the burn countdown bar just resetting itself if you switch views or even hide the UI for a screenshot; having a vessel in space get its status reset to “Landed” and losing trajectory lines or the ability to create maneuver nodes;  the physics bug that causes to vehicles to start spinning, sometimes so fast they break the laws of motion and fling themselves out of orbit …  Those are bugs, plain and simple, and break the game or ruin a mission once they occur for a given save.  

Fix those in Patch 1 and I”ll be happy. Then I can play an actual “space program” not a mission-by-mission/what should I do now? type thing. 

“Making it performant” should come after “Making the game work like it should.”

[RockyTV]

21 minutes ago, Delay said:

As for the bugs in the current release, I think I, as well as plenty of other people, will have to re-evaluate our stances a bit. It turns out @ShadowZone interviewed Nate a week prior to release. This reveals that the devs most likely knew about the state the build is in, which among other things also implies that QA is indeed doing their job sufficiently well.

If this is true then this just made me not trust IG anymore. If they knew the state of the build that was released to the public, why the hell did they release it anyway and not release a hotfix, if they knew about these bugs a while before the game was released to the public?