Developer Insights #19 - Try, Fail, Try Again...and Again

[Intercept Games]

Developer Insights #19 - Try, Fail, Try Again...and Again 

The QA Dev blog

Who are you??

My name is Darrin, and I’m the new Director of QA here at Intercept Games.   I’m new to the Intercept team (I joined a week before the KSP2 launch…) but I’m not new to QA.  I’ve been doing software testing since the early 90s and I worked at Visio/Microsoft for 17 years and then at Amazon for the last several years (most recently as a founding member of the Luna game streaming service).   I’m an old-school hardcore gamer - I’ve been playing since I had Bards Tale on my Commodore 64, and my Xbox gamer score is 150,000+ and I don’t pad that with those silly games to just farm achievements!  I’m doing my best to learn KSP2 as fast as I can, and just so happen to sit directly next to Nate, and I’ve received the rarely given “high five” that I will cherish always.

Please contact Private Division Customer Support for any game breaking issues such as hard crashes: Submit a request – Private Division Support . But, if you are posting about an issue on the Discord, the Forums, or even on Reddit, on the more data we have the better (aka in the Specs discussion in Discord, you’ll want to post your detailed specs info!) 

Bugs and Stuff

Running into an issue is frustrating; I feel your pain. Trust me when I say, bugs drive us just as crazy as they do you (honestly probably more, because we need to retry them over, and over, and over!)   But when you find an issue that is important enough to post about – you can do it one of 2 ways:

A. “This game doesn’t work!  I can’t play!!” 
(end of message)

Or

B. “This game doesn’t work, here is some info and specific steps of what I was doing – please fix it!!” 
(adds a bunch of information we can work with)

We will obviously do as much as we can about B, but there is literally nothing we can do about A.  I’ve chatted with Dakota and the others on the Community team… and they don’t ban people for hitting us with hard criticism.  You bought the game, and you are VERY entitled go full rage-mode on the boards when you run into an issue.  But, at the same time: we don’t have to read it. So, if you are over the top and just trolling the boards… we probably aren’t reading that.  But, if you are giving harsh but fair critiques – we take that to heart and bring that voice back to the greater team and do everything we can to ensure it gets taken care of.

So, help us help you and please give us all the info we might need.  This helps us move issues up the chain faster and keeps others from having to ask you for the same information over and over: 

Title: (a sentence that summarizes the issue)

Specs: (see further below for how to give us all the info we need here)

Severity: (high/med/low).   This is your opinion – but it typically goes (High = crash, Med = feature not working as expected, Low = there is an issue, but has a work around)

Frequency: (high/med/low).  Does this happen a lot?  Can you reproduce it consistently?  Or was it a one off? (still want to know about it, but we’ll categorize it as such)

Description:  Tell us what you were doing, what you expected to happen and what actually happened, etc.   More information here the better, but we want specifics not generalizations.  Screenshots are good, videos are good, save files, etc. HOW you were making something is very important here. Giving us a fully built rocket for us to load and try…. might not have the same results has giving us the steps of how you built that rocket. How you created it and the order you made it in is often far more important than the end result.

 

Helping us Test

I can hear some of you now: “Hey…! Why do we have to do the work for you???”   I’ll be 100% honest – you don’t.   Very few bugs that come from the community are not already found by a fantastic QA team here. But sometimes bugs can seem to be a “one off” or very difficult to put together consistent repro steps.

The more information we have and the more we know people hit it, the less time it will take to turn-around a meaningful fix.   We watch the forums… I personally spend a lot of time looking over the Discord and I know a Senior Engineer who keeps a close eye on the official Forum here. And no, Dakota didn’t mute me as punishment… I just don’t trust myself to chat in most channels (but I do read and react) - but for some important areas/issues, I’ll get directly involved. Most of us don’t respond a lot, but we see the conversations, take notes, and use that information when we can.

Why did you fix bug A and not bug B?

“Wait… if the QA team is finding all these bugs, why aren’t they all fixed?”  The process of deciding what bugs to fix is quite complex and is based on many factors.   We do not always go after the easiest bugs to fix, but rather bugs we feel will have the largest customer impact at any given time.   But at the same time, we must consider the impact of any bug that while fixed could have other implications (aka regressions).   We factor in the severity of the bug combined with the frequency as well as a ton of insider knowledge from people here on the team and we work very closely across all roles and make these decisions together as a team.

We care a LOT about bug regressions… so if you see a new bug that didn’t exist previously, then please pass along the information to us and we’ll look into it asap. But, remember… a change to how something works from one build to another is not necessarily a bug. We’re in Early Access and we’ll make changes to how things work at times to see how that goes and iterate on that over time.

How long does fixing a bug take?

Investigating a bug takes time to get a precise scenario for the engineer to address (that’s why the steps and info above can help). They will then do their own investigation on the fix itself (what it would take, what parts of the code would be affected, how risky of a fix it is, could it break other parts of the title, etc). Once that’s approved there is a code review of the changes that were made. Then the change is put into a specific branch/build of KSP2 where testers will do full investigation of the original bug and do halo testing around the areas that the code affected. Then, finally it goes into a release candidate build along with a bunch of other fixes and it gets tested again in a very deep regression suite of tests to ensure that other (supposedly unrelated areas of the product) still function as expected. There’s actually even quite a bit more to it than that - but it’s a good summary of how we do things here.

How do you test a game as complex as KSP2?

Kerbal Space Program is….. huge. I’ve owned the testing of products that ship to hundreds of millions of users that had a simpler test matrix than KSP2 does. There are a LOT of areas, processes and stages of testing a product, and I’m not going to go into all of them here (it would be a doc 20x longer than this). So, this blog is mostly focused on end-user reported issues and how we deal with those.

But with regards to complexity our KSP2 Test Lead Josh who’s been playing KSP since 2013 & testing it for the past 5 years, put some information together:

"Talking about the complexity of construction, and variables for potential issues, there is a consideration on why something may not be known, tracked, or reproduced before.

How unique is your vessel? It’s straightforward to test parts in a vacuum (the “by itself” kind, not specifically the “no air” kind) and confirm that all the bits and pieces are functioning as designed. However, interactions between various parts are where we often see things go sideways. There is a hierarchical interaction that can cause problems, and compounded by where it was placed relative other parts, when it was placed (order of construction), which is further exacerbated by what was done before the vessel was made and how it’s been flown.

Let’s break down possible iteration numbers to give an example as to the potential complexities available in KSP 2:

• If you were to use every stack attach part that has a top and bottom stack attach node in every possible permutation without duplicates, it would be factorial 245, which translates to a number 481 digits long.
  • For reference, the estimated number of atoms in the known universe is only about 10^80, or an 81 digit number.
  • So… The above is interesting, but not realistic. In normal circumstances, you are not likely to build a vessel using EVERY stack attach part.
    • If you assume people are only using about 30 stack parts in a single vessel stack (so a non-repetitive permutation of 30 out of 245 possible stack parts) you still end up with 7.429002947 E+70, or a number about 71 digits long.
    • That’s permutations, however. What about just using specific parts together in general in no particular order (combinations)? That has to be a significantly smaller number right? Well, even dropping this down to only combinations using 15 of the 245 potential stack attach parts with double (top/bottom) attach points still gives us a total of 3.396886498 E+23 possible combinations (or a 24 digit number).For comparison, the number of Stars in the sky is estimated only about 200 Sextillion (or a 2 followed by twenty-three 0’s, also 24 digits long in total).
  • Keep in mind, this is not counting variations using...
    • Parts with a single stack attach node
    • Stack parts that are attached radially (and the surface attach only parts)
    • Subassemblies that can be inside fairings/cargo bays
    • Parts stack attached to other radially attached parts connected to the center stack of the vessel
    • Adapters that allow stack attachments in other directions
    • Adapters that allow a single stack to diverge or converge (such as bi/tri adapters)
    • Translate/rotate transform parts (which also add new orientations to branch off from)

 

This isn’t to say we cannot infer certain configuration details. For example, it’s likely after an engine you probably are not placing another engine, or even a fuel tank (usually it’s a decoupler or separator). But what if, buried in your vessel somewhere, there were 2 engines stacked atop one another, and then that was vertically translated into a fuel tank and then hidden? A picture is worth a lot, but it wouldn’t help reproduce your issue. A save also would also not immediately make clear how this was built.

An example of how configurations can have impact, we recently fixed an issue with a handful of small parts that would cause the entire vessel to fly apart at a certain point in flight, only when used in conjunction with other specific (similar) small parts in a specific hierarchy order. Not all combinations of a vessel using those parts caused this, only in specific permutation orders.

One of the best ways to ensure a bug you encounter in flight is tracked is to give us as much information as possible. A log file and save help a lot, but if you have a workspace file for your vessel, in some circumstances, that can be even better.  

There is more to this game than parts, but the above is a math heavy example of the complexity we are working with in test. This is by no means the only game to have this many potential variations to consider, and it won’t be the last, I am sure. The one take away is this, the more information that can be provided with the circumstances something went wrong, the quicker we can identify the issue. Attempting to reproduce issues with just a list of the 20 parts used to create a vessel? That could take a VERY long time."

All that being said - someone on the team did the math and even with our entire product team testing on a particular build of KSP2… our total user base will pass that time spent testing within hours of release.

We use a matrix method that combines every feature with frequency of use across all hardware combinations and operating systems. This testing effort is what really adds to the time between patches, and then if we combine bug fixing alongside of new feature development… it’s big. Automation helps of course, but as users of the product you can understand that the majority of testing needs to be hands on.

It’s not all crazy matrixes and slogs of testing we have to do. We also have fun playtest events with themes (quite a few are ones we do just before the community team sends them out as challenges): 

From a recent playtest where a Designer on our team Chris is trying to branch out from rockets.

How big is the QA team?

I’ve worked at both Microsoft and Amazon as well as a few smaller companies, and our QA to Dev ratio is on par with just about any team I’ve ever been on. We have a dedicated QA team here at Intercept (Seattle) who follows the feature crews as new features are developed and a larger QA team within Private Division (Las Vegas) who owns regression passes and overall validation.  We supplement needs (hardware testing, OS’s, etc) with some vendor testing from time-to-time. We even have a large amount of previous hardcore Kerbal players that joined our team and have been helping us out, no matter their role (and I don’t mean just Nate!). We’ve got a ton of experience on the team going back to the early KSP1 days as well as others who have come during KSP2 and are now some of the best creators on the team.

 

Here are a couple pics from Lo - who is a member of the PD QA team in Las Vegas.

What are you currently working on?   

You can pretty much look at the roadmap and see all the stuff that’s coming.  And… we’re involved in ALL of that.    Lately we’ve been deeply involved in Patch 1 and Patch 2, while at the same time getting early looks at features that are still quite a ways out - something like Multiplayer (below) is something we’ll be involved in for a very long time and looking at it while we test all the other new features that are coming.

 

Min/Recommended Hardware questions

Every company handles minimum requirements a bit differently, but we use them as our bar of initial support. (aka we don’t officially support or test anything below minimum requirements.)   We set that bar based on the performance checks we’ve done in-house during our testing & evaluation process.  Some users may choose to try to run KSP2 on a below the minimum bar computer even though we don’t officially support it and we allow that (aka we don’t do a check at launch to determine hardware and force a hard stop at that point).   This choice is a tough one, because we want to allow users who might have some very specific or unique hardware to try to run KSP2 and this allows some specs clearly below the min bar to try to run even though that will likely cause issues.  

And that’s where things can get crazy – because we’ll see someone post on the boards that the game is unplayable and that they have a good computer to play it on, but after drilling in – the majority of the time the computer is below the minimum requirements bar (and the telemetry we currently have tells us the same story).  

Somewhere between our recommended settings and our minimum settings is where we do the majority of our testing.  We have a large variety of hardware in-house and we supplement that with vendor testing, but there will always be cases where users will try hardware that we haven’t and don’t have access to.  In these cases, we greatly value the input from the user base and will acquire hardware from time-to-time ourselves, when needed, based on that info. 

Constructive feedback can provide positive results: There was a very large thread on our Discord and a subset of users who all had specs below the min bar - they all had integrated graphics cards and were having very similar results (KSP2 wouldn’t load - at all). I checked in with our Senior Engineer, Mortoc, on this topic and he suggested a potential workaround by having them set their Windows resolution to 1024x768 - and now most of them are now able to play. No promises of course since it’s below the minimum requirements, but it’s worth a shot if you are also having that issue.

Our goal is to slowly decrease the minimum requirements over time, but we can’t guarantee where it will go to, or what those requirements will be. We’ll use the data that comes in from users, our automated benchmarks that we run as well as in-house testing to monitor performance over time.

Building functional complex ships is a goal on the team as well. Marc, a tester on the team since early KSP1 days (aka Technicalfool on the Discord) sent these to me when I asked for a ship to use for testing.

 

Best way to get your Specs info:

The more spec information we can get, the better that we can help you solve issues.   Typing it in is great, but even the best of us can have a memory lapse and think we have 16GB when maybe we only have 12GB.  Same with video cards…. It can get super confusing - and if someone on the team is investigating an issue for you only to find out the specs you listed were incorrect… it’s wasted time.  So, a screenshot of your specs is best and here’s how you can get it:

IF you are running via Steam: Click “Big Picture Mode” in the upper right corner of the Steam window. Then bring up the menu from the lower left and choose: Settings → System. Scroll down to the Hardware section and then use the Snipping Tool to get the info needed. (To exit this mode - click in the bottom left of the window and then click Menu - Power - Exit Big Picture mode)

 

Alternatively, if you don’t have Steam or want a lot more info:

In Windows – hit the Winkey (⊞ Win) to bring up the start menu and type in:  dxdiag

This will bring up the DirectX Diagnostic Tool.   The first tab (System) will show your system model, processor, and memory.   Now, just click the “Save All Information” button at the bottom, and it’ll put everything into a text file. 

Nothing in that file should be harmful to send, but if you don’t want to share everything else on there, just do a screenshot of the important areas (the snipping tool works great for this):

The other tabs will give you information about your displays and video cards (which is typically more important if you are having performance issues).  If you have multiple monitors or a laptop connecting to a monitor – then you might have to click on the last display tab to see the correct video card information.   Again, if you don’t want to share all your info – just get a screenshot of the important stuff:

 

We’re here for you.

The good, the bad and even the ugly. We like to hear what you have to say. Our fantastic community team keeps us in the loop (and coordinates us doing stuff like this doc and the AMAs) and we love to meet and chat with you all in person as well. We had the opportunity to chat with some of you at GDC (had quite a few Mun and Minmus landings) and we’re looking forward to more in-person events in the future.

How can I join the QA team or other roles at Intercept Games?

All our open roles are listed at Intercept Games

Most of the KSP team are previous players and there are more than a few former mod designers (and a writer) who are now a part of our Kerbal team. We love the game and for many it’s the dream job… I know it is for me. So, if you love KSP and want to be a part of the team- check out our reqs listed above. But no matter what is currently listed – we are always on the lookout for great people.  Even without an open req, we keep our eyes open here on the boards and other places that we interact with the users. And for QA specifically… keep an eye out, because one (or 2) might show up on that list above very soon…

Thanks everyone from the KSP2 QA team!

This isn’t the entire QA team, but I did get a chance to meet with a lot of them last week. I’m the super tired looking one on the far left (it’s Vegas - what can I say??). Mike is the professional wrestler in the middle (that’s not a joke btw).
 

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[Majorjim!]

15 minutes ago, Intercept Games said:

Building functional complex ships is a goal on the team as well. Marc, a tester on the team since early KSP1 days (aka Technicalfool on the Discord) sent these to me when I asked for a ship to use for testing.

 

But this isn’t a complex build.. at all.. it looks to be less than 100 parts…

 

[Squaremantis]

Quote

Our goal is to slowly increase the minimum requirements over time

What? I thought the development team was going to decrease the requirements?

The game as of late runs horribly on even recommended, so to see the developers say that they are going to increase the already extreme requirements is very worrying.  Last dev post had me a bit concerned due to how they were handling the updates for the game, but this is just not viable at all. You should be trying to at least cater to the current requirements by optimizing the game more instead of just putting optimization lower down the list and increasing the already insane requirements. I know that there is already stuff like the rtx 30 and 40 series which can run the game a bit better, but most people (like me) won't be able to afford those GPU's for a while due to how greedy many companies have been with prices for that kind of stuff lately.

Edit: Apparently there was a mistake in the post and they meant to actually say they were going to make the game run better, not increase the requirements.

Edited May 4, 2023 by Thesquaremantis Drawz

[Ghostii_Space]

Just now, Thesquaremantis Drawz said:

What? I thought the development team was going to decrease the requirements?

The game as of late runs horribly on even recommended, so to see the developers say that they are going to increase the already extreme requirements is very worrying.  Last dev post had me a bit concerned due to how they were handling the updates for the game, but this is just not viable at all. You should be trying to at least cater to the current requirements by optimizing the game more instead of just putting optimization lower down the list and increasing the already insane requirements. I know that there is already stuff like the rtx 30 and 40 series which can run the game a bit better, but most people (like me) won't be able to afford those GPU's for a while due to how greedy many companies have been with prices for that kind of stuff lately.

This was a typo, and was updated! 

[Squaremantis]

14 minutes ago, Ghostii_Space said:

This was a typo, and was updated! 

Ah ok, no worries then.

[Dantheollie]

16 minutes ago, Ghostii_Space said:

This was a typo, and was updated! 

In an alternate Universe where it wasn't:

"To ensure a stable and enjoyable user experience, we recommend playing KSP2 on a Matrioshka Brain"

[The Aziz]

I'm glad this is in. Especially this part

42 minutes ago, Intercept Games said:

someone on the team did the math and even with our entire product team testing on a particular build of KSP2… our total user base will pass that time spent testing within hours of release.

Shows how small the team is and yet there are people here demanding immediate results.

[LWGShane]

18 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

But this isn’t a complex build.. at all.. it looks to be less than 100 parts…

 

I've counted roughly ~20 total parts. I'm calling it now: The scale of the colonies and interstellar ships will be massively scaled down from what was presented in the trailers.

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, Intercept Games said:

Bugs and Stuff

Running into an issue is frustrating; I feel your pain. Trust me when I say, bugs drive us just as crazy as they do you (honestly probably more, because we need to retry them over, and over, and over!)   But when you find an issue that is important enough to post about – you can do it one of 2 ways:

A. “This game doesn’t work!  I can’t play!!” 
(end of message)

Or

B. “This game doesn’t work, here is some info and specific steps of what I was doing – please fix it!!” 
(adds a bunch of information we can work with)

We will obviously do as much as we can about B, but there is literally nothing we can do about A.  I’ve chatted with Dakota and the others on the Community team… and they don’t ban people for hitting us with hard criticism.  You bought the game, and you are VERY entitled go full rage-mode on the boards when you run into an issue.  But, at the same time: we don’t have to read it. So, if you are over the top and just trolling the boards… we probably aren’t reading that.  But, if you are giving harsh but fair critiques – we take that to heart and bring that voice back to the greater team and do everything we can to ensure it gets taken care of.

So, help us help you and please give us all the info we might need.  This helps us move issues up the chain faster and keeps others from having to ask you for the same information over and over: 

Title: (a sentence that summarizes the issue)

Specs: (see further below for how to give us all the info we need here)

Severity: (high/med/low).   This is your opinion – but it typically goes (High = crash, Med = feature not working as expected, Low = there is an issue, but has a work around)

Frequency: (high/med/low).  Does this happen a lot?  Can you reproduce it consistently?  Or was it a one off? (still want to know about it, but we’ll categorize it as such)

Description:  Tell us what you were doing, what you expected to happen and what actually happened, etc.   More information here the better, but we want specifics not generalizations.  Screenshots are good, videos are good, save files, etc. HOW you were making something is very important here. Giving us a fully built rocket for us to load and try…. might not have the same results has giving us the steps of how you built that rocket. How you created it and the order you made it in is often far more important than the end result.

So, you're changing what you want us to provide to you on bugs we find that you may or may not fix...again?  First we were told to use the button on the launcher to submit bug reports, which we did.  That wasn't enough, so you told us to create forum and Discord threads, which we did.  Then someone here actually created a mod that loaded all the log reports and such up for us so we could submit those.  Now you're telling us we haven't been submitting enough information, and that we need to follow this new format...that we've pretty much been trying to follow the whole time?

Sorry, but I have to ask if you guys are even reading the bug reports we've been submitting.  There are game-breaking bugs that have existed since launch that we've over-informed you about that...well...we aren't sure if you are even looking at them or not.  Nobody from TT/PD/IG bothers to go into the bug reports sub-forum here and at least post "Noted; information relayed to development team".  We have no clue what you are working on, or what bugs you've even looked at.  How do we know that providing even more information on bugs is ever even going to be looked at?

[cocoscacao]

21 minutes ago, LWGShane said:

I've counted roughly ~20 total parts

Just side boosters (no fins) and their engines are 8. I don't know how you've managed to count only ~20 parts...

This is an average rocket of an average player. When testing, start small, due to reasons mentioned in the original post.

[Clayel]

What is your response to those that have dug into the code and found that many of the systems are similar or exactly the same as ksp1, with the same problems? This seems to be very concerning, as I thought that the systems would at least be new.

[cocoscacao]

9 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

we aren't sure if you are even looking at them or not

Apparently, they do:

1 hour ago, Intercept Games said:

Very few bugs that come from the community are not already found by a fantastic QA team here.

---

9 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

There are game-breaking bugs that have existed since launch that we've over-informed you about that...well...we aren't sure if you are even looking at them or not

I think it is safe to assume they do. I don't think QA team can answer fully why they weren't fixed yet. As far as I understand, they're working on all features in parallel. Maybe some of those fixes are delayed for later, so they don't have to fix them twice... Or, the cause is still unknown...

Edited May 4, 2023 by cocoscacao

[Socraticat]

Thank you for your efforts! It's difficult to be patient when our anticipation is so high!

I know I want EVERYTHING, right now. But I am so glad to have what I have right now.

 

I know there's a person on the other end of every criticism I make, so I intend to start every criticism with an attitude of gratitude.

 

I hope the rest of us can remember the posititve forum movement. I know it's not easy, but that's the point. None of this is. If we can figure out how to  get to Mun and back, we can figure out how to be gratious and constructively critical.

[HebaruSan]

52 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

So, you're changing what you want us to provide to you on bugs

52 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Now you're telling us we haven't been submitting enough information, and that we need to follow this new format

Maybe there's a reason for that. Imagine being on the other side of the development veil, and when bug reports start rolling in according to the first requested bug report format, you look at them and find that many of them are impossible to investigate or otherwise just not actionable. Do you stubbornly stick to the original format out of fear that someone on the forum will be upset that you changed something, or do you look for ways to improve it so future bug reports will be better?

Edited May 4, 2023 by HebaruSan

[Stephensan]

Or instead of needing to do all this discord, launcher etc

 

how about having built IN the game... it gathers all your data (it has to be approved by the player), and you can report it in the game...

 

it would gather everything, including the save (if need be), system information, etc..

 

Why do we have to jump through hoops to report bugs more, still, continues? most every other game that is in a technical beta has a report a bug plastered EVERYWHERE, but here we still, 2~ months in have to jump through hoops to help? is it hard to link a forum profile, and ask for consent to collect information about your PC, ask what the problem is, what is expected, what things you would like to add like photos or the save file itself, and anything else they would like to add, to then be able to do the same thing we do on the forums or discord...

 

completely pointless to think otherwise, if its a game breaking bug, yes go on the forum or launcher, other than that i see zero reason to still need to jump through hoops to do a simple report... i have yet post myself a single report due to this, 10-15+ minutes for a single report when i can just close the game and wait 1-2-3-4 patches, when i have had 10-15+ in a single sit down on the game, and i can expect most players that left after day one is doing the same thing.

 

[caipi]

2 hours ago, Intercept Games said:

Helping us Test

 

I can hear some of you now: “Hey…! Why do we have to do the work for you???”   I’ll be 100% honest – you don’t.   Very few bugs that come from the community are not already found by a fantastic QA team here. But sometimes bugs can seem to be a “one off” or very difficult to put together consistent repro steps.

So if that's the case, which was kind of obvious before, but if that's the case, why isn't there a public bug tracker like we had with KSP1 for some time? So that people can see what is already known and does not need reporting.

Why should we now invest time and effort -especially if you already asked us to pay for it and after you told us it doesn't help you most of the time- for something that might not help you at all because you are already aware of it? Don't you think that this is either wasting users time and energy, or off-putting for others to even begin searching for a needle in a haystack that we don't even know about? If it were me, I wouldn't deliberately ask my customers to investigate everything and have them file a detailed report just to tell me mostly things I already know. I would even feel guilty if I didn't support them in anyway, e.g. by sharing what I already know what I don't need. And telling them, "well, honestly, you're work you've been doing for us is rather pointless. we already knew most of it."

[Davidian1024]

Can I get the save files and/or craft files for that Trogdor that Chris made?  That is awesome!

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

So, you're changing what you want us to provide to you on bugs we find that you may or may not fix...again?  First we were told to use the button on the launcher to submit bug reports, which we did.  That wasn't enough, so you told us to create forum and Discord threads, which we did.  Then someone here actually created a mod that loaded all the log reports and such up for us so we could submit those.  Now you're telling us we haven't been submitting enough information, and that we need to follow this new format...that we've pretty much been trying to follow the whole time?

Sorry, but I have to ask if you guys are even reading the bug reports we've been submitting.  There are game-breaking bugs that have existed since launch that we've over-informed you about that...well...we aren't sure if you are even looking at them or not.  Nobody from TT/PD/IG bothers to go into the bug reports sub-forum here and at least post "Noted; information relayed to development team".  We have no clue what you are working on, or what bugs you've even looked at.  How do we know that providing even more information on bugs is ever even going to be looked at?

 

I also don't quite understand the goal of this Dev Insight.

Sure, constructive and detailed submitted bugs will get fixed easier.

But what everyone is mad about is several game breaking bugs that are obvious and serious but still don't get attention, and if they do there is no deadline communicated, it could be the next patch, or in one of the future ones, who knows?

You don't have to look past this thread to see what I mean:

 

A very well documented bug, submitted here, with plenty of context, 2 days after the launch, in February 26th.

It's a very important bug because orbital mechanics are one of the core things in the game, so people waited for this to be addressed in first patch.

First patch came, this wasn't fixed.

Sure, people are busy, scrambling to fix a lot of things at once, these things can happen, surely such an important bug will be fixed in the second patch.

Nope, it wasn't fixed in patch #2 either. 

On April 12th, the CM told us this bug is being worked on and can't promise any deadline. Thanks, I guess?

So I guess we'll have to see if it makes it in patch #3.

[whatsEJstandfor]

2 hours ago, Socraticat said:

I know there's a person on the other end of every criticism I make, so I intend to start every criticism with an attitude of gratitude.

This is the correct philosophy. The devs are not your enemy; they want this game to achieve its potential more than we do because, frankly, they have more invested in it. And, ultimately, we're all just trying to have fun and mess around with silly rockets. There's no reason for vitriol or personal attacks. It doesn't help the game, and it can ruin someone else's day. Let us all remember this wisdom:

 

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, HebaruSan said:

Maybe there's a reason for that. Imagine being on the other side of the development veil, and when bug reports start rolling in according to the first requested bug report format, you look at them and find that many of them are impossible to investigate or otherwise just not actionable. Do you stubbornly stick to the original format out of fear that someone on the forum will be upset that you changed something, or do you look for ways to improve it so future bug reports will be better?

I AM on the other side of the development veil.  I get bug reports on stuff I've built from my end users daily.  And I have NEVER changed the format of what I am asking them for.  Like, ever.

I guess what I'm most disappointed about is that they tell us to submit reports, we do, they change what they want...and then they don't communicate to us what's even being looked at.  We are told to sit and wait, sit and wait, sit and wait.  And we get no communication, none of the forum threads has posts indicating they are being looked at, multiple game-breaking bugs reported since launch day haven't been addressed.  What more do they want from us before they start treating us with the respect we should have earned both by paying for this steaming pile AND by doing what they've asked us to do?

[whatsEJstandfor]

4 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

And we get no communication, none of the forum threads has posts indicating they are being looked at, multiple game-breaking bugs reported since launch day haven't been addressed.  What more do they want from us before they start treating us with the respect we should have earned both by paying for this steaming pile AND by doing what they've asked us to do?

I've seen this kind of argument a lot and I get the impulse but I don't really understand the nuts and bolts of what you mean. Would it actually be any better if Dakota replied to every Bug Reports post with "Looking into it"? Help me get a more concrete picture of what your ideal bug reporting system would be.

Edited May 4, 2023 by whatsEJstandfor

[Jaypeg]

3 hours ago, LWGShane said:

I've counted roughly ~20 total parts. I'm calling it now: The scale of the colonies and interstellar ships will be massively scaled down from what was presented in the trailers.

Some people are being dumb and mininterpreting the math here - rather they are saying that would have to be the case IF they didn't fix those issues.

 

10 minutes ago, whatsEJstandfor said:

I've seen this kind of argument a lot and I get the impulse but I don't really understand the nuts and bolts of what you mean. Would it actually be any better if Dakota replied to every Bug Reports post with "Looking into it"? Help me get a more concrete picture of what your ideal bug reporting system would be.

Also nate and Shana & etc reply quite a bit! Its just on the big chats. Lots of straw man arguments here and im not sure why...

57 minutes ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

 

I also don't quite understand the goal of this Dev Insight.

Sure, constructive and detailed submitted bugs will get fixed easier.

But what everyone is mad about is several game breaking bugs that are obvious and serious but still don't get attention, and if they do there is no deadline communicated, it could be the next patch, or in one of the future ones, who knows?

You don't have to look past this thread to see what I mean:

 

A very well documented bug, submitted here, with plenty of context, 2 days after the launch, in February 26th.

It's a very important bug because orbital mechanics are one of the core things in the game, so people waited for this to be addressed in first patch.

First patch came, this wasn't fixed.

Sure, people are busy, scrambling to fix a lot of things at once, these things can happen, surely such an important bug will be fixed in the second patch.

Nope, it wasn't fixed in patch #2 either. 

On April 12th, the CM told us this bug is being worked on and can't promise any deadline. Thanks, I guess?

So I guess we'll have to see if it makes it in patch #3.

They adressed this in the dev insight!? They literally said "we are working on many of the bugs from day 1" and "those are the hardest to fix, so they are taking more time." Furthermore as someone who does GD I can say that what they are doing isn't bad. At all. And finally (this is my last comment, I promise) I think that we all want a good game, including the devs. So, like the dev insight said-  don't blindly compain. You are wasting your own time and the QA team's time when they could be actually fixing the game. Instead if you get a game-breaking bug, report it properly! And things like "this dev team is useless and inexperienced" are just hurtful, cmon people.

[linuxgurugamer]

1 hour ago, Stephensan said:

how about having built IN the game... it gathers all your data (it has to be approved by the player), and you can report it in the game...

That won't work if the game crashes, or if there are screenshots to be included, etc

25 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I AM on the other side of the development veil.  I get bug reports on stuff I've built from my end users daily.  And I have NEVER changed the format of what I am asking them for.  Like, ever.

That works if when you start asking, you specify everything needed.  It seems to me that they didn't even know what to ask for

[HebaruSan]

2 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I AM on the other side of the development veil.  I get bug reports on stuff I've built from my end users daily.  And I have NEVER changed the format of what I am asking them for.  Like, ever.

OK, that's fine. Now imagine you're working on some other project, and when bug reports start rolling in according to the first requested bug report format, you look at them and find that many of them are impossible to investigate or otherwise just not actionable. Do you stubbornly stick to the original format out of fear that someone on the forum will be upset that you changed something, or do you look for ways to improve it so future bug reports will be better?

Edited May 4, 2023 by HebaruSan

[linuxgurugamer]

Frankly, I'm a bit disheartened right now.  I spent a LOT of time (which I don't have a lot of) to write the KSP Bug Packager (with the initial push coming from @ShadowZone, thanks).  

Then @Nate Simpson says he loves it as his favorite mod.

Then you come along and totally ignore it, and start asking for yet more info.  Tell me, did you even thing to ask me to add in those fields into the bug packager to help provide you with what you are looking for?

Sometimes I think I'm being totally ignored.  It really doesn't give me any motivation to write mods for the game.

I'm going to take what you asked for and add it to the bug packager, maybe you can consider suggesting to people to use the bug packager to make YOUR lives easier.  Believe me, it doesn't make my life easier when I have to write up bug reports, and then yet more bug reports, etc.

 

@linuxgurugamer