Shine On, You Crazy... Planet?!?

[ziqi]

so this is the only thing you do in the past 2 week?

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

While I appreciate trying somewhat to keep us in the loop, slowing updates, further delaying the first item on the Roadmap and throwing us another screenshot of a cosmetic update when there are a lot of bigger fish to fry that make the game unplayable and with not one added feature since launch, when the game is supposedly “almost done” and the team is allegedly proud with what was launched according last AMA.

This is a nightmare even for the most optimistic among us.

[Rosten]

So this is never happening, then.  No dates given on the roadmap, back to slowing down after 3 years of making no apparent progress since 2019, and top priority after release was a vacation.

[Aodhan]

I can understand the longer time between patches, but what really disappoints me is the implicit admission that science won’t be a thing anytime soon…

 

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

8 minutes ago, Aodhan said:

I can understand the longer time between patches, but what really disappoints me is the implicit admission that science won’t be a thing anytime soon…

 

“In the coming weeks” just became “in the coming updates”.

[LoSBoL]

Based on an earlier statement from Nate that there will be 2 QOL updates before the science milestone update I'm guessing we're half a year away from the science update, and maybe another bug fix will drop after that before Christmas.

0.1.1.0 Bugfix patch, 3 weeks

0.1.2.0 Bugix and performance patch, 4 weeks

0.1.3.0 First QOL update, 6-8 weeks

0.1.4.0 Second QOL update, 6-8 weeks

0.2.0.0 Science Milestone, 6-8 weeks

0.2.1.0 Bugfix patch, 3-4 weeks

Edited April 29, 2023 by LoSBoL

[cocoscacao]

Bummer for less frequent patches. Though expected, considering summer approach. I would appreciate more details on what is planned for upcoming patches before science though... 

[BobKtoo]

Thanks for the update, but his sounds like marketing nonsense to me: Lets concentrate on creating lots of new nice pretty things to show in screenshots and vids to boost sales of a fundamentally broken core game. Surely building more and more features on a broken foundation is going to make it more difficult to fix the thing in the long run. It worries me slightly that you imply that you don't have enough resources to work on the core issues and generate new features. I really want to love this game.  We obviously don't know what is happening internally with the team, but the sate of Denmark comes to mind. 

[Turbo Ben]

Well, this is disappointing.

Patch 1 was a massive improvement. Patch 2 only fixed minor bugs and created some new ones. The game is still broken and now we have to wait god knows how long for the next patch.

40 minutes ago, Aodhan said:

I can understand the longer time between patches, but what really disappoints me is the implicit admission that science won’t be a thing anytime soon…

 

Don't get me wrong, I want science. The game needs some form of goals and progression, but right now, what's more important is fixing what we already have.

Science can wait, heating can wait, visuals can wait, UI can wait, performance can wait (I get that performance is bad for some, but I'd rather have 10fps and a working game than 100fps and gamebreaking bugs).

I don't want to hear about better planet shine, I want to hear about fixes for unstable orbits, docking ports/decouplers, interplanetary trajectory lines, controls/SAS, corrupted saves, vanishing craft, vanishing celestial bodies and borked surface colliders. I want to see the next 2 or 3 patches dedicated solely to this end. Once the game is playable we can start talking feature updates.

[The Aziz]

7 hours ago, Redneck said:

multiplayer ready yet?

No, why?

7 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

<rant>

Ok  see ya next week.

5 hours ago, ziqi said:

so this is the only thing you do in the past 2 week?

Yep, totally, one thing shown in the post means there's only one thing in the actual update. Not like, over 200.

3 hours ago, Rosten said:

3 years of making no apparent progress since 2019

I know, glasses are expensive.

3 hours ago, Rosten said:

top priority after release was a vacation.

Tell me you wouldn't want a break after going through the most intense part of your work, which is release time.

1 hour ago, Turbo Ben said:

Patch 1 was a massive improvement. Patch 2 only fixed minor bugs and created some new ones.

On the contrary, for many, P1 only fixed minor issues, though quite a lot of them, P2 made the game playable by giving significant performance boost. I can launch things without looking at the sky to get frames above 15.

 

I, for one, still vote for hotfixes when needed. That's what the last zero in version number is for, right? 0.1.2.0, so it's not impossible. Especially when the bug in question is new, introduced in latest update.

[Turbo Ben]

16 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

On the contrary, for many, P1 only fixed minor issues, though quite a lot of them, P2 made the game playable by giving significant performance boost. I can launch things without looking at the sky to get frames above 15.

 

I've launched my grand tour craft at 15fps. It's not great but it's playable. What's less playable is when you get to Duna and Ike is nowhere to be found, go into orbit of Duna and have the transfer stage deorbit while you're attempting to land, lose hours of gameplay because a save got corrupted and won't load the craft, or lose days of gameplay when you get to Laythe and have your craft pop out of existence when you undock.

Edited April 29, 2023 by Turbo Ben

[Meecrob]

12 hours ago, Strawberry said:

Some more context in short, basically instead of nearly all the dev team focusing on one area (bug fixes), they're spreading their resources out more to focus on more stuff. This means we'll likely get less bug fixes and longer time in between updates but the updates will have more features in them. 

I cannot say I am instilled with confidence. Being told "it should have been obvious?"

 

I'm not sure people should be telling the community that things should be obvious, when we just want to know what is up with this game.

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

Ok  see ya next week.

Two things.

First, while it may be implied that I'm leaving the community, I'm not.  I'll still be here enjoying KSP1 and reading threads, but not playing KSP2.  My bad if that wasn't clear,

Second, thanks for ignoring the entirety of my post and the sentiment behind it.  Not agreeing with it is ok.  Boiling it down to a simple rant and then throwing shade at me with no context isn't.  I'm happy to discuss any points you disagree with.

Edited April 29, 2023 by Scarecrow71

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

I see an upside to this.*   The implication from Nate's post in relation to the other things we've learned from the team is that they're working on the big stuff like CBT over PQS+ and HDRP implementation.  The focus on Planet Shine is our indirect indication. 

I encourage folks to watch the latter half of the GDC vid.  That is not a beat down team.  That is a team that has been offered some new toys and seems excited to start playing with them.  Getting that stuff online is a major effort - not something that can be done quickly.  Pure guesswork - but the timing and implied direction suggest that they see these tools as a way to reduce machine time and get the game's performance under control. 

Because that's a big job and will take time, the other implication is that they'll have time to work on the other stuff that isn't working. 

So... The possibility is that the next patch won't be just a patch - but maybe a revamp. 

 

Shrug.  I'm not a developer - just someone hopeful they can actually make this game live up to the potential (and promises). 

 

 

 

*Of course, I put the game down the day Patch 2 came out and frustrated the *liquid* out of me.  So have a little mental distance between wanting to play and hoping they fix it. 

[PDCWolf]

15 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

On the subject of updates: our update cadence is going to slow down a little bit. There are a couple of reasons for this, not least of which is that every time we release an update, we divert resources that would otherwise be focused on continuing to improve the game. We are always balancing our desire to improve the current Early Access experience against long-term goals that involve more time investment.

I'm starting to take an issue here, what exactly are people paying for right now? Every single patch has been met with "the following one will take longer to have more QA", now not only does the game never reflect that QA time,  considering it's near unplayable for most, but testing and having the bleeding edge is exactly what people step into EA for.

Second off: stuff like this message ^ needs to be echoed here, not by a user taking a screencap, but officially, aaaand that "it should've been obvious" attitude needs to go.

Finally, planet-shine does look amazing, but you really need to fix those skies. Almost no stars could be visible when you have a huge glowing green ball, specially right by it. We have a much smaller white-ish ball in our sky and its shine drowns out most stars. Further on, if the planet shines that much, looking at it would probably drown out a lot of detail from the surface you're standing in, as your eyes adjust to look at the shiny object and not at the dimly lit surface. Once more, SpaceEngine to the rescue.

37 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Two things.

My man, you had the self-critique to be able to face your own mistake of defending PD/KSP2 and being hopeful only to get slapped. Some people don't have that, don't waste your time.

[DeStruisvogel]

I personally only have 2 things to say.

As some other users pointed out they are working on systems way on the end of the roadmap (like multiplayer). And I just wanna know why, it's your last goal for a buggy and unfinished game which is going to change a lot in the next 2-5 years. Why already work on these systems when they are all likely to change. Why not first fix the game and bring big updates step by step, or at least not divert so much resources to these systems.

Secondly why so much QA, it's an early access game which is normally used by (small indie) teams to get funds and feedback from enthusiastic players. You have funds as you are backed by a REALLY big company. But then why still go into early access while not using it's full potential. With this I mean why go trough the intense and long process of good quality QA instead of decreasing the price of the game (cause to be fair I have never seen a EA game for 50 eu. And this game is probably not even worth as much as KSP 1 in this state) and letting us help with QA. This way we at least see a lot of progress and even help you a lot more.

So yes for now I will be sticking with KSP 1. I'm sorry

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 minutes ago, DeStruisvogel said:

As some other users pointed out they are working on systems way on the end of the roadmap (like multiplayer). And I just wanna know why, it's your last goal for a buggy and unfinished game which is going to change a lot in the next 2-5 years. Why already work on these systems when they are all likely to change. Why not first fix the game and bring big updates step by step, or at least not divert so much resources to these systems.

This is a double-edged sword question.  The 'Dev Side' answer (confirmed by professionals in the forum audience) is that the only way for MP to EVER be a feature of KSP2 is for it to be baked into the game from the beginning.  MP isn't something that can be slapped on at the end stage.

The flip side?  There is every possibility that the decision to include MP at all is the cause of a reduced SP experience for all players.  

[lordbunson]

The latest developer update,  Shine On, You Crazy...Planet?!?,  wasn't posted to the KSP2 Dev Updates forum so I figured I'd create a discussion post here. Thoughts?

 

[regex]

 

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

Yeah, I have a thought.

There should be a refund program for anyone that bought KSP2, regardless of hours played (within a reasonable amount).

I think I’ve seen enough, and I’d rather be on my way.

Edited April 29, 2023 by GGG-GoodGuyGreg

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

17 minutes ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

Yeah, I have a thought.

There should be a refund program for anyone that bought KSP2, regardless of hours played (within a reasonable amount).

I think I’ve seen enough, and I’d rather be on my way.

Actually - that ship has sailed.

OTOH - once the game is performant, they should just give all of us Alpha/Beta testers a couple of free DLC updates ('cause you just know 'Robotic Parts' is gonna be a DLC)

[joratto]

16 hours ago, Davedavidson said:

The state of ksp2 is ridiculous  but if you think ksp1 has too many bugs at this point then you have no room to stand on bc you will never be happy.

I adore KSP1 but it has way too many bugs and you’d be insane to deny it. The fact that KSP2 makes KSP1 look better optimised than Rollercoaster Tycoon is the reason why it’s so ridiculous.

The hope was that a larger team with more budget and vision could’ve remade KSP with a lot less fundamental bugginess. Looks like it might still take 5 years to realise that dream, if it ever happens.

Edited April 29, 2023 by joratto

[Little 908]

9 hours ago, Rosten said:

So this is never happening, then.  No dates given on the roadmap, back to slowing down after 3 years of making no apparent progress since 2019, and top priority after release was a vacation.

I guess this is what we get for getting delayed for 3 years...

[pandaman]

7 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Actually - that ship has sailed.

OTOH - once the game is performant, they should just give all of us Alpha/Beta testers a couple of free DLC updates ('cause you just know 'Robotic Parts' is gonna be a DLC)

Hmm.  First DLC  free to those  that bought  (and didn't  refund) before say the First roadmap update, would be a nice 'thank you for your faith in us' gesture without being unrealistically generous. 

 I don't expect it mind you.  And nor do I feel I have any right to it.  I took my chances and bought it not even knowing if I could run it (I could, just) with no thoughts of refunding.

It did accelerate my PC upgrade plans by about a year though.

[branan]

As long as we're still in "weeks, not months" (so maybe every six-eight weeks), I'll be happy. I think that's realistic, but of course I'm not directly familiar with the dev process for this game.

Lots of folks on this forum have given input based on their experience as developers. But I will say, specific to this communication:

It's a huge investment to pivot a software engineering team towards being able to ship smaller changes more frequently. My impression is that the team has been shipping more quickly than they're necessarily comfortable with, because the fixes are small/focused changes. Now that they want to focus more on bigger features (and bigger bugfixes, which IME are more like features than fixes), they don't know how to break down that work into small enough chunks to ship quite as often.

I personally hope that over the course of early access the devs do spend some time adjusting their processes and workflows to enable shipping more often. But those changes need to be balanced with getting stuff out the door.

Imagine how mad everyone would be if we got a blog post saying "we're not going to ship for a quarter so that we can figure out how to ship faster"