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

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour 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)

This assumes, of course, that the game actually becomes performing and makes it to 1.0

[BowlerHatGuy3]

Although I’m glad the game is out I gotta ask: WHY DID THEY THINK RELEASING THE GAME IN A BARELY PLAYABLE STATE WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA?!!?

I’m actually a little afraid that this game might get abandoned assuming they were expecting the EA to make money.

[Vanamonde]

2 hours ago, lordbunson said:

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?

 

You can discuss it in the thread itself, to which yours has been merged. Carry on. 

[Wheehaw Kerman]

18 hours ago, Dantheollie said:

Unfortunately this news is going to be received very poorly by some members of the community. I appreciate that the team has come forth and clarified this issue for us. It gives us a little more certainty

“Some members of the community”… that turn of phrase got me wondering what this place would look like if it were an actual community.  “Encampment full of vicious angry homeless people having screaming arguments about conspiracy theories with their hallucinations while assaulting the social workers” comes to mind.

I’m glad to hear that the devs are still plugging away, appreciating the more regular updates, and looking forwards to the next update.

[f!r3fOx_]

In advance, sorry for my bad english.
I am very disappointed. KSP2 gave me hope. Something new, something modern, better graphics, better gameplay. The roadmap convinced me to look forward to KSP2.
In 2019 we saw the first gameplay scenes. The desire for an early release was great. 3 years later it will be called Early Access. 3 years?!? For what?

50€ for an unstable and buggy game. If I am informed correctly, most of the game consists of migrated parts from KSP1. So literally copied. That took 3 years? I am really very disappointed.
What's the point of great graphics if I have to play at 15 FPS just to make it look great? What's the point of great sound if the game just isn't what you expected.
And I'll say it again....after 3 years copy and paste into another engine. I think it was officially said that many things were taken over from the first part of KSP1.
Even setting the graphics setting to low doesn't improve it.

Specs:
AMD Ryzen 5 5800X 3D
32GB RAM
ASUS Rog Strix 2080 Ti OC 11GB

There are other simulations that don't look quite as good, but don't have such errors and problems. I think it would have made the community a lot happier just by releasing KSP2 in Early Access with better graphics than KSP1.
At least the since mode. More parts were announced. Currently there are fewer than in KSP1 in the original. That's ridiculous too. For me personally, KSP2 was an AAA title.
The emphasis is on was. €50 for frustration and I've already played 85.9 hours looking for something positive. The next hope was on the first update. But it hasn't improved much over the weeks.

How active the team is in TikTok is advertised.
Maybe you should use the time to finish the patches faster.

Nate, you write what Jool looks like now..... What does that bring us?
Such things are subtleties, you can patch them up. Isn't it more important to improve the game in its function? Bug fixing? Sandbox mode gets really boring over time. Super I can land on Mun and other planets.
And what can I do there? Nothing. I built a space station in Kerbal Orbit. Since the new patch, the parts no longer fit. Apparently the parts have been adjusted. I'll probably have to rebuild the station from scratch.

Now the patch periods are even longer. Well done. Who decided something like that? It was said that KSP2 won't be in Early Access for that long. Sorry, I don't see that.
It's sad that stuff like this always falls on the shoulders of the fans and the community. But hey... what do we as a community want to expect?
AAA titles have been badly rated.... The settlers.... Company Heroes III...... and some others..... and KSP2, too.

The only funny thing is the title Hogwards Lagecy. A patch was added within hours. The Settlers was released just a few days later the first patch was released. However, one must also say that it was not an early access game.
Although they also have a proud price, but KSP2 was sold for 50 € as early access. Quick question, what should KSP2 cost after Early Access? €200? I bought KSP1 for 12 € as Early Access.  
You have to let that melt in your mouth. I even bet my friends that KSP2 will never be finished because EA will scrap the project before the KSP2 Roard Map will be finished.
 

That´s the price when big whales buy small software companies. It has always been like this.
For Example Project Cars and Dirt Rally.

Congratulations!

Edited April 29, 2023 by f!r3fOx_

[f!r3fOx_]

57 minutes ago, branan said:

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"

What? 4 Weeks is 1 Month. 8 Weeks are 2 Months. It´s time to think in Months and years......

[Little 908]

Yep, Reviews are now 1:2 Positive to negative for yesterday and today on steam. I expect them to go back into the negative in the coming weeks.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, Little 908 said:

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

This whole line of thought needs to go. 

Think of development starting with Intercept.  It hurts your brain less. 

Way I see it - what they had before was little more than a great promo video and not much else... Intercept gets stood up, stands down for Covid and then really started to roll after that. 

Nothing else makes sense. 

[TickleMyMary]

Team... This is NOT the way to do this!

I'd love to go into some big speech about what I want to see and why I think this is a terrible decision... But... I'm done with it. You're building endgame roadmap features for a game that ISN'T enjoyable in it's current state, you can add heating and science to the game we have now and it STILL would not be enjoyable because the most basic fundamentals of the game are broken. 

If I can boil it down to one line... It doesn't, in any way, shape or form, feel like Kerbal Space Program.

If I cooked food like you all developed games, I'd be in jail for serial food poisoning... No point glazing ribs if the nose is still in the trough.

[mcdjfp]

I am disappointed to hear this.  With the current state of the game, maneuver node issues, SAS instability, craft loading in broken*, ...,the list goes on. There are too many fundamental problems right now that need fixing (barring any that are in temporary systems that are to be completely replaced in a future update) before any shift in focus to new features can be considered. I doubt the game at present is stable enough to enjoy any new features that are added that require more than 1 launch and 30 minutes to reach.

 

* Loaded a craft at the launchpad. (already launched successfully several times trying to optimize flight path). A decoupler was a bit late in loading, but I didn't think anything of it until staging. When I staged, the decoupler exploded and the two stages it separated got stuck in each other completely ruining the launch.

[DunaManiac]

I've been watching the KSP2 debacle from afar: it was what finally motivated me to get back to KSP after a month-long hiatus. It's such a shame that this game has been a parade of errors since the beginning. The fact that KSP1 has several times more daily players than KSP2 really shows you the state of the game. It's a little too early to write an obituary, but things really need to turn around if KSP2 is to surpass its predecessor: and this isn't it. I think that the "wait and see" people were wrong; I have done a lot of waiting, and I don't like what I see. I have full faith that the team is acting in good faith: I just don't have faith they can deliver. The game is in really bad shape: you can harp to me all day about how its UI is nice, it has a couple QOL features, it has a nifty new fuel combination, etc. etc. but when I have tried to point out to some that this doesn't excuse the game's faults, I have been met with condescension and  "you're just looking at Squad with rose-tinted glasses."

KSP2 has a dream that has merits: taking KSP1's ideal of conquering the planets, and making it possible. In  KSP1 you could do it:

But this requires a host of third party mods, and practically invites the kraken to your front door. It's a shame that at this point you can't even accomplish this in KSP2 without a parade of bugs. I'm done waiting at this point: I want to see concrete updates on the road map: how will the colonial system work? Will it be a paradox strategy game-esque system, or will it be more similar to KSP's MKS mod? If we decrease the frequency of badly needed bug fixes, we need to increase the frequency of communication. It's undeniable that KSP2 has a long road ahead of it, and this update only makes it longer. But wasn't the long road of KSP1 what a sequel was made to avoid?

[Little 908]

I'd just like to point out that quality over quantity is not always true. If you have 5 starving kids, do you make them a fancy chicken that takes hours to make. Or do you make frozen nuggets from the store. The children are hanging on a hair. Please consider this.

Edited April 29, 2023 by Little 908

[lordbunson]

State of KSP 2: stable orbits randomly change, landed objects fall through the ground, saves corrupt meanwhile core features like maneuver nodes and soi indicators are so poorly designed they are unusable

KSP 2 dev team:  *waves hands* look at this screenshot of jool!

[Little 908]

7 minutes ago, lordbunson said:

State of KSP 2: stable orbits randomly change, landed objects fall through the ground, saves corrupt meanwhile core features like maneuver nodes and soi indicators are so poorly designed they are unusable

KSP 2 dev team:  *waves hands* look at this screenshot of jool!

BuIlD a DrAgOn 

Edited April 29, 2023 by Little 908

[lordbunson]

22 minutes ago, Little 908 said:

I'd just like to point out that quality over quantity is not always true. If you have 5 starving kids, do you make them a fancy chicken that takes hours to make. Or do you make frozen nuggets from the store. The children are hanging on a hair. Please consider this.

They spent years promising us the best chicken dinner we've ever had only to show up with a burnt pheasant, now we're hungry and they are promising us a chicken dinner all over again. I'm beginning to doubt they even know how to make chicken!

[BowlerHatGuy3]

9 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

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.

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.

I’ve been advocating for a darker skybox for a while, so it’s nice to see someone agree for once .

[mcdjfp]

I do want to add, that I feel that the potential is there in KSP 2 so long as it is given enough time to get there. Please, give it the time. 

Given the state of the game, I feel that the "Beta" screenshots were a bit misleading at best. That said, if I had known the true state, I still would have purchased KSP 2 for the potential that it has. In some ways I am glad it is in such an early state because it feels like the developers are going to have to relearn some of the lessons that the KSP 1 developers learned over the years. The sooner we, the players, get a chance to start demonstrating the some of the design/UI issues, the easier they will be to fix since they will not be as entrenched.

I am worried about the poor multithreading performance I am seeing. I am not sure how many new features (over KSP 1) can be added without major gains in this area.

[Scarecrow71]

1 minute ago, mcdjfp said:

The sooner we, the players, get a chance to start demonstrating the some of the design/UI issues, the easier they will be to fix since they will not be as entrenched

I disagree.  We have been providing bug reports, screenshots, and video for the issues since launch day.  And yet they haven't been fixed yet.

[Little 908]

Maybe they should give us their version of ksp 2, you know, the one thats so good that  “Instead of getting bored of it, we play it after work.” The one with a multiplayer and interstellar. The one with colonies and the planet glumo they keep on bragging about, yet we know almost nothing expect the rough features about it. Even if its rough, ksp2 literally can’t get anymore rough then it is now. Bruh just give us the game in unity 

Edited April 29, 2023 by Little 908

[AtomicTech]

On 4/28/2023 at 4:00 PM, Nate Simpson said:

Happy Friday, brave Kerbonauts!

A little bit of a slow news day here at Intercept Games as we gather feedback and data from our latest update and continue to work on stability, perf, thermal, and new features. I’ve spent more time than usual over the last week building rockets in the 0.1.2 build, and I’m relieved to see that my own personal points of frustration are mirrored in the feedback we’re getting from the community. I know we may sometimes seem remote, or that it may feel like your feedback submissions are falling on deaf ears. Not only are we collecting and reviewing your feedback, but the frequency with which you’re reporting on certain issues is incredibly helpful to our goal of prioritizing fixes. As always, we appreciate your patience as we work down the list and shore things up for update 0.1.3.

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. This is a very personal issue for me, because as a fan I want the game to be perfect and awesome right now! But since genies don’t actually exist, that’s not how we’ll arrive at the best version of KSP2. We will continue to release updates prior to our big Science Feature update, and hopefully a slower update cadence will mean that when they do go out, they contain more robust improvements. We are still working out what that exact cadence looks like, and I’ll update you here when I know more.

Among the improvements that we’re seeing this week here at the studio, our planetshine system has taken a very big leap forward, and the next patch will feel quite different at night. Now, reflected light from planets and moons is much more apparent both in space and on the night side of a celestial body. A little sample of what Jool-light looks like on the surface of Laythe:

This week’s challenge: we’re building sci-fi spacecraft! There are already some very impressive entrants appearing in the KSP2 Discord ... check this thing out (by @S_Coriolis)!

That flux capacitor! MWAH!

Please also check out our TikTok! Our community team is very active over there, and their meme skills are quite breathtaking.

Have a great weekend!

I'm glad to see we won't need a PlanetShine 2; I'm sure that the original creator and all the maintainers can take pride in this fact

6 minutes ago, Little 908 said:

Maybe they should give us their version of ksp 2

All in due time fellow Kerbonaut 

[Strawberry]

10 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

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.

This isn't relevant to the thread butI dont think the no star claim is right, doing some back of the napkin math, Jool gets 4% of the light of kerbin, and if we assume a similar bond albedo to jupiter of .34, this means nighttime laythe should have ~1.4% of the light compared to daytime on earth (a lot of this math is definitely wrong here but this is just to get the point across). Like as you mentioned, we have a moon that reflects a lot more light then Jool would and you can still see stars semi fine, Jool would be a lot more dim then our moon, Im pretty sure you'd be fine here.

[PDCWolf]

Just now, Strawberry said:

This isn't relevant to the thread butI dont think the no star claim is right, doing some back of the napkin math, Jool gets 4% of the light of kerbin, and if we assume a similar bond albedo to jupiter of .34, this means nighttime laythe should have ~1.4% of the light compared to daytime on earth (a lot of this math is definitely wrong here but this is just to get the point across). Like as you mentioned, we have a moon that reflects a lot more light then Jool would and you can still see stars semi fine, Jool would be a lot more dim then our moon, Im pretty sure you'd be fine here.

Albedo is just part of the story. Here's Jupiter on Europa's night sky, the surface is almost invisible:

Here's how absolutely blown out everything has to get for stars to be visible:

[Strawberry]

40 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Albedo is just part of the story. Here's Jupiter on Europa's night sky, the surface is almost invisible

Looking into it, apparently auto exposure for space engine is based on how cameras behave, which is notably much more different then human eyes. I can still see the stars fine with a bright streetlight nearby, I think Id be fine with an incredibly dim gas giant in the sky (yes I know there are differences here, such as in this case Jools light scattering more in the atmosphere, but my point still stands that Jool is realisticallly incredibly dim). We havent exactly sent a person to Jupiter, but I feel like we'd be fine here. (Also dont know if kerbals bigger eyes would help or hurt here, but thats a silly argument). 

[LoSBoL]

18 hours ago, pandaman said:

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.

Although it would be a nice 'thank you' to the ones that 'endured' the EA release, it would be interpreted otherwise by everybody else. 

How about the signal to people that didn't endure EA and refunded? 'You ain't getting it because you didn't stuck with it'. Not the signal you'd want to send out, but will be interpreted as such.

I'm guessing it would be more bad publicity.

[f!r3fOx_]

The way KSP 2 appeared was the wrong way. The correct way would have been:

1. A fully KSP 2 in Early Access, like KSP 1 for €30
2. Bugfixing would have been the next step
3. Multiplayer
4. The end of Early Access
5. DLC Colonies for €20
6. DLC Interstellar Voyages for €20
7. DLC Exploration for €20

Currently you pay for 50 € KSP 2 in Early Access with all roadmap features that have been planned.
I would have bought every DLC in my example. Then you could have covered the costs better.
In my example €90.
I don't know what they were thinking with the current strategy....