Friday the v0.1.3.0th

[Guest]

I am sorry to be a little bit negative but we constantly hear that bugs which have been here since day 1 are beeing "worked on" and "hopefully there is a fix" since like forever.

And it actually decreases my hopes for this game since you intruduced a lot of bugs in the current version.

So here is my take. I get the feeling that Intercept Games is rather new to the business of delivering working software.

In software development there is the "general" rule that you can implement 80% of the functionality in 20% of the time and for the remaining 20% you need 80% of the time.

And I get the feeling that  Intercept Games is not aware about that at all. Everytime we hear something like "almost finished" or "we have something which should work". That means you have reached the 80% which only need 20% of the time. The 80% of the implementation is the "works for me" state, but in order to make customers happy you should reach more than that. And that requires a lot more time than the initial feature!

Please take into consideration that these "bugfixes" are not some minor issues which will be "fixed soon" because you think the main feature is already there. Every feature implemented in the game right now will take a lot of time until it reaches a point where customers are happy. You have done the 20% of time to implement the 80% of the features which are in the game right now. But you will need way more time to come to a point where customers are happy.

 

[Socraticat]

 

[Jockel]

3 hours ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

Let’s give the man a chance to tell us what happened before accusing that this was the idea all along. 

Firstly he'll likely not answer you. This is how things probably went down.

T2 PD and IG knew the state of the game. T2 gives them all a paper on which is stated what they are allowed to tell us before and after launch.
This is to ensure to not scare people of that the game is in an unfinished unplayable state. This is basic business.

You as a customer has to look through all that marketing talk (The game is almost done.... only final touches left.... we have all so much fun with the game.....etc) and
come to your own conclusions. 

My conclusion is .. i think there are passionate people behind the project, but thats not enough .... I lost all my faith in IG that they are able to accomplish what they had planned. 
I think everything that happened so far and let to this point that KSP2 has failed and this has a lot of reasons. Sure MAYBE we will get a final product sometime in 3-5 years, but this wasnt planned and it wont be anything we were promised over the last 3 years.
Its sad. And everything i read here are excuses.

[Astr0Guy5]

Thanks for another update Nate and team!

Seriously, all of your hard work is greatly appreciated.  With every patch KSP2 takes another step toward completion!  After taking a break from KSP2 for two months because of frustrating lag and bugs, I'm excited to get back to rocket building in 0.1.3.0.  I loved reading the changelog yesterday and seeing all of the performance improvements, bug squashes, and feature updates.  Several bug fixes gave me a good laugh, like how intake air was listed as a transferrable fuel.  Also, it's nice to see that we are getting our first set of new parts added in this patch!

I am perplexed by the progress of KSP2 right now, though.  As Scarecrow71 pointed out, KSP2 was initially announced to release in Spring of 2020.  Over three years later, I wonder how such a core feature, science progression, is not ready?  Perhaps something happened during development that required a fundamental rework of the entire game, leading to delays? If so, I feel like the community would benefit from transparency about that.  Ultimately, I'm not worried about the future of KSP2 at all; I wholeheartedly believe that eventually I will be setting up an enormous mining colony on the edge of a volcanic crater on Rusk with 60+ fps.  Still, sometimes I feel like the light at the end of the tunnel is slowly moving farther away.

Hopefully this doesn't come off as complaining because I try my hardest not to get caught up in the recent agitation of the forums.  I'm just a small Kerbonaut expressing his thoughts.

Have a great weekend guys, you deserve it!

[BeastHunter]

To be completely honest, I’m positively surprised by the announcement about the science update, I thought. They wouldn’t start saying “soon” until November.

[shdwlrd]

4 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

How this is still not fixed months after initial reporting is beyond me.  I wish I could tell my boss "Hey, I know there's a critical bug affecting our code, but I just can't get it fixed for several months".  I'd be escorted out of the building if I tried pulling that.

You seem like a software developer by trade. So imagine this scenario.

There is an obvious bug affecting certain areas of the software you're working on. You and your team trace the root cause to one of the very foundational pieces of code for software. There are many different pieces of the program that touch this piece of code.

What do you do now? Just bandaid your section of code (just like everyone else did)? Or bite the bullet and correct that code, and start the tedious process of correcting and verifying all the other pieces of code that touch that piece of code?

It seems like IG is doing the second option instead of having to remind and teach their software devs that this is bugged and this is how you get around it.

[RalphKerman]

I am in love with KSP 1 and bought KSP 2 on the first day clearly thinking that the road to a fully working and feature-complete game will be long. I want KSP 2 to be a success but my relationship with this game is a rollecoaster and with yesterday's 0.1.3 patch I have more mixed feelings than ever.

Version 0.1.0 was a catastrophe for me. I have an older machine (when I bought it in 2016 it was crazy, I7 with 2 x 1080 cards in SLI, about one month after they came out, truely obscene for the time back then, only SSDs, 32 GB RAM, full water cooling, still a very respectable system which I use daily for both work and games and I can play most games very very well on it, KSP 1 runs with loads of mods smoothly and as I said I love it) and when I fired up KSP2 for the first time I had a slide show with single digit FPS when I looked around and pointed the camera towards Kerbin. Not many features at all (but I knew that of course and the long time it will take to get everything we were promised). I played for less than 3 hours, was quite sad and started waiting for updates. Did not get a refund because I want you to get my money (although the price for that quality was borderline insane) and see it as an investment into the future of the game.

Version 0.1.1 and 0.1.2. were steps in the right direction. I was optimistic that we are getting somewhere, performance improved a little bit and (still without meaningful content) I could at least build a few non-complex craft, fly them, crash them and have a bit of fun. Satisfied but quickly bored I waited for this new update.

Version 0.1.3. came out yesterday and I quickly saw that performance was really boosted. I now have some 30 - 40 FPS and it feels playable and enjoyable (still only built a few "your first rocket" types of craft to test stuff, done nothing "serious" yet). I even registered here on the forum and wrote several bug reports and commented on some from other people as I really want to do my part now in helping finding bugs and reporting them so your devs can fix them (I work in IT and am in a role between customers and our devs so receiving and communicating bug reports and their fixes as well as solving problems is my daily business).

But this version has also filled me with great doubts. The release day was postponed 2 days because some major bugs needed to be fixed I read somewhere and they had to pass QA. And here is my biggest concern:

I have no faith in your QA process anymore.

Let me explain why: It took me literally 3 minutes of playing this latest update yesterday to discover 2 major bugs that are reported many times by now in the Bug Report forum. The camera bug took me exactly 2 key presses before I even launched my first craft. Make a craft, go to launch pad, press M for map, press M again to leave map and your camera is 180 degrees turned around in the middle of the launch tower. This bug is so frustrating that it kills a lot of my enjoyment when after every map switch the camera points into the default direction and the view looks nothing like what it did before entering map mode.

My very first test craft (the fun craft that everyone builds, a capsule, parachutes, decoupler, one tank, one engine, built in 1 min by everybody) was launched and I flew to orbit, deorbited, decoupled and wanted to slow down and land. That's when I found out that there is no drag for the command pod in Kerbin's atmosphere. The pod accelerated till it got grabbed near the surface and blown into orbit again by some magical force (documented in the bugs reports forum and in many videos on Reddit and YT meanwhile). This is the most basic thing you can do in Kerbal Space Program. It does not get any more basic than this!

How is it possible that such a game breaking bug can make it into a release version (especially since the patch explicitly states that a lot of aero rework was done and therefore I guess everything was tested and tested again and again....)?

And that's where I stand now. I am happy about the technical improvement (30 - 40 FPS vs. single digt ones) but worried that even the most basic physics bugs do not get caught before a release of a patch more than one month in the making. What shall I expect from more complex topics in the future? Must I assume they are broken on release as well if QA is unable to find even basic bugs?

I am still loving the game but again I am in the "waiting for things to get better" mode. No content added yet that will make playing meaningful (science mode.....) and a game state that prevents me from landing the most basic Kerbal space craft. This is a huge blow to my morale. I personally will stick around and wait for everything getting better but I fear many players will not and even more people will lose interest in the game.

Please have a look at your internal QA processes, get things in order in that department and make sure that such game breaking bugs do not find their way into 0.1.4 and beyond.

[regex]

5 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

Some players have also correctly noted that the orbital decay and SOI transit trajectory bugs are still present in v0.1.3.0 - while we had high hopes for an eleventh-hour breakthrough, neither fix made it across the finish line in time. In the days after code lock, a new fix for the SOI transit issue was submitted and is being tested. Our engineers have also isolated the orbit decay issue and believe they have a good remedy on deck.

Sounds like a pretty gnarly set of bugs, I could say I'm looking forward to a hotfix but I'm kind of on standby until you guys either fix the PQS issues with driving or implement the CBT feature.

Quote

We don’t want to reverse any of our recent framerate gains, so we’re taking the time needed to make sure reentry is both awesome-looking and performant.

Nice, that's appreciated.

Quote

The first of the headline Roadmap updates - which will add Science, Missions, and an R+D Center, is still several months away.

Oh, interesting. I was not expecting the missions to be alongside the science update, cool. Sounds like there'll be a lot of good content in that update too, awesome.

One thing I would ask of the team, at what point are we going to be able to fly on Kerbin and see trees to the horizon? When do I get that option? I'm guessing the answer will be something like "when we implement CBT", which is unfortunate because if I can't drive Kerbin (and you really can't drive Kerbin right now without immense willpower) I want to fly it. It can't be that hard to unlock the render distance on trees...

Edited June 23, 2023 by regex

[WatchClarkBand]

Nice work on the graphical perf updates. Tell Mike and Mortoc I said "nice job."

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, RalphKerman said:

How is it possible that such a game breaking bug can make it into a release version (especially since the patch explicitly states that a lot of aero rework was done and therefore I guess everything was tested and tested again and again....)?

[...]

Please have a look at your internal QA processes, get things in order in that department and make sure that such game breaking bugs do not find their way into 0.1.4 and beyond.

I am not sure if questioning the work of the QA department is really the thing to do.

The game was released with several fundamental bugs and they were not fixed yet.

I assume that the same thing happens if such a bug is found in a new patch. QA finds the bug, tells management/dev team about it and the patch is released anyway. This is basically what happend with every single patch with existing bugs. I would assume that management will push out the next patch anyway in this case too. QA can only find bugs. They do not fix them. And if the descicion is made to push something anyway it is not their fault.

This is just an assumption. But the whole game was delayed several years and then pushed out of the door. So I think QA is not the problem.

[jebycheek]

20% off is still extremely expensive for this big project，I can't recommend it to anyone I love or like because they're my friend, you know. 

I think 50$ still is a good price for a “intercept games” lesson. 

[Gurkonier]

I like the new more transparent communication style. I like to be involved in the progress developing the game. Communicating also delays or things, that didn't go as planned is a completely normal thing and only shows, that the whole team is as human (and kerbal) as everyone else. Then i'm even more excited to hear, when the team finally resolved an issue, which was very difficult to fix before.

Thanks, keep up the great work!

[Jarin]

Continuing to appreciate the new approach to communication. Thanks, folks.

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, running_bird said:

I assume that the same thing happens if such a bug is found in a new patch. QA finds the bug, tells management/dev team about it and the patch is released anyway. This is basically what happend with every single patch with existing bugs. I would assume that management will push out the next patch anyway in this case too. QA can only find bugs. They do not fix them. And if the descicion is made to push something anyway it is not their fault.

If that was the case the better thing to do is put a "Know Issues" in the patch notes, rather than feigning ignorance.

In this case though I very much doubt that was the case, and this is very much just a result of poor testing.

Edited June 24, 2023 by MechBFP

[Scarecrow71]

2 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

You seem like a software developer by trade. So imagine this scenario.

There is an obvious bug affecting certain areas of the software you're working on. You and your team trace the root cause to one of the very foundational pieces of code for software. There are many different pieces of the program that touch this piece of code.

What do you do now? Just bandaid your section of code (just like everyone else did)? Or bite the bullet and correct that code, and start the tedious process of correcting and verifying all the other pieces of code that touch that piece of code?

It seems like IG is doing the second option instead of having to remind and teach their software devs that this is bugged and this is how you get around it.

I am a software developer by trade.  The major difference is that bugs in our software cost the parent thousands, if not millions, of dollars in encounter revenue.  We have no choice but to be all-hands, doesn't matter what team you are on, overtime if we need to in order to fix things and keep the revenue flowing.  And all of that is invisible to the markets and vendors we have under contract.

So no, I don't understand how this isn't an all-hands thing.  I don’t understand how they can go months of saying "we are looking at it".  I fail to see how they can focus on things other than the major bugs right now.  I'm not talking about graphic artists working on code.  But there are other coders in the building that could be pulled in.  And no, I cannot understand the concept of "well, that isn't this person's job or team, so they can't help out" because, as a developer myself, I am constantly having to learn the functions of others to help fix stuff.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Scarecrow71

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

If that was the case the better thing to do is put a "Know Issues" in the patch notes, rather than feigning ignorance.

In this case though I very much doubt that was the case, and this is very much just a result of poor testing.

Do you remember the launch event at ESA where famous KSP players did play the game and everyone had the anoying pause/unpause message bug and they did collide with "rocks in space" probably KSC?

They said these issues will probably be fixed in the release version. They were not.

And since then this has been going on forever. So if famous youtubers encounter huge bugs during a launch event then they don't care to fix them.

There are tons of bugs since day 1 which are not fixed yet. And for "known issues" you can just check the bug reports. The list ist probably longer than the fixes, so it would be bad press.

Edited June 24, 2023 by running_bird

[KerbalServer.com]

From VAB to launchpad loading has greatly improved.
Return to VAB from launch / launchpad is still a bit slow.
Great new docking part additions!
Overall rocket control has improved.
Unable to rename crafts.

Thanks for the update! Love the game.

Edited June 26, 2023 by KerbalServer.com

[Pyritin]

49 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

So no, I don't understand how this isn't an all-hands thing.  I don’t understand how they can go months of saying "we are looking at it".  I fail to see how they can focus on things other than the major bugs right now.  I'm not talking about graphic artists working on code.  But there are other coders in the building that could be pulled in.  And no, I cannot understand the concept of "well, that isn't this person's job or team, so they can't help out" because, as a developer myself, I am constantly having to learn the functions of others to help fix stuff.

Scarecrow tends to get a bit more enthusiastic than my cup of tea but he isn't entirely wrong in this statement or his overall statements. IG very much so feels like a company full of "idea guys" and not enough people on the ground doing the things that needs the focus. At this point most of the "idea guy" roles at the company could easily be offloaded to the army of yes men in this community that would do it just for the "feels good". Tap on that resource and use the savings on some dev's who can release anything with any semblance of polish.

It's obvious some of the supporting staff have a lot of heart and passion, but the skills to see the goals through are lacking. We are 3 months into early release and don't even have a stable and finalized way to report bugs. We are getting fairly close at this point using a hacky forum/reddit type of approach but how was something this fundamental and basic not already vetted before this project was even released? I've not really ever ran into a game or studio I've been so conflicted with. The staff seem like great people who in another context I'd really enjoy talking shop with or watching on a livestream, but man it's hard to get behind what you all are putting out and the methods you all are taking to get things done.

[Skystorm]

@running_bird This is not the release version.  This is Early Access.  And that issue *IS* fixed.  So yes, it will be fixed by release.

[Scarecrow71]

16 minutes ago, Pyritin said:

Scarecrow tends to get a bit more enthusiastic than my cup of tea

It is only because I am so passionate about this series and want to see it succeed.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

7 hours ago, Redneck said:

Dude i agree with you on your arguments. I dont like how the state of this game was released either or the price they chose to release it at. But it was. No taking that back now. Lets try encouraging the devs and cheering them on it makes imo a better working environment and thus better quality  patches when you dont have all that animosity hovering over you. I understand keeping their feet held to the fire but ive chosen to give them some breathing room. 

Yup.  We’ve got the EA that we’ve got, but it’s getting better with every patch.  Animosity isn’t going to make the next patch drop any faster, but good bug reports and telemetry will make it better.

And the animosity is getting really stale.  It’s been months, people…

 

[Rosten]

25 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Animosity isn’t going to make the next patch drop any faster, but good bug reports and telemetry will make it better.

Being willing to pay $50 to work for free writing bug reports is why we're not playing a finished KSP 2 right now. 

[Spacefan101]

7 hours ago, RalphKerman said:

I am in love with KSP 1 and bought KSP 2 on the first day clearly thinking that the road to a fully working and feature-complete game will be long. I want KSP 2 to be a success but my relationship with this game is a rollecoaster and with yesterday's 0.1.3 patch I have more mixed feelings than ever.

Version 0.1.0 was a catastrophe for me. I have an older machine (when I bought it in 2016 it was crazy, I7 with 2 x 1080 cards in SLI, about one month after they came out, truely obscene for the time back then, only SSDs, 32 GB RAM, full water cooling, still a very respectable system which I use daily for both work and games and I can play most games very very well on it, KSP 1 runs with loads of mods smoothly and as I said I love it) and when I fired up KSP2 for the first time I had a slide show with single digit FPS when I looked around and pointed the camera towards Kerbin. Not many features at all (but I knew that of course and the long time it will take to get everything we were promised). I played for less than 3 hours, was quite sad and started waiting for updates. Did not get a refund because I want you to get my money (although the price for that quality was borderline insane) and see it as an investment into the future of the game.

Version 0.1.1 and 0.1.2. were steps in the right direction. I was optimistic that we are getting somewhere, performance improved a little bit and (still without meaningful content) I could at least build a few non-complex craft, fly them, crash them and have a bit of fun. Satisfied but quickly bored I waited for this new update.

Version 0.1.3. came out yesterday and I quickly saw that performance was really boosted. I now have some 30 - 40 FPS and it feels playable and enjoyable (still only built a few "your first rocket" types of craft to test stuff, done nothing "serious" yet). I even registered here on the forum and wrote several bug reports and commented on some from other people as I really want to do my part now in helping finding bugs and reporting them so your devs can fix them (I work in IT and am in a role between customers and our devs so receiving and communicating bug reports and their fixes as well as solving problems is my daily business).

But this version has also filled me with great doubts. The release day was postponed 2 days because some major bugs needed to be fixed I read somewhere and they had to pass QA. And here is my biggest concern:

I have no faith in your QA process anymore.

Let me explain why: It took me literally 3 minutes of playing this latest update yesterday to discover 2 major bugs that are reported many times by now in the Bug Report forum. The camera bug took me exactly 2 key presses before I even launched my first craft. Make a craft, go to launch pad, press M for map, press M again to leave map and your camera is 180 degrees turned around in the middle of the launch tower. This bug is so frustrating that it kills a lot of my enjoyment when after every map switch the camera points into the default direction and the view looks nothing like what it did before entering map mode.

My very first test craft (the fun craft that everyone builds, a capsule, parachutes, decoupler, one tank, one engine, built in 1 min by everybody) was launched and I flew to orbit, deorbited, decoupled and wanted to slow down and land. That's when I found out that there is no drag for the command pod in Kerbin's atmosphere. The pod accelerated till it got grabbed near the surface and blown into orbit again by some magical force (documented in the bugs reports forum and in many videos on Reddit and YT meanwhile). This is the most basic thing you can do in Kerbal Space Program. It does not get any more basic than this!

How is it possible that such a game breaking bug can make it into a release version (especially since the patch explicitly states that a lot of aero rework was done and therefore I guess everything was tested and tested again and again....)?

And that's where I stand now. I am happy about the technical improvement (30 - 40 FPS vs. single digt ones) but worried that even the most basic physics bugs do not get caught before a release of a patch more than one month in the making. What shall I expect from more complex topics in the future? Must I assume they are broken on release as well if QA is unable to find even basic bugs?

I am still loving the game but again I am in the "waiting for things to get better" mode. No content added yet that will make playing meaningful (science mode.....) and a game state that prevents me from landing the most basic Kerbal space craft. This is a huge blow to my morale. I personally will stick around and wait for everything getting better but I fear many players will not and even more people will lose interest in the game.

Please have a look at your internal QA processes, get things in order in that department and make sure that such game breaking bugs do not find their way into 0.1.4 and beyond.

I very much agree with this, I myself also ran into a few gamebreaking bugs literally within minutes of playing, and trust us its not just us 2 many people have had the same experience, you really have to get QA in order

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Skystorm said:

@running_bird This is not the release version.  This is Early Access.  And that issue *IS* fixed.  So yes, it will be fixed by release.

My wording was bad. I meant launch version of EA, not final release. And the pause/unpause message bug was only fixed in the second patch.

The argument from another user was that if there are known bugs that the proper thing to do is to publish a list of known issues. However in every release there are major known issues which are not fixed since the last patch. So clearly they have no problems with pushing a patch which has lots of known bugs.

The thing is I fail to see how this is a QA problem given how many major bugs exists since EA launch, how many really simple bugs (like unable to rename vehicle) are still not fixed and how many new bugs they introduced in this patch.

[RaBDawG]

The first roadmap(Science) item most likely being released almost a year from launch is pretty hysterical.

Edited June 24, 2023 by RaBDawG