Friday the v0.1.3.0th

[schlosrat]

On 6/23/2023 at 3:27 PM, schlosrat said:

I'd like to add my voice to the enthusiastic support of a hotfix for the SOI and orbital decay issues. There's a mod solution for the other one (and has been for months), so I'm less concerned with the loss of probe control on decoupling. Sure, please do fix it - it's an annoying bug, but at least we have a viable workaround in hand. The other two are another matter entirely. I know they're complicated, and I'm sure you want to be careful that you've got them fixed, but please, please, please, give us a hotfix for those ASAP!

Pretty please with sugar on top?

I would like to kindly update my request.

As much as I'd like to see a fix for the SOI and orbit decay issues, I would much rather see a fix for the drag issues that 0.1.3 has introduced. The SOI and orbit decay bugs are horrible and must be squashed, but the broken drag occlusion is actually much worse and kinda really game-breaking. This is adversely impacting all sorts of things, like during ascent phase when staging and the lower spent stage suddenly accelerates into the upper stage removing your fancy new coronet engine in the process. It's one thing to need to do a quick F5/F9 after decoupling your command pod for reentry, but the workarounds for how to deal with this during ascent are really goofy. So far the best way I've found is to let the vehicle tumble until it's at a high angle of attack, then stage and let the upper stage recover from the tumble while the lower stage files out ahead of it.

So, hot fix = YES PLEASE!

Priority = Please unbreak drag occlusion as your #1, 100% top burning priority. If you can fit an SOI or orbit decay fix in at the same time (understanding these are likely worked independently of the drag occlusion), then great - but as things stand I'd say 0.1.3 is on balance a significant step backward in terms of overall playability even with the dramatic improvements to FPS.

[MechBFP]

58 minutes ago, schlosrat said:

I would like to kindly update my request.

As much as I'd like to see a fix for the SOI and orbit decay issues, I would much rather see a fix for the drag issues that 0.1.3 has introduced. The SOI and orbit decay bugs are horrible and must be squashed, but the broken drag occlusion is actually much worse and kinda really game-breaking. This is adversely impacting all sorts of things, like during ascent phase when staging and the lower spent stage suddenly accelerates into the upper stage removing your fancy new coronet engine in the process. It's one thing to need to do a quick F5/F9 after decoupling your command pod for reentry, but the workarounds for how to deal with this during ascent are really goofy. So far the best way I've found is to let the vehicle tumble until it's at a high angle of attack, then stage and let the upper stage recover from the tumble while the lower stage files out ahead of it.

So, hot fix = YES PLEASE!

Priority = Please unbreak drag occlusion as your #1, 100% top burning priority. If you can fit an SOI or orbit decay fix in at the same time (understanding these are likely worked independently of the drag occlusion), then great - but as things stand I'd say 0.1.3 is on balance a significant step backward in terms of overall playability even with the dramatic improvements to FPS.

Yup 100% agree here. Hopefully the FPS gains aren’t related to this issue for some reason. 

[Buzz313th]

On 6/24/2023 at 6:53 PM, Turbo Ben said:

I've lost all faith in the devs. So far, each patch has broken as much as it fixed. At this rate we're looking at at least 4 or 5 patches before the game is anything even close to playable, at 2 months per patch, that's 10 months. Then there's all the bugs that will come with science, which will be another 6+ months to fix. Then colonies... We've gone from a game that just needed polish to years of development. I think they've bitten off more than they can chew.

I tried patch 3 for 15 minutes before uninstalling the game again. That's all it took to realise my joystick didn't work any more and the sound kept dropping out. And they haven't even fixed any of the game breaking bugs yet.

'IF' the engineering department can fix the bugs without completely trashing the code into a giant mess that nobody can fix!

I asked before with no answer and will ask again.  Are any of the original coders still working on the project?  The engineering lead, is he or she still here?  Is IG outsourcing the code work to another country to keep costs down?  Could that be partly the problem? 

Why does it seem like the engineering dept is in way over their head?

Edited June 26, 2023 by Buzz313th

[RocketRockington]

8 hours ago, schlosrat said:

I would like to kindly update my request.

As much as I'd like to see a fix for the SOI and orbit decay issues, I would much rather see a fix for the drag issues that 0.1.3 has introduced. The SOI and orbit decay bugs are horrible and must be squashed, but the broken drag occlusion is actually much worse and kinda really game-breaking. This is adversely impacting all sorts of things, like during ascent phase when staging and the lower spent stage suddenly accelerates into the upper stage removing your fancy new coronet engine in the process. It's one thing to need to do a quick F5/F9 after decoupling your command pod for reentry, but the workarounds for how to deal with this during ascent are really goofy. So far the best way I've found is to let the vehicle tumble until it's at a high angle of attack, then stage and let the upper stage recover from the tumble while the lower stage files out ahead of it.

Most every other EA developer would have told us a hotfix for a new bug like the drag issue was incoming already - not that there was just 'discussion' about whether to do a hot fix.  It's kind of shady that one of the most-promoted fixes by the team, with a whole devblog talking about how the fix was getting addressed, and multiple updates on its progress, has not just fallen flat, spawning a new bug worse than the original, and apparently they don't even know whether they're going to fix it soon or wait (3,4, 10, who knows how many) weeks to get it into the normal release cycle.  

[The Aziz]

On 6/26/2023 at 12:26 AM, Turbo Ben said:

I want to see KSP2 succeed, but it looks dead in the water to me. Hopefully they can pull a No Mans Sky, but from what I've seen so far, I can't see it happening.

What you've seen? 4 months mean nothing.

The difference between this and NMS is that Hello Games advertised their game as full product, the complete version, whatever you wanna call it. Charged 60 bucks and what we got was barely resembling a demo. It took them two years to regain some players, all while facing unfavorable opinions all over the internet. Since then it just keeps getting better.

At the very least, Intercept is honest with KSP2 not being a finished product at the moment, and they do have a roadmap, unlike HG who serve update announcements weeks before they are out.

 

[visa]

I created an account just to say that I bought a PC in 2020 as that was the originally announced release date for KSP2. It was delayed over and again for a better, complete, polished game. It didn't happen on release. After 3 patches down the road, we still didn't have a playable game. 

What horrified me more is that customers have been helping with testing, with enthusiasm for so long, yet progress was disappointing, to the extent that basic gameplay mechanics that were supposed to be in the "released" game are now suddenly a roadmap that's several months if not years away.

As much as I'd love to stay positive for the team, I think like many KSP1 players, the enthusiasm is simply worn out, and justifiably so.

I hope the team acknowledges this and own up to the fact that no amount of justification can change the fact that users have been let down, with misleading promises, over and over again.

[Periple]

17 hours ago, MechBFP said:

Yup 100% agree here. Hopefully the FPS gains aren’t related to this issue for some reason. 

They're not, they listed the optimizations that gave the FPS changes in the changelog, and none of them relate to the aero model in any way!

Spoiler

• Added new compute kernel to improve terrain performance by reducing rendering of non-visible detail
• Optimized cloud shader algorithm to improve GPU performance
• Implemented job system to handle per-part water detection (for 150 part vehicle, CPU time reduced from 10ms to 1.5ms)
• Optimized and improved quality of lens flares by using a commandbuffer
• Optimized cloud rendering when camera is below cloud layer
• Optimized GPU and memory usage for water rendering by using stencil buffers and new shaders
• Optimized KSC instancing to reduce draw calls
• Optimized Part Manager by removing several layout groups
• Optimized per-engine point lights by turning off shadows
• Optimized PQS terrain textures to reduce memory usage
• Optimized rendering of 3D UI elements in VAB and flight
• Optimized scatter object performance by using more compact scatter spawn buffers to reduce GPU memory usage
• Optimized tesselation factor for medium and low quality water to improve GPU performance
• Optimized water tesselation factor for water viewed from high altitude
• Optimized runtime CPU performance for water rendering by updating some properties less than once per frame"
• Reduced GPU memory used by local space shader by 75%
• Reduced low- and medium-quality cloud texture sizes for Kerbin, Duna, Eve, and Laythe 
• Removed unnecessary logging for time warp interpolation

 

[Rosten]

On 6/25/2023 at 4:00 AM, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Do you seriously think the game would be complete by now if it hadn’t gone into EA?  

If it wasn't viable to recoup losses by selling the remains of a game development project as a game, then companies would either put more effort into saving troubled projects or would cancel them.  Dumping game waste into the EA recycling machine is something that wouldn't happen were people not willing to tolerate being someone's bailout plan.

[JPR]

Will or is there a feature to aim or focus the camera at a specific part in Kerbal Space Program 2?

Is there a plan to introduce a first-person camera view and detailed interior spaces in the game? If so, when can we expect these features to be implemented?

Could you consider remaking the left-click parts menu so that it is organized per part rather than per vessel? The current menu displays too many options at once, and organizing it per part would be more intuitive and user-friendly.

 

[Alexoff]

On 6/23/2023 at 9:45 PM, Nate Simpson said:

We are aware that one of the decoupling fixes in this update has introduced a new issue that breaks aerodynamic drag after a decoupling action. Thanks to early reports from the community, we have been able to reproduce the bug and are working on a fix. If the fix proves stable and low risk, we will consider releasing a hot fix in a few days

How is the work on the hotfix coming along?

[Pyritin]

2 hours ago, Alexoff said:

How is the work on the hotfix coming along?

Nate said "a few days" which in the real world tends to mean "a few weeks" (at least). He is never even close to accurate regarding time estimates. I think you're expecting an update entirely too soon and really shouldn't expect anything for at LEAST another week.

[Ruedii]

Any progress with getting the launcher working with Proton/Wine  or will I need to use my override to run the game executable directly in proton?

Also, any progress in getting an option in the launcher to just skip the vast majority of it's function and have it just strap over to the game without loading anything substantial (only a "loading" splash screen derived from the updating one instead of the full interactive UI.)

[0111narwhalz]

1 hour ago, Ruedii said:

Any progress with getting the launcher working with Proton/Wine  or will I need to use my override to run the game executable directly in proton?

Out of curiosity, what is the point of a launcher in the first place? The launcher bypass command option works fine for me.

[Stephensan]

hot fix confrimed coming in

 

drag and something about the farrings.

[RocketRockington]

On 6/25/2023 at 10:52 AM, Stephensan said:

Also i really like to say something that i don't see a lot of people are talking about

 

we have nearly doubled if not tripled the amount of players playing ksp 2 with 0.1.3.0. pre 0.1.2.0

 

• Avg Players Sub 100~
• Peak Player 220~

and now 0.1.3.0

• Avg Player Sub 300~
• Peak Players 640~+

 

i been saying getting stable FPS is king as of right now, not being able to play at all is worse than bugs.. now with SOME playable framerates now the Big 3 bugs can be fixed whenever they are ready.

 

i been saying and ill keep saying, fps is king for players wanting to play a game.

Looks like KSP2 spent a whole 10 days defying gravity.  1.3 + a hot fix plus the sale plus US holidays all combined to give us 10 days of 500+ peak player counts.  Unfortunately, that has ended and things are sinking again,  though it looks like it might take 4 weeks or so to sink back to pre-patch numbers.

Which is a good thing - maybe if KSP2 could change its patch cadence and introduce more content, it could start getting momentum again.  Unfortunately of patch 1.4 takes as long as patch 1.3, I think things will get worse before they get better.  

I am curious what the sales #s were.  Vginsights says sales rates were 3-4x higher last week, and there were  roughly 2-3 the # of reviews per day.

Edited July 6, 2023 by RocketRockington