KSP2 EA Grand Discussion Thread.

[Dakitess]

13 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Just as I thought. Tom knew how much of a claim it would be and corrected himself. So the real quote is "Our ultimate goal is to slay the kraken".  Goal that hasn't been reached yet just like the game hasn't been finished yet.

I'm actually trying to find back the exact quote on Twitter (yeah, X) but it's a mess so far, I'll admit. I'll post back if I find it. I kinda remember it as a screenshot from the video showing the "we killed the Kraken" added on it, you know, the appealing vignette, that might redirect to the whole video which a bit more subtle, but, eh, c'mon, as it has been said, semantic, we all know what it's about. But I could have avoided speaking of an exact quote without the source to link to.

Edited August 28, 2023 by Dakitess

[gluckez]

10 hours ago, moeggz said:

When your game is less playable with less features than the prior entry in the franchise, is more expensive, and is progressing substantially slower than the first game yeah people are going to get grumpy.

what do you mean "less features"? you quote me to answer this, but literally in the next sentence after what you quoted I explained how at that stage, ksp1 actually had less features. as in: no actual sun, kerbin didn't rotate, no other celestial bodies, etc... ksp2 already has more features than ksp1 did in this stage of development. It has a full solar system, kerbin actually rotates, you have procedural wings (which were never even in ksp1 so that's already new), you have SAS, etc... 

And before you go: oh it's a sequel so it must already have all the same features as the previous version, my answer to that is: it was built from the ground up, by a different team, so it makes sense that it didn't just copy paste the original code base.

[Spicat]

1 hour ago, Dakitess said:

I'm actually trying to find back the exact quote on Twitter (yeah, X) but it's a mess so far, I'll admit. I'll post back if I find it. I kinda remember it as a screenshot from the video showing the "we killed the Kraken" added on it, you know, the appealing vignette, that might redirect to the whole video which a bit more subtle, but, eh, c'mon, as it has been said, semantic, we all know what it's about. But I could have avoided speaking of an exact quote without the source to link to.

The only mention of something similar to "we killed the kraken" on their Twitter account was because of a website bug:

[RocketRockington]

On 8/27/2023 at 4:41 AM, cocoscacao said:

Not necessarily. Some of us are interested what roadmap updates may bring.

Let me help you out - cringey claim of killing the Kraken he tries to walk back - but other claims of improving performance and physics over KSP1 that are not walked back and should have been.

 

Edited August 28, 2023 by RocketRockington

[m4inbrain]

3 hours ago, gluckez said:

ksp2 already has more features than ksp1 did in this stage of development.

I do like how you, clearly just "coincidentally", go by "stage of development" rather than the more interesting measure, "development time".

I'm not fluent in KSP1 Update history, if you'd do the honours and point out the differences between KSP1 and KSP2 after around 4-5 years of development time? Lets ignore for a second the fact that the KSP2 team is bigger by an order of magnitude for that comparison. 

Or, in a similar fashion.. Lets recall how long KSP1 was in development by the time they reached "this stage of development" - and where KSP2 would be, given the same. 

To be rather frank, KSP2 has nothing to write home about. They have a team more than ten times the size of the original development team, they have big money behind them, and they had 4-5 times the amount of time KSP1 had at "this stage of development". This isn't as great an argument or achievement as you might think it is. 

Even ignoring all the other issues like performance etc - purely the scope of what we have in terms of content/features after now 5 years of development is laughable. And i'm reasonably suspicious that you know this, too. That's why you chose the measure of "development stage" - which, again, is a nonsensical measure to take. A good example as to why that is would be Star Citizen. You know, the "game" that is a pre-alpha tech demo. 12 years into development. 

[gluckez]

4 minutes ago, m4inbrain said:

I do like how you, clearly just "coincidentally", go by "stage of development" rather than the more interesting measure, "development time".

lets go by a measure then that's actually used by developers themselves: effort. Developers do not estimate in terms of time, but rather effort.
Then on top of that, let's consider the idea that "development" is more than "writing lines of code". 

When ksp2 was originally announced in 2019, the original release date was set in 2020. that in itself is already hugely optimistic/not viable.
This release date was not set by developers, I can guarantee you that. 
After that initial announcement,  the game was being developed by Star Theory Games, who worked together with a panel of scientists.
This is where it becomes interesting as a developer, because here "development time" should be seen as "analysis effort". you spend months/years
working with experts in the domain trying to get a good grasp of everything ranging from engineering to orbital mechanics. as a software/game 
developer, that isn't an easy thing to do. 

So the first part of the "development time" was spent on analyzing the domain so they knew what they were building. After that, the release date
was pushed back to 2021, because now management sort of maybe understood that developing things takes time and you first need to understand what 
you're building exactly. now management decides that take two will establish a new studio under private division, with a few of the older employees.
This is a major problem, because all of the knowledge of those older employees that left needs to be transferred to the new ones. again, months of effort
needed for domain analysis. meanwhile, there's an architect working on designing the skeleton of the game, that needs to be future proof, and support
all the features promised, be scaleable and withstand the quirks of junior developers constantly breaking stuff. while this is being done, 3D and 2D artists
work on in game assets, and UX/UI designers work on laying out gameplay mechanics...

You see where I'm going with this? I could literally write a book just about how this entire process goes. my point is, even though you have a "big" team (<25 employees)
there's still a lot of work that goes into building a video game. and more often than not, restructuring by management, and refactoring and analysis efforts, are
unforeseen events that will delay everything.

This is why I choose the measure of "development stage", because you can't really know how much effort is being put in the actual building of the game vs everything else
that happens in a company. sometimes a feature gets delayed because management decided it was a good idea to fire half the development team and hire a bunch of cheap 
juniors that don't understand the code base, and you cannot possibly estimate how long it will take for these new employees to understand the code base, and that's just
one example of what can delay everything, that has nothing to do with the existing code base itself.

[The Aziz]

3 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

cringey claim of killing the Kraken he tries to walk back

It's aaaaaall about how you read it, isn't it 

[PDCWolf]

43 minutes ago, gluckez said:

When ksp2 was originally announced in 2019, the original release date was set in 2020. that in itself is already hugely optimistic/not viable.
This release date was not set by developers, I can guarantee you that.

You have literally no information or official source to make that judgement. We also do know that the game was 3 years in development by that point [1][2]. For comparison, KSP1 had its first prototype back in 2010 [Source]. This already invalidates most of your wild source-less speculation. If something happened to the game that was there in 2019, and is not the same one we have now, we haven't been told and, by quotable sources the only real thing we can say is KSP2 has been worked on for six years to date.

Now if you wanna do comparisons...

KSP1 in 3 years had gone from a flat plane and 2.5d rocket to what you could find in 0.18.3. It had tutorials, the full solar system, scenario system, docking, maneuver nodes, automatic fairings/interstages, action groups, science parts,  a complete redesign of most parts, probes for the first time, resource flow system for the whole ship, electricity, lights, the jet engine rework, and the first round of PQS overhauls.

In 3 years, KSP2 went from a full game developed by Star Theory set to launch in 2020 to... not existing.

In 6 years, KSP1 reached 1.2, full game done and post 1.0 updates. Meanwhile KSP2 today... barely reached feature parity with 0.18.3

[Vl3d]

7 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Meanwhile KSP2 today... barely reached feature parity with 0.18.3

IMO there's a lot of work done that's not visible. All features have prototypes implemented. It's not like they haven't started work on Science, Colonies, Resources and Interstellar because they're strictly focusing on bugs. They're developing in parallel, fixing all the bugs progressively as they finish up for the Science launch. Besides we have KSP1 which is still getting new cool features from modders - we can play that and other games while we wait.

Some forum members know that I had really big expectations for the EA launch. But I played it for 60+ hours, reported all the bugs, created the Unified Wishlist, adjusted my timeline and went on with my life. I will return to the game when there's new content to explore and when I can have more fun.

Actually, I'm happy seeing the work of @blackrack for KSP1 weather coming along - that's a very important direction for the game and I'm sure it also motivates the KSP2 team.

As for my hopes for multiplayer as a persistent universe with parallel/sequential gameplay, I had to adapt and sacrifice them for a few years. We work with the lemons life gives us.

[gluckez]

8 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

You have literally no information or official source to make that judgement.

Maybe it's worth mentioning then that I am also a professional software developer with extensive knowledge on Unity development. I don't need an official source to be able to tell you what is optimistic in terms of developing software.

 

10 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

We also do know that the game was 3 years in development by that point [1][2]. For comparison, KSP1 had its first prototype back in 2010

We also know that ksp1's first prototype came without a sun, without a rotating kerbin, without any other celestial bodies, without SAS, without control surfaces, etc...  I also took 3 years before it reached early access, and by then it did have other planets. 

and even then, that does not invalidate any of my points that I made about effort that goes into development. that was my entire argument. 
My argument was not about "how long" it takes to develop something, it's about the fact that software and game developers estimate this in terms of effort, not time. only management deals in terms of "time".
How much "time" does it take to get a firm grasp of orbital mechanics? did the original devs of ksp1 already have that knowledge? how long did the original devs of ksp1 work with a panel of scientists to understand
the domain? is this also calculated into the "time spent on development"? can you teach yourself advanced physics and engineering in a week before you start development?

so my entire point is that it's basically pointless to look at it from a time perspective, because that's not how development works. 
The only thing I can't argue on here is what's being told is done or not, if they said it was finished 3 years ago, then they were clearly lying, 
unless by that time they hired a new architect who found it necessary to rebuild everything.

[moeggz]

5 hours ago, gluckez said:

what do you mean "less features"?

As others have said, by development time.

5 hours ago, gluckez said:

And before you go: oh it's a sequel so it must already have all the same features as the previous version, my answer to that is: it was built from the ground up, by a different team, so it makes sense that it didn't just copy paste the original code base.

 

1 hour ago, gluckez said:

the first part of the "development time" was spent on analyzing the domain so they knew what they were building

I agree they didn’t just copy and paste the code, but KSP1 did exist, there’s no need to interview scientists about orbital mechanics you have a much more narrow definition of the scope of the game because you know way more clearly where you are headed then the devs of KSP1 did.

But let’s stop with all of this. Apples to apples KSP1 to KSP2 over the course of 6 months after release 

Ksp2: bug fixes. A few parts.

KSP1: numerous parts and features added. Any one of the (several) updates included several more bug fixes than have been done to ksp2 over its lifetime.

You’ll notice, that even with the rather broken game at launch most people were still optimistic. It wasn’t until nothing changed for months that people started to become pessimistic. 

14 minutes ago, gluckez said:

it's about the fact that software and game developers estimate this in terms of effort, not time. only management deals in terms of "time".

I highly doubt this is industry standard. “Time” is what dictates cost and profit, if management cares about something the workers care, hopefully in a non toxic way. But if I got to measure my work in effort and delivered unfinished projects way behind schedule constantly I wouldn’t have a job for long. 

[gluckez]

4 minutes ago, moeggz said:

there’s no need to interview scientists about orbital mechanics you have a much more narrow definition of the scope of the game because you know way more clearly where you are headed then the devs of KSP1 did.

ksp2 does have a broader scope than ksp1 did, so it's absolutely valid to get informed about how it works. and the best people to learn that from are experts in the field. If you want a game with the same scope as ksp1, why not just play the original?

 

5 minutes ago, moeggz said:

I highly doubt this is industry standard.

well, it is... at least in every team I've worked in in the past 6 years.

[moeggz]

Yes KSP2 has a broader scope. But they already know (or should’ve orbital decay still exists) how to program orbital mechanics.

As far as your second point, sure. Maybe that’s the industry standard and everything takes a decade more I don’t see. 
 

That doesn’t excuse the marketing and or releasing the game in this state. If it’s really important to you that the devs are not at fault at all we can go that route. The game should have never been released in this state, and the marketing side lied to the community for years. Still a bad product.

[PDCWolf]

[Snip]

16 hours ago, gluckez said:

We also know that ksp1's first prototype came without a sun, without a rotating kerbin, without any other celestial bodies, without SAS, without control surfaces, etc...  I also took 3 years before it reached early access, and by then it did have other planets.

KSP1s first public version was 0.7.3, which you can still download for free (direct download so don't click if you don't want it). KSP1 entered public Early Access the 24th of June 2011 and yes, it was very basic, making all the progress of those 3 years look even more amazing, specially when compared to the sequel's progress.

16 hours ago, gluckez said:

My argument was not about "how long" it takes to develop something, it's about the fact that software and game developers estimate this in terms of effort, not time. only management deals in terms of "time".

How much "time" does it take to get a firm grasp of orbital mechanics? did the original devs of ksp1 already have that knowledge? how long did the original devs of ksp1 work with a panel of scientists to understand
the domain? is this also calculated into the "time spent on development"? can you teach yourself advanced physics and engineering in a week before you start development?

so my entire point is that it's basically pointless to look at it from a time perspective, because that's not how development works. 
The only thing I can't argue on here is what's being told is done or not, if they said it was finished 3 years ago, then they were clearly lying, 
unless by that time they hired a new architect who found it necessary to rebuild everything.

Sadly, time is the only non abstract concept that can be experimented by customers, and it follows a very basic principle that, until a certain point, more people working with more resources behind them should, by all means, equal faster progress. You're trying to sell people the notion that KSP2 is taking more effort because of reasons, when they already have an extensive base of knowledge from a successful product that mostly works (and it's confirmed they lifted systems off the first game) and have 10 times the team and financial resources (Nate confirmed development until 1.0 already funded). No one is gonna buy that the "wider scope" (of systems they apparently haven't even designed yet) is holding progress down.

Edited August 29, 2023 by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator

[gluckez]

[Snip]

15 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Sadly, time is the only non abstract concept that can be experimented by customers, and it follows a very basic principle that, until a certain point, more people working with more resources behind them should, by all means, equal faster progress.

that still doesn't change the fact that software developers estimate based on effort... Also, software developers have this joke: A product owner is someone who believes 9 women can deliver a baby in 1 month. more people != faster development. otherwise, you could create a reddit group of a million people, ask each one to write one line of code, and you'd be done, right?

Edited August 29, 2023 by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator

[moeggz]

4 minutes ago, gluckez said:

that still doesn't change the fact that software developers estimate based on effort

Define effort in a way that doesn’t include the concept of time.

[gluckez]

1 minute ago, moeggz said:

Define effort in a way that doesn’t include the concept of time.

a force exerted by a machine or in a process. (as is the definition of effort in a technical context)

But as to the requirement "doesn't include the concept of time".. everything that relates to a process, or has moving parts, is subject to time. effort does not negate time, and something that costs a lot of effort, will likely also cost a lot of time, unless you have some brain cells, and you first put effort into simplifying the process, or creating tools that help with that process.
If you need to move a piano, that's a great effort, but if you first put wheels under it it's a lot easier. So when someone asks you, how long will it take you to move the piano, you take into account the effort it takes to go to the store and buy wheels, and then install them. but you don't take into account the fact that there might be a delay because the store ran out of wheels, or you got stuck in traffic. that's why software developers estimate terms of effort, not time.

[PDCWolf]

[Snip]

15 hours ago, gluckez said:

that still doesn't change the fact that software developers estimate based on effort...

Well then, it turns out it's great for the customer to have managers put such babble into real measurements. Now riddle me this: If hiring more people doesn't make progress faster, why not stick to small teams? I'm sure there's a tradeoff somewhere where hiring more people to work on the same thing or different aspects of it actually produces results, otherwise we'd all be one man bands.

Edited August 29, 2023 by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator

[Vl3d]

1 hour ago, moeggz said:

You’ll notice, that even with the rather broken game at launch most people were still optimistic. It wasn’t until nothing changed for months that people started to become pessimistic. 

It seems you're right. The mood has degradated. But fear not - Starfield is coming!

[cocoscacao]

5 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

Let me help you out - cringey claim of killing the Kraken he tries to walk back - but other claims of improving performance and physics over KSP1

Can't pass the bug section and imagine what they are trying to make, eh? 

3 hours ago, gluckez said:

Developers do not estimate in terms of time, but rather effort.

I recall one time, when I had to move a button a few pixels up. Estimated time: 5mins. Estimated effort: none. It took 3 devs and 2 weeks of digging through CSS, due to some obscure setting in the library we used for animations.

[gluckez]

[Snip]

I never claimed to know exactly what happened internally. The things I listed that I know happened internally came from wikipedia, the other things, relating to software development in general and how it actually works, came from my own experience.

15 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Well then, it turns out it's great for the customer to have managers put such babble into real measurements.

I wouldn't call it a "measurement" by a long shot. Saying the game is going to be done in a year is not a measurement, and it didn't help the customer in any way. 

 

15 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Now riddle me this: If hiring more people doesn't make progress faster, why not stick to small teams?

We do stick to small teams... every project I worked in is limited to a max of 15 people, and even that's big for a team. 
And there's been plenty of studies done around this, like this one: link or this one: link

It's even in the scrum guide link

Edited August 29, 2023 by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator

[moeggz]

45 minutes ago, gluckez said:

a force exerted by a machine or in a process. (as is the definition of effort in a technical context)

But as to the requirement "doesn't include the concept of time".. everything that relates to a process, or has moving parts, is subject to time. effort does not negate time, and something that costs a lot of effort, will likely also cost a lot of time, unless you have some brain cells, and you first put effort into simplifying the process, or creating tools that help with that process.
If you need to move a piano, that's a great effort, but if you first put wheels under it it's a lot easier. So when someone asks you, how long will it take you to move the piano, you take into account the effort it takes to go to the store and buy wheels, and then install them. but you don't take into account the fact that there might be a delay because the store ran out of wheels, or you got stuck in traffic. that's why software developers estimate terms of effort, not time.

That’s just work smarter and not harder, and unexpected delays happen. 
 

That’s true of every industry. 

[gluckez]

Just now, moeggz said:

That’s just work smarter and not harder, and unexpected delays happen.

that's exactly my point. and the smart thing to do is to not promise to management that you can do it in x days if you know for a fact there could be delays.

[Stephensan]

i think another thing that just sticks out like a sore thumb is the price, besides the amount of content/work that has been done to ksp 2.

an eye watering 50 dollars is just blatantly to much money for it is, its should have started at 20 dollars and each major update that did significant change to the game another 10 should been added until 60 USD, so even if a few are only 5 dollar increases that's fine..

 

i just yesterday checked almost ALL steam reviews possible and i find a very common thing of players playing for 3-6 hours and then negative reviews... the 50 dollars and knowing that your money is just "gone" is exceptionally well sometimes frustrating and there is actually very few positive votes that aren't actually satire.. and guess what, most of these users are out of the steam refund window and that money is gone. and the positive reviews pretty much disappear after 20 hours of playing besides the absolute loyalist.. The majority of ALL positive posts that aren't satire is giving them a like due to them wanting to "wait to see how it turns out" and not the actual gameplay they had they mostly brushed all the issues off as if this early access is meant to be this broken after all these years. i honestly think the positive to negative is out of 100 users 93 users hate the game as it stands with what i could come up with when testing and only 7 true users enjoyed the experience as it stands..

the amount of steam reviews i read was rather insane  and even i feel what the community is like with this game if i never knew what the game was before.

[PDCWolf]

[Snip]

14 hours ago, gluckez said:

I wouldn't call it a "measurement" by a long shot. Saying the game is going to be done in a year is not a measurement, and it didn't help the customer in any way.

3 years at least, as per the sources.

14 hours ago, gluckez said:

We do stick to small teams... every project I worked in is limited to a max of 15 people, and even that's big for a team. 

And there's been plenty of studies done around this, like this one: link or this one: link

It's even in the scrum guide link

So, a group of about 15 people with an already existing base to look at and lift stuff from should totally work faster than 3 to 5 independent devs, most of which were working on games for the first time. Glad we agree.

Edited August 29, 2023 by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator