KSP2 EA Grand Discussion Thread.

[Jacke]

All this back and forth....  Let me quote myself.

On 5/6/2024 at 8:59 PM, Jacke said:

No matter how it's cut, KSP development, as rocky as it was at times, as forced as it was at times, as buggy as it was at times, was a lot better than KSP 2.  The communication was even better.

There's no simple ways to hash it.  KSP 2 went off the rails.  I think the studio size was too large.  KSP 2 hit a lot of the problems that KSP had had, some of them worse.  It limited its market in being way more machine intensive than KSP and worse was far from optimized.  And there's questions of what issues remain in KSP 2 to fix.  Would if even be better to go back to KSP, push out an update or two to improve it, then sell a KSP 1 v2, maybe giving a discount to those who bought KSP 2 ?

 

Search your hearts, you know it to be true!  A team of gaming development amateurs did better than a pro studio.

Why?  I don't know.  Second-system effect?  Something else from The Mythical Man-Month (1975)?  Anyone trying to figure it out would need a lot more information of what went on inside than is publicly available.  And this is in software engineering, where studying failure has been done a lot and everyone being trained for several decades has been at least exposed to these and other cautionary tales of how things go wrong.  But like in military campaigns, sometimes the old mistakes get whole new outfits for modern times.

KSP 2 failed.  It shouldn't have.  But it did.  And it's ever been thus, going back to the OS/360 project and before.

Paraphrasing one of the vital references on military matters, Clausewitz:
"In programming, every thing is simple.  But even the simplest things are hard."

 

[TickleMyMary]

11 minutes ago, Jacke said:

a pro studio.

Yeah.... Nah.

[Superfluous J]

3 hours ago, Jacke said:

Search your hearts, you know it to be true!  A team of gaming development amateurs did better than a pro studio.

Why?  I don't know.  Second-system effect?  Something else from The Mythical Man-Month (1975)?  Anyone trying to figure it out would need a lot more information of what went on inside than is publicly available.

I'll take a stab.

The gaming development amateurs shot for the building across the street (the original plan was 2 dimensional and the first released game didn't have an actual Sun) and missed, hitting the moon (which was actually in the game along with Kerbin, that was about it). They just kept tacking on new stuff until the game was so big and unwieldy, they had no choice but to stop.

The pro studio [sic ] saw what the goofball amateurs did and thought they could make a game 4 times bigger with massive interconnected systems. They started from the standpoint where the game had to be ready for all these systems before it was ever released... and they never ever got there. It may be just that it can't be done (at that scale, though dialing back maybe it would work). It may be that it can but they can't do it (though I see no one else stepping up). All I do know is that it didn't happen.

Maybe in 10 more years someone will try again. Maybe computers will be good enough then to run it. Maybe maybe maybe.

[Bej Kerman]

3 hours ago, Jacke said:

A team of gaming development amateurs did better than a pro studio.

I'd say they both did about as poorly, just that the amateurs were spared an axe dangling above them.

[tremonthedgehog]

While I do agree that we could see ksp2 get 1.0’d or outright cancelled we have no official confirmation of any dissolving of the dev team or the canceling of the game. All we know is that intercept layed off a few developers.

 

we play ksp, surely we know how to have an appropriate reaction when a problem occurs

Keep this post-mortem discussion in check

[moeggz]

5 minutes ago, tremonthedgehog said:

All we know is that intercept layed off a few developers.

By all reputable accounts 70 people at their Seattle studio out of their about 70 employees.

Totally possible there is some clarification hear that makes this less bad… but they have left us with a corpo speak tweet for a week now. The time has come and passed to clarify before the worst was taken as the truth by the court of popular opinion.

[tremonthedgehog]

3 minutes ago, moeggz said:

By all reputable accounts 70 people at their Seattle studio out of their about 70 employees.

Totally possible there is some clarification hear that makes this less bad… but they have left us with a corpo speak tweet for a week now. The time has come and passed to clarify before the worst was taken as the truth by the court of popular opinion.

Fair, but I am an optimist

we will see what comes of this

Edited May 8 by tremonthedgehog

[moeggz]

Just now, tremonthedgehog said:

Fair, but I am an optimist

Trust me, it would make me very happy for you to be right on this.

[Bej Kerman]

12 minutes ago, moeggz said:

By all reputable accounts 70 people at their Seattle studio out of their about 70 employees.

Don't worry, maybe they left an extra employee or two under the doormat.

[The Aziz]

1 hour ago, moeggz said:

By all reputable accounts 70 people at their Seattle studio out of their about 70 employees.

Well, we know that two or three devs (not including community team who, while essential, wasn't doing the developing thing) were laid off. Nate's Linkedin suggests he now works directly for PD, not IG. 

The studio may be coming to a close but there's no reason to say that all of the people were left without jobs. Some, yeah, probably. The other some could be merged into PD and continue work. I don't think we're gonna get a leek from anyone from the active team members here about the current status of their work colleagues.

Best we can do is find the employee number of T2, extract 5% of it, divide between the number of recently closed studios and get the approximate number which can be completely inaccurate anyway.

[NexusHelium]

9 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

which was actually in the game along with Kerbin, that was about it

Actually no. The moon wasn’t in the game at release  

[Jacke]

6 hours ago, NexusHelium said:

Actually no. The moon wasn’t in the game at release  

It was well before my time (and my memory's hazy enough about the time I've actually played KSP).

But looking at the KSP Wiki entry for Kerbin, down at the bottom in the Changes section, that backs up @NexusHelium.  First released version was 0.7.2.  Mun was added in 0.12.

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbin

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

So I don’t open another thread, as it’s been plenty of those lately…

I saw a video the other day claiming Rocketwerkz (Dean Hall if it rings any bells) was one of the runners up to do KSP2 but Nate’s superior marketing skills won T2’s “bid” to do KSP2. 
If the information I have is correct, what do you think the chances are T2 is silent because an earnings call is about a week away and because they are looking to give the second runner up a chance to take a stab at KSP2?

Rocketwerks actually has some finished games they can be proud of. 
 

the video in question, the important part starts at 14:54

 

Edited May 8 by GGG-GoodGuyGreg

[Bej Kerman]

13 minutes ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

If the information I have is correct, what do you think the chances are T2 is silent because an earnings call is about a week away and because they are looking to give the second runner up a chance to take a stab at KSP2?

Seeing a game released once, pulled, then developed again from square one by an entirely different team would definitely be an interesting scenario.

[Jacke]

53 minutes ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

I saw a video the other day claiming Rocketwerkz (Dean Hall if it rings any bells) was one of the runners up to do KSP2 but Nate’s superior marketing skills won T2’s “bid” to do KSP2.

If the information I have is correct, what do you think the chances are T2 is silent because an earnings call is about a week away and because they are looking to give the second runner up a chance to take a stab at KSP2?

I think Take-Two is definitely being silent due to the near date for that earnings call.  That may be the first time we hear anything new.  Although it may be very low-content corporate-speak.

I really don't know about Take-Two backing a restart of KSP 2.  And any independent studio entering into a contract with Take-Two to do so better read and negotiate very very carefully.

I am almost certain that Take-Two will never sell KSP, even if KSP 2 is shut down.  That bears the grave risk of someone doing a better job with KSP than Take-Two's minions did, making Take-Two and its execs look incompetent.  If they figure there's no future, they will take the loss and wind things down, one way or another.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

4 hours ago, Jacke said:

I am almost certain that Take-Two will never sell KSP, even if KSP 2 is shut down.  That bears the grave risk of someone doing a better job with KSP than Take-Two's minions did, making Take-Two and its execs look incompetent.  If they figure there's no future, they will take the loss and wind things down, one way or another.

I couldn't agree more. Everyone, still employed, that had management positions would look bad. 

Why didn't we fund it enough? What do you mean they did it with 20 people?

There should be enough of a revenue stream in peripheral sales to fund the server & a customer support "specialist" 

That kind of thing would (in my mind) only happen if it remained an active drain on revenue streams even after being shuttered. 

[Jacke]

51 minutes ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

There should be enough of a revenue stream in peripheral sales to fund the server & a customer support "specialist"

That kind of thing would (in my mind) only happen if it remained an active drain on revenue streams even after being shuttered. 

These forums, their domains and the like, whatever paid staff and maintenance of everything to do with KSP and KSP 2, even if shared with other projects, is an ongoing cost.  It is that active drain, that cost centre.

That has to be covered by enough revenue to be put into profit.

I have no idea if that's the case.  I would not assume that it is.

It's covered for now, but after that Take-Two earnings call, whatever gets said there, whatever gets said afterwards, that will give us an idea of what will happen.  Exactly what that is, I do not know.

[Kerbart]

On 5/7/2024 at 10:37 PM, Superfluous J said:

I'll take a stab.

The gaming development amateurs shot for the building across the street (the original plan was 2 dimensional and the first released game didn't have an actual Sun) and missed, hitting the moon (which was actually in the game along with Kerbin, that was about it). They just kept tacking on new stuff until the game was so big and unwieldy, they had no choice but to stop.

The pro studio [sic ] saw what the goofball amateurs did and thought they could make a game 4 times bigger with massive interconnected systems. They started from the standpoint where the game had to be ready for all these systems before it was ever released... and they never ever got there. It may be just that it can't be done (at that scale, though dialing back maybe it would work). It may be that it can but they can't do it (though I see no one else stepping up). All I do know is that it didn't happen.

Don't forget expectations. The KSP1 audience started with literally nothing. Every feature added was an unexpected win. The KSP2 crowd already had a mature KSP1, which was the baseline. They were shown videos of colonies, other star systems, multiplayer. so that was the expectation. If you then  release something with far less features than "1," charging a full price and riddled with bugs, you have a revolt on your hands that can only be squashed by rapidly releassing patches to fix the bugs and a steady stream of feature updates. We know how that went. The pro-team set themselves up for failure in that respect.

[hansen]

Wow, it has been months since I checked out KSP 2 and now I see the whole thing has folded which I don't find surprising at all seeing how shady the whole story went, selling more or less a KSP1-reskin that is broken and provides less features than the original.

I am still in shock though about what happened in this forum here where a number of die-hard-fans (or marketing bots?) attacked any sane user voicing reasonable scepticism and critique, defending the scam until it was officially cancelled. This community was such a nice place 10 years ago, but that was obviously 10 years ago.

One of my favourite posts here pinpointing the issue, what is that even in hindsight and why was something like this borderlining 'fake news' even tolerated here?:

  

On 3/2/2023 at 6:32 PM, Periple said:

I disagree. The KSP2 engine clearly does a number of things that the KSP1 engine doesn't. The planet/terrain rendering is clearly entirely new, the way it partially unloads craft is new, the much faster load times (already at this stage!) when switching between VAB/craft/tracking station are new, the ability to thrust under warp is new, the ability to disassemble a craft into subassemblies and then reassemble it is new and indicates fairly big under-the-hood changes to construction. The aero model is also much improved although that could be iteration on the old system.

Moreover, if KSP2 really was just a re-skin of KSP1, then why would it have many of the issues that were -- with great difficulty and after a long time -- fixed/papered over in KSP1, and why are there major bugs in areas that work perfectly fine in KSP1? If you wrote it up from scratch on the same game/physics engine, I'd expect it to look more or less like this when it hits alpha -- you will get many of the same issues you did when you did it the first time in KSP1, the noodle rockets f.ex., and a raft of new ones in new code.

No, I'm pretty sure KSP2 is a total rewrite. It's just raw and needs to be finished.  It also doesn't look like it's years from done, I'd put it at about six months out with the current feature set.

Edited June 3 by hansen

[Deddly]

4 hours ago, hansen said:

Wow, it has been months since I checked out KSP 2 and now I see the whole thing has folded which I don't find surprising at all seeing how shady the whole story went, selling more or less a KSP1-reskin that is broken and provides less features than the original.

There is a huge difference between a basic reskin and building a game on existing code. 

[hansen]

Interesting point. Can you elaborate?

[Deddly]

Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "reskin". I envisaged something like a new skin for Winamp that changed the way it looked but doesn't change the functionality at all. 

[Pthigrivi]

29 minutes ago, Deddly said:

Winamp

[hansen]

Yes, I remember the Winamp-skins very well (miss those times)

In fact, I don't find the comparison with Winamp-skins too far off. KSP 2 to me seemed to sport the same engine even reproducing quite a number of well known bugs from KSP 1, in some cases making problems even worse. KSP 2 did not offer any substantial additional features or functions compared to KSP 1. So I don't see, to be honest, were there was anything but a reskin of KSP 1, with KSP 2 looking primarily graphically better (and in regards just different) with no major changes to the engine.

[kerbiloid]

On 5/8/2024 at 5:37 AM, Superfluous J said:

They just kept tacking on new stuff until the game was so big and unwieldy, they had no choice but to stop.

I guess, they had not enough funds to extend their staff with a team, who would take then-current version of the game, freeze it, and deeply refurbish the code without a need to permanently support and upgrade the main branch of the project, mixing desired and required.

This second team appeared in Seattle, but instead of refurbishing what's actually working without being hourly distracted by the current, actually playing customers, they did their own KSP, with kraken and kerbals, simultaneously being a reason for the new KSP owner to kill the working branch of development.

If the Seattle team did that small deed instead of swallowing the whole project, then several years ago the KSP-1 would be softly replaced by more developed KSP-2, and nobody but the developers would notice a difference.

Even more, they could provide Squad with money to hire the secondary team on their own.
Then some good people in Seattle would not get this job, but some other good people in Mexico would get it, and probably nobody would be fired at both places on the KSP replacement, as it would be actually one team.

On 5/8/2024 at 5:37 AM, Superfluous J said:

saw what the goofball amateurs did

A working game, unlike what the professionals did.

Noah built the amateur ark. Professionals built Titanic.

Edited June 6 by kerbiloid