You promised us communication, where is it?

[cocoscacao]

11 minutes ago, didkodidko said:

Reminder that Starship was a metal sketch when KSP2 was about to be released. Starship is monumental task, KSP2 is based on something that was already done and had a great community feedback, yet they don't how to do it.

I'm still getting the feeling that some members don't get the major difference between KSP 1 and 2

[Alexoff]

13 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

I'm still getting the feeling that some members don't get the major difference between KSP 1 and 2

What's the difference? I remember that in the fall of 2016, many KSP1 developers left and among other complaints there was a statement that the developers received the minimum salary for Mexico per month, something like 200 bucks. Could this be the difference?

[VlonaldKerman]

10 hours ago, AtomicTech said:

16 hours ago, Stoup said:

ive us their attempts to fulfill the challenges they put out, or engage with the community in some way by playing the game and sharing it

That would be amazing 

Imagine tuning into @DakotaTV?

I'd gladly do so

Actually, in a previous thread, I suggested this as a solution to their communication issues, by saying that this sort of absolute transparency is what early backers (which is what we are) should have, and I was shot down as being too demanding.

I feel like we should see the internal builds of the game that the devs have been hyping up for years.

[The Aziz]

40 minutes ago, didkodidko said:

It's pure incompetence.

There it is! I knew it would pop up at some point

[Alexoff]

18 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

There it is! I knew it would pop up at some point

It poped up in February 24, 2023

[didkodidko]

5 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

I'm still getting the feeling that some members don't get the major difference between KSP 1 and 2

Please elaborate on how it's using different  code for physics, aero model, terrain projection, terrain generation and patched conics. Like the real things that makes the difference? Set aside candy and music.

The base is the same and this is the major problem. Literally all the bugs we're going through now is available in KSP when you using Mods for space or bodies scaling. (Land on Deimos on the latest RP1/RSS and you'll see)

[snip]

Edited September 22, 2023 by Vanamonde

[AtomicTech]

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

There it is! I knew it would pop up at some point

The Infinite Incompetency Complaint Theorem (an AtomicTech Original): Any argument/complaint about anything will eventually result in repeated ad similar forms of accusations of incompetency.

[Strawberry]

59 minutes ago, didkodidko said:

Please elaborate on how it's using different  code for physics, aero model, terrain projection, terrain generation and patched conics. Like the real things that makes the difference?l

To clarify, while the code designs for most of these things are similar (ie both ksp1 and 2 use a pqs system), the actual code is different, as far as we can tell, no code has been straight up copy and pasted. This doesnt neccisarily detract from your point that many of the bugs of ksp2 are due to using similar systems to ksp1, but its an important distinction that needs to be made.

[kdaviper]

4 hours ago, didkodidko said:

Please elaborate on how it's using different  code for physics, aero model, terrain projection, terrain generation and patched conics. Like the real things that makes the difference? Set aside candy and music.

The base is the same and this is the major problem. Literally all the bugs we're going through now is available in KSP when you using Mods for space or bodies scaling. (Land on Deimos on the latest RP1/RSS and you'll see)

 

The way ksp2 estimates trajectories is completely different.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Vanamonde

[cocoscacao]

2 hours ago, Alexoff said:

What's the difference?

I think I already answered this to you. Possibly several times. Better simulation. All things computed, all the time, everywhere. That's a much harder job,

1 hour ago, didkodidko said:

The base is the same and this is the major problem

I still can't burn under warp in ksp1

[Fluke]

2 hours ago, didkodidko said:

Please elaborate on how it's using different  code for physics, aero model, terrain projection, terrain generation and patched conics

Decompile both and look for yourself, if you dont know how, perhaps you should rethink why you're asking the question in the first place. 

[Alexoff]

20 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

Better simulation. All things computed, all the time, everywhere. That's a much harder job,

Which place is better? Just don’t talk about the great goals of the developers; today, where can I see, touch and check this better simulation?

[cocoscacao]

5 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

today, where can I see, touch and check this better simulation?

In the game itself?

[Royalswissarmyknife]

Just now, cocoscacao said:

In the game itself?

The currently released game or Ksp-3 in 2035?

[cocoscacao]

1 minute ago, Royalswissarmyknife said:

The currently released game or Ksp-3 in 2035?

I think the answer is obvious in which game. You can test these things easily. Get creative.

[Gargamel]

Well, as the conversation has gone completely off the rails, as usual, it’s locked for now.    

[Vanamonde]

A fair amount of content has been edited or removed. Please avoid insulting each other, accusing others of dishonesty, and remember that this thread is about game development communication and is not a place to rehash the history of the game's development yet again. 

[Stoup]

6 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:

Actually, in a previous thread, I suggested this as a solution to their communication issues, by saying that this sort of absolute transparency is what early backers (which is what we are) should have, and I was shot down as being too demanding.

I feel like we should see the internal builds of the game that the devs have been hyping up for years.

I wouldn't even say we need to see content in progress, because that comes with its own set of complications.

Honestly, I want to see effort being made to showcase the game as it currently is! Since many players have indeed proven that some fun CAN be had with the game in its current state.

I want to reiterate that I definitely feel that the way development has gone has been less than stellar. There's no sense allowing that (or peoples' reactions to that fact) to stop any reasonable level of communication.

EA should be about building the game alongside the community. I can say that, while there is some level of engagement with the community challenges, I just feel like they're... token efforts? Like it's being done without enthusiasm behind it.

And I don't say that as a condemnation, but instead I hope to open dialogue about how creating feelings like this can be avoided

Edited September 22, 2023 by Stoup

[Stephensan]

another thing that i been seeing in Discord chat from the inner workings of the game development/company.

the meetings, it seems every single day they have a meeting, even if its an hour long of even just 9 members the amount of working hours going to not "working" on the game grows large if we only do, Nate, Dakota, some QA people and some coders/artists.. Even if we assume only 5 members need to actively work on progressing the game the hours build up rapidly.

Daily meetings from what we know from at least, what is going on,  Mike's leave during the holiday, hiring a new SMM, and working on communication and just the general talking/reporting of the game such as bugs and how much they have progressed..

if they have a normal 9 to 5 job that is 8 hours of useable time, (without transportation/getting ready for work etc) * 5 "Active" developers in this test, 5 days a week, is 5 hours each day. That is 25 working hours in meetings a week. and about 75 hours (if we just call a month 3 weeks) a month..

Those hours just build up in my mind, and it is way worse due to the limitations of how many people are in the company that has active work, and the number of hours wasted in meetings grows WAY larger for each and every single person that needs to attend.. if we go by their numbers of 30 members, if all of them have to be there for at least one hour a day and every single person works at the same time that is 450 hours just wasted in meetings.

i understand they want to prep for later on, but there is an entire community / entire game waiting on them for anything and everything to be shown..

just kicking rocks ain't fun after 300 hours with what WAS, a buggy mess, to now, an almost playable game on higher-end hardware, but with still zero new content and communication going slower compared to the start the only news we get is "there is no news" and "bug status/Bug Update" that really just comes to mind, a lot of the things that have been said that are in the works have been "cooking"....

just trying to keep myself even in the mindset of wanting to play the game is difficult during these times.

[The Aziz]

22 minutes ago, Stephensan said:

hours wasted in meetings

Dude.

Like, seriously, dude.

[Stephensan]

4 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Dude.

Like, seriously, dude.

im not trying to be rude or anything, I'm just saying if they are taking long times they are not productive, not wasted, you can thank Grammarly AI rewording it... I'm still questioning why i have it.

[chefsbrian]

9 hours ago, Stephensan said:

im not trying to be rude or anything, I'm just saying if they are taking long times they are not productive, not wasted, you can thank Grammarly AI rewording it... I'm still questioning why i have it.

As much as project managers really, really, really wish it was the case, sheer developer hours sat in front of a problem doesn't come anywhere close to linear correlation to actual productivity. Its also unlikely the daily scrums are hour long beasts, in all my experience its more like 15 minutes, with the occasional longer one for proper backlog grooming.

When it comes to trying to project manage bugfixes specifically, its pretty much all bets off trying to actually predict anything. At any point, for absolutely no discernable reason, a developer can have a brain flash and suddenly find the problem. Other times, they spend a week painstakingly iterating through every step of every point in the process a dozen times over, only to later find out that they were accidentally 'fixing' the very issue they were hunting due to some bizarre specific criteria to reproduce the bug that they just never knew to try.

As far as the whole instigating communication question of this thread? I'm really not sure what they can do. The root cause of the lack of communication is painstakingly clear - They just don't have anything to say, that's a good idea to say right now. That's not because they aren't doing anything, but because of the specific predicament they're in right now. The core guts of the game are in bad shape, and the timelines for the major updates have been unsatisfactory to the general community. You can't really provide effective frequent communication on bugfixes if the bugs aren't getting fixed - You'd put out regular "Yea still looking" messages then suddenly "whoop its done here's a hotfix", not really anything of substance to speak of between the two. On the major update space, the bad state of core guts means a lot of people take any major talk about the upcoming features as smoke screens, or misallocations of resources, etc - I don't want to hear about the new toys when my current ones fall outta the sky. And any early communication about the next major milestone also risks delivering unrealistic expectations. People will see X features complete, and some will fabricate connective features wholecloth in their mind, setting themselves up for disappointment. Some will use the feature list to predict delivery windows, which often end up circulating in the community as fact rather than expectations, setting up for disappointment. And its also risky to show off things that might not end up making the final or first cut - The last thing you want is to show off a bunch of really cool, fully fleshed out features that don't get delivered right away, especially with community trust being in the state it is currently.

On top of all of that, the longer this state of affairs goes, the worse it will get. People want communication because they feel that things are not getting done in a timely manner and want answers. But there are no answers or timely solutions to software bugs, that sort of work is very much an artform.

The long term solution really is "The game needs to be stable".

[cocoscacao]

53 minutes ago, chefsbrian said:

You can't really provide effective frequent communication on bugfixes if the bugs aren't getting fixed - You'd put out regular "Yea still looking" messages then suddenly "whoop its done here's a hotfix", not really anything of substance to speak of between the two

Fixing bugs isn't like moving boxes around. There's no such thing as "I've fixed 70% of a bug". It's (almost) always a black and white affair. When you find the cause, you apply the fix. Often with just a few lines of code. 

Edited September 23, 2023 by cocoscacao

[Stoup]

I think what (for me) can be taken away from this thread, after a lot of consideration here, is that I've developed a much clear picture of what I don't want to see from their communications:

Any kind of buildup of hype or reliance on player speculation as a means of driving interest. I just want to see them stick to facts and facts alone, and not leave us to draw our own conclusions about the way of things.

The vague nature of a lot of their comms has definitely been a sore spot for me. I'd hate to say that I would rather see them say nothing than to hear them say 'it's gonna be good, get excited!', because I'm all for more comms, but...

I think I've made a similar point before, but I feel at this point they should definitely be careful about keeping it black and white: this is feature X, it does Y and Z, please give us your feedback!

I'd also say that it would be good to hear that our feedback in threads like this isn't just screaming into the void, it would be nice to hear some comment about what community management thinks about all this! It occurs to me that good communication should be a two way street. I'd like to feel more of that in some form!

Edited September 23, 2023 by Stoup

[MechBFP]

6 hours ago, chefsbrian said:

They just don't have anything to say, that's a good idea to say right now.

Yup, and that is why I am not expecting anything particularly interesting for quite some time yet. I would be happy to be wrong about that though.