0.3.0.0 Update Disscussion

[gfdgfherytrey]

This thread is for people who have found info regarding the next roadmap update, which is colonies and provide news, information, and dev news.

[The Aziz]

Hello fellow bus drift enjoyer.

As for now you can pull all the info on colonies I have in my repo. With a handful of salt because these news are few years old.

[Kerbart]

Any updates on when it's going to be released? For Science has been out for a while now, so it's about time we get Colonies.

[Bej Kerman]

14 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Any updates on when it's going to be released? For Science has been out for a while now, so it's about time we get Colonies.

Was meant to release 3 days ago, delayed up to 12 months 

[Chilkoot]

Are we even sure that Colonies is still the next roadmap item?  Given the changes to Science/Exploration compared to what was mentioned in old dev interviews, I'm kind of expecting the unexpected at this point.

[mattihase]

I mean out of the other roadmap items:

• Multiplayer was always gonna be last because having to QA both singleplayer and multiplayer with each major update would be a huge increased weight on dev time/resources.
• Interstellar ready engines have been stated to require resource gathering if you want to build them in career mode
• Resource gathering has been stated to no longer be ISRU and require Colonies and trade routes

So... unless anything new has come up, the OG roadmap was already arranged in the order of "the order things need to be developed in" anyway. Probably not a bad idea to assume it'll still be more or less in that order.

Although given the talk of the imminent upgrade to using HDRP, I could see that getting a major release update number.

[Mutex]

16 hours ago, mattihase said:

• Although given the talk of the imminent upgrade to using HDRP, I could see that getting a major release update number.

Imminent? Have I missed something recently? I thought that was still quite far away.

[mattihase]

From how they've talked about it along the lines of "It won't be in 0.2.0" I got the impression it was at least on the horizon but I suppose I could be misreading that.

[Yskonyn]

Its a little early for April Fools , right?

Let’s just enjoy For Science! for a while and focus on the holidays instead of asking for the next shiny bauble.

[yijian huang]

I hope 0.3 just consolidate game experience over 0.2.

For example, add Career Mode (with limited budget during your career), further improve graphics performance, and make the game robust.

No need to hurry up to Colonies.

[Bej Kerman]

4 hours ago, Yskonyn said:

Its a little early for April Fools , right?

Let’s just enjoy For Science! for a while and focus on the holidays instead of asking for the next shiny bauble.

I'm pretty sure it's not weird to talk about the very next step of the roadmap. Especially when the devs have claimed the time between major updates will shorten.

[The Aziz]

4 hours ago, yijian huang said:

add Career Mode (with limited budget during your career)

No. For the hundredth time no.

[Bej Kerman]

6 hours ago, yijian huang said:

I hope 0.3 just consolidate game experience over 0.2.

For example, add Career Mode (with limited budget during your career), further improve graphics performance, and make the game robust.

No need to hurry up to Colonies.

Colonies - a major aspect of late-stage gameplay that adds upon gameplay loops encountered in the early and mid stages of the game

Career/budget mode - a needless gimmick that exists solely for the sake of imitating KSP 1, which is not the goal

I'm gonna have to politely disagree on this one

[kennyc222]

I desperately need  Colonies, so that I can build and launch the ship on Mun/Duna/Ike/Moho/Laythe/Vall/Tylo or beyond (except Eve!), so that I don't have to build a very heavy ship and launch from Kerbin every time! Save my brain cells and my PC workload! 

so I will use Mun as a base to build some lightweight ships!

Edited December 25, 2023 by kennyc222

[RileyHef]

7 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

I'm pretty sure it's not weird to talk about the very next step of the roadmap. Especially when the devs have claimed the time between major updates will shorten.

While I hope for a much shorter dev cycle, I am feeling quite skeptical it will be much shorter (if at all). From Dakota, they are still in the planning stage(?)

"we're in the planning process for 0.3, while also considering the minor releases between now and then. once we're back from the holiday break, colonies dev will truly start to kickoff (alongside work on major bugs, etc)"

Now I really am clueless about the dev process, but the fact that colony dev hasn't even "kicked off" seems kind of odd to me. 0.3 is a huge update which should include:

- Surface and Orbital colony parts

- Surface and Orbital building/creation tool

- Surface and Orbital VAB's

- Kerbal population management for colony populations

Each of these points brings a million questions and issues to work through. While I imagine the planning process has solved most of those questions, the actual dev work should take time I imagine. I would bet 6 months is the floor for delivering 0.3, with August (summer, 8 months from now) seems like a reasonable guess. I'm happy to wait, but I wouldn't expect any news by April. The good news, however, is that major bugs seem to be manageable as of 0.2. Still, between work on HDRP, UI overhauls, and the additional of still missing QoL features (IVA), there's plenty to get done.

It's a long road to 1.0, but I feel we can definitely enjoy the wait as 0.2 proves there is a solid foundation laid for a game that can easily last another10+ years like KSP1.

 

 

[chefsbrian]

6 hours ago, RileyHef said:

From Dakota, they are still in the planning stage(?)

For what its worth, they're in the planning process for the 0.3 release, not for colonies - IE, they're figuring out what they can actually fit into the release on whatever timeline they're aiming for, what features that are in flight/undeveloped that they absolutely need to fit into a first pass colonies release, etc. This would include bundling in the stuff they've already developed, and getting it to a fully connected state - They may have most of the models/assets in a first pass ready for game state (Modeled, early textures, but missing LODS and animations for example) but only some of them defined as workable parts in the colony builder. Colony builder might still be fired off by console commands, etc.

This is probably just a case of accurate but poorly defined communication misrepresenting the situation on the ground. Full kickoff into dev just means going from whatever core team was backboning it being the only resources on hand, to throwing most every artist, programmer, UI/UX designer that isn't working on the new fonts, etc into the kitchen now.

All that optimism said, I have no optimism over release windows and think August is optimistic. The team has a 100% hit rate on long development periods for seemingly little delivery, delays and reductions in scope for a given release, and I've seen no evidence or new trend of behavior showing it'll change.

[Datau03]

10 hours ago, chefsbrian said:

For what its worth, they're in the planning process for the 0.3 release, not for colonies - IE, they're figuring out what they can actually fit into the release on whatever timeline they're aiming for, what features that are in flight/undeveloped that they absolutely need to fit into a first pass colonies release, etc. This would include bundling in the stuff they've already developed, and getting it to a fully connected state - They may have most of the models/assets in a first pass ready for game state (Modeled, early textures, but missing LODS and animations for example) but only some of them defined as workable parts in the colony builder. Colony builder might still be fired off by console commands, etc.

This is probably just a case of accurate but poorly defined communication misrepresenting the situation on the ground. Full kickoff into dev just means going from whatever core team was backboning it being the only resources on hand, to throwing most every artist, programmer, UI/UX designer that isn't working on the new fonts, etc into the kitchen now.

That seems very plausible as they must've been working on colonies before the EA release a lot already and we have already seen some footage of them. Early access wasn't even intended until 2022 and they were propably focused on things like interstellar, colonies, resources and multiplayer until their focus had to shift to making the base playable quickly when they decided for Early Access. I think all the other features are at least in a working framework with still missing real gameplay with UI/UX integration state, so they still need to get connected together with the rest of the, UI/UX and some polish, so basically what you said

Edited December 26, 2023 by Datau03