Lots of Playtests today (New Patch Hype?)

[Presto200]

I was alerted to this by someone in the discord and I think its pretty interesting so I wanted to bring it to the forums.

They showed me that you can see both public and private versions of the game released on SteamDB https://steamdb.info/app/954850/depots/

in the past 24 hours they have tested a total of 7 versions of the game, most recently being 30 minutes ago. Hopefully this means a new patch is soon! very cool

Credit: @TheUSSLoliChan on discord

[Flush Foot]

[kdaviper]

Candidate 5 days ago as well

[Spicat]

Don't want to burst your bubble, but those branches are updated basically every weeks, regardless of a patch incoming.

Also, what Nate Simpson said:

Quote

We have team-wide playtests twice a week. Our QA team plays it basically all-the-time. I personally play almost every day.

Source: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/215852-324-discord-ama-answers/

The only interesting one that was close to a patch each time was the candidate branch, only this one. The longest time between a candidate branch update and the next update was 2 weeks. At least for now, it could change for this one because it has already been 2 weeks since the first post-0.2.1.0 candidate branch update.

[Flush Foot]

Party pooper

(Though yes, I know you "don't want to burst our bubble")

[Presto200]

10 minutes ago, Spicat said:

Don't want to burst your bubble, but those branches are updated basically every weeks, regardless of a patch incoming.

Also, what Nate Simpson said:

Source: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/215852-324-discord-ama-answers/

The only interesting one that was close to a patch each time was the candidate branch, only this one. The longest time between a candidate branch update and the next update was 2 weeks. At least for now, it could change for this one because it has already been 2 weeks since the first post-0.2.1.0 candidate branch update.

Thanks for the information, I'll still take this as good news though  

Edited April 10 by Presto200

[Dakota]

Just going to repeat that taking branch updates as any sort of sign is a bad idea. We're already trying to set expectations correctly, don't get yourself hyped up because Gwen broke something on one of the builds and we had to throw another one up for today's playtest.

[Flush Foot]

[Presto200]

2 minutes ago, Dakota said:

Just going to repeat that taking branch updates as any sort of sign is a bad idea. We're already trying to set expectations correctly, don't get yourself hyped up because Gwen broke something on one of the builds and we had to throw another one up for today's playtest.

Fair enough...

[cocoscacao]

11 minutes ago, Dakota said:

Just going to repeat that taking branch updates as any sort of sign is a bad idea

Yeah, I've figured that out long time ago. These days, I'm leaning more on sacrificing animals and making future predictions based on guts and intestines. But if that also fails for 0.3, humans are next.  

[Flush Foot]

3 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

Yeah, I've figured that out long time ago. These days, I'm leaning more on sacrificing animals and making future predictions based on guts and intestines. But if that also fails for 0.3, humans are next.  

In the style of Temple of Doom?

[cocoscacao]

13 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

In the style of Temple of Doom?

I wish. Lava is too expensive. I bought a plastic sacrificial altar at IKEA.

[Casellina X]

37 minutes ago, Dakota said:

Just going to repeat that taking branch updates as any sort of sign is a bad idea. We're already trying to set expectations correctly, don't get yourself hyped up because Gwen broke something on one of the builds and we had to throw another one up for today's playtest.

git push origin master --force ought to fix it.

[The Aziz]

1 hour ago, Dakota said:

because Gwen broke something on one of the builds and we had to throw another one up for today's playtest.

Has anyone of your QA managed to - during regular playtests - break a build so badly that it stopped launching whatsoever and required a fresh reinstall?

totallynotspeakingfromexperience

[Vanamonde]

Damn it, Gwen!  

Meanwhile, some comments removed. Stick to the subject, please. 

[calabus2]

3 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Has anyone of your QA managed to - during regular playtests - break a build so badly that it stopped launching whatsoever and required a fresh reinstall?

totallynotspeakingfromexperience

I'm not convinced they actually playtest any build. Then again they did fix some bugs. Not sure if that is from testing or community feedback. 

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, calabus2 said:

I'm not convinced they actually playtest any build. 

So they're putting the time and effort into making these builds for... what reason?

[The Aziz]

8 hours ago, calabus2 said:

I'm not convinced they actually playtest any build. Then again they did fix some bugs. Not sure if that is from testing or community feedback. 

There are long gaps with extra steps between testing and fixing.

[calabus2]

20 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

So they're putting the time and effort into making these builds for... what reason?

Fulfilling their contractual obligation. Poorly I might add. 

[RayneCloud]

On 4/10/2024 at 2:45 PM, Dakota said:

Just going to repeat that taking branch updates as any sort of sign is a bad idea. We're already trying to set expectations correctly, don't get yourself hyped up because Gwen broke something on one of the builds and we had to throw another one up for today's playtest.

With respect, we're not having expectations managed, because we're hearing very very little. One dev post about lighting since Dec 8th, and some sneak peaks and a nate vid that know one knew was out until it was linked here, is not enough. We've been told to expect more communication for 4 months and we have not gotten it to a satisfactory level, at least I will speak for me personally on this. Forgive me if I come off disrespectful here Dakota, it is not my intent, but we need more please. 

[calabus2]

27 minutes ago, RayneCloud said:

With respect, we're not having expectations managed, because we're hearing very very little. One dev post about lighting since Dec 8th, and some sneak peaks and a nate vid that know one knew was out until it was linked here, is not enough. We've been told to expect more communication for 4 months and we have not gotten it to a satisfactory level, at least I will speak for me personally on this. Forgive me if I come off disrespectful here Dakota, it is not my intent, but we need more please. 

The lack of communication post can be found here if anyone cares to chime in

 

[Lisias]

50 minutes ago, RayneCloud said:

With respect, we're not having expectations managed, because we're hearing very very little. One dev post about lighting since Dec 8th, and some sneak peaks and a nate vid that know one knew was out until it was linked here, is not enough. We've been told to expect more communication for 4 months and we have not gotten it to a satisfactory level, at least I will speak for me personally on this. Forgive me if I come off disrespectful here Dakota, it is not my intent, but we need more please. 

It's pretty hard to manage expectations after a huge hype campaign followed by... hummm... a somewhat less than expected initial release.

There's a lot of promises (as well tons of plain statements taken as promises) made in the last years that are probably going to be broken, and without a viable release to use as a trade-off (ok, A is not going to happen, but look! B & C were implemented instead!), at least in my book, the less technical details (or any details that can be used by technicians to infer the state of the game) you publish, less work you will have on managing a new loot of fallen short expectations.

It's kinda of a catch-22 situation: you talk about, you get screwed. You don't talk about, you get screwed. Finding the less bitter spot in which you get less screwed is the trick.

(don't look at me for answers - I'm on the "talk too much" spectrum)

Edited April 12 by Lisias
Tyops, as usulla...

[MechBFP]

26 minutes ago, Lisias said:

It's kinda of a catch-22 situation: you talk about, you get screwed. You don't talk about, you get screwed. Finding the less bitter spot in which you get less screwed is the trick.

That sums it up in a nut shell. If they had just come clean about the delayed state of the game back in 2022/2023 (even if they couldn't say why it happened) most of this issue with managing expectations wouldn't be a problem for people except for the handful of critics that you can normally expect anyway no matter what you do. I can really only assume some stupid and/or malicious  overlord had better ideas how to run things and the team is unfortunately along for the ride.

Edited April 12 by MechBFP

[Lisias]

30 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

I can really only assume some stupid and/or malicious  overlord had better ideas how to run things and the team is unfortunately along for the ride.

I have absolutely no doubt about it.

Technical managers on my company (me and a business partner... hehehe ) made a very, very stupid decision 4 years ago. The dev team (me and that business partner!) is still fixing the consequences due that mistake (we fix a symptom, something breaks somewhere else - and I can't fix the root problem because a core subsystem installed on the clients depends of that mistake... ).

I don't expect these dude's life be easier than mine.

Writing software is easy. Writing software professionally is hard. Writing good software and staying profitable is really, really hard.

Edited April 12 by Lisias
Better phrasing.

[Presto200]

I would like to say that if yall are talking about communication you can take it to the “what happened to increased communication” thread. I think we should be thankful that Dakota let us know pretty quick that this inference that was made in the beginning of this thread was false. That’s good communication and keeping some expectations in check which is what we say we want. Yes of course I would also love more information on colonies or the next patch but that’s a different type of communication (i.e. leaks)