HavesteR shares his thoughts on recent KSP2 news

[K^2]

56 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

This is why I think doing colonies first is the complete wrong approach. People wanted KSP with colonies to extend the game, not a colony management game with a bit of KSP. Doing colonies first would also divert time away from optimising large part counts.

You'd be less excited about that game in Early Access, but it also means you'd be less picky about it. Your expectations would be quite tempered. And if both roads lead to full-featured KSP2 eventually, I think having a less hyped Early Access, one with colony management upfront, would actually be a good thing.

I'm pretty sure that Early Access would sell a lot worse. Fewer people would play it. But then anyone who has played it, would be thinking about how great these features when the rocketry part gets up to parity. In contrast, what we've had is everyone taking KSP2 apart for not being at that parity during Early Access.

Seen from another perspective, if you're marketing a game, what you want to see is hype growing during development and hitting crescendo right when the full game is released on all platforms, so that everyone rushes out to buy it. If your hype peaks before Early Access, and just completely plummets after, it's bad. Getting that to build up again will be very difficult, and it's the situation that PD will be dealing with. An EA focused on colony allows you to follow the former route, with hype building up as more of the KSP elements are added to a functional colony game, building it up towards the full release.

Everybody knows that what we really want is a rocket building game with all these other features too. But that's precisely why holding that out until the game's finished would be the right move. Take Two has promised us a lavish three course meal, but then started us on a desert that hasn't even finished baking. We jumped on the sugar, and got filled up before the main course was ready, resulting in much regret and some stomach aches.

[Bej Kerman]

57 minutes ago, K^2 said:

You'd be less excited about that game in Early Access, but it also means you'd be less picky about it. Your expectations would be quite tempered. And if both roads lead to full-featured KSP2 eventually, I think having a less hyped Early Access, one with colony management upfront, would actually be a good thing.

I'm pretty sure that Early Access would sell a lot worse. Fewer people would play it. But then anyone who has played it, would be thinking about how great these features when the rocketry part gets up to parity. In contrast, what we've had is everyone taking KSP2 apart for not being at that parity during Early Access.

Seen from another perspective, if you're marketing a game, what you want to see is hype growing during development and hitting crescendo right when the full game is released on all platforms, so that everyone rushes out to buy it. If your hype peaks before Early Access, and just completely plummets after, it's bad. Getting that to build up again will be very difficult, and it's the situation that PD will be dealing with. An EA focused on colony allows you to follow the former route, with hype building up as more of the KSP elements are added to a functional colony game, building it up towards the full release.

Everybody knows that what we really want is a rocket building game with all these other features too. But that's precisely why holding that out until the game's finished would be the right move. Take Two has promised us a lavish three course meal, but then started us on a desert that hasn't even finished baking. We jumped on the sugar, and got filled up before the main course was ready, resulting in much regret and some stomach aches.

I'd argue there was a perfectly decent amount of hype for colonies and interstellar before EA came out and revealed flaws. If you drop colony management first, you just have a meh-ish management game without the big unwieldy rockets that colonies are supposed to serve, and I don't believe many people would have bought such a product when the entire point of KSP is to build rockets, pilot them, and plot orbits. I doubt most people were excited for the management of colonies, but instead for being able to build and launch rockets on other planets and in space, and being able to establish bigger settlements that don't just consist of rocket parts docked together.

To counter your desert analogy, I think a KSP early access with no rockets would have been like NASA with... no rockets. Just a mission control building with no missions to handle

[Alex76]

What needs to be done to get these thieves to return the money? I bought it immediately after the game came out.

[jost]

4 hours ago, Alex76 said:

What needs to be done to get these thieves to return the money? I bought it immediately after the game came out.

There is a thread on it: 

 

Tldnr: You need to find enough people to fund a lawsuit. Sonebody talked with a lawyer who saw a potential case in  it. But it would need a langer team, a retainer of 10000 bucks and enough people to fund the ongoing charges.

Even then the publushers legal departement is quite big so it might still end up with gaining nothing except  fees. 

With other words: As frustrating as it is I'm afraid you can't do very much about it except you havecto much money you need to burn

 

Edited May 13 by jost

[Codraroll]

15 hours ago, herbal space program said:

After saying  that, he remarked that if he were them, one thing he would definitely never have done is to start by trying to create a feature-complete upgrade of the original game, because that is a very high bar to reach without actually creating any kind of  really new content that would represent a novel sort of hook.

I maintain my position that this was one of the largest failures of KSP2: it had very little new stuff that would give players a reason to buy it.

Sure, there were other issues under the hood as well. Oh so many issues. But it's generally not a concern to players what goes on under the hood - at least when they are considering whether to buy the game. Above the hood, what was offered was "KSP1, but neater graphics - which means you need a beefier computer for it." The hook was missing.

Heck, I still wonder why they chose to feature the same exact solar system as the first game, even when they were going for a feature copy. Fans have already seen Minmus, Eve, Duna, and the rest of the planetary bodies. There would at least have been a hook in a new suite of planets, even if they didn't function any differently than the planets in the first game. From a development perspective, it makes no difference whether the gas giant is green and called Jool, or light-grey and called Sarnus, but it really helps marketing to have that difference to intrigue new players. Heck, ask any content creator whether they'd have preferred to make a video about "Let's see what Jool looks like in KSP2" or "Let's explore a new planet in KSP2". That difference is what makes people interested in the sequel.

Granted, I don't think this would have been a simple fix and instant recipe for success. The game had enough other issues that caused development to progress like a toad in syrup. "Development hell" would still have been a thing. But maybe they'd have earned enough money to push onward a little further before giving up. And at least we'd be left with a noticeably different game experience at the end of it. As it currently stands, I have no intention of buying KSP2, because I haven't seen anything to convince me that I couldn't get the same experience, running much more smoothly, in KSP1.

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

Unless this somehow makes one of those very rare and miraculous recoveries like NMS did, I think it’s best we forget KSP even had a sequel.

 

On topic, I’m not even into RC and bought in his (real) EA, because contrary to what others may think about me, I don’t mind paying if it’s to support people who actually deserve it.

Edited May 13 by GGG-GoodGuyGreg

[Siska]

18 hours ago, herbal space program said:

Not quite sure how he would have managed that exactly, but I think he did make an excellent point that implies they set themselves up to fail with the approach they actually took.

Simply, making basic parts that you need. 

Interstellar travel, and basic colony parts.

It would be enough 1 engine for intesrstellar, maybe few engines for start. Few parts. Very basic game, and than adding parts and features on top of that.

Through time, you approach on the level of parts numbers and features of KSP1. that would be the way to go, and it would deserve a word "sequel".

That way, you would have interstellar travleing, colonies, and i think people would dig it. If it would worked better than KSP2 at release though.

[PDCWolf]

10 hours ago, K^2 said:

I'm talking tech. PBR is built into KSP2 materials from the start, so you could build good, realistic materials on top of it. People have done that with KSP, but it's hacked in at best, causing visual mods to trip over each other.

Nevermind then. Just sad they used that tech to go for this look.

10 hours ago, moeggz said:

Yup. The prequel sounds fun, I would’ve bought it. But colonies, interstellar, larger part counts, more resources, and “near” future tech that allows for brachistochrone transfers in late game is really the game I was looking for. 
 

Yeah. I do agree with him that obviously doing "the same game" does set the bar higher, which is what these guys crashed against.

[LameLefty]

On 5/11/2024 at 6:51 PM, Superfluous J said:

I still remember when everybody hated him because he didn't want to put dV readouts in KSP.

I never hated him, though I was annoyed AF. I’m an engineer and I conceptualize in terms of numbers. Even though I design with rules of thumb and internalized knowledge of what works and what doesn’t, I want to see dV, relative veloocities, etc.  So, within a week of getting KSP (at version 0.19) and learning how the game worked, I discovered KER and used it to make my first orbital rendezvous and docking. 11 years later, I still want/need some numbers when I build in KSP.

[herbal space program]

1 hour ago, LameLefty said:

I never hated him, though I was annoyed AF. I’m an engineer and I conceptualize in terms of numbers. Even though I design with rules of thumb and internalized knowledge of what works and what doesn’t, I want to see dV, relative veloocities, etc.  So, within a week of getting KSP (at version 0.19) and learning how the game worked, I discovered KER and used it to make my first orbital rendezvous and docking. 11 years later, I still want/need some numbers when I build in KSP.

I'm not an engineer, but I must say that I didn't find creating  a spreadsheet for doing dV calculations particularly difficult, although  readouts in the engineering report of both wet and dry mass for different stages would have been really nice. As to relative velocities, I'm not sure what you're referring to.  We got those in the map interface at our target orbital intercept points and also on the navball when within ~50km of the target. Where else would you have wanted them?

[LameLefty]

29 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

Where else would you have wanted them?

Exactly what KER (and MechJeb for that matter) provides: real time numbers during flight.

[herbal space program]

20 minutes ago, LameLefty said:

Exactly what KER (and MechJeb for that matter) provides: real time numbers during flight.

I used KER as well, mostly to document challenges. I just don't see how all that extra info was really required to play the game.  I think what HarvesteR wanted to preserve was that adventurous seat-of-the-pants Jeb energy, where you never knew exactly what was going to happen, and didn't want to let players readily reduce it all to a straightforward engineering problem.  KER and McJeb  (to different extents)  pulled back too much of the curtain in front of the wizard to maintain that feel, so he didn't want to put all that in stock. One place I think they went too far with that is the navball only telling you your altitude with respect to ASL and not with respect to the ground. That made landing safely a whole lot trickier than I think it should have been. But in general, I can't fault him for wanting to maintain an aura of mystery around some of those things. And of course those aids were always there if you really wanted them.

Edited May 13 by herbal space program

[K^2]

12 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

I don't believe many people would have bought such a product when the entire point of KSP is to build rockets, pilot them, and plot orbits.

Yeah, and I think that'd be a good thing for KSP2 EA. Getting way fewer people playing it, and introducing rocket building gradually would be an improvement over dropping in something that tries to have all the KSP1 features at once, but none of it is at quality.

KSP1 got a lot of traction by introducing all these features gradually. I don't know how early you started playing the game, but it started out very bare-bones, and it was still fun to play.

[AtomicTech]

15 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

This is why I think doing colonies first is the complete wrong approach. People wanted KSP with colonies to extend the game, not a colony management game with a bit of KSP. Doing colonies first would also divert time away from optimising large part counts.

Y'know? I don't think we know what we want. Maybe it should have gone this way. A KSP sequel that doesn't aim to replace KSP until the end. From the top down, as Felipe said.

On 5/12/2024 at 12:38 AM, K^2 said:

I really hope that T2/PD consider it at some point.

Shoot, they might as well just sell it back to him and maybe take some royalties.

[K^2]

55 minutes ago, AtomicTech said:

Shoot, they might as well just sell it back to him and maybe take some royalties.

Studios don't like selling off IP, because even if unused, they're considered an asset that the company can claim to the company value. Somebody would have to offer a very significant sum of money for the Kerbal IP for it to make sense from T2 perspective. I don't see this being a small indy studio.

[FreeThinker]

On 5/11/2024 at 9:28 PM, PDCWolf said:

Love how humble he's remained.

It was also very interested to hear that whilst "T2 kept SQUAD hired to develop updates for KSP1"... that "SQUAD" was literally nobody from the original team.

Edit 1: "Before kerbals went to space they had to learn to fly" -Planes before rockets confirmed canon.

Indeed, what strikes me most was what he told about the lack of vision by Squad. With the team that created KSP 1 they hit gold but rather continue dig further they sold  the IP and abandoned the team. KSP 1 succeded precisely because it had very humble beginning where they were glad if anything worked at all rather the physics simultor I imagine they tried to build for KSP2 which became too complex to develop.  I also agree with HavesteR that the inital starting point of the KSP2 at the space center was a mistake and instead KSP 2 should have started in space, trying to set up a colony to collect resources, experience and science for gradualy more abitious exploration and collonisation missions.

Edited May 14 by FreeThinker

[Superfluous J]

8 hours ago, herbal space program said:

I didn't find creating  a spreadsheet for doing dV calculations particularly difficult

I didn't find creating a spreadsheet for dV calculations to be "magical."

Which is the reason HarvesteR gave for not including them in the game. Not "it's easy to make a spreadsheet so why add it to the game?"

Which frankly is a terrible reason but that's another subject.

[herbal space program]

23 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Which is the reason HarvesteR gave for not including them in the game. Not "it's easy to make a spreadsheet so why add it to the game?"

Which frankly is a terrible reason but that's another subject.

I maintain that KSP1 appealed so much to a broad spectrum of smart and capable STEM people, as is undeniably evidenced by all its incredible mod content,  precisely because it forced them to figure out stuff like that for themselves. For me at least, the satisfaction of pulling off something really difficult in the game through my own dogged, amateurish analytical efforts far outweighed anything I might have felt if l had been led to those things by the nose. YMMV, but in the immortal words of John F. Kerman, we do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard!

[PDCWolf]

2 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Indeed, what strikes me most was what he told about the lack of vision by Squad. With the team that created KSP 1 they hit gold but rather continue dig further they sold  the IP and abandoned the team. KSP 1 succeded precisely because it had very humble beginning where they were glad if anything worked at all rather the physics simultor I imagine they tried to build for KSP2 which became too complex to develop.  I also agree with HavesteR that the inital starting point of the KSP2 at the space center was a mistake and instead KSP 2 should have started in space, trying to set up a colony to collect resources, experience and science for gradualy more abitious exploration and collonisation missions.

I think it wasn't lack of vision, but fear of having to carry the backpack. When freed, he instantly went to create another incredibly niche product: a VR lego-like RC sim. Rc people who own vr headsets and would put up with a lego-like building system is a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset of people. That's just not something he'd be able to freely do with a team of people hungry for the next big "Kerbal" game. Heck, it's not something that fits the Kerbal world, which is why when asked about it he went for "kerbal aircraft prequel".

He probably felt having the Kerbal name on his shoulders when he wanted to do things that wouldn't necessarily fit said name, or that wouldn't be as successful and widely accepted as KSP1, was limiting him and keeping him away from what he wanted to do. Plus he could fund all of those fun projects just with selling the brand alone.

Edited May 14 by PDCWolf

[cocoscacao]

7 hours ago, herbal space program said:

not because they are easy, but because they are hard!

Those words always remind me of this gem

[Codraroll]

On 5/14/2024 at 10:49 AM, cocoscacao said:

Those words always remind me of this gem

Or the first illustration in this one, which satirizes Kennedy's statement a bit more directly.

[cocoscacao]

4 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

Or the first illustration in this one, which satirizes Kennedy's statement a bit more directly.

That whole thing was a short, fun read. I wonder what low/no G sports can be invented.

[Flush Foot]

10 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

I wonder what low/no G sports can be invented.

[Codraroll]

3 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

That whole thing was a short, fun read. I wonder what low/no G sports can be invented.

I don't think you'd necessarily have to invent new ones, because existing ones could be fun too. Imagine handball in low G, for instance. On the Moon, the Magnus effect is almost as influential to the trajectory of the ball as gravity, so giant leaps with crazy curveballs would be possible. It'd have to require a huge stadium, though, but it should be doable compared to baseball or golf.

[cocoscacao]

@Codraroll If they ever send me to the Moon, I'm so gonna parkour all over the Lunar ground base.