The first update i have actually been disappointed in

[NeoMorph]

You could use this one like I do...

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/mk3-cockpit-internals/

[erkha343]

*facepalm*

Just because you don't see a lot of difference at your end (ie the user end) doesn't mean that hardly anything has been done. There are all the new IVAs, the database work that will make modding easier to sort in the future. There are the filters. There are the debugging routines that allow you to Whack A Kerbal etc.... There are the memory optimisations. The added parts.

In fact there is one indicator that shows that a lot has been done in the background. THE SHEER NUMBER OF BUGS. These are a good indicator of what has been changed. The more bugs verses the exponential change in the code.

Yes, there is a whole load of stuff that can be added but when building a house you don't build the foundation and then the roof. Basically what SQUAD has done up to now has been building a skyscraper and they built the foundation and were adding more and more bits when they realised the foundation needed more work. So they went back and updated the foundation (the database) while still giving us a few more bits to play with.

Granted, the mods got broke but would you rather they had waited for another year or so and then we had resources and such and it all had to be redone when the database upgrades had to be done or else the game would lag so bad that it takes an hour to load?

Learn how coding systems work before criticising the devs.

Then not many people could do that, not everyone is a programmer, it's important to show what you like and what you don't like too, that's how feedback works.

I'm quite happy about the update, I've only experienced 2 bugs, but I did expect many more parts, and the interiors to be hi-res.

[whatisthisidonteven]

clearly you do not understand back end work

I do, but there wasn't enough "back end work" to justify the lack of features for this development time.

*facepalm*

Just because you don't see a lot of difference at your end (ie the user end) doesn't mean that hardly anything has been done. There are all the new IVAs, the database work that will make modding easier to sort in the future. There are the filters. There are the debugging routines that allow you to Whack A Kerbal etc.... There are the memory optimisations. The added parts.

In fact there is one indicator that shows that a lot has been done in the background. THE SHEER NUMBER OF BUGS. These are a good indicator of what has been changed. The more bugs verses the exponential change in the code.

Yes, there is a whole load of stuff that can be added but when building a house you don't build the foundation and then the roof. Basically what SQUAD has done up to now has been building a skyscraper and they built the foundation and were adding more and more bits when they realised the foundation needed more work. So they went back and updated the foundation (the database) while still giving us a few more bits to play with.

Granted, the mods got broke but would you rather they had waited for another year or so and then we had resources and such and it all had to be redone when the database upgrades had to be done or else the game would lag so bad that it takes an hour to load?

Learn how coding systems work before criticising the devs.

Game takes just as long (if not longer) to load than before, and the only mods I use are KSPX and Kerbal Engineer, which worked in 0.20 anyway.

And I said I wouldn't care if there was no resources if the update hadn't taken such a long time to develop. Last year updates took 1-2 months to develop and had a lot more features in, both "back end" and user-end features.

[flightmaster]

Ill tell you. All forum users asking for 0.2 everyday 24/7 and not thinking on anything that is not 0.2, and wishing and praying for 0.2, altogether, made the devs anxious to release this update. They rushed the release to make everyone happy and not wait any longer. The result is a buggy release without much to see.

Also, keep in mind this update was more of a "how game works" and manages memory update than a parts/gameplay update. Nonetheless, it need fixing.

I can almost guarantee you that user pressure was not a factor in how long it took them to release this update. I can't see how it took them 2 months to do this update (considering there isn't much included) and there still be this many bugs in it. I do acknowledge the fact that a lot of the progress in this update was made behind the scenes, trying to re-write code to make it more efficient and user friendly but still, they said "more updates, more often but less content included" and I was fine with that but then they took forever to release this update and it's what I'd expect from an update that would have taken half the time. You cannot blame people being impatient on the lack of quality control for this update. And by the way, it's 0.20, not 0.2.

[Commander Zoom]

As I keep saying, I've been playing this game for coming up on two years - since before there was anything to do but slap parts together and try to get into orbit (without orbital maps, just charts of height and distance) or make impressive fireworks. I'm fully prepared for it to take another two, or longer, before it's "ready."

Maybe it's just a matter of age and perspective? To a kid or teenager, a year is forever. To an adult in his forties, it's nothing.

[KasperVld]

We didn't get speedy updates though, 2 months for an update with this little amount of features isn't speedy.

I would understand if we had resources, as that's a big feature.

Most of the work done for this update is under the hood, and you won't notice a lot of that except maybe for the reduced RAM usage. I would also like to refer you to a dev blog post HarvesteR made a while ago about development asymptotes here

[Ted]

I do, but there wasn't enough "back end work" to justify the lack of features for this development time.

Game takes just as long (if not longer) to load than before, and the only mods I use are KSPX and Kerbal Engineer, which worked in 0.20 anyway.

And I said I wouldn't care if there was no resources if the update hadn't taken such a long time to develop. Last year updates took 1-2 months to develop and had a lot more features in, both "back end" and user-end features.

Whilst the back-end work may not be immediately apparent to people who had good performance in general. We now have a whole load of people who are able to play the game without the second-launch crash bug. Furthermore, the asset loading has been streamlined for the loading of scenes and not to mention the GameDatabase work, which has been a long-requested feature from Modders.

Also, do remember that the updates simply deploy finished features. Work could have been done on other features that simply didn't make it to the release.

[togfox]

You should all click this

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/30985-The-first-update-i-have-actually-been-disappointed-in?p=382736&viewfull=1#post382736

and give some rep to the author of that post. Click the little star. It won't hurt.

[karolus10]

IMHO, most of hate here is unjustified, this is not most buggy update and personally I considered this one as one of less buggy (or at least anything serious) and successful before bug reports start flowing in - not all bugs can be pinpointed (or ever could not happen at all) during testing.

Anyway bugs will happen in unfinished game and anyone can choose to whine about bugs found or help in finding and describing them. Help and support from players can benefit everyone .

[whatisthisidonteven]

Most of the work done for this update is under the hood, and you won't notice a lot of that except maybe for the reduced RAM usage. I would also like to refer you to a dev blog post HarvesteR made a while ago about development asymptotes here

I already gave a response to that a couple of pages back. And if I understand Nova and the changelog properly, then they reduced RAM usage by reducing all the planet texture sizes, which isn't really so much an under the hood change as it is reducing the quality for people who never had any problems with RAM usage. But if I read correctly, then that's going to be changed in 0.20.1, so that's good.

Whilst the back-end work may not be immediately apparent to people who had good performance in general. We now have a whole load of people who are able to play the game without the second-launch crash bug. Furthermore, the asset loading has been streamlined for the loading of scenes and not to mention the GameDatabase work, which has been a long-requested feature from Modders.

Also, do remember that the updates simply deploy finished features. Work could have been done on other features that simply didn't make it to the release.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay the features that are in 0.20, everything that is in 0.20 is great, there just isn't much of that stuff.

[Eric S]

I already gave a response to that a couple of pages back. And if I understand Nova and the changelog properly, then they reduced RAM usage by reducing all the planet texture sizes, which isn't really so much an under the hood change as it is reducing the quality for people who never had any problems with RAM usage. But if I read correctly, then that's going to be changed in 0.20.1, so that's good.

That is one of the things they did, there were other things that were done to improve memory consumption. There's also other improvements and UI changes that weren't even mentioned in the patch notes, at least one long-standing bug got fixed, etc.

[Mimwing]

I would imagine one of the main reasons why this update has less content would be because of the work done on resources, that probably took a lot of development time before it was pushed back. Two months may seem like a lot for a seat, two IVA spaces, flags and engine improvements but that was not all they were working on.

I don't see the bugs as too much of an issue. I can emphasize with people who are experiencing them, but there's no way around the fact that alpha game is alpha and these will probably be gone eventually. The devs did not purposely put those there and will be aiming to get rid of them asap I imagine.

What I do see as a more pressing issue was the texture changes. The new textures were limited to a max size of 2048x1024 instead of 4096x2048 pixels according to Nova. This is not half the size, this is a quarter of the size, and it is very, very noticeable. Unlike a bug, this was something the devs knowingly did - thinking it was a good idea. That's the sort of thing where criticism is important, not for the bugs.

[blspblackdeath]

The 2048x1024 instead of 4096x2048 thing is a problem for me. As you said it's it is very, very noticeable. I hope we'll get an option to change it again.

Someone with a not so good PC should go with 2048 and the one with better PC should go with 4096.

[OtherDalfite]

The 2048x1024 instead of 4096x2048 thing is a problem for me. As you said it's it is very, very noticeable. I hope we'll get an option to change it again.

Someone with a not so good PC should go with 2048 and the one with better PC should go with 4096.

That's a very simple thing to change in Unity. I'm sure the devs will add an option.

[AmpsterMan]

You know, I fail to see how this update is any buggier than previous updates. All of them have broken some mods, all of them have broken some saves, all of them have introduced some bugs, all of them have squashed others.

Was this update a little short on the content end of the line? Perhaps, but it did provide a new sorely needed engine, a new part that is already being used in a huge multitude of ways, a filter to the map and comand pods are no longer needed to make ships (IMHO, this has much greater implications than one realizes).

In the end, this update has stayed with the overarching theme of emergent gameplay. Ex. remember when KSPX first came out with it's LES part, how that spawned a huge debate on whether they should be stock? The solution the devs came up with? Make tiny separatrons have huge TWR. Problem solved.

This update has done much more than is readily apparent; I suspect the results will pay dividends down the line.

[BeTa77]

Most of the updates to this game have been mostly bug free for me(well, at least, game breaking ones. Kraken doesn't count) with this one sadly being one of the few that are a bit buggy on my end,

I'm not disappointed, just a bit annoyed. While it's an alpha state game, I haven't really had major problems with many other updates. Squad usually does a good job on fixing bugs.

Granted, I'm used to playing buggy alphas. Hell,. my (second) favorite game is in retail and it's buggier than 0.20. This update should be perfect with a hotfix/microupdate.

[KinkyFerrets]

I actually havent had any issues with this update at all. I think part of the problem is that, unusually for an alpha state game, its pretty darn stable, so when a build is released that's unstable(for some people, not everyone), its extraordinary, out of the blue problems, that people arent used to.

[Deadweasel]

I have (almost) NEVER had a crash or bug issue with KSP since its release, unless a mod I introduced to the mix went completely screwy and borked it all.

The plain and simple facts to keep in mind with this game are as-follows:

• KSP is Alpha. Bugs will come into the mix whenever changes of any sort are made. That's the nature of program development, and it only gets more pronounced as the program gets more and more complex.
  
• Mods are really neat and introduce lots of new ideas, but modders != Squad employees. Coding practices *will* diverge because Squad is not obligated to consult with modders with every change (though it's really cool that they do listen to the community when considering new ideas and directions). This *will* result in a lot of mods failing after updates.
  
• "Update" != "content". Not every fractional version is guaranteed to have new parts for you to play with. The people who are experiencing issues have just as much claim to Squad's development attention as the people clamoring for more parts. If you're that hard-up for new content, there are lots of mods that do that for you. You can be purist and patient, or adventurous and willing to install a mod pack. Choose one.
  
• Do your due diligence! If you like mods, then keep it in the back of your mind that mods don't come from Squad themselves, and KEEP A BACKUP of your working install before you install the new one, and for the love of Jeb, do NOT immediately just copy over all your mods to the new one before even trying it ONCE as vanilla, and proceed to gripe loud and often to everybody about how broken the new update is.
  
• Linux is a pain for games. If you're running a Linux distro and the game isn't working after an update, consider that your OS isn't exactly a priority target for games, and that something in one of your myriad configs might be just off enough to screw up how the update is trying to do things before you slam Squad for "poor coding" or "shoddy quality-assurance".
  

Okay, that's enough outta me. Just felt the need to blow off some steam and toss some common sense into the fray.

[satcharna]

• Linux is a pain for games. If you're running a Linux distro and the game isn't working after an update, consider that your OS isn't exactly a priority target for games, and that something in one of your myriad configs might be just off enough to screw up how the update is trying to do things before you slam Squad for "poor coding" or "shoddy quality-assurance".
  

To be fair, Kerbal does have an official Linux version. It's not unreasonable for us to expect as much attention as the Windows and Mac people are getting, even though we are a smaller group. While we should always make sure the problem isn't something easily fixable from our end, we still need to post bug reports about problems, because it is ultimately Squad's responsibility to make the game work as smoothly as possible.

That said, the Kerbal Linux alpha is one of the smoothest Linux games I've ever played, and I'm extraordinarily grateful to Squad for letting us in on the fun.

[Deadweasel]

To be fair, Kerbal does have an official Linux version. It's not unreasonable for us to expect as much attention as the Windows and Mac people are getting, even though we are a smaller group. While we should always make sure the problem isn't something easily fixable from our end, we still need to post bug reports about problems, because it is ultimately Squad's responsibility to make the game work as smoothly as possible.

That said, the Kerbal Linux alpha is one of the smoothest Linux games I've ever played, and I'm extraordinarily grateful to Squad for letting us in on the fun.

Absolutely it is not unreasonable to expect you're going to get the same amount of attention to bugs and issues now that there's an official release for it! I'm 100% with you on that front, but unfortunately, there are tons of Linux users out there who don't recognize the difference between the de-centralized open source nature of Linux, and the "global" standards imposed by the developers of Windows and OSX. With Win/Mac, you can be reasonably certain that if an update to the game is being buggy somehow, it's a problem with the game at some point. With Linux, that becomes less of a certainty and needs to be kept in mind when trying to solve an issue. I've run into that so many times with my Debian systems.

Anyway, I also agree that this game is the most amazingly smooth and stable alpha I have ever seen, given the level of playability and features it offers, and if there ever comes a day when there's such a thing as a multiplayer aspect of the game, I'll also be glad to have the Linux community in on the fun, because that'll make for that many more potential online pals to blow things up with!

[Frostiken]

You know, I fail to see how this update is any buggier than previous updates.

Changes to the directory structure aside, I think the difference is that features they said were coming straight-up don't work, in particular, the 'modify other .cfgs with @' feature.

[MR4Y]

My only gripe with it atm is the half implementation of features. I personally would prefer a full Subassembly Loader-esque implementation than flags, specially considering that the new Tracking Staion eliminates the need for Haystack.

[AmpsterMan]

When you're passionate about something you love, getting heated when something goes wrong is part of the natural process. I'm not asking anyone to not be upset, I'm asking you to work with us instead of against us, the game is not complete and there's always room for improvement, and KSP would be nowhere without you guys backing up. If you want to help us get better, bring up reports, suggest things that you think may make our testing processes sleeker, I'm here to listen to you guys.

I wouldn't call anyone a problem. Insulting's obviously not cool, but if we can all just get a handle on our tone and work together, we can get on fixing whatever issues have popped up in .20 as fast as possible instead of losing our tempers and wasting energy arguing pointlessly.

I love this guy!

[MickG]

I knew I signed up for an alpha and I will not complane until the devs state this game is final. In the mean time I enjoy what is there and enjoy it very much, despite the occasional bug. If any player cannot handle it, stay away from alpha releases and buy the game when it's final. THEN you can complane about bugs.

[Wait- Was That Important?]

I was a bit bummed out as well, but after a few days I've fixed all my mods and all is well besides some little instability problems.

I like the neat new features that have been added in. It's no 0.18.0, but I appreciate the direction the developers are taking.

It's all good to me. With such an active community mods are updaTed quickly, it's a purely temporary issue. Keep up the great work, devs.