Let's Not.

[air805ronin]

Anglave, it appeared in almost all of the complaint threads after .20 hit. Complaint about bug ----> they can't fix that, its so kerbal!

[sal_vager]

Yeah people report the strangest things sometimes, or stuff that just isn't a bug like losing control in orbit (gotta power your probes guys) but this wobble is a real pain.

The attachment nodes are supposed to be rigid, that's what they are called in Unity anyway, rigid nodes, and aren't meant to wobble but they do.

Squad are making the nodes do things that Unity hadn't really considered, what with the whole multi-part snap-together rocket thing, and if you throw gimballed engines into the mix and a finicky ASAS things get even worse.

Hopefully Unity will fix the nodes thing for us one day, or we'll get a stock strut gun like Harv mentioned ages ago, but until then we have to put up with it as best we can.

It's far from intended behaviour, but I would also kinda miss it if it were gone, I'm just so used to seeing it now.

[Maxmaps]

There's whining and then there's valid complaints. I understand why people would express themselves in certain ways because they're passionate about the game. We won't ignore anyone, as we need all sorts of input to know we're doing our job right. Mind you, Harv and the dev team have a pretty good vision of where the game is going, however, all sorts of input can lead to enrichment of ideas and an overall better game experience.

We'd like for everyone to keep things civil, and have our fantastic moderating team for when they don't, but this forum exists both to give the community a place to be and for the community to have a place where they can be in contact with the KSP team. All input is appreciated

[DerekL1963]

But, I do agree, the deves shouldn't bow too much to the community.

Back Alley Brawler, one of the devs for CoX, put it this way: "One of the best things a developer can do it listen to the community. One of the worst things a developer can do is listen to the community".

[The Jedi Master]

Can someone show me an example of this "lul so kerbal" thing?

[hoojiwana]

Where are you guys seeing this "so Kerbal" thing? Is it a new development I've thankfully managed to miss?

It's more of an attitude issue with a portion of the playerbase. Those who see spaghetti wobble on rockets and say it should stay like that, or with them being unable or unwilling to play and who don't wish to put in effort in order to learn how, so they just make rocketcars that are "LOL so kerbal!" instead.

It is totally up to the individual how they play in the sandbox, but I don't think it is okay that they spread the image of bugs and bad play as being acceptable, or even preferred.

[air805ronin]

The whole point is the fear of that kind of community affecting the developers and shielding them for any possible criticism, ignoring said part is not going to make that fear go away.

Ignoring the vapid response of a fellow forum goer? I'm not saying the Devs should ignore things. Just that if you make a bug report and someone makes an idiotic response, its generally better to ignore rather than engage.

If they post something worthy of responding to, thats a whole different response. I don't see ignoring "thats so kerbal" or "its an alpha" as being harmful.

[JonoRig]

Ignoring the vapid response of a fellow forum goer? I'm not saying the Devs should ignore things. Just that if you make a bug report and someone makes an idiotic response, its generally better to ignore rather than engage.

If they post something worthy of responding to, thats a whole different response. I don't see ignoring "thats so kerbal" or "its an alpha" as being harmful.

I find "its an alpha" is only a valid response if its someone who has an attitude problem; like "hey thanks for the report, but its only an alpha, have patience" but anything can be helpful, just the more constructive, the better

[Sputnik-1]

Back Alley Brawler, one of the devs for CoX, put it this way: "One of the best things a developer can do it listen to the community. One of the worst things a developer can do is listen to the community".

This.

iirc a company, not sure if it's the same, listens to their playtesters but fix the issues in a different way.

I.e: "Movement speed is too slow, make it faster" and instead of changing the speed, they increased the FOV to give the impression of you're going faster

It's a neat thing.

[Lumaro]

Ignoring the vapid response of a fellow forum goer? I'm not saying the Devs should ignore things. Just that if you make a bug report and someone makes an idiotic response, its generally better to ignore rather than engage.

If they post something worthy of responding to, thats a whole different response. I don't see ignoring "thats so kerbal" or "its an alpha" as being harmful.

When one person says it, it gives everyone the licence to dogpile on the critic. Most of the time that causes the thread to de-rail.

[sal_vager]

When one person says it, it gives everyone the licence to dogpile on the critic. Most of the time that causes the thread to de-rail.

Like now you mean?

[Spatzimaus]

Squad are making the nodes do things that Unity hadn't really considered, what with the whole multi-part snap-together rocket thing, and if you throw gimballed engines into the mix and a finicky ASAS things get even worse.

True, and I wouldn't argue against getting a Unity upgrade that allowed for variable rigidity in nodes. But I wonder how much of it is still self-inflicted, and coiuld be mitigated with a little additional work.

Take ASAS for example. Its algorithm seems to be a very straightforward logic: if I've drifted off-center in the +x direction, then try to push in the -x direction until I'm no longer off-center. The problem is that it'll be pushing at full speed the whole way back to the origin, which means I'll cross the zero point with a large -x velocity, taking me far from the origin in the other direction, which'll again require a large correction back. Effectively, it's attempting to match position but not velocity. It's especially bad if you're using RCS, since it'll be trying to use full RCS thrust to correct for tiny variations in orientation. A similar problem applies to engine gimbals.

But what if the internal math were fixed, to where the system tried to zero out deviations in both position AND velocity simultaneously? What if ASAS was designed to reduce rotations as it corrected, to where it hit the origin with zero rotational velocity, and therefore no need to see-saw back and forth? (That is, far from the locked angle it puts as much rotation in as possible, but as you get closer it attempts to reduce the velocity by thrusting the OPPOSITE direction so that rotational velocity approaches zero as you reach the right orientation.) A variable-thrust RCS jet would help with this, but it's not really necessary as long as the ASAS is smarter about knowing when/if to turn off the jets. Small perturbations can be corrected through flywheels, no need to fire the RCS, but right now turning RCS on means the ship will always use them at full strength whenever it needs to make any change in orientation.

Or consider the node rigidity issue. Maybe it's not worth the effort to try getting the Unity people to recode their physics engine to avoid the issue. But consider the possible workarounds; we already know that struts solve the issue, and the Quantum Strut mod allows for dynamic addition of struts in-flight, albeit with some part count/power issues. So there's no need to have everything require large numbers of permanent struts to stay stable, since there's nothing stopping the game from creating its own pseudo-struts internally. Imagine if the HubMax connector, or similar parts, could dynamically create invisible, strong "struts" to pull its connected parts back together if the connected joints began to break. No graphical workload, no symmetry issues requiring multiple struts to bond two tanks together, and it'd solve many of our disintegrating crafts if used correctly. Stations would no longer need nearly as many struts to stay stable, since their central connecting nodes would have this functionality built-in. (A pancake-shaped "super glue" part, using similar logic, would help as well for holding multiple tanks together in vertical rocket stacks.)

The point is, these things can be improved without waiting for Unity to get its act together.

[sal_vager]

I agree on the pseudo-strut point, it should work around the issue and I believe an attempt was made to do this with a plugin by DEADBEEF a while back.

ASAS is badly in need of an overhaul and has been for some time, though it has also been suggested that it might be replaced completely with another system to stabilize our craft, with the main issue of the ASAS being it's inability to adapt for different size rockets, it's really a one-size-fits-nobody issue at the mo.

Going back to the wobble though, I was told by another member ages ago that Unity offers several different types of node, and that there is a pivoting note that can be set to have zero movement.

This node is supposedly more rigid when set to zero than the rigid nodes, but I have no means to test this, I can't run Unity so maybe someone who can will be able to do some tests?

Squad should be able to address most if not all the issues we have given time, it's a precious resource though And they did work around the radial attachment issue rather than wait for a fix from Unity, as again it was Squad making Unity do things it wasn't intended to do, and waiting for a fix for an unsupported feature was not feasible.

[TouhouTorpedo]

I also feel it's important we remember that the game is in alpha, we're all volunteer testers, and major game-breaking bugs aren't unexpected.

Late as I am to this thread, this particular post did strike a nerve with me. You are aware that there are exclusive testing teams working with Squad, right? The game used to be like you describe, once upon a time, in that the whole community were the testers and builds were always available. However there were too many complaints of bad builds and this ended. To be honest, I do prefer the -idea- of the way things are now, as I don't want to play a wonky version, I'd rather wait for the actual thing. But 0.20 has obviously highlighted some issue with the Quality Control, be it in either the bug reporting mechanisms, the testers themselves, or rushing out to meet some internal deadline.

[JonoRig]

Late as I am to this thread, this particular post did strike a nerve with me. You are aware that there are exclusive testing teams working with Squad, right? The game used to be like you describe, once upon a time, in that the whole community were the testers and builds were always available. However there were too many complaints of bad builds and this ended. To be honest, I do prefer the -idea- of the way things are now, as I don't want to play a wonky version, I'd rather wait for the actual thing. But 0.20 has obviously highlighted some issue with the Quality Control, be it in either the bug reporting mechanisms, the testers themselves, or rushing out to meet some internal deadline.

there is also the unlikely chance that they didnt have any problems, because im not alone in having no issues with 0.20 yet; there were 2 whole threads on it; so maybe their tester pool isnt large or varied enough? like i said, unlikely, but possible

[AlternNocturn]

Things really need to change.

Remember Minecraft?

How it had promise? How it was a really neat game that was going to be 3d dwarf fortress?

How it turned into a game full of half-assed features with a lazy dev all because the audience of the game encouraged such behavior and refused to admit things are wrong?

This is beginning to happen. To the community, at least. With the labeling of very significant bugs as "IT'S A FEATURE SO KERBAL," the instant shooting down of ANY criticism using strawmen, and being in general insufferable at times.

Things need to change, we need to be able to accept that there are things that can be criticised. Doing so will help the development of the game and help it grow, rather than have it become full of broken promises and "features.".

I don't see any broken promises or half-assed features, do you? Hmm... Let's see. Docking? Promised, yes. Very well done too. We got it. Career mode? They want to work on it. Resources? They're making good progress last I checked. Rover wheels, pretty planets, more parts, reentry effects... so far everything they promised made it into the game, will make it into the game, or is being worked on right now. I think you're just worrying about nothin'.

Also, can I add that docking, reentry, one-man lander can, Skipper Engine, and a boatload of other useful and fun things in the game were originally requested by players? We have a competent community in the hands of a competent game development studio. There is literally nothing to worrying about.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

Pardon me if I am wrong, but isn't KSP set in our Universe? So does that mean some of the Laws of Physics still correspond, so that means some of the KSP physics should be somewhat realistic?

[Shrike42]

Things really need to change.

Remember Minecraft?

How it had promise? How it was a really neat game that was going to be 3d dwarf fortress?

How it turned into a game full of half-assed features with a lazy dev all because the audience of the game encouraged such behavior and refused to admit things are wrong?

This is beginning to happen. To the community, at least. With the labeling of very significant bugs as "IT'S A FEATURE SO KERBAL," the instant shooting down of ANY criticism using strawmen, and being in general insufferable at times.

Things need to change, we need to be able to accept that there are things that can be criticised. Doing so will help the development of the game and help it grow, rather than have it become full of broken promises and "features."

I'm not trying to imply that the devs would let this become another minecraft, but I'd rather not take the risk of it happening.

This is discussion. Feel free to add to it or castrate me for having opinions.

Speaking of strawmen...

While MC was definitely inspired by DF and infiniminer, it evolved as people discovered they liked having personal agency within the blocky sandbox world. That happened pretty quickly, and well before the explosion in popularity that made MC the 'half-assed' game you describe.

And as it sounds like you're putting DF up on a pedestal in comparison, let's take a look at DF.

So, you're giving a pass to:

melting fat off yourself to become fire resistant, quantum stockpiles, danger rooms, atom smashers, burning lignite in metal boxes for evaporating oceans, hydras that are only now not likely to die from a single blow, fluffy wamblers that can decapitate a bronze colossus, catsplosions, overpowered archers, and dwarven reactors.

Which are all unintended effects or applications of Tarn's buggy coding (not to mention DF's penchant for entirely pegging a CPU with single-threaded calculations).

While decrying things like...

asparagus systems, air intake spamming, part clipping without debug, geometry strangeness, and a lack of frictional heating

That's quite a dual standard you've got there.

Design intent and implementation aren't the same thing. Sometimes errors and bugs can create opportunities to enjoy games in ways no less valid than what the developer originally envisioned. Sometimes these are embraced by the community and the dev team, who work the game around it. Sometimes they are considered errors and stopgaps while something better is put in place.

It's one thing to want the Devs to work on their dream without bending to the will of the populace. It's quite another to insist they ignore feedback and happy accidents in favor of pure ideas.

And ... you'd prefer that KSP not be a massive commercial success like Minecraft and get people thinking about space exploration and the value of engineering and science? Well, okay.

For what it's worth: I'm no stranger to dwarven !!SCIENCE!!, which is the exploration and exploitation of bugs. I was one of the first people to correctly identify what the "acid rain" bug really was, leading to me personally inventing the dwarven healing chamber and contributing to the bug's weaponization in the dwarven microwave.

[Anglave]

And given the content / intent of the last two posts, I'm pulling the rip cord on this thread. It was nice while it lasted.

[air805ronin]

Late as I am to this thread, this particular post did strike a nerve with me. You are aware that there are exclusive testing teams working with Squad, right? The game used to be like you describe, once upon a time, in that the whole community were the testers and builds were always available. However there were too many complaints of bad builds and this ended. To be honest, I do prefer the -idea- of the way things are now, as I don't want to play a wonky version, I'd rather wait for the actual thing. But 0.20 has obviously highlighted some issue with the Quality Control, be it in either the bug reporting mechanisms, the testers themselves, or rushing out to meet some internal deadline.

Squad's dedicated testers are meant to catch the the atom bombs of the bug world, or else they'd have a large, paid group doing it. As it is, the people who do it were invited and their only payment is to receive test candidate releases (as far as I know, this hasn't changed...). As JonoRig points out, they likely don't necessarily have every combination of hardware and software of everyone in the community.

This means you'll occasionally have to have a bug affect you.

That is technically the longer version of the "its an alpha" response, but I'll follow it with this: "make sure you file a bug report for each bug you encounter."

Every alpha and beta game in existence have channels for bug reporting because QA teams don't find everything. I do a lot of betas and have submitted many, many bugs. The worst offender for me is currently a tie between Firefall and Warhammer Online.

Expecting every release from here on out to be sparkly clean is something of a pipe dream until they release 1.0.

That said, long running bugs that have been there for almost a year? I would like to think some of those could be fixed, given time (as Sal eloquently put it).

[pizzaoverhead]

I find "its an alpha" is only a valid response if its someone who has an attitude problem; like "hey thanks for the report, but its only an alpha, have patience" but anything can be helpful, just the more constructive, the better

People who arrive with bug reports and attitude problems are often doing so because they're frustrated. "It's only an alpha" is dismissive, and carries the implication that they shouldn't have reported the bug at all. If anything, this will make people more frustrated.

[Sputnik-1]

I don't see any broken promises or half-assed features, do you? Hmm... Let's see. Docking? Promised, yes. Very well done too. We got it. Career mode? They want to work on it. Resources? They're making good progress last I checked. Rover wheels, pretty planets, more parts, reentry effects... so far everything they promised made it into the game, will make it into the game, or is being worked on right now. I think you're just worrying about nothin'.

Also, can I add that docking, reentry, one-man lander can, Skipper Engine, and a boatload of other useful and fun things in the game were originally requested by players? We have a competent community in the hands of a competent game development studio. There is literally nothing to worrying about.

You missed a key word: TURNED.

Shrike - your post is huge, so I'm not going to quote it.

You missed the point of what I meant about turning into another minecraft

Not that it's a commercial success, as in the money changed the game.

Not as in Dwarf Fortress is on a pedestal, as in minecraft strayed from it's vision.

Again, people missing points.

This is trying to get us to make a change to stop glorifying and blindly defending devs and shooting down criticism.

Edited May 28, 2013 by Sputnik-1
a little snarky and hostile addition removed

[JonhyBee]

Speaking of strawmen...

While MC was definitely inspired by DF and infiniminer, it evolved as people discovered they liked having personal agency within the blocky sandbox world. That happened pretty quickly, and well before the explosion in popularity that made MC the 'half-assed' game you describe.

And as it sounds like you're putting DF up on a pedestal in comparison, let's take a look at DF.

So, you're giving a pass to:

melting fat off yourself to become fire resistant, quantum stockpiles, danger rooms, atom smashers, burning lignite in metal boxes for evaporating oceans, hydras that are only now not likely to die from a single blow, fluffy wamblers that can decapitate a bronze colossus, catsplosions, overpowered archers, and dwarven reactors.

Which are all unintended effects or applications of Tarn's buggy coding (not to mention DF's penchant for entirely pegging a CPU with single-threaded calculations).

While decrying things like...

asparagus systems, air intake spamming, part clipping without debug, geometry strangeness, and a lack of frictional heating

That's quite a dual standard you've got there.

Design intent and implementation aren't the same thing. Sometimes errors and bugs can create opportunities to enjoy games in ways no less valid than what the developer originally envisioned. Sometimes these are embraced by the community and the dev team, who work the game around it. Sometimes they are considered errors and stopgaps while something better is put in place.

It's one thing to want the Devs to work on their dream without bending to the will of the populace. It's quite another to insist they ignore feedback and happy accidents in favor of pure ideas.

And ... you'd prefer that KSP not be a massive commercial success like Minecraft and get people thinking about space exploration and the value of engineering and science? Well, okay.

For what it's worth: I'm no stranger to dwarven !!SCIENCE!!, which is the exploration and exploitation of bugs. I was one of the first people to correctly identify what the "acid rain" bug really was, leading to me personally inventing the dwarven healing chamber and contributing to the bug's weaponization in the dwarven microwave.

You sir are my new Hero. I play some DF but I am still not able to do more then half those things. And I also agree wholeheartedly.

[AmpsterMan]

I find it interesting how the OP mentioned something about logical fallacies, then went on to say that this game's forum is turning into something like Minecraft's forum without proving how it is or why, if so, that is a bad thing. Then went on to say that very significant bugs are labeled as features. Lolwut? Where did you hear that? Who said that. Oh, it is a "general feeling of the forums" right... that's convenient because it can't really be proven or disproven (mind you this is coming after an update that saw the most negative threads I could remember after launch)

Whatevs.

I don't think this game is devolving into anything. As for Minecraft, it is a very different beast from the one we have here. Minecraft is a game that doesn't really have much grounding to reality, doesn't really have much direction or focus, and doesn't have a very motivated developer. Kerbal Space Program is very different. Space travel is space travel. There are things that are going to be in it no matter what, things that would be awesome to have in it, and things that would be nice to have in it. We are kinda reaching the point of the second sentence here. KSP has every essential thing in place already; launching, planets, moons on those planets, docking, roving, probes, and reentry (rudimentary) etc. It is having some very cool but unnecessary things too: Airplanes, spaceplanes, harvesting of resources, scanning of planets, etc. And it even has, or is going to have completely unnecessary things: Kerbals with animations, Planet side bases, cities, dynamic clouds and weather, Iternal Vehicle Activity, Extravehicular Activity, flag planting, easter eggs up the nose, etc.

One can see from this that KSP direction, drive, and purpose. It is focused. I know that Harv saw this game completed before he even wrote his first piece of code. THAT is why there might be some percieved fanaticism toward the devs; they are building not something merely "cool" but rather something they want to be remembered for, they are building their dreams. And WE can be a part of it. It is amazing! KSP and Harv are more akin to Dwarf Fortress and Toady than Minecraft ever has, or indeed, ever will be.

Edited May 28, 2013 by AmpsterMan

[pizzaoverhead]

Yeah people report the strangest things sometimes, or stuff that just isn't a bug like losing control in orbit (gotta power your probes guys)

I think that out-of-power issues being reported as bugs so consistently points to it being a user experience issue. There's no clear indication that a craft has transitioned to an uncontrolled state. A GUI element (low power light on the navball/dimmed navball) or light on the probe core itself would help things.