On the topic of 0.22

[Motokid600]

Im having trouble deciding if I want to play a stock career or a modded sandbox. I love my mods, but Squad said they won't be incorporating full customability for the first career mode release. I could do both, but.. not really.

[Makeone]

Games take years to develope.

However with the advent of early access gaming, alot of people have the mentality "I've paid for it, it should be finished soon"

Yes, that is the main 'problem' here, at least that's how I see it. To be quite frank here, i love the game as well and play it WAay too much, but i like to see how my designs works...or explodes (mostly explodes, though). Like i wrote earlier, we paid to get in to beta test, but there's nothing much to test, so most people just plays with mods, like i do.

Some of the mods i would like to see in stock, like B9's beautiful parts, they could easily replace Squads rather...poor parts, and more importantly, brings more options, as stock Mk2 only have liquid fuel in them, hard to built spaceplane without oxidizer. KW rockets and...well, you understand, probably... 8)

Maybe the development would look prettier if they would change the next patch number as 0.3, it would LOOK nice, and the content is probably very good, as per those screenshots and Harvesters blog. IF i could hope something from Squad, that would be a little more communication towards the community, of which is gonna be hard as they shelved of their media people.

[theflyingfish]

One of the things that I feel SQUAD should be focusing more on is development and refinement of gameplay. I know that Harv came out a few updates ago to talk about "development asymptotes", using them as reason to put gameplay development on the backburner while Career mode is worked on. But while Career mode is supposedly being worked on, KSP's gameplay has become very stale for me. I have come to think that Squad moved from gameplay development before it was really finished.

This is illustrated by the modding situation that has developed around KSP for me. Every time the game is updated, I have to spend time updating and reinstalling mods that I use to make the game playable for me. They're not parts packs, they're plugins that fix some aspects of KSP that I believe are broken/could be improved. Some mods, like the Docking HUD and Navball Enhancer, should be stock. There is absolutely no reason why these mods couldn't be integrated into the base game, and they help improve some of the more bare-bones aspects of KSP.

Another mod that I believe should be made stock, or at least certain parts of it, is Ferram Aerospace. It addresses some of the basic problems with stock drag, like how leaving the ends of your rocket flat, without nosecones, is more efficient than rounding them off aerodynamically; like how a cylindrical stack of six fuel tanks has the drag of six fuel tanks rather than the drag of just one, i.e. parts at the front of your craft don't block the drag of parts directly behind them; like how spacecraft come screaming in on re-entry at thousands of m/s, only to suddenly stop at 7,000 meters because the atmosphere suddenly turns to maple syrup.

There are additional problems with the physics system, like how little stiffness there is between connections. While it may be funny to have your rocket jiggle back and forth like a pe-piece of spaghetti it becomes much more frustrating when your aircraft keeps rolling to the left because of a bizarre bug involving connection strength and the order you laid your parts down!

While there are many, many more problems I could whine about, I suspect most people skipped the wall of text above.

So my basic gripe is this: SQUAD moved on from Gameplay development to work on Career mode, which I think is a bad move because; 1, There are many more basic bugs to fix involving basic gameplay elements, as well as multiple small gameplay improvements (*cough* DOCKING HUD *cough*), that could drastically improve the quality of the game; and 2, because Career mode elements appear to be wasting massive amounts of Squad's time and money while the gameplay withers in Career Mode's shadow.

P.S: What happened to IVA? I was really excited when it came out in .15, but right now it's one of the most under utilized features of the game. Not only do a few cockpits still lack IVA, but it has no other purpose but to provide a cool first-person view. It needs more functionality, e.g. more instruments, more things to click that do cool stuff, cameras that you can place on your craft that can provide a live view of the cool stuff happening, etc, etc.

Also, what happened to ClairaLyrae? She was apparently hired a few updates back, but has never appeared in any KSP Weekly's, dev blog updates, random posts, etc. and is always listed as "developer on leave"? I was excited at seeing some of her parts pack make it in but all we've gotten are the cylindrical tanks and a few adapters...

[Ryu Gemini]

My view on this is that they should just do this.

1. Spend time and effort on the big updates that don't need to be that often.

2. Every 2-3 weeks, just throw together a new part we can mess with for a bit, and put it in a minor patch and ship it out to us. Just to give us something to play with some more until we get that big fancy update later on.

They should ESPECIALLY start doing this once the next update is out, since the research tree will give them more leeway on parts.

[Sandworm]

2. Every 2-3 weeks, just throw together a new part we can mess with for a bit, and put it in a minor patch and ship it out to us. Just to give us something to play with some more until we get that big fancy update later on.

They don't need to release parts as a patch. They could just release the part like any other mod and make it permanent later. Squad seems dedicated to large-scale patches covering multiple bases. Mistake. Small stuff like new parts can be released piecemeal without a formal patch or version number change. That would keep people interested. It would also allow for experimental parts ... the concept-car approach.

[tstehler1]

My view on this is that they should just do this.

1. Spend time and effort on the big updates that don't need to be that often.

2. Every 2-3 weeks, just throw together a new part we can mess with for a bit, and put it in a minor patch and ship it out to us. Just to give us something to play with some more until we get that big fancy update later on.

We can't expect the devs to try to work on a massive-scale update while regularly throwing parts at us. SQUAD just doesn't have the personnel or time for that. If you want more parts, I would suggest trying out some new mods.

[SFJackBauer]

You know, I know its completely and utterly bizarre what I am going to say, and that its like comparing a cart of apples to a truck of bananas, but I like a lot the concept behind what Valve did to Team Fortress 2 - embracing the mod developers, allowing them to participate and even earn money in the process. Honestly the work modders have been releasing so far is nothing short of amazing, and rivals even what the KSP developers have done given the same amount of time, HOWEVER they must not be afraid of it, because its okay, they are not superhumans, the modders are not competitors, and just as the modders couldn't ever lay down the foundations of the platform they are modding over.

So as long as modding is allowed, I am okay since any gaps will eventually be filled by someone (or even myself, if I feel really really compelled). The only thing I do not like is the extreme memory usage which limits severely which mods you can use.

[Seshins]

GTA 5 took 5+ years and $256 million, just sayin....

Love KSP - i am hungry for 0.22 though

[Levelord]

Games take years to develope.

However with the advent of early access gaming, alot of people have the mentality "I've paid for it, it should be finished soon"

I remember when halo 2 got delayed by nearly a year. These things happen, we're just fortunate enough to be able to play the game and watch it evolve. Instead of having to wait for the end product, play it for 50 hours then move onto the next call of duty.

Remember how long it took Duke Nukem Forever to get developed?

Time =/= quality

[loknar]

Remember how long it took Duke Nukem Forever to get developed?

Time =/= quality

Those big name games are delayed because the project is put on hold usually. And even Windows or Call of Duty take years to develop : 90% of the time (in actual timeline) is spent on concept, analysis, artwork and marketing.

Actual programming is fast. Many man hours but split into as many programmers as necessary.

In some cases the project is put on hold; the programmers are working on another project. Or they are building/"waiting for" a tool that will be used on the final product.

[J.Random]

That google graph is somewhat misleading. I had seen it before, and the spike you see on July is actually reflecting the boom we saw during the Steam Summer Sale. We are just returning to normal levels again, and also keep in mind the September data is incomplete.

Please be patient guys, it seems each update brings up this same discussion again. We have our own internal deadlines for 0.22, and things are moving well according to plan. That's all I can say.

Cheers

Oh, come on! Being modest is a nice trait, but hey, let's add some BIG titles onto that graph. We cannot add GTA V, of course, but there were Splinter Cell BL and Saints Row IV. Come on, add them to the same graph. You'll see a spike and quite rapid falloff of their popularity. KSP's audience is stable. I dare say that it's growing with every patch. For a niche game that's quite good result.

[AmpsterMan]

In my opinion, I always thought that smaller updates would be a good idea. .17 and .18 almost killed all of us due to their scale, and I can't imagine what sort of crunch time is going on for .22...

I'm sorry to hear it was so crazy on you guys, buy I guess the size and scope of those updates are what made the game what it is today.

Imagine if planets weren't added yet. That one expansion multiplied the amount of things one could do by at least an order of magnitude. Or imagine if Docking weren't in the stock game. Where would we be now?

The have had a history of gauging the the game's development pretty well. I think this Career update is what the game needs at the moment to give us a sense of what to expect at 1.0

Imagine, 0.22 will be the FIRST time in the history of the game that we will have reasons to go places besides self imposed reasons. It will be an expansion of persistence when it was first added (because, not only are ships saved, but technological progress) we will get a new building, new functions for certain parts, new scientific parts, and if tradition is anything to go by, probably a few new engines/ fuel tanks/ etc.

[DJEN]

It is no secret that KSPs development pace is very slow.

As a software engineer two points stand out to me:

1) SQUAD seems to be sidetracked easily by non-critical stuff like spaceport 2.0 or by doing stuff like throwing out AWS. As indy with extremely limited ressources you usually don't touch stuff like this with a ten foot pole because there are a thousand things that can go wrong (see: patcher, spaceport, pre-aws content delivery). So using stuff like AWS is a blessing because it is ready to go, proven to work, reliable and requires minimal effort on the developers side.

2) There is still no schedule at all (patch or release )after more than two years of KSP. At this point you should have at least some basic understanding what your team can do and how long it will take you. by not doing so you leave the impression that they either have little confidence in their own talent or no real mission statement for the project "KSP". If you do stuff like this there has to be an ultimate goal, with a date put next to it. Otherwise you get what we see under 1), "some neat side feature? yeah we can add that, it won't take long!".

Obviously many will disagree with the above statement, stating stuff like "development takes time", "the last 90% take the other 90% of dev time" ... yes you are right. But you consider that SQUAD has been at this for over 24 months. They are no longer newcommers in the indy game dev sense - puppy license: gone.

Its all fun and games until the money runs out and you spent your time bugfixing spaceport 2.8 instead of shipping the finished base game.

The devs just aren't serious.

They still seem to think of themselves as hobbyists, not proper workers.

But, people can be wrong.

Edited October 5, 2013 by DJEN

[magnemoe]

Those big name games are delayed because the project is put on hold usually. And even Windows or Call of Duty take years to develop : 90% of the time (in actual timeline) is spent on concept, analysis, artwork and marketing.

Actual programming is fast. Many man hours but split into as many programmers as necessary.

In some cases the project is put on hold; the programmers are working on another project. Or they are building/"waiting for" a tool that will be used on the final product.

Duke nukem was delayed because of total lack of focus, as in they decided to change engine multiple times and so on, they could spend an month designing an level , then dump it.

Yes you can dump an level because you don't get it to work, not because you don't like it. That should be determined early on.

As an developer myself. The time consuming part of business software and web applications is features. Any features like letting the customer modify the design, run a lot of reports takes far more time than the simple framework. This is also an major workload in games, all sort of options has to be added. For an more realistic game this is even harder, for climbing ladder you have to have an animation who fit the various ladders but also account for different character sizes. This is part of the reasons why some older simpler games had more features,

For most games its the gameworld design and artwork. This is the real killer for massive games like Skyrim or GTA.

You can splitt gameworld design up in many parts and have lots of people working on it, this is harder with programming at least for the core, but even features are harder to spit up. Designing a dungeon in Skyrim don't affect any other dungeons, but adding an feature like reentry heat damage will change gameplay in KSP in fundamental ways, you will have to add various heat shields for different lander types the players will use, and also account for that they will use them in ways they did not think about like using many of them for aerobraking large ships or simply use stacks of structural panels as ablative shields if the stock shields are to heavy.

[haltux]

Actual programming is fast. Many man hours but split into as many programmers as necessary.

Nothing can be more wrong. Please read "The Mythical Man-Month".

[techonce]

I always like it when people mention that you can just throw more programmers at it. I hear that at work on occasion. My response is: "Just because 1 woman can make a baby in 9 months, it does not mean that 9 women can make a baby in 1 month"

This update is coming out a bit slower. They are averaging about 2 months between releases. On that pattern they are running a bit late, but they are not migrating geese, they have they're own targets and dates, and it sounds like the science part is pretty huge. Better to get it right then make a mess of it.

Also it always makes me smile when a poster with less than 20 posts starts complaining.

[Captain Sierra]

They stopped the 2 month update schedule. I remember reading something about a comment by HarvesteR in a dev blog that they would be going back to the longer update times of .17 and .18. Personally, if the update is good, I'll gladly wait.

[blspblackdeath]

I must say for the last two month they lost me.

I'm playing WT and GTA atm. Looking only sometimes for updates.

The big problem is the long time between updates and barely some new information in between.

When was the last screenshot for 0.22 released by the devs? Only 1 devblog and a 5 min video a month ago of 0.22 is not enough to get me exited.

KSPTV is giving a little more than no information, too.

And that besides the fact that they keep firing/getting rid of the guys who tend to give us at least bits of information. (PD and Damion)

Squad its time that you release at least something.

[rkman]

The big problem is the long time between updates and barely some new information in between.

Except for weekly devblogs and KSPTV Squadcast.

[Comrade Jenkens]

Except for weekly devblogs and KSPTV Squadcast.

Still not even close to how good mustwinfull's monthly updates were!

[marach]

As an developer myself. The time consuming part of business software and web applications is features. Any features like letting the customer modify the design, run a lot of reports takes far more time than the simple framework. This is also an major workload in games, all sort of options has to be added. For an more realistic game this is even harder, for climbing ladder you have to have an animation who fit the various ladders but also account for different character sizes. This is part of the reasons why some older simpler games had more features,

For most games its the gameworld design and artwork. This is the real killer for massive games like Skyrim or GTA.

Ladder climb animations are generally universal btw it's why you'll somtimes see hovering feet Actually nowadays they tend to build a single animated skeleton (or if being fancy mocap one) and just scale the bones. You can spot it in say Mass Effect where the male and female shepard had the same animations leading to femshep come across as a drag queen...

[techonce]

Still not even close to how good mustwinfull's monthly updates were!

I don't believe that we was ever employed by Squad. He just collected the bits that were posted.

I do admit that there have been less screenshots and the like, but different things were being worked on back then.

I have noticed that there have been less postings by the devs. Makes me hope it just because they are just soo busy.

[Yargnit]

You also have to remember that some updates will contain lots of stuff that makes for screenshot'y goodness, and others will have a lot of programming back end stuff. Adding planets, or re-texturing them, or making re-entry effects makes lots of pretty pictures. Coding an R&D system, not so much. You've got the UI to interact with it of course, but other than that you're looking at back-end type support systems that don't really screenshot. But just because a new feature doesn't come with a lot of flashing lights & stuff, doesn't mean doesn't have just as much going on with it.

[The Fleet Master]

Does anyone know if 0.22 will break Saves, If so please post a link?

[Yargnit]

Nothing has been mentioned either way regarding saves, but for those of you who remember .21 and breaking saves they announced fairly early that it would (and then ended up being able to write a converter anyways). So I would take no statement as a likely good sign in that case.