On the topic of 0.22

[tom1499]

I LOVE these long updates. They make it more fun.

EDIT: And jfx: notice how actually if you zoom in for the last twelve months then there was actually a large jump a few months ago, and we are now level with before.

Edited October 2, 2013 by tom1499

[Demobot]

If we're talking about the popularity of a game, it would be helpful to look at the Steam statistics. http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&jstime=1&appid=220200&from=1362114000000&to=End+Time

[Ralathon]

I love how you can see when the summer holidays end on those charts.

[Brotoro]

Me, I like the pace SQUAD is moving at. I don't have loads of time to spend playing the game, so the current rate gives me time to do things before the world changes.

[NovaSilisko]

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...

[jwenting]

Confirming that EVE KSP is dying.

indeed. Or any other online community. All of them have the same, often a few very vocal fools repeating it ad nauseum from pre-beta to years past release.

[HarvesteR]

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

[leax256]

the devs have spoken, so it is.

[Superfluous J]

That Google graph reminds me of the "Skeptics vs Realists" graph for global warming. You see a sharp drop down in the past month. I see a general upward trend with occasional dips, one of which we're in now (assuming, as has been pointed out, September's numbers are complete which they aren't)

The image for reference. Please don't turn this into a Global Warming debate:

[Wayfare]

Please be patient guys, it seems each update brings up this same discussion again.

So... Make it work for you! Set up a betting pool on the next update's release date, Squad takes 10%. Fan the fires! Have one guy come out and say it's next week. Have another say it's next month. Have a third come in and yell that it'll be ready when it's bloody well ready. Squad soap opera! Pit the devs against each other in a live-streamed Twitch release date show-down and have people bet on that too! You'll be rolling in cash while keeping the plebs entertained

[leax256]

So... Make it work for you! Set up a betting pool on the next update's release date, Squad takes 10%. Fan the fires! Have one guy come out and say it's next week. Have another say it's next month. Have a third come in and yell that it'll be ready when it's bloody well ready. Squad soap opera! Pit the devs against each other in a live-streamed Twitch release date show-down and have people bet on that too! You'll be rolling in cash while keeping the plebs entertained

but who would then work on the game

[BostLabs]

but who would then work on the game

LOL! Truer words have not been spoken.

just keep running that game and be swimming in cash.. Wait, there's a word for that... It's on the tip of my tongue.... Oh yeah! Fraud.

[Captain Sierra]

My personal opinion is that if the quality of the update is good, I will happily wait longer for it and every minute I wait I consider invested. And that investment comes when I get my hands on .22. Based on some research and the statement that the Devs are going back to the old 3-4 month schedule, I think we are looking at after haloween at the earliest and more likely sometime in november. We could even see it as late as a few weeks into december. As for me, that just means more hate from my family over thanksgiving and christmas as I am addicted to SCIENCE!!!!

[Audiopulse]

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.

This may be old now, as the topic reached Page 3 already, but I felt an urge to comment on that.

Where'd you get that from? Could it be that this is just your perception?

SQUAD does sidetrack in general - and thats good! Have you ever seen how KSP started out? It was a 2D-orbiting-simulator. 2D. 2-dimensional. Without that sidetracking you would be playing a fun minigame instead of the KSP we got now. Sidetracking brought the Planes and Rovers. In my books they did a good job on aknowledging what is good for the game and adding it. This can go wrong, yes, but it is not.

Next - I dont see why you even started about the schedule. Are you really asking for a halt of development? I would understand if we were talking about a barely playable game that needs to make progress to be enjoyable. KSP has been fun to play since 0.8, though, so why are you asking to stop adding fun features that work well with the game?

The way I see it youre just measuring Squad/KSP to the standart-theories you have learned as a software engineer. Well, I am a Productdesigner. We do a lot of developing, too - often with careful "sidetracking".

[SFJackBauer]

Confirming that EVE KSP is dying.

As an EVE and KSP pilot, I approve of this product and/or service

[Audiopulse]

I read the rest of the topic now. I should have never come here. I will now go and sit in a corner. Facing the wall. In Terror.

[Ghost13]

As I already said in the separate topic (Will we ever see the finished game?) I have serious doubts that the game development will reach its destination. The KSP in it current form offer some fun (and madness) but after learning orbital basics, orbital rendezvous and docking, technically you become capable of flying to any destination in the game. That’s the point when the game become boring as hell, you can easily fly to almost any destination using few orange fuel tank and nuclear engine strapped on top. But the long burn time and bugs will take your endurance out. And instead of fixing fundamental engine problems we can see developers are working on things such as R&D. And the “switch to different engine†is in "not to suggest list". I actually hope that some bigger developer will take over Squad and redo things on different engine with bigger budged, dev team, and development deadline properly set. Otherwise the game will slowly fade out of popularity and will likely be driven by the small community of space exploration fans. It is not bad by itself but I feel little bit disappointed. The KSP offered a promise of great space sim, the promise it’s looks like not going to fulfill.

Maybe it's one of the major flaws of Early access concept. The devs get their money with no regard if they actually finish the game or not.

[Seyvern]

Should we be worried?

I've already got a KSP tshirt and bumper sticker. which cost about twice what I paid for the game.

Interest is still here, KSP remains one of my favorite games ever.

You've made me sad now.

You monster.

One guy complaining - that is expressing his frustration in terms of some unsubstantiated threat to the dev team - does not mean you should worry. I personally think the update cycle is slow and frustrating. I am also unlikely to pretend (unlike the person your responded to) that my frustration anyway translates to 'lack of interest in the game.'

[loknar]

1) SQUAD seems to be sidetracked easily [...]

2) There is still no schedule at all [...]

I'm also a software engineer and I see jfx's point.

24 months is a long time and is dangerous/hard to manage. You loose a lot of efficiency when the roadmap is unclear. But we don't know what SQUAD is going through, do we? Maybe they keep their methods secret?

It would be easy to speculate their programmers are doing this as a side-project and are busy with other things. Maybe they are waiting for offers by big game names to be bought out?

All speculation that I reject.

I only see a very nice game made with passion. It does seem very slow and the strategy is ...strange. But I never did any video game so who am I to judge?

[allmappedout]

Also, I think that Harv's point is quite pertinent. There's 3 coders. 3 full time guys working on the code. Now, as we all know, one guy can put out a concept for a great game, and improve it over time (cf. Minecraft, etc), but there comes a point when one guy cannot do it all. So you hire another person. What has that done? It's almost doubled your overheads. So you now need to double your sales in order to maintain a salary.

However, as has been explained too, the Development Asymptotes mean that as you complete more, you have to do more to get further (A bit like the Rocket equation I guess!). Having 3 guys working on KSP back in 0.8 or even 0.17 meant less bug testing, less regression testing, and more feature adding. The problem is that every feature now has to be cross tested against everything else that has been added.

Externally though, people have seen you have doubled your workforce, but your output isn't increasing. People will then get frustrated saying that there's no direction, or that people can't be bothered any more. Yet that's not the case. It's a classic 20/80 rule. 20% of the work takes 80% of the time. The early stages (ie: pre-0.18, I'd say), prior to feature complete, were able to be completed quicker than now as a result, and that's just going to continue.

Since Career mode is in a very nascent stage, and it's effectively being plugged into the Sandbox mode (which is almost feature complete), any addition to career mode has to be tested against a whole suite of features, as well as within and of itself. This takes time and a recent blog post explained that they have moved to longer cycle times because regression testing can't really get any faster.

Either way, every time an update is released, the content is almost invariably better than what we envisaged when we find out about it, so perhaps we should cut them a little slack? Yes, the development cycle is slow, but the game they're designing is trying to be a high quality product (maybe not AAA, but certainly it's trying to develop itself into more than a lot of other half-baked games out there just made to make a quick $), and that takes time.

Patience, young padawans...

[Monkeh]

Dota 2 was in Beta for over 2 years. This isn't just a small company thing. Version 1.0 of KSP hitting electronic shelves sometime in 2018.

I am happy to wait for new stuff as, quite frankly, what I have now is full of stuff and fun that is keeping me thinking, dreaming and playing rockets.

Take your time please Squad, this is going to be awesome and I, for one, can wait...not that I want to you understand, but I'd rather wait and get an amazing thing than get it now and find it to be bad.

[Luis]

And let's not forget that Blizzard has effectively infinite money and still took 15 years to release StarCraft 2.

[Corw]

And let's not forget that Blizzard has effectively infinite money and still took 15 years to release StarCraft 2.

And what about Half Life 3?

[DChurchill]

I love how you can see when the summer holidays end on those charts.

And how it also corresponds to updates.

I only see a very nice game made with passion. It does seem very slow and the strategy is ...strange. But I never did any video game so who am I to judge?

The judge is if you think you're getting your 20 bucks worth. For me, hell yes. I hope they never "finish" it.

Edited October 3, 2013 by DChurchill

[vetrox]

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.