KSP committed to multiplayer career and sandbox modes

[GusTurbo]

I know a dozen people who have said the game looks interesting, and that they would play it, but they're not going to buy a single-player only game. People want multi-player, and some of those people don't already own the game.

I suppose I can see the logic in that, in that they feel they wouldn't be getting the best value for their money without multiplayer.

[Luckless]

I suppose I can see the logic in that, in that they feel they wouldn't be getting the best value for their money without multiplayer.

Some people just don't like single player games. Many of my friends are busy people with careers and such going on, which makes purely social time rather rare. If they're going to play a game, then they want to be doing it with someone else rather than sitting down in a basement all alone.

[GusTurbo]

I guess the real challenge for the dev team will be making multiplayer actually fun.

[Savage117]

Some have already said it but id like to clarify why I think multi player should come after single player or be put to a separate development team.

I have been playing multi player games since Doom, and have seen a trend since that game introduced the multi player experience to me, that trend being loss of single player quality because of multi player. The devs concentrate on multi player and the single player development suffers, or gets nerfed/buffed due to issues in the multi player area. This is unacceptable to me for a game like this, in games like Battlefield it's fine because the game is made for multi player, but KSP was single player first and should remain that way, making multi player secondary and susceptible to single player changes, not the other way around. I do agree that this game should have MP though, it will attract a wider range of people and the game will probably increase in quality due to the extra revenue.

I’m not concerned about griefers, if the devs do MP correctly and give the right server tools or player tools, then griefers can be kicked or banned before they become a major problem, or they could make it where each player needs to give permission to another to touch their craft, if permission isn't given then it just clips right through without damage to the ships of both parties. That makes it your own fault if you give permission to a griefer. Unfortunately griefing is a part of MP these days, if there is a public MP mode there will be griefing of some type or another no matter what you do, you make it so someone can't effect or destroy other peoples ships, they will just spam chat or voice to annoy others, its in their nature.

[Luckless]

Some have already said it but id like to clarify why I think multi player should come after single player or be put to a separate development team.

I have been playing multi player games since Doom, and have seen a trend since that game introduced the multi player experience to me, that trend being loss of single player quality because of multi player. The devs concentrate on multi player and the single player development suffers, or gets nerfed/buffed due to issues in the multi player area. This is unacceptable to me for a game like this, in games like Battlefield it's fine because the game is made for multi player, but KSP was single player first and should remain that way, making multi player secondary and susceptible to single player changes, not the other way around. I do agree that this game should have MP though, it will attract a wider range of people and the game will probably increase in quality due to the extra revenue.

I’m not concerned about griefers, if the devs do MP correctly and give the right server tools or player tools, then griefers can be kicked or banned before they become a major problem, or they could make it where each player needs to give permission to another to touch their craft, if permission isn't given then it just clips right through without damage to the ships of both parties. That makes it your own fault if you give permission to a griefer. Unfortunately griefing is a part of MP these days, if there is a public MP mode there will be griefing of some type or another no matter what you do, you make it so someone can't effect or destroy other peoples ships, they will just spam chat or voice to annoy others, its in their nature.

Can you name a logical design element that will work well in multiplayer, but not work at all for a single player game? I would much rather have single player AND multiplayer receive strong design support from the get go, not tacking one or the other on at the end.

[Guest]

It's more about things that work great in SP, but are unfeasible/difficult to implement/impossible to balance in MP. I'm sure we'll sooner or later hear about that. "No, because it'll not work with MP". I don't want any of that. For me, multi can be missing half the features SP has. Or it can be missing entirely. I don't care, I probably won't play it.

[Savage117]

Can you name a logical design element that will work well in multiplayer, but not work at all for a single player game?

The time warp mechanic comes to mind as one thing that will have trouble being balanced between both iterations. As well as the physics calculation method for multiple craft in the same 2.5Km sphere radius. You thought one craft of 200+ parts caused your computer to slow down, try two in the same area as well as the network trying to sync said craft between the two computers. It will be a challenge for the devs.

I would much rather have single player AND multiplayer receive strong design support from the get go, not tacking one or the other on at the end.

Unfortunately it is unlikely you will be able to have both, Squad is a small game development company, although growing rapidly, even large multimillion dollar game companies struggle with this issue. Take Ubisoft's Assassins Creed series for example, as soon as multiplayer got added, started to get attention, started to get better and more entertaining, single player suffered and got worse reviews then the previous single player title. Then it went the other way, the new Black Flag game has got some awesome reviews for its single player aspects but the multiplayer only got some relatively minor editions and bug fixes from the previous title. If a game company were to keep the staff they have working on SP and add new staff to work on MP then this problem could probably be averted, but possibly too expensive, hence the reason it's not been done. It's this trend I fear when multiplayer is announced, so I hope Squad can take the new pressure they have brought on themselves and I hope the game as it is doesn't suffer, as in missing features that would have been added had the devs not been concentrating on MP.

I'm just saying it makes me nervous, if the devs can pull it off with the minimum amount of missing features then I will be one of the first to congratulate them.

[Bothersome]

I think the more likely reason for them wanting to put the MP mode in KSP is because they notice a few potential customers saying they wouldn't buy it without MP.

They didn't notice any potential customers saying they won't buy it until resources are added.

What I think Squad is underestimating is the fan base. They have as many sales as they do BECAUSE of us, the fans, posting on forums and other places about how great KSP is. If Squad wants to pursue that new money, will that new fan base be enough to keep up-talking KSP to keep their cash flow up? We old fans might eventually find that we've done all that we care to do in KSP and move on to the next programs in our lists. Resources seems to be a better investment for long term playability.

Yeah, MP allows a real-time lunar race to happen. But once you've done it then what? And you can race against the clock now, best time wins, that kind of thing. Beyond that, what else is MP gonna offer?

[OtherDalfite]

I think the more likely reason for them wanting to put the MP mode in KSP is because they notice a few potential customers saying they wouldn't buy it without MP.

They didn't notice any potential customers saying they won't buy it until resources are added.

What I think Squad is underestimating is the fan base. They have as many sales as they do BECAUSE of us, the fans, posting on forums and other places about how great KSP is. If Squad wants to pursue that new money, will that new fan base be enough to keep up-talking KSP to keep their cash flow up? We old fans might eventually find that we've done all that we care to do in KSP and move on to the next programs in our lists. Resources seems to be a better investment for long term playability.

Yeah, MP allows a real-time lunar race to happen. But once you've done it then what? And you can race against the clock now, best time wins, that kind of thing. Beyond that, what else is MP gonna offer?

Even with your Mun race idea, multiplayer has almost no effect on that. If the craft aren't going to be within 2.5 KM of each other, there is no point to even coding multiplayer. You could just race across different computers.

[ElJugador]

This makes me worried and nervous, but a little excited too. My two cents:

Multiplayer only after single player is done and dusted. That way, we're all happy.

[Wahgineer]

with the whole develop multiplayer or singleplayer thing: something tells me it will be a side by side thing. ex: sp is main focus while mp is worked on at the same time. this is possible because sp already has everything you need in mp, all that mp is is coding.

[Eadrom]

Forget about the grieffers. Be more afraid of the "serious" players flying 400+ part leviathans. Each will be surrounded in a 4km-wide sphere o' lag. Enough of these would create a Kessler-type situation where only those with twin-titan cards will be able to operate anywhere near kerbin.

The game is more CPU intensive than it is GPU intensive at its current state of development. I think 0.22 was able to move some work to the GPU and I expect further patches to continue this trend (GPU's are exceptional at crunching numbers, which KSP does a lot of).

Also, space is *big* even around Kerbin. You practically have to actively try to run into another ship already in orbit. Even if the 0 degree inclination plane is chock full of behemoth ships, a very small inclination on your launch trajectory will allow you to clear pockets of lag.

After some thinking i came up with this: I built a giant dish ( 50+m across) and put it in a retrograde orbit at the same altitude as the other guys space station (not really though), although unlikely it might one day intercept and cause massive destruction. The only question is, is a 12 year old able to come up with a similar idea?

As I understand it, if both object are on rails, then no actual collision will occur. Either the station or the giant dish have to be loaded in order for the collision to be take place. The station owner could simply work at the station and keep an eye on your dish and if it ever got too close for comfort, he/she could hop to the space center for a minute, let the dish pass, then go back to whatever he or she was doing.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Eadrom

[UNSC]

I thought the CPU is the number cruncher, and the GPU is the picture painter.

[Eadrom]

I thought the CPU is the number cruncher, and the GPU is the picture painter.

You are broadly correct. GPU crunches numbers to paint pictures. Your GPU is essentially a mini computer that specializes in crunching numbers that plugs into your motherboard and processes requests from the CPU (gross oversimplification, but generally correct).

[Eadrom]

Ok so I read the thread and made a couple replies in an above post. Here are my thoughts.

I think the fears of the archetypal griefing 12 year old are grossly overstated. With a game like KSP, it's very likely that multi-player will involve a small number of people playing together. Think old-school LAN gaming. I seriously doubt that we're going to see 100, 200, 500 player servers. Maybe if we all had quantum computers and ran on 512-bit hardware, lol. So then, what is more likely is small groups of people, something like 5-10, playing together on privately run servers. I very much doubt that Squad is going to roll out with a bunch of public servers. The infrastructure to manage that is way beyond their scope. That also rules out the MMO fears. Also brings me to multi-player does not mean MMO by any stretch of the imagination.

I personally feel that Squad should continue to develop stuff to do in single-player first. Give people stuff to do other than exploring and setting up interplanetary gas stations. Once there is a healthy amount of stuff to actually do in the game, expand that to let you do all this neat stuff with your friends. If they roll out with multi-player first, I fear the novelty of being able to build a space station with your friends will quickly wear off when that space station doesn't have any other purpose other than looking awesome or refueling exploration missions.

For example, look at a stock install and another install with just Kethane installed. With Kethane you immediately gain so many extra things to do and decisions to make. Do you have one ship that does everything? Or do you split the process up into miners, freighters, processors, or storage? Where do you mine? And so on. There is such a large gain in depth from just one resource that just focuses on fuel. You still are essentially setting up gas stations, but instead of just shipping fuel from Kerbin, you are now involved in the location, acquisition, processing, and shipment of the fuel. All of which requires more thinking, more challenge, more time spent playing KSP.

Add in resources and resource utilization. Finish putting biomes on all the planets. Finish the basic mechanics like life support and re-entry heat. Then once people have a ton of stuff to do off-world, let them do that stuff with their friends. I feel that would be the best roadmap for the next several steps in development. I absolutely DO want multi-player, I just do not want it to come at the expense of a half-finished single player game. I do think that now that they have decided to implement multi-player that all further single player development should be done with an eye towards that goal. Perhaps even begin to place the code infrastructure into place similar to how people were talking about finding testium or whatever it was in the .21 resource definitions .cfg file.

In the end, I do trust Squad to do what they think is best for KSP. They've done a good job so far in my book. In addition, it's their game and their vision that they'll be implementing. All we can all do is wait and see what they decide to do. If they continue their daily dev post things, I'm sure we'll have a better picture as to what direction they are going to take sometime here in the next month or so.

[metal_jacke1]

Its now May 2014.... still no Multiplayer? *facepalm*

[Rowsdower]

Hi, Metal_jacke1. Since it looks like you're new, I'm going to let you in on a few things. First, dragging up an older post that has seen no activity for a while (usually around 3 months or more) is considered a "necro." Necroposting isn't anything rage inducing, but is considered bad manners around here. Secondly, Squad has given no timetable for the inclusion of multiplayer. While basic groundwork has been laid for its future implementation, it's been back end work at the most basic. The current focus is on bringing features to career mode with work that will carry on in update 0.24, which is currently undergoing further development.

To put an end to any further necroposting in here, I'm closing up shop.