How much work of squad is showed in updates

[kiwiak]

Lets say that squad works on some big project.. like resources. It takes about.. 70% of their time. Or even 80%. And it progresses slowly, you cant show it to players in update because its not nearly complete and unplayable yet. But fanbases demands new things. So, to keep players busy, they add things like rapier engines, tweakables etc.

So, i wonder what are real numbers. How much work is done with thought in mind "now we got to add something to keep them ocupied" and how much is done as part of some long term plan, on features so complicated that a work of years is still needed for them to be complete.

[Clockwork_werewolf]

Considering what I know of programming I think you are seeing nearly all there is to see. Programming the first parts of a system are always the fastest, from that point on everything you add could break the old parts. This adds up until you reach a point where you are almost spending as much time fixing what you just added as you spend adding new items. Squad is actually very good about bug fixing before each release and what you don't see is all the bugs the parts added to the game that were then fixed. My bet is about 1 week to a month is just bug fixing on each update.

I do however think it might be nice if they made SURE they added a new item or two each update (which they mostly have so I'm very happy so far ) just to keep things seeming to progress to players. I say this as one of the major updates this time was a speed upgrade, something which the average player may not see or appreciate.

[lantay77]

I say this as one of the major updates this time was a speed upgrade, something which the average player may not see or appreciate.

IMO, this was the best thing about .23

[Sirrobert]

I really hope they add updates based on when THEY are done, not based on when the comunity becomes restless

[lantay77]

I really hope they add updates based on when THEY are done, not based on when the comunity becomes restless

Definitely agree.

[Clockwork_werewolf]

I really hope they add updates based on when THEY are done, not based on when the comunity becomes restless

No matter how much I have to sit on my hands and internally complain to myself about the time they are taking, I agree entirely.

[SkyRender]

I think their current compromise for that problem is to plan out the development cycle of each release so there's about enough work to fit into 2.5 months' worth of development time, with some wiggle room in case things prove too complicated. Tack on a bit of time for testing and bugfixing, and it tends to take around 3 months between major updates ever since 0.20. That seems to be about the right amount of time for most players.

[Frostiken]

I really hope they add updates based on when THEY are done, not based on when the comunity becomes restless

On the other hand there's a reason 99.99% of the world doesn't work on the 'when it's done' philosophy. Deadlines keep people focused and accountable. If deadlines mean nothing, then you have no motivation to get anything done in a timely fashion. It's one of the reasons I hate the 'when it's done' mentality. Not only has that historically been absolutely NO guarantee of quality whatsoever, but it is oftentimes little more than a flimsy excuse made by an unfocused and undisciplined team.

I don't see people building bridges 'when it's done', designing aircraft 'when it's done', cooking and serving food 'when it's done', or even major publishers releasing games 'when it's done'. As a matter of fact, delaying games used to be fairly common about ten years ago. Nowadays it's very rare that a game ever gets delayed. Teams are held accountable, on-track, and have milestones charted that they reach. The progress of the game from storyboarding to 'going gold' is charted to exacting detail. The team making the next Assassin's Creed game knows exactly how much time they have, where they need to be at every step of the way, and how much they need to get done to reach that point. They aren't just showing up and browsing Reddit for half the day and then deciding that since it's been three months they should put in a science archive screen.

The only example people can ever point to is Valve, but not only does Valve hardly even develop games these days, but the only last game that outright used a 'when its done' mentality was Half Life 2, which was 9 years ago. Neither Portal nor Portal 2 used 'when its done' development schedules.

Sorry but 'when it's done' is an excuse that flies with procrastinating teenagers, not anyone who actually has a real job. Squad's updates are outrageously slow and chronically offer extremely little content relative to the time investment involved. In three months I would expect you'd have been able to do more than to add two new parts and make some experiments a one-time affair. v1.0 of the game is so far away at this pace that I honestly wonder if anyone will even still be playing this game enough to care when that happens.

Christ knows that people are undoubtedly pretty tired of the current planetary lineup. I don't even care to speculate how many years it'll be before we get another single new planetary body.

If you don't stick to schedules and milestones, you slip a little. One feature doesn't get into update because it wasn't done in time. Then next time, you let the release date slip a little because you had another feature not done. Then next time, you just keep your delayed release schedule since people didn't get too upset last time, and besides, now you have more time to get more features done. So now you're developing three months of content in four months. Then you get a little lazy, maybe burned out on this project that you've been dragging out for three years, and you slip another feature, and decide to hold the next update for that feature. Now you're on five month schedules for three months of content.

Nothing good comes out of it. Games built 'when it's done' are not provably of any higher quality than games that stick to deadlines. If you believe that, Duke Nukem Forever would like to have a word with you - a game that is almost a monument for what can happen if you don't make a schedule and stick to it.

Edited December 26, 2013 by Frostiken

[NeMeSiS]

I don't see people building bridges 'when it's done', designing aircraft 'when it's done',.

To be fair; projects like that miss deadlines and go over budget so often that they might as well say 'when its done'.

Also: Valve time

Edited December 26, 2013 by NeMeSiS

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

Originally Posted by Clockwork_werewolf View Post

I say this as one of the major updates this time was a speed upgrade, something which the average player may not see or appreciate.

IMO, this was the best thing about .23

I totally agree with this. 0.23 is so much faster than any other version for me (playing since 0.19). Even my sound lag is gone for 90%... that has the biggest impact for me. I love it!

[Frostiken]

To be fair; projects like that miss deadlines and go over budget so often that they might as well say 'when its done'.

Most of which is the result of outside interference, ie: equipment failures and problems with the terrain, or designs suddenly changing from the guys with the checkbooks. Bridges aren't delayed and aircraft designs aren't overrun because the guys building the bridges or the aircraft aren't taking the project seriously and are only putting in like ten hours a week while still cashing what has, at this point, been at *least* half a million dollars of income.

Edited December 26, 2013 by Frostiken

[annallia]

Sorry but 'when it's done' is an excuse that flies with procrastinating teenagers, not anyone who actually has a real job. Squad's updates are outrageously slow and chronically offer extremely little content relative to the time investment involved. In three months I would expect you'd have been able to do more than to add two new parts and make some experiments a one-time affair. v1.0 of the game is so far away at this pace that I honestly wonder if anyone will even still be playing this game enough to care when that happens.

I always say if you can do it better then do it, otherwise sit down and shaddup.

That said, if you really want to throw othergames into the mix that used the "when it is done" concept and still failed... Well I have a moutain of games, some of which were launched at a near unplayable state that used the hard deadlines as fuel for the "when it is done" concept to be justified.

[Frostiken]

I always say if you can do it better then do it

I can't build a bridge or build an aircraft either, so I guess I should be happy even when bridges are collapsing and aircraft are crashing since "I can't do better", right?

Yeah, never say that again. Seriously, I can't believe you really just said that while being totally serious.

I have a moutain of games, some of which were launched at a near unplayable state that used the hard deadlines as fuel for the "when it is done" concept to be justified.

I guarantee you that that mountain of games is smaller than the planet-sized mass of games that adhered to schedules and came out as good as can be expected. I also can guarantee you that probably the majority of those games were fixed pretty quickly, not fixing two issues at a time every three months and dragging the whole process out over a decade.

Edited December 26, 2013 by Frostiken

[Sirrobert]

As a matter of fact, delaying games used to be fairly common about ten years ago. Nowadays it's very rare that a game ever gets delayed.

No indeed. Instead, they simply release a game that isn't finished yet. GREAT alternative.

I don't care if it's a bridge or a game, you don't release it when you are still building. Have you ever seen a bridge that wasn't finished yet be opened to the public? Ofcourse you haven't.

Games are different though. As far as I know from game development, it's almost impossible to predict when it will be done at the stage we are in now.

You are playing a game in alpha. Games in alpha don't have release dates. Bugs popping up at random because you added something make sure of that.

Noone's saying anything about Squad not having deadlines. They aren't strickt 'IT MUST RELEASE TODAY' deadlines though. They set a goal, work towards it, and release it when completed. That's the fastest anyone can work.

[lantay77]

No indeed. Instead, they simply release a game that isn't finished yet. GREAT alternative.

I don't care if it's a bridge or a game, you don't release it when you are still building. Have you ever seen a bridge that wasn't finished yet be opened to the public? Ofcourse you haven't.

Games are different though. As far as I know from game development, it's almost impossible to predict when it will be done at the stage we are in now.

You are playing a game in alpha. Games in alpha don't have release dates. Bugs popping up at random because you added something make sure of that.

Noone's saying anything about Squad not having deadlines. They aren't strickt 'IT MUST RELEASE TODAY' deadlines though. They set a goal, work towards it, and release it when completed. That's the fastest anyone can work.

Not sure if he is just trolling. The game is an ALPHA. It was pre-released to the public, they have never said anything about deadlines publicly. With programming, it is hard to meet set in stone deadlines because of all of the debugging involved. Squad also doesn't have a final plan for the game yet, so deadlines would be completely arbitrary.

[annallia]

I can't build a bridge or build an aircraft either, so I guess I should be happy even when bridges are collapsing and aircraft are crashing since "I can't do better", right?

Yeah, never say that again. Seriously, I can't believe you really just said that while being totally serious.

I guarantee you that that mountain of games is smaller than the planet-sized mass of games that adhered to schedules and came out as good as can be expected. I also can guarantee you that probably the majority of those games were fixed pretty quickly, not fixing two issues at a time every three months and dragging the whole process out over a decade.

Way to completely miss the meaning there. The meaning behind it is don't get pissed off at the bridge builder for not meeting your exact specifications or making the deadline if you couldn't do it yourself. If however the bridge collapses that is another story all together...

As to the games all I will say is you obviously never played a game released by Nexon... Some of them are going on 5+ years now with the same crappy bugs that hindered gameplay at launch still in them.

I currently play three different games (I take a break from ksp every now and then...) two of which use the hard deadline schedule. KSP has not since I started playing back in .19 had any sort of game breaking bug or glitch that I remember. The other two? Well one of them hasn't had anything horribly game breaking but they did have a few that greatly hindered playability (almost to the point that you couldn't play), the other had a bug show up on its test server that wouldn't allow certain people to log in to the game it would crash at the loading screen. But because of their hard deadline schedule they went ahead and launched the update anyway. You would think that with roughly 35-45% of their playerbase (not official, player estimated) not able to get into game they would roll out a fix right away right? Nope. It took them quite a while (3 weeks give or take a few days) and this wasn't even the first time they had problems like this.

For my money I would rather wait a bit and get something that actually works. Does me no good to have the latest greatest things if the game crashes constantly, or worse....

[Kerbart]

I don't see people building bridges 'when it's done', designing aircraft 'when it's done', cooking and serving food 'when it's done', or even major publishers releasing games 'when it's done'.

I think you are mixing up â€Âworking on a schedule†with actual deliveries. Not a single one of the things you mentioned is delivered on schedule, they all run late. Sure there is a planned timeline, but those are usually optimistic and rarely ever met. Would you rather have a restaurant put a plate with half cooked food on your table? “The pasta needed five more minutes and the sauce is missing but time was upâ€Â

Examples of work running late and delivered “when it's done,†not as per schedule:

Airbus A380

Boeing Dreamliner

Roadwork in general. By the way, most interstates if not all interstates were delivered in pieces “when it’s done,†the Squad way, and not when the entire road eastcoast to westcoast (or N to S for odd numbers) was completed

La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona

The Delta Works Plan in The Netherlands (especially the Oosterscheldekering)

Boston’s “big digâ€Â

And I can go on. Just because there’s a schedule doesn’t mean it’s met. Conversely just because there’s no on-time delivery doesn’t mean there is no schedule.

Squad is in a rough spot. If they freeze their development plan “they are ignoring the community†but if they change direction of development “they have no plan,†you can’t keep everyone happy obviously.

[AlamoVampire]

Frostiken I would wager you know very little about what it actually takes to make a game. If you DO know about coding and the monumental task that it truly is, I hope you are tolling. Even my limited knowledge of coding tells me, that, they will get us a fun, playable product as they can get it out to us and not to some arbitrary schedule YOU seem to be laboring under that they adhere to. Look, this game is awesome, and for all we know .23 could be the LAST installment. They are NOT obligated to take this game ANY further buddy, you agreed to that knowledge when you either paid them directly or Steam and agreed to the TOS. We will get what we get when it is done. period.

[syfyguy64]

Really, what we need to keep us occupied for long term time spans while they work out, say full career mode, they should release a bundle of 25 advanced space station parts (Gravity wheels, and nuclear reactors), or a separate solar system to explore with familiar planets and higher time warp.

Also, just to have fun.

[AlamoVampire]

as per the PC Gamer interview:

Do you have plans to add more solar systems, or even randomly generated solar systems?

Falange: That’s something we get a lot, and it’s actually something that I’m not very particularly [interested] about implementing. It’s not that can’tâ€â€we could, theoretically. But I think that KSP being a game where you can build your own spacecraft, play the game in your own way, and have essentially a completely different experience from everyone else… the only thing tying these experiences together is that the universe is the same. So if we were to add procedurally generated planets outside the current solar system, you would end up with places and destinations that don’t exist for anyone else. And then it would fail in terms of you being able to relate to someone else’s experience. You wouldn’t be able to say, “Hey guys, I landed on Duna, this was really cool!†And everyone knows what Duna is and what it stands for. Instead, you’d get, “Hey guys, I found this planet, it looks kinda like this.†And people would be like, “Oh... I’ve got completely different planets on mine.â€Â

Holtzman: The game is science fiction, but one of the things that Felipe has really driven is that he wants the science to come first and the fiction to come second. So when you start talking about multiple solar systems, you get further into the realm of fiction.

Falange: Right, because you’re talking about interstellar distances, which means time-warp isn't enough anymore, no matter how fast you’re going. Now you need some sort of warp drive, and that falls into the realm of sci-fi. And that then requires us to break the laws of physics, which would in fact make everything much trickier.

link: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/12/23/kerbal-space-program-dev-on-random-solar-systems-the-joy-of-failure-and-the-cult-of-steam/

[Stargate525]

I think you are mixing up â€Âworking on a schedule†with actual deliveries. Not a single one of the things you mentioned is delivered on schedule, they all run late. Sure there is a planned timeline, but those are usually optimistic and rarely ever met. Would you rather have a restaurant put a plate with half cooked food on your table? “The pasta needed five more minutes and the sauce is missing but time was upâ€Â

And I can name several projects that were met ahead of schedule and on or below budget. They've invited us into the kitchen after taking the bill for our pasta; they cannot rightfully expect someone to shut it when they think that they're barely making progress on something that doesn't even really resemble pasta.

[jwenting]

unless you're assuming Squad steals work from others and releases it as their own, EVERYTHING in every update is their work.

Just because it's not always an "oh, shiny" moment with new graphics, components, buttons on your screen, doesn't mean they're not hard at work completing and improving KSP.

Claiming (as you effectively are) that they're lazy and just sitting their sipping margueritas and eating tacos all day long, raking in the dough, is dishonest and insulting.

[magnemoe]

Most of which is the result of outside interference, ie: equipment failures and problems with the terrain, or designs suddenly changing from the guys with the checkbooks. Bridges aren't delayed and aircraft designs aren't overrun because the guys building the bridges or the aircraft aren't taking the project seriously and are only putting in like ten hours a week while still cashing what has, at this point, been at *least* half a million dollars of income.

You are pretty correct with bridges who are pretty known technology.

All recent huge aircraft projects has run over time, over budget and had lots of bugs. dreamliner and F35 is the current in spotlight.

They contains far less know technology than bridges.

[SkyHook]

I do not think that the development of the game should be compromised to appease shortsighted goals/desires, but they DO have a playerbase to please (although there is little financial incentive to do so after purchase). It stands to reason that every other update should be spent adding a significant feature to the game. Historically, that's one feature every six months. My severe lack of knowledge with game development may cloud my judgement, however.

[Sirrobert]

And I can name several projects that were met ahead of schedule and on or below budget. They've invited us into the kitchen after taking the bill for our pasta; they cannot rightfully expect someone to shut it when they think that they're barely making progress on something that doesn't even really resemble pasta.

Do you know how to make a game? If you don't, than shut up about it. You don't correct the chefs if you don't have god damn clue on how to make pasta.

Especially when everything they have let you taste so far is perfect.

Apart from that, you didn't pay for the complete game. You payed for the version you have NOW. Every update you got after you bought the game is free for you