Devnote Tuesdays: The Award Winning Community Edition

[BriXman]

You know what I like about KSP and the community? Everyone is so nice!

[acc]

You deserve it guys. This is a awesome project.

Would be cool to have more talks with the devs, like that one from Scott Manleys video.

Edited March 26, 2014 by acc

[TimMartland]

Wait...we won? I thought we would do well, sure, but... wow!

[FormulaRedline]

These threads in particular (Devnote Tuesdays) illustrate why you of course deserved to win that award. I've never seen a developer be so transparent, and in your case it also illustrates how excited everybody is to be building this game.

As a KSP lover, gamer, game modder, former software developer (non gaming flight simulations), and now business person, I feel like there are interesting tidbits from all those perspectives shared in these threads. It really gives me a sense of what goes on during the game development process as well as always making me excited for the next patch! Keep up the good work, Squad

[LaydeeDem]

These threads in particular (Devnote Tuesdays) illustrate why you of course deserved to win that award. I've never seen a developer be so transparent, and in your case it also illustrates how excited everybody is to be building this game.

As a KSP lover, gamer, game modder, former software developer (non gaming flight simulations), and now business person, I feel like there are interesting tidbits from all those perspectives shared in these threads. It really gives me a sense of what goes on during the game development process as well as always making me excited for the next patch! Keep up the good work, Squad

The didn't speak through a PR guy before, (No offense Rowdowser, you do your job fine.) they were even more transparent. What ever happened to dev blogs? I kind of wish the devs went back to being a part of the community instead of being all hush-hush for no reason.

Edited March 27, 2014 by Nutt007

[HarvesteR]

The didn't speak through a PR guy before, (No offense Rowdowser, you do your job fine.) they were even more transparent. What ever happened to dev blogs? I kind of wish the devs went back to being a part of the community instead of being all hush-hush for no reason.

Those took on average half a day to write, revise and grab screenshots for... so even though we'd love to do those, there simply aren't that many hours in the day. The weekly devblog works nicely for us because it lets us each just write a few lines in a couple of minutes, then Rowsdower takes care of putting it all together in a nicely formatted post.

Cheers

[HafCoJoe]

^ I agree. I like the weekly updates. It gives you something to look forwards to every Tuesday/Wednesday when its posted And again, whatever's easiest for you Devs as long as we get some info!

[Seshins]

I think Harv and the boys are keeping us informed fine. I mean at the end of the day we get a weekly run down on progress, whilst more time spent on dev duties. I go for weeks or months on games waiting on news on progress. Granted the changelog of progress is usually a page long, but IMO weekly chunks are better.

What WOULD be nice in dev note tuesday would maybe be a screenshot or two of something cool being worked on, the team, concepts etc etc.

[Giggleplex777]

As a token of appreciation, can we please get a standalone version the KR-25 (the space shuttle engines)? It would make building stock Space Shuttles a lot easier, as well allowing more flexibility of design in the larger parts.

It should be slightly toned down (compared to the 4 engine cluster) and the thrust would be traded off for gimbal range.

Here's what I think the specs should be:

Thrust: 600kN

Mass: 2 tons

ISP: 320s ASL, 360s vac

Gimbal range: >5°

[GusTurbo]

As a token of appreciation, can we please get a standalone version the KR-25 (the space shuttle engines)? It would make building stock Space Shuttles a lot easier, as well allowing more flexibility of design in the larger parts.

It should be slightly toned down (compared to the 4 engine cluster) and the thrust would be traded off for gimbal range.

Here's what I think the specs should be:

Thrust: 600kN

Mass: 2 tons

ISP: 320s ASL, 360s vac

Gimbal range: >5°

Seconding this. The creative class on the forums would be forever grateful.

[Woopert]

As a token of appreciation, can we please get a standalone version the KR-25 (the space shuttle engines)? It would make building stock Space Shuttles a lot easier, as well allowing more flexibility of design in the larger parts.

It should be slightly toned down (compared to the 4 engine cluster) and the thrust would be traded off for gimbal range.

Here's what I think the specs should be:

Thrust: 600kN

Mass: 2 tons

ISP: 320s ASL, 360s vac

Gimbal range: >5°

Third-ing that! I'd also like for the orientation of the engines on the cluster to be fixed, currently they're in a rectangle shape like the old SLS, the current design is in a square. I know you know Giggle, but I'm hoping for Squad to take notice!

I do love all the work Squad has done so far, this just irks me though.

Current design setup!

[CaptainKipard]

Congraturation. This story is happy end.

[mrxak]

Sounds like testing is going quite well and we'll see the patch relatively soon. I did see some bugs in the KSPTV marathon, but hopefully they're not too hard to fix.

[LaydeeDem]

Those took on average half a day to write, revise and grab screenshots for... so even though we'd love to do those, there simply aren't that many hours in the day. The weekly devblog works nicely for us because it lets us each just write a few lines in a couple of minutes, then Rowsdower takes care of putting it all together in a nicely formatted post.

Cheers

I see. The fact that my post was responded to means a lot and has settled me greatly. Thanks.

To me the dev blogs were always more than just KSP. For example your post about the Voronoi craters for 0.22 was very informative and helped me greatly on creating something similar for my own projects.

I can understand though. Thanks for the closure.

[Felsmak]

I've been increasingly amused by Jesus' status updates with every new Devnote Tuesday.

I read that as "Jesus statue", and that gave me a mental image of a Cristo Redentor built on an asteroid. Weird.

[henryrasia]

That still does not explain the sudden hush-hush about the updates. Is KSP not Indie anymore? Because I thought alpha access indies meant that only people who were truly interested on the project, not only the game, were at it, and thus devs could share even more technical details (programming and such). Furthermore, although I agree devblogs were great I also respect the fact that you put them aside to work more. However, I still find the Devnotes' lack of screenshots... disturbing...

On another note, since we, the alpha community, are supposed to crowdsource playtest the game hunting for bugs and suggesting fixes, features, and balances, why is there a QA team? Again, is KSP a AAA game now? In which there is a specialized testing group that the versions must go through before releasing it to the "public"? What's the point of early access then? I also do not understand the NDAs except on what regards the game's code and assets: can someone from the team explain, please? I just don't understand alpha builds of alpha builds.

[DoctorCruz]

That still does not explain the sudden hush-hush about the updates. Is KSP not Indie anymore? Because I thought alpha access indies meant that only people who were truly interested on the project, not only the game, were at it, and thus devs could share even more technical details (programming and such). Furthermore, although I agree devblogs were great I also respect the fact that you put them aside to work more. However, I still find the Devnotes' lack of screenshots... disturbing...

On another note, since we, the alpha community, are supposed to crowdsource playtest the game hunting for bugs and suggesting fixes, features, and balances, why is there a QA team? Again, is KSP a AAA game now? In which there is a specialized testing group that the versions must go through before releasing it to the "public"? What's the point of early access then? I also do not understand the NDAs except on what regards the game's code and assets: can someone from the team explain, please? I just don't understand alpha builds of alpha builds.

I agree with the part about screenshots of development, but not necessarily about the lack of crowdsource playtest. They just want to make sure that people have a good experience with the game. Even though you'd like to play the game earlier and deal with bugs, there are a lot of people that would hate on them for releasing something "buggy". I think that they do a good job with the releases, but I would like a little more in-depth looks during the development process. Screenshots would be enough for me. I understand that they don't want people to get hyped and then them change the game later, but we kind of do deserve a little more insight into the dev process.

[Tiberion]

That still does not explain the sudden hush-hush about the updates. Is KSP not Indie anymore? Because I thought alpha access indies meant that only people who were truly interested on the project, not only the game, were at it, and thus devs could share even more technical details (programming and such). Furthermore, although I agree devblogs were great I also respect the fact that you put them aside to work more. However, I still find the Devnotes' lack of screenshots... disturbing...

On another note, since we, the alpha community, are supposed to crowdsource playtest the game hunting for bugs and suggesting fixes, features, and balances, why is there a QA team? Again, is KSP a AAA game now? In which there is a specialized testing group that the versions must go through before releasing it to the "public"? What's the point of early access then? I also do not understand the NDAs except on what regards the game's code and assets: can someone from the team explain, please? I just don't understand alpha builds of alpha builds.

Well KSP is Alpha in the strictest sense of the word; it is software which is in active development that is not 'feature comeplete.' But it is also an "Alpha funded" game, which means that people are paying for it. And since the beginning, due to that fact, Harvester/Squad has viewed each update as a standalone release, which must be polished in such a way to be playable to those downloading it, with major functional bugs removed or fixed before moving on. If you know anything of other Alpha stages, this is absolutely not the case. So KSP has never been traditional in that aspect.

Even still, in the early days there was a lot of testing and feedback done post-public release because it was pretty much just Harv. The community was small enough that the forums didn't crumble under the weight of bug reports. But KSP grew and the community grew, and eventually each release basically broke the forum and flooded the bugs forum with pages of reports, most of them repeats of one or two major issues, and a lot of the smaller issues got buried.

So that make the testing team necessary. They were (and still are) volunteers who applied for the position and receive access to test builds just before the release of an update to iron out the major issues, so that the product that is released is in a much better state. This had two effects; the devs had a much smaller set of testers to interact with, and the bug reports are much easier to manage and resolve. Less 'noise' if you will. It did also distance the public community from development a little more, and that's when Dev blogs and such came around to offset this

But KSP continued to grow, and the community as well. The game became quite popular and successful. The development expanded quite a bit, and there are now several developers and artists working together on each and every update. And because the scale of the project grew, the internal QA team was needed. These aren't volunteers, they're members of the Squad team, and they work during the whole update to help integrate the work of all of those team members, so that they aren't building major things on top of crippling bugs. Its essential for a larger dev team to have that instant feedback and testing.

So it's just a sign that KSP and its team is evolving and adapting as it grows. It MUST be done. It does mean that the community isn't as close to the developers as we once were, but that is just reality. Thats why we also have several Squad members who are focused on the community. They bring us the information, and manage the Media group, and publicize the game.

The NDAs are tied to that. Let us remember that KSP is a product that Squad, a real company, is trying to sell. The people buying it now aren't just enthusiasts. So releases are events for them. They need big reveals and hype and all of that 'dirty' business stuff to sell their product. So the information coming out must be managed and those working on it before release must be careful not to spoil things (or promise/reveal things that might not be final)

Anyway, the TL-DR version:

When you buy KSP, you're buying the game and all forthcoming updates to it. Any update may be the last. You aren't buying access to the developers or inside information. There was a time when the scale of the project and the community allowed this in an informal way, but both have grown far beyond where that is manageable. Squad isn't a AAA developer with piles of resources or publishers behind them, but they are managing a hugely successful game with a large following, and that means things bug flow in a certain way.

All that said, there can be more open-ness of the development process if they desire it. They have a community team to help them out, as these daily devnotes show. I personally would like Max or Rowsdower to go in and get some more screenshots and previews of things when they can. You have to remember that there has been some wholesale changes in the community team over the past year or so, in the time that KSPs team has expanded. So its up to us to give (polite!) feedback to the community team to let them know what more we'd like out of them.

[DoctorCruz]

All that said, there can be more open-ness of the development process if they desire it. They have a community team to help them out, as these daily devnotes show. I personally would like Max or Rowsdower to go in and get some more screenshots and previews of things when they can. You have to remember that there has been some wholesale changes in the community team over the past year or so, in the time that KSPs team has expanded. So its up to us to give (polite!) feedback to the community team to let them know what more we'd like out of them.

Agreed. But we only get weekly devnotes, not daily. Daily would be insanely cool and nice

[softweir]

Weekly devnotes would become extremely repetitive. How many times can you read "I was working on adding XYZ feature" - "still working on same feature" - "same XYZ as before"?

Besides, every word from the devs is time away from development!

[Tiberion]

I meant the daily whatever updates, not just developer notes. Gathering daily comments would be pretty boring indeed. But other things throughout the week that offers insight into an update's progress would be cool; like one day a week that might show off a couple of screens one week, and another week it might have a slightly longer bit from one of the team members, and it would rotate so only one team member a week loses the hour or whatever to file something.

But I can also understand if they don't do that, because frankly the community has "ruined" some of the dev interaction we had in the past with bad behavior.

[henryrasia]

But I can also understand if they don't do that, because frankly the community has "ruined" some of the dev interaction we had in the past with bad behavior.

I agree, and I feel terribly sorry for the devs who can't even browse their own forums anymore... That is why I support the idea of having a "hardcore" forum where only people interested in the technical details, in the programming or the hard science (like floating point, engine, and physics discussions). The Steam release, though I think was really good overall, did do that to the game...