HarvesteR's First Contract Update Update #3

[Red Iron Crown]

okay, the recovery thing is a very discussable theme, and i think everyone has another opinion to this. i, personaly, would be better with such a quickfix thing than the current way it is done

ksp itself is not the problem. i myself LOVE it! the problem is squad. i did not know how unable they are!

the game itself, its POTENTIAL is worth a lot

1) brainstorm for an hour, or for all i care one day

2) kidding?? (for all i care one day)

3) again: kidding?

4) wat?

5) procedural, thats clear! and: kidding??

6) an argument! but: if you are thinkin really slow you will have a solution in 3 days ;D

7) beeing a good programmer avoids this. oh sry i mean good planning(!) does this

8) wat?

9) kidding?

10) kidding?!?

a contract system is that what i say: a contract system! and all it requires is thinking about it(planning) (for all i care take 4 weeks for that! ), draw some guis and write the scripts behind all that.

if all that is running really slowy after at lest 6 weeks (8 for all i care) it is totally finished.

i think the workflow is the problem. if i program something i test nearly all critical things on the way and not everything at the end. cause than you get hundreds of versions. and that makes testing even slower.

solution: moar programmarrs! ;D

btw: is only harvester programming?

This has to be one of the least convincing arguments I've read on these forums, I feel stupider after reading it.

Production code is not the same as some hobby project that no one will use but you. There are literally thousands of users of KSP with high expectations of quality, balance and lack of bugs. Hundreds of these users will scream bloody murder if those criteria are not met, and that bad word of mouth will spread.

Testing/debugging along the way is not a replacement for final testing, it is a prelude to it. You don't add new code and just assume everything still works as before, regression testing is absolutely critical. And this is a program with hundreds of thousands of permutations of parts, a dozen or so environments for them to work in, and a complexity level that is now far beyond any hobby project.

How about you take just one aspect of the contract system and show us all how easy it is. Please share what you think the prices for the parts should be. I mean, no way that could take more than a day, kidding??

[cpast]

okay, the recovery thing is a very discussable theme, and i think everyone has another opinion to this. i, personaly, would be better with such a quickfix thing than the current way it is done

ksp itself is not the problem. i myself LOVE it! the problem is squad. i did not know how unable they are!

the game itself, its POTENTIAL is worth a lot

1) brainstorm for an hour, or for all i care one day

2) kidding?? (for all i care one day)

3) again: kidding?

4) wat?

5) procedural, thats clear! and: kidding??

6) an argument! but: if you are thinkin really slow you will have a solution in 3 days ;D

7) beeing a good programmer avoids this. oh sry i mean good planning(!) does this

8) wat?

9) kidding?

10) kidding?!?

To quote you, never criticize without arguments. The notion that balance is "kidding?" is, to put it mildly, absurd - it's absolutely fundamental to anything you do in game design. If you think 90 corner cases you hadn't thought of aren't a thing, you have never programmed anything of substance, full stop. There is no such thing as a perfectly-planned program; everything has random issues that come up in implementation that are more complicated than you thought. Brainstorm for an hour for "what contract types"? Try thinking about it and doing proofs-of-concept over the course of weeks. Failure conditions - should contracts be one try, or be time-limited, or what? That involves actual thought. "How does the game handle this" is a reference to KSP being a large, complicated piece of software, and contracts actually needing to be integrated, which requires other game components be modified to support it (e.g. changing the recovery system to account for contract completion).

a contract system is that what i say: a contract system! and all it requires is thinking about it(planning) (for all i care take 4 weeks for that! ), draw some guis and write the scripts behind all that.

See, "a contract system" is really, really fuzzy. There is no firm definition of what's required; saying "it is what I say" means you aren't actually trying to speak so people can understand you.

i think the workflow is the problem. if i program something i test nearly all critical things on the way and not everything at the end. cause than you get hundreds of versions. and that makes testing even slower.

solution: moar programmarrs! ;D

btw: is only harvester programming?

a) Testing as you go is essential. So is testing at the end. Playtesting can often only be done after most things are complete; the reason 0.24 wasn't released months ago is that playtesters said contracts are pointless without budget, and the testing for contracts wouldn't help a ton till budget is added.

Yeah, you get hundreds of builds when making software. That's normal, if your project is something more than a tiny hobby project.

c) KSP has 4 or 5 devs, I think.

d) Adding people to a project near release will slow it down. If you've never worked with others on projects, you might not expect that, but it takes time to bring people up to speed - initially, they'll slow down progress, because they can't contribute much and require everyone else to spend time getting them up to speed.

[stoani96]

Apparently so. They should hire you because you seem to know a lot more about the game they're developing than they do and with you in charge, it sounds like KSP 1.0 will be ready before the end of the year. I'm completely serious - post on the Development and Suggestions board with all this and then just wait for the job offer. I have no doubt it'd come because you've demonstrated that you're clearly better than the entirety of Squad. I mean, after all, who could provide counterpoints to such persuasive arguments as "kidding?!?", right?

haha, funny

"kidding" because the answering of questions like: will contracts be optional or not? does not take MONTHS! so it is no (good) argument for the slowest developing of all time!

(i know all this sounds very hard, but it isnt meant that hard i know how it feels if someone does not appriciate your work. but if you do not start to expect more of your child than a drawing of an rainbow, it will bring you these drawing even if it is already in highschool, just because that is enough to make daddy proud. for ksp that means: the fans praised squad at the beginning just rightly, but they still do and so seams to do squad... the same slow developing process, just because the fans are good with that.

So... sry squad (and all these (extremism) fans out there who feel violated by my (just true) words) if all this sounds so hard like everyone is acting. Keep the work on ksp, its a great game with a even greater potential, and im sure it will sometime reach its full potential. Just rethink your way of working or your workflow in general. Because like it is now, i feel you are not really working for your money and that grinds my gears a bit, cause i paid the game!

Thats it for me now, the topic is eaten for me. Feel free to go on your floral idyll ksp life )

[Red Iron Crown]

Because like it is now, i feel you are not really working for your money and that grinds my gears a bit, cause i paid the game!

Read your license, you paid for the game as is. No new updates or timeframe for them is guaranteed.

[Seshins]

This has to be one of the least convincing arguments I've read on these forums, I feel stupider after reading it.

This has put me in a good humour.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

haha, funny

"kidding" because the answering of questions like: will contracts be optional or not? does not take MONTHS! so it is no (good) argument for the slowest developing of all time!

(i know all this sounds very hard, but it isnt meant that hard i know how it feels if someone does not appriciate your work. but if you do not start to expect more of your child than a drawing of an rainbow, it will bring you these drawing even if it is already in highschool, just because that is enough to make daddy proud. for ksp that means: the fans praised squad at the beginning just rightly, but they still do and so seams to do squad... the same slow developing process, just because the fans are good with that.

So... sry squad (and all these (extremism) fans out there who feel violated by my (just true) words) if all this sounds so hard like everyone is acting. Keep the work on ksp, its a great game with a even greater potential, and im sure it will sometime reach its full potential. Just rethink your way of working or your workflow in general. Because like it is now, i feel you are not really working for your money and that grinds my gears a bit, cause i paid the game!

Thats it for me now, the topic is eaten for me. Feel free to go on your floral idyll ksp life )

Right, can you please pseudo code the way that you think contracts can be implemented. Make sure it's procedural!

[stoani96]

How about you take just one aspect of the contract system and show us all how easy it is. Please share what you think the prices for the parts should be. I mean, no way that could take more than a day, kidding??

I expected this, so this one is my last:

first of all: im a hobby programmer, but do not ride on this! For me, the only diffenerce is, that i get no money for that. in the other aspects: i have high standarts for my programm, may they be little. i always look for the best solution, sometimes even seen from the performance perspective and always want the programs to run as stable as possible with an code that is as universial as possible

now to that: just do it, if it is that easy!

I cannot to it, because i do not have ksp pretty difficult to develop a feature for a game, of wich you do not have the source code ;D

I know unity, i played around a bit (do not overstress that) , and it feels very simple for me to add scripts that track progress. and simply said, nothing else is needed for that. a criteria and a system that looks for that.

and again: do not always overstress my words

[stoani96]

Read your license, you paid for the game as is. No new updates or timeframe for them is guaranteed.

When i buy a early access game, i naturally expect that it is going forward. thats the sense of that: getting money during developing. but i dont really feel its developing

@cpast: dont overstress my words: i know more programmers do not make really sense. just if the developing will last longer (what i expect to honest....)

(enough explained words for today

[BudgetHedgehog]

I cannot to it, because i do not have ksp pretty difficult to develop a feature for a game, of wich you do not have the source code ;D

He asked you what you thought the prices for the parts should be. You don't need Unity or to know KSPs source code to do that. It's a simple question: how much do you think the parts should cost? Bear in mind game balancing, of course. I expect your answer within 24 hours, given that's the deadline you gave Squad (which is about 7 people so I'm being more than generous).

Edited July 14, 2014 by ObsessedWithKSP

[smart013]

Was bin ich froh, dass Du ein Österreicher bist, so grosskotzig verhalten sich sonst ja angeblich nur die Deutschen. But dont overstress my words

[stoani96]

He asked you what you thought the prices for the parts should be. You don't need Unity or to know KSPs source code to do that. It's a simple question: how much do you think the parts should cost? Bear in mind game balancing, of course.

agian: do not overstress my words, i do not either!

sry, missread that somehow... i dont want to think about that, cause it would make absolutly no sense that anyone else than squad thinks about this. but: nobody can tell me that this simple thing lasts months(!) and it is a simple thing, you have to be honest, dont you?

(test report: fueltanks seem to be much too expensive. so we half the price.... i dont see any problem here... )

[stoani96]

Was bin ich froh, dass Du ein Österreicher bist, so grosskotzig verhalten sich sonst ja angeblich nur die Deutschen. But dont overstress my words

freie meinungsäußerung! kann ich ja nix dafür, wenn hier alle so vernarrt sind in ihr geliebtes ksp (ich mags auch keine frage, aber ich seh wenigstens noch die wahrheit )

btw: was bin ich froh, dass das arroganteste deutschsprachige Völkchen Fußball-WM geworden ist! ;P (nimms nicht zu ernst, nemts es alle nicht so ernst! )

Und jetzt wirklich gute nach, mir wird das hier zu blöd mit den ganzen fanatikern, die keine kritik am liebling aushalten

[BudgetHedgehog]

I'm not overstressing your words at all, I'm just saying that the reason you gave for not being able to answer the question isn't sufficient.

Yes, on the face of it, it is a simple thing. But, once you dig into it, it becomes complicated - what should the basic cost of the starting rocket be? How much should each fuel cost? I have to be careful not to make one part so cheap that it'd be too attractive to use it and none else.. should the prices be similar to real life? How can I balance this against the other parts?

Don't forget, you have to do this for every stock part, which is, at the last count, 181 separate cfgs and considerations. Do we make the RAPIER as expensive as a turbojet+aerospike? Or is the aerospike expensive? Does each fuel tank scale in price as it does with size, or do we take into account structural integrity/material used? Do the companies that make each engine have different prices?

Like I said, I expect your answer and an entire list of balanced part prices within 24 hours. You said it shouldn't take less than that, so go ahead. If you provide one, I swear down right now, I'll give you £20 via Paypal.

[BudgetHedgehog]

freie meinungsäußerung! kann ich ja nix dafür, wenn hier alle so vernarrt sind in ihr geliebtes ksp (ich mags auch keine frage, aber ich seh wenigstens noch die wahrheit )

btw: was bin ich froh, dass das arroganteste deutschsprachige Völkchen Fußball-WM geworden ist! ;P (nimms nicht zu ernst, nemts es alle nicht so ernst! )

Und jetzt wirklich gute nach, mir wird das hier zu blöd mit den ganzen fanatikern, die keine kritik am liebling aushalten

Just so you know, calling fanatics 'too stupid to accept criticism' doesn't help your argument.

[Rowsdower]

This thread's done.