Do you feel KSP is ready for 1.0?

[Robotengineer]

It looks like they are going quite fast compared to their previous dev cycles, at least relative to the content of the update. Looks like they are going to be the first passengers on the HypeTrain.

--Update--

Maxmaps on re-entry heat.

Edited January 28, 2015 by Robotengineer
Stupid twitter tags.

[Motokid600]

Well, I hope this update takes a long time.

[NWDogg]

Well, I hope this update takes a long time.

I'm just guessing obviously, but I wouldn't count on it taking much longer than the previous few updates. I have a feeling that Squad has all their ducks in a row right now, and are barreling along as quickly as they can. Why they are doing this, I have no speculation, but it seems to me that they are planning on this update being out soon. Like, soon without the trademark symbol.

I'm in the 'Yes, it's gonna be ready' camp, but if I'm right about this...that they are hurrying along this update...then maybe some of the concerns raised in this thread are valid (rather, more valid than they already are.) Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't be the only one that is reading into this a 'quick approach' for this update.

[Stargate525]

It looks like they are going quite fast compared to their previous dev cycles, at least relative to the content of the update. Looks like they are going to be the first passengers on the HypeTrain.

--Update--

Maxmaps on re-entry heat.

twitter tag not working. link below.

https://twitter.com/Maxmaps/status/560262153471795201

[Corw]

The update following 1.0 will be 2.0.

When did KSP turn Firefox?

[Khatharr]

Um...

If you release right now you're going to get torn apart over the bugs and performance issues...

You spent 4 years in alpha, maybe you should respect that investment and make correct use of the beta period.

[cpast]

While the "No" percentage has been dropping, the statistical significance of the result may be increasing. For example, an 80% result with 100 votes may be less significant than a 73% result with 750 votes.

This poll is a self-selected sample of a community which is highly unrepresentative of the average player of KSP, a game reviewer, or anyone looking to buy KSP. It has no statistical significance; you can't get good data out of a self-selected poll, nor out of such an unrepresentative community as this one. FlowerChild has it right -- number of responses is meaningless, because the quality of the sample is so awful. The poll is good for some things, but should not be taken as a representative sample of anything at all.

About "bugfixing comes last:" Well, yes, there is a way in which it normally does come last. Specifically, at the end of development, you should just be doing bugfixing; it's not that you leave it till the end, it's that as you approach release date you shouldn't be making any changes to the code that aren't necessary to fix a bug. When read like that, it suggests that it's not necessarily a good sign to add tons of features for the 1.0 release.

(that said: I like KSP so far; Squad has proven that they can make a game I really like, so I'm really not all that worried. If I had more big-project experience I might be more worried, but I assume that Squad knows what they're doing. I do think people assuming they know exactly what reviewers will say should give some reason why they think reviewers will say that: particularly about modding, the average user, as a rule, does not mod their games)

Edited January 28, 2015 by cpast

[Twreed87]

Um...

If you release right now you're going to get torn apart over the bugs and performance issues...

You spent 4 years in alpha, maybe you should respect that investment and make correct use of the beta period.

Alpha and Beta are not terms that have ever really applied to KSP. We're not the QA testers of this game, that would be, well, the QA team, and Experimentals. Those are the guys whose job it is to make sure any release is free of bugs. In the past, certain issues have gotten past them, not because they were missed, but because Squad just wasn't ready to fix them yet. That's what they're doing here. They've got a list of all the major issues, and they'll fix them before they release 1.0. And new issues will come up with the new features, and they'll be caught and fixed too. If Squad wants to make sure this release is free of major bugs, they'll do that using their QA team, just like any game studio does for any game. And any minor issues can still be fixed in a -.-.1 patch.

[basic.syntax]

It's the job of software testing to inform developers and management what the problems are. Management and developers have the responsibility to act on the information. Further, and at times irritating to us, management has to evaluate the cost of developer time to fix obscure bugs that are reported by only a few people, no matter how passionately that small number argues in favor of fixing the bug they found. Management tends to prioritize bugs for fixing, starting by the easiest to reproduce and number of reports. Bugs that are estimated to require a lot of time (money) to investigate and fix, that are also rare and intermittent, get pushed down the list, if higher priorities are still being worked on.

[andruszkow]

Great. One more thing to be bugged up and unbalanced for their release client.

You really need to go outside and get some fresh air.

This attitude is tiresome and juvenile.

[basic.syntax]

FlowerChild has it right -- number of responses is meaningless, because the quality of the sample is so awful. The poll is good for some things, but should not be taken as a representative sample of anything at all.

Absolutely. The poll is a snapshot of concerned player's gut feelings on the subject. People who have taken the time to register to make comments here. The question kind of leads me to think "ship KSP today and call it 1.0? noway!"

~600 players voting "no" here, is heavily contrasted by ~16,000 positive comments on STEAM. People who have paid money for something that isn't finished, and had fun with it, despite some problems they may have had. That doesn't change when KSP goes to 1.0, I am confident good numbers and a high percentage of new players will STILL find something fun in KSP 1.0, and make a positive comment, even if they note some problems that they had along the way. Critics of this view say standards go up when something is declared "done" and criticism gets harsher. Some of that may happen, but I don't see it derailing the train, as long as Squad sticks to the process that has worked for them pretty well, thus far. Today's dev notes suggest the development train is marching right along

[vexx32]

It might be an idea to put together a similar poll (albeit with a few more options) on a third-party site, and post links here on the forum, on /r/KerbalSpaceProgram, and in the Steam community, in order to get a more complete picture of the opinion of KSP's general players.

It will still be imperfect, for sure, but it'll be more comprehensive than a simple forum poll.

[Jouni]

If you release right now you're going to get torn apart over the bugs and performance issues...

Bugs and performance issues only plague the advanced players, who use a lot of mods or build huge ships with hundreds of parts. It's not something that affects the majority of players, who probably won't play KSP for even 50 hours, or the reviewers, who'll base their reviews on even less game time.

The biggest issue in 1.0 is probably going to be game balance. With so many major changes to the game, Squad is not going to get it right on the first attempt. At least not unless they make a closed 0.91 release, and let the testers play it for a few months.

[WOODY01]

Well KSP has a positive review from me because it is early access. I am not judging it as harshly, I acccepted the flaws.

I have a descent rig that runs most modern games well. Some games I need to alter the graphic settings, but most run fine on high settings without lag.

I like KSP, enjoy playing it, would recommend it while advising to use mods and pointing out the flaws posted above by others.

That probally would not be true if a did not puchase this game before release. I would have noticed the relatively long load time, missing IVA's when playing around, poor tutorial, eventually notice the memory leak, poor performance, lag once I started trying to build vehicles with more than around 150-200 parts, lack of 64x support for a game released in 2015, parts clipping and getting stuck in terrain on occassion, and some things I am omitting to avoid a wall of text. I would probally give it a negative review saying what a shame a game that seemed to have a lot of potential fell short of reaching it.

[Thourion]

Theres no long load times with stock game, the game you payed for.

Theres no weird stuff going on, or any game-braking bugs, again if you play vanilla.

Theres absolutelly no rush for a 64bit version, if you play without mods, as the current memory usage is in nominal digits imo.

I would consider KSP ready for 1.0, same time i actually bought it. 2012 if im not mistaken.

I got a hip ton more than i payed for, and while it was a fun game to pass the time, they decided to keep putting free stuff on, that other game-companies would probably milk you to death for.

And of course, even with the above things mentioned about the stock version of the game, which in all honesty thats what you payed for, a gazzilion of modders went all the way and made a huge amount of crazy-insane-usefull-absolute-must-have mods for the game, bringing it even higher to the scale.

Its up to you, to read about them, and get info about any problems using them, and still the community here is 100% nuts, teaching the rest on how its supposed to be done, by giving info and the whole nine yards about the mods, and even the stock game.

(not to mention the crazy science discussion all over the place)

Yeah i probably sound like a blindfolded fanboy, but to me what i said is the truth.

KSP has a STRONG community behind it, who work in tandem with Squad that gave us this game with all these updates for free 4 years later ..jesus...

Really now, if someone has to say something bad about the game, i wanna punch him in the face, end of story.

And by the way, i would really wanna hear someone mention some game that went RELEASE status, that doesnt have flaws, or even worse no decent gameplay with just a few mentions of a plan-for-the-future here and there.

In all honesty im suprised with the poll results so far, and even more suprised about whats so special about a game going 1.0 2.0 3.93 etc.

TLDR Version:

It seems a little bit odd to me that people are so up-in-arms about KSP going 1.0 at this point in time ... the game is more polished and has more substances than most other games.

The more I think about it, the more it seems like there's a lot of people that aren't ready to let go of the "early access" magic of KSP -- that somehow when it is "released" that things will change. *shrug*

Basically what he said

Edited January 28, 2015 by Thourion

[running]

When compared to other games that were 1.0 where I payed full price for.... KSP is nothing short but a miracle.

I very rarely encounter crashes. Performance can always be better but is really only a problem when you start building huge things. Yes it slows down with each item you add, but it doesn't become problematic when you are just doing career mode kind of missions. (al depends on your hardware ofcourse.)

Other bugs... I play the hell out of this game. The number of hours invested is ridiculous for someone with 2 kids and 2 jobs. Yes I sometimes notice things that aren't perfect. But I'm pretty sure the guy at NASA doing the same thing has probably more issues than I do.

So on bugs and stability I'd say it's ready.

On features... most items are in there that you would expect

Some graphics could be nicer. (But is that a pass or a blocking issue... highly subjective.)

Maybe some more planets etc. (But adding a couple of planets can be done quickly.)

Movable parts could be added. (There are mods for that.)

Objects outside the 4km bubble in atmosphere just disappear, making it very hard to accidentally destroy buildings.

I think some features do need more depth. (Strategies and Kerbal experience could use more work.)

It's hard to say how many work here can be done in one release. but 0.90 is not 1.0 yet.

Balance is kinda linked to features. We can currently set a lot of options in the career mode. When you start giving the features more depth, you might need to work on the balance instead letting players tweak things in career mode. (Think of the new player that has no idea what the importance of science returns is.) This tweaking of balance will quickly result in another update or two (depending on the internal testing before releasing.)

So it's almost ready, but I don't think that the next release will be the one. probably atleast 1 or 2 more released would be needed.

What reviewers think of the game?... I don't care, I've already bought it, I'm have my own opinion, don't need someone else's.

What poor reviews would mean to squad (revenue) I don't know, bluntly... that's their problem.

What 1.0 could mean for me?

Every update I start a new career mode, finish it and start a more difficult career. I (nearly) finish that one and loose interest in the game until next update.

1.0 suggests the next updates could be just maintenance... so it might not pull me back into the game. Having played out career on 1.0 means I'm done.

I'd be back when we get close to 2.0.

In short I'm happy with the state KSP is in right now, I don't care about a alpha, beta, released label. I would not call it a finished product yet, but if Squad wants to but promises to keep up the good work that's fine with me.

[Corw]

When compared to other games that were 1.0 where I payed full price for.... KSP is nothing short but a miracle.

When you are used to eating [dirt] having a cookie still does not make it a roast beef.

Edited January 28, 2015 by Red Iron Crown
No profanity, please.

[Hary R]

Well as the devnote comes, it seems that this update is far bigger then I initially expected. Reentry heat anyone?

The more it goes, the more feature they add, polished or finally include. (keeping hope for more planets ).

In fact, the only thing i'm afraid of is that they rush the release, not giving enough time to the QA team to push it to it's limit and destroy every single issue in the game-play and giving us and the rest of the gaming community a not really well polished first official 1.0 release, I don't wont it to be perfect, I won't 1.0 to be the best release ever. Apart from that, I don't mind the 1.0 status. It won't change anything to me.

[KerbMav]

Plot twist:

Every released version of KSP was six months old and the development process is far more advanced than we were made to believe!

[Awsum0]

Sadly I feel that the balance of the game has pretty much collapsed - science mode was great, but the numbers are so far off in Campaign mode at the moment that it is detrimental to the experience.

[Renegrade]

Plot twist:

Every released version of KSP was six months old and the development process is far more advanced than we were made to believe!

Extra plot twist: The KSP we're playing is just a doodle that Harv scribbled up in his spare time for fun. The real KSP is actually a space-oriented AAA+ FPS (aka playable movie).

[klgraham1013]

I do think people assuming they know exactly what reviewers will say should give some reason why they think reviewers will say that: particularly about modding, the average user, as a rule, does not mod their games)

Many of us have done just that, but after 70+ pages, I don't expect anyone to have read the entire thread.

[monstah]

When compared to other games that were 1.0 where I payed full price for.... KSP is nothing short but a miracle.

Completely agreed. I bought it as Early Access over two yers ago and to me it was a fully playable and enjoyable game from the get-go.

When you are used to eating [dirt] having a cookie still does not make it a roast beef.

Well, that's just rude and childish. We're discussing KSP, not your eating habits.

Edited January 28, 2015 by Red Iron Crown
Removed quoted profanity.

[Robotengineer]

After seeing a lot of the modding discussions through out this thread, Squad shouldn't integrate anymore mods. They should just integrate CKAN, it makes getting mods easy, and has saved me a ton of time unzipping folders. It would also make it easier for KSP noobs to get mods, etc. Since you can't please everyone, make it easier for everyone to please themselves.

[Broax]

After seeing a lot of the modding discussions through out this thread, Squad shouldn't integrate anymore mods. They should just integrate CKAN, it makes getting mods easy, and has saved me a ton of time unzipping folders. It would also make it easier for KSP noobs to get mods, etc. Since you can't please everyone, make it easier for everyone to please themselves.

Gosh... CKAM looks brilliant!! O.o

Include it and you can have my firstborn!!