Do you feel KSP is ready for 1.0?

[Rdivine]

Nuclear reactors?

And more planets?

Ven's Stock Revamp?

Nuclear reactors are already in the game? (R.T.G.s)

I agree with the more planets idea.

In my opinion, Ven's stock revamp isn't desperately required in the game, as it is just the remodelling of some parts. Personally, i think that light guards and new solar panels could be added in ksp 1.1 update.

[Northstar1989]

@Rdivine

Some great insights, and I wholeheartedly agree. I would give you rep if I hadn't already hit my limit for a 24-hour period.

Since this is presented as a thread about what is missing, rather than how to solve it (roll back the 1.0 announcement), can I suggest you re-brand this as a "Discussion" thread rather than a "Suggestion" thread so as to help avoid the wrath of the moderators and the mighty thread-closing hammers?

Regards,

Northstar

[Vanamonde]

Several threads merged. Let's please not have everybody start his/her own thread on this one same subject.

[Bill Phil]

Nuclear reactors are already in the game? (R.T.G.s)

I agree with the more planets idea.

In my opinion, Ven's stock revamp isn't desperately required in the game, as it is just the remodelling of some parts. Personally, i think that light guards and new solar panels could be added in ksp 1.1 update.

RTG's are Radio Thermal Generators. Not reactors. An RTG uses the decay of a radioactive material to provide heat, and thus power.

Ven's Stock Revamp does more than remodel parts. Gimbal is more realistic. The nosecones make more sense. More 0.625 meter parts. It makes some parts more sensical.

Plus, with the new aero, clouds and re-entry heat are probably good.

However, realistic Isp scaling, and thrust scaling, is a must-have.

[FlowerChild]

I would like to ask which developers you do fill are trustworthy, because I personally believe there is not such think as a 100% trustworthy company, like people, you can't trust someone 100% but there are some that are more trustworthy then others.

Off the top of my head, I find Introversion to be rather trustworthy. IMO, they've always delivered more than they've promised, and I don't remember ever feeling deceived by them. Darwinia was a bit of a let down, but I don't feel that it didn't achieve any of its goals.

I generally do have a certain amount of trust in Squad, up until the point where they pulled this "We're in Beta...we've always been at war with Beta" head game thing.

[GoSlash27]

If they came out and said, in all sincerity, that the reason for this is a lack of budget, I would understand. Otherwise, there is no logical reason for KSP to go gold. I've been very forgiving talking about KSP to my friends and have even gotten Squad at least 4 new costumers. If they insist on moving to 1.0. I can not in good faith recommend this game. There will be no more excuses for poor tutorials, un-intuitive UI, an unbalanced career mode, and a lack of necessary information given to the player. I will not be able to recommend this game without including a list of mandatory mods and a link to Scott Manley's channel. That is unacceptable.

klgraham,

What does any of this matter to you AFA your game playing experience? That is; how does it affect you *personally* whether the next release is .92 or 1.0?

I'm having a hard time grasping what all the fuss is about.

Best,

-Slashy

[klgraham1013]

klgraham,

What does any of this matter to you AFA your game playing experience? That is; how does it affect you *personally* whether the next release is .92 or 1.0?

I'm having a hard time grasping what all the fuss is about.

Best,

-Slashy

I apologize for wanting the game to succeed. From here on I'll think only about myself.

[eldiabs]

Seems a bit early for 1.0...but it's their game.

In all honesty, the only thing that kept me playing KSP was the mods that have greatly improved game play and longevity. They make the game so much more enjoyable. KSP vanilla is a bit shallow overall.

[GoSlash27]

I apologize for wanting the game to succeed. From here on I'll think only about myself.

Do you own stock in Squad? Are you employed in program management or accounting? You do realize that there are people who are paid to worry about this stuff and that they have decided that they're ready to go to market, right?

Scratchin' mah head,

-Slashy

[covername]

I dont care about any of this and Ill take the mods if that is the only way. I am however unwilling to overlook optimization.

[GoSlash27]

I'll open this question up to anyone else here who's up in arms about this:

Why should I (or anyone else here) be concerned about whether KSP goes open now or not?

[Robotengineer]

klgraham,

What does any of this matter to you AFA your game playing experience? That is; how does it affect you *personally* whether the next release is .92 or 1.0?

I'm having a hard time grasping what all the fuss is about.

Best,

-Slashy

I would like to take this question as well, as it applies to me too.

It should be quite obvious, if they release it early and it gets bad reviews, less people buy it, less money goes to Squad, Squad has to lay off Devs, Squad closes development of KSP. If the game succeeds, development continues and we will get the additional content we want. On a less selfish note, the dev's at Squad get to keep their jobs. it's a win-win for everybody.

Edit:You posted the above while I was writing this.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

KSP is ready to be a full release... not only now but a Long time ago.

The reason there are still some issues with the gameplay (quirky orbits, random disassemblies) origins on the pure fact that the Unity engine is not capable to keep up with what KSP is throwing at it.

Take a look at Harvesters Speech on it. Link in my Signature.

For anything else like Tutorials, Balancing Issues and so on:

Squad is working on it.

There is no necessety to Balance a game if you havent already implemented everything into it.

(You dont start painting your house when you havent built the walls yet)

I have put over 2000hours into playing this game. More time than into every other Game in my whole life.

KSP is ready to face Gold... and I dont think it would make any difference

Edited January 25, 2015 by MalfunctionM1Ke

[WuphonsReach]

I feel they might be jumping the gun a bit.

- Win32 still needs memory management issues addressed so that KSP doesn't start crashing as soon as you start installing additional mods.

- At least one balance pass should be done and tested by the beta testers before stamping it as 1.0.

[Bill Phil]

It's just that KSP so far on the early access shield. So, if something normally okay with us, the community, slips through that isn't acceptable by reviewers, then KSP will effectively be stamped with a "DO NOT BUY" sign. And that's the opposite of what KSP deserves.

[FlowerChild]

Why should I (or anyone else here) be concerned about whether KSP goes open now or not?

If it doesn't sell sufficient numbers to support or warrant ongoing development, then development will naturally come to an end. Beyond that, the scale of success will likely determine the effort that will be devoted to expanding upon it post release.

At the extreme ends of the scale it's largely why something like Minecraft still sees updates years after release, while something like Spacebase DF-9 didn't continue to receive updates a few weeks after release.

Edited January 25, 2015 by FlowerChild

[basic.syntax]

I think the conclusion is that there are just to many things to get done before 1.0, and that there need to be more Beta versions. I would like to see an official response from a Squad dev related to this thread.

Maxmaps tweets and comments earlier in this thread.

If they insist on moving to 1.0. I can not in good faith recommend this game. There will be no more excuses for poor tutorials, un-intuitive UI, an unbalanced career mode, and a lack of necessary information given to the player.

If folks want to think of 1.0 as "the real beta..." that's fine. But we can't pre-judge it, without seeing the result of the next month or two of development work. We have HarvesteR's list of goals and promise to address lots of bugs, Maxmaps tweets and this great summary and discussion of Maxmaps Squadcast comments.

Squad built a large group of experimental build testers from the community for the last round of testing, and we can be sure they will all be tapped for 1.0, and I would not be suprised if Ted (QA lead) asks for another round of applications when the time is right.

The 1.0 announcement is a surprise to us on the outside, but I'm certain they discussed many of the pitfalls that have been raised here, and will do their best work to be ready to face a new round of reviews. And at the end of the day if there are still some nasty bugs or missing tutorials, 16,000 positive comments on STEAM say "... I had a great time, anyway." KSP is already a success and making money, to the point Squad has promised to keep working after 1.0. KerbalEDU will put it in front of thousands of schoolkids, go beat that - other pure entertainment games! The future of KSP looks very bright.

[Pi_]

It may have been mentioned already, but to me this reeks of some sort of contractual type agreement. Like a clause that specifies version "1.0" be released by a certain date in order for continued funding... maybe not necessarily relating to funding, but revolving around a date & the "1.0" tag.

[Kerano]

With the list of additions they're planning for the next update, I'd say it's almost ready. Would be nice to have a full Kerbol system on the 1.0 update (add Saturn, Uranus and Neptune analogues along with a few moons), and squash a few more bugs (crazy radial decoupler torque is the most annoying one), but in terms of what a new player will experience I think it's pretty much ready. I've played a lot of other games which have been much further from complete - and far buggier - on their initial release than KSP is at 0.90.0. Those games were still popular and improved dramatically after a few patches and/or an expansion.

So yeah, I'm not concerned about KSP going to 1.0 with the next update. I'm still petitioning for Gas Giant 2 to be included though.

[StarStreak2109]

I would strongly recommend releasing a .95 or something before punching out the big 1.0. There are too many open items on the bug / optimization list to make the big step from beta to release IMHO.

[Superfluous J]

Squad built a large group of experimental build testers from the community for the last round of testing, and we can be sure they will all be tapped for 1.0, and I would not be suprised if Ted (QA lead) asks for another round of applications when the time is right.

So which is it (Squad or the large group of beta testers) who let a memory leak through that makes many players have to restart the game after an hour or so of playing?

I'd be far more confident with this massive update that changes almost everything in the game and adds things never in the game, if things like that didn't make it into every single build we've had.

[nanobot]

Of course they cannot undo an announcement of 1.0. The best they could do now is a 1.0RC for a large test player base (maybe even on steam?), and the official release later.

But since KSP is available only in digital form I guess is does not matter which version is tagged 1.0, it is easy to update ...

[Northstar1989]

The problem, as I see it is, SQUAD doesn't seem to realize that officially "releasing" the game will expose it to a lot of attention from the more mainstream reviewers and gamers. People who look at games and judge them by their graphics before even trying them, players who look at a game and say "lame graphics, not playing it" (one of my apartment-mates I've tried to get to get involved in KSP repeatedly is unfortunately like that, and has had this precise reaction. He's a nice guy and a gamer, but I'd say he's unfortunately not of the broadest perspective and is of only slightly above-average intelligence at best...) People who have MUCH less tolerance for bugs than the average KSP player, and will likely lose patience with KSP if it doesn't significantly improve its tutorials before release...

Something as simple as adding clouds and EVE-like enhancements to the game's visuals would go a LONG way towards making the game appealing to a lot more players and reviewers. Optimizing the code so that it takes less CPU/memory (can can actually run with better graphics at a faster speed) and doesn't have memory-leaks would be another: and I've talked to a number of people with knowledge of programming and KSP's code who are ADAMANT that there is a LOT of room for improvement on the optimization side of things...

Stuff like optimization, bug-fixing, and improving the graphics may not sound $exy, but it makes an ENORMOUS difference for player experience (even I have ragequit KSP at times because of bugs- or quit because restarting was the only way to make the game stable again...)

Honestly, KSP should bide some time balancing the parts, filling some parts niches that are still unfilled, designing+adding new planets, releasing multiplayer, and squashing as many bugs as they can (did I mention multiplayer will probably have a *HUGE* number of bugs that will need to be squashed when it's first released? Every multiplayer-capable game EVER has had to deal with large numbers of bugs related to multiplayer...); and then make a massive optimization/graphics push as soon as Unity 5 is out (should be within the next 6 months from what I've heard). Then, and only then, will KSP truly be ready for release.

Regards,

Northstar

P.S. Some of you may notice my earlier posts seemed a little out-of-context with the discussion here. That's because they weren't originally part of it. Much to my irritation and dismay, the moderators merged several other discussions I was taking part in with this one (at least they didn't close them). It's almost like they're trying to drown out further dissent under a 40-page wall of text or something...

Edited January 25, 2015 by Northstar1989

[Tuareg]

well, they are garage developers so they act like ones...

[Geneborg]

So...you'r going to 1.0.

You just barely finished the structure of the house, living in it took alot of patience and handywork, you are making large last minute changes like ripping/replacing internal walls, are not done with the paint job, it's not decorated...so you are going to rent it out to complete strangers now.

Hm, what reaction are you hoping to get here? I'm confused. The moment you lay off the "ErAc"-Label you are going to be judged way harder then now, you must realize that? I understand your zeal to finally finish it, but leaving the gameplay/balancing/bugfix pass out can't have been the result of a well thought out brainstorming at the office, no?

Edited January 25, 2015 by Geneborg