Do you feel KSP is ready for 1.0?

[NecroBones]

I do wonder if Squad is having a bad case of "Go Fever". To which I say, it's the players that should be experiencing that!

[KerbMav]

They could at least give me weekly builds to see if I can safely sleep.

[basic.syntax]

This thread has slowed down, everyone is trembling in anticipation of the dev notes...

I don't know about you but my knees are knocking and my nerves are frayed, what could they say this week do you think?

The update following 1.0 will be 2.0.

They're going to skip 2.0, no need for it. Straight on to 3.0!

Not a bad idea, Windows didn't really take off until v3

[skyace65]

They're going to skip 2.0, no need for it. Straight on to 3.0!

It's what Microsoft's counting team would recomend

[Wallygator]

the point is that every one who has invested in the early access program has a bit of feeling of investment in the overall outcome of any 1.0 perceptions. We all want 1.0 to be the best that it can be.

That said, there seems to be a disconnect between the Devs and the community on this. I think this is a symptom of internal discontinuity between the community management process and design requirements management. Early access assumes a balance between original design requirements and external community feedback. Our beloved Devs have now moved to "Beta" which might well assume no further input from the community. I hope not.

It would be nice to get come dev feedback on this.

[panzer1b]

As much as hate to say this, it really isnt ready to be considered fully developed until the performance is improved.

While i dont technically consider ANY game that is still being patched in any way whatsoever developed, i guess most of the features squad invisioned in the game are included.

There are a few bugs here and there (im looking at you claw, or should i say instant kraken in a bottle). And the game does crash once in a rare while. But overall its fairly stable if you dont include a couple parts and or clipping (clipping still causes its share of explosions/phantom forces). Biggest problem is when part count goes above 500 in any one spot. This can cause anywhere from minor to heavy lag, and when parts go above 8-900, the game becomes more or less impossible to play, docking is not possible at that point due to the lag time between controls, ect. Aside from performance, i will say its a great game in every way, and even supports some form of MP, despite that mod being rather buggy in some situations (ive had at least 10 cases of kraken attacks within a week).

Anyways, until im able to run at least 1000 parts on a gaming rig (i have quadcore i7, 8gb ram, gt770m gpu), i cant say this game is truly developed. Yes its a laptop, but its able to bloody run most anything even metro2033 (which is way more graphics/cpu intensive then this).

[Red Iron Crown]

Yes its a laptop, but its able to bloody run most anything even metro2033 (which is way more graphics/cpu intensive then this).

Metro 2033 is way, way less CPU-intensive than KSP. I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed about being able to run 1000-part ships smoothly, even if multithreaded physics become possible.

[FlowerChild]

Anyways, until im able to run at least 1000 parts on a gaming rig (i have quadcore i7, 8gb ram, gt770m gpu), i cant say this game is truly developed. Yes its a laptop, but its able to bloody run most anything even metro2033 (which is way more graphics/cpu intensive then this).

Yeah, I really don't think that comparing a game that calculates physics on a per part basis for arbitrary player-designed vessels to a largely fixed-environment FPS is at all a fair comparison. That kind of flexibility comes at a heavy performance cost, and one of the reasons free-form destructability of environments is such a big deal in FPS games is because it prevents a lot of the more traditional optimization techniques from being applied, that rely on a largely static environment where you can perform a lot of precomputation to speed things along at run time. The less you know about your data set ahead of time, the less of that you can do, and I can almost guarantee that Metro relies on an at least partially static environment to run at a reasonable frame rate.

In other words: player freedom comes at a heavy performance cost, and KSP has an awful lot of player freedom.

It's a similar situation to how people complain about the performance of Minecraft when it's so graphically simple in comparison to other games, and claim that's because of poor code or what have you. What they're neglecting there is that you're talking about an entirely free-form world where pretty much everything is dynamic and can be manipulated by the player. Some of the optimizations in the code to make that a possibility were actually quite brilliant at the time, and were a part of why that game was a first of its kind in a lot of ways.

Do I think there's room for performance improvements in KSP? Almost inevitably. But it's really not fair to Squad to compare apples and oranges in making that point.

Edited January 27, 2015 by FlowerChild

[basic.syntax]

It would be nice to get come dev feedback on this.

We have it. Here is a link to Maxmaps tweets and comments earlier in this thread.

[Technical Ben]

So Squad looked out the window... saw the clouds passing by, and said "we are leaving the atmosphere, we are about to get into space!" and then pulled up their sleeves and got ready to leave BETA and enter release 1.0.

So all good!

[Bill Phil]

Wait wait wait...

Reentry heat?

Clouds?

HL3?

We need to know, are they confirmed?

[Broax]

Clouds? Did I miss something?

[Thomas988]

Clouds? Did I miss something?

I didn't think so...

[Robotengineer]

Clouds? Did I miss something?

It's one of the features some people believe should be added before 1.0.

[Jacke]

Well, today's Devnote Tuesday is out. And the only references to calling the next version "1.0" was using that as the label for the next version. Not a word about that 3/4 of their player base think "1.0" is a bad idea and for well-thought reasons about how it will impact Squad and KSP.

Obviously Squad is ignoring this issue and hopes it just will go away. That's sad.

On second thought, maybe Devnote Tuesday would be the wrong place for such a statement. That statement would be difficult too.

Edited January 28, 2015 by Jacke

[Majorjim!]

So will there be a disk version at 1.0 release? Because I want.

[asheft]

Well, today's Devnote Tuesday is out. And the only references to calling the next version "1.0" was using that as the label for the next version. Not a word about that 3/4 of their player base think "1.0" is a bad idea and for well-thought reasons about how it will impact Squad and KSP.

Obviously Squad is ignoring this issue and hopes it just will go away. That's sad.

On second thought, maybe Devnote Tuesday would be the wrong place for such a statement. That statement would be difficult too.

My thoughts exactly. I was hoping they would at least address the issue in some way... I guess KasperVld did say he was listening to the discussions, but I personally thought that the impression he gave was that he was merely observing them, and not really passing on the arguments to Squad to consider. I really hope that they have a good reason for this...

[klgraham1013]

Well, today's Devnote Tuesday is out. And the only references to calling the next version "1.0" was using that as the label for the next version. Not a word about that 3/4 of their player base think "1.0" is a bad idea and for well-thought reasons about how it will impact Squad and KSP.

Obviously Squad is ignoring this issue and hopes it just will go away. That's sad.

On second thought, maybe Devnote Tuesday would be the wrong place for such a statement. That statement would be difficult too.

Max will probably make a statement on Reddit.

[KerBlam]

It seems to me that they have noted the concerns of the community, and are going ahead with the release anyway. Whatever their reasons are, they obviously believe that they are ready, or they wouldn't be doing it.

I think this thread has hashed over every concern that the community has had, repeatedly... If there was a good enough reason for SQUAD to delay the release and spend a bit more time in Beta, I think that's what they would be doing. These are smart guys... I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, even if the release isn't AAA standard, and full of bugs, it's not going to stop me playing KSP. I'll just be loading up my 0.90 game and love it all the same.

I can't tell how well the mainstream gaming community is going to pick up KSP... If I'm honest I'd say that a majority won't have the patience for the learning curve, and go back to playing Call of Duty. Hardcore gamers won't be impressed with performance on their x64 gaming rigs.

I think the Linux gaming community will take to it the most enthusiastically, and that's a reasonably small percentage of the market.

[FlowerChild]

Obviously Squad is ignoring this issue and hopes it just will go away. That's sad.

Unfortunately, it may not be incorrect either. One key point about the 75% figure is "and dropping". Was 80% a couple of days ago, and the longer this goes on, I suspect the smaller that number will get. I've been watching it rather closely and there's a steady downward trend there. My personal theory is that the longer it goes on, it slowly shifts from being dominated by the more hardcore forum goers that follow issues like this closely, to extend out into the more casual audience that may not feel as passionately about something like this and may not understand what all the hooplah is about in the first place.

I also eagerly scanned over the dev notes to see if there was any mention of this, and while I was disappointed there wasn't any, I wasn't entirely surprised either. They may not be able to answer these concerns at this time, beyond what they've already said. They may want to think it over longer before committing to any particular course of action. They may think the answers they've given are already sufficient and addressing it further will only serve to stir the kettle and focus people on it even more.

We just don't know right now.

[klgraham1013]

To me, it seems like they're moving forward to 1.0 simply because they don't like being labeled "early access." It's the same reason janitors are now sanitation engineers and home ec. is now...I don't know. My nephew told me what home ec. is now, and it's ridiculous.

- - - Updated - - -

Unfortunately, it may not be incorrect either. One key point about the 75% figure is "and dropping". Was 80% a couple of days ago, and the longer this goes on, I suspect the smaller that number will get. I've been watching it rather closely and there's a steady downward trend there. My personal theory is that the longer it goes on, it slowly shifts from being dominated by the more hardcore forum goers that follow issues like this closely, to extend out into the more casual audience that may not feel as passionately about something like this and may not understand what all the hooplah is about in the first place.

I also eagerly scanned over the dev notes to see if there was any mention of this, and while I was disappointed there wasn't any, I wasn't entirely surprised either. They may not be able to answer these concerns at this time, beyond what they've already said. They may want to think it over longer before committing to any particular course of action. They may think the answers they've given are already sufficient and addressing it further will only serve to stir the kettle and focus people on it even more.

We just don't know right now.

Even if it sways to 60% in favor. That's still 40% of people who think it's a bad idea. As of this moment, 73.27% think it's a bad idea.

[razark]

Max will probably make a statement on Reddit.

I was thinking twitter.

[FlowerChild]

Even if it sways to 60% in favor. That's still 40% of people who think it's a bad idea. As of this moment, 73.27% think it's a bad idea.

I think it would be very hard to predict how low the percentage could possibly go. I think all we really know is that just over 500 of what are probably some of the most hardcore forum goers/players that make up the overall KSP player base think it's not ready for release, and while I have no idea how many copies KSP has actually sold, I'd be willing to bet that's probably a rather small fraction of the overall number of players.

Statistics collected from polls are very funny things and are highly dependent on the context in which a question is asked and who winds up responding as a result. Even choosing to respond to a poll in the first place indicates a person has a particular interest in the topic at hand...or just really likes answering polls

Edited January 28, 2015 by FlowerChild

[Gus]

Unfortunately, it may not be incorrect either. One key point about the 75% figure is "and dropping". Was 80% a couple of days ago, and the longer this goes on, I suspect the smaller that number will get. I've been watching it rather closely and there's a steady downward trend there.

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.

[FlowerChild]

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.

True enough. Don't get me wrong, I still very much think making the next version the release version (unless additional modifications are made to the release process to provide mass testing) is a terrible idea, and I've probably been one of the most vocally opposed to it. However, I'd probably be just as vocally opposed to it, and just as convinced of it, if I were the only one that had that point of view. Minority of one and all that.

I just don't think that stats alone make a very compelling argument for anything, and that ultimately Squad will either hear the reasoning behind some of the arguments here and potentially modify their plan as a result, or they won't, and even if they do hear them, it's no guarantee they'll choose to respond to them.

Edited January 28, 2015 by FlowerChild