The mod dilemma of KSP

[justspace103]

Now that Harv has announced 1.0, i breathed a sigh of relief for the following reason:

I will no longer have to keep updating mods and starting new games.

1.0 is a sign for me that there is a very little chance of any game breaking update after 1.0

Has anyone else had the same dilemma?

[enneract]

I have no idea why you would think this?

You clearly don't understand WHY mods break after a game update.

[Vanamonde]

They've said there will be versions after 1.0, so don't count your chickens just yet.

[astropapi1]

... they're still going to keep doing regular updates after 1.0.

[merendel]

Since they said they will keep updateing the game chances are there will still be mod breaking patches. Unless they release a patch that ammounts to little more than adding/editing parts or makeing tweeks that mods already do there will be some breakage. They'd have to lock the base code of the game and never touch it agian to keep mods stable.

[NecroBones]

I think the truth will lie somewhere in the middle. Pre-release updates were very likely to break mods, since anything could change at any time, and entire new systems were being added. After "release", while they'll still be developing, those updates are less likely to be overhauls or wide-sweeping changes as compared to before.

Some mods update regularly because they're also still under development, and others are more stable and need to react to game changes. So I think some mods will slow down in updating, and some will not break after each update, but others always will.

I know with my parts pack, the main things that forced me to do updates were when they fixed the "rescaleFactor" bug, or changed how SAS worked. Stat-balance changes make me do updates too, but they're not as "breaking". Mods that use plugin code will break when there are changes to the internal APIs, which can of course still happen.

[DBT85]

Yeah, I'd say things are less likely to break, but that some are still going to break from time to time.

[justspace103]

They've said there will be versions after 1.0, so don't count your chickens just yet.

I guess ill have to wait a while longer

[klgraham1013]

You would assume any changes after 1.0 won't be game breaking. Unless Squad defines 1.0 different than nearly every other game company. I know 1.0 meant little to Minecraft, but that's one game compared to so many others which define 1.0 in a very specific way.

[Renegrade]

By the way, 1.0 is actually really just 0.27. Do NOT expect magical things that are not specifically mentioned in the features list. Alpha/Beta/Release barely meant anything historically, and means pretty much nothing today. And not just at Squad, either, it's a universal thing practically.

[rtxoff]

Nooooooo, 1.0 is the pink unicorn edition !!!

[klgraham1013]

By the way, 1.0 is actually really just 0.27. Do NOT expect magical things that are not specifically mentioned in the features list. Alpha/Beta/Release barely meant anything historically, and means pretty much nothing today. And not just at Squad, either, it's a universal thing practically.

I believe it actually means quite a bit, typically, in development.

Version numbers don't always work like real numbers. Did you actually think there would be 100 updates before 1.0?

[Renegrade]

I believe it actually means quite a bit, typically, in development.

Speaking AS a professional software developer, no... no they don't. It's just marketing fluff. 0.90, for instance, isn't some massive improvement over 0.25, nor any advancement to feature completeness (proof: take a look at the feature list for 1.0. How many of those features do we have right now? None? So we're obviously not feature-complete if the very next update will have a slew of new features).

Or let me put this another way: Windows 1.0 released almost 30 years ago - was it feature complete? Did it stop breaking backwards compatibility? Are you aware that Windows 8 is actually Windows NT 6.2? And that XP is NT 5.1? And that NT is essentially an OS/2 fork?

Any of the definitions, by the way, are just de-facto, poorly defined ideas that tricked down from IBM's traditional practices. There's no ANSI or ISO standard to these -- and even if there was, everybody would ignore it.

(Granted I've always worked on the back end/server side of things, but I've had to interact with the front end/user-software guys many times)

Version numbers don't always work like real numbers. Did you actually think there would be 100 updates before 1.0?

No. Where did I even suggest that?

Generally speaking though, a feature freeze has to occur at some point, followed by extensive testing and bugfix-ONLY releases before a release candidate makes it the release or "RTM" stage, assuming a traditional development model. Does it sound like Squad is following this? EA? Bioware? Microsoft? Adobe(lol)?

Squad's already indicated that they'll be continuing to improve and extend KSP past 1.0, and are already adding massive new features past "Beta". If we were in a classical IBMish beta, we'd not have seen any new features since 0.25.

The concept of a "final release version" is rather flawed anyhow, and actually giving way to the old continual-improvement/subscription model which predated it. (A good example is the Linux kernel - remember the odd-numbered experimentals? Nowadays a version is just picked at random for LTS and pinned for a while on the front page and provided with fixes-only. And again, all of these 3.x kernels are still just improved versions of 2.6)

TL;DR: It's just marketing hype. #lol1.0

[magnemoe]

Since they said they will keep updateing the game chances are there will still be mod breaking patches. Unless they release a patch that ammounts to little more than adding/editing parts or makeing tweeks that mods already do there will be some breakage. They'd have to lock the base code of the game and never touch it agian to keep mods stable.

Mods mostly break because of feature chances. new features seldom create much problems the same way features added in mods rarely create problems for other mods.

Amyway for DLC you will have to check for mod comparability before installing.

[klgraham1013]

snip

I suppose I misunderstood you. Let me put it this way. As a consumer, when I hear a game has gone gold, I expect a finished product. I'd imagine most consumers feel the same. ...or we could go ask those that bought AC: Unity or Halo: Master Chief collection.

I'll also add, I work in a production position, though, not software development. We have similar states to alpha, beta, and gold. If I were to say I had finished a project, that would mean a very specific thing. There's no wiggle room.

Squad has run into some semantic issues that must be dealt with.

[Renegrade]

I suppose I misunderstood you. Let me put it this way. As a consumer, when I hear a game has gone gold, I expect a finished product. I'd imagine most consumers feel the same. ...or we could go ask those that bought AC: Unity or Halo: Master Chief collection.

Oh um, yes, I agree with that. Or at least, that used to be the idea. (The states aside from that though are poorly defined, and generally unique to a given company)

My thoughts are basically this:

- The current version, although nice in many ways, is basically more of 0.23/0.24/0.25-style development, and not something I'd call a 'beta' in any way. It's rough, has problems, and many things left to do. I refer to it often as 0.26.

- The next version is not something that will change the style either, unless they somehow magically stuff another five years of development into the next six months. So really, it should be 0.27.

- Any bumps in the numbers are either extreme detachment from reality, or politically/marketing department motivated.

So I don't see anything like API or data format freezes with KSP 0.27, given that they already have plans beyond it... and that all this version number/status change things are just Moar Hype.â„¢.

And also that the reviewers are going to tear them a new one.

I'll also add, I work in a production position, though, not software development. We have similar states to alpha, beta, and gold. If I were to say I had finished a project, that would mean a very specific thing. There's no wiggle room.

Yeah, there should not BE any wiggle room. Squad's "1.0" is very premature if they're going for the classic concept of a finished product.

One thing I was trying to express above is that the old "finished product" thing is in some ways inferior to the even older concept that software is basically just one component in a solution, and it continues to adapt as the customer's needs change..and the Early Access/Beta/indy games are embracing that sort of design. My own software was employed in the 'ongoing service' sort of paradigm, and it has a number of advantages.