Is KSP dying?

[HafCoJoe]

Well one lesson I see clearly here is that the forum should grow more connected. I'm sending out a few friend requests I should've sent a while ago.

[Robotengineer]

"What's that, KSP? You're getting weaker? You're going to die? Oh no!

Wait...what? I can barely hear you.

You say that you'll get better if all the boys and girls out there just believe in kerbals?

Come on everybody! We can do it if we just believe!

Clap your hands if you believe in kerbals!

Clap your hands if you believe in version 1.0!"

Not gonna work. Only Squad can revive KSP. Kerbalus! Come forth! Like that.

[Astrofox]

Honestly, I too feel as if KSP is dying. HOWEVER! considering that many things die down after a while does not mean that it is officially dying, in other words, if KSP 1.0 comes out with something completely new, then people will be posting more about it, and creating more mods, so therefore no activity. So if we take this to a global scale, as Vsauce once said, we will never stop creating ideas. However, many ideas are derived from others, so this means that the "MOAR MODS" thing will occur, and therefore more posts each day. Also, if SQUAD created a commercial for KSP to air on TV, the popularity of the game would most likely rise, possibly about 10-60%, if not more. Why? well, since the answer is mostly clear, IF most people watch TV in their spare time, and most people want entertainment, so therefore, more profit and popularity. So KSP is technically not dying, as it will say within the next few years or so (and possibly sooner).

[royying]

I think KSP's situation like the MAC computer before 2006, only have slow CPU and have no way to help, only can hope the Motorola release a CPU that have better performance soon

[Lanfranc]

Don't be silly, KSP is doing fine. Stop worrying and learn to love the rocket booster.

[Aragosnat]

Since in a way it is. As people have become burnt out. (Been playing "The Witcher" myself lately. Beat Turok 2008 pc one on hard). They seem to slowly stop coming here or else where to post. Have not seen whackjob in a while as well as a few others. Think it is likely they are waiting for an update that radically changes the game. Maybe. I do agree that it seems like there are less new people coming here. Hopefully that will change with 1.0.

[Pipcard]

KSP is not dying.

The KSP community is way more active than the Orbiter community, and the latter isn't dying.

[montyben101]

I think the devs need to listen to some of our wishes...

[Xavven]

I think the devs need to listen to some of our wishes...

I love that they are currently listening to some of our wishes.

New aerodynamic model with procedural fairings

delta-v readings

Isp now affects thrust instead of fuel flow

Spaceplane+ parts

IVAs for everything

I've been on these forums for over a year and these are some of the most-requested things I've seen threads about. About the only majorly hyped request they aren't delivering on is Gas Planet 2.

[Plusk]

Ive stopped playing KSP with 0.90 release.

For me, performance issues grew bigger with every single update. And with 0.90, having less than half of my favorite mods and crashing every 20-30 minutes, ive snapped. My gpu is barely utilised, while my cpu can choke itself to death on certain parts. I can build 100-part space station that runs just fine, while having 5 fps with a single Mk1-2 pod on a launchpad...

And funny thing is, i can run most recent games with medium to high settings just fine.

Until some real multi-core support, and better gpu utilisation, i have to stick to my 23.5 career.

And dont get me wrong, i still love KSP, but id like to try newer versions, with all new fancy mods that come with them, without buying whole new Intel-based rig and switching to Linux, just to play a single game.

[your mom]

Back in my day seeing this much people on the forums right now would be unthinkable. It's not dying, just sleeping.

[Jouni]

And funny thing is, i can run most recent games with medium to high settings just fine.

Until some real multi-core support, and better gpu utilisation, i have to stick to my 23.5 career.

That day may never come. While your computer can show fancy graphics in simple games by throwing a lot of GPU cores to the task, it doesn't have the right kind of hardware to run KSP well.

Some tasks are inherently easier to parallelize than others. If you can split the task into multiple independent subtasks, each of them can be executed in parallel without interfering with the other subtasks. For example, KSP could spawn a new physics bubble for anything entering an atmosphere, and these bubbles could be simulated on separate CPU cores. Even the GPU, despite its poor single-core performance, could help with simple ships.

Parallelization becomes harder, when the subtasks have mutual dependencies, which require locks, syncronization, and other nasty things. The more the subtasks depend on each other, the less benefit you get from using multiple parallel threads. Simulating the forces affecting a 1000-part ship in KSP is a good example of problems like that. If the ship has a linear structure (e.g. a single stack without any struts), you can probably split it into multiple submodules that are mostly independent of each other, and simulate them in several threads without too much syncronization overhead. More complex ships (e.g. an Eve lander with 9 pairs of boosters and struts and fuel lines everywhere) are harder to split into submodules with only a few connections between the modules, so multi-threaded physics might not help with them at all.

[Sof]

It is between releases

Besides, it is a single player game. Why care so much if the forum is a bit quiet? If you enjoy it, play it. You don't need other people. I could be the only person in the world playing KSP and would be having as much fun as ever.

[Bigbootie]

Dying? Maybe. Not at my house though.

[Dingbat1967]

I think there's a definite slowdown that's for sure in terms of the community activity. I see it on Reddit. Many old faces don't seem to show up anymore (ie: Whackjob for instance).

1) Many prominent youtubers have either slowed down or completely stopped (ie: HOC Gaming, KurtJMac).

2) I feel that the newer versions of KSP don't bring that much more to the table other than more resource consumption. I just started playing 0.90 when the mods started stabilizing around it and frankly, I was having the same level of fun with 0.24.2 with a very well-balanced set of mods. So I think the game has reached a point of "homeostasis" to a certain extent. Whatever SQUAD adds, was already done by modders so the added value just isn't there IMHO.

3) Lack of new places to go to (yeah, I know, there are planet mods and all that but lets face it, unless you strip down your game close to Stock, these tend to consume a lot more RAM which causes stability issues) -- once you've been everywhere, multiple times.

4) The Reddit challenges ... seem to have petered out. The admins seem to have brought them back but even then, I don't see the energy and gusto that people were enjoying the first time around. I think it'd be just more productive to reroll out the old challenges for the newer players instead of inventing more weird ways to force play (ie: the upside down rocket challenge ... it's funny, but you know, getting players to do a good old Kerpollo again ... could be just as fun).

Anyhow, ... just a few things I feel may be behind some of this slowdown. Maybe the game just lost it's novelty now that it's "mainstream" ...

But I still play regardless. Can't wait for multiplayer to come out. That will put some life back into it.

[pandaman]

Dying? No I don't think so. It's just starting to reach maturity.

It's been through it's childhood and started 'big school' with v0.18. Since then it's grown into an 'unstable adolescent' and with v1.0 is about to start adulthood. It's changing to be a more complete, balanced and stable (hopefully) individual - and it's just discovered girls too .

It still has some growing up to do of course, but the next release is that first step into the big wide world outside.

Ok. Light hearted waffle aside, we are in that gap between releases, when activity slows down. We are all interested, excited and concerned about what's in v1.0 and how it will be received by the world. But this is a relatively long wait and squad needs to take it's time and get it as right as possible. But it's not dying, not by a long way, as far as I can tell.

[daffy]

It's just natural for this time of year. For the US side anyway. Tax return time, everyone's out and about, or getting the spring fever. A lot of people that do outdoors stuff in the spring are starting to get things together. Most Industry is pretty busy right now with the new quarter and real life is just occupying time.

[kStrout]

From my experience trying to get other people interested about the game, it's just too difficult for most people. Most games anyone can learn to be masterful because it requires skills specific to the game. KSP is different because it requires skills that are known to some people in real life. If you have never heard of orbital mechanics and have no experience in rocket science KSP is very difficult for you, and you would lose interest quickly. Of course there are people like us that understood the concepts and are very good at the game. This does have some advantages, these forums are one of few places online that consists of exclusively intelligent conversation.

[Robotengineer]

From the Steam usage graphs, it looks like KSP began gravity turn in April 2014. Which is when the .23.5 ARM patch was released. It hasn't gone down though, so it may still be coasting to Apoapsis, probably 1.0. How reliable is Steam data if half of players use the store?

[Roflcopterkklol]

Ive stopped playing KSP with 0.90 release.

For me, performance issues grew bigger with every single update. And with 0.90, having less than half of my favorite mods and crashing every 20-30 minutes, ive snapped. My gpu is barely utilised, while my cpu can choke itself to death on certain parts. I can build 100-part space station that runs just fine, while having 5 fps with a single Mk1-2 pod on a launchpad...

And funny thing is, i can run most recent games with medium to high settings just fine.

Until some real multi-core support, and better gpu utilisation, i have to stick to my 23.5 career.

And dont get me wrong, i still love KSP, but id like to try newer versions, with all new fancy mods that come with them, without buying whole new Intel-based rig and switching to Linux, just to play a single game.

So it is not just me crashing more often.

I can not even load these craft anymore, in earlier versions i could use them no worries, heck i could fly a white lightning to another white lightning and re fuel it in previous versions.

I have just been assuming that i have melted my graphics card building crap like these.

[boxman]

So it is not just me crashing more often.

I can not even load these craft anymore, in earlier versions i could use them no worries, heck i could fly a white lightning to another white lightning and re fuel it in previous versions.

I have just been assuming that i have melted my graphics card building crap like these.

I think the problem is that the new content keep using up more and more memory while KSP is stuck with limitations of 32bit. :\

I really wish they could just load whatever content on the fly when needed instead of loading every single part and texture into ram each time you start it up.

[Roflcopterkklol]

I think the problem is that the new content keep using up more and more memory while KSP is stuck with limitations of 32bit. :\

That sounds about right, i have been tempted to uninstall 0.90 and go back to 0.23, i liked that version the most.

I mean heck, the beast is still the best handling plane i ever built and it is one of the first planes i ever really tried hard on.

No chance of ever making a plane handle like that with the parts from 0.90, i have tried.

[MartGonzo]

I wanted to revert to 23.5 too for performance reasons but unfortunately I deleted all the old copies of my mods and finding the right versions of the 30 or so mods I'm running seems like a Herculean task.

It is definitely getting more unstable with each release and with all the new features being talked about for 1.0 I'm worried that it's going to use so much resources that modding will become essentially impossible.

(please nobody start on the Unity 5 will fix everything, there are half a dozen things squad could do right now to minimize CPU and memory load and they've shown they just aren't interested)

[boxman]

I wanted to revert to 23.5 too for performance reasons but unfortunately I deleted all the old copies of my mods and finding the right versions of the 30 or so mods I'm running seems like a Herculean task.

It is definitely getting more unstable with each release and with all the new features being talked about for 1.0 I'm worried that it's going to use so much resources that modding will become essentially impossible.

(please nobody start on the Unity 5 will fix everything, there are half a dozen things squad could do right now to minimize CPU and memory load and they've shown they just aren't interested)

And this is exactly why it makes no sense to move out of beta anytime soon. It would make sense to optimize it first and even do the unity 5 port before going to 1.0.

It is bad enough that it is unstable on release, but these changes will most likely create new bugs and break save games and mods as well. With a 1.0 release you dont really expect that save games and mods keep breaking with new patches.

[Motokid600]

A load on demand system needs to be implemented asap.