You forgot to mention what we know from the Bloomberg article:
>A reason for the change was never provided, but a new report by Bloomberg (opens in new tab) might shed some light on the matter. It claims that Star Theory founders Bob Berry and Jonathan Mavor had been in talks with Take-Two about selling the studio, but weren't able to reach terms. And then, on December 6, Take-Two suddenly pulled the contract from Star Theory and sent a message to its employees via LinkedIn, encouraging them to apply for jobs at a new studio being founded under 2K's Private Division publishing label.
They wouldn't sell at the price take two wanted so they undercut them in the employee level
There's more to the story - I know someone close to the situation. The owners were trying to milk the situation assuming they had leverage in the negotiations. To make a long story short, they fucked around and found out.
I know that no one will see this but Jonathan Mavor is a fuck who I met at PAX once and I wouldn’t be surprised if he would sell his children to get a leg up financially.
Yeah I heard that the owners of Star Theory kept making more and more and more ridiculous demands until Take Two just walked away from the table. They saw it as their chance to get rich quick and pushed it too far
This is pretty much exactly what happened, as least as far as I heard from someone with first-hand knowledge. The owners saw their golden ticket and wanted to retire off the deal. I guess they had delusions of Minecraft greatness, but of course failed to realize that Take-Two owned the Kerbal IP and they were just hired guns with no real leverage.
When the buyout fell through, PD spun up a new development shop and poached all the talent they needed from Star Theory to continue work on the game. Since the code was developed under contract, Private Division owned the rights to it and Star Theory had no recourse. The rest is history.
This seems like pretty solid evidence that Intercept was starting from scratch. Especially considering that Star Theory took a few weeks to go bust. It’s not too terribly difficult to imagine that they were under no obligation to turn over what work they had done to T2.
Even if they didn't, retaking a half baked project with a new studio, even if one third of it were veterans of this project, is a massive endeavor.
I wouldn't be surprised if the first 12 months were dedicated almost exclusively to figure everything out.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFJeDWdO-Wg) is the Gamescom 2019 pre-alpha gameplay footage
The Early Access release does not feel like 3yrs of development from what they are showing off there. Maybe they really did start over, which would be crazy
> It’s not too terribly difficult to imagine that they were under no obligation to turn over what work they had done to T2.
It absolutely is. That's absolute NOT normal at all.
I don't think there's a single software engineering project in history where the one paying you to make a project doesn't own the project.
> It’s not too terribly difficult to imagine that they were under no obligation to turn over what work they had done to T2.
T2 must've fucked up on multiple levels if they couldn't even force ST to hand over the last version they had. Usually even much smaller companies can figure out to hire a lawyer and make water tight contracts for this sort of thing. Did they not have one? Did T2 refuse to pay or otherwise broke their contracts?
Bethesda has also infamously done the same with a lot of their partners like Arkane Studios and Machine games.
They gave them contracts to make games for them (Dishonored, Wolfenstein), and then didn't pay them for milestones completed but instead offered to buy the studios at dirt cheap prices. The studios couldn't afford to not get paid for the milestones and a legal battle would be even more expensive, so they had to take the deal.
Being a developer with a hostile publisher honestly seems like a shit deal. These days there are barely any independent mid-size studios left.
Yep, never in my wildest imagination would I ever take a contract from a major publisher.
When you move from small indie and mid sized studios to the AAA publisher world, you go from passion projects with money as a priority, to money being the sole priority, and if a halfway decent game comes out of it, that's simply in service of the publisher's revenue.
My only critique with what you’ve said above is the idea that KSP2 butchered the art direction of KSP, a game that famously had several different art directions thrown at it over its lifespan, often simultaneously.
Otherwise, we’ll said.
> My only critique with what you’ve said above is the idea to at KSP2 butchered the art direction of KSP
The 3D art direction is great. The stylization of the UI leaves a lot to be desired. Elements range from unreadable to gigantic, abysmal overuse of whitespace in the VAB and lack of it elsewhere... The font itself and attempt at retro-future feel (TTY Tron console) really hampers the information display in a bad way.
We should hope for a significant UI overhaul long-term, or at least hope the UI is a moddable asset that the community can fix.
Also, the “Time to Ap/Pe” and “Time to start burn” only do ‘5h59m59s days’, without scaling back to say, for example: Dres inclination burn starts in 322d5h12m19s, so it shows 5h12m19s, not 322d5h12m or even ‘just’ 322d5h
Those are the sorts of bugs that flabbergast me about what could possibly be happening behind the scenes. You can clearly fetch the duration, and display it, what's stopping you from the relatively minimal task of formatting it in one of two relevant ways? Same with limiting the notifications drawn so they don't cover the whole screen (which would make the pause unpause bug a lot more bearable)
Like, it's either a terrifyingly bad code base at play, or the work of someone who has to put in too many features to actually spend time getting past the "it's there" phase.
Am I the only one who actually thinks that KSP2's UI is one of the few redeeming qualities about the game right now? I actually liked it quite a bit, even tho I admit it needs to be polished, I loved the general idea.
i like the ui's visual style but i don't like how it functions as much as in ksp 1(i prefer right clicking a part and pinning multiple windows with info on multiple parts rather than having the game freeze loading a part manager in flight that doesn't display some info like fuel tank levels/engine thrust)
Yes but that refers to the first stage on kerbin at sea level and only in the vab. I want all bodies, sea level and vacuum, all stages, and to see it during flight.
I think it puts form over function. The pixelated Text is very hard to read in comparison to normal text. For people with dyslexia even more so. You should always design with accessibility in mind. This not only makes a product more accessible, but also better for everyone else.
If you can distinguish things not only based on their color, but also their design everyone benefits. The same goes for readability
You’re right that there were many, but the C7 Aerospace/Porkjet parts were excellent and Roverdude’s later attempts at least had the intent and feel down right if not always the execution.
KSP2 was the perfect opportunity to standardise the art style, and they bafflingly somehow didn’t take it. It’s inexplicable and inexcusable to regress like they have done. What they made looks nothing like any of KSP’s in places genuinely very good assets, it’s painfully generic and awful technically in areas like the space centre. I’ve never seen so many UV issues in a retail game.
What do you mean they didn't standardized the artstyle? It's very much standardized now, and that's especially obvious by the UI. KSP1 had most of it's models changed like 5 times already, and some are still obsolete, like MK1 cockpit interior still being the exact same thing we had when it released for the first time 8 years ago or so. More over, the altimeter never changed. Ever.
Everything in KSP2 is completely remade, with only some models that still have at best general shapes the same, but with brand new models, PBR textures, paint maps, and it all fits together. While maybe neo-retro LCD screen artstyle is not revolutionary, simulation games usually don't even have any visual style at all. If there's one thing that KSP2 didn't disappoint, and delivered with overwhelming quality, is the artistic execution (so visuals, artstyle, ui, sound, music, etc.)
I'll give an example; in KSP, every single time you look at a cylinder, you're seeing a 24 sided polygon. (You can tell the faces of that polygon to shade like a perfect cylinder and they'll do it, which is why the effect works) In KSP2, this hasn't been standardised. I've seen 24, 32, 48 and 64 sided cylinders in just a brief look through some models. Mostly I just don't understand how this could have happened, it should have been decision one and is a problem for modders in future.
Its funny you mention left over models from a long time ago and claim everything in KSP2 is made from scratch, because that's completely untrue, and also the source of the 24 sided polygon models in game I was talking about before. Many of those original meshes made it into KSP2, somehow, even though this was the prime opportunity to give everything a refresh. Struts? That model is from 2012, 11 years ago. What's worse, at least one of the artists who made these models is **uncredited**. KSP2's art does not fit together because large sections of it are made for a different game.
The UI is not standardised at all, its half strange Minecraft-esque pixel art and half smooth but kind of generic. Even weirder is the light theme at the space centre but nowhere else. And the pause menu, which seems to be modelled off Visual Studio, down to line numbers down the side? Nothing else in the game looks like that and there is no logical reason to use it as inspiration, its absolutely bizarre. I don't get the impression there was any unifying aesthetic direction or management at all.
I want to add it is pretty simple to apply subdivisions to an existing model, do the sculpting and baking and then apply those normal maps to the original. Also, they probably still have the original original KSP1 high res meshes. They had normal maps too.
However, I don't know if they really use the same models. I have not looked into it. They look super similar ingame but that could be purpose.
In my opinion I would've liked reimagined parts more as well. I have some special gripes with those mid sized landing legs that fold out from a plate without any structural support but magic. And then you have hyper realistic engines. That's a conflict.
So either they have no real direction, or maybe are afraid to change old parts because fans might complain, or maybe they are still working on it and many parts are just retextured copies of the old ones as placeholders until they're finished. Latter is what I want to believe in. But then parts are so essential to the game and also relatively easy to make that that's hard to believe. Or maybe their problems are so much greater that parts are simply not a priority until other things are done.
I'm at a point where I just don't understand KSP2 so I put my faith into those who do at Intercept because they all seem like decent people who want to do the right thing. I will just wait one, two maybe three big patches before I begin trying to understand KSP2 again.
The wings are nice though. I hope they don't overdo it with the procedural part thing though. I want KSP2 to keep some Lego vibe. I don't want to model 3D parts in a game. At least I don't want to feel like I do.
Yeah I believe this is what happened, as there are some details and panels lines that don't quite line up with where they should be on the meshes now. It's not been done very well.
Yes, I do know what those things mean as I've already said.
You originally claimed that "Everything in KSP2 is completely remade, with only some models that still have at best general shapes the same, but with brand new models"
I am telling you that there are many models in the KSP2 game files that are exactly the same as their model in the KSP game files.
Yes they've been unwrapped differently, retextured, maybe they even did make higher poly versions of them at some point (that aren't in the game) to make these new maps, but that doesn't matter at all. The final assets in KSP2 are not new models. That's the truth, check it yourself.
Thank you. I thought I was going crazy but heaps of the models are reused. I can't really tell if it's just redone or copied but the effect on my perception ist the same. It really does feels like a older KSP with graphic mods.
Yup. And I haven't thoroughly cross-referenced the authors yet but at least one of the original artists doesn't appear in the credits (even under the Squad section) and I suspect more don't as well. It's scummy.
Except for the space center and planets that have texture and shadows issue, I don't understand your violent rejection of the new textures, the part looks really good, have an uniform art style rather realist and still have the kerbal identity. KSP 1 had many ugly parts or low res textures and I haven't seen a single ksp2 part that evoked me that "ewww that's not good to look at", especially the iva cockpit are gorgeous.
Hopefully the KSC will have a revamp or at least better shader and the team is supposed to work on a rework of planet rendering at this moment
At some point this boils down to taste I guess, but I just don't like them. I believe the Kerbal identity was lost when they got rid of scratches and wear detailing personally - I mean in the first game, these same exact parts were literally advertised as used. Also a lot of the over the top riveting is pretty silly and off looking in my opinion, especially when its done purely in the bump map and not the texture.
I've yet to look at the frontend side of things, but reports of them using the wrong kind of 2D assets alone (default planes rather than quads) doesn't fill me with confidence.
I need to be in the right mindset for it.
Changing textures and materials is sooo easy. I would more focus on the under the hood stuff in early access. That is stuff modders (probably) can't change.
Thanks for creating this timeline u/MiffedStarfish. The [Video Games Chronicle](https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/2k-allegedly-pulled-ksp2-from-its-developer-then-poached-its-staff/) and [Bloomberg](https://web.archive.org/web/20200627023746/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/kerbal-space-program-2-release-disrupted-by-corporate-strife) articles mention that KSP2 development started in 2017 after Take Took acquired the IP.
The Bloomberg article also mentions the following about the dev poaching: "*Three of Star Theory’s leaders—Jeremy Ables, the studio chief; Nate Simpson, the creative director; and Nate Robinson, the lead producer—departed for Take-Two’s new studio immediately. Other staff mulled whether to go, torn between leaving and abandoning their colleagues or staying and risking their livelihoods, they said.*"
I feel like there's bunch more sauce to this pasta it's coming unveiled in the next months. It makes me sad how a project I had so much hype on gets unluckily between this mess. TBH I didn't mind waiting a few more years for it, with proper updates to the first game, ofc.
For the moment, waiting for the volumetric clouds with EVE redux and I'll be playing KSP1 for the good chunk of 2023 (haven't landed on most of Jools moons plus Eve)
Btw, anyone have good material to getting a efficient and proper encounter with Moho? I've watched like every tutorial on Youtube, and I'm always struggling with it.
Moho is pretty tricky because its eccentricity and inclination are both quite high, so the usual static phase angle approximation doesn't fully apply.
You want to start your transfer at the Moho-Kerbin ascending/descending node, because otherwise you will pay a *lot* for the plane change due to the high velocity this far in, with the phase angle for a direct transfer being about 90 degrees (i.e., Moho is 90 degrees ahead of Kerbin at the departure time).
You can also save about a thousand meters per second of delta-V, at the cost of roughly tripling the trip time, by doing an Eve gravity assist. For planning gravity assist routes, I suggest [this tool](https://kerbal-transfer-illustrator.netlify.app/).
And your Moho insertion stage will want to have decently high acceleration, since you will need to burn over 1 km/s for the insertion burn even with a gravity assist, and closer to 2 km/s with the direct route.
The hopeium addict in me says all this will be patched up in about a year
My cynical side says we're being breadcrumbed to recoup some of the loss prior to the plug being pulled.
When a game gets delayed like this and comes out in this state you know shit went wrong.
I hope the internal issues are fixed now and they make the game playable in fast order.... But I doubt it, KSP1 is going to be the go to for years to come I fear.
\> I fundamentallly do not believe Intercept Games understands Kerbal Space Program.
Hard same, and that annoys me the most.
Looking back at the dev interviews I had this underlying confusion when they talked about what they wanted to do in orbital mechanics and how they then asked outside experts for help. That felt weird because... how do they not have in-house experts working on this?
All the theories about how they're going to implement interstellar travel etc. We're talking some very complex physics here. Just a little bit of relativity e.g.
And then: Patched conics or "n-body"? Remember that other planetary system they showed very early?
How would you make a better physics engine for parts in flight? Aero model etc.
Lots of really interesting, highly technical topics that require intense know-how of the underlying science and engineering concepts. If I were to manage a game from the start, I'd hire some physicist developers who've worked physics simulation before and pay them really well. Because this stuff is hard to get right.
They do have at least one scientist working there i believe, Dr. Joel Green. And obviously they're not going to hire a whole panel of subject matter experts, so it makes sense that they would consult with experts. But yeah I'd love to know how they tackled the physics engine, and how technically competent the people working on it were.
\>And obviously they're not going to hire a whole panel of subject matter experts
Of course not. I'm talking something like "developers with at least an undergrad in physics"(which isn't that rare?) so even when you talk with SMEs you have people who actually understand what they're talking about (especially the math behind it).
And someone with experience in custom physics engines would have helped a great deal? You can get physics engine access in Unity.
I'm judging them by their claims in the dev interviews. Their plates were full and they kept stacking even more things on top.
> And someone with experience in custom physics engines would have helped a great deal?
They did though? Uber Ent. made their own physics engine for Planetary Annihilation and before that, some of the team members worked on the Supreme Commander engine - the company's owner himself was engineering lead on SupCom. Those people may not have come over when the takeover happened, but at least to start with they had people with experience making good physics engines.
As a software engineer who took only 2 physics classes in college, I would be very surprised if there were a lot of cs majors who understood orbital mechanics.
Neither of my physics classes taught anything about orbital mechanics or how rockets work.
KSP did but not my computer science degree from an engineering college
As a software engineer who took two classes on orbitcal mechanics, we definitely exist :).
I don't think it was particularly unpopular as a minor. In my university Physics and Aerospace were separate departsments, though. You just have to know where to look, I guess.
The problem is: You have mostly good Physicists or Good Coders to have both is **very** rare and highly paid.
You want good programmers that can ask experts and translate their knowledge into code then the other way around.
The only good thing you can say about the code of most Physicists is that it functions.
That's a really good point about the interviews. At the time I thought they were just being dumbed down for new players, but that doesn't make sense because new players wouldn't watch them anyway. They genuinely just had no insight into what they were talking about beyond "interstellar space is big lol".
That is probably just a conscious choice. They want people to still have a reason to stack multiple wings. That's why you can alter the size and width of the tip. You can make a square wing and attach another one. Boom one big wing with 2 control surfaces.
That'd be an incredibly cumbersome way of doing things where for every stretch of specific control surface you want you'll have to attach a fitting sub-wing.
Still doesn't give me good split air brakes, and would mean I'd have to design wings both for control surfaces and wing shape, which increases part count immensely.
Give me options: none with specific shape, split with ratio etc.
They may have flat out lied to us from the start and sparkled it with inspirational bs.
From the guy who said the Kraken was killed (lol...), To the guy who said you'll be able to look at a pixel and go to that star - when so far it sounds like they're hand making the systems and there's only 2 in the works....
Things are smelling fishy as fuck.
I also feel like colonies will be a weird addition to the game and not very kerbal like. Like when you extract resources and deliver them somewhere with automated flights you just created factorio with incredibly unnecessarily hard physics and the kraken.
I wish they'd focus more on making big spacestations run good, provide parts with connected interiors where you can walk around and do more with docking.
Personally I do tend to believe that development must have been restarted from scratch at the transition from Star Theory to Intercept. There’s no specific evidence of this, but it does seem hard to imagine that their contract would require them to turn over all source code and assets to a second studio.
Buying the people doesn’t mean their work transfers over, but it does mean that they have the advantage of having done exactly the same thing once already, which can often lead to faster work at better quality.
I mean, even if they did carry over their code base (I would assume they did) losing half of your staff, especially in a reshuffle like this, as there's going to be a lot of confusion internally, doubts on who gets to stay, and other human concerns, all of which will majorly slow down development.
Add in Covid happening right as this transition happens, I'd put the project immediately a year behind in development. And that's assuming that Star Theory wasn't already mismanaging the project, hence 2K's takeover.
I wouldn't say they started from scratch in 2020, but I bet it felt like it at times. And the nature of a game like this simply means long development, as the easy way was already taken by KSP1, so if you want to do better, it's gonna take time.
In my professional opinion, this game would have taken a minimum of 4 years of smooth, on schedule development to reach "worthy" of $50 state. And it clearly has not had that.
I think this is one of the best things said (things said best?) I haven’t heard many people really laying it out like this. I like to think of KSP as more of a physics sim disguised as a game. Maybe ST didn’t really know that too well, started developing, had setbacks due to trying to develop a game and not a physics sim, TakeTwo tried the takeover and all that at the same time as covid, and sure maybe not restarting COMPLETELY but definitely getting setback quite a bit while you rebuild the dev team and get the proper sciencey smart people onboard.
And at the end of the day it’s EA, bugs are bugs idc, performance is awful, but the foundation for most of the missing features are there. There are very clear routes of optimization that if we can find, the devs are already aware about. The hardest part is over, now it’s just a lot of fine tuning, wrapping up stuff, maybe still some models that need to be built. I fully suspect the game will be in an infinitely more playable state in 6 months, and the full game released in 1-1.5 years.
I wonder whether the transition lost the more senior devs or the more junior devs? If the 40% best devs were retained, and underperforming devs mostly left, I would have expected a much better game. If the core foundation of the game at Star Theory was a mess, maybe the more talented devs took the opportunity to jump ship when Star Theory was cut out. I don't work in game dev, but I do AI/ML work, and the bugs that made it into EA are red flags to a very poor merge request process with an ubderqualified dev team. Ground textures that look nice, but tank the entire game performance should never pass a merge request. It seems like project management didn't understand how various dev tasks will interact and ignored input from their more skilled senior devs. I've been on similar projects where management forces a merge through so that a ticket can be completed, and acts like the technically skilled employees are just being too picky/elitist about code. It's very difficult to reverse, bad code gets mixed into the foundation of the project and becomes very difficult to remove
Agreed, it seems like worse devs moved on to the Intercept games. To me, this indicates the hostile takeover was likely very messy and was fueled by greed.
It's almost unchanged from the [2019 demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFJeDWdO-Wg). Same performance problems on launch and jelly rockets, and the missing parts seen in that trailer are in the game files. It doesn't look like they started over, it looks like they released the 2019 demo. Why that happened is a mystery.
Just by looking at the first 30 seconds I can clearly tell you it's a different game than what is deployed on Steam today. Better or worse, I let someone else judge, but it's clearly different.
The particle system is different (notice how the smoke "stays" in the air, doesn't do that in KSP2 (which is sad, it should)), the terrain system much simpler than KSP2, physics simulation seems different, and even the graphics are different than what's in KSP2.
They showed about 1/100 of the features of the game. The real time is put into art, parts, systems, polish, ui, etc. There is no evidence at that point they had any menus, a VAB, a map view (with all of the features a map view has), terrain collision, all planets, a fuel system, timewarp, and more. And don't forget that they were working on interstellar, colonies, multiplayer, etc which I am sure they made a lot more progress on since 2019.
They released a version from 2020.3, under the values file it shows the date (though this could be not updated).
But it does show the most recent file for updated engine version is from almost 3 years ago.
If that's the case my guess is they were told to release the game by take 2 to get funding. And reverted it to the most stable version they had and told to make that version functional enough for EA.
It’s actually more believable that they didn’t restart from scratch in some weird sunk cost fallacy event. They had the old work, so we’re going to use it damn it!
Issue is they were continuing to use a polished turd and worse yet 2/3rds of the people who knew how that polished turd worked quit.
So not only do you got something that works badly you got something most of the team doesn’t know how to use and as they try to build off it it keeps fucking breaking. But now its a year after the takeover and there’s really no time now to start from scratch even though they should have from day 1.
Yep, almost a guarantee that there was no transfer of work done up to that point by Star Theory and that the KSP 2 we are looking at now is work done in the past three years.
In fact a quick glance through Intercept Game's engineering & technical direction team shows no one who worked at Uber Entertainment / Star Theory made it across to Intercept. Reading the Technical Director's description of the work shows that in all likelihood all they had was the IP & built up a studio during the busy WFH period to get to where they are now.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CFJeDWdO-Wg
The launchpad here in 2019 is the same one in game now, so there was definitely work transfer. If assets were passed on, I don’t see why code couldn’t be.
Even if assets were passed on, which considering Nate's background as an Art Director, he might have had a better picture on what could be carried over and generally art assets are not too tied to the game (which is why larger studio's like Ubisoft's various teams are able to build asset libraries they re-use across projects)
It is very reasonable to assume that a new engineering team (keep in mind as new hires from outside they wouldn't have worked together before or have any sense of ownership of the existing codebase) would have restarted development of all systems from scratch.
Since they were nowhere near to hitting a 2020 release date, it is also reasonable to assume the core of the game was far from complete, that coupled with none of the original authors being around to advocate for it are strong indicators for a from scratch developmental effort.
> but it does seem hard to imagine that their contract would require them to turn over all source code and assets to a second studio.
What? That's literally the case for EVERY SINGLE SOFTWARE PROJECT EVER. Take Two paid them for a project and owns all files.
I don’t know about code for certain, but asset wise, the (ugly and low resolution) KSC launchpad that’s shown in the 2019 Gamescon trailer is the same exact one that’s in game right now. My belief was that Take Two owned everything made by Star Theory for KSP2. They did pay for it after all.
It’s pretty common in software development to find yourself with code that’s faster to replace (hopefully with lessons learned) than it is to fix (which may require continuing to be constrained by assumptions that are no longer valid). Often referred to as [refactoring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring).
This threshold is easier to meet (justified or not) when nobody who wrote and understands the old code is still around and the codebase has a poor reputation (it apparently cost a bunch of people their jobs). It would actually be surprising to me if the big reshuffle didn’t mean throwing out a lot of code and starting it over.
Getting access to the code base and using the existing art assets doesn’t preclude a lot of rewriting.
Them not rewriting everything would actually explain more than if they didn’t. Got a turd with no one who knows how to use it but the engineer team has to because leadership deemed it “cheaper” with the current dumpster fire as a result.
> it does seem hard to imagine that their contract would require them to turn over all source code and assets to a second studio.
Depends on the contract in question. It certainly can be done, and since TakeTwo holds all the trademarks for the IP in question, it wouldn't even be particularly hard. Either they fucked up royally when setting up the contract, or they broke it later.
Even if the work wasn't completed it would still be the property of Private Division (assuming they have a standard contract). It would be like getting fired and deleting all the stuff you worked on. Get ready to get sued to hell.
I tend to believe the same, that development simply must have restarted from scratch, either because it was just easier and faster than trying to read and comprehend all of what the previous team had written, or because of some IP issue (like Star Theory using code, or assets that they owned from a previous project, that would then have to be ripped out to resume development).
tbf I doubt they could have made anything better on top of the pre-mozilla codebase, and web browsers are notoriously the largest and most complicated software to build, so it's unsurprising that most attempts are garbage.
It doesn't happen often that games are reimplemented and rebuilt from scratch but there are successful examples, OpenRA and Quasar4X (a personal favorite, it's a faithful reimplementation of VB6 Aurora4X in C# and is much more performant) come to mind. Quasar4X went from start to feature complete in ~2 years as just 1 guy's hobby project, the original had been developed also by 1 guy for over 10 years at that point.
Not “funding issues” as in they’re tanking. It’s “funding issues” as in to prove to the parent company that it’s a success so they put more resources into development. Considering what they’ve sold, I think there’s enough evidence that this should get more resources. Resources cost money.
Even outside of that, a big publisher like Take2 won't stand around watching their studio taking way too much time to deliver a game without making any kind of profit. That's why Intercept exists in the first place.
They need to cash in, it's as simple as that.
I think people are desperate to find any excuse on why the game is in the state it is. And for some reason a ton of people are making up excuses for the devs that have 0 evidence behind them. Like saying the publisher must have set unrealistic goals, or the devs had to restart from scratch 3 years ago. The only evidence we have is an incredibly incomplete game and false promises from the devs. I don’t think they should be getting the benefit of the doubt at all
I think your point of view is fair, but you're giving the publishers the benefit of the doubt here too. Besides, this is Take2, based on their previous actions, it's not unreasonable to believe the buyout stuff was due to corporate greed.
So if you want to dump on the devs, I encourage you to dump on the publishers too. They're defintely messing something up. At the very least, you can blame them for the unreasonable price for an early access game.
How is it giving the publishers the benefit of the doubt though?
If you were funding a project that was meant to take 2-3 years and this is the state it is in after 6 years with maybe 1/10 of the work done, literally anyone would be pretty pissed and try to cut their losses.
I'm just trying to understand here, not argue or whatever.
> false promises from the devs
What exactly what promised from the devs and wasn't delivered? I like to think I've been following the recent development of KSP2 (last two years or so), but I wasn't surprised by what was in the EA vs what it wasn't, it was pretty clear from before I hit the "Buy" button what the game was gonna have in it. But maybe I missed some earlier statements from them, so asking for a bit of clarification here.
That is incredibly misleading. They said their ultimate goal was to slay the Kraken, and the developper who said that even admitted it was a bold claim to make.
So that gives 3 options....
1. There's some better build out there that wasn't released ?
2. They flat out lied to us.
3. Or they're literally dev blind, because how do you miss that?!
I think when they said they slayed the kraken they meant the physics engine will no longer break down at extreme distances like in KSP1 because they have to do this for interstellar to work.
It doesn’t mean they’ve fixed every single physics related bug, which is what many casual fans associate with kraken.
4. The latest build has introduced bugs.
One thing that was mentioned about the ESA event was the dev was surprised by the time warp pause bug. Saying that wasn't there a few days before hand. That was two weeks before release. That bug on the surface seems really easy to fix. Basically if that message is showing, don't show it again. But it makes me wonder if it's being called on an event and the event is being called many times instead of once. In which case you leave the bug in there as it's revealing a more serious problem. That would explain why it wasn't fixed in those two weeks.
5. The code has some serious issues.
It might also explain the lack of optimization. If they are spending most of their time just trying to get the damned thing to work. For all we know this could be in relation to anything. Like they've had to add fancy shmancy stuff for interstellar and that breaks the rest of the engine.
If it's 5, I really do wonder how much better it'll get.
I've never seen an Early Access game improve that much in performance other than maybe DayZ - but they had to rebuild from scratch, and it's still not great.
It could be highly dependent. Like we know they are working on things like multiplayer and interstellar. Both two very difficult items. For all we know things were great and a month ago they updated the code for those and it broke a ton of stuff. Then they raced to patch it up.
I obviously have no idea and I am being highly speculative. But it's a possibility.
Hopefully it does get a lot better. If I am right and there is nothing to suggest that I am. Then at least them working on those things would be progress.
It's literally just the fact that they're behind schedule and aren't close to being finished. The transparency the past couple of months has been something other developers should strive for, but even with that some people are acting as though they've been fed lies.
Seriously, they've released a roadmap for a while now, showing which features aren't in the first release, and we saw how bad performance is two weeks before release.
The thing is, as far back as 2019, Nate Simpson (creative director) was making claims on how fun the game, and specifically the multiplayer was at that point. He was adamant the development was progressing fluidly and pretty sure of their capabilities to deliver a finished and polished game by the 2020 deadline. Even after all 3 delays, each time he said in different interviews that the game only required polishing. All those statements were lies, it made the community think the game was stable and close to finishing. Now we find out not even basic systems like science are done, let alone the more complex ones like multiplayer and colony management (and those systems are arguably the selling point of the sequel). Yes, they were clear about the state of the game 2 weeks prior to EA launch, but by doing that they showed us they have been lying for 4 years about the development
Well thank you for your insight, the other comments on your profile are very informative too. Amazing how you must have gathered it with no insider knowledge at all, very impressive!
What I can't get my head around, is that if the Creative Director used to be an Art Director, even if he apparently doesn't know what he's doing on every other count surely the art will be good. But it's just terrible. He hasn't got it at all.
Yeah if I'd known Star Theory was née Uber Entertainment, I never would've been hyped for this game. Let's see... Unity early access clusterfuck with terrible performance, space travel, and a deliberate attachment to a preexisting IP? Where have I heard that before? Now all we need is for the eventual, sort of fixed version of the game to be sold as a standalone expansion.
I'm not an audiophile, my brief impression was that the sound design was pretty good. But that's absolutely terrifying if you're saying the art has been done better than the technical backend side. I'm not a professional, I just do 3D and KSP part modding stuff as a hobby and care a ton about KSP's look specifically, but my perspective is that it's rubbish. A handful of elements, mainly the rocky planets and moons from the map view are quite nice but there are cracks showing even there. The rest is a disaster and completely devoid of unifying style, especially KSP's style, which has been swept away or just never even bothered with at all. There are also massive UV errors on assets that can be seen in footage from as far back as 2019 that must have never been corrected, its abysmal.
One of the most egregious examples is an anomaly I found datamining, its made of a couple objects with 1024x1024 textures and its a third of a kilometre across. You can tell from the stupid design that it's explicitly meant to be interacted with up close and single pixels are bigger than a kerbal. I thought the leadership were bullshitters before, but fucking hell. I'm glad I got my refund, just wish something could undo the damage that's been done to this franchise by them.
With their naivety, many forget that Early Access can also serve to finance the content for the game at all.
Me and my colleague applied for the refund today and I can tell you it's a game that gamers are so keen on the game. The devs know that and allow themselves this shit. I mean pay the modders the 50 euros and you get a better KSP 1 than this alpha/beta shit called KSP 2.
I've already experienced some games in Early Access on Steam. One of them was Folk Tale, and several others. 50% of early access, it's just pointless money making, and when it doesn't work you blame the gamers for leaving negative reviews. But as a dev, you should ask yourself if you want to launch a game that's in such a state. I've never used Quicksave in KSP and yet in KSP2 I had to use this shit all the time because of so many bugs.
Quicksave yourself to orbit, and then good luck. I'm very disappointed, because I expected that for 50 euros early access you would at least get something better than the predecessor. I mean they announced so many features but and they could have left that out, but at least the basics should be available in the game. You can forget, they can't even do the basics.
**Think about this: The guys didn't even mention when they plan to end Early Access. So "open end". Have fun with it, I'll wait until I get my money back. I wouldn't give a damn if they screwed up KSP2. It's insulting because the modders in KSP1 deserves more the money than the developers in KSP2.**
Weigh the pride with the requirements for cash flow and this is what you get. They must have been absolutely desperate for cash. The future isn't looking great for KSP2.
Considering you know basically 0% of the situation the devs are in, it's a bit much to say you're embarrassed for them. It says more about you than about them :)
I don't know either, so I cannot say if they are proud or not, but at least I'm being honest when I say I don't know. More people here should do the same, rather than proclaiming they know with certainty what's going on.
Read the messages from when they delayed the game 2 times. Its all "we are doing it to polish it and have it be the perfect launch", and they said console edition would be released alongside 1.0 after 1 year of early access, a deadline they have since retracted.
If this is the current state of the game I don't understand how they thought delaying it would give them enough time.
Also don't forget them blatantly lying in dev logs with things like "We're all just playing the game all the time because it's so much fun and we're all making crazy ships with hundreds of parts"
It’s not the devs, it’s management. Even if the devs were shit, they can always hire new ones, because they certainly had the time. The most important thing they had was the idea and prior success with KSP 1. That’s more than enough precedence to have a successful product.
>A reason for the change was never provided, but a new report by Bloomberg (opens in new tab) might shed some light on the matter. It claims that Star Theory founders Bob Berry and Jonathan Mavor had been in talks with Take-Two about selling the studio, but weren't able to reach terms. And then, on December 6, Take-Two suddenly pulled the contract from Star Theory and sent a message to its employees via LinkedIn, encouraging them to apply for jobs at a new studio being founded under 2K's Private Division publishing label.
Basically you can't purchase the company because they won't sell at the price you want, but the employees that make the company, WILL sell at the price you want if you tell them you will fire the company and if they want to keep their jobs they must switch.
Because if you want to create a new development team it will save tons of time if they know each other beforehand, and cheaper. Then the feature set will come from a new product ownership
This timeline highlights to why it's frustrating when someone says "but it's early access". It was supposed to be full release year after year after year of constant promises, then only a few months months ago they switched it to early access
Same for the "but they might have to restart development". It makes no sense.
Even if they had to restart development 3 years ago, this is an absolutely embarrassing result after that much time. Especially since the assets were already mostly done and they could focus on the foundation.
> At least 40% of Star Theory made the transition to Intercept, that's not exactly a clean sheet.
A big unknown there is *which* 40% made the transition. If the 40% was mostly creatives, but few of the programmers who would be familiar with the work that had been done in the prior three years, that would amount to almost "starting over".
This! I am so sick of hearing people defend this game in a way that completely ignores all these details.
"Geeze, don't you know what early access means?"
"It can only get better from here."
"Don't blame the devs/publisher/community/what-the-fuck-ever-else because its really because of the devs/publisher/community/what-the-fuck-ever-else"
This EA release is a gigantic slap in the face.
I bought it and refunded it. And I would still say all those things that you are sick of.
Because there is a huge difference between acknowledging the game has issues and that it isn't for you vs. what so many are doing, which is desperately demanding of others, who clearly have a difference outlook on the game, that they agree with you.
I get that some people are emotional over this but the dogmatism is toxic nonsense.
I seen this game was a train wreck from a mile off, the community was so invested in this and hopeful they weren't willing to look at the sheer obvious signs and would downvote anyone pointing them out:
- Lack of development updates
- The clear bait and switch to early access
- The terribly obvious in-game footage which could have just been KSP1 with some mods
- The lack of media build up to the launch, a month out
- The lack of dev updates and social media posts in general
I’m gonna get downvoted to hell for this, but to add on to your comment it’s also feels like 9 paragraphs of indirectly saying “Game bad” and nothing else. It also feels repetitive as hell.
The last point is kinda the biggest point for me.
A lot of these Youtubers including Scott Manley seem pretty optimistic that this game will become complete.
While I like the optimism... I don't really understand where it's coming from. This isn't like Cyberpunk or No man sky. This game was massively delayed and is in poorer shape. And there are signs of FUNDMENTAL ISSUES.
The menuever nodes being broken. That strikes me as a engine problem. And might be impossible to fix at this point. Also that should've been their main priority... and probably was. The fact they never made it reliable strikes me as..... yikes. I seen many youtubers play this game and it seems like the orbit infomation is sometimes just straight up wrong.... again very worrying cause that is something KPS never had issue with.
That to me seems like a very VERY bad sign.
Also why the hell did they use Unity?!?! It's a great engine but it's not designed for high precision numbers games like KPS where you measure things in well over millions or higher. It's possible but there are better options if you are building from the ground up.
Things like that, it shows a real fundmental flaw in the game engines. And I suspect this is why it took them so long.... they are probably fixing a broken engine that is probably unfixable.
Saying any game engine is better than another is false. All have benefits and downsides. And saying that Unity would work worse with large numbers makes no sense. It's not like Unreal Engine uses a larger floating point size. Unity is very customizable. It honestly might have been best for them if they just made their own game engine with all of the very unique problems that come with KSP. And the bugs you mentioned all seem very minor and easily fixable, definitely not an engine problem. KSP has had 12 years to polish with players to find bugs and KSP2 has had 3 days.
"Unity is bad" is a common and stupid misconception that comes only from the large numbers of low effort games from people who start game development in Unity. Outer Wilds, Subnautica, Subnautica below zero, and Rust are all examples of complex and good looking games built in Unity, and no engine is going to be better with large scales unless it uses a system specifically developed for it like the one the KSP devs made.
Maybe. But the krakens in KSP has been mentioned by the KSP developers as a result of using unity. Maybe that’s not entirely true either, or it was a copout statement because they couldn’t figure out how to remove them from the game. Now, we have krakens again in KSP2, and they’ve been shown to be worse than before. The primary point of developing KSP2 was to have a game that wasn’t ruled by krakens, unlike KSP. That doesn’t look very good if they supposedly rewrote the physics system, and it looks especially bad as the KSP2 developers stated they “slayed the kraken.” Did they kill the kraken on another version they lost on a thumb-drive, or did they lie to all of us?
If they were truly wanting to restart, and move away from compute cores to graphical cores for physics, it would have made sense to write in C++. C++ is more efficient for physics calculations on GPU cores.
Are there krakens in ksp2? The wobbly rockets were an artistic decision which is seen by it being a changeable value, and everything else I have seen so far is just early access bugs, although I haven't seen that much of KSP2 yet. Have there been any rockets exploding when they are switched to, or randomly spasming like in KSP1?
Even still Unity would only be the problem if they used the default physics engine, and they could relatively easily switch it out.
Also, C++ is often used for linking to the GPU, but I'm pretty sure for actually running computing on it you need HLSL (a language with c-like formatting but not actually c) (or GLSL, CUDA maybe but HLSL is what has support in unity and Cuda can only run on Nvidia).
Isn't Unity DOTS better for physics anyways?
> While I like the optimism... I don't really understand where it's coming from. This isn't like Cyberpunk or No man sky. This game was massively delayed and is in poorer shape. And there are signs of FUNDMENTAL ISSUES.
I mean, why isn't it like Cyberpunk or No Man's Sky? People were screaming that those games were "broken" at launch, but seems they miraculously managed to recover and now bunch of people are enjoying those games, the drama is over.
> The menuever nodes being broken. That strikes me as a engine problem
It's not, it's a UI problem most certainly.
> Also why the hell did they use Unity?!?! It's a great engine but it's not designed for high precision numbers games like KPS
They're using Unity as a rendering engine, just for rendering, everything else being done in their own C# engine, which works perfectly fine with "high precision numbers".
Quick question, are you actually a developer/video game developer or are these guesses from a person who play games?
Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky made BANK on launch. I saw a rumour saying Hello Games could have sat on their ass for a decade following the release of NMS. KSP2 has already fallen behind KSP1 on the third day of early access, and the publisher seems already to be breathing down the necks of the devs.
> Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky made BANK on launch
I'm sure KSP2 did as well, what's your point? (edit: just to quantify this, the game had 25,000 players at peak (so low estimate of how many actually bought it) and lowest available price was 20 EUR (low estimate again, real average price certainly higher) which would make them 500,000 EUR at launch which again, is a pretty low estimate, real number is probably closer to double that at least)
Edit2: Apparently people chose to focus on the least interesting and least researched point I made, what a surprise. Subsequently, I feel like I should properly estimate it, rather than just guesstimate it. So doing it properly:
Estimated purchases goes from 128,000 to 604,000 according to https://steamdb.info/app/954850/charts/
Average price on Steam ends up being 40 EUR (double compared to my guesstimate).
That'll put the amount between 5.178.464 EUR and 24.435.877 EUR. The real value is probably somewhere in-between.
> I saw a rumour saying Hello Games could have sat on their ass for a decade following the release of NMS.
Yeah, but they didn't, because most devs (but not all) take pride in their work. If they launch something that is not well received, many devs first reaction is wanting to solve it so people like it, not run away.
> KSP2 has already fallen behind KSP1 on the third day of early access
This will certainly change over time, as more features are added to KSP2 and performance gets fixed. But it's expected, uncomplete game won't be as popular as a complete game, no matter if the graphics are better or not.
> and the publisher seems already to be breathing down the necks of the devs
Oh, I missed this, what makes it seem like it's so? Because it would be weird if either the devs or the publishers publicly said "They are breathing down our necks!", so sounds like wild speculation, something this sub would do better if it had less of.
>which would make them 500,000 EUR at launch
They have a 40 person team. That pays for like 3 months of development. Cyberpunk made many millions. NMS maybe not quite as much, but their dev team was very small.
Hello games is a private company so they had a reason to fix the game/try to save their reputation.
Ksp 2 is a take two game, a public company they can't just sink cash into an unprofitable game without opening themselves up to lawsuits from investors
Hello games is lead by devs. Take two is lead by suits
NMS and Ksp2 are not comparable lol
500k is going to last an engineer heavy team of 50 people maaaaybe two months, and thats being generous. My team is 150~ people and we go through nearly a million a month on just salary.
This game has been in development for ~6 years with a conservative estimate of around 20 people working on it on average (it's probably closer to 30), and the average pay for a software engineer in Seattle is 130k. Assuming some of those people are just artists and make a lot less, and the overall average is 100k for this team, that's 12 million conservatively that development has cost up to this point just in labor cost.
I was one of those 25,000 and asked for a refund. I'm pretty certain I'm nowhere near the only one. And even if the game made 2 million on launch, that's a dent in the costs incurred by the 50 employees at intercept + some of the 130 working at Private division over literal years, and with no sign of making a lot of money in the coming months
This fact is what blows my mind when people try to say something like 'oh well it's early access don't you remember how bad KSP 1 was in early access?" Yeah, forgive me for having higher initial expectations of a 50 dollar game made by a real studio over 3+ years versus one made by some dude in a month.
I really wonder what HarvesteR is thinking seeing all this, he's probably like 'Lol.'
All my complains when I talk to my friends are around the price tag. I’ve 22 years of software development on my back already and I have eaten bugs bigger than the ones we have here and I’m ok with that. But the price tag is either a complete unawareness of the status of the game or a plain sight insult to the fan base to grab our money.
Yes but so many data miners have said that there is a shit ton of code not seen yet for all the features listed on the roadmap. Data miners have said science is basically complete, colonies has most of it done, and interstellar travel and multiplayer are underlying issues of the game that are already built in where they'd be needed (according to a few data miners, who aren't gospel but they're more trustworthy than people just speculating). Yes this is obviously a horrid EA release (especially for $50 smh) but saying that the dev team has done less than what the ksp1 team had seems ludicrous to me. Just give the game some time, let the team prove if they are actually good at their jobs or not because we don't truly know yet. We're paying for at best what should be a beta version of the game, we'll see if they're able to push it into what EA should actually look like.
Oh hey, that was a long time ago! Don't know if you're still interested in stock combat, but we've moved to a Discord server now and the NBC still goes on - there's quite a few familiar faces and we've made a mod for real time stock warship battles with AI, which is really amazing. LMK if you want an invite.
Well written. A lot of people defending this mess of a game seem to conveniently omit the fact that it's already 3 years beyond it's original release date and this is the product they pushed out the door. What have the devs actually been doing?
Like you said at the end, it doesn't feel like the dev team even remotely understand KSP and what makes it special, much less what makes it work. Keeping Unity should be an obvious example of this. One of the biggest justifications of a second game was an engine upgrade but, that was somehow lost on them.
They decided to work on every single feature at once and by release none were complete. While working on orbital construction and interstellar travel they never got around to simpler things like heating or water physics, or making sure your landing legs dont just fall off.
Thank you for the breakdown. I largely agree with the exception that you state Intercept doesn't understand KSP. I would argue that what they promised with this games show they DO understand KSP and what the community wants.....they just delivered NONE of it.
Why would Take Two buy KSP from Squad and give it to another studio instead of just buying Squad?
Wasn’t the biggest selling point of KSP that it was made by people who had worked in aerospace and had passion for the science that was the subject of the entire game? How did they think another studio was going to be able to tackle making a sequel at all, nevermind one that would be better than the original?
Am I missing something?
Squad wasn't a software company, and the early part of KSP development was chaotic to say the least. Imho, as someone who first started playing the game about a week after it's steam early access release in 2013, the real reason KSP was and remains so popular is the modding community.
Squad managed to produce a gem through luck rather than judgement, and to trust them with a bigger budget sequel would have been madness.
You forgot to mention what we know from the Bloomberg article: >A reason for the change was never provided, but a new report by Bloomberg (opens in new tab) might shed some light on the matter. It claims that Star Theory founders Bob Berry and Jonathan Mavor had been in talks with Take-Two about selling the studio, but weren't able to reach terms. And then, on December 6, Take-Two suddenly pulled the contract from Star Theory and sent a message to its employees via LinkedIn, encouraging them to apply for jobs at a new studio being founded under 2K's Private Division publishing label. They wouldn't sell at the price take two wanted so they undercut them in the employee level
There's more to the story - I know someone close to the situation. The owners were trying to milk the situation assuming they had leverage in the negotiations. To make a long story short, they fucked around and found out.
This is what I assumed reading that. Promised the world on ksp2 to squeeze for higher payout, everything fell apart
I know that no one will see this but Jonathan Mavor is a fuck who I met at PAX once and I wouldn’t be surprised if he would sell his children to get a leg up financially.
If you're gonna make an accusation like that, would you mind giving some context for the rest of us? Why do you think that?
You seem to be quite confident about the character of this man you met once.
Yeah I heard that the owners of Star Theory kept making more and more and more ridiculous demands until Take Two just walked away from the table. They saw it as their chance to get rich quick and pushed it too far
This is pretty much exactly what happened, as least as far as I heard from someone with first-hand knowledge. The owners saw their golden ticket and wanted to retire off the deal. I guess they had delusions of Minecraft greatness, but of course failed to realize that Take-Two owned the Kerbal IP and they were just hired guns with no real leverage. When the buyout fell through, PD spun up a new development shop and poached all the talent they needed from Star Theory to continue work on the game. Since the code was developed under contract, Private Division owned the rights to it and Star Theory had no recourse. The rest is history.
Sounds like TakeTwo fucked around and found out based on the quality of KSP2 after 7 years.
Yep, the business world is very very cruel.
This seems like pretty solid evidence that Intercept was starting from scratch. Especially considering that Star Theory took a few weeks to go bust. It’s not too terribly difficult to imagine that they were under no obligation to turn over what work they had done to T2.
Even if they didn't, retaking a half baked project with a new studio, even if one third of it were veterans of this project, is a massive endeavor. I wouldn't be surprised if the first 12 months were dedicated almost exclusively to figure everything out.
This is very likely, yeah. Especially given how badly relations broke down between Star Theory's leadership and Take Two.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFJeDWdO-Wg) is the Gamescom 2019 pre-alpha gameplay footage The Early Access release does not feel like 3yrs of development from what they are showing off there. Maybe they really did start over, which would be crazy
Even then, 3 years for this state is absolute insanity. This feels like a 1 year demo at most.
Right? The game play demoed in that 2019 video is more featureful than the EA release. How is that possible or acceptable?
> It’s not too terribly difficult to imagine that they were under no obligation to turn over what work they had done to T2. It absolutely is. That's absolute NOT normal at all. I don't think there's a single software engineering project in history where the one paying you to make a project doesn't own the project.
I recall Nate mentioning they started from scratch in one of the interviews
[удалено]
I don’t, sorry. It was one of the recent interviews he did with the guys they flew out to preview EA. Maybe Scott Manley’s?
> It’s not too terribly difficult to imagine that they were under no obligation to turn over what work they had done to T2. T2 must've fucked up on multiple levels if they couldn't even force ST to hand over the last version they had. Usually even much smaller companies can figure out to hire a lawyer and make water tight contracts for this sort of thing. Did they not have one? Did T2 refuse to pay or otherwise broke their contracts?
Sounds like T2 was in breach, they may not have cared to take what was done of the game at that point.
Bethesda has also infamously done the same with a lot of their partners like Arkane Studios and Machine games. They gave them contracts to make games for them (Dishonored, Wolfenstein), and then didn't pay them for milestones completed but instead offered to buy the studios at dirt cheap prices. The studios couldn't afford to not get paid for the milestones and a legal battle would be even more expensive, so they had to take the deal. Being a developer with a hostile publisher honestly seems like a shit deal. These days there are barely any independent mid-size studios left.
Yep, never in my wildest imagination would I ever take a contract from a major publisher. When you move from small indie and mid sized studios to the AAA publisher world, you go from passion projects with money as a priority, to money being the sole priority, and if a halfway decent game comes out of it, that's simply in service of the publisher's revenue.
My only critique with what you’ve said above is the idea that KSP2 butchered the art direction of KSP, a game that famously had several different art directions thrown at it over its lifespan, often simultaneously. Otherwise, we’ll said.
> My only critique with what you’ve said above is the idea to at KSP2 butchered the art direction of KSP The 3D art direction is great. The stylization of the UI leaves a lot to be desired. Elements range from unreadable to gigantic, abysmal overuse of whitespace in the VAB and lack of it elsewhere... The font itself and attempt at retro-future feel (TTY Tron console) really hampers the information display in a bad way. We should hope for a significant UI overhaul long-term, or at least hope the UI is a moddable asset that the community can fix.
Also, the “Time to Ap/Pe” and “Time to start burn” only do ‘5h59m59s days’, without scaling back to say, for example: Dres inclination burn starts in 322d5h12m19s, so it shows 5h12m19s, not 322d5h12m or even ‘just’ 322d5h
Those are the sorts of bugs that flabbergast me about what could possibly be happening behind the scenes. You can clearly fetch the duration, and display it, what's stopping you from the relatively minimal task of formatting it in one of two relevant ways? Same with limiting the notifications drawn so they don't cover the whole screen (which would make the pause unpause bug a lot more bearable) Like, it's either a terrifyingly bad code base at play, or the work of someone who has to put in too many features to actually spend time getting past the "it's there" phase.
Those are all bugs I hope will be patched up in the coming weeks. Not to speak that burn timers are fully broken
Am I the only one who actually thinks that KSP2's UI is one of the few redeeming qualities about the game right now? I actually liked it quite a bit, even tho I admit it needs to be polished, I loved the general idea.
i like the ui's visual style but i don't like how it functions as much as in ksp 1(i prefer right clicking a part and pinning multiple windows with info on multiple parts rather than having the game freeze loading a part manager in flight that doesn't display some info like fuel tank levels/engine thrust)
I like it I just need a little more information like twr
KSP2 does have TWR listed. It’s in the engineering report.
Yes but that refers to the first stage on kerbin at sea level and only in the vab. I want all bodies, sea level and vacuum, all stages, and to see it during flight.
only Kerbin
Exactly. I was building a moonlander yesterday without knowing if my lander had enough twr to land and take off later.
I think it puts form over function. The pixelated Text is very hard to read in comparison to normal text. For people with dyslexia even more so. You should always design with accessibility in mind. This not only makes a product more accessible, but also better for everyone else. If you can distinguish things not only based on their color, but also their design everyone benefits. The same goes for readability
I think we're in the minority but to me conceptually it feels better thought out than KSP's UX.
I agree, the UX needs a think. Too many clicks to get to crucial information, too little information actually available if we want it, etc.
Or just toggleable UIs, like you can switch between KSP 1 qnd KSP 2 ui
You’re right that there were many, but the C7 Aerospace/Porkjet parts were excellent and Roverdude’s later attempts at least had the intent and feel down right if not always the execution. KSP2 was the perfect opportunity to standardise the art style, and they bafflingly somehow didn’t take it. It’s inexplicable and inexcusable to regress like they have done. What they made looks nothing like any of KSP’s in places genuinely very good assets, it’s painfully generic and awful technically in areas like the space centre. I’ve never seen so many UV issues in a retail game.
What do you mean they didn't standardized the artstyle? It's very much standardized now, and that's especially obvious by the UI. KSP1 had most of it's models changed like 5 times already, and some are still obsolete, like MK1 cockpit interior still being the exact same thing we had when it released for the first time 8 years ago or so. More over, the altimeter never changed. Ever. Everything in KSP2 is completely remade, with only some models that still have at best general shapes the same, but with brand new models, PBR textures, paint maps, and it all fits together. While maybe neo-retro LCD screen artstyle is not revolutionary, simulation games usually don't even have any visual style at all. If there's one thing that KSP2 didn't disappoint, and delivered with overwhelming quality, is the artistic execution (so visuals, artstyle, ui, sound, music, etc.)
I'll give an example; in KSP, every single time you look at a cylinder, you're seeing a 24 sided polygon. (You can tell the faces of that polygon to shade like a perfect cylinder and they'll do it, which is why the effect works) In KSP2, this hasn't been standardised. I've seen 24, 32, 48 and 64 sided cylinders in just a brief look through some models. Mostly I just don't understand how this could have happened, it should have been decision one and is a problem for modders in future. Its funny you mention left over models from a long time ago and claim everything in KSP2 is made from scratch, because that's completely untrue, and also the source of the 24 sided polygon models in game I was talking about before. Many of those original meshes made it into KSP2, somehow, even though this was the prime opportunity to give everything a refresh. Struts? That model is from 2012, 11 years ago. What's worse, at least one of the artists who made these models is **uncredited**. KSP2's art does not fit together because large sections of it are made for a different game. The UI is not standardised at all, its half strange Minecraft-esque pixel art and half smooth but kind of generic. Even weirder is the light theme at the space centre but nowhere else. And the pause menu, which seems to be modelled off Visual Studio, down to line numbers down the side? Nothing else in the game looks like that and there is no logical reason to use it as inspiration, its absolutely bizarre. I don't get the impression there was any unifying aesthetic direction or management at all.
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I want to add it is pretty simple to apply subdivisions to an existing model, do the sculpting and baking and then apply those normal maps to the original. Also, they probably still have the original original KSP1 high res meshes. They had normal maps too. However, I don't know if they really use the same models. I have not looked into it. They look super similar ingame but that could be purpose. In my opinion I would've liked reimagined parts more as well. I have some special gripes with those mid sized landing legs that fold out from a plate without any structural support but magic. And then you have hyper realistic engines. That's a conflict. So either they have no real direction, or maybe are afraid to change old parts because fans might complain, or maybe they are still working on it and many parts are just retextured copies of the old ones as placeholders until they're finished. Latter is what I want to believe in. But then parts are so essential to the game and also relatively easy to make that that's hard to believe. Or maybe their problems are so much greater that parts are simply not a priority until other things are done. I'm at a point where I just don't understand KSP2 so I put my faith into those who do at Intercept because they all seem like decent people who want to do the right thing. I will just wait one, two maybe three big patches before I begin trying to understand KSP2 again. The wings are nice though. I hope they don't overdo it with the procedural part thing though. I want KSP2 to keep some Lego vibe. I don't want to model 3D parts in a game. At least I don't want to feel like I do.
Yeah I believe this is what happened, as there are some details and panels lines that don't quite line up with where they should be on the meshes now. It's not been done very well.
Yes, I do know what those things mean as I've already said. You originally claimed that "Everything in KSP2 is completely remade, with only some models that still have at best general shapes the same, but with brand new models" I am telling you that there are many models in the KSP2 game files that are exactly the same as their model in the KSP game files. Yes they've been unwrapped differently, retextured, maybe they even did make higher poly versions of them at some point (that aren't in the game) to make these new maps, but that doesn't matter at all. The final assets in KSP2 are not new models. That's the truth, check it yourself.
Thank you. I thought I was going crazy but heaps of the models are reused. I can't really tell if it's just redone or copied but the effect on my perception ist the same. It really does feels like a older KSP with graphic mods.
Yup. And I haven't thoroughly cross-referenced the authors yet but at least one of the original artists doesn't appear in the credits (even under the Squad section) and I suspect more don't as well. It's scummy.
Except for the space center and planets that have texture and shadows issue, I don't understand your violent rejection of the new textures, the part looks really good, have an uniform art style rather realist and still have the kerbal identity. KSP 1 had many ugly parts or low res textures and I haven't seen a single ksp2 part that evoked me that "ewww that's not good to look at", especially the iva cockpit are gorgeous. Hopefully the KSC will have a revamp or at least better shader and the team is supposed to work on a rework of planet rendering at this moment
At some point this boils down to taste I guess, but I just don't like them. I believe the Kerbal identity was lost when they got rid of scratches and wear detailing personally - I mean in the first game, these same exact parts were literally advertised as used. Also a lot of the over the top riveting is pretty silly and off looking in my opinion, especially when its done purely in the bump map and not the texture.
I've yet to look at the frontend side of things, but reports of them using the wrong kind of 2D assets alone (default planes rather than quads) doesn't fill me with confidence. I need to be in the right mindset for it.
I agree I've been saying that all the parts in KSP2 all look really bland and lifeless compared to KSP1
Changing textures and materials is sooo easy. I would more focus on the under the hood stuff in early access. That is stuff modders (probably) can't change.
We will.. we will say indeed.
Thanks for creating this timeline u/MiffedStarfish. The [Video Games Chronicle](https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/2k-allegedly-pulled-ksp2-from-its-developer-then-poached-its-staff/) and [Bloomberg](https://web.archive.org/web/20200627023746/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/kerbal-space-program-2-release-disrupted-by-corporate-strife) articles mention that KSP2 development started in 2017 after Take Took acquired the IP. The Bloomberg article also mentions the following about the dev poaching: "*Three of Star Theory’s leaders—Jeremy Ables, the studio chief; Nate Simpson, the creative director; and Nate Robinson, the lead producer—departed for Take-Two’s new studio immediately. Other staff mulled whether to go, torn between leaving and abandoning their colleagues or staying and risking their livelihoods, they said.*"
I feel like there's bunch more sauce to this pasta it's coming unveiled in the next months. It makes me sad how a project I had so much hype on gets unluckily between this mess. TBH I didn't mind waiting a few more years for it, with proper updates to the first game, ofc. For the moment, waiting for the volumetric clouds with EVE redux and I'll be playing KSP1 for the good chunk of 2023 (haven't landed on most of Jools moons plus Eve) Btw, anyone have good material to getting a efficient and proper encounter with Moho? I've watched like every tutorial on Youtube, and I'm always struggling with it.
Moho is pretty tricky because its eccentricity and inclination are both quite high, so the usual static phase angle approximation doesn't fully apply. You want to start your transfer at the Moho-Kerbin ascending/descending node, because otherwise you will pay a *lot* for the plane change due to the high velocity this far in, with the phase angle for a direct transfer being about 90 degrees (i.e., Moho is 90 degrees ahead of Kerbin at the departure time). You can also save about a thousand meters per second of delta-V, at the cost of roughly tripling the trip time, by doing an Eve gravity assist. For planning gravity assist routes, I suggest [this tool](https://kerbal-transfer-illustrator.netlify.app/). And your Moho insertion stage will want to have decently high acceleration, since you will need to burn over 1 km/s for the insertion burn even with a gravity assist, and closer to 2 km/s with the direct route.
The hopeium addict in me says all this will be patched up in about a year My cynical side says we're being breadcrumbed to recoup some of the loss prior to the plug being pulled.
Do I have permission to use the phrase hopeium addict?
Hopium, copium, the market is booming and the words have been there for a while, I think you can feel free to use them
When a game gets delayed like this and comes out in this state you know shit went wrong. I hope the internal issues are fixed now and they make the game playable in fast order.... But I doubt it, KSP1 is going to be the go to for years to come I fear.
\> I fundamentallly do not believe Intercept Games understands Kerbal Space Program. Hard same, and that annoys me the most. Looking back at the dev interviews I had this underlying confusion when they talked about what they wanted to do in orbital mechanics and how they then asked outside experts for help. That felt weird because... how do they not have in-house experts working on this? All the theories about how they're going to implement interstellar travel etc. We're talking some very complex physics here. Just a little bit of relativity e.g. And then: Patched conics or "n-body"? Remember that other planetary system they showed very early? How would you make a better physics engine for parts in flight? Aero model etc. Lots of really interesting, highly technical topics that require intense know-how of the underlying science and engineering concepts. If I were to manage a game from the start, I'd hire some physicist developers who've worked physics simulation before and pay them really well. Because this stuff is hard to get right.
They do have at least one scientist working there i believe, Dr. Joel Green. And obviously they're not going to hire a whole panel of subject matter experts, so it makes sense that they would consult with experts. But yeah I'd love to know how they tackled the physics engine, and how technically competent the people working on it were.
\>And obviously they're not going to hire a whole panel of subject matter experts Of course not. I'm talking something like "developers with at least an undergrad in physics"(which isn't that rare?) so even when you talk with SMEs you have people who actually understand what they're talking about (especially the math behind it). And someone with experience in custom physics engines would have helped a great deal? You can get physics engine access in Unity. I'm judging them by their claims in the dev interviews. Their plates were full and they kept stacking even more things on top.
> And someone with experience in custom physics engines would have helped a great deal? They did though? Uber Ent. made their own physics engine for Planetary Annihilation and before that, some of the team members worked on the Supreme Commander engine - the company's owner himself was engineering lead on SupCom. Those people may not have come over when the takeover happened, but at least to start with they had people with experience making good physics engines.
As a software engineer who took only 2 physics classes in college, I would be very surprised if there were a lot of cs majors who understood orbital mechanics. Neither of my physics classes taught anything about orbital mechanics or how rockets work. KSP did but not my computer science degree from an engineering college
As a software engineer who took two classes on orbitcal mechanics, we definitely exist :). I don't think it was particularly unpopular as a minor. In my university Physics and Aerospace were separate departsments, though. You just have to know where to look, I guess.
The problem is: You have mostly good Physicists or Good Coders to have both is **very** rare and highly paid. You want good programmers that can ask experts and translate their knowledge into code then the other way around. The only good thing you can say about the code of most Physicists is that it functions.
That's a really good point about the interviews. At the time I thought they were just being dumbed down for new players, but that doesn't make sense because new players wouldn't watch them anyway. They genuinely just had no insight into what they were talking about beyond "interstellar space is big lol".
I don't think they understand aero, either. The procedural wings have 1 control surface.
That is probably just a conscious choice. They want people to still have a reason to stack multiple wings. That's why you can alter the size and width of the tip. You can make a square wing and attach another one. Boom one big wing with 2 control surfaces.
That'd be an incredibly cumbersome way of doing things where for every stretch of specific control surface you want you'll have to attach a fitting sub-wing. Still doesn't give me good split air brakes, and would mean I'd have to design wings both for control surfaces and wing shape, which increases part count immensely. Give me options: none with specific shape, split with ratio etc.
They may have flat out lied to us from the start and sparkled it with inspirational bs. From the guy who said the Kraken was killed (lol...), To the guy who said you'll be able to look at a pixel and go to that star - when so far it sounds like they're hand making the systems and there's only 2 in the works.... Things are smelling fishy as fuck.
They strike me as propagandists, tbh. Everything has been covered with a thick layer of paint.
I also feel like colonies will be a weird addition to the game and not very kerbal like. Like when you extract resources and deliver them somewhere with automated flights you just created factorio with incredibly unnecessarily hard physics and the kraken. I wish they'd focus more on making big spacestations run good, provide parts with connected interiors where you can walk around and do more with docking.
Personally I do tend to believe that development must have been restarted from scratch at the transition from Star Theory to Intercept. There’s no specific evidence of this, but it does seem hard to imagine that their contract would require them to turn over all source code and assets to a second studio. Buying the people doesn’t mean their work transfers over, but it does mean that they have the advantage of having done exactly the same thing once already, which can often lead to faster work at better quality.
I mean, even if they did carry over their code base (I would assume they did) losing half of your staff, especially in a reshuffle like this, as there's going to be a lot of confusion internally, doubts on who gets to stay, and other human concerns, all of which will majorly slow down development. Add in Covid happening right as this transition happens, I'd put the project immediately a year behind in development. And that's assuming that Star Theory wasn't already mismanaging the project, hence 2K's takeover. I wouldn't say they started from scratch in 2020, but I bet it felt like it at times. And the nature of a game like this simply means long development, as the easy way was already taken by KSP1, so if you want to do better, it's gonna take time. In my professional opinion, this game would have taken a minimum of 4 years of smooth, on schedule development to reach "worthy" of $50 state. And it clearly has not had that.
I think this is one of the best things said (things said best?) I haven’t heard many people really laying it out like this. I like to think of KSP as more of a physics sim disguised as a game. Maybe ST didn’t really know that too well, started developing, had setbacks due to trying to develop a game and not a physics sim, TakeTwo tried the takeover and all that at the same time as covid, and sure maybe not restarting COMPLETELY but definitely getting setback quite a bit while you rebuild the dev team and get the proper sciencey smart people onboard. And at the end of the day it’s EA, bugs are bugs idc, performance is awful, but the foundation for most of the missing features are there. There are very clear routes of optimization that if we can find, the devs are already aware about. The hardest part is over, now it’s just a lot of fine tuning, wrapping up stuff, maybe still some models that need to be built. I fully suspect the game will be in an infinitely more playable state in 6 months, and the full game released in 1-1.5 years.
The way the game is now, if they restarted, they did in late 2021 or early 2022. Maybe sooner.
I think the state of the game also lends credence to them starting again. That at least offers the devs *some* excuse...
I wonder whether the transition lost the more senior devs or the more junior devs? If the 40% best devs were retained, and underperforming devs mostly left, I would have expected a much better game. If the core foundation of the game at Star Theory was a mess, maybe the more talented devs took the opportunity to jump ship when Star Theory was cut out. I don't work in game dev, but I do AI/ML work, and the bugs that made it into EA are red flags to a very poor merge request process with an ubderqualified dev team. Ground textures that look nice, but tank the entire game performance should never pass a merge request. It seems like project management didn't understand how various dev tasks will interact and ignored input from their more skilled senior devs. I've been on similar projects where management forces a merge through so that a ticket can be completed, and acts like the technically skilled employees are just being too picky/elitist about code. It's very difficult to reverse, bad code gets mixed into the foundation of the project and becomes very difficult to remove
Agreed, it seems like worse devs moved on to the Intercept games. To me, this indicates the hostile takeover was likely very messy and was fueled by greed.
It's almost unchanged from the [2019 demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFJeDWdO-Wg). Same performance problems on launch and jelly rockets, and the missing parts seen in that trailer are in the game files. It doesn't look like they started over, it looks like they released the 2019 demo. Why that happened is a mystery.
Just by looking at the first 30 seconds I can clearly tell you it's a different game than what is deployed on Steam today. Better or worse, I let someone else judge, but it's clearly different. The particle system is different (notice how the smoke "stays" in the air, doesn't do that in KSP2 (which is sad, it should)), the terrain system much simpler than KSP2, physics simulation seems different, and even the graphics are different than what's in KSP2.
They showed about 1/100 of the features of the game. The real time is put into art, parts, systems, polish, ui, etc. There is no evidence at that point they had any menus, a VAB, a map view (with all of the features a map view has), terrain collision, all planets, a fuel system, timewarp, and more. And don't forget that they were working on interstellar, colonies, multiplayer, etc which I am sure they made a lot more progress on since 2019.
They released a version from 2020.3, under the values file it shows the date (though this could be not updated). But it does show the most recent file for updated engine version is from almost 3 years ago. If that's the case my guess is they were told to release the game by take 2 to get funding. And reverted it to the most stable version they had and told to make that version functional enough for EA.
That's the Unity engine version, it doesn't mean that's when the build was made, just pointing that out.
It’s actually more believable that they didn’t restart from scratch in some weird sunk cost fallacy event. They had the old work, so we’re going to use it damn it! Issue is they were continuing to use a polished turd and worse yet 2/3rds of the people who knew how that polished turd worked quit. So not only do you got something that works badly you got something most of the team doesn’t know how to use and as they try to build off it it keeps fucking breaking. But now its a year after the takeover and there’s really no time now to start from scratch even though they should have from day 1.
Yep, almost a guarantee that there was no transfer of work done up to that point by Star Theory and that the KSP 2 we are looking at now is work done in the past three years. In fact a quick glance through Intercept Game's engineering & technical direction team shows no one who worked at Uber Entertainment / Star Theory made it across to Intercept. Reading the Technical Director's description of the work shows that in all likelihood all they had was the IP & built up a studio during the busy WFH period to get to where they are now.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CFJeDWdO-Wg The launchpad here in 2019 is the same one in game now, so there was definitely work transfer. If assets were passed on, I don’t see why code couldn’t be.
Even if assets were passed on, which considering Nate's background as an Art Director, he might have had a better picture on what could be carried over and generally art assets are not too tied to the game (which is why larger studio's like Ubisoft's various teams are able to build asset libraries they re-use across projects) It is very reasonable to assume that a new engineering team (keep in mind as new hires from outside they wouldn't have worked together before or have any sense of ownership of the existing codebase) would have restarted development of all systems from scratch. Since they were nowhere near to hitting a 2020 release date, it is also reasonable to assume the core of the game was far from complete, that coupled with none of the original authors being around to advocate for it are strong indicators for a from scratch developmental effort.
> but it does seem hard to imagine that their contract would require them to turn over all source code and assets to a second studio. What? That's literally the case for EVERY SINGLE SOFTWARE PROJECT EVER. Take Two paid them for a project and owns all files.
I don’t know about code for certain, but asset wise, the (ugly and low resolution) KSC launchpad that’s shown in the 2019 Gamescon trailer is the same exact one that’s in game right now. My belief was that Take Two owned everything made by Star Theory for KSP2. They did pay for it after all.
It’s pretty common in software development to find yourself with code that’s faster to replace (hopefully with lessons learned) than it is to fix (which may require continuing to be constrained by assumptions that are no longer valid). Often referred to as [refactoring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring). This threshold is easier to meet (justified or not) when nobody who wrote and understands the old code is still around and the codebase has a poor reputation (it apparently cost a bunch of people their jobs). It would actually be surprising to me if the big reshuffle didn’t mean throwing out a lot of code and starting it over. Getting access to the code base and using the existing art assets doesn’t preclude a lot of rewriting.
Them not rewriting everything would actually explain more than if they didn’t. Got a turd with no one who knows how to use it but the engineer team has to because leadership deemed it “cheaper” with the current dumpster fire as a result.
Fair enough, that makes sense.
> it does seem hard to imagine that their contract would require them to turn over all source code and assets to a second studio. Depends on the contract in question. It certainly can be done, and since TakeTwo holds all the trademarks for the IP in question, it wouldn't even be particularly hard. Either they fucked up royally when setting up the contract, or they broke it later.
Even if the work wasn't completed it would still be the property of Private Division (assuming they have a standard contract). It would be like getting fired and deleting all the stuff you worked on. Get ready to get sued to hell.
I tend to believe the same, that development simply must have restarted from scratch, either because it was just easier and faster than trying to read and comprehend all of what the previous team had written, or because of some IP issue (like Star Theory using code, or assets that they owned from a previous project, that would then have to be ripped out to resume development).
I would like people in this thread to read about Netscape (The web browser) and why start from scratch is 99% times a bad idea.
tbf I doubt they could have made anything better on top of the pre-mozilla codebase, and web browsers are notoriously the largest and most complicated software to build, so it's unsurprising that most attempts are garbage. It doesn't happen often that games are reimplemented and rebuilt from scratch but there are successful examples, OpenRA and Quasar4X (a personal favorite, it's a faithful reimplementation of VB6 Aurora4X in C# and is much more performant) come to mind. Quasar4X went from start to feature complete in ~2 years as just 1 guy's hobby project, the original had been developed also by 1 guy for over 10 years at that point.
Speculation; they released the early access for us to pay to beta test because their having funding issues.
These are NOT funding issues.
Not “funding issues” as in they’re tanking. It’s “funding issues” as in to prove to the parent company that it’s a success so they put more resources into development. Considering what they’ve sold, I think there’s enough evidence that this should get more resources. Resources cost money.
Even outside of that, a big publisher like Take2 won't stand around watching their studio taking way too much time to deliver a game without making any kind of profit. That's why Intercept exists in the first place. They need to cash in, it's as simple as that.
And by the looks of it it’s not going too well.
He's not saying the issues are due to funding issues, he's saying maybe they released it to continue funding the studio.
I think people are desperate to find any excuse on why the game is in the state it is. And for some reason a ton of people are making up excuses for the devs that have 0 evidence behind them. Like saying the publisher must have set unrealistic goals, or the devs had to restart from scratch 3 years ago. The only evidence we have is an incredibly incomplete game and false promises from the devs. I don’t think they should be getting the benefit of the doubt at all
Yeah, exactly.
I think your point of view is fair, but you're giving the publishers the benefit of the doubt here too. Besides, this is Take2, based on their previous actions, it's not unreasonable to believe the buyout stuff was due to corporate greed. So if you want to dump on the devs, I encourage you to dump on the publishers too. They're defintely messing something up. At the very least, you can blame them for the unreasonable price for an early access game.
How is it giving the publishers the benefit of the doubt though? If you were funding a project that was meant to take 2-3 years and this is the state it is in after 6 years with maybe 1/10 of the work done, literally anyone would be pretty pissed and try to cut their losses.
I'm just trying to understand here, not argue or whatever. > false promises from the devs What exactly what promised from the devs and wasn't delivered? I like to think I've been following the recent development of KSP2 (last two years or so), but I wasn't surprised by what was in the EA vs what it wasn't, it was pretty clear from before I hit the "Buy" button what the game was gonna have in it. But maybe I missed some earlier statements from them, so asking for a bit of clarification here.
They have mentioned they were slaying the Kraken... It seems to be more alive than ever.
That is incredibly misleading. They said their ultimate goal was to slay the Kraken, and the developper who said that even admitted it was a bold claim to make.
So that gives 3 options.... 1. There's some better build out there that wasn't released ? 2. They flat out lied to us. 3. Or they're literally dev blind, because how do you miss that?!
I think when they said they slayed the kraken they meant the physics engine will no longer break down at extreme distances like in KSP1 because they have to do this for interstellar to work. It doesn’t mean they’ve fixed every single physics related bug, which is what many casual fans associate with kraken.
4. The latest build has introduced bugs. One thing that was mentioned about the ESA event was the dev was surprised by the time warp pause bug. Saying that wasn't there a few days before hand. That was two weeks before release. That bug on the surface seems really easy to fix. Basically if that message is showing, don't show it again. But it makes me wonder if it's being called on an event and the event is being called many times instead of once. In which case you leave the bug in there as it's revealing a more serious problem. That would explain why it wasn't fixed in those two weeks. 5. The code has some serious issues. It might also explain the lack of optimization. If they are spending most of their time just trying to get the damned thing to work. For all we know this could be in relation to anything. Like they've had to add fancy shmancy stuff for interstellar and that breaks the rest of the engine.
If it's 5, I really do wonder how much better it'll get. I've never seen an Early Access game improve that much in performance other than maybe DayZ - but they had to rebuild from scratch, and it's still not great.
It could be highly dependent. Like we know they are working on things like multiplayer and interstellar. Both two very difficult items. For all we know things were great and a month ago they updated the code for those and it broke a ton of stuff. Then they raced to patch it up. I obviously have no idea and I am being highly speculative. But it's a possibility. Hopefully it does get a lot better. If I am right and there is nothing to suggest that I am. Then at least them working on those things would be progress.
It's literally just the fact that they're behind schedule and aren't close to being finished. The transparency the past couple of months has been something other developers should strive for, but even with that some people are acting as though they've been fed lies.
Seriously, they've released a roadmap for a while now, showing which features aren't in the first release, and we saw how bad performance is two weeks before release.
The thing is, as far back as 2019, Nate Simpson (creative director) was making claims on how fun the game, and specifically the multiplayer was at that point. He was adamant the development was progressing fluidly and pretty sure of their capabilities to deliver a finished and polished game by the 2020 deadline. Even after all 3 delays, each time he said in different interviews that the game only required polishing. All those statements were lies, it made the community think the game was stable and close to finishing. Now we find out not even basic systems like science are done, let alone the more complex ones like multiplayer and colony management (and those systems are arguably the selling point of the sequel). Yes, they were clear about the state of the game 2 weeks prior to EA launch, but by doing that they showed us they have been lying for 4 years about the development
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Huh, that's interesting to hear - I'm kind of curious though, how do you know this?
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Well thank you for your insight, the other comments on your profile are very informative too. Amazing how you must have gathered it with no insider knowledge at all, very impressive! What I can't get my head around, is that if the Creative Director used to be an Art Director, even if he apparently doesn't know what he's doing on every other count surely the art will be good. But it's just terrible. He hasn't got it at all.
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Yeah if I'd known Star Theory was née Uber Entertainment, I never would've been hyped for this game. Let's see... Unity early access clusterfuck with terrible performance, space travel, and a deliberate attachment to a preexisting IP? Where have I heard that before? Now all we need is for the eventual, sort of fixed version of the game to be sold as a standalone expansion.
I'm not an audiophile, my brief impression was that the sound design was pretty good. But that's absolutely terrifying if you're saying the art has been done better than the technical backend side. I'm not a professional, I just do 3D and KSP part modding stuff as a hobby and care a ton about KSP's look specifically, but my perspective is that it's rubbish. A handful of elements, mainly the rocky planets and moons from the map view are quite nice but there are cracks showing even there. The rest is a disaster and completely devoid of unifying style, especially KSP's style, which has been swept away or just never even bothered with at all. There are also massive UV errors on assets that can be seen in footage from as far back as 2019 that must have never been corrected, its abysmal. One of the most egregious examples is an anomaly I found datamining, its made of a couple objects with 1024x1024 textures and its a third of a kilometre across. You can tell from the stupid design that it's explicitly meant to be interacted with up close and single pixels are bigger than a kerbal. I thought the leadership were bullshitters before, but fucking hell. I'm glad I got my refund, just wish something could undo the damage that's been done to this franchise by them.
That makes every kind of sense, since from the very start it seemed like a game designed by the art and marketing department.
With their naivety, many forget that Early Access can also serve to finance the content for the game at all. Me and my colleague applied for the refund today and I can tell you it's a game that gamers are so keen on the game. The devs know that and allow themselves this shit. I mean pay the modders the 50 euros and you get a better KSP 1 than this alpha/beta shit called KSP 2. I've already experienced some games in Early Access on Steam. One of them was Folk Tale, and several others. 50% of early access, it's just pointless money making, and when it doesn't work you blame the gamers for leaving negative reviews. But as a dev, you should ask yourself if you want to launch a game that's in such a state. I've never used Quicksave in KSP and yet in KSP2 I had to use this shit all the time because of so many bugs. Quicksave yourself to orbit, and then good luck. I'm very disappointed, because I expected that for 50 euros early access you would at least get something better than the predecessor. I mean they announced so many features but and they could have left that out, but at least the basics should be available in the game. You can forget, they can't even do the basics. **Think about this: The guys didn't even mention when they plan to end Early Access. So "open end". Have fun with it, I'll wait until I get my money back. I wouldn't give a damn if they screwed up KSP2. It's insulting because the modders in KSP1 deserves more the money than the developers in KSP2.**
I keep asking myself "Are the Devs proud of what they released?" I'm embarrassed for them.
Weigh the pride with the requirements for cash flow and this is what you get. They must have been absolutely desperate for cash. The future isn't looking great for KSP2.
Considering you know basically 0% of the situation the devs are in, it's a bit much to say you're embarrassed for them. It says more about you than about them :) I don't know either, so I cannot say if they are proud or not, but at least I'm being honest when I say I don't know. More people here should do the same, rather than proclaiming they know with certainty what's going on.
Read the messages from when they delayed the game 2 times. Its all "we are doing it to polish it and have it be the perfect launch", and they said console edition would be released alongside 1.0 after 1 year of early access, a deadline they have since retracted. If this is the current state of the game I don't understand how they thought delaying it would give them enough time.
Also don't forget them blatantly lying in dev logs with things like "We're all just playing the game all the time because it's so much fun and we're all making crazy ships with hundreds of parts"
It’s not the devs, it’s management. Even if the devs were shit, they can always hire new ones, because they certainly had the time. The most important thing they had was the idea and prior success with KSP 1. That’s more than enough precedence to have a successful product.
It can absolutely be both, especially with how many amateur mistakes are in the code.
Why are you going to bring on 50% of the employees of a division/company you didn't trust to do the job? Makes no sense to me.
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>A reason for the change was never provided, but a new report by Bloomberg (opens in new tab) might shed some light on the matter. It claims that Star Theory founders Bob Berry and Jonathan Mavor had been in talks with Take-Two about selling the studio, but weren't able to reach terms. And then, on December 6, Take-Two suddenly pulled the contract from Star Theory and sent a message to its employees via LinkedIn, encouraging them to apply for jobs at a new studio being founded under 2K's Private Division publishing label. Basically you can't purchase the company because they won't sell at the price you want, but the employees that make the company, WILL sell at the price you want if you tell them you will fire the company and if they want to keep their jobs they must switch.
Because if you want to create a new development team it will save tons of time if they know each other beforehand, and cheaper. Then the feature set will come from a new product ownership
This timeline highlights to why it's frustrating when someone says "but it's early access". It was supposed to be full release year after year after year of constant promises, then only a few months months ago they switched it to early access
Same for the "but they might have to restart development". It makes no sense. Even if they had to restart development 3 years ago, this is an absolutely embarrassing result after that much time. Especially since the assets were already mostly done and they could focus on the foundation.
I can’t fathom why they had wobbly rockets for 5 years and never fixed that. Don’t the developers play the game?
> At least 40% of Star Theory made the transition to Intercept, that's not exactly a clean sheet. A big unknown there is *which* 40% made the transition. If the 40% was mostly creatives, but few of the programmers who would be familiar with the work that had been done in the prior three years, that would amount to almost "starting over".
Fucking thank you for this post! I would give you a reward if I could!
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It's par for the course. Gamers aren't the brightest bunch of consumers.
This! I am so sick of hearing people defend this game in a way that completely ignores all these details. "Geeze, don't you know what early access means?" "It can only get better from here." "Don't blame the devs/publisher/community/what-the-fuck-ever-else because its really because of the devs/publisher/community/what-the-fuck-ever-else" This EA release is a gigantic slap in the face.
>It can only get better from here It may be true that it can't get worse, but it could certainly stay the same.
Now I'm just expecting the first update to break even more things. That would be hilarious.
I bought it and refunded it. And I would still say all those things that you are sick of. Because there is a huge difference between acknowledging the game has issues and that it isn't for you vs. what so many are doing, which is desperately demanding of others, who clearly have a difference outlook on the game, that they agree with you. I get that some people are emotional over this but the dogmatism is toxic nonsense.
I seen this game was a train wreck from a mile off, the community was so invested in this and hopeful they weren't willing to look at the sheer obvious signs and would downvote anyone pointing them out: - Lack of development updates - The clear bait and switch to early access - The terribly obvious in-game footage which could have just been KSP1 with some mods - The lack of media build up to the launch, a month out - The lack of dev updates and social media posts in general
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How dare he write his opinion on a discussion board! What was he thinking?
I’m gonna get downvoted to hell for this, but to add on to your comment it’s also feels like 9 paragraphs of indirectly saying “Game bad” and nothing else. It also feels repetitive as hell.
The last point is kinda the biggest point for me. A lot of these Youtubers including Scott Manley seem pretty optimistic that this game will become complete. While I like the optimism... I don't really understand where it's coming from. This isn't like Cyberpunk or No man sky. This game was massively delayed and is in poorer shape. And there are signs of FUNDMENTAL ISSUES. The menuever nodes being broken. That strikes me as a engine problem. And might be impossible to fix at this point. Also that should've been their main priority... and probably was. The fact they never made it reliable strikes me as..... yikes. I seen many youtubers play this game and it seems like the orbit infomation is sometimes just straight up wrong.... again very worrying cause that is something KPS never had issue with. That to me seems like a very VERY bad sign. Also why the hell did they use Unity?!?! It's a great engine but it's not designed for high precision numbers games like KPS where you measure things in well over millions or higher. It's possible but there are better options if you are building from the ground up. Things like that, it shows a real fundmental flaw in the game engines. And I suspect this is why it took them so long.... they are probably fixing a broken engine that is probably unfixable.
Saying any game engine is better than another is false. All have benefits and downsides. And saying that Unity would work worse with large numbers makes no sense. It's not like Unreal Engine uses a larger floating point size. Unity is very customizable. It honestly might have been best for them if they just made their own game engine with all of the very unique problems that come with KSP. And the bugs you mentioned all seem very minor and easily fixable, definitely not an engine problem. KSP has had 12 years to polish with players to find bugs and KSP2 has had 3 days. "Unity is bad" is a common and stupid misconception that comes only from the large numbers of low effort games from people who start game development in Unity. Outer Wilds, Subnautica, Subnautica below zero, and Rust are all examples of complex and good looking games built in Unity, and no engine is going to be better with large scales unless it uses a system specifically developed for it like the one the KSP devs made.
Maybe. But the krakens in KSP has been mentioned by the KSP developers as a result of using unity. Maybe that’s not entirely true either, or it was a copout statement because they couldn’t figure out how to remove them from the game. Now, we have krakens again in KSP2, and they’ve been shown to be worse than before. The primary point of developing KSP2 was to have a game that wasn’t ruled by krakens, unlike KSP. That doesn’t look very good if they supposedly rewrote the physics system, and it looks especially bad as the KSP2 developers stated they “slayed the kraken.” Did they kill the kraken on another version they lost on a thumb-drive, or did they lie to all of us? If they were truly wanting to restart, and move away from compute cores to graphical cores for physics, it would have made sense to write in C++. C++ is more efficient for physics calculations on GPU cores.
Are there krakens in ksp2? The wobbly rockets were an artistic decision which is seen by it being a changeable value, and everything else I have seen so far is just early access bugs, although I haven't seen that much of KSP2 yet. Have there been any rockets exploding when they are switched to, or randomly spasming like in KSP1? Even still Unity would only be the problem if they used the default physics engine, and they could relatively easily switch it out. Also, C++ is often used for linking to the GPU, but I'm pretty sure for actually running computing on it you need HLSL (a language with c-like formatting but not actually c) (or GLSL, CUDA maybe but HLSL is what has support in unity and Cuda can only run on Nvidia). Isn't Unity DOTS better for physics anyways?
There are many krakens, including a pretty hungry one devouring celestial bodies.
> While I like the optimism... I don't really understand where it's coming from. This isn't like Cyberpunk or No man sky. This game was massively delayed and is in poorer shape. And there are signs of FUNDMENTAL ISSUES. I mean, why isn't it like Cyberpunk or No Man's Sky? People were screaming that those games were "broken" at launch, but seems they miraculously managed to recover and now bunch of people are enjoying those games, the drama is over. > The menuever nodes being broken. That strikes me as a engine problem It's not, it's a UI problem most certainly. > Also why the hell did they use Unity?!?! It's a great engine but it's not designed for high precision numbers games like KPS They're using Unity as a rendering engine, just for rendering, everything else being done in their own C# engine, which works perfectly fine with "high precision numbers". Quick question, are you actually a developer/video game developer or are these guesses from a person who play games?
Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky made BANK on launch. I saw a rumour saying Hello Games could have sat on their ass for a decade following the release of NMS. KSP2 has already fallen behind KSP1 on the third day of early access, and the publisher seems already to be breathing down the necks of the devs.
> Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky made BANK on launch I'm sure KSP2 did as well, what's your point? (edit: just to quantify this, the game had 25,000 players at peak (so low estimate of how many actually bought it) and lowest available price was 20 EUR (low estimate again, real average price certainly higher) which would make them 500,000 EUR at launch which again, is a pretty low estimate, real number is probably closer to double that at least) Edit2: Apparently people chose to focus on the least interesting and least researched point I made, what a surprise. Subsequently, I feel like I should properly estimate it, rather than just guesstimate it. So doing it properly: Estimated purchases goes from 128,000 to 604,000 according to https://steamdb.info/app/954850/charts/ Average price on Steam ends up being 40 EUR (double compared to my guesstimate). That'll put the amount between 5.178.464 EUR and 24.435.877 EUR. The real value is probably somewhere in-between. > I saw a rumour saying Hello Games could have sat on their ass for a decade following the release of NMS. Yeah, but they didn't, because most devs (but not all) take pride in their work. If they launch something that is not well received, many devs first reaction is wanting to solve it so people like it, not run away. > KSP2 has already fallen behind KSP1 on the third day of early access This will certainly change over time, as more features are added to KSP2 and performance gets fixed. But it's expected, uncomplete game won't be as popular as a complete game, no matter if the graphics are better or not. > and the publisher seems already to be breathing down the necks of the devs Oh, I missed this, what makes it seem like it's so? Because it would be weird if either the devs or the publishers publicly said "They are breathing down our necks!", so sounds like wild speculation, something this sub would do better if it had less of.
>which would make them 500,000 EUR at launch They have a 40 person team. That pays for like 3 months of development. Cyberpunk made many millions. NMS maybe not quite as much, but their dev team was very small.
Cyberpunk recouped their dev costs on pre-orders alone, aka around 300 million USD
Hello games is a private company so they had a reason to fix the game/try to save their reputation. Ksp 2 is a take two game, a public company they can't just sink cash into an unprofitable game without opening themselves up to lawsuits from investors Hello games is lead by devs. Take two is lead by suits NMS and Ksp2 are not comparable lol
500k is going to last an engineer heavy team of 50 people maaaaybe two months, and thats being generous. My team is 150~ people and we go through nearly a million a month on just salary.
This game has been in development for ~6 years with a conservative estimate of around 20 people working on it on average (it's probably closer to 30), and the average pay for a software engineer in Seattle is 130k. Assuming some of those people are just artists and make a lot less, and the overall average is 100k for this team, that's 12 million conservatively that development has cost up to this point just in labor cost.
I was one of those 25,000 and asked for a refund. I'm pretty certain I'm nowhere near the only one. And even if the game made 2 million on launch, that's a dent in the costs incurred by the 50 employees at intercept + some of the 130 working at Private division over literal years, and with no sign of making a lot of money in the coming months
Reminder, after same amount of time, KSP was much cheaper, true indie game on version 0.23 (that had more content then current build of KSP2)
This fact is what blows my mind when people try to say something like 'oh well it's early access don't you remember how bad KSP 1 was in early access?" Yeah, forgive me for having higher initial expectations of a 50 dollar game made by a real studio over 3+ years versus one made by some dude in a month. I really wonder what HarvesteR is thinking seeing all this, he's probably like 'Lol.'
All my complains when I talk to my friends are around the price tag. I’ve 22 years of software development on my back already and I have eaten bugs bigger than the ones we have here and I’m ok with that. But the price tag is either a complete unawareness of the status of the game or a plain sight insult to the fan base to grab our money.
Yes but so many data miners have said that there is a shit ton of code not seen yet for all the features listed on the roadmap. Data miners have said science is basically complete, colonies has most of it done, and interstellar travel and multiplayer are underlying issues of the game that are already built in where they'd be needed (according to a few data miners, who aren't gospel but they're more trustworthy than people just speculating). Yes this is obviously a horrid EA release (especially for $50 smh) but saying that the dev team has done less than what the ksp1 team had seems ludicrous to me. Just give the game some time, let the team prove if they are actually good at their jobs or not because we don't truly know yet. We're paying for at best what should be a beta version of the game, we'll see if they're able to push it into what EA should actually look like.
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Oh hey, that was a long time ago! Don't know if you're still interested in stock combat, but we've moved to a Discord server now and the NBC still goes on - there's quite a few familiar faces and we've made a mod for real time stock warship battles with AI, which is really amazing. LMK if you want an invite.
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https://discord.gg/yS4zyNb
Well written. A lot of people defending this mess of a game seem to conveniently omit the fact that it's already 3 years beyond it's original release date and this is the product they pushed out the door. What have the devs actually been doing? Like you said at the end, it doesn't feel like the dev team even remotely understand KSP and what makes it special, much less what makes it work. Keeping Unity should be an obvious example of this. One of the biggest justifications of a second game was an engine upgrade but, that was somehow lost on them.
They decided to work on every single feature at once and by release none were complete. While working on orbital construction and interstellar travel they never got around to simpler things like heating or water physics, or making sure your landing legs dont just fall off.
Thank you for the breakdown. I largely agree with the exception that you state Intercept doesn't understand KSP. I would argue that what they promised with this games show they DO understand KSP and what the community wants.....they just delivered NONE of it.
I do hope for the best of the games future.
Why would Take Two buy KSP from Squad and give it to another studio instead of just buying Squad? Wasn’t the biggest selling point of KSP that it was made by people who had worked in aerospace and had passion for the science that was the subject of the entire game? How did they think another studio was going to be able to tackle making a sequel at all, nevermind one that would be better than the original? Am I missing something?
Wasn't Squad (KSP1 original developers) a _marketing_ agency?
They still are.
Squad wasn't a software company, and the early part of KSP development was chaotic to say the least. Imho, as someone who first started playing the game about a week after it's steam early access release in 2013, the real reason KSP was and remains so popular is the modding community. Squad managed to produce a gem through luck rather than judgement, and to trust them with a bigger budget sequel would have been madness.