Kerbal Space Program TWO, DOS, DEUX, ZWEI....

[Prime Junta]

My guess is that clouds will be in but weather won't, i.e. clouds will be cosmetic only.

 

[Hellraiser]

Scott Manley interviews the creative lead at PAX West:

 

[Riel]

A loong silence about this. It seems it is set to release in April though.

 

[Hellraiser]

A loong silence about this. It seems it is set to release in April though.

Doubtful, during some earnings release call or whatever Take 2 said the game will not be out in their current fiscal year but sometime in the next one. Well technically it does start in April, but I would be surprised if we get it this spring. Could be anywhere up to March next year.

https://www.pcgamer.com/kerbal-space-program-2-is-delayed/

No relevant news regarding anything KSP 2 since then.

They would be building hype more if they were so close. Most likely scenario is the dev team is too busy working on the game to release anything.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

I'm all for waiting. KSP still plays nice and looks great with mods like Restock.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Scott Manley interviews the creative lead at PAX West:

WTF. Still runs in Unity, probably completely recoded and looks like shit. There is absolutely no point to this game.

 

[Hellraiser]

Just in case anyone is wondering no new info on the game so far, although we might get more after they hire a new community manager in Seattle soon. They wouldn't be looking for one if they didn't want to use him or her to release information to the community.

Scott Manley interviews the creative lead at PAX West:

WTF. Still runs in Unity, probably completely recoded and looks like shit. There is absolutely no point to this game.

The only really shit part I saw so far are the ground textures, especially considering the base game just recently upgraded the ground textures for some of the celestial bodies. They seem quite basic and placeholder-ish, kind of expected as what they have shown so far is pre-alpha footage. Seems they focused on the new scatter system which, if the below image is not doctored, seems like an improvement even in this early build. Actual ship and base part models look ok on close-ups even if the first screenshot below seem to be missing anti-aliasing for some reason.

For me features like proper support for interstellar craft including continuous acceleration during time-warp, proper base building support, multiplayer and the improved procedural terrain system justify doing this sequel.

Unity of course is a whole other problem.

 

[Hellraiser]

FYI it seems Private Division will be at PAX East which is next week from the 27th of February to the 1st of March. We might get new info then. At the very least I would expect the devs to show up and say something new.

 

[Hellraiser]

First video from new dev video series got released an hour ago, more coming in the next few weeks, features new footage between talking heads. Footage looks quite good but also somewhat choppy in places.

Video mostly related to how they had their science consultant help them design speculative metallic hydrogen engines. Also explosions.

Spoiler

Apparently SCIENCE says the metallic hydrogen rocket engine exhaust would be pink.

 

[Twiglard]

WTF. Still runs in Unity, probably completely recoded and looks like shit. There is absolutely no point to this game.

It's not nearly as bad with 1.8. The stutter is practically gone. That was by far my biggest gripe. The memory leaks are still there though.

Unfortunately I'm stuck on 1.7.3 due to RP-1. The base game isn't complex enough even with mods like JNSQ or LRTR. And I'm fucking sick of using the overpowered Dawn engine.

First video from new dev video series got released an hour ago, more coming in the next few weeks, features new footage between talking heads. Footage looks quite good but also somewhat choppy in places.

Not particularly reassuring. In KSP 1 many game systems have complete mod rewrites given how crappy they are. Aerodynamics, gravity, tanks, engine thrust at the top of my head. I don't expect the original implementation to be any good.

 

[Hellraiser]

New dev blog on the science of explosion visuals:

https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/dev-diaries/developer-insights-2/

Also they confirmed a few days ago that indeed they will be at PAX East which starts tomorrow I think. Here's hoping they don't pull a CDP and cancel their attendance just before it due to the coronavirus. Although in the case of foreign trips I also would cancel, airports are a risk and nobody wants staff quarantined.

 

[Hellraiser]

Officially delayed to somewhere after September of next year:

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/194026-kerbal-space-program-2-to-be-released in-fall-2021/

The delay is not so surprising given that they had that whole dev studio absorption deal just before lockdown mania started. Bad timing to create and organize a new studio.

 

[somewhatgiggly]

Well, if the Modders can remake RSS and give me a orbital shipyard, I don't care much. I just use KSP to lowball some cosmetically hardscifi designs for my own works and most of my ships were torchships anyway, so the antimatter stuff (if it's there) is welcome, and if not I'll wait until someone ports/remakes the interstellar mod.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Looks like Nertea is back to work on his Far Future mod, so hopefully in couple of months you'll have great quality models to build torchships.

 

[LESS T_T]

Take Two/Private Division takeover:

 

[Hellraiser]

Now that is an unusual tale, although it does explain a lot.

 

[Prime Junta]

Interesting although there's not that much there that's new. It'd be interesting to hear TT's side of the story, this is pretty unusual and as the reporter says the potential reputation risk for TT is major, especially as their strategic objective is to cultivate a stable of indie studios making mid-budget hits for them. Must've been a major morale hit for everyone working on the game too.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ogram-2-release-disrupted-by-corporate-strife

Game Publisher Cancels Contract With Developer, Then Tries to Poach Its Entire Team
Three months after losing a deal with Take-Two, Star Theory Games was out of business.

Attendees play a demo of Borderlands 3 from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.'s 2K Games during the E3 Expo in Los Angeles in 2019. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg


One Friday evening last December, employees of game designer Star Theory Games each received the same unusual recruitment message over LinkedIn. It struck them as bizarre for two reasons. One, it came from an executive producer at the publishing company funding their next video game. Two, it said the game—in the works for the previous two years—was being pulled from their studio.

“This was an incredibly difficult decision for us to make, but it became necessary when we felt business circumstances might compromise the development, execution and integrity of the game,” Michael Cook, an executive producer at Private Division, a publishing label within Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., wrote in the message, which was reviewed by Bloomberg. “To that end, we encourage you to apply for a position with us.”

It was strange and disconcerting news to Star Theory’s employees. Normally, an announcement like this would be delivered in a companywide meeting or an email from Star Theory’s leadership team. The contract with Take-Two was the studio’s only source of revenue at the time. Without it, the independent studio was in serious trouble.

The LinkedIn message went on to say Take-Two was setting up a new studio to keep working on the same game Star Theory had been developing, a sequel to the cult classic Kerbal Space Program. Take-Two was looking to hire all of Star Theory’s development staff to make that happen. “We are offering a compensation package that includes a cash sign-on bonus, an excellent salary, bonus eligibility and other benefits,” Cook wrote.

When employees returned to the office on Monday, Star Theory founders Bob Berry and Jonathan Mavor convened an all-hands meeting. The two men had been in discussions about selling their company to Take-Two but were dissatisfied with the terms, they explained. The game’s cancellation was a shock, but the founders assured staff that Star Theory still had money in the bank and could try to sign other deals, according to five people who attended the meeting and asked not to be identified, citing the risk of litigation. Berry and Mavor encouraged employees to stick together and stay at the company.

The next few weeks were chaos, employees said. Take-Two hired more than a third of Star Theory’s staff, including the studio head and creative director. By March, as the coronavirus pandemic choked the global economy, any hope of saving the business appeared to be lost, and Star Theory closed its doors.

Even by the cutthroat standards of the video game business, Take-Two’s tactics were extreme. The company behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise is one of America’s largest publishers, with a market value of $15 billion. The stock is up 10% this year and trading near an all-time high, thanks to increased demand from people stuck at home. Take-Two cultivated a leading position in publishing through a mix of big-budget games developed in-house and by a tightknit group of studio partners. Publishers like Take-Two control a project’s financing, marketing and distribution, giving them a great deal of leverage over most developers they sign.

Attendees play Borderlands 3 video game by Take-Two during the E3 Expo in Los Angeles in 2019.
Photographer: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg

The swift demise of Star Theory and the events of its three final months, which have not been previously reported, highlight the frailty of those business relationships and the power dynamics within the industry.

Brian Roundy, a spokesman for Private Division, said the company contacted “every member of the development team” at Star Theory with an invitation to join the new studio, called Intercept Games. “More than half of the team is now at Intercept Games,” Roundy wrote. “In doing so, we are empowering our deeply passionate and talented team to focus on quality, and we are thrilled with the progress that they are making on the game.” Star Theory’s Berry and Mavor didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Patrick Meade, a senior engineer at Star Theory, said he turned down the job offer from Take-Two. He declined to discuss the events in detail but said he didn’t want to work for a big company where he wouldn’t have the same degree of influence or financial benefits if the game were a hit. “I was at a small studio, where the work I did had a massive impact on our success,” Meade said. “When I see myself at any large corporation, that is fundamentally not true.”

Berry and Mavor started their game studio in 2008 in Bellevue, Washington. They called it Uber Entertainment, later changing the name to Star Theory following the rise of a certain ride-hailing company. Early hits included Monday Night Combat, a cartoonish shooter that sold more than 300,000 copies, and Planetary Annihilation, a strategy game that raised more than $2 million on Kickstarter.

In 2017, Star Theory began working with Take-Two on its most high-profile project. Take-Two had purchased the rights to a popular flight simulation game developed by another independent studio and contracted Star Theory to make a sequel. The original game, Kerbal Space Program, allowed players to construct and launch rockets using realistic physics. It sold more than 2 million copies, was critically acclaimed and even led to partnerships with NASA and the European Space Agency. Gamers, like moviegoers, tend to flock to brands they know, so working on a well-liked franchise is a chance for a studio to increase sales and gain exposure.

The view inside Star Theory was that development on Kerbal Space Program 2 was proceeding smoothly, according to the people who worked on the project. A preview of the game on display at the Penny Arcade Expo in September left fans impressed, and Take-Two’s public enthusiasm for the title was rising, said Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen & Co.

Late last year, Take-Two agreed to extend Star Theory’s development deadline by six months to add new content to the game. That kicked off a new round of contract negotiations. All seemed well, said the people who worked on the game, until Dec. 6, when the project was pulled and the LinkedIn messages went out. At the hastily called staff meeting a few days later, the founders said in addition to sale talks, they had been trying to clarify royalty terms, which were unclear in their contract, they told employees.

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. One employee, who asked not to be identified, said they felt a mix of confusion and fury, adding that they’d never been put in this type of position.

The attempt at hiring away the development team came with business risks, both for the project and for Take-Two if word got out, said Creutz. “They've got a game they've got high hopes for, and they have now potentially injected an enormous amount of disruption into the development process,” he said. “You could be taking a reputational risk as well, if you want other studios to work with you and it appears that you play this kind of move when things don't go the way you want.”

About a dozen of Star Theory’s 30 employees wound up leaving for Take-Two’s new studio, while the rest stuck around in an attempt to save the business, they said. By January, the remaining team had a plan in place: Each employee would spend the next two months brainstorming new ideas and building prototypes. Then they would pitch the best ones to publishers at the Game Developers Conference in mid-March in the hope of securing a new deal, the five workers said. The annual conference is always full of publishers looking to make investments in indie studios with proven track records.

Then came the pandemic. The conference was canceled, leaving Star Theory with nowhere to take its pitches. Publishers, sensing an economic downturn, tightened their spending. On March 4, Star Theory shut down. Each worker received a month’s pay and two months of health insurance, said three former employees. A few joined their former colleagues at Take-Two’s Intercept Games.

Kerbal Space Program 2 remains in development at Intercept. The game had been set to come out this year, but the company said last month it was delaying the release until the fall of 2021. “With everything going on in the world today due to the Covid-19 outbreak,” the company said, “we’re facing many unique challenges.”

 

[HoboForEternity]

Take Two/Private Division takeover:

Tbh this sounds very scummy. Basically negotiations didn't pan out as tt wanted to be, then they sabotage star theory to death.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I don't see a problem. Why should Take Two not try to hire people?

In the end it's everyone's decision wether they take a new offer or not.

In fact, whenever you see the word "poaching" used these days, you can be sure it is meaningless and indicates a bad business practice. The article makes it sound like the employees are the sole commodity of Star Theory Games and here lies the problem. They fucked up a deal with their only contractor and now expect that the employes pay the price for that and pull the cart from the shit. Why should they do that if they get a better offer and already accepted it?

 

[Hellraiser]

So they released episode 1.5 of the developer update. Seems episode 2 was supposed to be about space geology or whatever but the dreaded just a flu, bro, interrupted the filming of that. Instead we got some boring "working from home" cliched coof stuff mixed with some new footage.



So I'll just post the screenshots someone else made since that is the only interesting part, there's some more footage of Duna orbital station, Kerbin orbital station and Minmus from Orbit and possibly its surface inside the video.

Duna Greenhouses, also snazzy rough terrain showing them planet surface improvement, also spess plane ramp in the background.

Zoomed out view of the same colony I think, landing in such rough terrain is gonna be a nice challenge:

Cranes are in, hopefully they can be controlled and used to lift shit up:

Lastly, this is how the tutorial animations explaining the rocket science will look like, guess this one is about gravity drag or TWR or something:

They also showed some brief shots of Duna orbit with Ike in the background and possibly minmus surface (or mun, but I think it was minmus).

 

[Hellraiser]

PC Gamer article that was previously in the paper version. It mentions some of the things related to the screenshots in my last post.

I think the most important bit of info it reveals is that you only need to do one supply run to a colony (or between outposts) on a given route for a given resource, and then an automatic resupply route is set up.

Also colonies lacking critical resources will not utterly fail but just be worse, somehow. Hopefully modders will fix that.

Finally it will have the delta-v map built-in for easier trip planning when in the VAB.

 

[somewhatgiggly]

PC Gamer article that was previously in the paper version. It mentions some of the things related to the screenshots in my last post.

I think the most important bit of info it reveals is that you only need to do one supply run to a colony (or between outposts) on a given route for a given resource, and then an automatic resupply route is set up.

Also colonies lacking critical resources will not utterly fail but just be worse, somehow. Hopefully modders will fix that.

Finally it will have the delta-v map built-in for easier trip planning when in the VAB.

I guess any colony would be stuffed with hydroponics/aeroponics/stuffed with vitamin capsules and fully matured ECSS before even taking off, which is not too much to ask for when making, you know, a colony. Thus in the scenarios where there's still some air in a can they can at least survive for a while to await rescue than just dropping dead.

 

[Twiglard]

Finally it will have the delta-v map built-in for easier trip planning when in the VAB.

If anything I want flight planning prior to liftoff.

 

[Hellraiser]

Dres will have a bulge now, Iapetus style:

The canyon of course is still there, seems there's a second one too: