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Comment by SketchySeaBeast | Hacker News Reader

KSP2 is really becoming the premier example of "Nearly perfect labour of love's legacy ruined after being bought by a larger company."

More on topic: I have no idea why one would want to use the registry to store this information.

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It's far worse than that. Take-Two bought Squad and KSP along with it. Soon after they took Squad's original IP from them and gave it to Private Division to develop KSP 2. Then they poached staff from Squad. It's not like KSP 2 is developed in some innovative way, I was expecting that game like KSP 2 should have been developed in it's own engine since it's so unique among other games. But nooo. KSP 2 still uses Unity, and in worse way. You are better off installing better graphics mods on KSP.

Not sure, but isn’t unity in this case covering your need for some tools, like rendering, assets management and so on, but maybe not all - i.e deferring to them the physic. Or so would I say assume ?

I heard from someone who actually works in the industry (as engine developer) that companies usually don't use Unity out-of-the-box and write their own tools and extensions (e.g. memory management) and change parts of the engine as the needs vary greatly depending on the game they are making. Not sure how common that really is though.

Common patterns from non-indies using Unity is something like that: write your game with the idea that Unity handles the rendering and media stuff, everything else you write/manage yourself with a proper C# codebase.

You may be referring to Unreal in this instance. Unreal is open source* but you pay to license the engine, so you can make core changes I.e. memory management or tweak underlying net code. Unity is closed source and so you can only really extend very core parts of the engine.

FWIW my experience in gaming has been that Unity is exceptionally powerful and allows game developers to create games that would otherwise require an entirely separate dev team to support the engine. When I first learned game dev, the code sections were almost entirely devoted to interacting with the underlying graphics libraries (OpenGL or DirectX) and hardly any to creating powerful features in a game. Now, using something like Unreal or Unity is akin to using a web framework like Ruby on Rails or Laravel.

* The source is available to view and modify

No people do rewrite parts of unity for their own games, they just don’t rewrite it all the way down at the c++ level.

I’ve known people who worked on some games where they hand rolled a physics engine in c# instead of using the unity one.

Unreal is not open source.

I think you might mean that unreal is "source available" which doesn't confer any of the rights of open source, but does allow you to view and modify the source code subject to a commercial license (which might be free for personal, small scale use. I don't know unreal's pricing structure).

> Unreal is open source

Unreal is not open source (cf. the Open Source Definition: https://opensource.org/osd/). It's just that the licencee is allowed to view and modify the source code within the limits of the licence.

BTW, unity does offer a full source of the engine to companies that are willing to pay enough for it. So you can effectively modify it as much as unreal.

Although, I don't even know if the KSP2 studio is big enough to afford it, let alone if they are actually doing it

> open source*

> * The source is available to view and modify

“source available”, and then you are using common terminology in a non-controversial way and don't need an explanation that is longer than the term.

Plenty of companies have source access to Unity and write their own custom portions of it. It's just not accessible at the hobbyist or indie budget level. It's one of those "call us for pricing" situations.

My limited experience with Unity was that, if you are planning to do something the Unity way, its very easy to bootstrap and start just coding cool features. Which is why theres a proliferation of Unity store assets + cheap gameplay on steam.

But if you want to do something a bit more complex, like modifying 3d objects in flight based on unit interaction, not only are you fighting an uphill battle, but the documentation is all out of date and mostly wrong. Because Unity isnt just an engine, its a set of default addons to that engine, and each of those addons was written to be just generic enough, but mostly just enable people to start making FPS and RTS games really quick. If you want to step outside that paradigm you are basically just engine coding again.

> write their own tools and extensions (e.g. memory management)

I've been using Unity since 2009, and have been a lead developer and CTO in several different companies. I have never heard anyone writing their own memory management for Unity. May be you're talking about object pooling?

It's kinda what ECS is, depending on how loose you want to get with the term memory management. And studios have implemented their own ECS in Unity long before Unity's official ECS framework.

Incorrect on nearly all counts:

* The GAME (KSP) and the IP was purchased by Take-Two, not the company itself.

* The IP was then given to Star theory (MNC/SMNC/Planetary Annihilation guys) to develop KSP2

* Star theory failed once to deliver on the budget they promised, they got extra money

* ST failed second time,T2 didn't wanted to give them more money, so ST wanted to sell out to T2

* T2 went "fuck it", took IP from them

* Take-Two was one to poach developers from Star Theory (not Squad!) to make new studio to make KSP2. IIRC they basically made blanked statement "if you want to work on KSP we will hire you" to their devs, a lot of them came over.

I assume the last part happened because T2 went "hold on, you failed to deliver then want us to buy you ? Why would we buy company with incompetent management in the first place ? Poaching devs is cheaper".

> You are better off installing better graphics mods on KSP.

Well, at least you got that right.

You got it wrong. Star Theory didn't want to sell out to Take2. They realized Star Theory couldn't fulfill the totally-not-abusive-and-predatory deadline they wanted to release the game, so they said "ok" and tried to purchase the studio. They rejected the purchase, so they poached like 60% of their developers and employees instead, to a point that ST had to close doors because Take2 poached almost their entire work force.

I'm assuming that the "Squad" you're talking about has nothing to do with the "Squad" multiplayer tactical FPS game developed by Offworld Industries.

As someone not familiar with the KSP ecosystem that threw me for a loop.

> should have been developed in it's own engine since it's so unique among other games

with my limited technical knowledge about game programming and much less limited technical knowledge about software development in general this seems quite wrong

because while the game is somewhat unique in some point, in many many(1) other technical points it's not, so by using a game engine you can save a lot of time/problems with all the points it's not unique in and just either replace or adapt the parts where it is

so while Unity might very well have been a bad choice

the general idea of using an existing game engine was not

(1): Like window handling, input handling, asset loading/packing/bundling/compression, parts of game saving, most parts related to the rendering pipeline, menus, statistics/crash reporting, installers, and probably more.

Through this is also how game engines rot: By not maintaining many of the build in components leading to any non very simple game needing to replace them all the time. I think Unity had been going into that direction.

The "some point" is the main selling point of KSP. The "many other" technical points are beside the point. If you get the small things right but fail at the most important part, you fail overall.

I think you missed the point of my comment.

developing games is cost and time constrained

if you can use a existing engine and not wast resources on all the things which are not the main selling point and in turn spend more resources on getting the main selling point right, why should you not do so?

AFIK few, probably non of the more successful established game engine force you to use their physics engine

KSP is a game that routinely runs into floating point related problems and a game that needs deterministic physics simulations to be accurate and glitch free at all simulation speeds in the vacuum of space and inside the atmosphere of a planet.

yes so you need to replace the physics engine

this still leaves quite a lot of parts you do not need to replace

Why do "evil overlord" always seem to fail at understanding what they bought, especially the fact that the brand isn't worth much, and what are required investments/plans to capitalize it?

Like, buying Palm and reselling cheap Android phones, buying KSP and releasing KSP2 as it is don't seem to make a lot of financial sense. Or does it? It's always assumed "they" make a lot of money by ruining a brand. How and how much?

not an expert here, but there are thousands of variations of this.. the amount of effort and unique-whatever'ness that it takes to bring a product line into profitable maturity includes lots of people, places and things.. most of those are costs. If capital and their attorney buy the entire operation, with all the layers, the focus changes to the accounts and balance sheet, where lots of happy positive things are mercilessly cut. An unpredictable second part is, willing buyers for some of those parts. What happens from the consumer point of view after that, may or may not appear to make sense. Communicating to the customers costs money and risks reputation. Quite a lot of what happens in decision making is business-secret, some of the bad parts are forever hidden. $0.02 in America

It's a great example of "Quality doesn't produce market-leading returns"

Of which the consequence should be "Don't turn labors of love into businesses that demands market-leading returns"

Are you suggesting KSP2 is quality? It is decidedly the opposite.

KSP1 however ARE and have created decent returns.

KSP1 took 5 years of development to get to 1.0, at a non-software company.

Take-Two then bought the game in 2017 and is responsible for ports and KSP2.

So while KSP1 likely generated returns of Squad-magnitude with a few resources... that doesn't mean KSP2 is capable of generating Take-Two-magnitude returns from a full team.

Dwarf Fortress sold a lot of copies too (finally), but it's also been in development for 21 years!

But their point is for that to even feasibly be an idea to consider, KSP2 would have to be good. It's practically a downgrade from KSP1 in every way except the graphics. Entirely a downgrade if you're willing to install graphics mods in KSP 1.

Dwarf Fortress is an indie game. KSP was an indie game until Take2 bought the game.

The expectations for both these games were low. It was a small team working on both of them so we don't expect much, and since they're indie, they are actually gamers like us and like to play their games.

Being bought by a AAA publisher and having billions at their disposal increases the quality expected by unprecedented levels. And they are just showing that they are even worse than the indie team (HarvesteR) that started KSP. And they have budget and can get more personnel if they want.

In a way, this speaks to the power good software engineers hold.

You can have hundreds of millions but no match for a small number of software engineers in what they are good and enthusiastic at.

I think the graphics of Dwarf fortress and Minecraft are why those games were so much cheaper to develop, rather than some romantic story about the triumph of the underdog the vs some big bad empire. Turns out fun is more important to some than graphics. There are plenty of people that tried to play Dwarf fortress and gave up because earlier versions were impenetrable.

I'm curious, for someone who's never played KSP, what is the consensus on the last "good" version of KSP? The last patch that came out before being bought out?

The most recent version/patch level of KSP 1 is fine, it's been a pretty solid game for a while. There's not much reason to play older patch levels unless you want to use older mods that no longer work on newer versions.

I recommend CKAN for installing and maintaining mods for KSP 1.

The first KSP game is still a stellar experience, if you pardon the pun - especially if you install a few graphics mods to make it prettier.

KSP2 has a lot of potential, and is very pretty, but unfortunately also requires a pretty beefy machine to run well - and even with a beefy machine, it can still stutter quite a bit. I honestly am not sure if I own KSP2 or not - my Steam library is like most people's, and I often treat game purchases a just a "you did a good thing, here's some money" - but I certainly can't run it on any hardware in my house.

Stock KSP1 is superior in almost every way. Less buggy, more game features, and a mature mod community. KSP2 has all of that planned but it’s still struggling with very basic gameplay. Problems that were solved a decade ago with KSP1.

Most of the interesting mods have already been integrated into the core KSP1 game. About the only ones worth mentioning are ScanSat (adds planetary observation sensors) and EngineerEverywhere (or something. It adds the thrust-weight-ratio display info without a part). The graphics are enhancements are just pretty pictures, that do nothing.

> Nearly perfect labour of love

I wouldn't go that far. Its not KSP2, but KSP1 has plenty of jank and bugs.

It has jank, but I don't know anyone who stopped playing because of it.

I stopped playing because I could no longer figure out how to install mods. There's a mod manager, but it doesn't seem to work.

I see you're not a rocket scientist.

Ckan works for me if it’s a different mod manager you use. I’ve been using it for like at least 5 years without issue.

Ckan is the one I tried to use, but the resulting KSP1 installation usually threw a ton of exceptions at runtime. Maybe it's just compatibility issues -- those weren't called out, though.

The jank was sometimes part of the fun

The Kraken.

The jank was also forgivable when it was a one man effort or a very small team. Plus it was a relatively novel idea for the game being created for the first time. It also made no grandeur promises of what was to come, and continually made improvements.

Take Two and KSP2 have none of the same forgivable qualities.

The jank was acceptable because it was supposed to be a simple 2D game that ended up outgrowing it's diapers as it grew, and being a Unity project a long time ago, was stuck on abysmal physics systems. It couldn't NOT be jank. Everyone always "wanted" a better physics system or game engine entirely, because KSP1 was often held back by Unity, but that would have definitely killed the project.

Then KSP2 is like, still on Unity? Despite massive amounts of budget and like no compelling reason to stay on Unity with the backing of a real game company.

> like no compelling reason to stay on Unity

One benefit of Unity is moddability.

But yeah, thats not really worth the drawbacks for something like KSP.

Well, kinda. Big company just bought IP and hired small "labour's of love" company to do it.

The ideas how to progress the game were great! And players liked it!

But after failing the deadline twice (I assume they lied to take2 about funds required) T2 kicked them off the project and poached developers that did it (basically "if you still love KSP come work for us).

And again, it looked great! The improvements they wanted and presented were received positively as it was basically "KSP1 but MORE! And with MULTIPLAYER!"

But in the end it turned out that passion cannot replace competence and the developers of this game are not very good.

the oh-so subtle difference between two almost equivalent but in-the-end completely different intentions of:

making games (and also a bit on money on the side)

making money (and having to make some video games so the money will come)

KSP is on GOG, but the enshittification made all reviews one-star:

https://www.gog.com/en/game/kerbal_space_program

I don't know what other companies have screwed up GOG titles, maybe paradox (like stellaris?)

The legacy of the game was already ruined by the greed of it's owners. Remember when almost all of the KSP original development team resigned at once?

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