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v0.1.5.0 Patch Notes

A month after the v0.1.4.1 hotfix, a new version was released. There are promising bugs being fixed, such as a regression caused by the orbital decay fix, soft locks during loading screens and some graphics adjustments.

The list of bugfixes is not impressive, but it’s important to highlight that there’s a lot of performance optimization fixes included in this patch. The most important ones seem to be that CPU use has been optimized when rendering clouds, GPU performance was increased when doing terrain rendering and (maybe not entirely noticeable) some code optimizations.

The update is promising, as there are players on the official subreddit reporting a 250% FPS when flying above the ground on a celestial body, and the same player claims this was achieved with the highest visual settings.

It seems like Intercept is finally understanding their codebase and finally fixing the issues that persisted since KSP2’s launch. I gotta admit, the performance gains are really impressive, but I am still very cautiously optimistic for the big content update coming in December.

Introducing For Science!

Intercept Games has announced that the first major content update for KSP2 is going to be released in December. Although they didn’t give a specific date (probably because they don’t want to be held accountable if there are any delays and they can’t deliver things as promised), it still looks quite bad for them, as the first content update will be released only after almost a year since the game released.

The development team highlighted some new features the Science update will have and, finally, atmosphere reentry effects. They also mentioned “significant improvements to the game’s performance, but we are yet to see them deliver on these significant improvements.

Other than that, it’s worth reading the blog post about the content update and create your own bingo card to bet how many missing features the content update will release with 😀

v0.1.4.1 Hotfix Release Notes

Good news, Intercept Games beat their record and released a hotfix 4 days after the PQS registry flood bug was widely noticed!

The developers also included a small fix on this hotfix to reduce orbital decay in low gravity SOIs– a bug where the orbit will start decaying when a vehicle orbiting a celestial body is completely stopped, without any time warp involved.

I was actually surprised by how fast they released the hotfix, though Intercept should still work on getting updates and hotfixes out more often.

KSP2 Flooding Windows Registry

A fellow KSP player posted an interesting bug report on the KSP forums this weekend (September 24). The bug report was titled “KSP2 is Spamming the Windows Registry Over Weeks/Months Until the Game Will Stop Working Permanently”. According to the report, something is misconfigured and KSP2 is flooding the Windows registry every time the player changes SOI (sphere of influence) or when a save file is loaded. As noted by the user, this problem didn’t occur until after the v0.1.3.0 release.

The problem seems to be related to Unity’s PlayerPrefs class, used to “store Player preferences between game sessions”– I don’t know who thought this was a good idea or why it’s the norm to store these kinds of preferences on the Registry, but in every other OS supported by Unity and even Windows UWP itself, these preferences are stored in a file and not inside the registry.

On another side, it looks like the game is saving information related to in-game objects to the registry, but surprisingly the dev team at Intercept Games is competent enough to forget that object instance IDs change every time you start the game. And the old information stored on the registry is not deleted, meaning your registry will get flooded with game object information up to a point that the game can no longer start because the registry is “full”.

The developers considered this as a “critical issue” and were aiming to release a hotfix, which should be released in the “coming days”, according to community manager Dakota. One can hope that Nate and his minions deploy a hotfix for this issue faster than before. Or it will take the usual 1-week timeframe to deploy hotfixes that fix a single bug.

In any case, bugs like these and the delay in deploy fixes for critical problems like the one above show how “serious” the KSP2 dev team is, and how “competent” they are. It’s not like they have almost infinite budget and a billionaire publisher behind them. After all, they are indie developers, right?

v0.1.4.0 Patch Notes

After the one week delay from the original release date, version 0.1.4.0 was finally released. An interesting thing you can instantly notice is that the patch notes is disappointing as it’s much smaller than the other releases.

As always, Intercept Games is not transparent enough and didn’t provide more information on the “critical performance bug” that they encountered weeks ago, delaying the original release date of the new version. They added some Level of Detail (LOD) models to some buildings, added some performance optimizations and that’s about it. As someone has correctly pointed out on the discussion thread of this announcement:

In case any of you don’t have time to read that very impressive patch notes, here is a summary version of it:

• minor bug fixes and performance improvements

Have a great day!

The two most important bugs that were constantly highlighted on every patch notes by Nate and the team are – drum roll, please – not fixed yet! Orbital decay remains on the same state as before, though Intercept Games claims they made progress on fixing the bug. Regarding performance degradation, they said they saw some improved performance, but of course, they are using the magical gaming rigs that didn’t catch the bugs and issues from release day, meaning there’s no progress on solving performance degradation.

Meanwhile, it seems like there’s a trend of releasing a new version every 2 months, roughly. And I hope this is not a trend to have less and less bugfixes and content on the patches while the “release cadence” is decreased. Imagine waiting 3 months for a patch that fixes just a couple of bugs!

KSP2 Patch v0.1.4.0 Timing

As everyone was expecting the v0.1.4.0 update, the team at Intercept Games published a very brief blog post to announce that v0.1.4.0 will be delayed for a week after their team “identified a critical performance issue”, which apparently was detected a week before the planned release date. They decided to delay the release for a week so they can try to fix the issue.

They claim they have fixed the problem and are testing it and the earliest date for the new version release is next week.

They didn’t give any other information about what the issue was or how it affected performance. Maybe this issue was present since release day and only now they decided to stop bullshitting the KSP fanbase and work on improving the game? Who knows? As they mentioned on the previous blog post, they know KSP2 doesn’t meet expectations but it will only get better— it’s already better, they don’t even want the players to know what is going on with their game, just using generic excuses to justify their poor decisions.

The closest we got was a link to a Twitter post saying they identified a critical performance issue. Nothing else. Good job, Nate!

Patch Four is Incoming

The KSP2 development team published an announcement exactly one month since the latest patch claiming that version 0.1.4.0 is currently scheduled to be released on August 22.

They said they are “committed to resolving the biggest issues faced by the community to set up a solid foundation in preparation for the Science update”. One might argue that there’s no foundation and if there’s one indeed, it’s anything but solid.

Jokes aside, the blog post is short and they said there will be devblogs about upcoming features that Intercept Games is planning to add to the game, like heating and visual effects for atmospheric reentry, and probably how they are planning to tackle wobbly rockets and orbital decay. Things that the dev team seems busy enough to not have addressed them with top priority and release hotfixes frequently enough to try to address these issues and prevent the outflow of players from the game.

The blog post concludes with Intercept acknowledging that the game in its current state doesn’t meet fan expectations, but they make a joke and say that it’s only going to get better. Oh boy, I can imagine, we had a 6-week update cadence, the only way it can get better is if we have updates every 2 months, hotfixes that don’t fix anything at all, and the cherry on top—increasing the price tag for an unfinished, broken prototype!

There will be an Ask Me Anything session with Nertea, former KSP1 modder, to talk about parts and parts systems. It will be hosted on Twitch on August 17th, 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST.

v0.1.3.2 Hotfix Release Notes

A new hotfix was released 12 days after the first hotfix ever released for KSP2. Another 2 bugs were fixed in this patch, one related to UI/UX where the navball markings would show up blurry, and another related to trajectory position changes when a vessel is transitioning between spheres of influence.

Adding to the count, that’s 4 bugs fixed in a span of 3 weeks since v0.1.3.0 came out. I wonder how frequent the updates would be and how many bugs would be fixed by now if KSP2 was being developed by a big studio— oh, wait.

Hot Fix Summer

This blog post starts talking about the first ever hotfix, since the game was released (4 months ago). Intercept Games managed to “accidentally activate” the DRM on Steam and lots of players reported that they were unable to launch the game outside the Private Division launcher. I really doubt it was accidental seeing how “reputable” and “reliable” Take-Two is. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the future, this was the only possible way to launch the game. Since then, they have fixed the “issue” and you can launch KSP2 normally through Steam again.

They mention that another hotfix is on the way (of course, release date is yet to be defined, maybe it will be in the next 2 weeks) to fix an issue that makes the navball blurry. They try to, unprofessionally, joke that they are “sneaky little devils” and will manage to include another bugfix in this upcoming hotfix to fix the bug that affects SOI trajectories.

If these fixes prove stable and low-risk, we’ll release a second hotfix. Fingers crossed!

Intercept Games mentions that this SOI trajectory bug was number 2 on their “high-priority list” and credit their teams for a “well-coordinated joint effort” and “fast turnaround” (maybe they live in Mercury where each day lasts 59 solar days, thus they considered it fast). Maybe everything is going according to the greedy corporate plan that Take-Two has for Kerbal 2.

Anyways, the new “high-priority” bug list was decided by community votes, orbital decay being the most voted one, with 25 votes, and UI artifacting being the least voted, with 6 votes only.

So, apparently, the developers really don’t play the game to decide what bugs should be fixed first and instead rely on the community to do some project management for them. Nate Simpson and Intercept Games don’t disappoint in surprising us every day that goes by with their perfect (mis)management! Hooray, Nate, you deserve a raise for that!

v0.1.3.1 Hotfix Release Notes

The first ever hotfix was released a week after v0.1.3.0 was released, and, surprisingly, it contains only 2 bugfixes, one related to atmospheric drag not being applied correctly to capsules after decoupling and another related to procedural fairing buttons overlapping each other in VAB.

It’s surprising how it took Intercept Games one full week to fix these bugs and they dare call this a hotfix when players had to deal with this bug for a week since 0.1.3.0 came out.

Friday the v0.1.3.0th

The development team posted an update regarding the 0.1.3.0 update released the day before, highlighting several bugfixes and addition of new features.

The post also mentioned that the v0.1.3.0 update represents an incremental step of “addressing game-breaking bugs while moving toward our first Roadmap update”. The first major content update for KSP2 should feature science collection, parts progression and a mission system. Intercept Games also recognized that there are still some “game-breaking bugs” and gameplay issues that need to be addressed, claiming that the new list of the top 10 “most wanted” bugs will be released next week, which will feature 3 bugs from the previous list that was disclosed earlier this month.

There seems to be a bug that decoupling interferes with aerodynamic drag and Intercept Games said they are looking into it and might release a hotfix “in a few days” – the first time after 4 months being released that the development team has considered releasing a hotfix. Apparently this is the only “game breaking” bug that deserves a hotfix, as the team itself mentions that other bugs affecting orbital decay and SOI transit trajectory will probably land on the 0.1.4.0 update.

They brought up reentry and heating, which was asked by community members. Intercept Games replied that they are looking for ways to add the reentry visual effects without it costing too much performance and that the VFX will probably be added before thermal systems are added. It was mentioned that they will continue working on “incremental updates” until most game-breaking bugs are fixed before working on 0.2.0.0, the first major content release. Of course, no release date was provided for the upcoming update.

0.1.3.0 Release Notes

KSP2 version 0.1.3.0 was finally released after being announced more than one month ago and exactly 71 days (2 months, 11 days) since version 0.1.2.0.

The new release contains a substantial amount of fixes and looks promising at first sight. A lot of performance optimizations were included in this update, mainly focused on GPU memory usage and fixing some memory leaks. Other notable features from this release include 8 new parts (A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S were finally added!), configurable flight HUD UI scaling, the ability to skip the splash screen and a fix for the bug that activating or staging an engine would trigger staging for decouplers and fairings below the engine.

KSP 2 saw an increase in player count when the update was released, jumping from the usual 200 players to a 759 player peak on patch day. The players trend line increased to around 500 players. This could also be explained due to KSP2 being on sale for 20% off until July 13th.

Calvinball? More like Spherical Hydrogen Tank-Ball!

The dev team has pushed back the v0.1.3.0 release date to June 22 (2 days delay) due to “critical bugs” (can you believe it?).

They also talked about wobbly rockets and are leaning towards not having autostrut and are keen on leaving rockets wobbly:

Wobbly rockets are sometimes fun and funny. […] Broadly, we see this as part of the Kerbal DNA, and want to preserve it in some form.

A “major suite of new features” was mentioned, with a planned revamp of the Science system from KSP1. According to Intercept, there are “content-focused feature teams" (in plural!) that are working on the new Science update.

Yet, 4 months since launch and there are literally no reentry visual effects or part heating. One can guess what these teams were doing before they decided to reduce the update cadence to “focus on new features”.

Launch Day Notes

KSP2 was released in Early Access for $49.90, after being delayed three times. Originally announced at Gamescom in August 19, 2019 with a 2020 release date, it was pushed back to Q3 2021, and later in 2020, Nate Simpson, the game’s creative director, announced that the new release date would be in 2022. In May 2022, a YouTube video posted on the official channel announced that the release was pushed back again to "early 2023".

The early stages of the game’s development was surrounded in a controversy, as the game was initially set to be developed by Star Theory Games. A report by Bloomberg revealed that there were disagreements between Take-Two and Star Theory, which resulted in Take2 cancelling the contract with Star Theory and trying to poach most of the developers that were working on KSP2. Take2 created a new studio, Intercept Games, with a bunch of employees from the previous studio. Star Theory shut down its doors three months later.

The developers acknowledged that there were some issues during launch, for example, missing parts from KSP1 and lack of re-entry and thermal heating system (and their respective visuals). Players experienced extremely low performance with top-tier gaming rigs, others experienced "bringing the entire KSC with their vessel" when launching a rocket, random ship explosions and other bugs that prevented one from having an enjoyable gameplay session.

A few weeks prior to the launch, Take-Two and Intercept Games, together with the European Space Agency, organized an event and invited several youtubers and content creators to try out KSP2. Some creators pointed out a lot of critical issues that the game had during this test, which, surprisingly, weren’t caught by the QA team and fixed by the Early Access launch date.

Although there was no other official communication, creative director Nate Simpson was actively replying to users on the forums and trying to convince them that the critical bugs would be fixed by the next patch (he didn’t give an ETA for the next update).