Talking about the KSP 2 Shutdown with HarvesteR - the Creator of Kerbal Space Program!
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- Опубліковано 1 чер 2024
- I’m gonna guess you know what’s up with KSP 2 right now, in that, we have no idea what’s going on with KSP 2 right now - the entire studio has apparently been shut down, with multiple employees directly associated with KSP 2’s development announcing their departure from the company.
Really, it’s all guesswork right now, whole lot of smoke and mirrors, us UA-camrs aren’t privy to any information that the public doesn’t know, so I don’t have anything meaningful to share.
One voice that I thought you guys might find interesting though is Felipe Falanghe’s, also known as HarvesteR, who is the creator of the original Kerbal Space Program, pitching the game to Squad back in 2011!
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Shadowzone's video:
• KSP2 Studio Shut Down?...
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My PC specs:
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor
64 GB RAM
3840 x 2160, 144Hz
This video is intended for audiences 13+ years old.
Chapters:
00:00 The KSP 2 Situation So Far
01:27 HarvesteR's Origins
03:45 The Beginning of Kerbal Space Program
07:02 The ORIGINAL Kerbals
09:03 KSP: From Concept to Game
11:02 Were you really NEVER approached for KSP 2?
12:45 HarvesteR's Theory about the Take 2 Acquisition
15:25 Why do you think KSP 2 has taken SO long to make?
20:20 What makes KSP so difficult to develop
25:15 Was using Unity for KSP 2 a mistake?
29:00 How HarvesteR found out about the KSP 2 shutdown
31:10 How does this situation make you feel?
32:48 HarvesteR's idea for a KSP Sequel!
36:10 How would you have developed KSP 2?
40:07 If asked, would you work on KSP 2?
42:05 Is there anything Intercept did that you wouldn't?
43:52 HarvesteR's NEXT Space Game!
48:45 HarvesteR's Newest Release
51:45 Closing Thoughts - Ігри
Enjoy! Remember that we don't know anything about what's internally happening at Intercept/Take 2 Interactive. This video is purely speculative opinion, but it's the speculative opinions from a person who created Kerbal Space Program and therefore I felt was something worth sharing.
Speculation yes. Are you going to cover the Take-Two Interactive investor call (or what ever it is) on Thursday?
pure speculation , with no studio the game is dead. with no plan to pick it up the game wont be finished . i hope global refunds for those who invested are in the future as the game had not launched yet. particularly sad when we supposed to get an upgrade and now we have uncertainty
Had me actually rolling when you said how Kithack doesn't have colonies, so what were you really doing with your time?
There still is hope, be optimistic. The flame of hope isnt extinguesh yet.
@@vladdumitrucampian3046Even if it does continue, switching studios is bound to have a negative impact on the development
KSP: "I hate marketing, here's a great game"
KSP 2: "We don't have a complete game, but here's some marketing"
Wow... that fits unsurprisingly well.
This game really just crashed harder than my typical attempt at a "rocket"
They needed to add more struts :(
maybe the amount of wobble in the game was reflective of the development status
it actually lithobraked as they promised in the very first trailer :.(
The game crashed before it even left early access.
I think you mean, “Untitled Space Craft”
This is a good look at how sharp and thoughtful the original dev is.
I love this interview because Felipe isn't under any NDA or corporate agreements, and so he feels so much more human than people in interviews of KSP2 devs
KSP wouldn't have happened without him, even if they somehow started the project. Felipe is a brilliant guy.
Pretty amazing-- he knew what game HE wanted and made it-- and the fans found it, latched on, and celebrated. While there's plenty of elements he spoke about having to force (or rather to emphasize and reiterate to the team), most of the ideas of the early game all held on and became core components of future games. Obviously there were major expansions and subsequent iterations and overhauls, like the entire (space)plane flight system -- lift wasn't really a thing for quite a while.
I started playing in college back around version 0.8.x. Bought it as soon as it got to that point, and transferred to a Steam license shortly after it went Early Access.
That's crazy, being an amateur dev and creating such a thing is really impressive. He wasn't alone so that helps but if you pitched that to anyone on the internet, they'd think you're crazy and that you will fail.
This is a good look at how stupid people are for pre-ordering an early access game.
That KSP aviation prequel would have been fun. Instead of the Wright Brothers we could have had the Wrong Brothers. 😂
Kright. It has to start with a K remember.
yess, KSP aviation sounds very fun, as a fan of aviation and vintage planes this game would be amazing
@@kukuc96 Instead of "Kerbal Space Program" just call it "Kerbal Wrong Brothers" lol
So we'd use our rickety cloth-and-wood aircraft to explore Kerbin, rescue polar expeditions, map uncharted territories, and make daring trans-Kerblantic record flights. Oh the things we could've been doing...
@@elFulbertooh my god, imagine the insanely monstrous da-Vinci style aircraft you could make. It would be like that early passenger plane concept with like 20 wings in 4 rows.
HarvesteR, as a scientist I would like to thank you for creating an amazing simulator that has gotten a countless number of people into maths and science. You will never know how truly important you have been to the aerospace industry and science in general. Thank you a million times over.
xkcd 1356
That comic is becoming like the Simpsons: there's a panel for any possible situation
Im doing my masters in Aerospace engineering with a focus on spaceflight in no small part due to playing ksp as a kid
I fell in love with KSP and adopted a very simple principle:
Look at all the options you have. If there is one with even the slightest connection to spaceflight, choose that. And it worked!
Although I studied something different, I am now working at a space company.
First I worked on ground equipment, but now I am getting my hands on flight hardware. :)
Thank you HarvesteR!
I would like to sign under this.
KSP is not just a space game, it is gateway to space exploration.
P.S. All I wanted from KSP 2 was coop and performance improvements if possible.
Any interviewer that lets their guest just talk without interrupting is a good one. Thank you.
Underrated comment imo - all of the most interesting interviews are done by interviewers that say very little, but just enough to get the verbal ball rolling for the interviewee. Matt seems to be great at it!
I think the difference is that Matt actually wants to hear what HarvesteR is saying.
Absolutely. Had Joe Rogan interviewed him, he would have got no more than a dozen words out at any one time before being interrupted.
Yeah it was really nice hearing the development of KSP1 and actually hearing his view and own additions that isn't just a script. Also very inspiring as a game dev student!
@@pumpakatten And that rambling would contribute nothing of substance at best, or be pseudo-intellectual misinformation at worst.
For a guy responsible for creating one of the best games ever made, he's surprisingly humble.
QUI?
what did you expect? a cocky guy?
@@3SPR1T Lot of game devs are cocky though
Some of the very best scientists and inventors are. Electronic music pioneer Bob Moog, whose synthesizers were near-legendary, didn't really take credit for his ideas. He said something like, "the ideas came through me". Isaac Newton of course said, "If I have seen more than others, it is because I have been standing on the shoulders of giants."
The TOP dogs normally are. It's the guys in the middle that care more about proving how great they are to everyone.
This is one of the most beautiful and most sad interviews I've ever listened to
That Harvester drawing hits *hard*
@@victor_silva6142 What a future it could have been, if the Kerbal IP goes to do other things besides spaceflight. Kerbal Aviation like his original idea, maybe Kerbal Age of Sail, Kerbal Trains, or Kerbal Cars.
Still, I don't think the concept of what KSP2 tried to do was wrong (HarversteR seems to think it was a flawed idea from the start based on this interview), KSP1 plus ability to make much bigger spaceships without the performance issues, colonies, interstellar and multiplayer would have been a good game.
@@kukuc96 I can sort of see where Felipe was coming from. KSP 2's pitch was essentially "It's just like KSP, but more and better!" which gave the community certain expectations, which they have (for the most part) fallen short of meeting.
I don't think he necessarily thinks the idea is flawed, just that Intercept had set the bar for success extremely high. And this is speculation on my part, but I get the impression that Intercept went into this project with the Jeremy Clarkson mindset of "Well, the first game was made by a dozen or so people, how hard can it be?"
Really weird nobody from the OG team was contacted. Felipe seems like a reasonable guy to work with. Even just getting to pick his brain about what issues they had during development seems like good strategy for risk minimization.
I mean this game was his first baby too. He talks about the personal connection to his childhood and everything. For a company to then take your original and personal idea and fumble the bag on a nearly unprecedented level must hurt. I know business can't be personal, but it was both a bad idea and a spit in the face to not talk to the original developer.
I like his theory, and will add to it that Take-Two basically *wanted* to get the IP away from the OG team, and keep it that way. Like Felipe said, can't really envision a reason for him not to have been contacted for consultancy *at minimum* unless someone in a position of power actively prevented it.
Right?! I lost interest at the KSP2 announcement when it was clear that Harv was not going to be involved.
@@sirdugginsBusiness can't be personal sounds like somebodies selling you something.
@@Pyxis10that's nice in theory but business involves people and very often ends up being personal.
Excellent video, love hearing about HarvesteR, especially since these inside scoops remind me of the good ol' days of checking his KSP forums account, to see if he commented something development-related anywhere.
A real treat for anyone who is interested in non-superficial glimpses at a game, thank you for doing this!
Agree. I appreciate how HarvesteR can actually give his thoughts about the game without being bound by an NDA like (probably) all of the current KSP devs; it makes what he’s saying feel much more authentic and non-corporate.
Danny2642!
The OG himself!
Good to see you here agent Kirrim
Danny!
OMG! They didn't even try and contact him. Dude! And I was thinking that HarvesteR didn't want anything to do with it. That makes this situation even more sad.
KSP2 was just starting to look appealing, and now it might all go down the toilet, very sad with the way the games industry has been goning in the last few months (thousands of layoffs and dozens of studio closures)
It's been like this for years.
It's all about greed. Games make plenty of money and the industry is only growing. Unfortunately the increasing corporatization of the gaming industry is slowly ruining it
Helldivers II seems to be about the only good AAA title right now. But it’s a solid one though, such a fun game.
@@anomalyfox5186 Yeah, except Sony doesn't want people to play it
They took their free fiat currency from the global house arrest and did nothing with it. Now the reaper is taking his due. They deserve it.
11:40 It's absolutely not an ego thing, and it's extremely weird. I'm a software engineer and we are always in contact with a SME (subject matter expert) or Technical Lead for a project. We would never take on something like this without at minimum hiring Felipe as a consultant. KSP2 was nothing but red flags from the start. Thanks Felipe for birthing such an amazing game and being brave enough to make it a reality.
I would love to work with you mate everywhere I work in software its one lead bellend who hasnt got a clue and tons of mids and juniors carrying the fcker
Always great to listen to HarvesteR shed details on KSP development! Him saying he would have started with something like colonies and work from there is bang on how it should have gone. Almost like he knows what he's talking about ;)
One thing though to the dev team size mentioned at 23:50: The studio was 50 to 70 people. But actual engineers were never more than 20. Current credits (v0.2.1) show 18 people in "Programming/Engineering". And a part of the studio (smaller than the actual KSP2 team) was working on that secret second game.
The eight-person team on the original KSP included art, sound, and production roles right?
I think NASA, or some other aerospace agency should give Felipe some special recognition award or something like that (if they haven’t already). I mean, the amount of new engineers that will have or have had their careers start with KSP must be unprecedented. At the very least, it probably made a non insignificant portion of the youth population interested in space flight and exploration.
Thank you Felipe!! And greetings from Costa Rica!
not just the youth population
I was never interested in space until playing KSP1 back in high school. Now, I worked at NASA/JPL making the next space lander...
Half way through the video Im thinking "i wish this video came out BEFORE ksp2 was released... could have saved myself some money and heartache"
wow and at the end... starting from the end and working back, this guy is a genius
Hope you had a way to refund the game on release..
+ Btw, if you have (very often) checked news, you could have found out about problems with development
He said much of the insight he gained was recent as he contemplated the failures. I don't think he would have been able to say much of this earlier.
Take this as a lesson to wait _months_ in advance before buying any product related to take two, ea, or literally any other major "AAA" studio. And even then maybe still don't buy any of them.
It might suck a bit to do sometimes, but the amount of money saved and the bullets you'll dodge will make it worth it.
@@licemere9899 Many people went over Steam's 2 hour limit just troubleshooting and learning the new mechanics, then when it was clear the game wouldn't be fixed, Steam would deny refunds. Considering T2 and the KSP2 devs knew the state of the game, it still reeks of a scam, especially the $50 price tag and knowing people were buying based on the Kerbal brand....
Nah, I had doubts about the game as soon as I saw the feature list pitched when it was announced. Far too ambitious for the stage the project was obviously at at the time.
If Squad had held onto the IP and had announced a similar project, with HarvesteR at the helm, I'd have been nervous due to the scope (especially if it was made clear that it was a clean-sheet reimplementation), but at least I'd have been confident that they had experience to make a good shot at it. But a new team starting a clean-sheet implementation of a much more ambitious project and weighed down by the corporate bloat of a larger organization, with a target date that was insanely close? Please. And then when Take 2 stiffed the original studio and poached all their devs, I knew it was headed nowhere good.
Wow its very weird that despite this game having such a large impact on my childhood hearing the voice of the creator for the first time is really cool.
The Voice of the Creator 🙌😄
The "everything was on fire, all the time" said about the KSP1 development at 17:20 amusingly mirrors the way our Kerbal contraptions often work. (Just not with the stress of loosing your job if it burns down.)
Everything is on fire is such a software developer vibe 😂
This was really really great to listen to. I didn't know a lot of this from those very early KSP days. Nice interview/collab mate.
Cool seeing you here
The clip in one of the original development videos for KSP 2 where they said "Our ultimate goal is to slay the kraken" is one of the worst aged clips of video game history.
pipe dreams
Just goes to show how delusional they were
They tried to slay the Kraken, but they only made it stronger.
I believe long before that they actually claimed that the kraken was dead
@@orionSpacecraftNot delusional, they knew they were lying and they didn't care.
Felipe we love you ♥You gave us Kerbal and sparked the love for spaceflight and aerospace engineering for literally millions of people. Whatever happens with the KSP IP, always keep in mind that you will always be in the hearts of everyone that once discovered your game and fell in love with it forever and beyond. ♥
I have heard numerous stories of folks going into aerospace engineering because they played KSP. Just think about that, going from the simple little flash game he originally conceived to something that has had an actual positive impact on the advancement of spaceflight worldwide. Just wild.
Yup, if I was young enough to pull it off, I would be one of those stories.
This game gave me probably four or five of the best feelings I've ever had playing a video game. First time I made orbit, first time I docked to ships together, first time I landed on the mun, etc. It also made orbital mechanics intuitive in a way they never were for me before.
The part about how he would have made the game start with colonies, it hit me hard because I never thought about it like that but it's so obviously the way it should have been done
Kerbal Colony manager. Design automated Rockets, set Resupply lines, Asteroid mining, Manage resources to build infrastructure, comms satellites and research stations to exploit the whole system and build an interstellar craft. Blow up research centres with antimatter, set up gravity assists wrong, weather solarstorms, asteroid impacts, radiation...
Tons of potential: more top-down, not directly competing with KSP1.
"leaving it in good hands" means leaving it to engineers who will still have to fix bugs if they arise, make platform changes etc., it doesn't mean KSP2 is going to a new studio or that any new features will ever be developed, as I imagine the publishers have made a massive loss on this project and plan to leave it on sale indefinitely to recoup some costs. - games industry software engineer.
With so many awesome mods and modders for KSP-1 I'm surprised that there are no open-source KSP-like games.
@@PetrPss There probably are but I would bet they're pretty basic and wouldn't be able to compete with KSP; no one's probably heard of them. As mentioned in the video you would never be able to match the amount of content. Why go and play this other game when you can just mod KSP 1 and have more content/features? Sure that other game COULD end up being better but you'd have to invest a LOT of time for nothing until that point.
this is why take two needs to be boycotted, maybe even purged from US markets
so basically, leave it in the state it was a few years ago - ksp1 with a shiny facelift and procedural music and none of the actual features people were promised..
It's good to hear from the man himself that KSP2 is not an easy project. KSP1 wasn't, either, but at least they had a greenfield to develop into and no micromanagement. If you need a huge team to pull off a AAA version of the game, and the much smaller KSP1 team already had communication problems, maybe the AAA version is actually impossible and if not literally impossible, economically unviable.
HarvesteR also bringing up the Mythical Man Month is great, because I'm pretty sure he re-learned that lesson the hard way. Great discussion all around, especially debunking the armchair expert opinions on building the games.
I do wish the IP transfer had worked more like it does in the entertainment industry, where you option an IP and there's often a clause saying you have ten years to do something with it or it reverts to the original owner... But that's a foreign concept in the games industry.
this studio was always a scam studio.. the warning signs were there from their original work
@@raidermaxx2324 "a" scam studio? There's been two so far...
KSP was a game that many of us didnt knew we wanted, but a game many of us needed. Thank you HarvesteR for givving us this gem of a game. And thanx Matt for this interview. Still playing KSP RP-1 till this day and it is still my most played game, great job!
Buy back the ksp ip (I bet it will be for sale after this stunt), make a dlc for ksp1 with the features that the community wanted ksp2 for in the first place (multiplayer, colonies). That ksp prequel game would be amazing too. Just too lovely of an idea to miss.
We gotta crowdfund it
@@christiananderson9015 totally!
I totally agree, although I have to confess, I'm total shi... I'm really bad at flying aircraft in KSP.
it'd probably be prohibitively expensive though
KSP1 codebase is too dated to support ambitious ideas like colonies. That what the entire appeal of a KSP sequel: a complete rewrite from the ground up. Sadly, the new dev studio got in way over their heads.
Other kerbal simulators would have so much potential. Imagine a kerbal digger game. You start out with shovels, digger machines, progress to deep drilling, tunnel boring machines, mechanized crawlers, create underground bases, explore caves systems and underground rivers with your own designed digger crawler machine etc...
I thought this about an ocean exploration game as well. Almost like a subnautica but with designing submarines/bases that could withstand higher and higher pressures as you progress.
The Kerbal franchise could be such a great series...
I hadn't thought of that. Maybe KSP 2 was a bad idea, at least as an immediate successor. Expanding into a variety KSP like simulations would have changed things up without trying to make KSP 1 obsolete.
@@bird4816 It sounds good in practice, but what makes KSP so great is its scope. You _could_ build boats, even with some limitations. All these simulation suggestions can only extend so far. Compared to likewise space, where it is infinite.*
*Technically, as "infinite" as the observable universe, but otherwise, you can do whatever you please, especially such with mods.
stationeers sounds similar to that, that dev submitted a proposal for ksp2
When I was taking game development classes in high school, we had a unit dedicated to KSP 1 and it was the most fun I had during the entire class. Taught me a lot about game design, interlocking mechanics and so much more. Never got around to getting KSP 2, but KSP 1 will always hold a special place in my heart. Thank you, HarvesteR. You've inspired many aspiring and hopefully upcoming game developers.
Give HarvesteR back the rights and let him cook with a dedicated team! Hell, just make a new version of KSP 1 with a "lessons learned" approach.
I am going to the European Space Agency in September for an internship and it is all because KSP helped me discover my passion for making space videos on UA-cam.
I will never thank you enough Felipe for the impact you made ❤
"A game where you build rockets and try to not kill your astronauts."
Yup, definitely my playstyle. Trying to not kill my astronauts.
*Danny music starts playing*
I think they were technically incapable of making the game ever. 24:40. I don’t think it was an ego thing they just didn’t know what they were getting into. Listening to harvester talk about (common) game mechanics really made it click for me. That’s why kerbals had great animation, the graphics were great and the sound design was amazing. Because those are established game mechanics, that can be done by these big groups. But things like interstellar orbital mechanics, orbital mechanics with multiplayer, and colonies on any part of a planet that has thousands of square miles were basically impossible for the team. And we never got close to it.
Good point. It seems like they very much underestimated the particular challenges a physics based space game brings. Would have been good to talk to the OG dev team a bit, at least in the beginning and hear what particular difficulties they had.
with making a sequel though the goal is to expand and put more into the game, I fully agree with everything Harvester was talking about, and the difficulties of pulling off such feats, but given that KSP had already basically done its job, being a spaceflight/orbit simulator type of game, KSP2 needed to expand on that, and KSP mods had already proven basically every concept KSP 2 was planned to have, so why wouldnt we think its possible? if the mods pulled it off, surely a very experienced dev team could do it.
I feel bad for KSP2 and intercept as a whole tbh, I think they really did have a good game to be made
Space games are my favorite genre, but the number of studios that actually get space right are sooo small. Most just turn off gravity in space (no forces pulling you), have very low max speeds for ships(almost like wind resistance still exists...), no orbits, planets are different instances from space with loading screens.
Only really KSP and Outer Wilds have got that space feeling right for me. Space Engineers is also great, but they had to sacrifice a fair bit of simulation depth too.
@@sirduggins a lot of your issues with space games comes from limitations and what the game is about, having orbital physics and gravitational forces is all fun and cool, but I personally wouldn't want that in my space RTS (like sins of a solar empire), or massive open-world RPG (like starfield). That's why the "Physics Simulator" genre was invented, KSP is a rocket, gravity, orbital physics simulator, with missions and science thrown in to add some extra gameplay value, at its core it is a physics game, where as something like starfield, is at its core a RPG game.
Now I would absolutely love a full open world RPG style game that also contains all the physics systems like KSP, Teardown, etc. have, that would be hilariously fun, but the problem with this is that such a game would be effectively impossible with current tech, would be filled with bugs and glitches, take well over a decade to produce, and would require one hell of a NASA supercomputer to run.
Edit: I wrote a contradiction I believe, in my first point stating I wouldnt want it in an open world RPG, then later saying I would love to see the same genre with various physics systems, I meant as it currently stands, games need to focus on specific genre's and systems, combining to many would harm the product more than help it.
In this case we can appreciate how KSP has been pushed by the KSP 2 team, but next time we require tackling the remaining challenges differently.
Refactor, ask counsel, technical stuff.
Looking at it from a management perspective, one of the things that was most concerning to me was early in the process where senior people were being resistant about removing the floppy from the floppy rockets. I'm not a developer, but if the issue can be corrected by modding 2 lines in an XML by the community, this is not an issue that should have taken month to correct. While it may have been less desirable from a long-term design perspective, the leadership at Intercept seemed to be taking for granted goodwill without bothering to feed the community solutions when and how it could.
The net result was a loss of goodwill and faith in the team. A game this (and let's be honest) weird and niche is only going to make it through development if either A ) no one is watching or B ) people keep believing in it. A wasn't true from the start and B just wasn't cultivated. Anyway, my two cents, the problems here were around leadership and PR management.
a month nothing, it took them almost a YEAR to do that
I always was dubious about KSP2, and never committed any of my money to it.
My doubs were confirmed when in an interview, Nate Simpson said people enjoyed the floppy rockets. This was an out and out lie, and I knew from that moment on, KSP2 was built on sand.
And I'll probably get slammed for this, but I would never purchase any "early access" type games Simpson was involved with after this, assuming it is all over for KSP2. If he's in any way associated with it, then I'd only purchase a game which is fully complete and after reading the opinions and reviews of other players.
@@Warriorking.1963 As far as I'm concerned, early access should be a fundraising tool for small, independent studios and solo developers. Take-Two didn't need our money to develop KSP 2, which is why they never got mine.
@@andrewjuby6339 Exactly, very well said!
Honestly they got rid of floppy rockets faster than in KSP1 but the original did the vast majority of development in EA; so there was less lead time.
This was a great interview. Felipe comes off humble but he has clearly learned a lot from jumping into the game dev deep end and filling a gap in the market. KSP is a fascinating story.
HarvesteR *NAILED* what is *valuable* about the Kerbal brand. *_Kerbals + Danger + (dare I say) Construction_*
I'd LOVE to take this moment to thank HarvesteR for everything you, and the team, poured into KSP 1 over the years. Words cannot express how incredibly grateful I am, for the experiences I've had within that game. Thank YOU!
“Kerbal aviation program” would have been Sick!! I would love to play such a game. But since it’s not gonna happen I can just enjoy Kithack :)
Yeah, considering how popular the plane building part of KSP was and how at the same time sidelined it was by the aerodynamics engine (from my bystander understanding), a game like that would have found many fans among KSP 1 players.
The milsim side of kerbal would've went bananas
@@christiananderson9015 me included lol
Same here, that one picture gave me enough inspiration to know that it could have been a fantastic and FUN game. Early aviation has lot's of good 'engineering' challenges, there is pioneering with weird ideas, there is history and there is a lot of humor you can bring into it. I can imagine playing a pilot first traversing the Channel or the Atlantic, wires snapping, engine sputtering, gages going haywire, thunderstorms, navigation limitations, and that is only the airplane flying part, but what about balloons or zeppelins, airshows. Well I guess Kithack has a lot of it in it. Thanks Philippe.
24:36 is giving major "Tony Stark Was Able To Build This In A Cave, With A Box of Scraps!" Vibes😂😂
the backstory of the kerbals is so cute xD
Honestly, the "Kerbal Series" prolly should ve extended into fleshing out Kerbin.
Say Kerbal Farms, Kerbal Mining, ... Kerbin of the Deep (the XComTotD clone) etc.
Subnautikerbal would be my dream haha
Kerbal Skylines
@@PeskiePete Building a thriving city, and the Space program takes all the money for ridiculous rockets!
@@MattLownethat would be amazing. Especially if it had full wind mechanics for developing sail boats.
Silent Kerbal: Kerbal of the Pacific
The thing that strikes me is how badly Squad fumbled this. No interest in a second game after producing a monster like KSP? They should have at least given Felipe a few months to flesh out a prototype for his prequel.
I'm curious to know how much Take-Two paid for KSP. Couldn't find it anywhere in a cursory search.
They weren't even a game studio though. Kind of understandable they sold to take2 who should have been more than qualified...
@@zwenkwiel816 After HarvesteR and team left, sure. Cashing in and leaving it to a game studio is sensible. But why would you reject a proposal from someone who already produced a golden goose?
@@kukuc96Golden goose maybe but also en enormous risk and investment. If the company usually does small scope projects, a single 5+ year project with no guaranteed return is very risky and could run them into the ground fast.
@@kukuc96 Exhaustion [of/by] the employer who did not anticipate so much attention/effort on games, and was much happier/comfortable returning to whatever industry they were competently in before. -Which to be fair,- game-studios did divest/spin-off from their publishers so that each could to focus on their core competencies without competing for internal resources. . .
Which has indirectly led to developers with 'creative' ideas to struggling with publishers more interested in predicable-conservative tropes and trends.
IIRC Allot of the mould-breaking/stretching DOS era games (many of which while unique, weren't particularly memorable/successful) were one-offs by companies primarily interested in other (software-adjacent) activities, that happened to have an exceptionally competent and games motivated employee that they wanted to keep (instead of allowing to wander off to do games development), and so were persuaded to invest more of their resources to publishing or even developing a game (as its promise/success grows) to 'incubate' the final product.
-Parallels how CNC (incl. 3D printing) has significantly reduced the minimum cost at which a new invention can be manufactured (and copied).-
It seems me that this employer-entanglement doesn't happen more frequently in recent times because the barrier for 'indie' developers to mass-market is lower, and crowdfunding has taken on the role of investor -(...business literacy vs games-development literacy?)- So instead we see things like lawyers making their passion project mods into comercially successful games in their spare time, then being pressured to choose between continuing their successful 'indie' hobby or successful 'day job' career.
But I haven't been bored enough to go through a year-by-year list of (digital era) publishers who only released a single game to see if they 'only' developed one game, were one-of-dozens of similarly-named-but-functionally-disparate businesses based(?) out of the same machine-shop/office-building, or actually otherwise in one oddly specific industry/function, or some other curiosity.
So this might actually be more common today, but like yester- -day- -year I've missed it happening dozens-of-times because there weren't many notable examples.
@@Haessige The normal way to do this, if they didn't actually want to do game development, would have been to spin the game devs off into a subsidiary and either have that go public or sell it off. With the original KSP team there they could have commanded a much better price.
Such a shame that a game that started out as a pet project and turned into a cult following has turned into a failed cash grab by the same publisher that will probably monetize GTA6 to death.
The humor in KSP1 is great, for example the part descriptions, the depictions and the officer Kerbals and there one-liners, the little cars driving round in the VAB, the look the feel and movement of the Kerbals but also for example the bars indicating courage and stupidity as Felipe pointed out. That humor combines very well with all the crashes and explosions when you first play the game. Now after thousands of hours playing KSP RSS/RO/RP1 things are a bit different but I still enjoy the look and feel of KSP1 and for example Gene Kerman's oneliners and mission briefings in Mission Control.
The best thing for take 2 was Sony angering people more with Helldiver's 2. So KSP2 became background news.
i thought that game was a completed success? unlike this fucking thievery
@@raidermaxx2324 It was, and then they briefly made it unavailable in any country where you can’t have a PSN account before reverting the change after backlash
@@zutaca2825 it's also still wracked with bugs and balance issues, many of which have been around since launch
@@zutaca2825 actually, the game is still delisted in all those countries, the problem started with sony trying to make a PSN account mandetory
@@zutaca2825 THey've not actually reverted anything. The game is stilll not sold in like 100+ countries (coincedentally all the countries that dont have PSN). Even their official statement very much reads as "damn these negative reviews look really bad on us, we'll be back later, assholes" They'll try again later
If Take2 is clearing house, they need to put KSP back in the hands of the original creators, including HarvesteR if he'll entertain them.
this would never happen and tbh I dont think harvester would actually accept it at this point, since he's already moved on into other projects
Picking up a groups work project would be impossible plus the funding would never get to him it's a dead horse
These compagnies are the greediest trash you can thing of. They possess rights for a crazy amount of licences, basically the majority of videeo games licenses ever created, but won't allow anyone to use them. Because they want to be ablee to freeely reuse theem wheneveer they feel it could bring a bit of money, even in decades, and because seeeing a small studio make money out of onee of their licenses would make their shareolders ask why they did not do it themselves, and gives them the money earned. KSP is dead, and will surely stay like that for at least a decade or two.
I am so happy you asked about the engine being a big limitation. The performance was my biggest gripe with KSP2 and I always knew it wasnt due to the engine, but it was practically impossible to have a conversation with other ksp fans about it because that same mantra of "unity bad" would be repeated over and over.
I am really disappointed with how KSP2 was handled, the priorities by the studio were absolutely terrible.
Decoupling graphics from physics is a good way to solve floating point precision issues; the physics are likely to be done on the CPU anyway; so FP64 or whatever isn't much of a problem. In the end when doing the render phase you have to do a floating origin implementation as the graphics card generally takes a crap with any kind of real distance; leading to all sorts of culling and z-fighting issues. Years ago I did a real scale simulation of Jupiter, the Gallilean moons and the Sun; for the actual rendering I set the camera to render 50KM; z-sorted the bodies and did a simple translate from simulation to render space. A surprising amound of devs don't know this kind of basic stuff as they learned on an Engine instead of OpenGL.
I was always surprised at how long Star Citizen took to learn this lesson.
About KSP-2. I think they should have take some existent engine for 3D graphics and made custom engine for physics from ground up. Preferably multithreaded or with GPU help.
23:00 harvestr knows his stuff. I run into communication issues all the time working for a company that spans coast to coast. With the local team, everything is great, with the guys from out of state, it's a nightmare.
Kerbal Space Program is such an important part of my life. The first 'tattoo' I've ever got was a simple rocket my wife gave me through a Stick'n Poke. Great interview albeit very depressing.
Very interesting interview! Thank you Filippe for speaking so freely.
I noted how much KitHack, the "Wrigth Brothers" prequel for KSP that Felippe once pitched and KSP have in common. It seems that Felippe really likes to make this kind of "hack something together and then launch it simulation" game. I think it is interesting too look at what makes KSP work as a game, and what the means for other simulation games.
What made KSP such a wonderfull game IMO is that doing orbital machanics and landing and launching is such a wonderfully weird system, yet it is presented in a way that makes it doable for just anybody. Add to that the rich history of space travel that provides a relatable context for the game, some humor and not taking yourself to seriously and it turns out you have a wonderfull game! I really hope Felipe is able to create such a rich setting and background for his new game, because while creating a simulation game is fun for the developers, playing it has to be fun an rewarding for the players too :). And in the case of KSP it was the combination of all this things that made it work.
Which, I think, is also the weird thing about the whole KSP2 project. Adding better graphics and adding everything players have asked for does not automatically make an interesting game. The plan for KSP2 seems to have been to rebuild KSP (Filippe mentions this in the interview) and only then figure out how to intergrate these new mechanics and ideas in the game, based on player feedback it seems. So basically crowd sourcing your core game's design. A bold strategy that would require a very transparant and interactive process with the community. It could have worked because of the existing vibrant KSP community, but the KSP2 development team did not do this at all.
Whatever is going on, it's likely that anyone privy to the details is bound by an NDA. That would at least explain the radio silence.
What an amazing conversation! I am happy to hear that Harvester is doing so well! THANK YOU for the interview!!
This is the first time I've really heard the story of how KSP came to be. I'm glad it was included. I'm a fan of 2D for games in general, but I'm glad I got to play a 3D rocket simulator. The extra dimension makes it a much deeper challenge.
Haha! Felippe's description of early-stage game dev is what I'm trying to recapture in my programming hobby. I guess I'm never going to finish any of my projects. 😅 But the other trouble with it is when you start worrying which choice would be best, it gets overwhelming. That's why I never _start_ anything! 🤣But when Felippe talks about realising he could make an easy change to the controls and finding he liked the game a whole lot better that way, I've had that at the design phase; it's a great feeling! 😄
I wondered about the inclusion of that collision on the screen, when the rotating KSP rocket hits the other part it was meant to dock with, but then I realised it set the stage perfectly for the true story about the origin of the kerbals. I'd forgotten the rockets weren't model rockets but actual fireworks!
Oh! and the quicksave right on "try not to kill your astronauts"! 🤣Was that planned?
Oof!!! Projects which you start without any real understanding of where you'll end up can be awful! Yet, in the rare cases where such projects succeed, they may break new ground for humanity. KSP1 led so many people to become aerospace engineers & got so many more people understanding orbital mechanics.
On the other hand, I understand KSP1's bugs a little better now. :)
It's hard to develop automated build and publish scripts. It's hard to learn such systems when they've been developed by others. But yeah, you need them for anything more than a 90s DOS shareware project. This is why there are so many DOS coders still around -- I know!
Huh! So Bill and Bob are freaked out by riding in a car doing 30mph because no-one in the games industry knew how to animate kerbals. It makes perfect sense when Felippe explains it! 😂It really does. When you don't know what you're trying to do, you have to pick something fairly straightforward and just go with it. That then leads to edge cases where the algorithm's behaviour looks (or is) very strange. In this case, it's more 'looks strange' than 'is strange'; the roads around the KSC aren't actually city streets; the kerbals would get into a lot of trouble for driving around at more than maybe 10mph. The rest of the terrain is off-road; it's only smooth because it's a game and we don't want rovers to be too hard or too slow.
It is very easy to lose track of why you're doing certain things. It also gets hard to avoid over-emphasising such things, hence KSP2's wobbly rockets.
Ahaha! I love the Kerbal Aviation concept! Though, having read so much about the era, I'm certain fewer players would have made sustained flights than got to Mun in KSP! 🤣
Y'know, my idea for a KSP sequel was to start with a space colony; a huge interstellar generation ship approaching its target system.
Thanks Matt, thanks Felippe! This was fascinating, entertaining, and easy to listen to.
What a genuinely fascinating interview. Never knew Squad wasn't a game studio, really hope there's a documentary or some biography, I want to hear about that transition
I could easily see KSP2 as a colony start: IE: you choose to start from Duna, you can order parts from Kerbal or you have to create and develop them as new tech.
On-brand for kerbal engineering skills
Felipe is such an amazing storyteller, I could listen to him talk about the KSP story all day.
Thanks for this great video Matt, it’s helped a bit with the pain of the whole KSP2 situation.
I really hope he’ll consider making his spiritual KSP sequel after Kithack.
That concept art for a KSP prequel-sequel is so unbelievably adorable that I am very sad it’s not happening.
Maybe some modders can get on it.
I can't pin-down what was the greater genius in the original KSP. Was it the scaled-down but challenging solar system where you would eventually learn the basic principles of rocketry and orbital dynamics? Was it the fun, non-threatening interface that allowed building and failure and explosions and learning? OR was it the addition of the little Kerbals? I have to think the Kerbals were that unique psychological aspect that other "similar" simulations just didn't have. BRAVO HarvesteR! Bravo! Long Live Jebediah Kerman.
Imagine if they would have released a game with only Kerbin orbiting the sun, another planet orbiting another star, basic colony management and all the parts you need to go interstellar.
This would have been a game covering the basic features of the game's pitch : go to space and build interstellar colonies.
Afterwards, they could have focused on adding stuff to a point where you'd end up with the same features as ksp1 covered in a different game.
But instead, they focused on remaking a game we already had but poorly.
Long live KSP1! Still king of physics sims.
I've played KSP since Alpha build... I've watched it grow.. I've been in love with it from the very beginning.
It's so incredibly sad to see KSP 2 die... But we will always have the masterpiece of the original.
I will always love Kerbal Space Program. Thank you, HarvesteR and team.
He sounds like a very intelligent and level headed guy. No wonder he created something this unique and awesome.
I appreciated how he dispelled the Unity myth. Unity gets a lot of flak but the fault is 100% with developers using it, always has been.
If it's shut down completely, it'd be great to see it all released to the community to try to continue development through modding and such. It could be KSP2: Failure to Launch.
Publicly traded company. That will never happen. They would rather hold the IP forever on the off chance they can sue someone over it in the future.
If harvester would have had the opportunity to have this exact conversation with the developers of ksp 2 six or seven years ago I'm sure it would have been helpful to them
That's true of every big software project. I never got to the end (as much as development ever ends) of a big project and didn't think "Man, it would have been so much easier if I'd done this or that instead."
Very insightful about how trying to rebuild the original hampered ksp2. They pretty much pulled that part together, and were finally on the brink of adding something new to the gameplay when it all hit the fan. Very frustrating after spending $50 and waiting for over a year. If I could just get colonies, I would be happy, multiplayer was never going to happen given how the game functions with time scales.
Amazing interview. HarvesteR is a very intelligent pleasent human being and created one of my most beloved games of all time.
But also great to see an interviewer who don't interrupt and tries to fill the room. Great job Matt
At least I've been having fun with Kithack Model Club, looking forward to the future updates
Epic vids Matt great to hear from the creator of Ksp about this stuff
I love playing a game called Space Agency on iOS, it’s basically what the original pitch for this game was but much more in depth with construction and basic orbital mechanics. Very fun game.
Can’t wait to see some new speculation about this!!! 👌👍😏🤯
The piano music under Harvester's speech is too loud, it's hard to hear him for people with hearing issues.
What a cool guy Harv is. The good thing is that the original title looks and play amazing at this point, its still very enjoyable.
Barely 5 minutes after discovering KSP for the first time I wondered if it allowed early aviation pioneering. Kerbal Aviation is literally all I would ever need for a sequel.
In the long run the closure is going to be seen as a good thing. We were never going to get the game we wanted from the developers. Now there is a chance that in the future someone can do it right.
Philippe shows a better understanding of game design and even studio operations than take 2.
this time i wouldnt blame it on take 2.. this is 100 % incapable, inept devs
To think even a brief phone call with the original KSP guys could have done so much to change the outcome we got now...but they didn't even bother to do that. Also I TOTALLY agree with how development of a KSP is NOT anything like conventional game development. You need a smaller, tighter team with longer deadlines instead we got a huge team with tight deadlines and it was a disaster.
The OG Harvester's KSP sequel game, Kerbal Aviation. Its literally 'Build, Fly, Dream" given game form.
It saddens my heart even more. 😢
Little froggy friends building together a future they did not even understand the sheer scale of... This is the true spirit of Kerbal. 😢
Bruh jaboy is so based love how humble and well meaninged he his. Totally what i would expect from the creator of a game like KSP lol. Its so funny in comparison to Matt's Britishness.
The most insightful discussion on this topic! Thank you both for this.
Excellent interview! It was so interesting learning more about the origin of ksp, and the story of HarvesterR! That's so cool that kerbals existed before the game! Obviously sad that ksp 2 is most likely discontinued... I was browsing reddit and saw the ksp2 trailer recreated in ksp1 with mods, and that made me realize that I don't have to wait for ksp2 to be good, I can just return to ksp1 and everything will return to the way it was.. Last week I was playng a lot of ksp1 and had a blast!
Matt you should start a podcast where you just talk about stuff and have guests like this, and have KSP gameplay on the screen, it works really well
thanks for the interview! KitHack is now on my wishlist.
What I would have done differently:
1. Not set up the studio in Seattle.
2. Not staff the project with people from Seattle.
Seattle is dying.
@@bryan81584 do you chuds even live in seattle or do you just hear about how the world is falling apart on the news
Good interview. His takes on what likely happened sound very true. Also to how hard KSP2 was with all new people is because the game has to be a mostly accurate physics simulation that takes a lot of knowledge, dedication, and precision. It isn't something you commonly get or there would be a lot more of this type of game.
Felipe is a personal hero of mine. Such an inspiration for Latin American developers. Thanks for the interview
i never bought ksp2, kinda saw it coming. It's sad but most sequels go to shit if they try to be corporate...
They lost it when they removed Werner.
Cool insights!
I really hope there's more Kerbal stuff from the original creator in the future. I suppose that would involve somehow clawing back the rights first, though.
Just do kerbol space program or something, make em blue instead of green XD
Learning what he describes at 18:05 about versions and uploading them and so on is so valuable it's ridiculous. Every game studio from the small to big is always looking for people who can do that part well and it's not even particularly hard. Just not glamorous as the code you write won't end up in the game. Still pays good :P
Man, Kerbal Aviation would've been such a fun prequel game to KSP! Also, I didn't even know until now that HarvesteR wasn't even approached by T2 for KSP 2's development. Just a shame in general. The interview itself was fantastic though - I loved hearing HarvesteR's take on the whole situation as well as the full origin story for KSP.
HarvesteR is a legend, this is such an interesting discussion
Bro Kerbal Aviation needs to be made asap as possy!
never gonna happen due to IP rights. Kithack is the closest we're gonna get
I wish we could buy the KSP IP and give it back to HarvestR, because even if he never works on it again, he is the far better person to manage who does and does not.
This is the first I've heard of it, damn guess I'm not shocked but I hoped for more...
2011... I was in my last year of school learning flash. Funny to hear about KSP being a flash game lol
This was an absolute joy to listen to. Thank you :)
This whole time we've been waiting for colonies and interstellar travel and we'll never see them? That sucks so much.
Felipe you will probably not read this but I just wanted to say thank you for your perseverance, your game is what got me interested in aerospace engineering, starting from struggling to get to orbit in vanilla ksp to full interplanetary missions in ksp rp1
Hope you enjoy and have a wonderful life from now, you truly deserve it !
Awe man, that Kerbal Aviation game looks really fun. I super wish that would have become a reality.