Kerbal Space Program to Finally Blast Off From Early Acess

[Steven Bogos]

Kerbal Space Program to Finally Blast Off From Early Acess

One of Early Access's actual success stories is finally making the plunge to retail.

Kerbal Space Program [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/early+access] has been a massive success, and the poster child for a successful Early Access game. And now, the team is finally ready to blast off from Early Access, and go full-retail.

"As development in Beta has progressed, one thing has become very apparent," writes SQUAD's Felipe "HarvesteR" Falanghe [http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/326-Beyond-Beta], "Kerbal Space Program is about to reach a state in which every single one of the original goals for the game has been reached, and we can say that our original design document has been fulfilled."

He says that the team is currently prepping the game's 1.0 patch, which will officially bring it out of early access, and into the sphere of full retail releases. But, for those of you worried that progress on the title will stop, fret not! "We see no better way to follow up on reaching our initial goals than to continue development on Kerbal Space Program, beyond Beta, past our original plans," said Falanghe.

The 1.0 update will also include new, more realistic modelling of drag and lift, an 'Engineer's Report' warning of crucial design flaws, a game over state, and female Kerbals. You can check out a full change-log here [http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/326-Beyond-Beta].

While there's currently no solid release date for the update, we can probably expect it to launch in the coming weeks.

Source: PC Gamer [http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/326-Beyond-Beta]

Permalink

 

[Zontar]

Wait, it wasn't until now? I was under the (clearly mistake) assumption that it had left Early Access. Though it's an easy mistake to make, the game did have a quality which would have given it a pass for launch after all (that also seems to be the only way an Early Access title can manage to work, amazing how many devs don't understand that even now).

 

[jab136]

the last update was .90 it was the beta release, before that it was actually still in alpha believe it or not. It still has it's issues, 32 bit is still much more stable than 64 bit, and it still crashes a lot, but definitely a great game, especially for the modding support it has.

 

[webkilla]

With their 0.90 beta update - their latest update - they had declared that the game was 'feature complete'.

This matches with what they're aiming for with their gold update, since that seems to be purely reworkings of existing features, like their drag and aerodynamics mechanics.

I can't bloody wait

 

[Newage]

Female Kerbals? I hope they're not in over their head, I heard it doubles the cost of production

OT : Glad to see that this one made it. I haven't played much of it (I don't have the patience for it) but I still enjoyed it a lot.

 

[Deathfish15]

Paranautical Activities wasn't a "cautionary tale" related to Early Access. It was a tale of an idiot saying on Twitter that he wanted to kill Gabe Newell because they didn't change the game's status from EA to regular release in a timely manner that suited them. That's it.

 

[NoX 9]

That's awesome news. I enjoyed this game for several years already and I feel like it has been of a very high quality for quite some time, and packed with potential content for the inventive and adventurous. This game is most definently ready for release.

I am still hoping for some sort of official multi-player functionality. Nothing major, but a nice way for friends to have a little space race going and track eachothers progress on the map. I guess the fastforwarding function is the main issue with doing something like this.

Female Kerbals? I hope they're not in over their head, I heard it doubles the cost of production

When will these small developers learn?!

 

[leffi3]

Multiplayer is in the works and has been for some time now. If you can't wait till it's done, there is a mod or two for multiplayer.
Can't say I care for it personally, but hey, fun is a subjective thing =)

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

Female Kerbals? I hope they're not in over their head, I heard it doubles the cost of production

When will these small developers learn?!

obviously now they must quadruple the marketing budget, that will surely solve the problem of pointless spending

 

[Product Placement]

Wait, it wasn't until now? I was under the (clearly mistake) assumption that it had left Early Access.

Like others have pointed out, the last big update marked the game's transition from Alpha to Beta.

Considering it that this was only last December, I'm quite surprised that it's exiting Early Access, so soon.

 

[LordLundar]

Well, that's exciting. I'll definitely have to give the game another go once the patch is live.

Did they ever end up adding in reentry damage, or is that still only a visual effect?

Still only visual but you can install Ferram Aerospace Research and Deadly Reentry to offset that. I honestly think that those mods giving the option is why they've held off so far.

 

[Spartan448]

Well, that's exciting. I'll definitely have to give the game another go once the patch is live.

Did they ever end up adding in reentry damage, or is that still only a visual effect?

Still only visual but you can install Ferram Aerospace Research and Deadly Reentry to offset that. I honestly think that those mods giving the option is why they've held off so far.

I know about both of those mods, I just was expecting something like reentry damage to be in the final game.

Oh well, I can always install the mod I guess. I dont really want to install Ferram, though, since I wanna see how the new updated aerodynamics work.

It probably will be in the final game eventually - Squad seems to have been making a habit recently of taking really popular mods that offer much-needed expansions to game mechanics and basically drafting the mod creators into Squad. For example, I think they're planning on adding Karbonite to the base game in one of their upcoming patches, and it's a good bet that Ferram and Deadly Re-entry might not be that far down the line. I can see Squad's hesitation to add in game mechanics that are already covered by mods though. I still remember the shitstorm that erupted when Minecraft added potions, which were already covered by a mod.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Paranautical Activities wasn't a "cautionary tale" related to Early Access. It was a tale of an idiot saying on Twitter that he wanted to kill Gabe Newell because they didn't change the game's status from EA to regular release in a timely manner that suited them. That's it.

I kinda feel for the dev in that particular situation. Valve kinda did jerk that indie dev around for literally no good reason. Not saying what the dev did was right, but I believe I would've done the same being an indie dev not already not rolling in the dough.

 

[ender1200]

Well, that's exciting. I'll definitely have to give the game another go once the patch is live.

Did they ever end up adding in reentry damage, or is that still only a visual effect?

Still only visual but you can install Ferram Aerospace Research and Deadly Reentry to offset that. I honestly think that those mods giving the option is why they've held off so far.

I know about both of those mods, I just was expecting something like reentry damage to be in the final game.

Oh well, I can always install the mod I guess. I dont really want to install Ferram, though, since I wanna see how the new updated aerodynamics work.

Good news!
"Yes, we're doing reentry heat. Yes, it will have an option to be turned off."
https://twitter.com/Maxmaps/status/560262153471795201

 

[Korzack]

Cool! I know I got a lot of fun out of the demo, will probably pick it up once it goes full release

 

[Dalisclock]

Female Kerbals? I hope they're not in over their head, I heard it doubles the cost of production

Well, putting a little pink bow on their head requires advanced texture modeling, the physics calculations and of course, MORE BOOSTERS!

 

[PG]

As much as I love KSP, I don't think it's in a state where they should declare it "released". It still has far too many issues that should not be accepted in a released game:
You can't remove Kerbals who have died or it will corrupt your save, you can't use 64 bit without major instability which limits the complexity of craft you can build, you can't use OpenGL (which gives significant performance improvements over DX) without graphical anomalies like only an eighth of the screen being rendered.
1.0 apparently has a lot of bugfixes but if the above aren't fixed then it should stay in beta.