March 2023 - Page 31 of 32 - Gaming Army United

Kerbal Space Program 2’s unfinished features may have been unearthed by dataminers

The rocky launch of Kerbal Space Program 2 (opens in new tab) into early access this past week has been met with a flurry of commentary, disagreement, and strife among the game’s community. Bugs and performance issues alongside features deemed “missing” are a lament among the audience and reviewers (opens in new tab), while others are quite happy that the graphics are pretty and the “rocket still go up.” Here on PC Gamer, Noah Smith said that the early access launch was “only for seasoned astronauts.” (opens in new tab)

Some players blamed this on the decision to launch the game into early access, theorizing that it was a corporate decision by publisher Private Division after a change of studios and three years of delays. These flames were fanned for some, dampened for others, by the information that dataminers and modders started finding inside KSP2’s code. One dataminer reported (opens in new tab) finding “most of a … modding API, multiplayer synchronization code, colony management and supply route setup, research, aero heating” and more among the code.

Private Division did not confirm explicitly that these datamined features are in development, but the publisher did generally respond to what the community had discovered: “What players are uncovering is the evidence and affirmation of the immense amount of work that has gone on under the hood to set Kerbal Space Program 2 up for the new features coming in early access, such as colonies, interstellar travel, and eventually multiplayer. Players are also finding other breadcrumbs, and we’re super excited to share about those when the time is right, but we don’t want to spoil anything!”

The publisher also stressed that the game’s release scheme was not, as some players have suggested, neutered by a management-level pivot to an early access release rather than a complete game. “The decision to release in early access did not affect our feature set. The complexity of the game, just like the original, means that KSP 2 is made better from the early access process where we can collaborate with our community,” they said.

It’s a strong confirmation from Private Division that more work has gone into KSP2 than is immediately apparent in its currently limited features. It’s not a surprise that so much incomplete work is in the code—a game about engineeering and experimentation uniquely lends itself to the Early Access model, where near-complete features are omitted because they produce critical bugs that can’t be resolved in time. What’s more, artifacts of development get left in code all the time. Many famous mods are built on finishing and “restoring” just such cut content or cut features to games.

A rocket exploding in space sim Kerbal Space Program 2

(Image credit: Private Division)

For their part, Private Division seems genuinely grateful for all the fan feedback, some of which is quite extensive—like a huge open letter (opens in new tab) signed by dozens of Kerbal Space Program modders. “We’ve already seen a rapid increase in our ability to test implemented features and adjust how we prioritize things based on feedback from the community, and that’s just within 4 days of launch!,” they said.

“The community is running into bugs and performance issues, some of which we were already working on fixes for, and some new ones that we were not yet aware of but are now actively working on fixes for. We’re incredibly appreciative of the community’s patience and have been moved by all of the supportive comments we’ve seen on Discord, the forums, the subreddit, and Steam.”

Private Division also directed players curious or confused about the state of development to its pre-release and launch day notes for examples of the known bugs and performance issues in KSP2’s first early access release.

Kerbal Space Program 2, now in early access direct from the publisher, on Epic, and on Steam, is the sequel to what we’ve long called one of the best flight sims on PC, and one of the only ones to simulate space travel to the depth that it does.

psa_from_a_dataminer_stop_calling_the_devs_lazy from r/KerbalSpaceProgram

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That was quick: Speedrunner beats Sons of the Forest in under 9 minutes

In my first 9 minutes of Sons of the Forest I grabbed some gear, made a crappy tent, ate a poisonous berry, fell in love with Kelvin, and had the crap scared out of me by a shrieking cannibal.

Naturally some players are getting a lot more done in that same timeframe, particularly speedrunner Benjamin Romero (opens in new tab). Sons of the Forest has been out for less than a week but Romero has already beaten the game in under 9 minutes. You can watch the current record-holding speedrun embedded above. It won’t take long.

Note: Spoilers for Sons of the Forest’s ending below.

It’s what’s categorized as an Any% Normal Glitched run, though it takes a while for those glitches to become apparent. In the video, at 2 minutes in, Romero has essentially just run part of the way up a mountain from the starting area. But at 2:27, he leaps off the top of a cliff and takes enough damage to fall unconscious.

In Sons of the Forest, running out of health in combat or by accident doesn’t mean the game is over: you wake up somewhere else, tied to a post in a cannibal village. So dying is a form of fast-travel, in a way (except for the times when you actually die). I’m guessing the region of the map you die in determines where you respawn, hence the mountain-climbing first to get close enough to the desired village.

After cutting himself free, Romero grabs his pack, pops some meds, and runs off again, grabbing some sticks along the way. Holding the crafting manual while running downhill allows him to essentially become a human sled without taking damage (it’s a known glitch), making sliding down the mountain safe and fast.

Using what is apparently another known glitch, Romero enters a bunker while holding a stick in his hands and quickly clips through the wall to avoid the security door (which typically requires a Sons of the Forest keycard (opens in new tab) to open) then falls onto the top of a corridor allowing him to walk over the geometry and avoid the mutants and monsters below. Same with the final door, which should require the golden armor (opens in new tab) to open: Romero, armed with only that stick, is clipping through all sorts of walls.

And then it’s just a short walk through the darkened cavern complex, sidestepping a few mutants and doing a bit more crafting-manual-sledding to reach the final cutscene. That’s Sons of the Forest: finished in 8 minutes and 45 seconds and 26 smaller parts of a second. Bravo!

Will the record be beat? Most likely, as it looks to me like there are opportunities to save a few seconds here and there in a similar run. Other records (opens in new tab) right now are just over 10 minutes, but like the maps in Sons of the Forest, records were made to be broken.

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Racecar driver says steering F1 champ Max Verstappen’s car like playing Call of Duty with ‘sensitivity up to the highest it will go’

F1 driver for Williams Racing and apparent Call of Duty player Alex Albon recently described what it’s like to drive an F1 car using an example most of us will understand well: aim sensitivity in Call of Duty.

Albon wrote about his career and struggles as an F1 driver in a blog post on The Players’ Tribune (opens in new tab). Most of the post focused on his time as the number two driver at Red Bull and his inability to feel comfortable in a race car designed around his teammate and current F1 champion, Max Verstappen (who has a sim racing rig inside his private jet).

“This isn’t to throw shade at anyone at Red Bull Racing or Max or anything, honestly. But the car is set up in a unique way that is built around the lead driver, and that’s Max,” wrote Albon.

The driver said that he’s no stranger to cars with a lot of front-end sensitivity and preferred it, but that the Red Bull car was different. “There was so much nose on the thing that if you blew on the wheel, the car would turn,” Albon wrote. “If you play Call of Duty or a game like that, turn your sensitivity up to the highest it will go. That’s what it’s like to drive that car.”

We all know what it’s like to play a first-person game with the mouse sensitivity cranked up, and I can only imagine what it would be like to drive a racecar that can hit a speed of 231 mph with that much steering sensitivity. This would explain some of the nasty crashes (opens in new tab) we saw from Albon in 2020 in that Red Bull.

He’s not complaining, though. Albon said that he “completely” understands why the car had to be that way. “Max was, at the time, a future world champion,” he wrote. “It was clear for all to see. So, of course, you’re going to build your car how he likes.”

Albon ended seventh on points in the World Drivers’ Championship that season and then was demoted to a reserve driver for Red Bull in 2021, losing his seat to Sergio Pérez. Albon joined Willams Racing in 2022, finished 19th in the standings, and is awaiting the start of the new F1 season, with its opening race beginning March 5 at the Bahrain GP.

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New Deep Rock Galactic spinoff is a Vampire Survivors-style auto-shooter (with mining)

The world of cooperative horde shooter Deep Rock Galactic is getting adapted to a new setting: A survivors-style auto-horde-shooter where a single dwarf takes on the buggy hordes all on their own. The trailer (opens in new tab) for Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor dropped today alongside a Steam page and a loose Early Access release date of “2023.”

The spinoff will release into Early Access, where it promises to have four characters, 30-some guns, 10 or so enemies, 1-3 bosses, and 3-5 biomes to explore in the same mission-based extraction gameplay that has you escape with your loot to buy permanent upgrades for future missions. Perhaps the most intriguing bit is that you’ll still be mining stuff and that it’ll still have the same kind of procedural cave generation that Deep Rock Galactic is known for.

“Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a single player survivor-like auto-shooter,” says the very excited game description. “Wield the full arsenal of Deep Rock Galactic, take on hordes of lethal aliens, mine riches, and unlock powerful upgrades. It’s one dwarf against all of Planet Hoxxes!”

(As a brief aside, can we… not call them “survivor-likes?” We’ve already got survival as a genre and this is uncomfortably close.)

The trailer and screenshots available so far show off a variety of guns, from pistols and miniguns to flamethrowers, shotguns, and autocannons. There are also some classic-looking spinning orb shield things. You know the kind: Enemy hits the orb, enemy goes boom, orb comes back a while later. Interestingly, the player seems to have some kind of weapon slot system, meaning maybe you switch between guns rather than fire everything all at once like in other survivor games.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor will be published by DRG’s original developers Ghost Ship, but it’ll be developed by exterior studio Funday Games. Not too surprising, as the success of Deep Rock Galactic prompted little Danish studio Ghost Ship to get into publishing in the first place, and it’s very cute to see DRG getting franchised out.

You can find Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor on Steam (opens in new tab). It’s set to release this year, in 2023.