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KSP2 is spamming the Windows Registry until the game stops working

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Re: KSP2 is spamming the Windows Registry until the game stops working

#161

Post by duped »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #112
duped wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A central key-value store that can be programmatically accessed to persist state across users, processes, and boots, that is also strictly typed and hierarchical is quite useful. I think it would actually be quite useful to have an /etc/conf virtual file system that could be programmatically accessed by user space processes and used as a "dumping ground" just like /etc already is.

I think the "central" part is where you lose me with this argument. What advantages does the registry have over application-specific KV stores... besides the potential to interfere with other applications and the OS itself?

How do you find it? How do you install it? Do you need root/admin permissions to create it? How do you provide access control for it?

There's a lot of value to having something like this "built in" where the plumbing isn't something you worry about. You don't have to worry about the state of your users' file systems (User deleted 'My Documents', User doesn't have a $HOME folder, you don't have write permissions for %AppData%, etc...).

I think if someone went off and redesigned a global KV store for an OS they'd probably require authentication tokens for mutations, so your app would only be able to communicate with the subtrees of the store that it has permissions to (but also, kind of like a file system?)

Re: KSP2 is spamming the Windows Registry until the game stops working

#162

Post by marcellus23 »

jonathankoren wrote: post #102
moffkalast wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And every time anyone mentioned any of that on the subreddit they got downvoted to oblivion, including myself. It's like everyone was (and to a smaller extent still is) on a heavy dose of weaponized hopium because the studio invested half their budget into a prerendered trailer. Even the youtubers that got to play the prerelease version pulled out every excuse in the book to not present what they saw objectively.

Watching Matt Lowne’s KSP2 videos just makes me feel better about not buying. It’s just buggier and less. While I was interested in the surface colony stuff they promised for KSP2, the addition of another star system you could travel to was very disappointing. Not so much another system, but that you could travel to it. One thing I liked was that KSP was somewhat grounded in real physics. Practical interstellar trave…

I don't think FTL drives were ever going to be in KSP2. Interstellar travel was going to be via torchships. You can argue _those_ are unrealistic, but they're at least feasible without needing to break the fundamental laws of the universe.

Re: KSP2 is spamming the Windows Registry until the game stops working

#163

Post by MaxikCZ »

philistine wrote: post #152
Someone1234 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you store where the application-specific KV stores are located? Are you just going to hard-code it so the application cannot be moved or installed elsewhere or on external drives? Where does the OS store its own settings? There are a lot of problems with software "shotgunning" their junk across the system. This isn't exclusive to the Registry or even a specific OS unfortunately. Just go look at what configur…

macOS has a folder called Library where this stuff is supposed to go. It's not enforced by decree, with many apps doing their own horrible thing. Ultimately, its macOS' culture that mostly makes apps puts their settings and other resident details in Library. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know why a culturally enforced folder is far worse than the database that Windows has. Care to enlighten me?

I pressume "Program Files" or "AppData" folders are Windows analogy to Library

Re: KSP2 is spamming the Windows Registry until the game stops working

#164

Post by mcpackieh »

Someone1234 wrote: post #127
ilyt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine every setting in ~/.config and /etc is stored in corresponding SQLite database, and you have common interface to access both. Now imagine this database is not a great engineering product like SQLite but really, really REALLY fucking sucks at being database, and slows down quickly with sizing up. Now imagine there is no sensible way to get obsolete data out of it, and as every program uses same file it just ga…

> REALLY fucking sucks at being database, and slows down quickly with sizing up. This is over 20-years out of date.

Then why does KSP2 spamming the registry with orphaned entries eventually cause KSP2 to hang on launch?

Re: KSP2 is spamming the Windows Registry until the game stops working

#165

Post by marcellus23 »

Pannoniae wrote: post #27
duped wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call a game sequel bombing "enshittification." Beloved games sometimes have horrible, buggy, no good sequels.

But it's not just about the game being bad. There is a huge difference between a poor game which was made with an effort and care, and a completely soulless, effortless cashgrab. This is the later, that's been obvious from how Take-Two handles things, with the game even changing developers midway through development.

The individual developers do seem to care a lot about KSP2, fwiw. It seems like the problems with the game are more caused by incompetence, bad project management and probably unrealistic deadlines from the publisher.

Re: KSP2 is spamming the Windows Registry until the game stops working

#166

Post by heavenlyblue »

pathartl wrote: post #85
kortex wrote: post #8

It feels like the Windows Registry is one of those well-intentioned ideas that ended up being a tremendous mess in actual implementation. "Let's use a central database to store things that the OS, drivers, and UI need to access" somehow became "half assed KV dumping ground for every process and their dog to litter with whatever while acting as a singular bottleneck". See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=322…

Most games that _do_ use the registry use it as a data store that may or may not be accessed by external applications. It provides a very reliable pathing (at least at the time of the game's release) to access typed data. For instance, most EA games from the early 2000's standardized the store of the CD key in ~HKLM:\SOFTWARE\ \ergc. This would let one install the game to any drive and still have access to the CD key…

How is that different from accessing $HOME/.config? It does exist on Windows too, but I don't want to Google it.

I believe in Windows there's even $SHARED/.config

Re: KSP2 is spamming the Windows Registry until the game stops working

#167

Post by mcpackieh »

moffkalast wrote: post #56
dotnet00 wrote: post #9

KSP2 had all the warning signs of being a disaster ever since the initial delays and controversies with the original studio. Unfortunately, as usual, the community put on hype blinders until it became impossible to ignore.

And every time anyone mentioned any of that on the subreddit they got downvoted to oblivion, including myself. It's like everyone was (and to a smaller extent still is) on a heavy dose of weaponized hopium because the studio invested half their budget into a prerendered trailer. Even the youtubers that got to play the prerelease version pulled out every excuse in the book to not present what they saw objectively.

Subreddits for corporate products are almost invariably shit. Run either by the company itself, one of their contractors, or a team of corrupt 'community' mods. In any case it becomes a corporate propaganda space. Reddit's usefulness peaked many years ago.

Re: KSP2 is spamming the Windows Registry until the game stops working

#168

Post by ethbr1 »

Aperocky wrote: post #131
ethbr1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Re: KSP2 is spamming the Windows Registry until the game stops working

#169

Post by [deleted] »

Noughmad wrote: post #14
Pannoniae wrote: post #6

Not surprised at all; KSP as a franchise is in the enshittification stage where they aim to invest the minimum amount of money and maximise returns. This is just simply inexcusable software engineering and quality control. Bit tangential but I'd like to remind everyone that this is the game where the lead designer (?) said that wobbly rockets and physics bugs are adding to the fun of the game, and they are implemente…

Well, I still believe it's going to be good eventually. Like KSP1, for example, or No Man's Sky. There certainly have both the resources and a guaranteed player base to make that happen. That said, I cannot be sure of that, so I will not buy it until it is actually good.

[deleted]

Re: KSP2 is spamming the Windows Registry until the game stops working

#170

Post by c0nsumer »

mcpackieh wrote: post #164
Someone1234 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> REALLY fucking sucks at being database, and slows down quickly with sizing up. This is over 20-years out of date.

Then why does KSP2 spamming the registry with orphaned entries eventually cause KSP2 to hang on launch?

Likely because the app can't deal with the size of the data it's getting back when it tries to get its entries.
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