Announcing Kerbal Space Program 1.0.5

Hi all,

It's always a pleasure to bring you good news. We're in a pretty fantastic position where we have developers working to create and develop features, and a behemoth of an engine update going on at the same time. After assessing the work that the team have completed so far, in terms of features, the engine upgrade, tweaks and fixes, we've decided to plan a 1.0.5 update for KSP.

We're including the further development of the contracts that Arsonide/Brian has been working on, Porkjet's fantastic new (and overhauled) parts, refinements to the Thermal system that Nathan and RoverDude/Bob have been working on as well as a rather large number of fixes and tweaks that the team overall have been working on. Of course, the pace that we did those fixes and tweaks have been massively sped up by the ever invaluable work of the QA Team in triaging, reproducing and fix-testing bugs. 1.0.5 won't be built off of Unity 5, instead using Unity 4.6.4 which is the same as 1.0.4.

We're including the following work in 1.0.5:

• Arsonide's Contextual Contracts
  The contracts in KSP up until now have been pretty self-contained and independent of much of the player's actions, and the rest of the game. Contextual contracts aims to remedy that with a new system that detects and creates contracts for existing vessels. Satellites, for instance can be tagged in a contract to adjust orbits into an already existing satellite network. The chance for these to appear increases as the player builds and places more assets, causing these missions to show up more often in place of contracts requiring new vessels.
• RoverDude's Thermal Improvements
  Radiators, the ISRU and RTGs are all getting a bit of attention from RoverDude! Notably, the radiators can now be hotter than the parts they're cooling, allowing for active refrigeration, the ISRU's core now heats separately from its skin and the RTGs now generate appropriate amounts of heat.PorkJet's New, and Overhauled Parts
• Porkjet's parts
  We've showcased a few of the parts that Porkjet has been working on in the past, namely he's been working on a Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) analogue, an overhauled Mk1 Cockpit, overhauled versions of the Basic Jet Engine, Turbo Jet Engine, Mk1 Fuselage, Mk1 Structural Fuselage and Mk1 Intake. You can view these parts in this album, though for now we haven't made a final decision on the Mk3 ramp yet, as it requires a bit more coding.
• NathanKell's Thermal Tweaks and Fixes
• • EVA kerbals now handled properly.
  • Energy neither created nor destroyed when exposed area changes.
  • Physics constants and ablation tweaked.
  • Ablation rate is now based on the maxAmount always, not the current amount.
  • Heating from engine exhaust improved and rebalanced.
  • Fix engines not resetting throttle on flameout.
  • Add missing drag cube overrides for hollow parts.
  • Flags no longer count as active flights on the Resume Game interface in the Main Menu.
  • Fixed issue with flag resetting to default.
  • Fixed issues where parachutes would cut on decouple.
  • Make crossfeed toggling on docking ports persistent and also available in the editor (and as actions).
  • FXAnimateThrottle can now optionally depend on engine output, not throttle state.
  • Fixed issues with FlightLogger's values not accounting for reference shifts.
  • Fixed Airbrake action group persistence.
  • Ladders now properly have multiple drag cubes (due to their animations).
  • Kerbal EVA drag cube can now be specified in Physics.cfg.
  • If a part on a vessel is targeted, display the vessel label over the part, not the center of the vessel.
  • Make control surface deploy state properly persistent; fix an issue in the editor update method for them.
  • Fixed an issue with localisation and settings.cfg.
  • Offset cargo bay interior nodes so the inside and outside nodes do not precisely overlap, to aid in part placement.
  • Fixed ladder extend/retract failing after a load in the editor.
  • Procedural fairings set part mass in the editor as well as in flight.
  • Fixed issues with intake logic and display airspeed.
  • And more...

Work is still progressing just as quickly as it was on Unity 5, with 1.0.5 serving as our way of releasing the work we've been doing around that to you all. Felipe and Jim continue with their UI tasks, Mike and Dave plow on with KSPedia, Bob continues with the Probe/Antenna Relay feature (he took some time out to improve the ISRU, radiator and thermal features) and much much more that you can read about in this week's Dev Notes!