Devnote Tuesday: is it March already?

[SQUAD]

<figure><img src="https://31.media.tumblr.com/0ff9377afa68dc3ad3fe6844aaf1bd38/tumblr_inline_nknmz28KOX1rr2wit.jpg"/></figure><p><b>Felipe (HarvesteR):</b> Work on the fairings is nearing completion now. The procedural mesh generation is working pretty well, and fairings now also implement the same CargoBay module used in the cargo bay parts to handle shielding the payload inside. Payload handling itself was rewritten (just today in fact) to prevent cases where multiple cargo bays would enclose the same part. This is an expected case, the most easily explained version being a ship where a small bay is nested inside a larger one, with the smaller containing a part. This payload is then shielded by two parts, and opening just one doesn’t necessarily mean it would be exposed. To solve this, the ‘shieldedFromAirstream’ flag we had before was replaced by a more comprehensive system where parts are aware of shielding components which contain them, and are only considered unshielded when all airstream shields are removed.</p><p>Still on the subject of CargoBays, there was an open issue before I got into fairings about how they would handle their open fore and aft sections. Cargo bays can be extended, which means the CargoBay module must also be able to handle these properly. Without any special treatment, the open ends of the bays would cause edge cases where parts placed outside the bay in just the right places would be incorrectly flagged as being shielded. That’s been fixed now, and the solution works not just to allow multiple cargo bays, it also supports nested bays, and allows fairings to be ‘closed’ on to arbitrary surfaces, using that surface’s colliders as part of its own enclosure.</p><p>That last bit means that interstage fairings are now fully supported. When building a fairing, you can close it either by placing a cross-section of minimum radius, which will close the fairing with a tip section, or you can place a cross section at the surface of a part. If the part is flush with the fairing (i.e. you’re not trying to plug a round hole with a square peg), the fairing will allow you to close it off at any point mid-ship. This should allow you to build Apollo-like designs, where the LEM was housed inside the interstage fairing, among many other possibilities.</p><p>The placeholder part I was using has now given way to not one but three new fairing parts: 1.25m, 2.5m and 3m fairing bases, to allow as many different designs as possible, without putting too much ‘responsibility’ onto a single part. And worry not about memory usage, all three parts share the same textures.</p><p>Oh, and in response to a discussion that flared out from the last notes: <i>procedural </i>means a mesh that is created by code, as opposed to one that is imported from file. Not to be confused with random or pseudo-random (seeded) generation, which is a separate subject entirely, although frequently used together with proc meshes, which I guess is where the confusion might stem from. The fairings aren’t random in any way, but their meshes (with exception of the base piece) are generated <i>procedurally</i> based on the input they are given (the list of cross-sections you placed).</p><p><b>Alex (aLeXmOrA):</b> Last week I have a discussion with the guys at TeacherGaming in order to set the new requirements for the KerbalEdu license system. There are still some issues to improve and small things to add that I’m going to be working on. </p><p><b>Mike (Mu): </b>I’ve been ploughing on with the re-entry and aerodynamic heating effects. As a byproduct of this I have rewritten the thermal management of vessels so that heat is transferred more realistically and evenly throughout. Rather than temperature being a driving factor, the system is based on energy transfer and the thermal mass of parts. A full fuel tank will have a much higher thermal mass than an empty one and, of course, different fuels have different specific heat capacities. Energy is also transferred to/from the environment via both conduction and radiation.</p><p>In some down time, I’ve also put some time into a small optimization pass. I’ve fixed some big memory leaks with the scatter system and the part action menus. Managed to push some more performance from a variety of core systems. I also added a simple performance monitor into the debug menu.</p><p><b>Marco (Samssonart):</b> It’s nice to finally be able to talk about that secret project, you may have already caught that <a href="http://"><b>EUCL3D AMA</b></a> last Friday, I’ve been working with the Eucl3d guys to have a .craft file parser so you can have your favorite ships 3d printed for you to have on your desk, or hang from your ceiling. Apart from the help to get that system running I’m working on the game side of the 3d printing process, the idea is to give you options, you can request a print directly from the game or you can just upload the .craft file to Eucl3d’s website for they to take care of it. We’re still deciding on a few implementation details, but my work on that part is almost done. Phew, it’s nice to get that off my chest.</p><p>I’ve been also continuing with the tutorials, I’m taking care of a bug in the asteroid tutorials where fuel lines aren’t working correctly and also working on implementing the docking tutorial. The patcher is gone to the bench for this week, there hasn’t been enough time to test it.</p><p><b>Daniel (danRosas):</b> I’ve been full speed ahead on the new animation. There’s the animatic been roughly transformed as the first blocking phase. I’m still going to cut some frames here and there, to make it more concise and then send it to lipsync and start audio design. .On game related features, I’m waiting on the implementation of the female Kerbals to see if anything comes up. Soon enough we’ll get those bugs rolling… </p><p><b>Jim (Romfarer): </b>This week i’ve been fixing more bugs the QA team found in the Engineer’s Report. For the most part this work has been involving fixing non critical ui related issues and spelling errors. I also haven’t seen any real programming exceptions with the ui yet, which is a good thing, because those tend to crash the game for silly reasons. </p><p>The hardest part of writing tests for this system is to figure out what constitutes a design concern. It gets tricky fast because whether it is an error or not depends on what you intend to use the rocket for. Consider missing parachutes. There is no way to determine whether a vessel is never supposed to land (ie. no parachute required in the first place). Or the case where you use a single docking port on your vessel to release a probe Not an error in itself, but the released probe will likely not have docking capabilities. Still not an error because it could be a satellite. And what if you intended to land that “thingâ€Â. Luckily we have an awesome QA team.</p><p><b>Max (Maxmaps):</b> As it has now become rather evident, we wrapped up the deal with the awesome people over at Eucl3d, however there’s a lot more conversations and deals to get through. I’ve also been coordinating with our fantastic team of modmaker cooperators (need a flashier name for that) and have seen some magnificent progress on all areas. Frizzank is working on killer IVAs, Porkjet’s parts are at the usual level of extreme quality we have come to expect, and Arsonide’s ideas for the contract system and its growth just make me think that if that dude ever makes a game, I’ll be first in line to buy it.</p><p>On a not particularly similar topic, we are thrilled to see the release of Unity 5, and look forward to digging into it once we’ve released 1.0, as development on the next update is far too advanced now to throw something as complex as an engine update on top of it.</p><p><b>Ted (Ted):</b> It has been a very busy day here, if not a very busy week! We’ve taken a hold on testing the Engineer App to begin QA on Resources today. Engineer App QA was going excellently with the issue count being high, but severity very low - which is always a nice sign that it’s really only tweaking and refinement that it needed. Overall things in QA are going nicely, we’ve had a look over the aerodynamics overhaul refinements that a number of the members of the QA Team have expertly worked on and refined and we’re hopeful that we can implement a number of them, if not all.</p><p>Additionally, it was pretty awesome to see the craft files I sent the Eucl3d guys (via Marco) appear in reality!</p><p>Lastly, work on the Patcher with Marco has taken a little break as things get busier here and we need to be more careful with how we spend our time (no going down rabbit holes of Python library dependency issues on OSX just yet). But we should be back to making progress on it soon.</p><p>In our downtime (waiting for builds to deploy), one of the QA Testers made a couple of pictures to illustrate both how I like to <a href="https://i.imgur.com/muOai5e.png"><b>RELAX</b></a> and my <b><a href="https://i.imgur.com/GQDSztc.png">MAIN JOB</a> </b> at the moment it seems - bonus points if you get the reference on the 2nd one.</p><p><b>Kasper (KasperVld): </b>The cat’s out of the bag on one of the things I’ve been working on: contacting space agencies to see if we can work out a way to get flags with their logos in the game. I’ve got a few more companies to contact and although it’s a very small contribution it feels good to be helping out with things that’ll make their way into the game directly. Other than that there’s not a whole lot to share this week, though I’d like to give a shout out to <b><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/2xel6j/ama_were_eucl3d_kerbals_official_3d_printing/">DasValdez</a></b> who got featured on Twitch’s official stream last Friday. </p>

[TeeGee]

Yay Unity 5 was mentioned!

Boo!! It's not being implemented into 1.0.

To all, see my rant in the unity discussion.

Edited March 3, 2015 by TeeGee

[blspblackdeath]

Nice Devnotes, thank you.

[KasperVld]

No mention of Unity 5 yet I guess...

Actually:

On a not particularly similar topic, we are thrilled to see the release of Unity 5, and look forward to digging into it once we’ve released 1.0, as development on the next update is far too advanced now to throw something as complex as an engine update on top of it.

[Alephzorg]

bonus points if you get the reference on the 2nd one.

Running Man

[FishInferno]

That last bit means that interstage fairings are now fully supported.

means that interstage fairings are now fully supported.

interstage fairings are now fully supported.

fully supported.

10chars

[Solivagant]

Holy Batman! Mad props to all of you, it sounds like great things are getting done. Really hyped about interstage faring and logos! Keep it up!

[Bill Phil]

Nice stuff!

And it's great to hear about those new 3dprints...

Btw, procedural alone means it follows an algorithm to do something. Generally to do that thing with no human intervention other than coding. But there is the occasional exception...

I'm not really trying to correct it, I'm sure you know. The mesh in this case is being generated between each input. Which is technically procedural. But then you can define everything a computer does as procedural. A line has to be drawn somewhere.

Anyhow, fairings that you shape yourself are a good decision. Good call!

Can't wait for 1.0.

[Pecan]

Sounds like a lot of progress guys, well done :-)

The whole aerodynamics, cargo-bay, fairings, heat stuff sounds really good.

[basic.syntax]

Thanks once again for these updates!

We have yet to read much about the thing that rhymes with delta-V.

I've been hoping for a few paragraphs about how this feature that has been discussed many times and discarded, for some interesting gameplay reasons, (controversy notwithstanding, the arguments against it have a point) found its way back into KSP.

I think when you are starting out with KSP, "experiential learning" is a fun part of the game. But, once players graduate beyond Kerbin orbit, they start wanting more help from the game, to accomplish complex tasks without reverting back to the VAB 20 times.

[Hcube]

Amazing devnote, i was really looking forward to this one !

No mention about the resources system (id like to hear that there will be a way to replace those scanlines that screw up with my eyes ) but everything looks GREAT ! Especially the fairings and the heating. The logos and the engineer's report also look good !

(I wish all the indie games had a kind of devnote tuesday equivalent, you guys really show how much you care about the community and thanks for that)

[Frank_G]

Thanks for the detailed update. I´d really love to peek at the new fairing parts...

[Superfluous J]

Ooh several tasty tidbits here.

<b>Felipe (HarvesteR): </b>

interstage fairings are now fully supported. When building a fairing, you can close it either by placing a cross-section of minimum radius, which will close the fairing with a tip section, or you can place a cross section at the surface of a part. If the part is flush with the fairing (i.e. you’re not trying to plug a round hole with a square peg), the fairing will allow you to close it off at any point mid-ship. This should allow you to build Apollo-like designs, where the LEM was housed inside the interstage fairing, among many other possibilities.

Very very cool. Glad you could figure it out. Those will make a lot of cool designs possible!

Rather than temperature being a driving factor, the system is based on energy transfer and the thermal mass of parts. A full fuel tank will have a much higher thermal mass than an empty one and, of course, different fuels have different specific heat capacities. Energy is also transferred to/from the environment via both conduction and radiation.

If this means what I think it means (that you're dropping the "temperature" system for a "heat" system) then I have just one word for you: AWESOME.

If it doesn't mean that I have two: Why not?

In some down time, I’ve also put some time into a small optimization pass. I’ve fixed some big memory leaks with the scatter system and the part action menus.

YES. Thank you. That is one of the biggest downers for me right now.

<b>Jim (Romfarer): </b>

The hardest part of writing tests for this system is to figure out what constitutes a design concern. It gets tricky fast because whether it is an error or not depends on what you intend to use the rocket for. Consider missing parachutes. There is no way to determine whether a vessel is never supposed to land (ie. no parachute required in the first place). Or the case where you use a single docking port on your vessel to release a probe Not an error in itself, but the released probe will likely not have docking capabilities. Still not an error because it could be a satellite. And what if you intended to land that “thingâ€Â.

Why not just do what spell checkers do? Allow me to say "stop ever reporting that this is a problem" or "stop telling me this is a problem for this particular ship."

<b>Max (Maxmaps):</b>

On a not particularly similar topic, we are thrilled to see the release of Unity 5, and look forward to digging into it once we’ve released 1.0, as development on the next update is far too advanced now to throw something as complex as an engine update on top of it.

Thank you for nailing this one shut quickly.

[tater]

Thanks for the update.

[NoMrBond]

Thanks all for your notes, as always I have a few questions;

Felipe (HarvesteR): Will we be able to pick individual formed fairing panels after they're shaped (

)? Will the number of fairing panels be set by node size or selectable?

Mike (Mu); Does radiative heat mean we can now overheat ships by getting them too close to the Sun, and will need to plan accordingly for environments with elevated temperatures? (which would be cool neat)

Marco (Samssonart); Will modders be able to supply assets to EUCL3D so that craft containing their parts could be printed?

[r_rolo1]

Good news on the fairing ddepartement , Harv Interstage fairings are definitely a plus in my book

Interesting tidbit about the reentry code by Mu. While I'm not expecting fully developed heat diffusion mechanics ( they are quite hard ), it is good to know that the system will be atleast semi-realistic. P.S BTW does that not open the possibility of having again a scalding hot Moho ?

Romfarer part is actually fun, if you consider that there will be surely people that will try to launch the most absurd ship possible that doesn't trigger warnings.... or that triggers most warnings and can still fly Anyway, I just hope the whole system is user friendly enough to guide the newer players.

To end, no Unity 5 in 1.0 Expected but sad news anyway :/

Edited March 3, 2015 by r_rolo1
Added a question

[basic.syntax]

Consider missing parachutes. There is no way to determine whether a vessel is never supposed to land (ie. no parachute required in the first place).

Why not just do what spell checkers do? Allow me to say "stop ever reporting that this is a problem" or "stop telling me this is a problem for this particular ship."

Yeah this... or... maybe we should just ignore the line in the report that says "parachutes?" if we know the craft should not have them. The report in this case, would just be a checklist with reminders of possibilities, not a hard-and-fast list of requirements, before we're allowed to go to the Launchpad. It's already been said that we will be able to click to go to the Launchpad, without fixing any problems the report may talk about.

[Caelib]

Interstage fairings! Yay!

EDIT: 2nd reference: Running Man!

Edited March 3, 2015 by Caelib

[One-Way Films]

<figure>Max (Maxmaps): Frizzank is working on killer IVAs, Porkjet’s parts are at the usual level of extreme quality we have come to expect, and Arsonide’s ideas for the contract system and its growth just make me think that if that dude ever makes a game, I’ll be first in line to buy it.</figure>

Splendid. So the MK3 and the inline cockpit are getting IVAs then? Superb job guys!

Unity 5

Super Superb Devnote!

P.s: SUPERB!!

[Samssonart]

Thanks all for your notes, as always I have a few questions;

Felipe (HarvesteR): Will we be able to pick individual formed fairing panels after they're shaped (

)? Will the number of fairing panels be set by node size or selectable?

Mike (Mu); Does radiative heat mean we can now overheat ships by getting them too close to the Sun, and will need to plan accordingly for environments with elevated temperatures? (which would be cool neat)

Marco (Samssonart); Will modders be able to supply assets to EUCL3D so that craft containing their parts could be printed?

The mods subject is more of a legal problem than an implementation one, if the guys at Eucl3d can reach a legal agreement with the modders implementing mod parts wouldn't be hard at all, I guess they'll have to see how much of a demand there is and decide if it's a battle worth fighting.

[sarbian]

On a not particularly similar topic, we are thrilled to see the release of Unity 5, and look forward to digging into it once we’ve released 1.0, as development on the next update is far too advanced now to throw something as complex as an engine update on top of it.

I was trilled to see the licensing change for the free unity (yay, I can now prototype the stuff that required pro with launching KSP) and I m glad to see it's on your radar. I hope it won't be a too hard transition

[Robotengineer]

Good devnote. I can understand why Unity 5 is not a priority for 1.0. Seems like the QA team is catching bugs, which is good. I still think that going straight from QA to 1.0 without an interim beta is a bad idea, but it's your funeral game.

[Yakuzi]

Great update: interstage proc fairings, proper atmospheric shielding, thermodynamics, optimisation pass (more of these please), 3d printed rockets (that's the secret? I'm somewhat disappointed... secretly... and purely my personal opinion ).

@HarvesteR: how does the atmospheric part shielding system account for multiple cargo bays serially attached, and say, only 1 cargo bay is opened? Are all parts in the cargobay cluster now considered exposed or just the ones in the opened cargobay? This is of particular interest if you have a single large payload shielded by multiple cargobays.

I second the kerbolar radiation heating, hot Moho and Eve, and (active) cooling parts

Thanks Squad!

Edit: Also, still no news on the new pilot, scientist and engineer skills and the something rhyming with shmeltah-vee?

Edited March 3, 2015 by Yakuzi

[Daze]

Interstage fairings: YES.

I love how the creation works based in diameter input by players, it's simply amazing and innovative! I'm wondering that should make possibile to create "standard" fairings right?

[regex]

Mike (Mu): I’ve been ploughing on with the re-entry and aerodynamic heating effects. As a byproduct of this I have rewritten the thermal management of vessels so that heat is transferred more realistically and evenly throughout. Rather than temperature being a driving factor, the system is based on energy transfer and the thermal mass of parts. A full fuel tank will have a much higher thermal mass than an empty one and, of course, different fuels have different specific heat capacities. Energy is also transferred to/from the environment via both conduction and radiation.

In some down time, I’ve also put some time into a small optimization pass. I’ve fixed some big memory leaks with the scatter system and the part action menus. Managed to push some more performance from a variety of core systems. I also added a simple performance monitor into the debug menu.

Everything in this quote is awesome. Thank you for being awesome.

Does this mean that modders will be able to specify thermal capacities for particular resources and, if so, how is that defined?

Did I mention that you're awesome? Because you are.