Devnote Tuesday: 1.0.5 is approaching

[SQUAD]

<figure data-orig-width="480" data-orig-height="92" class="tmblr-full"><img data-orig-width="480" data-orig-height="92" src="http://41.media.tumblr.com/0ff9377afa68dc3ad3fe6844aaf1bd38/tumblr_inline_nwwk2y4KKc1rr2wit_540.jpg"/></figure><p>Hello everyone!</p><p>Another week has gone by, and the developers have been hard at work at both 1.0.5 and 1.1. </p><p>To start with the former, Ted has paid a visit to our build servers to give them a pep talk and some performance enhancements to make sure they’re ready for the final bits of QA and the start of Experimental testing, which we’re expecting later this week – after the QA team assesses a few balance updates.</p><p>Now that the 1.0.5 update is getting closer we want to share a bit more information about it: Nathanael (NathanKell) has been one of the driving forces on 1.0.5, fixing countless bugs and implementing small quality of life improvements that had been on our radar for a long time, but that no one had the time to implement. Over the past few weeks for example, he’s been working on overhauling the buoyancy models for the game and as a result it is now feasible to build working boats or indeed seaplanes. </p><p>Among the highlights of the “fixes and optimizations†he’s been implementing are the optimization of the Flight Integrator’s occlusion code, and the ability to transfer Kerbals using the right-click menu rather than clicking on a hatch. </p><p>Together with Brian (Arsonide) the contracts have also been given a critical look: the part test contracts will now depend on a constraint system instead of hardcoded values per situation. For example, it’s now possible to specify how often a part can be tested – once, once per body or once per situation, or even infinitely. The constraints in terms of situations, but also things like flight envelope or different speed requirements can then be applied to certain prestige levels of the contracts. All of these features can be accessed through the part config files as well so that modders can go absolutely crazy with this system, expanding on the moddability efforts we’ve been going through since 1.0. </p><p>More changes to contracts come in the area of the World First contracts: currently some of these rewards are automatically recorded, but we’re changing the system up so that it applies to all progress on every celestial body. Furthermore, these world firsts are now separate from the main contract system and they’ll accumulate into one single report that shows you all earnings you have accumulated. The World First contracts won’t entirely disappear as they are a good way to push you beyond your comfort zone, but in 1.0.5 you will be rewarded for new feats even if you haven’t filled out the paperwork, and a new strategy in the Administration Building will enhance this feature. </p><p>Of course, Brian hasn’t just been working on contracts: small quality of life improvements are also being developed, such as an EVA navball. This navball doesn’t follow the Kerbal, but rather the camera, allowing players to look around and get their bearings to help (in particular) with ground surveys. Some issues with the science data transmission were also addressed, but mainly there is now an option to automatically abort the transmission when not enough electric charge is available to complete the task, and the science will be placed back in the container from whence it came. The advantage of this system is that it prevents the science from being devalued by repeated signal loss. It is on by default, but you can toggle it off on the antenna if you absolutely must send the data regardless of signal loss.<br/>More 1.0.5: Chris (Porkjet) has spent these past few weeks mostly working on cockpit internals for the new mk.1 cockpit and crew cabin, aided by Nathanael who implemented quite a few tweaks and small additions to the code that allowed for (for example) new nozzle effects on the jet engines. Thanks to Bob (Roverdude) the Mk3 cargo ramp deployment height will also be freely adjustable, a feature that we’re also considering to add to such things as cargo- and service bays. We saw a request pop up that this be applied to control surfaces as well, but for now that’s outside the scope we’re aiming for.</p><p>The cockpit internals will make use of a new shader which will apply lightmaps and ambient occlusion maps to the IVA meshes through a second UV map. That’s a fancy way of basically saying a lot of time will be saved because the same texture can be reused in several internals, instead of having to create them from scratch every time. </p><p>Did we cover everything? Not nearly. Bob (Roverdude) has been working on the new core heat system that we briefly touched upon a few weeks ago. He’s pretty excited about the system which will not only add more depth to the existing context, but also opens up new possibilities to modders who can use it for things such as nuclear reactors and other high-temperature parts.</p><p>The core heat system is – essentially – a third thermal value to handle cases in which there are extremely high temperatures. Think of the aforementioned nuclear reactors or metal smelters. When drawing a comparison to a computer for example, the internal temperature in KSP represents the temperature in the computer case, whereas the core temperature in KSP represents the temperature of the CPU in the computer. One of the main issues to work around with this system has been the fact that it has to work under timewarp, unlike for example engine heat which can only be generated under regular time progression (or physics warp). </p><p>A lot of time was spent, and is being spent, making sure this system works well under timewarp and that it is balanced. The QA Team has been giving great feedback on everything from how to balance existing saves, to the gameplay ‘feel’ of the system. We’ve included a screenshot of a small new UI element in the gallery below. Aside from all this, Bob has also created a new radiator, and again we’ve included a screenshot below.</p><p>Now, as we all know we’re working not only on this amazing content patch that is KSP 1.0.5, but work also continues on the Unity 5 update and major the KSP 1.1 update that will encompass it. </p><p>Felipe (HarvesteR) has been stuck in – you may have guessed it – more user interface work, tackling the crew portraits system. In this area a few quality improvements have been made as well, rather than simply overhauling the codebase. The crew portraits quadrant you’re familiar with in the lower right hand corner of the screen will now smoothly scroll to the right and left, instead of just swapping the crews in three static panels as is the case currently – and the system is no longer hardcoded to have three portraits. We’re currently looking into adding a few extra buttons there to let you expand the portrait gallery to show more than three portraits at once, if your screen width allows for it.</p><p>While overhauling the crew portraits Felipe also got a chance to look into the internal spaces and the implementation of Kerbals in IVA. A longstanding bug was fixed in the process: the orientation of the sun light in internal spaces didn’t actually match the sun direction in the outside world. Gone are also the days of the old ‘static overlay’ effect implementation: instead of switching the portrait’s texture image to show static (as we now do in 1.1), the old hack had the static and ‘KIA’ messages rendered by a quad placed in front of the portrait camera, which was a pretty ugly hack although quite characteristic of the olden days of placeholder implementations.<br/>Jim (Romfarer) has been working on the list of features that were purposely left out on the previous user interface overhauls, polish tasks if you will. One of these tasks are sprite animations in the application launcher. The new sprite animations are now running on the Animator class using its transitions to toggle animations. At the moment it has two transitions: idle and notification. It is fully expandable so we can easily add more transitions down the road. If you want to add your own animated buttons it does require the animator component but only if you want to use the application launcher to automatically handle everything. That said, it is very much possible to attach anything you want to the buttons since animated buttons are only handled by the system as a convenience since that’s what we use internally. Details will follow in documentation.</p><p>Finally, Dave (TriggerAU) has been knee-deep in KSPedia work, designing content to fit into a later release. These pieces of content have to cater to a range of knowledge levels and be “bite sized’, so the biggest challenge has been trying to squeeze that information into single “Screensâ€Â, and not make typos in the progress. A few examples have been included in the gallery below. </p><p>It’s about time to wrap up the devnotes now, but we’d like to thank everyone who voted for us in the Golden Joystick awards. The polls have closed and the prizes will be handed out on Friday. Good luck to everyone who entered!</p><p><br/></p><blockquote class="imgur-embed-pub" lang="en" data-id="a/44f5K"><a href="//imgur.com/a/44f5K">Devnotes 2015/10/27</a></blockquote><script async src="//s.imgur.com/min/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Edited October 27, 2015 by technicalfool

[SpenSpaceCorp]

First!!! New buoyancy!! Aww Yisssss!

EDIT: Also lovin the look of those 0.625m tanks!

Edited October 28, 2015 by SpenSpaceCorp

[jaredkzr]

Can't wait for this!

[Alshain]

You know you can't mention Seaplanes unless Porkjet is actively working on pontoon landing gear. You are gonna start some sort of riot here

More changes to contracts come in the area of the World First contracts: currently some of these rewards are automatically recorded, but we’re changing the system up so that it applies to all progress on every celestial body. Furthermore, these world firsts are now separate from the main contract system and they’ll accumulate into one single report that shows you all earnings you have accumulated. The World First contracts won’t entirely disappear as they are a good way to push you beyond your comfort zone, but in 1.0.5 you will be rewarded for new feats even if you haven’t filled out the paperwork, and a new strategy in the Administration Building will enhance this feature.

Woot! They listened!

This is the best DevNotes we've seen since pre-1.0 I think.

Edited October 27, 2015 by Alshain

[smjjames]

"Now that the 1.0.5 update is getting closer we want to share a bit more information about it: Nathanael (NathanKell) has been one of the driving forces on 1.0.5, fixing countless bugs and implementing small quality of life improvements that had been on our radar for a long time, but that no one had the time to implement. Over the past few weeks for example, he’s been working on overhauling the buoyancy models for the game and as a result it is now feasible to build working boats or indeed seaplanes."

Awesomeness, Fengist and Infinite Dice will love this.

Also, since Fengist and Infinite Dice were working on their own buoyancy model (mostly Infinite Dice), any possibility of NathanKell hooking up with them?

Oh yeah, will keeled boats work?

[regex]

fixing countless bugs and implementing small quality of life improvements that had been on our radar for a long time, but that no one had the time to implement.

Maybe if you'd taken the time to put out an optimization release like we've all been waiting literally years for...

Anyway, awesome that you've brought NathanKell on.

E: Missed the KSPedia images, looks good.

Edited October 28, 2015 by regex

[Tw1]

Buoyancy, eh? This should be interesting.

[Red Dwarf]

So Squad dropped Devnote Tuesday. 1.0.5 is still en route, but there's one big highlight.

Seaplanes!!!

Javascript is disabled. View full album

*cue hallelujah chorus*

[Endersmens]

Oh. Oh my. This devnote has so much information! I honestly can't wait for 1.0.5. All of that sounds amazing! Especially seaplanes and KSPedia. That looks amazing honestly. And EVA Navball? Amazing! This may be my all time favorite devnote!

[regex]

More interested in the optimization pass, but seaplanes are alright.

[smjjames]

You forgot the big thing behind seaplanes, fixed up buoyancy!

[L4r5man]

Holy mother of Jeb! Now THAT's what I call a good devnote! So much new stuff. So much progress. It's all the things and more.

[Red Dwarf]

I'm just really excited to start doing replicas again. I've been needing to build one of these for a long time.

[juanml82]

That's a lot of great news!

Thinking about limiting how much the cargo bays open (which can avoid clipping), I wonder if that setting can be accessed in flight. It's a bit of a hassle, but suppose you have a cargo bay with boosters hanging next to it. Before staging them, if you open the bay, it will clip inside the boosters. So by limiting how much it opens, that clipping can be avoided. But after you stage, you could fully open the bay (And, presumably, let anything inside escape the ship)

[Starwhip]

Can you feel the hype yet?

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

...

Wow.

​The hype is real.

- - - Updated - - -

Ninja'd by starwhip.

[HafCoJoe]

Ha! This weeks Devnotes header is abbreviated to "Devnote Tuesday: 1.0.5 is..." Got my hopes up

Over the past few weeks for example, he’s been working on overhauling the buoyancy models for the game and as a result it is now feasible to build working boats or indeed seaplanes.

O_O

Edited October 28, 2015 by Avera9eJoe

[Superfluous J]

Extremely good devnotes. Thanks!

I'm excited to see the buoyancy, and the new thermal system (though unlike most everybody else I've not had many problems with the current one), and the new contract categories sounds fantastic, I can't help but be most excited about antennas giving up and sending their data back when you've run out of EC. That's been an annoyance since Science became a thing, and it's great to see it finally dealt with.

One question: You mention the ability to make the Kerbal IVA windows show more than 3. Will it also allow you to show less than 3? As fun as they are, sometimes I wish I could put something else in that real estate.

[RocketPilot573]

WOW! Now this is what I was hoping for: A bunch of cool unexpected features! Kerbal Sea Program? Cool! Though I hope large platforms that float can still be made *cough* SpaceX *cough*. Also quite an IVA there, I like the private jet feel.

[RocketPilot573]

The devnotes made me happy too! Wonderful. .‿.

[Rainbow-Dashie]

My Amphibious shuttle finally can become a reality 0_0

[Fluburtur]

Devnotes are life, finally proper boats/water stuff

(who cares about space? water is the stuff)

[RAINCRAFTER]

Hype initiating.

[Snark]

...it is now feasible to build working boats or indeed seaplanes...

Seaplanes?

Woohoo! I'm lookin' at you, Laythe...

[DundraL]

Sounds like 1.0.5 is coming along nicely....

Been looking forward to this quite a bit, and im really happy about the buoyancy change. Does this mean things dont kill themselves when falling over after landing on water?