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Devnote Tuesday: 1.0.5 is approaching


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This is probably the best set of devnotes ever, if only because quite a few of my personal requests have finally been fulfilled.

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.

It will definitely be interesting to see how add-ons with inflatable floatation collars would behave under the new buoyancy system.

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.

The second item is most appreciated. Many crew compartments, such as habitats or transfer tunnels, aren't supposed to have airlocks or hatches opening right out into space, so it'll be nice to be able to transfer crew between hatchless compartments without add-ons.

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.

Definitely nice to see more asset reuse in the stock game. Every little bit to reduce RAM usage helps :)

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.

Glad to see this is finally being addressed, as this issue is most noticeable in transparent or high-visibility pods from add-ons.

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Uh guys, I think all the stuff about boats.... I think you are reading too much into this. I believe its a change for the way thing collide/ float on water. I dont thinks they are adding boat parts or anything like that. Just existing parts interact differently i think?

EDIT: Also, will firing upright rocket engines decrease buoyancy if they are underwater? Causing the rocket to sink?

Edited by DundraL
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Can somebody tell me why the fuel cells use LF and OX?

It doesn't make sense considering real fuel cells use hydrogen, which some rockets use as liquid fuel, so logically fuel cells in KSP would only use LF.

Because real fuel cells do in fact use fuel and oxidizer to make electricity. That's why they're called fuel cells. They're "burning" fuel to release energy, but in a way that goes directly to electricity instead of heat/combustion. I suppose if you wanted to be realistic about it, you could provide some way for fuel cells to run on LF only if they happen to be in an oxygen-bearing atmosphere such as Kerbin or Laythe. However, most use cases are elsewhere, where they do in fact need oxidizer to work. Might be a usability challenge to handle both cases without cluttering things up or confusing players.

Anyway, 'nuff said, this thread is about the devnotes.

So... Yay 1.0.5!

(Here's hoping the foldable radiators will be fixed so that the sun-tracking actually works. I'm chomping at the bit to send some near-Sun missions.)

- - - Updated - - -

So with the new buoyancy, will heavy parts, such as full fuel tanks or heat shields filled with ablator sink naturally, without any need for mods?

Rocket fuel is considerably less dense than water, both in the real world and KSP. I'd say the volume of the 16-ton (18 including dry mass) fuel tank is about 24 cubic meters, so even when full it weighs less than an equal volume of water (which would be 24 tons). Of course, that's assuming that Kerbal water is the same density as in our universe, which may be assuming too much.

Still, it would be neat to see full tanks floating lower in the water than empty ones.

One thing that would be a nice touch: let liquids on different planets have different densities, e.g. if Eve's oceans were a significantly higher or lower density than Kerbin's.

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So with the new buoyancy, will heavy parts, such as full fuel tanks or heat shields filled with ablator sink naturally, without any need for mods?

Rocket Fuel wouldn't sink in water, it has less density. Nor would an empty tank because of air.

EDIT: Ninja'd

I mentioned it earlier in the thread but what you need is a ballast tank. RoverDude says the ISRU system is easily moddable so you could mod in water as a resource with an appropriate density. Add that to the density of the tank itself and it will sink like a submarine. Then you just need a ModuleGenerator to add water, instant ballast tank. You also need a way to 'consume' the water, I'm not sure which module does that (might be able to generate a negative value)

Edited by Alshain
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...you could provide some way for fuel cells to run on LF only if they happen to be in an oxygen-bearing atmosphere such as Kerbin or Laythe.

Except they're still running with oxygen too. I think what you mean is that the vehicle doesn't have carry the oxidizer with it? (and, just as a bit of trivia, but some fuel cells can be run in reverse where electricity is passed to them and they split the water back into H2/O2. Those are regenerating fuel cells)

(Here's hoping the foldable radiators will be fixed so that the sun-tracking actually works. I'm chomping at the bit to send some near-Sun missions.)

What do you mean about them not working? Every one that I've tested tracks?

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I don't understand all the excitement for boats and sea planes. Doesn't this just distract from the game's main intent or am I missing the intended purpose for this feature?

I am not trying to troll or flame I just don't see the intent... Please explain.

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I don't understand all the excitement for boats and sea planes. Doesn't this just distract from the game's main intent or am I missing the intended purpose for this feature?

I am not trying to troll or flame I just don't see the intent... Please explain.

It's not about the boats, maybe a little about the seaplanes. What it is really about is water landings for planes, command pods, and whole rockets. Boats and seaplanes are just a fun side effect. I don't know how long you've been around but even 1.0 is an improvement over our old water. In early access water was harder than land even at slow speeds.

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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?

Water-landing survivability has long been a pet peeve of mine. Water is softer than land, so it seems silly that impact tolerance is applied uniformly. I should be able to handle warlter impact at a higher speed than land impact. It seems especially silly that it gets applied to moving over the water, i.e. try to move in the water at 10 m/s and most parts explode.

The good news is that they must be fixing that. They didn't say so specifically, but they did say "seaplane", so obviously it must be able to land and take off without exploding.

Also, hopefully the things-falling-over-when-landing problem should be mitigated, at least for a lot of designs. If I'm landing a ship that's an empty fuel tank sitting on top of a heavy engine, hopefully it ought to just bob up and down vertically, without falling over (as long as it doesn't have something really heavy up top). Might be fun to make a rocket that's actually designed for a water landing.

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This devnotes is great!

Not a big fan of boats or seplanes before bu the ne sytem definitely worth it a try. :)

Really like the independent world record contract idea, it would make my career progress much faster. The adjustable door make it feels more real!

HYPEHYPEHYPE

Now we're talking about buoyancy and seaplanes, then how about the reverse one, i.e. airships? anyone? :sticktongue:

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Now we're talking about buoyancy and seaplanes, then how about the reverse one, i.e. airships? anyone? :sticktongue:

Technically speaking, it's not the reverse, it's the same thing. NathanKell would have to clarify if the new system goes that far, but buoyancy is buoyancy, regardless if you are trying to be more buoyant than water or more buoyant than air. I would love to hear the system is consistent enough to create Helium and fly through the air realistically.

Edited by Alshain
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Thanks for the response about buoyancy. I have only been around since 1.0.4 other then lots of old demo playing but I have noticed that trying to do a soft water landing has issues and at times my stuff broke off my pod.

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Hit me up if you need a second pair of eyes to check for typos in the KSPedia. I have a lot of practice in the department.

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.

I actually managed to catch this in action a while back. Made me laugh at how simple but functional it was. XD

hNiesNR.png

Keep up the good work, guys. Can't wait to play with the new builds. :)

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This sounds like an awesome content/bug-fixing update!

I'm particularly interesting in the navball being visible for Kerbals on EVA. Will we be able to see the same markers we have on the vessel Navball? That would be extremely helpful for navigation. Setting manuver nodes on EVA would be nice too, but I'm guessing that would be overkill.

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This sounds like an awesome content/bug-fixing update!

I'm particularly interesting in the navball being visible for Kerbals on EVA. Will we be able to see the same markers we have on the vessel Navball? That would be extremely helpful for navigation. Setting manuver nodes on EVA would be nice too, but I'm guessing that would be overkill.

Not sure that would make sense to have the same nodes. Notice it says, it isn't tied to the Kerbal, it's tied to the camera. So the Navball moves to show the direction your camera is looking, not the direction you are actually aiming the Kerbal. I think that would make things like Prograde, Normal, and Radial misleading.

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What will the changes to the occlusion code do? Is it purely performance orientated or a simulation accuracy increase (or a bit of both)?

What will the engine nozzle code do, will it let us have (for example) child gimbals which copy the rotation of a parent EGO simplifying the current config requirements for a separate MODULE{GIMBAL} for each 'leaf' on the nozzle (or creative EGO dummying via the look constraints), or something else entirely (i.e. what case is it handling and/or simplifying?)

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What will the engine nozzle code do, will it let us have (for example) child gimbals which copy the rotation of a parent EGO simplifying the current config requirements for a separate MODULE{GIMBAL} for each 'leaf' on the nozzle (or creative EGO dummying via the look constraints), or something else entirely (i.e. what case is it handling and/or simplifying?)

Pretty sure this added gimbal animation capability to the jet engines.

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This sounds like an awesome content/bug-fixing update!

I'm particularly interesting in the navball being visible for Kerbals on EVA. Will we be able to see the same markers we have on the vessel Navball? That would be extremely helpful for navigation. Setting manuver nodes on EVA would be nice too, but I'm guessing that would be overkill.

It has all of the functionality of the regular navball, it just faces where your camera is facing rather than the kerbal, which would cause it to bounce all over the place. :P The directional vectors (other than the survey navigation marker) get hidden while you are walking on a surface, though.

Edited by Arsonide
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Not sure that would make sense to have the same nodes. Notice it says, it isn't tied to the Kerbal, it's tied to the camera. So the Navball moves to show the direction your camera is looking, not the direction you are actually aiming the Kerbal. I think that would make things like Prograde, Normal, and Radial misleading.

How so? All of those markers have to do with orbits. Not the ship. The only ship oriented marker is heading. If they unlock EVA rotation entirely, you would point normal by moving camera till heading is on normal and the kerbal would auto rotate to face heading. I think that would be an excellent way to have it work.

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NoMrBond: better ways to bind FXModuleAnimateThrottle, mostly.

The buoyancy code, for performance reasons, applies only to oceans and applies only when one is (a) over and an ocean and (B) below a given height.

Occlusion functionality has not changed significantly, other than being a bit more generous than it used to be (this was planned for 1.0.4 but did not quite make it). So instead of under-estimating occlusion it will overestimate.

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How so? All of those markers have to do with orbits. Not the ship. The only ship oriented marker is heading. If they unlock EVA rotation entirely, you would point normal by moving camera till heading is on normal and the kerbal would auto rotate to face heading. I think that would be an excellent way to have it work.

That would be incredibly confusing to me to have the heading icon not be the actual heading.

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