Devnote Tuesday: A week of Experimental Testing

[eddiew]

That's the goal!

Iiii... will save up all my holiday for that announcement And it won't be nearly enough...

[Alshain]

It's all still one part, so no added part count.

Oh, ok. Well that is fair enough, the description in the OP made it sound like you had to 'place' it. Will it dissapear when clipped through other things? That would take away my VTOL and other design concerns and then I wouldn't care.

[Arsonide]

Agree, it should be at least 30 by default. Especially if they are adding a bunch more contract types with contextual contracts.

The contextual contracts generate using the existing types associated with them. They will not add new types, but rather add new objectives within existing types, so this will not be an issue.

[Alshain]

The contextual contracts generate using the existing types associated with them. They will not add new types, but rather add new objectives within existing types, so this will not be an issue.

Cool. It's still an issue now though, even without them.

[r_rolo1]

(...) The issue with the ragdolls was that the rigidbodies that made up the female ragdoll had very different mass and drag defaults than the male model's. Ragdoll physics are a feature used to animate falling characters, Wikipedia has a decent article on it

Ok, let me reframe my question about ragdolling, Kasper:

-Why do KSP has ragdolling mechanics that don't allow the players to recover control until the Kerbal in question imobilizes ( or gets a small enough velocity ) in the ground? Given that we have bodies in game with very little gravity, waiting that the kerbal imobilizes in the ground to give back control to the player is not the best way to deal with things, and in fact half of the issue with the female kerbals ragdolling is not the extra elasticity in itself, but the fact that, due to the extra elasticity, your female kerbal will simply not stop for a long, long time ( and sometimes will not stop before they reach kerbal breaking velocities ) and thus you will not regain control in a while, if ever :/

[Fyrem]

Rolo1, that would be one of the reasons that they FIXED it, to be the same as the male ones.

[JedTech]

Will you please separate plane/spaceplane parts into a different gamedata folder so I can easily delete it? I have to be selective about memory use and planes are not how I run my space program.

Edited November 3, 2015 by JedTech

[r_rolo1]

Rolo1, that would be one of the reasons that they FIXED it, to be the same as the male ones.

My point is that the same happens with the male ones, just in a far less frequent fashion. But you can still have your rage inducing 5 minutes of nonstopragdolling with male kerbals as well , and it happens for no sane reason ( and worse, the game will not give you any way of recovering from that besides waiting :/ If the game had a "if the kerbal is ragdolling for 2 minutes, give control back to the player" rule, it would be so much better ... )

[problemecium]

I for one am NOT in favor of that new doohickey hanging out of the engines.

Before I saw the screenshots, I read "just clip into other parts" and imagined a small, unobtrusive turbine that didn't extend very far. That would have been cool - it would hint at the reason for the COM offset, help portray jets more accurately, and possibly make for some good decoration on some of the replica crafts or just plain weird ones.

But when I looked at the screenshots, I was shocked at how BIG that thing is. Yes, it does indeed approach the proportions of a real jet turbine. But it's going to be a nightmare for anyone who wants to build a "stubby" jet or mount a jet nozzle on a skinny part (as decoration or otherwise). Sure, it's less realistic, but that doesn't automatically make my stance invalid.

What if, say, I want a VTOL with hover jets? IRL I'd use a system with nozzles offset from the turbines or design a specialized low-profile turbine, but in KSP this is not available (and I'm not saying we need to add low-profile jet parts!).

By all means, add in a little spinny bit at the bases of the jet nozzles, but the existing one is awful. Great idea, lousy execution. I don't want to go around being critical but I can't be alone here.

[RocketPilot573]

I like the under water fog... I'm guessing submarines may be a thing now? However I must agree with the several other people in this thread in that the jet engine turbines are a bad idea... All it accomplishes is limiting our creativity.

[klgraham1013]

Sounds like Nathan is putting in that work.

[CrashTestDanny]

Love the new turbine engines look - very nice! Can't wait to see it implemented.

I second what someone else said about sorting contracts by celestial body. In fact, I wish that Kerbal had more sorting and filtering capabilities not only in contracts, but also things like the tracking station (maybe similar to haystack) and VAB/SPH load/merge dialog. Once I hit about 45 ships saved, this window began lagging horribly. I now have about 100 ships saved in VAB and have to aggressively manage/delete ships that I am no longer using in order to try to reduce this. If we could manage those lists with folders or maybe some sort of categorization, it would really help!

Danny

[Frozen_Heart]

Love the new underwater effects and looking forward to trying to build a sub with the new buoyancy.

Don't like the internal fan parts. It will destroy all of my VTOL designs and make small VTOLs like F-35/Harrier replicas impossible to make.

[KerrMü]

Nice devnotes. Can´t wait for 1.0.5.

Personally I really like the extended jet engines. And regarding VTOLs, two small jets will provide almost as much thrust as one Wheesley. So I guess they will be my choice for VTOLs from now on. They´ll look even nicer in that role.

Hope you won´t find many more bugs, cause I desperately WANT those new parts.

Cheers

Edit: +1 for sorting contracts by celestial bodys. Would be nice if you could say "hmmm, I´ve been to Eve last time. Gimme Moho contracs now."

Edited December 1, 2015 by KerrMü

[regex]

All it accomplishes is limiting our creativity.

Huh, that's funny, I thought static, non procedural parts and "working with what you have" actually increased creativity. At least, that's what I've been told around here.

I'm sure it won't be as big of an issue as people are making it out, especially with smaller engines becoming available soon.

[Hobbes Novakoff]

Really like the new QOL improvements-No longer will I fear to use cosmetic or action-group-based decouplers because of the risk of accidental spacebar-induced splodage. However, the turbines do need to be shortened, otherwise that cuts off a ton of aesthetic opportunities.

[nohelmet]

Cool new polish, that's great! I'm excited for 1.05. I'm glad the steam controllers are getting some love, too.

I like the turbine, I think it looks great! And it makes sense that a jet isn't just the nozzle. Then again I focus on rockets anyways.

[Pthigrivi]

Yeah wow so much consternation over the turbines. I think its a great idea. I mean isn't creativity more satisfying if it's believable? Use dem mini-jets!

[klgraham1013]

I like the new turbines. Makes more sense than having invisible mass for a correct CoM.

[InsaneDruid]

Really? A 12-sided mesh for the turbine? Even as its more or less just visible during assembly, but c'mon, this is 2015 and not 1996.

[Tourist]

I really like the turbines. I think they look cool. They don't seem to long to me, one of them seems as though it fits within the mk1 liquid fuel tank.

Squad, don't be discouraged by lack of enthusiasm you see here, this is a very hard crowd to please and you can't please everybody. That's not a bad thing about the community necessarily, it shows they care about your creation and feel invested in it, so much so that they have strong views about how the game should develop... but I imagine you could feel discouraged when you unveil something you're excited about and you get so many nonplussed responses.

Edited November 4, 2015 by Tourist
appeasing the neglected proofreading gods

[Chaos_Klaus]

Well, I like when things are technically correct. The turbines are a nice thought, but I think it's a bad idea to add them in terms of flexibility. It works for the typical designs, but in some cases you might pretend that nozzle and turbine are built at an angle.

Everything else i think is absolutely great!

Also, I actually think it is great that you go ahead and try the thing with the turbines and see how it looks, how people react.

[LaytheDragon]

The new easter eggs in the passive contracts must be rewards for finding easter eggs in-game, like the island runway.

The new turbine is nice, but I agree with others that it will ruin VTOLs forever. That's why I suggest a compromise; give an option to toggle the turbine extension in the Vehicle Assembly Building (defaulted to off) and in the Space Plane Hanger (defaulted to on)!

Edited November 6, 2015 by LaytheDragon

[Red Dwarf]

I guess I'm kind of split on the whole turbine thing. Yeah, those fans are a bit long, but then again, they're supposed to be. I'm gonna miss having super-sleek, super-powerful VTOLs, but it looks like the .625 m jet will be up to the task. I guess we'll just have to wait and see

[Bloody_looser]

I like new turbine thingie. Depicting a jet engine like some hole on fire is stupid.

VTOL builder problems sound like 1.0 infiniglide fix related whine.