Devnote Tuesday: One One Three

[SQUAD]

Hello everyone!

We’d like to introduce you all to Rodrigo (Roy) who has recently joined the development team in Mexico. Roy is the first new addition to the team, which we’re looking to restructure and expand in the near future:

Hey there, I recently joined Squad as part of the dev team and this is my first devnote!

I’m eager to start working with the other developers to improve Kerbal.

Currently I’m helping get the console versions ready to go, and to get rid of bugs and suggest improvements in functionality.

Those of you who follow us closely will know that as of late last week, update 1.1.3 has entered experimental testing! The QA and experimental testers are diligently running through their test cases, but the general feeling here is that we’re quickly running out of high priority bugs to address, which bodes well for a release next week.

One of the issues that came up last week related to the way career mode generates random orbits with the new orbit code. To cut a long story short contracts were generating erroneous parameters with the new orbit code and saving them, causing persistent issues. To fix this, Brian (Arsonide) edited the orbit generation algorithm to be more modular which allowed him to change it to regenerate only the orbital parameters that were faulty, while leaving the others intact. Because the code had to be re-designed, this proved to be an excellent opportunity to make it much easier to work with for devs and modders alike.

Nathanael (NathanKell) split his attention across many areas of the game, fixing issues at the pace of… something insanely fast. A selection: fixed an issue introduced by the drift fix where acceleration would spike when transitioning between rotating and inertial reference frames (<100km to >100km orbits). Fixed an issue where the reporter method for RCS torque wasn’t considering the thrust limiter. Fixed an issue where crew transfer dialogs could be opened more than once, making crew disappear.

Dave (TriggerAu), Steve (Squelch), Nathan (Claw) and Mathew (sal_vager) are keeping themselves busy working through test cases, regression tests and bug reports: sorting, prioritizing and forwarding them to the developers. Further good news is that the issue where the editor could crash when deleting parts appears fixed now, though on the flip side Ted’s work on the experimental testing has been complicated over the past few days because of a broken internet connection. Press [F] to pay your respects.

Mike (Mu) and Bob (Roverdude) have been focused on the 1.2 update. Mike has been working to update the game to Unity 5.4 in preparation for development to kick off after the release of the 1.1.3 patch. We’re planning a huge behind-the-scenes project / code clean up which should help make the game run smoother and increase the maintainability of the code so that we can add many more features in the future. Bob has been working on more integration and polish on the antenna relay system. A few new configurable realism options have been introduced and antennas are now subject to aerodynamic destruction much like solar panels are.

Yesterday we’ve seen an article about KSP published on the NASA website. Sarah Schlieder explores the challenge Jason Dworkin of the OSIRIS-REx program presented to our community. Seeing KSP being used as a tool for a space agency to interact with space enthusiasts is incredibly rewarding and the article quotes both Kasper (KasperVld) and community member Matuchkin! You can read it here.

That wraps up the devnotes for this week! As always you can follow us and ask questions on our forums, on Facebook and Twitter, and on Reddit.

[legoclone09]

Yay!

AND FIRST

EDIT: What? Look in the top left of the picture.

THANK YOU @SQUAD!!!!!!!

Edited June 14, 2016 by legoclone09

[LordCorwin]

Wow, 1.1.3 coming soon! I hope all the crashes will stop then :-)  Roy, my best wishes.

Edited June 14, 2016 by LordCorwin

[AlamoVampire]

I wonder if they have tackled the resurgence of the cannot deploy while stowed issue? Now it's affecting landing gear...

also neat stuff if relays are in 113

edit: when can we have the ability for full UI customability? The vertical nature of the resource, contracts etc is intrusive and should be adjustable :S

edit edit: 1.2 eh? Cool

Edited June 14, 2016 by AlamoVampire

[KasperVld]

Just now, AlamoVampire said:

I wonder if they have tackled the resurgence of the cannot deploy while stowed issue? Now it's affecting landing gear...

also neat stuff if relays are in 113

Relays are in 1.2

 

[Speadge]

7 minutes ago, legoclone09 said:

EDIT: What? Look in the top left of the picture.

THANK YOU @SQUAD!!!!!!!

whats to be seen there? nothing special but the antenna integration, isnt it?

[legoclone09]

1 minute ago, Speadge said:

whats to be seen there? nothing special but the antenna integration, isnt it?

That was meant to be in 1.2

3 minutes ago, KasperVld said:

Relays are in 1.2

 

Oh, oops.

Edited June 14, 2016 by legoclone09

[Speadge]

Just now, legoclone09 said:

That was meant to be in 1.2

it still will be, thats no pic of 1.1.3

[Just Jim]

15 minutes ago, KasperVld said:

Relays are in 1.2

 

How will this effect career games?  I'm assuming they'll still be playable, other than maybe having to launch a few more satellites?  

[ISE]

Greetings Roy! 

Glad to see you with the dev team, and am pumped to see what you guys got planned for 1.1.3! 

[LaytheDragon]

Welcome, Roy! Now, for the suspense of waiting for a direct response from the new forum account that must accompany a new developer!

What joy must be running through those who are plagued with the crashing issues in 1.1.2, that 1.1.3 is approaching quickly and is swarming with fixes. As an addition, it is nice to hear that there are massive plans for KSP after 1.2.

[illenshen]

Will there be a way to toggle the Antenna Relay System off when making a save?

[basic.syntax]

Some sources of crashes are expected to be fixed, but random crashes are situational: when doing X or Y, crash may happen. Just because "X" method is possibly fixed, does not mean the harder-to-reproduce "Y" method is also fixed.  We will all know soon enough, fingers are crossed in hopes of a great update  

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Just Jim said:

How will this effect career games?  I'm assuming they'll still be playable, other than maybe having to launch a few more satellites?  

 

1 hour ago, illenshen said:

Will there be a way to toggle the Antenna Relay System off when making a save?

RoverDude has stated (quite often in fact) that the Antenna Relay system is additive, not restrictive. Using it gives you MORE options. Not using does not give you any LESS.

So, a current career game that updates to 1.2 (or never implements the antenna relay system) will see absolutely no difference from previous versions. When you want to use it, though, it'll be there for you.

I don't know what this implies about its usefulness.

I must apologize, I apparently misunderstood RoverDude's comments on multiple occasions

Edited June 14, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[Atlas2342]

Whoooo! 

Edited June 14, 2016 by Atlas2342

[Just Jim]

5 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

 

RoverDude has stated (quite often in fact) that the Antenna Relay system is additive, not restrictive. Using it gives you MORE options. Not using does not give you any LESS.

So, a current career game that updates to 1.2 (or never implements the antenna relay system) will see absolutely no difference from previous versions. When you want to use it, though, it'll be there for you.

I don't know what this implies about its usefulness.

Awesome!

[HebaruSan]

48 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

Nathanael (NathanKell) [...] Fixed an issue where crew transfer dialogs could be opened more than once, making crew disappear.

Oh cool, I just hit that one recently (luckily right after an F5). @NathanKell's fixes ftw!

[RoverDude]

1 hour ago, Speadge said:

it still will be, thats no pic of 1.1.3

That's a pic of my development branch

28 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

 

RoverDude has stated (quite often in fact) that the Antenna Relay system is additive, not restrictive. Using it gives you MORE options. Not using does not give you any LESS.

So, a current career game that updates to 1.2 (or never implements the antenna relay system) will see absolutely no difference from previous versions. When you want to use it, though, it'll be there for you.

I don't know what this implies about its usefulness.

Not quite

You can of course disable the feature, and we've also ensured that you will not be put in a situation where your unmanned craft are 'bricked', but it will be enabled by default.

[CrashTestDanny]

 

2 hours ago, SQUAD said:

We’d like to introduce you all to Rodrigo (Roy)

Welcome Roy!

 

2 hours ago, SQUAD said:

Bob has been working on more integration and polish on the antenna relay system

Why is the antenna system in polish?

 

Danny.  Wondering how many people won't get that it's a joke...

[Guest]

2 hours ago, SQUAD said:

Further good news is that the issue where the editor could crash when deleting parts appears fixed now

Funny that you said that.  I just had my first ever case of that bug.  

F

2 hours ago, SQUAD said:

We’d like to introduce you all to Rodrigo (Roy)

Is his real name John McClain and he's just going by Roy?  If so, tell Al that I got him some Twinkies.  (Die Hard reference)

Edited June 14, 2016 by Guest

[Guest]

Hello to you Roy . Great work Squad really looking forward to the update and future developments of KSP.

Edited June 14, 2016 by m-theory

[Nerfclasher]

very nice

null

 

Edited June 14, 2016 by Nerfclasher

[NoMrBond]

Sounds promising that Unity 5.4 is in decent enough shape for KSP 1.2

Are any of the Unity 5.4 specific features coming down the pipe for KSP 1.2 as well (like DX12 or SSRR etc)? Or will that depend on whether the switch over to the Standard Shader is doable?

[Edit] Side note - Physics Debug View (yay!), not full PVD but it's a start.

Edited June 15, 2016 by NoMrBond

[Peder]

Welcome Rodrigo (Roy)    ;-)   

[AlphaMensae]

15 minutes ago, NoMrBond said:

Sounds promising that Unity 5.4 is in decent enough shape for KSP 1.2

Are any of the Unity 5.4 specific features coming down the pipe for KSP 1.2 as well (like DX12 or SSRR etc)? Or will that depend on whether the switch over to the Standard Shader is doable?

[Edit] Side note - Physics Debug View (yay!), not full PVD but it's a start.

NathanKell and Mu (Mike) in last week's Squadcast hinted about various new features in Unity 5.4 that if they don't end up being used in stock v.12, will be available for use by modders.  Someone who follows Unity developed would probably know more of what those would be.

Quote

We’re planning a huge behind-the-scenes project / code clean up which should help make the game run smoother and increase the maintainability of the code so that we can add many more features in the future.

Just as I suspected from what NathanKell and Mu said, KSP is getting a long-overdue top-to-bottom code cleanup.

 

Edited June 15, 2016 by Laguna