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KSP Weekly: We’re turning into polyglots!


SQUAD

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Welcome to KSP Weekly, everyone! It’s been an exciting week, there’s been progress in all fronts and things are starting to take shape, so without further ado, let’s begin,

On the QA front testing for the localization pack continues, specifically for the KSPedia, fonts and keyboards layouts. For example, one of the challenges we’ve faced is due to changes to some of the structures that we use to accommodate the different languages, which has meant that more bugs have also been created. However, we’ve been watching out for those as well as checking the other fixes as the Dev’s deliver them.

Our Localization volunteers continue to astound and are doing a great job. We’re firing up the latest QA builds every day to see more and more stuff coming online and beginning to work. Given the only thing they have to work with is quite boring-looking spreadsheets and markup, we all here at the KSP HQ want to give them a public shout out for dealing with all of that. Without your help we wouldn’t be able to deliver such high quality. Thank you.

All this work has given sal_vager quite some poetic inspiration. For the second week in a row we have been given another of his creations:

Localization is so much work

Japanese, Chinese, makes my head hurt

Spanish at least, is little pain

Russian? Reach for the vodka again

But luckily for our QA testers, the localization effort is almost coming to fruition and soon they will be able to focus on some other exciting stuff, but we’re not quite there, yet.

Having said that, let’s move on to the development team, who are also working hard to finish with the localization. This week’s activities included some work on the font settings and display, specifically some rework and tweaking for the Chinese and Japanese fonts. Similarly, we worked on localizing strings found in the contracts system: refactoring them, or in other words adapting and extending the code of unlocalized strings and applying Lingoona’s grammar rules to them.

In between the localization work, the devs also took the time to fix a few bugs including an annoyance where if you pinned PAW windows on vessels and then paused the game or used timewarp the pinned PAWs would disappear. They’ve also been working on ironing out the runway seam alignment issues. JPLRepo has refactored and aligned the Tier3 Runway and begun working on the Tier2 Runway. The Devs have also begun looking into the terrain issues that you all have been reporting. What would really help the devs out is if people could submit actual save files (must be stock only) of these terrain issues (with a vessel next to them) we’d really appreciate it and that would really speed up the investigations. There are lots of bug reports on this one but if we could ask you to attach saves to this report that would be terrific!

Our friends at Blitworks continue to advance with the console update, they are now working to adapt all the building and editor UIs to be more gamepad-friendly, which is a laborious but necessary improvement to the UI. We are very happy to be working with them and we’re excited to bring Loud and Clear to consoles!

Our artists are helping with the localization of the KSPedia, they’ve managed to finish Japanese and Chinese so far, and now it’s time for Español. In addition the retopology of the Kerbals continues and they are trying to decide between blendshapes and bones, blendshapes and bones. Hey, why not both?

We are also very happy to welcome our new Senior Programer, Bjorn, who is nicknamed BJ because it’s a lot easier to pronounce than his actual name. He was a gameplay programmer on Shadows of the Damned, Killer is Dead, and Batman: Arkham Knight. He’s lived on four continents (although he admits that he’s cheating with that number because Europe and Asia are technically the same continent) and wants to round out the final three before he dies (which will probably coincide with his visit to Antarctica). BJ would like to go to space and is considering stalking Elon Musk on the off chance that it’ll get him there faster. Some of his favourite video games are: the Gran Turismo series , the DIRT series, the Forza series, the Project Gotham Racing series, Batman: Arkham Asylum, The Last of Us, Super Meat Boy, Space Channel 5, Jet Set Radio, Metal Gear Solid 3, BioShock, Okami, Braid, SSX, Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus. Welcome BJ!

Finally, we want to thank everyone who participated on the Kerbal Spice Program contest, we were all amazed by the creativity, ingenuity and skills of the participants. We had lots of fun and we think the people that entered did too, since a new forum thread called Kerbal Spice Program 2.0 was opened as a fan-fuelled continuation of the contest. Here are some of our favorite creations for this contest and click here to see them all if you haven’t. 

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Coffee Tea Party by EBOSHI

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It’s a bird… It’s a Plane… It’s a…? by wrcsubers 

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Flying Spaghetti Monster by DV-13 

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Kerbal Cake Program by Drillgorg

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Toaster with solid fuel powered toasts by DV-13

That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news!

Happy launchings!

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Holy Cow! First!

Love those Spice Program entries. I just couldn't think of what to do myself.

Welcome Bjorn! I see a lot of racing game experience there. Any chance of a rover racing minigame within KSP?

Love the poem, @sal_vager

Again. no mention of the the allegedly upcoming supersecret feature? Has that been dropped?

Patiently waiting for Loud and Clear to come to console. I won't let my boys buy KSP on their XB1 until then, assuming they have the savegame bugs ironed out.

And again, I'm gonna make a shameless plug to get a product placement on The Big Bang Theory. Last time, I think I posted too late to get Squad's attention. It would be so epic!

HFGrT7R.png

 

 

Edited by StrandedonEarth
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35 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Again. no mention of the the allegedly upcoming supersecret feature?

I'm gonna guess that's because of the fact that it's super secret.

 

Hello, Bjorn, and welcome aboard! Hope to see you around the forums soon.

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1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

The Devs have also begun looking into the terrain issues that you all have been reporting.

Praise be to all that is good and righteous!

1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

Shadows of the Damned, Killer is Dead

BJ.  You have my respect.  I have an irrational love for all things Suda.  Maybe it's because I was an 80's child...

59 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Welcome Bjorn! I see a lot of racing game experience there. Any chance of a rover racing minigame within KSP?

BJ was secretly hired to be lead programmer on the inevitable Kerbal Cart Racer.

22 minutes ago, Dman979 said:

I'm gonna guess that's because of the fact that it's super secret.

 

Never stopped them before.

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1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

What would really help the devs out is if people could submit actual save files (must be stock only) of these terrain issues (with a vessel next to them) we’d really appreciate it and that would really speed up the investigations.

Speed up, huh? A submitted report including all the above has been waiting for even the first acknowledgement from devs for the past 3 months. Stock - check. Screenshots - check.  Exact coordinates - check. Save file attached - check. Rover parked right next to it - check. Not even 'Confirmed' after 3 months - check.

But hey, at least it's mentioned in KSP Weekly now. We're making progress...

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21 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

Speed up, huh? A submitted report including all the above has been waiting for even the first acknowledgement from devs for the past 3 months. Stock - check. Screenshots - check.  Exact coordinates - check. Save file attached - check. Rover parked right next to it - check. Not even 'Confirmed' after 3 months - check.

But hey, at least it's mentioned in KSP Weekly now. We're making progress...

The gaps at the South poles on Minmus and Bop have been known about for a very long time:

http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/7410

http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/7418
And the devs involved in the terrain seam problem already are looking at those two. Your report is a duplicate, and I just marked it that way.

However, those are not the terrain seams that the devs mean this time. They mean the new ones that showed up in 1.2.0, that are not at the poles. The ones that players have been complaining about flipping their rovers and stuff. And the devs specifically want any extra really bad ones, that are significantly worse than the ones you find in the grass around KSC.

The old terrain seams will hopefully also get resolved with whatever fix the devs come up with for the new terrain seams.

Edited by bewing
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51 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

Speed up, huh? A submitted report including all the above has been waiting for even the first acknowledgement from devs for the past 3 months. Stock - check. Screenshots - check.  Exact coordinates - check. Save file attached - check. Rover parked right next to it - check. Not even 'Confirmed' after 3 months - check.

But hey, at least it's mentioned in KSP Weekly now. We're making progress...

Devs don't acknowledge bug reports. They are triage'd by QA and copies are made into private bug trackers that you don't see. This is done to assist our workflow and internal processes.
We have known about that bug report for some months along with all the others already on the tracker. It was acknowledged in the Weekly post above that there are many bug reports regarding the new seam problems.
We are investigating the NEW terrain seam problems, not the pole ones specifically. The pole ones were acknowledged a long time ago as being a product of the PQS system. We are currently investigating the new problems and if by some chance the pole ones are fixed then that would be terrrific. What has been asked for is we would like more save files to assist in debugging and ensuring the bug is fixed once fixed. Please paste them into this bug report which is one that I copied just for the purposes of collecting the bug reports.

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44 minutes ago, bewing said:

The gaps at the South poles on Minmus and Bop have been known about for a very long time:

Your report is a duplicate, and I just marked it that way.

Well, better late than never, I guess.

My logic and the bug tracker search logic do not seem to agree well. I routinely search first before making a new report, yet here we are again.

 

11 minutes ago, JPLRepo said:

Devs don't acknowledge bug reports. They are triage'd by QA and copies are made into private bug trackers that you don't see. This is done to assist our workflow and internal processes.
We have known about that bug report for some months along with all the others already on the tracker. It was acknowledged in the Weekly post above that there are many bug reports regarding the new seam problems.
We are investigating the NEW terrain seam problems, not the pole ones specifically. The pole ones were acknowledged a long time ago as being a product of the PQS system.

As you put succinctly: I, as a lowly customer/user, do not see any of this. We are told time and again to report bugs in the bug tracker, which I do, and then the reports go a long time without any kind of visible feedback whatsoever. Unless someone posts an update to them, or changes the status, it does not show us in any way if it has even been read, or if it has somehow silently joined the ranks of long-standing bugs with little hope of being resolved in the foreseeable future.

Then we ask about them in the forums, and those questions go unreplied to as well (just check the last several issues of KSP Weekly). This doesn't exactly encourage people to keep feeding the black hole bug tracker, and when at long last something is finally said about the problem, getting directed to 'use the bug tracker' can unleash a bit of latent cynicism.

You might have more success keeping people enthusiastic and cooperative and non-snarky about that darned tracker by giving some feedback, any feedback, every once in a while, to the actual reports, which is all we can see. Just sayin'.

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This Weekly seems to be a bit richer than previous ones. We have actual, concrete talk about real, pressing bugs. We have a mention of the console patch. And we don't have hype-building about some mysterious feature which will likely go unappreciated.

Guys, we're progressing. Reinforce this behavior!

4 hours ago, SQUAD said:
retopology

Is that the word I've been reading as "reptology" for the past six months?! :confused: It's like when that thing you've always thought was red turns out to be green!

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43 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

This doesn't exactly encourage people to keep feeding the black hole bug tracker, and when at long last something is finally said about the problem, getting directed to 'use the bug tracker' can unleash a bit of latent cynicism.

I also agree with it to some extent. If we report a bug, it seems to be triaged. Perhaps initially it was the purpose of bundling duplicate bug reports.
Once I posted a bug report, it was removed from the list as a bug similar to "a few years ago" was reported. It can not be said that the bug tracker is functioning.
However, we must patently post to the bug tracker, to eliminate bugs.

Edited by EBOSHI
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Yes, there are many many reports in the public tracker.
There was a big cleanup effort before 1.2 to try and clean up the trackers as you may recall.
There are curently 1107 open reports on the public tracker. There are also all the PreRelease tracker open reports as well (632 open).
There are many that are duplicates. Whilst the process is not perfect. Your reports do not go un-noticed.

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2 hours ago, JPLRepo said:

 

Yes, there are many many reports in the public tracker.
There was a big cleanup effort before 1.2 to try and clean up the trackers as you may recall.

 

That's right. In KSP1.2.x many of the small frustrations so far have been resolved. It was a great breakthrough!
It may be difficult to select which bugs and which opportunities to modify, but I hope to improve little by little.
I think I will post bugs (using search as well) posted in the vanilla environment.

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56 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I hope not the PC version, but welcome anyway BJ.

Let's just hope that he was part of the team that made the PC version playable. I got it last year and thankfully by that time the game worked without a hitch, for me at least.

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You've kept talking about "localization" for months. This weekly, im sure you use the word at least 10 times. For a guy who don't know what that is, it sounds extremely boring.

 

Can you please explain? You talk about it like it is sooo sexy.

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32 minutes ago, EasyAce said:

You've kept talking about "localization" for months. This weekly, im sure you use the word at least 10 times. For a guy who don't know what that is, it sounds extremely boring.

 

Can you please explain? You talk about it like it is sooo sexy.

Translating the game to other languages :) 

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