KSP Weekly: A Titan’s flyby and making history!

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

I love the Vostok and new mono tanks but if I see the word "localization" one more time I'll lose it! Most of KSP's playerbase is in the US and Canada, so leave localization until you have your DLC - which I will TOTALLY be buying by the way - done! It'll mean better content for the existing fanbase, and more attention for everyone else as YouTubers like Jacksepticeye etc will return to it.

#businessstrategies

[Mako]

1 hour ago, Daniel Prates said:

I quite frankly cant understand all the resistance to the idea that I've seen here. Why not?!?!

Well, to answer your question: I think this in an idea that has been asked for quite a lot by quite a few people for quite a while now. People have wanted to have more of a guiding as opposed to reacting influence over their unique space program experience. So I'm not too sure what resistance you are sensing; I believe people have just been pointing out that what you're looking for is probably not what's coming in this DLC based on the few details that have been provided.

By all means, you and everyone else should continue to voice your opinions and desires. From what has been said, Squad looks to be still in the design phase of this DLC production. Now is the time when it's easiest to make any changes to the design. However, right now we only have a very general picture of what is being implemented and our ideas may not fit what Squad is planning quite as well as we think. This is not a blanket endorsement of Squad's decisions; this is just the reality of the situation.

And if in the end you are dissatisfied with what Squad presents then do not purchase it. That's all any of us can really do.

 

[HebaruSan]

8 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Most of KSP's playerbase is in the US and Canada

Maybe they want to sell more copies by changing that.

8 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

leave localization until you have your DLC

I'm afraid that's a futile demand. They have most of the code changes and most of the translation to the new languages done already, and now they're tidying up the last few things that got missed in earlier passes. Just a few more weeks of more of the same are all that stand between SQUAD and a flood of renminbi. Nothing short of a comet striking Mexico can stop localization at this point.

However, they have said they're also working on the DLC at the same time, so you need not fear that localization is soaking up all the resources.

[Redneck]

 localization still? I'll check back in in another couple of months. Go squad! Hey Roverdude!

[klgraham1013]

20 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I like this idea long-term, but how exactly could it know how 'hard' a mission is?

The same way procedural contracts already determine how difficult a contract is.  Perhaps with a few additional variables.

We all have a general idea how hard certain things are in the game.  Which planets are the most / least difficult to land on / escape from.  A little thought could design a decent enough system for this.

18 hours ago, Daniel Prates said:

I am a ninja.

^ He beat me to it.

[Daniel Prates]

4 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

 

^ He beat me to it.

Hehe

@Mako just to be clear, and regarding the 'resistance' comment, I am only posting these comments in the intention of contributing somehow to the game's development. I mentioned resistance because, if you check some of the responses I got, some are silly platitudes like "not everybody plays the game in the same way" or "if you don't like the game you don't have to buy it", or even "its not a contract generator because it is not meant to be a contract generator". Well duh, you guys! Those comments are all either obvious or useless statements. Some are even rude. All I am saying, if that is not clear enough already, is that if Squad is developing a mission-builder system to be used elsewhere in the game, they COULD (and I am not holding a gun in anybody's head, even if I could do it which I can't) contemplate the possibility of implementing a mission-builder in career mode, science mode or sandbox mode (or all of the above). In all my programming ignorance, I imagine it would be an easy thing to do since the mechanism, interface, GUI or whatever would be probably 90% the same anyway. 

[HebaruSan]

22 minutes ago, Daniel Prates said:

if you check some of the responses I got, some are silly platitudes like [...] "its not a contract generator because it is not meant to be a contract generator".

You said (emphasis added):

On 4/24/2017 at 0:14 PM, Daniel Prates said:

I'm amazed [shaking my head in disbelief] that the next great feature of KSP will not be available for use in 90% of the game's scope, namely, career/science modes.

... which is not correct as far as we know. That's why you got pushback from me on this specific statement; misinformation tends to snowball on these forums as commenters take other people's misinformed speculation as gospel, wait a week or two to let it mutate, and then add their own unique interpretation to the pool.

[Daniel Prates]

2 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

You said (emphasis added):

... which is not correct as far as we know. That's why you got pushback from me on this specific statement; misinformation tends to snowball on these forums as commenters take other people's misinformed speculation as gospel, wait a week or two to let it mutate, and then add their own unique interpretation to the pool.

Point taken. I guess we're all just trying to improve the game somehow, within our possibilities.

As Zizek himself have put it, "the measure of love is, that we can insult each other" or something of a sort! 

[fourfa]

Zizek on KSP; that has to be a first

[The Moose In Your House]

Are there forums on the https://www.nasa.gov/ website? Because I couldn't find any.

[genbrien]

On 25/04/2017 at 3:57 PM, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

 Most of KSP's playerbase is in the US and Canada,

where did you get that info?

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

13 hours ago, genbrien said:

where did you get that info?

Because that's where most of the planet's native English speakers are.

[Curveball Anders]

28 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Because that's where most of the planet's native English speakers are.

But you don't have to be a native speaker to play KSP in english.

There's quite a lot of us who get by with english as second (or third) language

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Because that's where most of the planet's native English speakers are.

I'm not sure the people of the UK would agree with that claim; there are significantly more native English speakers in the UK than in Canada.

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

On 4/27/2017 at 5:40 PM, Curveball Anders said:

But you don't have to be a native speaker to play KSP in english.

There's quite a lot of us who get by with english as second (or third) language

Yes but still a signifigant minority

23 hours ago, Kerbart said:

I'm not sure the people of the UK would agree with that claim; there are significantly more native English speakers in the UK than in Canada.

The US and Canada are largely one cultural block. The UK is not

[Curveball Anders]

Just now, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Yes but still a signifigant minority

I can't say I've seen any evidence of that, rather seen that the KSP usage is quite widely spread.

[Kerbart]

13 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Yes but still a signifigant minority

The US and Canada are largely one cultural block. The UK is not

You're absolutely right. I get your point; KSP right now is severely limited to the US/CA market. The language update makes perfect sense as the potential customer base can be expanded by a factor of at least 3.

That is what you meant, right?

[Mikki]

... i recognize lots of europeans and asians in the international forum...
Depends on where i look at maybe.

[John FX]

I am still having trouble figuring out the difference between a contract and a mission. They seem to be exactly the same except there is no reward for a mission and you cannot play a mission in career. All I can think is the craft is fixed in a mission so they would be like a contract where you cannot build your own ship in that case.

Is there anyone who can enlighten me as to how a mission is different to a contract?

[razark]

34 minutes ago, John FX said:

Is there anyone who can enlighten me as to how a mission is different to a contract?

The missions are like the Challenges section of the forum.  Accomplish a goal under certain constraints.

Also, contracts are a feature of career mode.  Missions are not.  Instead of Sandbox/Science/Career, you can play Sandbox/Science/Career/Mission.

 

Edit:

On 3/24/2017 at 7:47 PM, SQUAD said:

He also wanted to take this opportunity to let you know a bit more about the Mission Builder and it’s background. The Mission Builder takes inspiration from the Challenges we’ve noticed that you set yourselves on the Forums. We saw these and wanted to come up with a system that replicates these within the game and that allows you to build and share Missions far and wide.

 

Edited April 28, 2017 by razark

[DMagic]

From what I can gather it sounds like the building blocks (or at least one type of building block) for missions are very similar to contract parameters. Things like: orbit the Mun, plant a flag, collect science, and so. These are all contract parameters and they also make sense to be used as mission objectives.

But the difference is that the contract system is really not built for anything but simple, one or two objective contracts. If you were to try to create a contract that asked you to launch with certain parts on-board, orbit the Mun, plant a flag, collect science, return home, don't have any Kerbals die, do it withing a certain time period, etc... it would be terribly complex. The contract system is simply not designed for that type of multi-objective thing. It would be possible, but would also probably be very inflexible and would be very difficult to track in the contracts window. You would either have a dozen or so interlocking contract parameters (also something that the contract system is not designed for) or a whole lot of sub-parameters, sub-sub-parameters and so on.

The mission system sounds like it has been built from the ground up with this type of multiple, serial or parallel, objectives missions.

It also sounds like missions have a more flexible scoring system, and, obviously, have an in-game system for making your own. I'm also assuming that some of the mission constraints that they talked about at some point aren't quite the same as contract parameters.

[Errol]

What ever happened to the dev blog promise from a few months ago about more developer in-depth articles to make up for flaky dev notes? We got two articles I think it was, the last one about runway seams was great, and then nothing for three months? I hope this lack of news means that you are all working so hard on release that you have no time to report on progress.....

[TriggerAu]

1 hour ago, Errol said:

What ever happened to the dev blog promise from a few months ago about more developer in-depth articles to make up for flaky dev notes? We got two articles I think it was, the last one about runway seams was great, and then nothing for three months? I hope this lack of news means that you are all working so hard on release that you have no time to report on progress.....

You nailed it in one, we have a list of some topics and started on some more, but with Pre starting its been a new level of busy-ness. Thanks for the poke cause we do need to get some of these out the door, just balancing time

[StrandedonEarth]

Without any more ado, the devnotes At the same time, the author(s) of the KSP Weekly have responded to the helpful feedback and it has improved immensely in its information content and format, which lessens the need for the DevBlog articles (deep breath; sorry for the run-on sentence). Nonetheless, I look forward to new ones. 

Edited April 28, 2017 by StrandedonEarth

[Errol]

2 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Without any more ado, the devnotes At the same time, the author(s) of the Dev Weekly has responded to the helpful feedback and it has improved immensely in its information content and format, which lessens the need for the DevBlog articles. Nonetheless, I look forward to new ones. 

I want to be clear, I was referring to the offered reasoning for the alleged increase in volume of dev articles by calling the dev notes flaky, which they were at that time. I agree fully that there has been immense improvement to the dev notes, which has led to me actually enjoying reading them again. Still trying to get used to the new day of the week though.. Makes me feel old and stubborn; but I get a little sad when I realize on Tuesday that dev notes aren't coming out for another few days. I guess it bodes well that I seem to be looking forward to them again in general though.