KSP Weekly: Women in space and more!

[The Space Dino]

The fact that I killed Val on a minmus landing is just sad when I saw the title of this thread.

Well I have not really got into details of what the devs plans for the DLC as I wasn't on the forums when they announced it but keep up the good work devs,I know you guys are working on something wonderful for a historical DLC.

[Gaarst]

I'm happy about the "explosion on launch" fix. I am currently (and have been for the past half hour) reverting a plane over and over again hoping to be able to fly it, I am starting to get a tad annoyed.

Edit: it turns out I had one clipped strut, and somehow it was enough to blow up the entire 250 parts plane upon launch, go figure...

Edited June 17, 2017 by Gaarst

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

42 minutes ago, Caelib said:

I really hope you don't fall into the trap of dumbing down the game to facilitate consoles.  Many great PC-based franchises have died a slow, painful death because of this.

I obviously don't know for sure but, from the tone of the announcement I think they mean strictly for the console version. I sure hope so, anyway. I have a Windows-compatible XBOX controller that does nothing but collect dust. I'd like to keep it that way.

[Streetwind]

While you're bughunting, could you take a look at #15419? I raised it 11 days ago, and it's kiiinda serious, but hasn't been acknowledged yet.

[danfarnsy]

On 6/16/2017 at 2:00 PM, SQUAD said:

 It’s in our best interest to include all human beings who can positively contribute in building our future, regardless of their gender, race, or sexual orientation.

Amen! I love the history of physics. I've always been amazed at how much the field has moved because of enormous contributions from relatively few extremely talented individuals. Because gender roles left few women participating in physics, we effectively cut our talent pool in half. How many other Emmy Noethers and Marie Curies were out there with potential to make big contributions that we simply missed because of culture? Even today, when 60% of university undergraduates are women, physics programs are dominated by men, which means we're still missing out.

As much as I hate the whole "first woman to do x" because of how patronizing they often sound, raising daughters has taught me how much they look for rules and examples of what they should be and what they should do, drawing too many conclusions that limit themselves. It wasn't until recently that I discovered that because I was in an all-male unit in the Army, my oldest daughter had this idea that women don't join the Army. I was glad I could point her to my friend, who was an intelligence officer and is now a helicopter pilot, to help dispel a limitation that, until then, I'd had no idea she'd learned. But probably the best example they can get is themselves. My own mother's fierce competence, in building and crafting, didn't come about because of female role models, but because she worked alongside her dad and built stuff. Examples are good, but discovering and building your own capacity through doing are even better. Regardless of gender, our real capability often transcends the limits we imagine for ourselves.

Except basketball. Didn't matter how much I practiced, I was bad at basketball.

[technicalfool]

5 hours ago, Streetwind said:

While you're bughunting, could you take a look at #15419? I raised it 11 days ago, and it's kiiinda serious, but hasn't been acknowledged yet.

Looks like @bewing checked and confimed it about three hours after your post here.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

Quote

We also fixed the alignment of settings in some UI elements,

I think the team should crack open 1.05 for a bit and check out what worked better there- I dislike the fact that Kerbals on EVA have text overlaid on them, it was nicer when it was in the space above (less clutter) with a digital font (cooler). I would love to see a pass on font improvement, rendering, and clarity (maybe AA settings (yes I'm getting old)), as well as some unification of font types. It seems every version they change but don't necessarily get better, just different. This type of design is a pretty specialized skill and not exactly a priority I imagine, but it'd be nice to see this eventually solidified.

[bewing]

53 minutes ago, Waxing_Kibbous said:

I would love to see a pass on font improvement, rendering, and clarity (maybe AA settings (yes I'm getting old))

AFAIK, that's a Unity thing, and not something KSP can do much about.

Quote

 It seems every version they change but don't necessarily get better, just different.

I would personally disagree. The 1.1 font was amusing, but the 1.2 font was a huge improvement in readability. I think the 1.3 font was chosen to be able to accomodate all the 5 languages, uniformly and conveniently -- which the previous one couldn't. There were some tiny sacrifices made in the English version, perhaps, to handle localization. We're lucky it wasn't more drastic.

 

Edited June 18, 2017 by bewing

[Vanamonde]

A few posts have been trimmed from this thread. Please don't make the discussions personal. 

[richfiles]

I'm still hoping wheels will get fixed... Auto-strutting the wheels to the rest of the vehicle might be a bandaid that fixes some bugs, but it should ultimately be a temporary fix. Currently, auto-strutting the wheels utterly breaks some old pre-autostrut vessel designs. It might not be seen as much of a high priority, but the fact that it kills some creative designs, really makes it a stinker of a bug, in my eyes. Anything that reduces creativity in KSP is something that needs fixing. I just hope to see wheels properly fixed someday.

Glad to see some improvements on elements related to explodium brand struts and fairings! Control From Here being made into an action group item... PRAISE BE!!! 

I'd like to offer a suggestion... More Action Groups... They can be unbound by default if you want, but just the option of HAVING additional action group keys would be amazing! You could easily have 2 basic groups... You could have the 1-9,0 keys above the alpha keys be one set of 10 AG keys, and if a keyboard has a numberpad, 0-9 on the number pad could be a completely separate set of AG keys! One could rebind those keys, if desired... Another option I'd like to see would be to double that again, for up to 40 action Groups, by pressing one of those keys, with a modifier.

Trust me... Some vessels might very well use up a couple dozen action groups for normal operations! I've seen some of the stuff done using the Action Groups Extended mod (or whatever it's called). Spaceships have lots of controls! Say we embrace ALL the buttons! 

[klgraham1013]

1 hour ago, richfiles said:

More Action Groups

I don't necessarily need more, but making them editable in flight would be nice.  Action Groups Extended is overkill, and Action Group Manager's UI is a little clumsy.  Would be nice if Squad could address this.  Though, I don't really expect them to.

[AverageJoeGuy]

On ‎6‎/‎16‎/‎2017 at 3:00 PM, SQUAD said:

We not only did some bughunting for the core game, consoles got their fair share too, and the console builds are coming along nicely and stability is still looking good. We are now focusing on finding ways to improve the gameplay, while making sure that all aspects of the game are accessible using the controllers and menus, and that they are intuitive for new and veteran players alike. Additionally, there’s been another QA pass of the KSPedia on the consoles, highlighting any spacing or layout issues, and checking for accuracy. Soon we’ll have more testing hands to help us find any remaining issues.

How about making the game playable, for those of us who already paid for it, then work on better gameplay?

[StrandedonEarth]

1 hour ago, AverageJoeGuy said:

How about making the game playable, for those of us who already paid for it, then work on better gameplay?

Much more effective to make the game playable and fun to play in one shot, than to release a game that gets a response of "this sucks anyways" and have to wait a few months to fix that. By then everyone would have bailed anyways. Improving gameplay now won't take much longer and saves time overall in QA.

[richfiles]

On 6/16/2017 at 4:48 PM, Kosmonaut said:

As well as being the first Canadian on Mars, it may also be nice for me to be the first non-straight person on Mars

I think we're all missing the point...

This dude knows you don't aim straight for a planet and burn straight. You find your transfer window, burn prograde, and take advantage of the Oberth effect to raise your orbit to do a nice, efficient Hohmann transfer! amirite! 

Wait... We're talking orbits, right?  

[Vanamonde]

Some posts have been removed from this thread. Please keep the discussion on-topic. 

Also, no one is forcing anyone to reveal anything personal here, and no one is forcing anyone else to read the revelations. Keep it polite and try to be tolerant of other types of people. 

[richfiles]

11 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

I don't necessarily need more, but making them editable in flight would be nice.  Action Groups Extended is overkill, and Action Group Manager's UI is a little clumsy.  Would be nice if Squad could address this.  Though, I don't really expect them to.

You've never seen one of my more advanced craft then!  I have sometimes used 3 Action Groups on solar panels alone, just to do staged deployment (and not break the panels). I often have Action Groups arranged to deploy and reset my reusable science instruments, and to deploy individual consumable science instruments. That can be anywhere between 3 to 6 or more action groups alone, depending on how many AG keys I have left. Some of my rover and vessel designs have featured things like VTOL capability, toggle able thrust vectors, etc. Winches and tow lines, backup batteries, data transmission... Adding mods and complexity to a vessel makes this demand for action groups even greater.

Simply adding additional keybinding options for more action groups can't be that hard, coding wise. I mean, a mod did it to the point of excess... 20 or 40 Action Groups in stock would be phenomenal! The default keybindings wouldn't even be an inconvenience... Tossing the second set of 10 AG keys default binding to the number pad, and doubling that total of 20 using the modifier key. The concept is super simple.

As for editing in flight... That'd be awesome.

I certainly hope that it becomes a reality... 

(INB4 Take-Two makes additional Action Groups a paid DLC and C&Ds Action Groups Extended... Or more to their style... ModuleManager...) 

Edited June 19, 2017 by richfiles

[septemberWaves]

1 hour ago, richfiles said:

You've never seen one of my more advanced craft then!  I have sometimes used 3 Action Groups on solar panels alone, just to do staged deployment (and not break the panels). I often have Action Groups arranged to deploy and reset my reusable science instruments, and to deploy individual consumable science instruments. That can be anywhere between 3 to 6 or more action groups alone, depending on how many AG keys I have left. Some of my rover and vessel designs have featured things like VTOL capability, toggle able thrust vectors, etc. Winches and tow lines, backup batteries, data transmission... Adding mods and complexity to a vessel makes this demand for action groups even greater.

Simply adding additional keybinding options for more action groups can't be that hard, coding wise. I mean, a mod did it to the point of excess... 20 or 40 Action Groups in stock would be phenomenal! The default keybindings wouldn't even be an inconvenience... Tossing the second set of 10 AG keys default binding to the number pad, and doubling that total of 20 using the modifier key. The concept is super simple.

As for editing in flight... That'd be awesome.

 

Building on to this, I have an idea which I think a lot of people would appreciate (though I don't know how easy it would be to incorporate into the game): an action groups button. In addition to the tabs in the upper-right corner for contracts & resources and other things, a tab for action groups probably wouldn't be out of place. Perhaps such a tab could allow in-flight editing of action group sets for normal 0-9, alt + 0-9, ctrl + 0-9, and perhaps others but honestly thirty is probably sufficient for most purposes. It'd also be nice to be able to label each action group set (perhaps with text that pops up as you hover over the icon for it). I imagine this sort of thing may be complicated to create, but I think the vast gameplay improvement (for most players at least) would be worth it.

[NoMrBond]

In-flight editable action groups would be very handy

Maybe it could be something you need an Engineer onboard to change (like SAS for pilots), certain Engineer levels can access different levels of action groups (10/20/30), or set certain actions.

[Mako]

Since several people have mentioned it in this thread I'd like to add my voice to those asking for more assignable action group keys, ideally using a modifier like ALT+Number, and in-flight editing of action groups. I think there's some great suggestions in here that are relevant to the work the devs are doing since they're currently putting some thought into part actions and action groups.

[klgraham1013]

On 6/16/2017 at 3:00 PM, SQUAD said:

Furthermore, we did some bug fixing for 1.3.1 including, but not limited to: a change to the camera clipping pane, so we don’t have to see what Kerbal’s have been eating for breakfast when you zoom right in on them

Question: Is there any way this could lead to zooming into a 1st person perspective?  Modding the game to allow 1st person while walking or in a command seat really brings forth a sense of scale you just don't get while in 3rd person.  

...or is this just stopping the camera before it enters the head.  That's probably it.  I thought it might be turning the textures invisible once you reach a certain level of zoom.  Disappointed.

Edited June 19, 2017 by klgraham1013

[richfiles]

3 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

Question: Is there any way this could lead to zooming into a 1st person perspective?

In essence, IVA for EVA. 

Edited June 19, 2017 by richfiles
Gene Simmons demanded this edit

[Broke dead dogg]

Great news for the console! I'm curios to know how optimizing the controller is "dumbing down for consoles"

Anyway, I've a question: what (if any) plans are being made for when the new Xbox one X is released in November? Seems there's a lot of potential there

[KerbMav]

19 minutes ago, Broke dead dogg said:

Great news for the console! I'm curios to know how optimizing the controller is "dumbing down for consoles"

I actually hate console ports that do not put afford to adapt to PC controles. Context sensitive buttons are a good thing - but not at any time. (e.g. BF1 spotting enemies, comm-wheel and placing orders on objectives - all on one button)

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

Yo, @RoverDude: hope you're gonna give us a sneak-peek pic with the new weekly later today. If this weekly was a test to see what would happen if you didn't include a pic, I think we have an answer: not much interest and a conversation that took a couple of strange turns. One of your pics is sure to get the conversation back on track. Like whether or not the new parts have the proper amount of rivets and grease stains. 

[Daveroski]

Click, clique, click clique..