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KSP Weekly: Docking for peace


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On 22/07/2017 at 0:04 AM, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

I'm certainly no programmer, so I can't say for sure (and I definitely get where you're comin' from), but how much can there be to tell from one week to the next? Ask me what I did at work this week and I'll respond (probably in a less-than-polite manner), "same crap I did last week".

That's why I look forward to the pics. At least they speak for themselves.

I kinda understand what you mean, but tell me this, what would your boss say to an answer like that? Or a customer?

Let's face it, when asked what you've done this week, if your response was a transparent rewording of you basic job description, chances are your wouldn't have that job for very long (and potential customers would likely spend their money somewhere else

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3 hours ago, Broke dead dogg said:

I kinda understand what you mean, but tell me this, what would your boss say to an answer like that?

That's pretty much exactly what my department's weekly reports are.  Usually "Nominal Operations."

It's the things that are out of the ordinary that raise questions.

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4 hours ago, Broke dead dogg said:

I kinda understand what you mean, but tell me this, what would your boss say to an answer like that? Or a customer?

Let's face it, when asked what you've done this week, if your response was a transparent rewording of you basic job description, chances are your wouldn't have that job for very long (and potential customers would likely spend their money somewhere else

The amount of information must necessarily be related to the amount of context that the recipient has.

I would tell my wife "I got [a lot|a little|less than I wanted] done today"

I would tell my boss "Paid Enhancements for the Alaska project"

I would tell the Alaska Project owner "finished up CISADOTEMS-90, and starting on CISADOTMMS-156, with some rework on AA-9896"

Those issue numbers would mean little to my boss, and nothing to my wife, but tell the project owner exactly what is going on.

To my eye, we are getting the 'Paid enhancements to Alaska' level of detail, because: 

1) we do not have access to the internal bug repository, making the more detailed report either useless or a major burden on the developers who would need to translate it into something a majority of users can understand 

2) the exact technical details are not really relevant unless they have something that is completed that they can tell us about,

3) it is more informative to the majority of forum readers than a highly detailed technical report that could only really be done by taking a developer off of working on the game for half a day or longer each week.

 

I think a highly detailed technical report would be great, but I also know that if I had to do one of those every week, it would slow me down quite a bit, and I would rather the developers make as much progress as they can, even if it means we get a higher level report.

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7 hours ago, Terwin said:

 I would rather the developers make as much progress as they can, even if it means we get a higher level report.

Only two pages of comments speak eloquently that there is nothing to say about this weekly emptiness.

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Speaking about the communications in the weekly, Wube do a fantastic job week in and week out. Plenty of descriptions of things that have been done, describing optimizations, screenshots of new features, etc... They even talk about the custom tools they've had to write to tackle certain problems. It's always interesting.

https://www.factorio.com/blog/

Even if you consider Wube to be setting an impossibly high standard (they're not) KSP's weeklies are almost always lacking. We had a nice golden period when the devs who left for Valve were around, and I would assume pre-2013 as well, but otherwise the weeklies have been fairly worthless affairs where the only thing to really be said is "Please proceed". Dev blogs are pretty good though, we could use more of those.

Edited by regex
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19 hours ago, razark said:

That's pretty much exactly what my department's weekly reports are.  Usually "Nominal Operations."

It's the things that are out of the ordinary that raise questions.

"Nominal operations" or more likely"on schedule" would probably be what the high ups in squad/take two get but, I shouldn't have to tell you, we are customers! Customers expect (and rightly so) more from a company that A)already has their money and B)has not yet delivered.

Imagine if one of your customers/client was looking for a progress report and simply got "we are making progress"?

No schedule, no details of problems.

I can't think of many customers who'd be happy with that

18 hours ago, Terwin said:

The amount of information must necessarily be related to the amount of context that the recipient has.

I would tell my wife "I got [a lot|a little|less than I wanted] done today"

I would tell my boss "Paid Enhancements for the Alaska project"

I would tell the Alaska Project owner "finished up CISADOTEMS-90, and starting on CISADOTMMS-156, with some rework on AA-9896"

Those issue numbers would mean little to my boss, and nothing to my wife, but tell the project owner exactly what is going on.

To my eye, we are getting the 'Paid enhancements to Alaska' level of detail, because: 

1) we do not have access to the internal bug repository, making the more detailed report either useless or a major burden on the developers who would need to translate it into something a majority of users can understand 

2) the exact technical details are not really relevant unless they have something that is completed that they can tell us about,

3) it is more informative to the majority of forum readers than a highly detailed technical report that could only really be done by taking a developer off of working on the game for half a day or longer each week.

 

I think a highly detailed technical report would be great, but I also know that if I had to do one of those every week, it would slow me down quite a bit, and I would rather the developers make as much progress as they can, even if it means we get a higher level report.

Please bare in mind that we (the console players) don't get all the shiny screen shots for the upcoming making history expansion. We don't even know if it's going to be available to us.

All we get is a couple of dozen words randomly organized each week.

I think we would all be a little happier just to get a couple of examples of bugs they've encountered maybe even a few more details of the new control scheme since it sounds like we're going to have to relearn the game.

Throw us a bone here!

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3 hours ago, Broke dead dogg said:

Customers expect (and rightly so) more from a company that A)already has their money and B)has not yet delivered.

Imagine if one of your customers/client was looking for a progress report and simply got "we are making progress"?

As a customer, I've already paid my money and gotten my product.  Squad/TTI has no further obligation to provide me with anything, much less updates on what they're doing.

 

3 hours ago, Broke dead dogg said:

we (the console players)

Ah.  With that context, I can agree that you want more information.

You have a point on the lack of any screenshots (although, I'd hope that there's no difference between the versions, which would make screenshots rather uninformative) and the control scheme.  The bugs fixed, I can't say would be as meaningful.  Without knowing what their list of bugs to fix looks like, you can't really tell how much progress is being made, or if they're working on the big ones or just minor issues.

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Hmm - the LEM had both astronauts in restraints that put about 30lbs of force on their feet, as described here. These were locked during landing and docking, although they were adaptable to looking up and out the docking window before locking in a docking operation. Artificial gravity, just add springs!

lm-6-restraint-equipment-sm.jpg

That way they could essentially stick their noses to the windows, getting a very wide view for a very small expanse of (heavy and fragile) glass. The teeny windows and seated positions in the IVA on Imgur make the windows really really useless...

Oh, and from here is a fairly good view of the actual LEM interior assembled from a mosaic shot by Armstrong starring Aldrin during Apollo 11. Note the proportions - the windows are much larger, instruments much smaller, than the Kerbal version. Incidentally, I believe at least some of the stuff wadded up on the ceiling includes the sleeping hammocks:

AS11%20Aldrin%20NASA:Hancock.jpg?itok=_u

Edited by DancesWithSquirrels
Added photo of actual IVA
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One thing to always consider (regarding things like Kerbals standing up in the LEM, proportions, etc.).  Kerbals are not humans, so a lot of stuff either simply does not physically fit, or would look really weird if it did.  Also, we have to take into account things like playability, limits on geometry, the scale of Kerbals as well as the scale of the Kerbin system, and various design decisions when making parts.  Ultimately, it's best to consider the expansion parts as 'heavily inspired by' and 'recognizably reminiscent of' historic parts vs. the expectation of exact replicas, as that would be incompatible with the constraints above.

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