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Nate Simpson

KSP Team
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  • About me
    Creative Director KSP 2
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    Seattle, WA
  • Interests
    Kerbal, comics, cycling, and sci-fi.

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  1. Tomorrow marks one whole year since the Early Access launch of KSP2. How is it that a year can fly past in a heartbeat while also containing so much stuff? In that time, our team has released a total of 11 updates and knocked out more than 2441 bugs. We’ve brought new physics systems online (re-entry heating, more rigid rockets) and we’ve added new features (Exploration Mode, Science collection, and Missions). As good as it’s felt to work through our feature list, the most satisfying part of the release process has always been the "day-after basking," where we take in all the unexpected ways the community is taking advantage of new gameplay possibilities. This has only gotten more exciting since the arrival of the Science and Mission features - not only are your vehicles getting more ambitious, but the missions themselves are starting to get pretty elaborate. The ways you’re getting the U-Dunkit module into alien seas are emblematic - it’s quite an awkward part, and the vehicles that it’s attached to tend to be delightfully weird! Shadowzone does a Laythe dunk (full disclosure, he discovered a bug on this journey, but I think he still had fun) Shadowzone is dunk-drunk, and now seeks out puddles across the Kerbolar System! Audaylon with a rare double-dunker with fore and aft Dunk-its! @GalaxDragon aka Yuri has managed to get their U-Dunkit nowhere near any liquid at all @SciVirus has used the part in an unexpected but delightful way We’re looking forward to the new possibilities that will be opening up to players in the coming year, especially with the arrival of colonies! We’re making good progress in that area right now - why, here’s a stately little orbital test colony over Duna (it looks extremely cool with all the modules rotating): Thanks for continuing to share your creations with us, and thanks for helping us to make KSP2 even better in 2024! Nate
  2. To clarify for our QA - this post relates to our fairings not becoming translucent on mouseover. 연평균기온, we are tracking this issue and it's on our list of desired UX improvements for vehicle creation! Thank you for submitting this feedback.
  3. I just wanted to check in on this thread to tell you all that we're following this conversation and are prioritizing a number of UI improvements related to legibility and ease of use. Areas that we're looking at right now: font legibility and scalability maneuver node usability, in particular the difficulty of selecting and dragging the gizmo itself trajectory tag iconography and differentiation trajectory tag stem organization (eg. the "stem salad" that you sometimes get when a bunch of tags are near one another) SOI transit "bullseye" indicators are too aggressive map icon scale issues and related difficulty of selecting a CB when you've got something in orbit around it difficulty of rearranging staging stack order when selecting the bottom- or top-most stage general part manager usability - in particular the tracking of fuel levels on a per-part basis, but also a bunch of general legibility/organization issues This is by no means an exhaustive list - we've got quite a pile we're working through. But we are in strong agreement about the opportunity for improvement in this area. Thanks as always for sharing your feedback!
  4. I'm sorry to hear that! If something similar happens in the future, that corrupted save file would be extremely valuable in our effort to track down the problem. If anybody else has had this experience, please forward us your save file via the bug reports subforum.
  5. We had a lot riding on the For Science! update that we released two weeks ago — it’s been a long first year of Early Access, filled with the arduous and mostly unglamorous pursuit of bugs, stability improvements, and performance gains. This update, the first of our major Roadmap Updates, had to achieve some big new goals for KSP2: it had to round out the core game loop with re-entry heating and buoyancy; it had to introduce a whole new progression system via the R&D Center and Mission Control; it had to introduce Science collection, Science parts, and dozens of new points of interest; and of course it needed to continue to deliver quality of life improvements (banishing wobbly rockets) and performance improvements. Also: there are boat docks now! In a nutshell, the addition of Exploration Mode transformed KSP2 from a sandbox experience into a proper long-form game. Working on something with so many moving parts, there’s always a little trepidation when we release a new build to the public - especially when there are so many new systems in play. We do our best to test every possible scenario, but there’s always a chance that something terrifying will rear its head once we’ve got thousands of people playing the game. It was with this fear lurking in the backs of our heads that we sat together in our own mission control room and waited for confirmation that For Science! had been released into the world. We nervously watched the first review videos appear on YouTube, and were relieved to discover that veteran players like Carnasa and Matt Lowne were excited about what they found in the new update. We cycled between the livestreams of Everyday Astronaut, EJ_SA, and Giantwaffle, discovering to our delight that all three were not only having fun, but were having trouble putting the game down! By the time we did our own livestream that evening, it was clear that we’d succeeded in creating a more stable and realistic universe, and that we’d given players some compelling goals to pursue within that universe. Our stream ran over an hour longer than planned because we, too, had a bit of trouble putting it down. That’s a story we’re hearing a lot - you sit down to play this game for an hour, and before you know it the sun’s coming up. Over the last couple of weeks, a clear picture has emerged - there are still some bugs, as well as some big opportunities to improve the player experience - but for the most part, those rough edges have not gotten in the way of some very ambitious exploratory missions. I’ll talk more about those bugs in a bit, but first I’d like to highlight some of this update’s biggest wins: The music. Yes, you all love Howard Mostrom. We’re going to need a bigger inbox for all his fan mail. The tutorials and first-time user experience have paved the way for a new group of first-time Kerbal players, and we’re not only seeing lots of you get to space, we’re also seeing a lot more players doing interplanetary missions. In many ways, the original justification for KSP2’s existence was to find a way to welcome more new players to Kerbal, and we’re very excited to see that this work has begun to bear fruit. We knew that bringing rocket science to the masses wasn’t going to be easy, and there’s still a lot more work to do in this area... but we’re making progress! Folks are enjoying the missions! We’re excited to continue adding new missions to the game via upcoming updates, and we’d love to hear your suggestions for compelling new exploration goals. In general, we’re beginning to see the flourishing of player creativity that we knew would take place once the most critical performance and usability issues had been ironed out. It’s been a pleasure to visit r/kerbalspaceprogram and our #bestof Discord channel and just bask in the awesomeness. People are making magnificent things, and it feels so nice to see all that imagination unleashed. Look at this stuff! Courtesy of Aravir Courtesy of Flypig07UA Courtesy of Dr. Seno Courtesy of BioticKeen Of course, one key benefit to our game being in Early Access is that we get detailed bug reports and feedback from a wide variety of players, and boy, did we get a big helping after releasing this update. Check out the spike we saw on our K.E.R.B. bug submissions at the end of December: There are some annoying bugs and usability issues in the mix - some are new, some have been around for a while but have risen in prominence now that other more consequential problems have been addressed. Areas of frustration include font scale and legibility, the maneuver node interface, thermal system tuning (including the propensity of some parts to explode even when they’re shielded and the insufficiency of fairings to protect their contents), as well as a few weird one-off stability issues (most of which can be corrected by reloading or restarting). We are triaging and trying to reproduce issues related to things like parachutes failing to deploy, trajectories vanishing from the map view, and Delta-V accuracy (which given the dependency of maneuver plans on accurate Delta-V projection, can result in being blocked from planning a maneuver). We’ve also noted some user experience gaps, most notably the game’s failure to properly communicate to new players that "Revert to VAB" is different from "Return to VAB" - an oversight that has led some newcomers to lose their progress after completing a mission. I’ll also take this moment to offer a new protip that I learned today after complaining to Chris Adderley about my spaceplane wings being destroyed on re-entry: while the heavier wings are more heat-resistant, the volume of every wing (and especially the wing’s thickness) affects its thermal mass. A thicker wing will be more resistant to destruction via heat! I’ll be trying out the "fat wings" approach tonight after work. Procedural wings sure are cool. Anyway, back to bugs. If you’re one of the people who have come up against a truly blocking or fun-destroying issue, please do take the time to share that information with us via the bug report subforum. We’re seeing much less of this after the For Science! update, but it’s still something we want to investigate aggressively when it’s encountered. We’re already hard at work on the v0.2.1.0 incremental update to address as many of these issues as we can, and we’ll update you here as soon as we know the exact timing and contents of that update. In the meantime, thank you for continuing to share your bug reports and feedback - your detailed reporting continues to play a huge role in helping us to improve the game. Another exciting new development: modders have started to produce some extremely cool augmentations for KSP2, including Orbital Survey, an alarm clock mod, and there’s even some planet modding underway! Our team is especially happy to see that the extensible tech tree file format created with future moddability in mind has paved the way for things like the new Tech Tree Manager mod. The Orbital Survey mod The 2.5x Kerbolar System mod The next major Roadmap Update, which will bring colonies to the game, is now also in progress. In the meantime, the current plan is to sneak a few additional missions into the next incremental update, just to keep things fresh. Now that there are interesting things to do in the game, we’re very excited about all the ways that we can continue adding new layers to that experience in the coming year while knocking out the bugs that remain. 2024 is going to be a very exciting year for KSP2, both for the players and for us developers! Nate
  6. I just wanted to say on behalf of the team that we love seeing how much fun you all are having with For Science! We'll keep chasing down bugs while we build toward the colonies update, but we're super energized by all the enthusiasm we're seeing for the game. It feels like the wind is finally at our backs, and we have you all to thank for it. Cheers!
  7. For us early fans of the original Kerbal Space Program, there were so many things to enjoy during those first sandbox days. Whether it was the slapstick fun of stringing together small fuel tanks (there was only one size) into impossibly huge rockets, or the eternal search for unlikely uses for the game's only “robotic” part (the landing leg), KSP was a good time from the very beginning. Ah, the good old days (courtesy of TD Channel) If HarvesteR and Squad had stopped there, Kerbal would likely still be remembered as a beloved curiosity. But then they added Science Mode. Suddenly, the game had goals: anywhere you went in the Kerbolar System, you could gather a Science currency that could be spent at the R&D Center to research new technologies. Over time, an expanding roster of new parts were added to the game, and lo and behold, KSP became undeniable. With the siren song of new celestial bodies calling out to me, my own campaign saves turned into epic sagas. I became attached to the individual Kerbals who crewed my first, stumbling Mun missions. Stranded survivors of landings gone awry could not be left behind. That first Mun landing was a moment to remember, but the first Mun rescue was even better! As that narrative emerged — and as I invested my crews with personalities and dreams — the game began to invade other parts of my life. I have a strong recollection of designing a Laythe rescue rocket in the margins of my meeting notes at work. It not only had to land upright in Laythe’s ocean, but had to deploy a boat to collect the survivors of a previous mission who had contrived to get stranded several kilometers apart from one another. And then the whole thing had to take off from the water again to rendezvous in orbit with a Kerbin return vehicle. The missions became puzzles that I couldn't put down. To feed my growing hunger for design ideas, I first turned to the /r/KSP subreddit, where others (some of whom clearly knew a thing or two about space travel) were achieving impossible things with their own space programs. Many of these creators drew inspiration from planned space missions, some of which were more speculative than others. Thus was I introduced to the strange and beautiful universe of “what happens when the Kerbal spirit is applied to the material world.” Could you propel a ship with nuclear bombs? Yes, and we almost did! Could you build a plane that takes off from a runway, then switches from air-breathing mode to oxidizer mode to fly to orbit? You sure can try! My Kerbal experience became a way to investigate many of these real-world mission architectures, and as a greater number of mods became available, virtually all things became possible. The real-world mission proposals all had awesome names that hinted at their audacity: Orion. Nautilus-X. Constellation. Sometimes it felt like I could wish them into being by building them in KSP. Not all of these dreams were as far off as they seemed — as SpaceX achieved the impossible goal of landing first stages propulsively, we all played along at home. This video game had introduced me to a new and beautiful reality. When I knocked together my first goofy rocket, I didn't even really know what an orbit was. HarvesteR didn't just give me a game, he gave me an endless undertaking, the pursuit of which would lead me to Atomic Rockets, the NASA Spaceflight forum, and the videos of Scott Manley. Tomorrow, Kerbal Space Program 2 is crossing that same threshold from “fun toy” to “trying to figure out in the shower how to make a rover when you haven't unlocked wheels yet at the R&D Center.” With the release of the For Science! update, the game receives several new features and numerous high-consequence bug fixes. I've been playing a single Exploration Mode campaign for a couple of months now, and I'm suddenly realizing that thousands of deeply-invested sagas are about to get underway. Just unlocked some probe cores, it's time to fly to Duna! My son was born a year after the original KSP’s debut. Now we're playing KSP2 together, and our own Exploration Mode campaign has just entered tier 3 on the tech tree. We've Gotten Weird With It, somehow managing to unlock the nuclear NERV engines before having rover wheels, extendible ladders, or any but the smallest batteries. We've returned samples to Kerbin from Duna's North pole and the deep craters of Gilly. We've disintegrated more than one probe in the thick atmosphere of Eve, and we're assembling a very big nuclear rocket in low Kerbin orbit, with the goal of exploring all the moons of Jool in one go. We’ve got a lot of empty docking ports on that main truss. Probes? Landers? Packing for Jool is always hectic It's so fun. It's really, really fun. How is it different from KSP? Lots of ways, big and small. Science collection is a much smoother process that involves a lot less guesswork, and the new Science parts are pleasingly diverse, asking you to think hard about how to take advantage of their unique properties. To give one example, the long collection time of the ASCM-A "Air Sniffer" atmospheric science module requires you to develop a loiter capability. You’re either going to have to make a plane, or you’re going to need to get creative with your lander design! We haven't unlocked the big engines yet, but that won't stop us from testing some spaceplane ideas! The new terrain system really comes into its own here, as well. There’s no way to predict what you'll encounter when landing at a new location, and I often find myself sightseeing when I'm supposed to be doing serious science stuff. Adding to that feeling of mystery are the new Discoverables — one-of-a-kind points of interest, a couple dozen of which have been scattered throughout the Kerbolar System. My son and I have run across one of them so far (won't tell you where), and it was every bit as exciting a discovery as I'd hoped! Tim C. Kerman clearly thinks he's discovered a delicious baked potato This update’s inclusion of re-entry heating and more rigid joints are of course hugely important to the overall experience, as are the recent corrections of a number of stability and performance issues. Buoyancy has also seen a major upgrade, and it’s now possible to build working seaplanes (and launch them from our brand-new boat docks)! The game is still in Early Access, which means there are still plenty of improvements to come (as well as plenty of opportunities to help us out by submitting your feedback and bug reports), but the simple fact is that the game is now very hard to put down. My first glorious seaplane flight in KSP2 (inspired by this amazing real plane) Go check out our announcement post for a breakdown of everything that’s arrives tomorrow at 10 A.M. Pacific Time in the For Science! update We've got an all-new Mission system that offers you interesting new goals to pursue in your quest for Science, and there's a completely revamped R&D Center with four tiers of unlockable technologies. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing how deep into the Kerbolar System people can get with only the first research node unlocked. I suspect it's shockingly far. Could Eeloo be in play? Could somebody possibly manage an Eve landing and return? Only time will tell! Eve: beguiling yet deadly! The For Science! update is the first of a series of major Roadmap Updates. The next one brings colonies to the game, and future installments will add new star systems and new technologies to enable you to fly between them. We’ll also continue to listen to player feedback to get a sense of which changes are working well and which ones need further development. The fun is just beginning! 2023 has been a year of challenges for KSP2, and we appreciate the huge role our community has played in helping us to identify and pursue areas of improvement. I also want to give a big shout-out to our Pioneers, whose dedication and eagerness to dig deep into early builds uncovered a lot of previously-invisible issues. I hope that as we pass this new milestone, you can feel how much passion and hard work the team at Intercept has poured into this game. We are proud of how far KSP2 has come, and we are equally grateful for the dedication and patience our players have shown over the past year. We certainly have come a long way in the last ten months. From all of us at Intercept to all of you in the KSP community: thank you for your support. We’re excited to finally get the Exploration Era underway with all of you. Don’t forget to check your staging, and I’ll see you on Laythe! Nate
  8. David's instinct to measure twice and cut once is one of the traits that makes him an extremely effective engineer. It was clearly honed over his years of dealing with similar challenges in KSP1. I'm always impressed by his calm and analytical approach - he never jumps to a prescription before we understand every dimension of the problem we're trying to solve. Trust me when I say that my own eagerness to solve a problem in the "obvious" way is almost always proven misplaced once we've done a deep dive on the causes of an issue. David is a treasure and we all love working with him.
  9. This is a great question. We're aware that the people who have chosen to play the game in Early Access have done so because they want to have fun (while participating in the evolution of the game). There continue to be some bugs that are active obstacles to fun - these are distinct from bugs related to polish, presentation, or ease of use. Fun-killing bugs have to go to the top of the pile. Thankfully, the process of settling on a joint rigidity solution isn't made all that much more difficult by running through the potential remedies and recognizing that one of the lower-cost choices could make the game more fun for people while the extensible, interstellar-friendly version is under construction.
  10. In case people are wondering why I listed "wobbly rockets" as our current top bug and not "orbital decay," it's because a hotfix just went out (38 minutes ago) that not only fixes the recently-detected registry bug, but also addresses the orbital decay issue. It's a huge relief, both as a developer and a player, to have this finally squared away:
  11. I have a very strong idea when the short-term fix is likely to materialize, but the complexity of this game has a way of turning "low-risk" predictions into misstatements. To my eyes, it feels very close. But there are always questions that can only be answered by testing (which for a game like this can take time). Does it work in all situations? Does it introduce new bugs? Does it break a seemingly unrelated system in a hard-to-detect way? I'm reminded of how the joint reinforcement technique we introduced for a narrow subset of parts created an initially subtle but ultimately game-breaking fuel flow bug that flew under the radar for weeks. What I can say, without fear of misrepresenting things, is that it's a priority task for our most senior developers, and it is internally our most-wanted fix right now. We released this video to underscore that it's a priority for us and that we're approaching the problem with the nuance and openness that it deserves. Our goal here, given requests we've seen here for greater transparency, was to provide more visibility into the way we navigate the sometimes complicated terrain of requirements presented by this game.
  12. I hope you enjoyed this chat! Since this conversation took place, David has been developing a tool that allows our team to compare multiple wobbly rocket remedies, including selective wobbliness for certain part categories, KSP1-style autostrut for the entire vehicle, and various flavors of packed vehicle physics. We are testing these now, with the goal of achieving a near-term improvement in vehicle rigidity while developing a more ambitious long-term fix that's performant at all scales. We'll post more information when we've arrived at a balanced solution. We know you've waited a long time for a solution to this issue, and we're excited to be closing in on a resolution.
  13. I think you may be referring to the same phenomenon listed in the original post as "SAS causes runaway pitch oscillation for aircraft in flight." SAS does not currently like to provide incremental control surface commands - it's very all or nothing right now, which leads to the up-down seesawing. It's bad enough that I don't really even attempt SAS when I'm flying aircraft these days. It's a high-priority issue for us.
  14. Good afternoon, intrepid Kerbonauts! Lots of stuff to talk about today! As many of you know, a couple of new bugs were introduced with last week’s v0.1.3.0 patch. The most significant of these bugs relates to a loss of atmospheric drag (and physics in general) when capsules are decoupled. For the first time ever, we issued a hotfix to correct that issue yesterday morning. Yesterday’s v0.1.3.1 hotfix also contained a fix for a VAB bug in which fairing editor UI elements were drawing on top of one another. We discovered after yesterday’s hotfix that people were unable to launch the game outside of the Private Division launcher. This was not intentional, and has been fixed — due to a configuration error on our end, we accidentally included Steam’s built-in DRM. KSP2 is DRM-free, just like KSP1. The fixed update was pushed to Steam this morning. Sorry for the headache! We’re testing a second hotfix (timing TBD) that corrects the blurry navball issue. And because we’re sneaky little devils, we’re also doing some testing around a fix for the SOI transition trajectory bug. If these fixes prove stable and low-risk, we’ll release a second hotfix. Fingers crossed! The work that’s gone into the SOI transition issue — number 2 on our top-ten most wanted bugs list — deserves a special mention. Engineers David Tregoning, Mark Jones, and Shalma Wegsman put in colossal efforts to both track down the cause of the issue and to craft a solution. This one has been a long time coming, and it’s great to be able to knock such a big item off the list. The credit for the fast turnaround on all the latest fixes goes to a well-coordinated joint effort between engineers, production, and QA. We’re still learning as we go, but things are feeling good. Bugs: The Next Generation Based on the Bug Reports subforum, these are the community’s 10 most-upvoted bugs: Orbital Decay [25 votes] Incorrect Maneuver on Inclination Change [10 votes] Cannot Change Craft/Vessel Name in Tracking Station [9 votes] AIRBRAKES Deploying on Roll [9 votes] Camera Resets Position Map View [8 votes] Graphic Glitches on AMD [8 votes] Engine Sound Effects Not Playing [7 votes] Cannot Change Symmetry While Holding Strut [7 votes] Center of Mass/Thrust/Pressure Vectors sitting on VAB Floor [6 votes] UI Artifacting [6 votes] Note: Navball Blurry [18 votes] and SOI Trajectory Line Issues [18 votes] have been left out of the above list since we're considering them for the second hotfix. Thank you to everyone who took the time to submit bugs in the subforum. Even if you don’t have a new issue to report, your upvotes help us determine the relative priority of the bugs that have already been posted. While we investigate the bugs above, two other non-feature items also feature in our top ten: Rockets are still too wobbly SAS causes runaway pitch oscillation for aircraft in flight Lots to do! Thanks again for submitting such detailed and well-documented bug reports. It’s going to be a busy month! Art Director Kristina Ness AMA Did you catch our Art Director’s AMA yesterday? She was asked lots of interesting questions, many of which ranged well beyond the domain of art. She gave fantastic and detailed answers, and if you missed the stream, it’s definitely worth watching here. With the help of streaming-wizard Dakota, she even got to show off some visuals as well! You can find a transcript of the AMA here as well. Thanks, Ness! KSP2 Steam Sale This is the second week of Private Division’s 20% off sale for KSP2, which ends on July 13th. If you’ve got any friends who you think might enjoy the last little bit of heat-free reentry during Early Access, now’s a great time to tell them about the sale! Weekly Challenge Last week’s Jool 5 challenge produced some of the coolest, most ambitious craft designs we’ve seen in KSP2. Check out this absolute unit from DarlesChickens: Or this beauty from Razorback: And here’s a unique one from Tr1gonometry: We know that in the Wobbly Rocket Era, missions of this kind can be extra challenging. Kudos to everybody who braved the bugs and slipped the surly bonds of Kerbin regardless! This week’s challenge? You’re putting on an air show! Build a maneuverable stunt plane and show off your fancy flying skills. Buzz the tower! Under the bridge! Do some barrel rolls! To get specific: Primary goal: Fly an inside loop, an Immelmann turn, and a split-s turn Secondary goal: Fly an outside loop, a barrel roll, and a hammerhead stall turn Jeb-level goal: Fly under the R&D Bridge as fast as you can Val-level goal: Fly under the parking garage bridges (from the water), under the R&D bridge, and then back through the parking bridges Tim C-level goal: Fly a loop arouund the R&D bridge so that you pass under it twice in one maneuver Don’t forget to wear your G-suit — you’re about generate some wing loads that’ll make your crew chief very grumpy! While your screenshots are always welcome, video capture will be the best way to show off your maneuvering prowess. Good luck! Summer Changes Now that summer’s here, with all its vacation-related comings and goings, I’ll be letting other parts of our team handle forum posting for a while. In the coming month, you’ll still see the following on the forums: Bug report updates More AMAs Challenges In addition, we’ll be uploading more gameplay clips to our social channels. I’ll still be lurking both here and on Discord, so you’ll see me in the comments from time to time. We’ve got a lot of good momentum coming off the last update and we’re already making great headway on the next one. I’m looking forward to sharing our progress with you soon.
  15. We believe this issue is fixed in the v0.1.3.0 release build. Please let us know if any of you are still experiencing this problem. Thanks! Edit: Sounds like maybe this was premature. Still gathering data.
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