WildBill

Version 1.6.1 has been remarkable stable for me. As good as 1.3.1 so far...

The new feature are really looking nice, and I do look forward to seeing them. But I'm really worried. The bugs in this game are building to a point that it's almost unplayable, at least for me. Game stutter (frozen for 3 - 5 seconds every 20 - 30 seconds), memory leakage, progressive refresh degradation, LT-2 landing leg bugs, Large Landing gear bugs. The 1.5.1 defect list is long and getting difficult to work around. Please take an extra month or so and get the core game working better! Pretty Please!!

I disagree with the term 'Polished'. Adding improved artwork is really great. Love it. But I cannot call this game 'polished' with the number of bugs and severe memory leakage I encounter at every turn. My latest example: launch an SSTO to orbit. Takes a while, thanks to the stutter caused by poor garbage collection. Perfmon shows pretty steady memory leakage the whole time too. But I eventually make it and everything looks great. Now 'Switch to' another orbiting ship, and immediately 'Switch to' back. Both of my 'Medium Landing Gear' are now rotated all out of whack. Every 'Switch to' rotates them to a new random position. Makes landing impossible! I managed to manually edit the 'persistent.sfs' game file to fix the orientation, but I suspect only a handful of gamers would be able to do that. That should never be needed with a 'polished' game. My opinion of KSP is that it's at the far opposite end of the 'polished' spectrum right now...

Keep those bug fixes coming! Thanks Squad!!

Keep those patches coming! They are much appreciated and the game is really starting to shape up nicely now! Thanks. (And First!)

Woohoo!! I've been waiting for this to update from 1.3.1 and get the DLC! Thanks Squad!

Very cool! Can't wait for the 1.4.2. bug-fix release! (and First!!)

I can see both sides of this debate. Like HarvestR once said, too much information could make the game too easy. But, as I found out the hard way, the more complex and advanced stuff is too frustrating without basic information to be fun. At least for me. So it depends on how you're playing: as a game vs a realistic simulator. It depends on your own view, perspective, and goals. In the real world, you would simulate the crap out of a spacecraft before first launch: for those folks information is essential. (this is me, by the way) As a challenging game: too much information makes it too easy. (this is me too) Trying to appease both sides is a challenge! Maybe some kind of Career-based gradual roll-out of information so the early game is fun and the later game is still fun? Add the ability to override as you wish and everyone wins.

I'm curious why you don't install KER? It's the first thing I add after a new release. My research so far indicates KER works with 1.4, although I'm still gonna waiting for 1.4.2 because bugs, well, bug me and it sounds like 1.4.1 still has its fair share of em...

Cool! Keep up the good work. (and First!)

Best of luck Nightingale!

Second Nice dev notes guys. Sounds like solid progress. Keep up the good work!

You are very welcome. Always happy to help...

I would be honored!! (uh, I need to sit down and stop hyper-ventilating, KasperVld liked my post! I'm not worthy...)

I would love to help Squad, but just don't have the time to do it properly. As a seasoned software dev (20+ years hardcore software development), I know exactly what this will take. Running buggy pre-release software is not fun, it's tedious and takes time and effort. Daily downloads to make sure you're on the latest version. Planning how you want to exercise the game for maximum coverage. Carefully note the problems you encounter, and repeat to make sure you have the repro down. Remember, this should help the Developers: be precise, include screen shots, dig into the logs for specific error messages, run PerfMon to monitor memory usage, use the Debug menu, collect crash dumps, know the directory structure in general, and the layout of the sfs files in particular. It's work, not play. If none of that rings a bell, you might want to pass this by. If only I had more time available...

Thank you so much for this update! Now my SSTOs (w/ Rapiers) have working readouts again! Happy! Happy!!

How about Kerbonauts named Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, or something along those lines? That would be kind of cool....

I am appalled by all the whining about the Editor. Seems fine To me... It's just different. (ah! too much whitespace!! my eyeball just exploded!! Now I'm a 1-eyed minion, nooooo!)

Not to be too picky, but to be a Single-Stage-To-Orbit (SSTO), don't you need a single stage?

My recent discoveries (apologies if this is old news): 1. When setting up maneuver nodes, you can click on your target (say Jool), and select Focus View. Now you can zoom in and see the details of exactly how you're going to approach your target. And when you actually execute the maneuver, I do the same thing. Except this time you can make tiny little burns (with RCS) to fine-tune your approach way before you even get close. Saves lots of fuel! 2. Talking about Maneuver Nodes, gang a couple of them together. Especially with Eve, my initial de-orbit burn from Kerbin never intersects due to the different inclinations. So plop a 2nd Maneuver node at the future A/D Node and add a correction burn. Now you can go back to the 1st Maneuver Node and fine tune your burn for an optimal intersection. 3. I love the new course tracking options to the left of the NavBall, especially RetroGrade for landing. Once I get my lander pointed tail-down, I click on RetroGrade. Now the lander will automatically point straight up and Retro burns add very little horizontal drift. No more landing with too much lateral drift and flipping over. 4. When docking, once you get close, use [ and ] to switch between your target and you. If your target isn't enormous or fragile, move it around a bit to make your approach easier/straighter. I never use MechJeb, just KER for it's wealth of information, and the built-in SAS. I just like flying everything myself...

I'm an avid player of the game, since before .23. Totally addicted to KSP. Love it. As an experienced software developer, I feel your pain on the merge. Well done with the rebase! [I]"With 1.0.5 released and stable..."[/I] my friend, I'm afraid we have different definitions of 'stable' - I fired up PerfMon, pointed it at KSP.EXE and measured Private Bytes - took about 20 minutes in VAB to go from 2.5Gb to 4Gb, then it crashed with an Out-Of-Memory exception. Only 2 Mods: KER and Chatterer. Happened 3 times in a row. Now, the ship was huge! Still, that’s not stable in my book. 64-bit will help with more memory headroom, but if the game continues to leak memory like this, crashes are inevitable. With that as background, I’m hoping you concentrate on getting the 1.1 update stable (really stable) and out the door, then add features later. New features are wonderful (1 step ahead), but frequent crashes are really bad (5 steps back). Nothing is worse for a game's rep that to be labeled as 'buggy' and [imho] KSP is getting too close for comfort...

I've had that broken-undock problem too. Several times. I've been able to track the problem to a missing DOCKEDVESSEL section under the Docking Port's ModuleDockingNode Module in persistent.sfs. This only happens with KMP, not the latest KSP. With KSP, you could edit your persistent.sfs/quicksave.sfs file to put the missing DOCKEDVESSEL sections back. Or realign the ports. But with KMP, persistent.sfs is copied from the server and there is no quicksave support. So there's no way to fix it. For me, it makes the game largely unplayable, since I like to assemble large structures in orbit and then actually use them. My suspicion is that the KMP server code is stripping the DOCKEDVESSEL sections or not merging them properly. At least that appears to be what's happening...