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Devnote Tuesday: Fairing well


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<figure>tumblr_inline_nkamrdAXSl1rr2wit.jpg</figure>Felipe (HarvesteR): This week has been mostly focused on the new fairings, the procedural mesh generation is already up and running, and you can already place them in the editor and sculpt the fairing as you wish. The enclosure is subdivided into panels, which can break off individually or in groups, which means we can have full control over how the fairing will come apart once it’s jettisoned. During construction, you can place a fairing and build it up immediately after placement, or you can use Tweakable actions to edit it later. There are actions to delete, re-build and edit fairings at any time in the editor.

Next up is implementing the actual jettisoning behavior for the panels, and also writing in the enclosure detection, which is already being handled by the cargo bay module. There is quite a bit of work still left to be done, but I dare say what we have is looking pretty good already. .

The fairings are very customizable via the part.cfg, so we can determine the number of panels, the amount (if any) of edge smoothing between panels of different angles, as well as a number of other parameters, on a per part basis. And yes, we are planning on a number of different sizes of fairing parts (at least covering 1.25m through 3.5m profiles).

Alex (aLeXmOrA): Had to download the whole project of the game to my computer again since we did some equipment changes at the office. Now that I have Unity again, I’ve been tracking some issues and I’m also going to be adding some things to the license system.

Mike (Mu): Well development has stalled a little this week as I have been as sick as a dog. In my more lucid moments I have been cracking on with the aerodynamic heating effects.

Marco (Samssonart): I kept working on the patcher some more, after a few local tests it seems to be working with a few minor problems, but I am a bit troubled by the fact that all of the mac computers I have access to have already installed Rsync, and due to it being used for other stuff I can’t uninstall it, so I asked Ted to squeeze it into QA, the guys haven’t had the time yet, busy with other stuff, but in case it doesn’t work I have already thought of a workaround, but anyway, I think it’s safe to say that you will be able to use the patcher to update to 1.0 when the time comes.

Other than that, I have started to implement those tutorials I have been discussing, right now I have reviewed everything, making changes here and there to reflect the newly implemented features that weren’t discussed in the tutorials, the only current tutorial that underwent a major overhaul is the flight one, now it’s all about getting to orbit. I will continue to work on tutorials for the rest of the week.

Daniel (danRosas):.Published last week the Valentina Kerman design. Read some really cool stuff on all the social networks. Glad that you like her that much, it was months of team effort to make it right. We’re working on a new animation. I’ve been playing with the animatic, the editing and the blocking, to make something that makes sense. We are still not sure what could be changed. It’s that moment where everything looks ugly, but needs to make sense in timing and camera work..

Jim (Romfarer): This week my Engineer’s Report branch went into QA testing. As expected they found bugs with many of the tests. They also reported some issues which were rooted deeper in the code base. For example: the preflight-checks had a bug which made it possible to launch uncontrollable vessels and a bug in the staging toolbar where the backup state (the state you load when you hit ctrl z) was not set correctly. So all in all it was a good week.

Max (Maxmaps): Marketing deals, promotional deals, collaborations and all sorts of meetings galore! Add to that meetings and quick talks with the devs to monitor their fantastic progress and it’s been a very, very busy week. I’ll be throwing an AMA announcement on our subreddit and forums later regarding an exciting new partnership. Other than that, absolutely thrilled with the response and love Valentina got from you guys. KSP continues to have the coolest community out there. Also this week’s Squadcast may contain some early looks at new IVAs!

Ted (Ted): Over the past week, I’ve been working with the QA Team to test out Jim’s Engineer App. Testing on it is going well despite me managing to catch the flu over the weekend. Additionally, a couple of the QA Testers have continued the progress with the aero tweaks they’ve been eagerly working on. Hopefully we should see some good things there soon!

Rogelio (Roger):.I’ve been modeling and texturing some props for the release animation, trying to keep as less shaders and uv maps as I can to have more control on the project and more important to make render testing less painful. I’ve found all the assets I needed to dress some of the scenes, and for now we’re re thinking the sequences edition to make a fluid storytelling. There are some props that aren’t modeled yet, but hopefully this week they should be done..

Kasper (KasperVld): I’ve been working from morning ‘till midnight most days of the last week, focussing on doing a few tasks that were still outstanding and a few that popped up. The most visible part of it will be that we have two new streamers for KSP-TV: NewbiusMaximus will show up Mondays 6PM-8PM EST to present his Adequate Space Adventures, and 1stGhostLive will be joining the channel as well, streaming on Monday mornings EST (exact timeslot still pending). Finally, I was very pleased to see the great response to the Valentina Kerman reveal last Friday, that was a fantastic end to our week..

Edited by KasperVld
timezone fix
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This week my Engineer’s Report branch went into QA testing. As expected they found bugs with many of the tests. They also reported some issues which were rooted deeper in the code base. For example: the preflight-checks had a bug which made it possible to launch uncontrollable vessels and a bug in the staging toolbar where the backup state (the state you load when you hit ctrl z) was not set correctly. So all in all it was a good week.

I like being able to launch uncontrollable vessels. Surely this isn't being completely removed?

I like everything else though-keep up the good work!

Edited by DuoDex
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"Fairing ill" perhaps - two people in the office have or have had flu, it's pretty likely everyone else will sooner or later. Unless some of you got vaccinated.

As for the fairings, sounds good. Reading between the lines it seems like the user experience will be simple, but there's a lot of under-the-hood power for modders to provide more complicated fairings with.

And good to see more KSPTV streamers!

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Much less detailed than usual, but expected. Why not just have one fairing base that is tweakable? It would be nice to see IVA's. Valentina is good currently, I do hope she gets some revisions though, like eyebrows and hairstyle. Hope you get well soon Mu/Mike!

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"Fairing ill" perhaps - two people in the office have or have had flu, it's pretty likely everyone else will sooner or later. Unless some of you got vaccinated.

As for the fairings, sounds good. Reading between the lines it seems like the user experience will be simple, but there's a lot of under-the-hood power for modders to provide more complicated fairings with.

And good to see more KSPTV streamers!

That would be the case if all of Squad worked in the office, but don't most of them work remotely? I was under the impression that many, or even a majority, of the devs aren't even in Mexico.

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That would be the case if all of Squad worked in the office, but don't most of them work remotely? I was under the impression that many, or even a majority, of the devs aren't even in Mexico.

Mu works from home in the UK, because the commute is horrible :)

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Mu works from home in the UK, because the commute is horrible :)

Naturally, you presumably drive in from the Netherlands, though.

Actually, how *does* Squad coordinate with so many remote workers? Do you guys have, like, daily meetings at such-and-such a time, or is it basically "work on your stuff and chat with other staff as you feel like you need to"?

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Naturally, you presumably drive in from the Netherlands, though.

Actually, how *does* Squad coordinate with so many remote workers? Do you guys have, like, daily meetings at such-and-such a time, or is it basically "work on your stuff and chat with other staff as you feel like you need to"?

It's a mix of both. There are scheduled meetings in which we exchange a lot of information, and often we just poke eachother when we want to know something quickly :)

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Marco (Samssonart): I kept working on the patcher some more, after a few local tests it seems to be working with a few minor problems, but I am a bit troubled by the fact that all of the mac computers I have access to have already installed Rsync, and due to it being used for other stuff I can’t uninstall it, so I asked Ted to squeeze it into QA, the guys haven’t had the time yet, busy with other stuff, but in case it doesn’t work I have already thought of a workaround, but anyway, I think it’s safe to say that you will be able to use the patcher to update to 1.0 when the time comes.

It's about time.

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Nice! Thanks for the news. A bit disappointed by the proc fairings, though...

I'm not quite sure what you're disappointed by, they've started working on them, and we haven't seen them in any capacity whatsoever?

Are you disappointed they're procedural at all?

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Could enterprising modders access the procedural mesh generation system to make... other things?

I see no reason why it shouldn't be possible. Just bear in mind the proc mesh code was written with fairings in mind, so it might not be ideally suited for unforeseen usages... But then again, making a system that is ideally suited for unforeseen uses would render those uses foreseen, or require time travel. (Do let me know if you have a working implementation of the latter).

As for the fairings, sounds good. Reading between the lines it seems like the user experience will be simple, but there's a lot of under-the-hood power for modders to provide more complicated fairings with.

Indeed, the usability is something we want to keep as simple as possible, but the proc mesh system is made to work as independently of the module workflow as possible.. And vice-versa as well. There should be (hopefully) minimal coupling between the two systems. The functional bit (the actual enclosing of the volume) is handled by yet another system, so coupling should also be minimal for the functionality of these procedural parts and their procedural-ness.

Excited about fairings! Will we be able to do interstages with the new procedural fairings? Or will I have to keep doing this with wings?

Interstage fairings are something we've discussed here to quite an extent. The current system doesn't support them completely at the moment, but it doesn't preclude them either. They're just not accounted for yet, and we're probably going to have to do some playtesting to figure out how (and if) the fairings would work in between two chunks of spacecraft. We might be able to adapt the current module to do both, or we might require a separate module to handle those cases. The short answer is, we're not quite there yet. :)

Cheers

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We have it in stock, have you been waiting hours on your Mun missions this whole time? Did someone else implement timewarp? :P

That's half the work done, now we just need a way to travel back in time and implement the features before they're requested.

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That would be the case if all of Squad worked in the office, but don't most of them work remotely? I was under the impression that many, or even a majority, of the devs aren't even in Mexico.

Nope. Only four devs are in Europe, the rest of us (six devs, one producer and two exec-producers) are in Mexico :)

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I'm not quite sure what you're disappointed by, they've started working on them, and we haven't seen them in any capacity whatsoever?

Are you disappointed they're procedural at all?

I don't like them that much... They're fine for a game with a bunch of other proc parts, but they don't really fit very well in KSP. It seems like a cheat... And will be abused as one.

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