Devnote Tuesday: is it March already?

[TMS]

Great notes and promising features.

This caught my attention:

and Arsonide’s ideas for the contract system and its growth just make me think that if that dude ever makes a game, I’ll be first in line to buy it.

One of the things that bugs me about the game is that there is zero narrative. No driving storyline. It's effectively sandbox with "fetch-quest" spam. Will the game have a narrative added prior to 1.0 release?

[sjwt]

Why not just do what spell checkers do? Allow me to say "stop ever reporting that this is a problem" or "stop telling me this is a problem for this particular ship."

I would say be the time you want to be doing that, you are not using the engineering report =>

[Superfluous J]

I would say be the time you want to be doing that, you are not using the engineering report =>

I've been playing this game for over 2 years. I've landed on every planet and moon that you're supposed to, and gotten low science from Sun and atmospheric from Jool.

And even now I forget solar panels, parachutes, to remove my RCS and to check my staging.

[worir4]

That performance debug monitor sounds cool.

[basic.syntax]

Will the game have a narrative added prior to 1.0 release?

I would like to see a story driven campaign, but its not in any plans I've read. The semi-sequential tutorials (improvements coming for 1.0) offer the closest thing KSP has to a story, because each task is introduced by space center characters.

Maybe a storyline will come at some point later, when Squad have time to catch a breath from other feature work, and certainly it is a gap modders can fill. The contract system answers a problem with story campaigns: once they are over, that's it. Scripting limits some of the replay value. The contracts don't say too much about how you should do a particular thing, and are therefore pretty open ended. KSP as it is now, is more a series of puzzles and challenges; the player decides when they are done, not a scripted story campaign. It looks like some contract tweaks are in the works, and it is very welcome .

[ShadowZone]

That last bit means that interstage fairings are now fully supported.

Yay!

Rather than temperature being a driving factor, the system is based on energy transfer and the thermal mass of parts. A full fuel tank will have a much higher thermal mass than an empty one and, of course, different fuels have different specific heat capacities. Energy is also transferred to/from the environment via both conduction and radiation.

Okay, this sounds really cool! Can't wait so experiment with this.

In some down time, I’ve also put some time into a small optimization pass. I’ve fixed some big memory leaks with the scatter system and the part action menus. Managed to push some more performance from a variety of core systems. I also added a simple performance monitor into the debug menu.

Finally some performance updates! Please do more of those

[sarbian]

Squad hasn't ever not been 'pretty set' to do as it sees fit. To quote regex - "dude, it's squad."

Whilst input is sometimes sought, it's still their baby to grow as they see fit. Unity 5 has been delayed more often than the second coming of cthulhu; that and I cannot even begin to fathom why people are so dead-set that the 1.0 version should run on unity 5.0, which is almost certainly going to be a veritable bug fest; lets release the game to the world as gold, on a major engine version release. I'm sure that will end well.

Better to give the engine a chance to stabilize first, sort out the loose ends, clean up longstanding bugs and memory issues, then commence to migrate code across when you know it's mostly 'done'.

We've had quite enough game breaking bugs, so I am far more pleased that the focus has been to 'finish' a lot more of what was started, and a big bug cleanup done, than embracing a world of pain that 5.0 is almost certain to bring with it, early on.

Yep. And it's not like Unity 5 release was not rushed to get it ready for the GDC. Have a look at their beta forum and you'll see quite a few bug talk in the RC versions.

Squad can finish 1.0 and by that time U5 will most likely have couple of minor release.

[marce]

So much goodness!

• Proper stock fairings! (I hope you thought about payload-auto-strutting/joints)
  
• Proper (kind off) stock aero!
  
• Proper stock heating!
  
• Proper stock resources!
  
• Optimization!!!
  

The KSP fan in me is crying tears of joy. However, putting that much new stuff in a 1.0 release gives the software developer in me the creeps.

I wish you the best of luck SQUAD (seriously!) and hope that Mu is the wizard he seems to be, you’ll need one to pull this off.

Oh and I think it’s a good idea to delay Unity 5 to 1.2 (1.1 will be the urgent hotfix release for 1.0 ) since they are really going through with not releasing more betas. Otherwise Unity 5 would have to be in the release (which I would do in Q3 2015) of course.

[FishInferno]

Am I the only one fretting about how long the patcher will take to update to 1.0:P

[pavlos-21-]

Kasper (KasperVld): The cat’s out of the bag on one of the things I’ve been working on: contacting space agencies to see if we can work out a way to get flags with their logos in the game. I’ve got a few more companies to contact

Is there a possibility we are going to have a SpaceX flag?

[FleetAdmiralJ]

I still think that going straight from QA to 1.0 without an interim beta is a bad idea, but it's your funeral game.

They aren't. It goes through experimentals as well, which is essentially squad's version of beta testing. every release does. Do they catch everything? No. But things they caught did bring about the much distressing delays in releasing both 0.23.5 and 0.24 IIRC heh.

--- more ---

As far as the engineers check, I think you guys may be overthinking it. I know part of the concern is new players, but it might be useful to just check for parts (parachutes, solar panels, etc.) and just be like "it looks like you have forgotten solar panels. Do you wish to continue editing or launch?" Maybe that's what you're already doing but the impression reading is that you're almost having it try to build the ship for them (OK, not really, but perhaps babying the building quite a bit).

I have no problem with it telling me if I've forgotten something because I still do it. But I'm not sure how I'd like it if it started telling me how it thinks I should build my ship.

Edited March 4, 2015 by FleetAdmiralJ

[monstah]

Realistic heat transfer? More interesting than anything!

[Tw1]

I would like to see a story driven campaign, but its not in any plans I've read. The semi-sequential tutorials (improvements coming for 1.0) offer the closest thing KSP has to a story, because each task is introduced by space center characters.

I would rather there wasn't any one scripted story, that you follow. If any story element was to be added, it should be flexible, and be more of a report, or based on what you've done, rather than something you must follow.

One of the great things about earlier versions of KSP is it wasn't a big fetch quest. What enticed you out was the possibility of new worlds to explore, and the challenge of getting there and back. How you got there, and what you did there formed its own story.

I still think ksp could be a lot better if it was less about collecting points to build up stuff back on kerbin, and more about doing stuff while you're in space - exploring planets, doing experiments at bases and stations, etc. It could be more about the experience than the grind.

[Sampa]

As I asked earlier, are radiators going to be implemented sometime in the future as stock?

[BagelRabbit]

I really appreciate all of the effort SQUAD is putting in, but I think that 1.0 will be so immensely buggy that it will require one or more immediate patches.

I hate to sound pessimistic, but I think I'm being relatively realistic here. After all, it's happened with nearly all previous releases, and some of these introduced only a small fraction of what 1.0 is going to.

What SQUAD is trying to do is to not only fix all of the bugs introduced by the 0.90 update (I'm still surprised that there was no 0.90.1 patch to take care of some of this), but it also must introduce an enormous number of new features. All of these features must be less buggy than usual, and all of these features must be extensively tested. As much as I respect the QA testers, I simply think that this is too much for any small group of people to test in any reasonable amount of time.

So!

While some of the new features are really good, I actually cringe when I see them, because I think that they will have some really nasty bugs. I would hate for SQUAD's triumphant release of 1.0, covered by so many websites and embraced by so many people, to have a patch a week after its release because thousands of people's games are breaking in some way or another. I know that this is "just another update," but unlike all of the other updates, it's much more important for SQUAD to get it right the first time. And I don't think that will happen.

If you could release an '0.99' update, which would be identical to the 1.0 update but not be considered the actual release, then we could squish bugs by the dozens, and 1.0 could be better. There's no real reason not to.

...and I don't care in the slightest about Unity 5.

-Upsilon

[EDIT: ...and while I'm posting here, I should mention that water needs a significant overhaul, both aesthetically and functionally. It's difficult to believe that water has been less forgiving to land on than land in KSP since it was actually rendered as something that was not solid, back in 0.8 or 0.9. This is badly needed, SQUAD. Can you please make it happen?]

Edited March 4, 2015 by UpsilonAerospace

[Majorjim!]

I really appreciate all of the effort SQUAD is putting in, but I think that 1.0 will be so immensely buggy that it will require one or more immediate patches.

I hate to sound pessimistic, but I think I'm being relatively realistic here. After all, it's happened with nearly all previous releases, and some of these introduced only a small fraction of what 1.0 is going to.

What SQUAD is trying to do is to not only fix all of the bugs introduced by the 0.90 update (I'm still surprised that there was no 0.90.1 patch to take care of some of this), but it also must introduce an enormous number of new features. All of these features must be less buggy than usual, and all of these features must be extensively tested. As much as I respect the QA testers, I simply think that this is too much for any small group of people to test in any reasonable amount of time.

So!

While some of the new features are really good, I actually cringe when I see them, because I think that they will have some really nasty bugs. I would hate for SQUAD's triumphant release of 1.0, covered by so many websites and embraced by so many people, to have a patch a week after its release because thousands of people's games are breaking in some way or another. I know that this is "just another update," but unlike all of the other updates, it's much more important for SQUAD to get it right the first time. And I don't think that will happen.

If you could release an '0.99' update, which would be identical to the 1.0 update but not be considered the actual release, then we could squish bugs by the dozens, and 1.0 could be better. There's no real reason not to.

...and I don't care in the slightest about Unity 5.

-Upsilon

[EDIT: ...and while I'm posting here, I should mention that water needs a significant overhaul, both aesthetically and functionally. It's difficult to believe that water has been less forgiving to land on than land in KSP since it was actually rendered as something that was not solid, back in 0.8 or 0.9. This is badly needed, SQUAD. Can you please make it happen?]

Agreed. There are some major game breaking bugs still that I believe will still be there at the 1.0 release.

For example, if you leave an SSTO in orbit for a while it is likely that parts will randomly smash off.. When you check the report it says you collided with a launch clamp..

Bugs like this are not excusable and need to be squashed yesterday.

In regard to Unity 5, it wont be the fix all solution we want it to be. It will help a little but part counts will still be massively restrictive..

[Hcube]

I really appreciate all of the effort SQUAD is putting in, but I think that 1.0 will be so immensely buggy that it will require one or more immediate patches.

I hate to sound pessimistic, but I think I'm being relatively realistic here. After all, it's happened with nearly all previous releases, and some of these introduced only a small fraction of what 1.0 is going to.

What SQUAD is trying to do is to not only fix all of the bugs introduced by the 0.90 update (I'm still surprised that there was no 0.90.1 patch to take care of some of this), but it also must introduce an enormous number of new features. All of these features must be less buggy than usual, and all of these features must be extensively tested. As much as I respect the QA testers, I simply think that this is too much for any small group of people to test in any reasonable amount of time.

I agree with you on that 1.0 has so much features planned it will likely be buggy and that KSP should get another beta, but i'm trusting squad. And i dont think that 0.90.0 is very buggy... I must say that I haven"t encountered more than 2 bugs in more than 200 hours of playing in beta(stock).

[regex]

I agree that there is still a lot to fix. Looking at the water shouldn't halve my framerate. Loading literally everything into memory needs to be fixed. Floating points errors need to be fixed (this is a big one for me), even if it takes Unity 5 to do it. There are many more new systems being added and we're not even certain if those will be bug free. As awesome as KSP is getting, it's still not ready for prime time.

[bdito]

3D Printing? Really?

I'm not bashing the idea or the work being done on it, I'm sure it's fantastic and the models would turn out quite nice. It just seems like it's something that only 0.1% of players would ever use.

Everything else looks great. Keep up the good work guys!

[linuxgurugamer]

Yay Unity 5 was mentioned!

Boo!! It's not being implemented into 1.0.

To all, see my rant in the unity discussion.

I would rather they give it a chance to be used by others, shake out the inevitable bugs

[Alshain]

Max (Maxmaps): I’ve also been coordinating with our fantastic team of modmaker cooperators (need a flashier name for that)

Max's Marvelous Mod Makers (4M for short)

[2001kraft]

Can I ask a question?

Is a broader choice of ion engines on the agenda for future updates?

[Robotengineer]

I really appreciate all of the effort SQUAD is putting in, but I think that 1.0 will be so immensely buggy that it will require one or more immediate patches.

I hate to sound pessimistic, but I think I'm being relatively realistic here. After all, it's happened with nearly all previous releases, and some of these introduced only a small fraction of what 1.0 is going to.

What SQUAD is trying to do is to not only fix all of the bugs introduced by the 0.90 update (I'm still surprised that there was no 0.90.1 patch to take care of some of this), but it also must introduce an enormous number of new features. All of these features must be less buggy than usual, and all of these features must be extensively tested. As much as I respect the QA testers, I simply think that this is too much for any small group of people to test in any reasonable amount of time.

So!

While some of the new features are really good, I actually cringe when I see them, because I think that they will have some really nasty bugs. I would hate for SQUAD's triumphant release of 1.0, covered by so many websites and embraced by so many people, to have a patch a week after its release because thousands of people's games are breaking in some way or another. I know that this is "just another update," but unlike all of the other updates, it's much more important for SQUAD to get it right the first time. And I don't think that will happen.

If you could release an '0.99' update, which would be identical to the 1.0 update but not be considered the actual release, then we could squish bugs by the dozens, and 1.0 could be better. There's no real reason not to.

...and I don't care in the slightest about Unity 5.

-Upsilon

[EDIT: ...and while I'm posting here, I should mention that water needs a significant overhaul, both aesthetically and functionally. It's difficult to believe that water has been less forgiving to land on than land in KSP since it was actually rendered as something that was not solid, back in 0.8 or 0.9. This is badly needed, SQUAD. Can you please make it happen?]

Thank you for this good post, this is what I have been trying to say for a while now. It's much easier to catch bugs when you have thousands of people playing compared to the much smaller experimentals/QA team.

[Superfluous J]

3D Printing? ... It just seems like it's something that only 0.1% of players would ever use.

Hey that's higher than destructible buildings!

[Lord Aurelius]

Hey that's higher than destructible buildings!

I use destructible buildings... What else would I fire my rocket artillery and cruise missiles at?

Joking aside, at least the destructible buildings were a free game update and were the foundation for upgradeable buildings, unlike the 3D printing which doesn't add anything to the game (as cool as it is) and is expensive enough to relegate it to a tiny niche of players.