Devnote Tuesday: Rocket Technology

[Yargnit]

So based off historical significance, timing with development, and the day of the week it falls on, I am predicting May 5th for 1.0 release with Max stating they've finalized their internal date. Thoughts?

[regex]

releasing KSP on a national holiday

Makes perfect sense.

[klgraham1013]

I've got my fingers crossed the tech tree gets sorted.

As far as KSP needing an end goal, I'm not sure it needs one. What I would prefer is an end game custom contract system that allowed you to set your own goals with appropriately given rewards. In fact, forget end game. Just make that it's own mode. I'd much rather determine my own missions and be given appropriate funds and rep for their successful completion than deal with the current contracts.

[Dodgey]

So based off historical significance, timing with development, and the day of the week it falls on, I am predicting May 5th for 1.0 release with Max stating they've finalized their internal date. Thoughts?

I'm betting on an end of May release considering the size of the update and the extra polish it is going to need.

Going back to the need for an end game I think that Minecraft handled it well. It provides a goal that is completely optional that only really provides a sense of accomplishment. I think that that is all KSP really needs, not something that ends the game but just provides a sense of accomplishment.

[SaturnV]

Totally disagree that KSP needs some kind of pre-defined end game objective, the freedom to create your own objectives is one of the best things about this game. "The End" in minecraft feels like a tack-on job added to satisfy the unimaginative.

Contracts are contracts. This game, however, is kerbal space PROGRAM.

I‘m not a big fan for contracts, stock program planner and check list would be cool. With it players can plan their own space program consisting of many missions.

[Superfluous J]

Hopefully Squad realizes how important the Tech Tree is to both Modders and Players. As kludgy as the current system is, it is still completely accessible to both Modders and players. Any change that substantially reduces accessibility to either would be undesirable.

Well, the tech tree editing is Kludgey not in spite of Squad making it open, but because they did NOT. They could dump hot tar on the hard drive containing the code for tech trees and accidentally make editing them easier.

[federicoaa]

I think it would be nice to have a simple interface in the mission control where you can "create" missions by specifying goals attached to a ship, for example, land in a specific biome in duna.

This would be helpful to track missions, and also to have a log of past and current missions, where you can tag them as accomplished, ongoing, or failed. Moreover, you can have the crew listed per mission and all kind of data, everybody loves logs!

[Engineer of Stuff]

@KasperVld: If Pewdiepie played KSP, then that would bring thousands of new players to the game. To answer his question, I really don't have one. The only one I would vote for I found out that he did play it.

[Mitchz95]

I'd love to see Markiplier pick up the game again. He did play it in version 0.19, but I'd love to see him take on Career mode once 1.0 goes live.

A side question: is water lag going to be fixed in 1.0? Because I'm frankly disappointed that it's still an issue.

[SkyRender]

I can describe the Oberth Effect pretty simply for you. It's easier to go faster when you're already going fast. You can't get much faster in an orbit than being as low as you can get without hitting the planet below you.

Anyway, good to hear that KSP development is progressing well.

[Bill Phil]

@KasperVld: If Pewdiepie played KSP, then that would bring thousands of new players to the game. To answer his question, I really don't have one. The only one I would vote for I found out that he did play it.

Correction: Millions of buyers. Thousands of long time players.

I think they should ask Pewdiepie and Markiplier, maybe Cry and perhaps some other ones.

[Lord Aurelius]

I really like the idea of ingame editors, hopefully it extends beyond just the tech tree and lets us edit part values as well. Something along the lines of Hyperedit would be nice as well for testing landers and such.

I've always thought that career needed some kind of end goal, I know many players are completely satisfied with the sandbox it is now, but for me it's basically a grindy sandbox where the only tangible goal is to unlock the tech tree. I do have fun building science vessels, but there's no endgame, once you've unlocked the tech tree, there's no more use for the science and it's essentially no different than sandbox.

My vision of what would be an interesting game progression would be a series of randomly placed procedurally generated anomalies, where early on after the first few missions you find an anomaly on Kerbin which unlocks the next anomaly, say on the Mun (or a more remote area of Kerbin) and possibly gives some new technology as well. The anomalies would lead the Kerbals across the system, and the ultimate mission could be a manned return mission to an extremely difficult to reach anomaly (possibly on a randomly generated planetoid just for this contract) that unlocks technology that allows the building of sci-fi style vessels that can quickly travel the solar system and land anywhere with ease, or if that's outside the scope of the game, have it be some kind of groundbreaking discovery (i.e. it reveals the origin of life on Kerbin), and have a fancy video cutscene followed by credits (not the rambling weirdness that minecraft had). In this career, science points would be a means to an end, where you have to gather science points to unlock parts and possibly to reveal new anomalies, but the player still has the freedom to choose to pursue the anomalies at their own pace (or ignore them entirely). The random placement would ensure replayability where you have to find the anomalies each time instead of just always going to the same coordinates.

Edited March 11, 2015 by Lord Aurelius

[RocketPilot573]

Looking forward to my fresh start with 1.0.

Honestly I would like to see either Etho or Bruce Willikers pick up KSP, even for just one video.

I remember Etho mentioning KSP a while back, but no video....

[daniel l.]

I only wish the devs would make planets more alive first (Clouds, Volcanoes, Ocean waves (Interstellar anyone?), Geysers, Wind, ACTUAL COLLISION MESH FOR GROUND SCATTER!!!, Larger asteroids, More asteroids, Asteroid moons for planets, Aurorae, Special music tracks for each planet ( For example a sleepy twinkly one for Eeloo.), Small scale procedural terrain for planets (Little details that are generated by the computer) to make surfaces look cooler,Volumetric rings, Procedural asteroid fields ( It would look like several asteroids but they would really all be attached by part joints making it so the computer only has to calculate one orbit instead of 200.), Dust fog that would fill the asteroid fields,

If you guys wanna see what i am thinking of ksp becoming check out Limit Theory an upcoming space sim with GORGEOUS graphics!.

[basic.syntax]

I'd like prettier planets and other FX too, but by sounds of it the house is still being built. For which, I'm very grateful Maybe after 1.0, for the strongly rumored Unity 5 update, they might do some work on re-painting the house

[footforhire]

Now, this begs the question: Will these tools be available in the release version? The answer right now is, I don’t know. I’m building the toolset for our own use here at the moment, as that’s what’s required of it. Writing release-quality code, even for debugging tools, inevitably takes a lot more time. However, if by the end of the rebalancing and testing phase we think these utilities are presentable, then we might leave them in, along with the rest of the debug toolset. But we’ll see about that when we get there. No promises yet.

I really like the idea of ingame editors, hopefully it extends beyond just the tech tree and lets us edit part values as well. Something along the lines of Hyperedit would be nice as well for testing landers and such.

This has been mentioned in other threads and within this one as well. I think a set of optional utilities that could be packaged inside or outside of the game would be useful to most players. Much like procedural parts, this would allow the game to become "procedural" and give a lot more flexibility to those players that want to not only customize their own game, but give others ideas on how to customize their own.

Contracts are contracts. This game, however, is kerbal space PROGRAM.

I‘m not a big fan for contracts, stock program planner and check list would be cool. With it players can plan their own space program consisting of many missions.

A check list for not only starting a space program but progressing it would be an awesome addition to help newer players get their bearings. Maybe this might be a different way to look at tutorials? For example, have in-game achievements that are not necessarily tied to contracts that will allow players to progress gradually through the game, allowing players who don't know what to do next to reach the next level in their program.

[KerbMav]

Felipe (HarvesteR):

So, instead of just bracing ourselves for another round of tweaking cfg files by the hundreds, and awkwardly editing a prefab full of tech nodes, I’m writing a set of tools to allow us to edit the tech tree directly from the running game. This should allow us (and the test team) to change part assignments to tech nodes, modify part and node parameters, and generally re-jig the tech tree around without having to go through the tedious process that doing these things requires right now.

I wonder how the changes to the tech tree and anything around it will affect the way mods can integrate/move parts in the tree? (i.e. ModuleManager)

[Hcube]

Thanks for the devnotes ! Cant wait for 1.0

[grawl]

Great devnote! As usual I might say

Harvester: "barring any bugs that might pop up during the upcoming testing phases"

It's funny how all the devnotes and blogposts about the development made me understanding better the quality aspects of an application and the trap-holes to avoid. Helped me a lot for my quality exam yesterday (especially the story when Harv talks about the need to squash bugs sonner in development cycle, to avoid them becoming unbearable pains later).

They're not only a way to feed us info-hungry players, they have a real value as a resource to transmit the experience acquired during development.

Keep up the good work !

Edited March 11, 2015 by grawl

[Blondai]

KASPER

I think Rhett and Link would be the best bet for trying ksp. They prob have an audience largely unaware of the game. And them boys ain't half funny.

[Mesons]

Marco (Samssonart): Nothing new to report this time, I’ve been working on that Docking tutorial, which is now basically complete, awaiting script revision, so a few minor changes could come up, I started work on a Interplanetary Transfer Orbits tutorial, meant to walk you through an efficient way to get to Duna, using the Oberth effect and all, that one’s barely starting, I am trying to get the Oberth effect explanation just right, accurate and easy to understand, from there on it should be pretty straightforward.

Great, I love tutorials, even when I (probably) won't learn anything from them, I also love docking, I really think the game benefits from stepping stones like these, thanks for helping improve that area of the game Marco, you're my favorite, you're also great at run-on sentences!

[CaptainKipard]

Happy about the tech tree. I've been in favour of an overhaul for the longest time. Here's the suggestion thread with some ideas from the community. It was stickied for a month in January. I think the devs already saw it, but it's here still for the community to discuss.

Edited March 11, 2015 by Cpt. Kipard

[micha]

Tune in for Squadcast on Friday

Any chance of archiving the Squadcasts so those of us in different timezones and/or commitments can watch them at a later time?

[Superfluous J]

Any chance of archiving the Squadcasts so those of us in different timezones and/or commitments can watch them at a later time?

All past KSPTV broadcasts are here: http://www.twitch.tv/ksptv/profile/past_broadcasts

You have do dig a little for the Squadcasts but they're all there. Except the one they accidentally deleted.

[TheMoonRover]

My vision of what would be an interesting game progression would be a series of randomly placed procedurally generated anomalies, where early on after the first few missions you find an anomaly on Kerbin which unlocks the next anomaly, say on the Mun (or a more remote area of Kerbin) and possibly gives some new technology as well. The anomalies would lead the Kerbals across the system, and the ultimate mission could be a manned return mission to an extremely difficult to reach anomaly (possibly on a randomly generated planetoid just for this contract) that unlocks technology that allows the building of sci-fi style vessels that can quickly travel the solar system and land anywhere with ease, or if that's outside the scope of the game, have it be some kind of groundbreaking discovery (i.e. it reveals the origin of life on Kerbin), and have a fancy video cutscene followed by credits (not the rambling weirdness that minecraft had). In this career, science points would be a means to an end, where you have to gather science points to unlock parts and possibly to reveal new anomalies, but the player still has the freedom to choose to pursue the anomalies at their own pace (or ignore them entirely). The random placement would ensure replayability where you have to find the anomalies each time instead of just always going to the same coordinates.

That sounds a lot like NovaSilsko's original plan for the storyline involving the easter eggs and a hidden planet.

But thinking about that, quite a few of the [THREAD=60551]easter eggs need to be fixed[/THREAD].

The SSTV Mountain went silent a long time ago. The Magic Boulder went in 0.18 and there are several easter eggs floating in the air of buried underground (mainly monoliths but also the camera on Duna and the Cave under Tylo)