Devnote Tuesday: Smooth Transitions

[basic.syntax]

The SoI transition calculation change described here, does not suggest any work beyond that change. A KAC-like feature would be a welcome addition to KSP.

But because they have had to postpone work on User Interface elements for Kerbal skills (and delta-V) until after 1.0 is done, its very unlikely we would see any KAC-like feature in 1.0. They haven't mentioned that kind of feature before, and it would need its own bit of UI work.

[Yakuzi]

Max mentioned the delta-v feature specifically as something that probably won't make the 1.0 cutoff, but said that the features cut from 1.0 were very likely to turn up in 1.1. Basically, I got the impression that if it got mentioned in the dev notes, it was going to make the cutoff, if it hadn't progressed far enough to get a mention there, it was probably going to be on the delayed list. The first part of that has been confirmed, the second part of that implied.

Thanks for the info Eric! If you could give a link to the source it would be greatly appreciated

Ninja'd... Thanks basic! I was overseas this weekend so I missed the Squadcast

Edited March 24, 2015 by Yakuzi

[digitalpsychosis]

Speaking of KSPTV, DigitalPsychosis has joined the group of streamers on our official channel and will be streaming Thursdays.

I'm totally fan-girling over myself right now. Glad to be on board and I feel very humbled by the welcome.

[worir4]

Thanks for these dev notes.

It is nice how we can watch and feel the game develop as time goes along.

Thanks SQUAD.

[Renegrade]

Very glad to hear that the longstanding SOI change issue has been finally (hopefully) squished. Kudos!

[Caelib]

You may have noticed when vessels cross spheres of influence at high time warp, that the resulting orbit after the transition can be quite different from what was originally estimated.

Nice to hear that this has been improved now, thanks!

[-RanZ-]

Sounds like we are getting close to experimentals? I share Maxmap's excitement of getting this to the media group, I want to see all the new features in action!

[GusTurbo]

Really excited to hear about performance enhancements. Also good to hear the SoI transitions are fixed.

Sounds like this will be an awesome update.

[Pecan]

All sounding very nice. Lots certainly happening everywhere.

Except...

<b>Kasper (KasperVld):</b> Make sure you tune into Squadcast on KSPTV this Friday, as Maxmaps will be showing off female Kerbals as they look in-game! Speaking of KSPTV, DigitalPsychosis has joined the group of streamers on our official channel and will be streaming Thursdays. Other than that there’s been a lot of media planning for 1.0 ...

...when you said "We get it" a while ago, did you 'get' that we don't all want to, or have the time/broadband, to watch videos? "Media" includes more, please start by giving us transcripts.

[Robotengineer]

Good read. Seems like your moving right along. Still seems to quick IMO though.

[NoMrBond]

Thanks for the info Eric! If you could give a link to the source it would be greatly appreciated

Ninja'd... Thanks basic! I was overseas this weekend so I missed the Squadcast

Thread in question; Comment in question

[KasperVld]

...when you said "We get it" a while ago, did you 'get' that we don't all want to, or have the time/broadband, to watch videos? "Media" includes more, please start by giving us transcripts.

The pictures Max shows off during Squadcast are posted to our social media immediately afterwards and find their way to every corner of the community within minutes, at least in my experience. If you don't want to see the entirety of Squadcast that's fine, but I think providing transcripts goes a bit far, especially because Squadcast is not scripted. That said, I love the Squadcast summaries that pop up every week here on the forums, perhaps that's an alternative to watching the livestream as well

Media is also a bit wider than just Squadcast here, we need to plan for people wanting to make release videos for KSP, or stream it just before release: how do you get pre-release copies to those people? What content can we allow and when can we do that? All those things need to be made clear so everyone plays by the same, fair rules.

[r4pt0r]

Daniel (danRosas): Animation is moving forward, we’re doing our first renders and testing out color palettes for the different environments that will need their own lights set up. We’re dangling with lots of frames here, I think it’s the most ambitious animation up-to-date, so we’re figuring out the best way to move those frames from the server into our workstations. And at the same time don’t die in the process.

are these animations in the game?

[basic.syntax]

I think KSP .90 had a good selection of alternate videos at its launch. If 1.0 gets out of Experimentals with a reasonable vote of confidence, I don't think Squad will have any publicity trouble. Players and streamers like talking about things they like. 1.0 will offer a number of hotly anticipated features.

[monstah]

are these animations in the game?

As far as I know, Dan mostly looks after the release animations, which are the fun little trailers that come up with most versions.

I'm interested however in a previous question, which was the same question but regarding Roger's smokey particles!

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and yeah, I approve of the devnotes!

[kofeyh]

Cool. Good news on the SOI changes. Slowing down to a crawl to transition across orbit changes just to make sure you maybe actually pop out at the right place gets frustrating.

This will also hopefully put to bed the long standing issue of blitzing through multiple orbit changes (for example a SOI change to a planet, that also includes it's moon and missing either one in some kind cosmic flyby joke).

Not so hot on the reduction in garbage collection however; memory is something KSP is fast running low on. It's annoying but without clean up and now the reduction in scene changes - what does that do to overall memory use and release? Has any efficiency been sought to improve the release of memory? People seem to not want GC, but it's actually important to long term stability and the game's memory footprint.

[klgraham1013]

Great to hear the SOI crossover problems got worked out.

- - - Updated - - -

A delta v readout needs to be in 1.0.

[basic.syntax]

People seem to not want GC, but it's actually important to long term stability and the game's memory footprint.

That's a great point, I certainly focus on the annoyance factor more than its purpose. I was just thinking that it could be made less noticeable, if GC could be tied to scene changes. But, I don't know if that would lead to out-of-memory errors, while trying to build a 255 part craft in the VAB. The key for me is: if the code has to stop the world from spinning to do something behind the scenes, the stoppage could be masked, if I'm doing something where a brief pause might be expected.

[Aragosnat]

Kasper (KasperVld): Make sure you tune into Squadcast on KSPTV this Friday, as Maxmaps will be showing off female Kerbals as they look in-game! Speaking of KSPTV, DigitalPsychosis has joined the group of streamers on our official channel and will be streaming Thursdays. Other than that there’s been a lot of media planning for 1.0, and I have no doubt that’ll continue right up until release, and a while after. Busy times, but it’s worth being a part of!

Very intresting. Hope you guys don't burn out.

Edited March 25, 2015 by sjwt

[Wiseman]

Mike (Mu): It’s been an exciting week. The aero/thermal branch was finally merged into develop and brings with it a load of performance improvements. The VAB/SPH scenes no longer require reloads when you clear/load a vessel, PQS reset/startup has been smoothed - lowering the time required to transition scenes, and lots of little tweaks to reduce the game’s CPU load and garbage collection. The QA team and myself have also been working on improving and balancing the new physics systems.

Best, best, best part right here. The spotty garbage collection memory leak has been my only real peeve.

[Rassa Farlander]

Just curious as I might have missed it somewhere, but what happened to multiplayer? It has been awhile since I saw it talked about.

[Guest]

Felipe (HarvesteR): In practice, this means we will now be able to cross SOI boundaries without having to worry so much about warping down before the transition, as the orbit on the other side will be very much the same as the estimated one from before you crossed over.

Thank you , I am so happy right now after reading this. In all honesty, I'd almost forgot about the SOI bug because I've grown so used to working around it. Thank you. It sounds like this was a good week for all of you. Best of luck to you all on the upcoming release. I can't wait!

[basic.syntax]

Multiplayer was mentioned in last Friday's Squadcast. It won't make it into 1.0, but it is still being worked on, for a later update.

[Lord Aurelius]

@ Rassa Farlander

Maxmaps mentioned multiplayer in the last Squadcast: (transcription located here)

11:00 [twitch question: Multiplayer progress in 2015?]

"Well, ideally we want it to BE in 2015, but, its a beast of a task, we're still working on it, we have great progress, but nothing we can fully show yet."

As far as these devnotes go, glad to see Squad doubling down on bugfixing. I still would feel better about the 1.0 release if the community could get a proper beta where we can actually play a 1.0 release candidate before the official release to help Squad properly test the game, but at this point I'm very glad to see many of these longstanding bugs finally being addressed.

[Damien_The_Unbeliever]

Not so hot on the reduction in garbage collection however; memory is something KSP is fast running low on. It's annoying but without clean up and now the reduction in scene changes - what does that do to overall memory use and release? Has any efficiency been sought to improve the release of memory? People seem to not want GC, but it's actually important to long term stability and the game's memory footprint.