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Devnote Tuesday: It’s All In The Details


SQUAD

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<figure data-orig-width="480" data-orig-height="92" class="tmblr-full"><img data-orig-width="480" data-orig-height="92" src="https://36.media.tumblr.com/0ff9377afa68dc3ad3fe6844aaf1bd38/tumblr_inline_nm3h3ek2l91rr2wit_540.jpg"/></figure><p><b>Felipe (HarvesteR):</b> There’s been quite a large amount of work done this week. The build system had to be reconfigured, which took quite a good deal of time and during which we were unable to run builds as often as we would’ve liked… While the QA process was slowed down by these server issues, I took the opportunity to do things that I’ve had in my wish list for a very long time:</p><ul><li>Added TrackIR support to all game views, plus independent toggles for each of those in game settings</li><li>Added Field of View control to the main flight camera. (Hold modKey and zoom)</li><li>Added confirmation dialogs .prompting you to save the current craft on leaving, loading or creating a new craft to the editors.</li><li>Added a confirmation dialog before overwriting a previously saved craft file.</li><li>Part test contracts now round their altitude and speed envelopes to much more sane values.</li></ul><p>Also, Kerbonauts now cost Funds to hire. The cost of hiring more crews increases for each additional crew member in your active roster, that is, hiring your 30th Kerbal is much more expensive than hiring your 5th one. This cost increases based on your current active crew count. That means, for instance, that going through 100 Kerbals would be far less expensive than having a roster with a hundred active ones. </p><p>And lastly, this is something that I’m still working on today, I’m adding a togglable camera wobble system, to allow cameras to shake and vibrate in response to external forces. Currently I already have implemented effects when pulling high Gs, when rolling over the ground, and when intense aerodynamic effects are acting on the vessel. there are still a few other causes which I hope to implement, but even now this system already promises to be a significant enhancement to how flying feels.</p><p><b>Mike (Mu): </b>Another fun week of bugs and balancing. Have put a lot more work into the aero/thermal side of things plus fixed a load more issues besides. </p><p><b>Marco (Samssonart): </b>Last week was all about the demo, it’s fun having to work on something that involves everything, every area of the game. This week I worked on some general restrictions the demo has with respect to the game, this is a previous necessary step before I dig in and start butchering sandbox and career mode. Other than that I got my Tutorials Git branch as tidy as possible because it’s about to enter QA, so that’s another thing that will be keeping me busy this week.</p><p><b>Daniel (danRosas):</b> This week I took some time out of rendering and animating to improve Valentina’s cinematic model. That’s right, she’s going to be having an appearance in the new animated adventure. The face rig that the Kerbals are currently using is a bit old (that means I did some amateurish mistakes) and has some performance issues, while being referenced inside the Maya scene. Hopefully Valentina’s will prove that it’s better to change all the mouths for the sake of easier animation. </p><p><b>Jim (Romfarer): </b>This week I’ve focused on bug fixing, the sort of bugs that have come from merging all the branches together. Between that I’ve worked on getting the resource panel in the Knowledge Base up to standards. </p><p><b>Max (Maxmaps): </b>Tuesday already? Crud. Been way too busy with the business side of Squad HQ to plan the April 1st thing tomorrow. There might not even be one and that makes me sad in the heart. Besides that, helping out Dan with the 1.0 animation stuff, and making sure all the content from our awesome collaborators gets in the game in an orderly fashion. It’s kinda amazing seeing the devs working in ‘beta’ mode, where they’re just adding small things and doing polish instead of crafting behemoth systems. Kinda like modding their own game, really. Mind you, you have to look past the actual behemoth systems that still had to be made for 1.0, aero is big. Really, really big. You think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to the aero overhaul.</p><p><b>Ted (Ted): </b>Over the past week we’ve been working on QAing the develop branch, with pretty much everything merged in that needs to be. Now it’s a matter of clearing up the issues remaining on the develop branch and adding polish touches that have been pending a while. </p><p>Thankfully the build server issues have resolved themselves for now as well.</p><p><b>Rogelio (Roger): </b>I fixed some shots of the smoke simulation, when I started to do some render tests I realized it looked weird on some frames but I fixed that and I’m working on the scene lights, I think that should be done by the end of this week, and then the compositing and FX part will consume the art department resources. .</p><p><b>Kasper (KasperVld): </b>It’s been a relatively quiet week which was rudely interrupted by a spam bot on the forums that posted more than a thousand blog entries with links to several shady websites. Because the blog system is a bit ‘tacked on’ to vBulletin, some of the normal moderation tools aren’t available for them and so I spent a few hours .manually deleting every single blog entry. Looking forward to the IPS4 update if and when that comes around. Facebook seems to be messing with its metrics a bit lately, which results in some confusing numbers but I won’t bore you with the details on that one. </p>

Edited by sal_vager
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Harv, shaky cam? Really? :/

Besides that, good work. It looks that stuff is going in cruise speed in the bug squashing department ...

P.S. To be clear, I'm not against the usage of a shaky cam to give input on the structural loads the ships is suffering, but if badly done it will be a just a gimmick that would just mimic a very debatable fad in last decade cinema ... not mentioning the possible nausea aftereffects :D

Edited by r_rolo1
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This was pretty neat. Just make sure the shaky camera is toggleable, I'm certain many people will disagree with it.

I REALLY LIKE THE IDEA OF A SHAKING CAMERA, BUT SO MANY PEOPLE ARE MEAN JERKS THAT IT NEEDS TO BE TOGGLEABLE.

Edited by GregroxMun
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You think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to the aero overhaul.

Thumbs-up for the reference!

Hitchhiker-Symbol-icon.png

Edited by amorymeltzer
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<b>Felipe (HarvesteR):</b><p>And lastly, this is something that I’m still working on today, I’m adding a camera wobble system, to allow cameras to shake and vibrate in response to external forces. Currently I already have implemented effects when pulling high Gs, when rolling over the ground, and when intense aerodynamic effects are acting on the vessel. there are still a few other causes which I hope to implement, but even now this system already promises to be a significant enhancement to how flying feels.</p>
Please, please, please tell me that we'll be able to turn this off...
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Added Field of View control to the main flight camera. THIS!! with triple screen setup!!!

Part test contracts now round their altitude and speed envelopes to much more sane values. - Nice.. now I'll actually do them!

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This was pretty neat. Just make sure the shaky camera is toggleable, I'm certain many people will disagree with it.

This. I love the idea, but I don't think I'd like a shaky cam when trying to toggle an air intake or do a science experiment.

EDIT: Wow. Tons of comments about this.

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Do the devs really need to spend time developing stuff for which there are already suitable pluggins? Kerbquake already reacts to the listed events and more...why step over the modders? Why not develop something that isn't already done?

TLDR: Why re-invent wheel squad?

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Shaking virtual point of views makes no sense. Hearing engine sounds in space is already bad enough.

Do we really need the game to feel more arcade style?

Well, since KSP is a game, not a simulator, one would expect more arcadey elements to creep in. As if the tiny solar system hadn't already given that fact away...
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+1 vote for toggle on camera shake modes.

Many of us would like to see separate articles with more info on how impending features will work, as they are ready:

  • ISRU (A lot can be inferred from multiple sources, but an overview would be nice.)
  • SPH Aero overlay
  • Parts functional balance and cost changes: were any big changes decided, for example greater than 25%, compared to .90 ? (I expect some significant changes due to Aero.)
  • Engineer's report

Regardless, its good to read for 2nd week in a row that time is being spent on improving existing features, and bug fixing. We are still celebrating news of improved SoI transition handling, from last week's Devnote. :)

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  • Added TrackIR support to all game views, plus independent toggles for each of those in game settings

Excellent! Don't forget the FreeTrack and Oculus Rift players if time allows it!

And lastly, this is something that I’m still working on today, I’m adding a camera wobble system, to allow cameras to shake and vibrate in response to external forces.

Related to this, it would be a great win for usability if the right-click menus in the flight scene were decoupled from the craft position so that they stayed stable on screen. Currently, menus can be very difficult to click if the craft is spinning (or the screen is shaking). Make the menus draggable and connect them to the part with a line instead.

Edited by pizzaoverhead
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Good work guys! :D Although, please make the camera shake something that you can turn off, with my weak stomach I don't know if I could handle it. I send my thanks out to KasperVld for fixing the problem with the blog, sucks that you had to go through and delete the posts manually. Anyways, keep up the great work guys, I look forward to every Tuesday to see the progress!!

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Please tell me the shake-cam can be disabled. I can't watch The Hunger Games movies in theaters because the shake-cam causes me to vomit in 15 minutes flat. This game is too awesome for me to not play because it makes me physically ill.

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Do the devs really need to spend time developing stuff for which there are already suitable pluggins? Kerbquake already reacts to the listed events and more...why step over the modders? Why not develop something that isn't already done?

TLDR: Why re-invent wheel squad?

Well, there are a couple of reasons to do so. First, the modder code might simply be a hack around the main code, that would not be needed if the devs made the feature themselves. Second, unlike other devs in another companies, AFAIK SQUAD does not force you to waive your IP when modding KSP automatically, so technically the modders code is not open for their use automatically ( leading to negotiations about it's usage that can be simply avoided if you just redo from scratch ). Third, the devs might believe that adapting the current mod code to the main code will be a bigger workload then doing it from scratch. Fourth, the devs might believe that they can do better than the modder ... ;)

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