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Devnote Tuesday: Experimental Improvements

SQUAD

By SQUAD
in KSP1 The Daily Kerbal

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One-Way Films

One-Way Films

Posted
Posted

Originally Posted by SQUAD viewpost-right.png

The Flight UI can now be made transparent through a game setting.

No idea what this would be used for... Neat Nonetheless!

I think it's aimed at film-making or for those who want to go 100% IVA only.

quote_icon.png Originally Posted by SQUAD viewpost-right.png

Added a difficulty slider to turn reentry heat down (or up, or entirely off… your choice)....

Not sure about this. Difficulty sliders make sense for the "game" elements, such as Money and Science and Rep. But should we really be able to change the laws of physics? That would be like having a slider to make engines more efficient or even change the gravity of Kerbin, not good.

I disagree. Newer players might want to play without it to ease into aerobraking without the consequences.

(Actually, with re-entry heat, it's gonna be hard getting to Jool. I'm looking forward to the Challenge Squad!)

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Hcube

Hcube

Posted
Posted

"We now have a new SRB"

"Added a ‘warp to next morning’ button at the KSC toolbar."

"SAS Maneuver mode automatically disengages back to stability assist as dV nears zero."

"Bob and I are working on two new parts, which should be very useful now that reentry heat is a thing."

THANK YOU SQUAD !

so_good.png

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Lord Aurelius

Lord Aurelius

Posted
Posted

Glad to see all the details in the devnotes this week.

Small (I assume 0.625m) SRBs: these have been sorely needed for a long time, glad to see they're finally making it in. Are there any plans to implement some kind of hybrid rocket motor in stock?

Extra audio is good, sound effects in this game are lacking in stock. Will this also extend to things like rovers which have been silent up to this point?

Not sure I like the idea of repurposing the toroidal tank as a Xenon tank as it's actually a useful part for smaller designs. Drastically changing or removing a part should only be done if the part had some serious balance issues (i.e. OP or useless), or if it's being superseded by a part that fills the same role (which does not appear to be the case here). A better approach would be to create a new tank (or just simply copy and retexture), as we do need a larger Xenon tank in stock.

There’s also been several other minor fixes and tweaks, from proper detection and placement of splashdown effects at very high speeds (now that that’s possible) to making pressure and temperature experiment modules able to function in space… It was an intense week, most assuredly.

Does that mean the water physics have been fixed so we can actually land safely on water now? Also, glad to hear you're extending the locations for science experiments (I got so frustrated with the arbitrary pressure requirements I made a mod to allow the barometer to work in space).

The jet engines have had another pass with respect to their characteristics. For those that don’t know, the airflow through jet engines (and thus fuel flow, and thus thrust) is now a function of mach and of air density giving them more interesting limitations and effects.

Glad to hear the jet engines are getting overhauled, they definitely need it. Will afterburners be supported?

In the current system all tech tree icons are hardcoded into the backend. This was fine when it was created, but later additions to the tree has made it painfully clear that we had to do something about it. So i’m in the middle of replacing this old system with a more flexible version. It is quite similar to the PartCategorizer in VAB/SPH: it’s all config definable and modders can now easily add their own custom icon for every node.

The hardcoded tech tree (along with everything else that was hardcoded) has been a sore point with the modding community for quite awhile now (and has resulted in some clever workarounds), glad to hear that it will be config file based now.

(Experimentals is going swimmingly, it seems like extending QA has severely reduced the stress of it!)

Glad to hear that taking a little extra QA development time has paid off.

I’ve been rendering and doing some post production tasks, last week I started to play with particle systems to do some clouds.

You've already specified that this is for the video, but I can't help but think how much better stock would be with proper clouds. I can only hope that they're planned for an update soon after 1.0.

I haven't heard much about career mode, is anything being done on that front to make it more coherent and rewarding? I know it was mentioned that the part testing contracts would have more sane requirements, but is anything being done to improve the main progression contracts?

Overall, glad to hear that experimentals is going well, hopefully 1.0 will be a great update.

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Chaos_Klaus

Chaos_Klaus

Posted
Posted (edited)

I think someone mentioned that as kerbin is smaller than earth, reentry heating would not occure quite so severely. But for the sake of gameplay, it is nice to have reentry effects. If that is true, a slider is just a great solution.

UI transparancy means that you can see trough it. You can set the opacity. To turn off the UI completely you can hit F2 ... that already works in the beta.

The problem with the torodial tank was that it hat no usable fuel-to-mass-ratio. However I often used it for aesthetic reasons. It gave great character to my landers. I love using it to attach size 0 engines to size 1 parts. But the ion drive is size 0 too, so meh.

Edited by Chaos_Klaus
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juanml82

juanml82

Posted
Posted
Wha??

The Oscar-B is a fantastic tank!! Seriously, you mad mate?

I'm not sure which of the smallish tanks is the better one, but the toroidal looks cool, so I'm with the people suggesting to axe the Oscar-B

As for the rockets, can we have a 2.5 m SRB? I will be simpler, and less physics intensive, than using 4 S1s under an adapter and struts to keep them in place

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Bill Phil

Bill Phil

Posted
Posted
hmmm will that new SRB be 0.625 meter or even better a 2.5 meter? and how about going full hog and doing a 3.75 meter part?

I'd prefer 0.625 meter. But 2.5 as well as a 0.625 would be cool. Plus an upper stage SRM. Maybe 1.25 meter?

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Daze

Daze

Posted
Posted
Nice stuff.... wait what?

Xenon is useless, that tank was awesome how it was! That is a terrible terrible change.

I'd suggest changing the Oscar B then. It's about as useless as Xenon.

Xenon? Useless?

Wow.

(Maybe you didn't discover how to use it. )

Anyway: New SRB sound good, it is a super useful addition with better aero. Aldo hype for that 2 parts!

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Majorjim!

Majorjim!

Posted
Posted
I'm not sure which of the smallish tanks is the better one, but the toroidal looks cool, so I'm with the people suggesting to axe the Oscar-B

As for the rockets, can we have a 2.5 m SRB? I will be simpler, and less physics intensive, than using 4 S1s under an adapter and struts to keep them in place

Thankfully they won't do this. As then there would be no tiny size fuel tanks..

All they have to do is make another tank model or even easier just change the texture on the toroidal tank! Almost no work and you don't lose a well liked part.

Why is this even happening?

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r_rolo1

r_rolo1

Posted
Posted

OK, big list today. Let's start with Harv

<figure data-orig-width="480" data-orig-height="92" class="tmblr-full"></figure>Felipe (HarvesteR): (...)

Here are some highlights:

  • Fixed a VERY ugly-looking bug concerning scenario modules and persistence, I’m amazed it went by as it did. Should fix many mysterious persistence problems, hopefully.
  • Went over the balance and progression of the SRBs in early games. We now have a new SRB, called the RT-5 “Flea†Booster. (Model by Bob “RoverDudeâ€Â)
  • Speaking of new parts, Bob and I are working on two new parts, which should be very useful now that reentry heat is a thing. More on that later.
  • Added a difficulty slider to turn reentry heat down (or up, or entirely off… your choice)....
  • The Flight UI can now be made transparent through a game setting.
  • Added a ‘warp to next morning’ button at the KSC toolbar.
  • SAS Maneuver mode automatically disengages back to stability assist as dV nears zero.
  • Many improvements to ambient audio in flight.
  • The Round8 Toroidal Fuel Tank was repurposed as a 1.25m inline Xenon Tank.
  • The vessel info panel in the KnowledgeBase UI now shows a craft’s max acceleration and est. time to reach 0m/s (very useful for timing rendezvous burns)
  • Added a system to generate and display thumbnails for craft files in the LaunchDialog and CraftBrowser screens. (thumbnails not required for sharing craft files)
  • Several improvements to part shaders, especially around transparent textured ones.
  • Added PorkJet’s awesome new Mk3 wing sections.

There’s also been several other minor fixes and tweaks, from proper detection and placement of splashdown effects at very high speeds (now that that’s possible) to making pressure and temperature experiment modules able to function in space… It was an intense week, most assuredly.

That is a good list. A bigger xenon tank and a smaller SRB were stuff that was being asked by the players for a long, long time ... and I'm happy to see new MK3 parts. The fact that temp and pressure now can be taken in deep space is also a plus since it was a major suspension of disbelief breaker. Oh and godspeed on the work on those unnamed parts that will help with reentry ;)

Now on the critics ( not destructive ones, though ): the fact that you can change the transparency of the Flight UI is a good thing ( in fact, there is no reason to not extend all of that customization to all the UI ;) ). But you need to be careful fo that to make that important intel to get hard to read. Notice that this already happens in current game with the survey contracts, where the only input we have we are entering the zone is a fairly dim yellow warning on screen that can be quite hard to see vs the environment. The slider for reentry heat was already expected ,so there is not much to say and TBH I couldn't care less for the warp to morning ( I know some people care; I simply don't :D )

Mike (Mu): It’s been another week of bug fixing and optimisation. There has been a lot more work put into balancing and tuning the aero system too. The jet engines have had another pass with respect to their characteristics. For those that don’t know, the airflow through jet engines (and thus fuel flow, and thus thrust) is now a function of mach and of air density giving them more interesting limitations and effects.

Keep up with the good work, Mu. Those are good news indeed.

Jim (Romfarer): Following up on the tech tee changes i was applying last week to make every node visible, this week i started updating the icons for the new and modified nodes. In the current system all tech tree icons are hardcoded into the backend. This was fine when it was created, but later additions to the tree has made it painfully clear that we had to do something about it. So i’m in the middle of replacing this old system with a more flexible version. It is quite similar to the PartCategorizer in VAB/SPH: it’s all config definable and modders can now easily add their own custom icon for every node.

Same as for Mu. This is something that was needed and was being insistently asked for since the tech tree became stock. Thanks for the work there ;)

Rogelio (Roger): I’ve been rendering and doing some post production tasks, last week I started to play with particle systems to do some clouds. Also I’ve been fixing some textures, doing some changes and rendering some shots to see if we’re achieving what we want. We’re almost done with rendering and we’ll start with the comp.

Too bad this is not for the game itself :( Anyway, thanks for the work Roger , and hopefully we will be able to see your work soon :D

Kasper (KasperVld): (...)

Something worth your attention was DasValdez’ special edition of Kerbal Space Academy last night in which he paid tribute to the famous Apollo 13 mission with special guests Sawyer ‘TheNasaGuy’ Rosenstein, Hank Green from VlogBrothers and former NASA astronaut Tom Jones! You can watch a video of the show here.

First of all, it was good to see you up to form this week :D And second, the DasValdez stream was actually a fairly good stream and Mr Jones interview was quite interesting. Also the stream got twitch 1st page honors in a day that was littered with GTA V pre-release streams, something that is not exactly a easy task ;)

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Fel

Fel

Posted
Posted

Not sure about this. Difficulty sliders make sense for the "game" elements, such as Money and Science and Rep. But should we really be able to change the laws of physics? That would be like having a slider to make engines more efficient or even change the gravity of Kerbin, not good.

Well, would you rather have a slider to turn off the reentry heat if you didn't want to deal with it for whatever reason or be forced to use a mod to turn that off?

It isn't like we haven't been changing the laws of physics for convenience anyways. The Kraken was slain, yet timewarp still stops all rotational motion. Reaction wheels, kerbin's sun being too small for fusion. Real time "transmission" for probes. Heck, we don't even have a proper truss simulation either; and often seek to get around it with procedural prats. I mean, when aren't we breaking the laws of physics for better game play?

I tend to be all for adding in absurd features and giving players easy ways to disable what they do or do not want.

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cantab

cantab

Posted
Posted

.625 m SRB maybe? Neat.

Warp to morning is a nice addition.

Changing the Round-8...I'm not so sure about that. While the game absolutely needs larger xenon tanks, the doughnut has good uses as it is. The game is full of parts that are "redundant...except in terms of design", but they stay in. The doughnut for me isn't redundant, I see it as the smallest 1.25m tank and it's valuable for "fine tuning" fuel amounts on craft with slim margins. So a new xenon tank would be better I feel, base it on an existing one like the doughnut or maybe the .625m xenon tank and I can't see it being an awful lot of work.

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NoMrBond

NoMrBond

Posted
Posted (edited)

Will we see a more standard looking (say FL-T5) fuel tank for the 0.625 size to give us a bit of design flexibility since the round-8 change is going to leave our options there a little sparse?

What change is making splashdowns at very high speeds possible? Does this mean precision of water interactions has been improved to be less, err, lethal?

Cool the hear about shader improvements and bug fixing, butttttt would it be possible to hear about them in a little detail?

Edited by NoMrBond
accidentally a word
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Eric S

Eric S

Posted
Posted
Not sure about this. Difficulty sliders make sense for the "game" elements, such as Money and Science and Rep. But should we really be able to change the laws of physics? That would be like having a slider to make engines more efficient or even change the gravity of Kerbin, not good.

DRE wound up making reentry heat adjustable as well, because the realistic level of heat didn't provide enough challenge for some players, so they added a setting that would cause more reentry heat than physics would support. Because of the reduced reentry velocity caused by smaller planets, it's possible to reenter without a heatshield even with DRE installed if you're using the "realistic" setting, and that's without using rockets to kill off most of your velocity.

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