Devnote Tuesday: Back to Work!

[SQUAD]

<figure data-orig-width="480" data-orig-height="92" class="tmblr-full"><img data-orig-width="480" data-orig-height="92" src="https://41.media.tumblr.com/0ff9377afa68dc3ad3fe6844aaf1bd38/tumblr_inline_nom74agW511rr2wit_540.jpg"/></figure><p><b>Felipe (HarvesteR): </b>Things are mostly back to normal now, and I if you’ve been following Max’s tweets recently, you’ll know by now that Unity 5 is the next big thing we have coming up for KSP. We started work last week on porting the game to the new Unity, and I do mean porting the game, because the move from U4 to U5 is by no means a simple automatic upgrade. I had said earlier that it was going to take some doing… I may have grossly understated the situation. U5 is a vastly improved platform, but it is a vastly modified platform as well. .As a result we are going over large swaths of game code and assets here, to make sure everything will run properly. </p><p>The game UI, which admittedly has suffered from the lack of a robust UI backend in the past, is now being completely revised, to use Unity’s new (and awesome) native UI system. You can readily imagine just how large of a job that is. We’re talking all of the game’s UI. Every button, panel, dialog and icon will have to be revised. In the end though, we should see some really cool benefits, not least among which should be a hefty boost to performance.</p><p>Speaking of performance, Unity 5 now uses the much improved PhysX 3.5, compared to the really outdated 2.8 version we had until now. The new PhysX is optimized for multiple threads, is more accurate and more stable, and is generally better in every measurable way. However, it’s not without its own set of changes that are (you guessed it) also backward-incompatible. Wheel colliders for one are completely changed, which means we have to update our own… That should be hopefully straightforward. </p><p>One thing I didn’t expect would be a problem though, was a small but far-reaching change: Rigidbodies using Mesh colliders would previously collide just fine with other rigidbody mesh colliders, as long as one of them was a convex mesh. This is no longer the case. Now, if you have two rigidbody objects, both mesh colliders have to be convex. At first glance, this seemed fine, as all our parts are already convex, and the terrain isn’t a rigidbody object, so it can still have a con-convex mesh. So all is good then… except asteroids. </p><p>Asteroids are the one exception to this new convex collider rule. They have to be able to collide with other parts (for obvious reasons), and they also have to have rigidbodies, otherwise they wouldn’t be maneuverable. That put us in a bit of a quandary, because using a single convex hull around an asteroid is just not accurate enough. Asteroids can be very large, compared to spacecraft and Kerbals, and we wouldn’t want objects hitting (or grappling on to) invisible walls over and around the rock surface.</p><p>We half expected we might run across problems like this, which is the reason why we couldn’t take this upgrade as a small job, or even estimate how long it would take. This one issue in particular did have a solution, which took two days to implement. It’s a piece of code I’m actually quite proud of, 700+ lines to procedurally generate solid collision geometry, and all it does is make asteroids behave no differently from before. It can be a thankless job sometimes… But it was a lot of fun to code, in a geeky, procedural-mesh-enthusiast kind of way.</p><p>That aside, we’re also going over shaders. U5 changed the way shaders are compiled, so several of our own shaders broke in various ways, from minor alpha blending issues, to straight up not compiling at all.. We have our work cut out for us now to go through all those problematic shaders, and convince them to work again.</p><p>Not all is woe and trouble though. Here’s the good bits: The Unity Editor itself is now 64-bit, meaning we can now finally properly support 64-bit development. This doesn’t immediately translate itself to a 64-bit build coming out again, but the good news is that we caught some bugs in the new editor that were specific to previous KSP x64 builds. This means the Editor’s internal player is very similar to the x64 unity player, and that means we can now look for (and hopefully fix) bugs which until now were impossible to even reproduce in a development environment. As for when x64 will be available again, it’s way too early to tell yet, but we should be able to start targeting that platform once more, and run test builds on it again.</p><p>And lastly, I reckon it turned out for the best that we couldn’t include the audio pass we had planned for the 1.0 release due to time constraints, because Unity5 has the most awesome audio toolset I’ve ever seen in a game engine. Imagine tools you’d find in pro audio software like Audition or ProTools, inside the game engine. Multi-channel mixing, EQ control at runtime, the works! It would have been such a wasted opportunity had we managed to get the audio revision in on time for 1.0… Good things did come for those who waited in this case. </p><p>Well, that’s the news on my end for this week.</p><p><b>Alex (aLeXmOrA): </b>After a week hanging out with the KSP team here in Mexico City, now it’s time to get back to work. I’ve been helping doing the KerbalEDU builds that will have KSP 1.0 features, so all the schools that have purchased the educational version can enjoy them. Also, as you may know, our websites are in a provisional server solution. Since the release was close and we needed to move the sites, we found the best and temporary hosting for them, but now I’m working to set them up to their final home. All the issues you’ve been experiencing in the Wiki, such as image rendering and math calculations, will be solved after the migration. Sorry for the inconveniences that any of those are causing.</p><p><b>Marco (Samssonart):</b> It’s been a while, much has happened since the release, on the one side are the good times with all the guys, on our meetup week where we discussed future plans and had a very good time; on the other side I’ve been crying over not having Rsync access to the new server yet, which means no patcher and lots of confused people asking how to update, sob sob. This week I’ve been helping Alex out with the KerbalEdu builds and checking that the tutorial UI’s work as expected using the newer Unity system, of course they don’t out of the box, they’re going to take some work.</p><p><b>Daniel (danRosas): </b>This past weeks have been for planning and having that slow time after the storm. On the devnotes side of the week, we’ve prepared two Shapeways models that are pending approval. I guess you know of which models I’m talking about, two Valentina Kerman prints. Also noticed some things that could be improved upon for the Kerbals, which I’ll work on after the Unity 5 issues are resolved. </p><p><b>Jim (Romfarer):</b> Despite the 25 hour trip back and forth i had a really good time in Mexico, i even got to jump/fall out of a plane. The trip was not all fun and games though, little actual work was done but we had some good discussions about the future of KSP. The first thing that hit me is that we are going to replace the 3 previous gui systems with the new unity 5 gui system. As felipe mentioned it is a monumental task also considering i have to learn the new system beforehand. But i am in good spirits and am actually looking forward to overhauling everything.</p><p><b>Max (Maxmaps):</b> We jumped out of a plane, spent a lovely weekend relaxing and overeating in ludicrous manners. Now it’s back to work. I’ve been organizing the update plan for the next few updates (yes, plural) while figuring out how to most effectively organize the team to speed up Multiplayer’s development. Adding to that the fact that the U5 update is turning out to be a tremendous workload, we’ve got quite the busy schedule for the foreseeable future. </p><p><b>Ted (Ted):</b> Ted is currently busy with exams. Good luck Ted!</p><p><b>Rogelio (Roger):</b> Not so much, after having a really nice week with the european team, we’ve been doing some proposals for more shapeways models, we have to try many times because sometimes the wall thickness of the models doesn’t match the shapeways requirements, also .I’ve been cleaning my file folders they were a mess.</p><p><b>Kasper (KasperVld):</b> We’re getting back in our regular rhythm now. Personally I’m still recovering from the jetlag after an amazing week in Mexico. It’s been great catching up to what you guys have been doing while we were there, keep the fanart coming! However, there’s one thing that even after more than three years with the community I don’t quite understand yet: <i><a href="http://i.imgur.com/3ZLwFQY.jpg">what is it with KSP and birthday cakes</a></i>? Regardless, happy 30th birthday Clayton!</p>

[regex]

Wooooo Unity 5. *\o/* Hoping we can see a patch soon for the 1.0.2 aero issues?

[Commander Jebidiah]

Can we get the 1.0.0 aero back Squad?

[ZodiusInfuser]

When I read this all I can think of is the hassle it will cause all us modders when the update comes around, especially this whole change to physics and collision meshes

Also, any hope of getting a 1.0.3 update to fix the rest of the bugs with the game before diving into another 2+ month development cycle? I know I've been experiencing issues with things, and have seen a number of streamers encountering problems too.

[Endersmens]

Wow. Just wow.

This update (to U5) will likely be the longest update to date. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a year or more.

However, it will be so worth it. U5 will bring so many things to the game that are gonna be totally amazing.

[nadreck]

Can you turn up the re-entry heat just a little?

[Sheppard]

Unity 5, multiplayer, x64 - AWSOME!

[Space_Kraken]

Unity 5 now uses the much improved PhysX 3.5

Unity 5.

PhysX 3.5

*squeals*

[amorymeltzer]

All I really wanted were Devnotes anyway. Thanks Squad!

[Whirligig Girl]

Can you turn up the re-entry heat just a little?

So here's the thing with Kerbin entry heating. It may seem a bit too easy when coming back to Kerbin, but have you tried going to Jool? It's extremely unforgiving. So it's not actually a low entry heating setting, it's just that Kerbin has a relatively forgiving atmosphere.

let me guess regex, it doesn't make any sense.

[Starwhip]

Yeah! New devnotes!

Business as usual, then, I suppose?

[DanJourney]

I was also wondering about the possibility of a 1.0.3 patch (I think Max may have mentioned a hotfix in a tweet recently). A lot of little things could still be made even better!

Other than that, it's great to hear from the team again! U5 and the other changes sound awesome. Sounds like great problem-solving is already taking place!

Edited May 19, 2015 by DanJourney
Speeling.

[NoMrBond]

You can get access to the latest PhysX 3.3.3 source from the nVidia github repository now too (don't know if that would help though?)

Will all the shaders still be targeted at DX9 after the update? Some of them don't behave (well, or at all) under DX11 or OpenGL? And I guess, why not just use the standard shader instead of multiple custom shaders, is the standard shader a bit of performance hog?

Everyone's sounding mostly refreshed and inspired too, and good luck Ted with the exams

[CaptainKipard]

OK.. This is all nice, but career mode?

Also will we be able to use the new physical shaders?

[r4pt0r]

All the code changes with U5 shouldn't break saves after the U5 update comes right?

[1greywind]

Not a word about hotfix?

[r_rolo1]

Devnotes again ? Yay ... TBH I was already starting to worry

Good to know that the work on the Unity 5 port is going well enough. And on the asteroid issue, Harv, not all the parts are convex in KSP ... remember the cargo bays insides ? Unless you did some cheating on there, the cargo and service bays are quite concave

And, to end, good luck on the UI and sounds overhaul. Both areas need it ( especially the UI ... please use this chance to think in a way to rationalize the whole UI structure, that nowadays is still quite crazy ).

[pizzaoverhead]

And lastly, I reckon it turned out for the best that we couldn’t include the audio pass we had planned for the 1.0 release due to time constraints, because Unity5 has the most awesome audio toolset I’ve ever seen in a game engine. Imagine tools you’d find in pro audio software like Audition or ProTools, inside the game engine. Multi-channel mixing, EQ control at runtime, the works! It would have been such a wasted opportunity had we managed to get the audio revision in on time for 1.0… Good things did come for those who waited in this case.

Excellent! Audio is one of the few remaining placeholder areas of the game, I can't wait to hear what you do with it!

[Nemrav]

ha ha ha knew it would be the wheel colliders, knew it..... well, it ruined my own backroom vehicle game for now (but neither have had the time recently to repair it either..)

I'm guessing wheel colliders break down into about these issues :

1) they are designed for a predefined vehicle weight, meaning the planes and rovers will need a funny script to adjust the wheel colliders for the weight changes in real time

2) insane torque needed to get them moving, self-explanitory (this is the biggest issue I've noticed with the new wheels)

3) there is a little known wheel lock "feature" that will probably break landing gear, unity demo gets around this by giving gear a bit of torque.

4) not forgiving for not weighted enough/too weighted vehicles (vehicles springing to infinity and getting compressed under the terrain)

heres a unity thread with some solutions in it + help : http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-5-wheelcollider-component-is-unusable.307099/ unity posted a reply on one of the later pages....

great work on the procedural colliders ! its hard making proc meshes, but colliders.... AMAZING, and in such a short time too...

GL:HF

[biohazard15]

Unity 5, new PhysX, x64 - great news!

Multiplayer... meh, I still hope that it won't be released. KSP does not need this.

[CaptainKipard]

Excellent! Audio is one of the few remaining placeholder areas of the game, I can't wait to hear what you do with it!

There are no placeholders anymore the game is out.

[Bill Phil]

Thanks for starting the tackling of U5, and everything that needs to be done.

[Seshins]

yay for devnotes! really looking forward to U5

[Orionkermin]

Just make sure you release the new version of part tools with the update

[Linear]

Wow. Just wow.

This update (to U5) will likely be the longest update to date. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a year or more.

However, it will be so worth it. U5 will bring so many things to the game that are gonna be totally amazing.

Grossly overestimated. No where near.