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Devnote Tuesday: Greener Pastures mk2


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Great stuff, except Rogelio. Let us know when you release something so we can check it out!

Hopefully 1.0.3 will be out by the weekend. For once I have nothing to do and can think of nothing better than playing KSP.

One question about Unity 5. I know that joints like in Infernal Robotics are buggy in the current Unity, but are they better supported in Unity 5? Will we finally be able to build unfolding satellites and space ships that fit nicely under fairings yet transform into awesomeness once in space?

- - - Updated - - -

@Mu - while you're rewriting UIs can you make the contract and engineers apps more than a paltry 140 pixels wide?

Horizontally resizable would be nice, and maybe a font size option. #OldEyes

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Do keep in mind though, that balancing is very much a subjective thing, and what feels right for one may not feel right for others, so the bottomline is that there is no exact solution to it. We aim to hit a happy middle ground, but we can only act on feedback accumulated over a reasonable period of time (at least several weeks), and from which we can identify a general trend towards a specific direction. My point with this is that 1.0.3 is firstly focused on fixing technical issues, then glaring balance problems and potential exploits, and lastly, subjective balancing, when applicable.
Thank you very much. You've said exactly the right thing. Game balancing is a dark art. No matter what you do, someone will feel you went too far, or not far enough. Trying to strike for middle ground, and providing knobs for modders to turn higher or lower, is for the best. The game has a lot of moving parts in it, figuratively and literally. I hope Squad will continue to mine the forums and consult with moderators, who are usually well in tune with complaints and reports of inconsistent behaviors.
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My only question is. Will the Explore Minmus contract ever pop up? As well as Eve and the other ones. Kind of holding off going else where till I get Minmus to show up... As anyone else gotten the explore Minmus to pop up?

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My only question is. Will the Explore Minmus contract ever pop up? As well as Eve and the other ones. Kind of holding off going else where till I get Minmus to show up... As anyone else gotten the explore Minmus to pop up?

You can force it to show up with the cheat menu, but I have had several of those that did not show up. Minmus, Duna, strangely I did get Ike. Personally I think the Explore Body contracts should be automatic like the Worlds First, that way you aren't waiting on a contract to progress and you know you are eventually going to some other body. My opinion anyway. Possibly Fly by contracts too. Basically any contract that has the potential to no longer appear after it has been done should be automatic.

Edited by Alshain
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Mike (Mu)What a fun week it’s been. We embarked on the Unity 5 upgrade last week and decided that we would consolidate all of our UI systems on to the Unity native UI system. So thus i’ve been going through the entire game and replicating, rewriting and reworking every piece of UI. This is a bit of a chore but the rewards for it will be great. The game will run faster, be slightly smaller, be more easily moddable and, just as important, be faster to work on. It also paves the way for future enhancements and allows for much better scaling with odd aspect ratios, screen resolutions. There will also going to be a UI scale slider for those amongst you with really good/bad eyesight.
My only question is. Will the Explore Minmus contract ever pop up? As well as Eve and the other ones. Kind of holding off going else where till I get Minmus to show up... As anyone else gotten the explore Minmus to pop up?
You can force it to show up with the cheat menu, but I have had several of those that did not show up. Minmus, Duna, strangely I did get Ike. Personally I think the Explore Body contracts should be automatic like the Worlds First, that way you aren't waiting on a contract to progress and you know you are eventually going to some other body. My opinion anyway. Possibly Fly by contracts too. Basically any contract that has the potential to no longer appear after it has been done should be automatic.

Shameless plug: I've made a suggestion that fixes this, and it requires only very few changes to the contract system itself... it's mostly a UI redesign issue, a difference in the way in which contracts are presented to the player.

And since Unity 5 requires redoing the UIs anyway... ;)

Hey Mu, do you think there's room for something like this in 1.1? Or would that be out of scope? I really believe it would greatly improve the flow of career mode gameplay, and there seems no opportunity more convenient than this.

P.S.: That UI scale slider? Best thing ever! Not only for those of us with bad eyesight, but also for those of us with high resolution displays or the GPU power to utilize downsampling/dynamic super resolution. There's a growing trend towards high resolutions as a means of avoiding aliasing and texture flicker in the games industry right now. And perhaps in five years it'll be perfectly normal to play even games like KSP on 4K or higher simply for the image crispness, with no more need for antialiasing strategies. Great to see that KSP will be prepared for that shift! :)

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Good luck, Roger! Tell me what your game is and I'll probably buy it!:D

On another note, Devnotes are looking fantastic! Glad to see the plushies are available, and the new patches are shaping up to look excellent!

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I don't see a devnote from Porkjet. Are we left with broken medium/large landing gear models?

Nor do you from Arsonide or RoverDude. DevNotes are usually just the Squad employees, not the contractors.

Anyone else tiring of the use of the word "broken" for "not what I want"? The new gear work fine, they aren't "broken". Just need some animation for the wheels when turning, but that's an aesthetic issue that doesn't break the game. Not meaning to single you out, it's everywhere. Fairings are heavier than expected and separate in an odd way? Broken! Drag too high? Broken! Drag too low? Broken! LV-Ns generate more heat than preferred? Broken!

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Nor do you from Arsonide or RoverDude. DevNotes are usually just the Squad employees, not the contractors.

Anyone else tiring of the use of the word "broken" for "not what I want"? The new gear work fine, they aren't "broken". Just need some animation for the wheels when turning, but that's an aesthetic issue that doesn't break the game. Not meaning to single you out, it's everywhere. Fairings are heavier than expected and separate in an odd way? Broken! Drag too high? Broken! Drag too low? Broken! LV-Ns generate more heat than preferred? Broken!

Yes. Nearly as tired as I am with overuse of 'rushed'.

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Nor do you from Arsonide or RoverDude. DevNotes are usually just the Squad employees, not the contractors.

Anyone else tiring of the use of the word "broken" for "not what I want"? The new gear work fine, they aren't "broken". Just need some animation for the wheels when turning, but that's an aesthetic issue that doesn't break the game. Not meaning to single you out, it's everywhere. Fairings are heavier than expected and separate in an odd way? Broken! Drag too high? Broken! Drag too low? Broken! LV-Ns generate more heat than preferred? Broken!

Thank you so much for this. The day the Word "broken" was introduced into conversations all around the Web was a very dark one.

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Nor do you from Arsonide or RoverDude. DevNotes are usually just the Squad employees, not the contractors.

Anyone else tiring of the use of the word "broken" for "not what I want"? The new gear work fine, they aren't "broken". Just need some animation for the wheels when turning, but that's an aesthetic issue that doesn't break the game. Not meaning to single you out, it's everywhere. Fairings are heavier than expected and separate in an odd way? Broken! Drag too high? Broken! Drag too low? Broken! LV-Ns generate more heat than preferred? Broken!

Very much. Also "Stupid" and "Dumb" make me cringe.

The vast number of ways the forum community has to say "not my preferred thing" is amazing.

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Rogelio (Roger)

Hi guys just wanted to tell you that I’m leaving the KSP team to start a new mobile gaming project on my own

Best of luck !

Felipe (HarvesteR)

they are right up at the limits of SM3 constraints, and U5 adds a couple of new things that effectively give us fewer texture interpolators to play with.

Did you see the Unity blog post about 5.1 (I know :P) and their upgrade of the OpenGL engine to allow DX11 level features ?

Mike (Mu)

It also paves the way for future enhancements and allows for much better scaling with odd aspect ratios, screen resolutions. There will also going to be a UI scale slider for those amongst you with really good/bad eyesight.

Or large resolution. Many thanks :)

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Nor do you from Arsonide or RoverDude. DevNotes are usually just the Squad employees, not the contractors.
In J.Random's defense, it's not necessarily clear what their relationship with Squad was/is. I want to go a bit further on this single point: the 1.0 "launch edition" Devnote was a special edition, where major feature contributors were publicly thanked by Squad for their work, and given some space in Squad's Devnotes to talk about their features. Seeing their words there without much explanation, could make a reader wonder if they were now Squad employees. I certainly hope Squad will continue to consult with them about their work, any follow-up that might be required based on bug reports and balance questions, and expand on their features in future updates.
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Anyone else tiring of the use of the word "broken" for "not what I want"? The new gear work fine, they aren't "broken". Just need some animation for the wheels when turning, but that's an aesthetic issue that doesn't break the game. Not meaning to single you out, it's everywhere. Fairings are heavier than expected and separate in an odd way? Broken! Drag too high? Broken! Drag too low? Broken! LV-Ns generate more heat than preferred? Broken!

^^^This +1

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Nor do you from Arsonide or RoverDude. DevNotes are usually just the Squad employees, not the contractors.

Anyone else tiring of the use of the word "broken" for "not what I want"? The new gear work fine, they aren't "broken". Just need some animation for the wheels when turning, but that's an aesthetic issue that doesn't break the game. Not meaning to single you out, it's everywhere. Fairings are heavier than expected and separate in an odd way? Broken! Drag too high? Broken! Drag too low? Broken! LV-Ns generate more heat than preferred? Broken!

Did I say "broken landing gear"? No, I've said "broken [...] models". Model consists of mesh and animations. Missing animation is exactly this: broken model, like it or not. And yes, I want my wheels spinning. Who doesn't?

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Did I say "broken landing gear"? No, I've said "broken [...] models". Model consists of mesh and animations. Missing animation is exactly this: broken model, like it or not. And yes, I want my wheels spinning. Who doesn't?

You're right. Those models don't work at all, not usable. Completely broken. *Sigh*

Seriously, it's an aesthetic issue. Call them incomplete or ugly or something, but "broken" does not apply. And note that that doesn't mean I don't agree that they should be animated, they really should. But it is an aesthetic issue, not breaking anything.

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The great dev exodus begins...
Right?
Anyone else tiring of the use of the word "broken" for "not what I want"?
Haven't seen it used in that manner much. I have seen it used in the "not functioning properly" or "not complete" manner a lot around here, though.
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... Personally I think the Explore Body contracts should be automatic like the Worlds First, that way you aren't waiting on a contract to progress and you know you are eventually going to some other body. My opinion anyway. Possibly Fly by contracts too. Basically any contract that has the potential to no longer appear after it has been done should be automatic.

I definitely agree here. None of my careers have actually sent me to Duna - all of them sent me to Ike. I'm not even convinced that Mun is a reliable destination, and I'm pretty sure I've had Minmus come up first, even though it's very hard to hit without manoeuvre nodes!

(Though since I am now playing with the New Horizons pack, that could work rather badly against me, since my local planets are not what you'd expect anymore :blush:)

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Anyone else tiring of the use of the word "broken" for "not what I want"? ....

Or all the chicken little cries of 'BUG?!'. Most of which turn out to be problems between the chair and the keyboard.

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