Devnote Tuesday: Chugging Along

[NoMrBond]

@HarvesteR: You could write every dev note about wheels, lots of insights for me, thanks for explaining it so thorough!

On a similar note, could we get a editor screenshot of the Unity hierarchy for a wheel under the new system?

Staying in engine territory, did/does the Unity 5.2 (b1) release fix the issues that 5.1 introduced which were keeping the KSP project on 5.0?

[basic.syntax]

what kind of qualifications would be required to be an experimenter? or will there be more on that later?

I expect that Ted will update or just point us at his previous article, which is a great guide to QA and Exp test teams. Check it out here

[softweir]

Question- how does one apply for the Experimentals team? I saw Ted mention a Google Docs form in the last Devnotes, but I never found out what that was.

Squad will announce when they are ready to start taking applications, and will publicise the Google Docs form when they do - that's the way they've done it previously.

[hellion13]

Best devnotes in a while.

[StrandedonEarth]

Great Devnotes!

With all this UI stuff going on, could you guys please work in an in-flight Action Group manager? Maybe tie it to engineers...

PlzThx, That would be great

[smjjames]

I’d also love to hear from you guys on the subject of changing Squadcast’s format. Maybe doing something like going through community provided saves and challenges.

Maybe you could try some of the challenges on the challenge section?

[KrazyKrl]

Great Devnotes!

With all this UI stuff going on, could you guys please work in an in-flight Action Group manager? Maybe tie it to engineers...

PlzThx, That would be great

In my opinion, there are a lot of things that should be improved upon with the new, unified, UI. But this isn't the time to add features... First the current features need to be redone (and refactored) in the new engine, as shown by HarvesteR's updates on the wheel subsystem. There will be plenty of time for new features after the existing features are all ported over .

[Superfluous J]

I’d also love to hear from you guys on the subject of changing Squadcast’s format.

Oh I forgot to comment on this.

What if you recorded 30 minutes of gameplay ahead of time, and had it running while you answered questions only? Or if two people were involved, one played and had no interaction with the chat, while one answered questions?

This is kind of a followup to the speculation that Squadcast was going to cut down to 30 minutes.

[basic.syntax]

What if you recorded 30 minutes of gameplay ahead of time, and had it running while you answered questions only?

Addressing this part only... a pre-recorded sequence that is just background for live commentary... would not be as interesting. It could work, but half the life in SQ is seeing the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat, playing out live and direct. Trying to write something constructive - I like everyone's suggestions that Max seek out conversation guests / co-hosts. And trying out "problem scenarios / challenges" that he likes, drawn from player submissions.

[pxi]

If work wasn't at least somewhat repetitive, we'd probably have a different word for it

<p>I’d also love to hear from you guys on the subject of changing Squadcast’s format. Maybe doing something like going through community provided saves and challenges.</p>

In my honest opinion, I'd prefer that Squadcast was a little more focussed on discussing the game. There are plenty of channels on twitch if I want to watch someone play KSP, there is only one Squadcast. Community provided challenges might be interesting though.

[nightingale]

While we're at it, howsabout all that info at the top of the screen and on the left goes into map mode too? One of the reasons I use KER is it's super clunky in stock to know both my apoapsis and altitude at the same time, and there's no way to know both of those things at the exact time you stage.

I'd be most happy if the contracts app (and engineer's report while we're at it) wasn't a measly 160 pixels wide (making Wider Contracts App obsolete). Actually having the apps be fully resizable in both dimension would be great.

Hopefully this is already happening, given that the knowledge base has a lot more info to it, so it can't just be a teeny tiny little thing... right?

[regex]

a pre-recorded sequence that is just background for live commentary... would not be as interesting.

Watching Max play KSP isn't interesting to begin with. I'd also much rather have a podcast-style event that went over the week in development (or something) and lasted some fifteen minutes long rather than suffer through all the random commentary from the peanut gallery.

[Superfluous J]

Addressing this part only... a pre-recorded sequence that is just background for live commentary... would not be as interesting. It could work, but half the life in SQ is seeing the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat, playing out live and direct. Trying to write something constructive - I like everyone's suggestions that Max seek out conversation guests / co-hosts. And trying out "problem scenarios / challenges" that he likes, drawn from player submissions.

Watching Max play KSP isn't interesting to begin with. I'd also much rather have a podcast-style event that went over the week in development (or something) and lasted some fifteen minutes long rather than suffer through all the random commentary from the peanut gallery.

What regex said. Something to watch while actual Q&A occurs for a solid 30 minutes would blow the current 1 hour of... gameplay plus a few random questions answered off the cuff while only half paying attention.

[Streetwind]

Squadcast isn't a "live devnotes", though. It's a community interaction event.

I actually like the casual format. Who cares if Maxmaps doesn't stick a landing because he's too busy talking to the chatroom? Explosions Happen; it's a fact of life

[Superfluous J]

Squadcast isn't a "live devnotes", though. It's a community interaction event.

I actually like the casual format. Who cares if Maxmaps doesn't stick a landing because he's too busy talking to the chatroom? Explosions Happen; it's a fact of life

I don't want a "live devnotes." I want 30 dedicated minutes of what we get 10 sporadic and interrupted minutes of now: Several small, hopeful announcements and lots of Q&A.

[regex]

I actually like the casual format. Who cares if Maxmaps doesn't stick a landing because he's too busy talking to the chatroom? Explosions Happen; it's a fact of life

It's not that Max fails (if that was a problem I wouldn't be subscribed to 5thHorseman) it's that he's genuinely uninteresting to watch.

As for the community questions, take them beforehand, vet them, spend Squadcast answering them and doing the big reveals in fifteen minutes or less with a black screen, podcast style. I'd listen to that. Max + chatroom for an hour? Snooze-worthy and very hard to follow.

[Captain H@dock]

How come nobody's gone mad over that yet? If I read it right, this is going to be really impressive visually.

The large gear bay has also been improved, and now features a bogey module which controls the 4-wheeled pivoting undercarriage

[eddiew]

As repetitive as they may be, these are pretty good devnotes. It's a nice little reassurance that the things we know are/will be problems are still in the crosshairs. And I can't help but be excited about the U5 update. Even though I've no doubt it's a long way off, it looks like it could bring a lot of performance gain to the table, which translates to bigger and crazier ships! At the mo, I tend to get performance capped before I hit 255 parts so there's little incentive for a tier 3 VAB/SPH

[sysigy]

I look forward to the devnotes however repetitive every week.

I can't say I am pleased about this PS4 announcement, I don't believe the console community deserves your hard work and efforts, KSP is far to good a game for consoles but if it brings in more revenue for you guys to progress KSP into the future then I can't (and won't) hold it against you one bit.

[micha]

Thanks for the DevNote Tuesdays again! Always much anticipated and appreciated - even if you feel you don't have much to report, it is an interesting insight into the development.

Jim (Romfarer)

[...]

We are actually planning some changes. Before the applauncher was anchored in the top-right corner of the screen and the apps were laid out to the left. Now the plan is to lay the apps out downwards so they will take up the right hand of the screen.

[...]

PLEASE make this a configuration option! Not everybody plays on wide-screen monitors (a fad which I really haven't understood).

Having the applauncher down the right side of the screen will significantly impact my view of the game.

In fact, ideally, look to blizzy78's Toolbar mod for inspiration - being able to select which buttons are shown on each scene and where the toolbar is is fantastic.

[John FX]

+1 from me to have the toolbar contain adjustable size icons and for it to be able to be short and fat as well as a long vertical line, also to keep it horizontal if wanted. In short to have user adjustable options. I`d want to be able to hide some icons, have two (or more) rows, reorder icons, scene aware icon lists etc.

You could do worse than look at blizzy`s toolbar for ideas.

[DavidBowman]

New features for KSP 1.1? As in mods, or actual in-game mechanics??

Knowledge Base coming to the applauncher means we can check the crew without going to the map view. Now, how about Portrait Stat?

[Kiro]

Super excited for 1.1, GO DEV TEAM GO!!

[Donziboy2]

The ability to set inner wheels to turn less then outer wheels(divider) would also be nice, large multi axle vehicles with more then 1 set of steering wheels have different ratios to them. 2 sets of front wheels, the first set turn fully the second set turn based on the distance to front and rear tires.

[Terwin]

The ability to set inner wheels to turn less then outer wheels(divider) would also be nice, large multi axle vehicles with more then 1 set of steering wheels have different ratios to them. 2 sets of front wheels, the first set turn fully the second set turn based on the distance to front and rear tires.

Sounds like you are asking for 'Ackermann steering'

From June 23rd Dev notes:

Felipe (HarvesteR)

(...) The new steering module uses a new method to calculate which way each wheel should turn based on the steering input, which is used to figure out where the commanded turn ‘pivot’ point would be, and that is then used to make each wheel rotate to face sideways to that point, so regardless of where or how they are mounted on a vessel, wheels will always respond properly to steer the right way (There will still be steering invert and toggle tweaks though, just in case). Another benefit of this approach is that Ackermann steering happens as a consequence.

So looks like this is something that is not only planned, but mostly or completely implemented for 1.1 already.