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Devnote Tuesday: Hello, World.


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<figure data-orig-width="480" data-orig-height="92" class="tmblr-full">tumblr_inline_nskrxqIaFZ1rr2wit_540.jpg</figure>Felipe (HarvesteR)

These past two weeks I haven’t quite been working on any specific features, but rather in a general framework to support large additions to the game later on. More specifically, this will be the underlying framework for the next big things, like Multiplayer. The idea with this framework is to leave the base game, as much as possible, unchanged, and by not changing it so much, we get to cut down on unity compile times, as well as making the new content much more portable and easy to work with.

This may sound somewhat familiar if you’re a mod developer… and it actually is. This framework uses the same runtime assembly loading system we’ve always had for mod plugins, but it goes beyond it on some areas, mainly asset loading and such. It also involves designing a new build pipeline (coming soon) to automate builds for these things, hopefully without requiring the entire game to be rebuilt every time.

There is one good addition that might help out modders too. I’m not sure if this happens when developing to a build of KSP, but it did in Unity and it was driving me mad. Whenever I ran the game, the assemblies would load and all, but after stopping, they wouldn’t get released from being ‘in use’. Meaning any attempts to recompile in the following 2-3 minutes would result in the .dll files not being copied over because they were supposedly being used by the game. I found this awesome C# feature though, called Shadow Copying, which is meant to solve that exact problem. What it does is, whenever you load an assembly into your program, instead of loading it from the dll file directly, the file is first copied to a temp location, then the copy is loaded. That leaves the original dll file free to be modified, and allows me to keep my sanity at reasonable levels! Everybody wins!

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the way this system is working. It might not be terribly exciting unless you are an organized data structure enthusiast, but this will allow us to continue building big things for KSP in updates to come.

Mike (Mu)

I’ve just finished re-implementing the Kerbal portraits back into the flight scene. They’ve been missing for some time and it was getting lonely. As with most areas of this upgrade I’ve been reworking the backend code as i go along so that it’s not so crazy and runs smoother too. We can’t be too far away from some decent QA testing on this new stuff, looking forward to it shipping.

Marco (Samssonart)

This was a very fun week, we have our PS4 test kits set up in our temporary office. It’s been wild, considering the office is in maintenance mode and the dev kit has a certain number of requirements to be able to be recognized by the computer; and even physically finding a place on a desk for the kit to sit is hard. The dev kit and development side and the PS4 SDK are under NDA, so forgive me for not being able to disclose much about it, but I’m only hoping we can play our WIP KSP version on the PS4 test kit sometime this week.

Daniel (danRosas)

Got a little tired due last week’s trip. Picked up some stuff for Squad, and visited good friends! Back home, I worked on a launcher screen for Max, and kept on with the assets for of the game. Created prefabs and imported the new stuff. Next thing to do is pull the scripts, and start making those assets work. On the other hand we’ve been playing Rocket League in our spare time, and we’ve discovered a new obsession. Playing with Romfarer it’s an assured win!

Jim (Romfarer)

All the stock apps have been implemented in U5 so this week I’m concentrating on finishing up the application launcher. In an earlier devnote I mentioned that we are planning on making knowledge base run under app launcher. This shouldn’t affect the look of the game much but it was necessary in order to have the app launcher go on the right hand side of the screen. Behind the scenes the knowledge base will be split into five apps which will be displayed in mapview and tracking station as before.

Max (Maxmaps)

It has been one of those weeks where it doesn’t really feel like I can write good devnotes. The Unity 5 work goes along nicely, as goes the studio renovations and repairs. The most important thing I’ve been involved in is helping Badie get used to the studio and her new duties. All the while, I can’t wait to be back on my usual desk. You really miss the second screen when it’s gone!

Ted (Ted)

I’ve been staring into the abyss of data processing and analysis (if you could call it that), this past week. The Experimental Applications have been closed - with a final count of 387 - and preliminary filtering and sorting performed, with the majority of the applications still undecided on. I’ve created a pretty simple mail merge and have just been going through them one-by-one, quickly eliminating the applications that aren’t viable, leaving a good quantity of great applications. It’ll take its time, but I want to ensure I’m not overlooking any applicants and there’s no real metric that applicants can be filtered out by - other than the NDA question.

Additionally, I’ve been auditing our Experimental Testing Team, which has been its own bit of fun in Excel! That’s pretty simple, with the general activity being gauged from the last activity on the Bug Tracker and Forums, as well as of course how often they’re seen in IRC, the Forums and the Bug Tracker. This audit doesn’t really deal with the quality of reports, as that’s not something we find decreases across the team. The hard part of the audit is dealing with the fair amount of data and ensuring that there’s no foibles in the methodology for determining inactivity.

Lastly, I’ve been doing the usual production tasks of checking in with the developers on Unity 5, 1.1 and such as well as having meetings here and there to sort out things of a technical nature!

Kasper (KasperVld)

It’s been a terrifying week for me personally, as I was waiting for the results of my exam to come in, thankfully I passed with a good grade and that means my bachelor of science degree should come soon. More KSP related is the overhaul of the media group, which took a fair amount of time to set up and complete. A few of you have sent me applications to join after last week’s devnotes and I’ll be going through those with Andrea soon.

I leave you with a question: are any of you planning to visit OpenESTEC in the Netherlands next October?

Andrea (Badie)

Hey guys! I’m the new CM, I’m happy to be part of KSP, this is my first week so i’ll be learning everything from the team members and specially Kasper, I hope i’ll adapt very quickly. From now on you can count on my full disposition..

Edited by KasperVld
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Mike (Mu)

I’ve just finished re-implementing the Kerbal portraits back into the flight scene. They’ve been missing for some time and it was getting lonely.

Is there a way to have portraits show for all Kerbals on a craft regardless of whether there is an IVA? Maybe have them displayed against a black background or something? It would be great to have the ones in a command seat show up and that sort of thing.
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<figure data-orig-width="480" data-orig-height="92" class="tmblr-full">https://41.media.tumblr.com/0ff9377afa68dc3ad3fe6844aaf1bd38/tumblr_inline_nskrxqIaFZ1rr2wit_540.jpg</figure>Felipe (HarvesteR)

There is one good addition that might help out modders too. I’m not sure if this happens when developing to a build of KSP, but it did in Unity and it was driving me mad. Whenever I ran the game, the assemblies would load and all, but after stopping, they wouldn’t get released from being ‘in use’.

Could those be a source of memory leaks? Not being released sounds like it could lead to memory leaks.

Kasper (KasperVld)

It’s been a terrifying week for me personally, as I was waiting for the results of my exam to come in, thankfully I passed with a good grade and that means my bachelor of science degree should come soon. More KSP related is the overhaul of the media group, which took a fair amount of time to set up and complete. A few of you have sent me applications to join after last week’s devnotes and I’ll be going through those with Andrea soon.

Congrats on passing the exams! :D

Andrea (Badie)

Hey guys! I’m the new CM, I’m happy to be part of KSP, this is my first week so i’ll be learning everything from the team members and specially Kasper, I hope i’ll adapt very quickly. From now on you can count on my full disposition..

Hi Andrea! :) Welcome to the community!

Just wondering, how do you pronounce your username?

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It sounds to me like most of the Unity 5 work is being wrapped up... ;) SOON is the word!

Good to hear Kasper! Regardless of the outcomes of that draft I l look forwards to seeing some fun videos and new faces next release. :D - I also forgot to mention that I am following a career in video and motion graphics.

Andrea, it's good to have you. :) If you ever need someone to help with community competitions or similar things I'd love to help out!

- I really have to say that this weeks devnotes are top notch ;)

Edited by Avera9eJoe
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Is there a way to have portraits show for all Kerbals on a craft regardless of whether there is an IVA? Maybe have them displayed against a black background or something? It would be great to have the ones in a command seat show up and that sort of thing.

Wouldn't this help the other way as well? Allow you to "turn off" IVA and save the memory, but still have the portraits?

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Andrea (Badie)Hey guys! I’m the new CM, I’m happy to be part of KSP

Welcome aboard Andrea! Welcome to the forums! Good luck getting an overview of everything that goes on here, mastering the game(if you haven't already) (or whatever it is you'll be doing as you prepare to be CM.)

We're a friendly bunch, mostly, willing to explain and discuss. We're here for space, flying, challenge, and adventure!

Unless you ask the wrong modder stupid questions, post a lot of rubbish, or raise some of career's most poorly thought out features, which may stir some passion...

Also, we have been known to get jealous if you spend more time with reddit than here.

Is there a way to have portraits show for all Kerbals on a craft regardless of whether there is an IVA?

It sounds possible, it's just a unity camera facing the Kerbal.There's probably more to it though, iirc, currently, those cameras only pick up things on certain layers.

Edited by Tw1
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Great! Where did she come from? What snapped inside Kasper's head that said, "Yeah, this person should be the new CM."

Rowsdower came in as a stranger from the outside too, remember, and he wasn't too bad.

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Nice devnotes, thanks! Great to hear the Unity5 stuff is coming along nicely, and wow, PS4 port ready to run on a DevKit? Wasn't really expecting that so soon.. although guessing that's still with mouse/keyboard, and not controller yet. Looking forward to seeing that running!

Not so thrilled about multiplayer personally (although hoping to be pleasantly surprised), so wondering what other "big additions" are being planned for the future of KSP which the new framework will support?

@Kasper: Definitely have been thinking about heading to OpenESTEC; sounds awesome!

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Could those be a source of memory leaks? Not being released sounds like it could lead to memory leaks.

No, those .dlls only bother developers as they are "in use" even after exiting the program, what prevent them from being manipulated with (and Devs need to do that all the time), if I understand it correctly. Memory leaks are caused by mirroring textures, which is bug in Unity4 engine itself. Hopefully, the Unity5 will not suffer from this issue.

Welcome Badie! I hope you will find this community as friendly and inspirational as I do. Not counting few rare exceptions (begging for pirate copies of the game on FB page, reading the comments of loayal members really gives you the idea of the spirit of the community), this community is one of the best I was ever part of. I believe its because of slight intelect requiements of the game itself :-)

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Awww now I miss Rowsdower.

Nothing (seriously) against any community managers before or since, but Rowsdower was great.

^^ Rows was responsive and chill, mad props to him for putting up with us.
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Is there a way to have portraits show for all Kerbals on a craft regardless of whether there is an IVA? Maybe have them displayed against a black background or something? It would be great to have the ones in a command seat show up and that sort of thing.

Or having more than three visible at once (especially since we have a full 4-crew cockpit)

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Or having more than three visible at once (especially since we have a full 4-crew cockpit)
Eh... Would rather not have my entire lower screen filled with Kerbals (unless we can move the navball? Please?), but it would be nice to scroll through them all.
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Or having more than three visible at once (especially since we have a full 4-crew cockpit)

Orrrr being able to choose the portrait area (this bit is filled with portraits) and scale (this is how big the portraits are) so people can set up to their own tastes (and screen size/resolution)

P.S. If Mu could please add a class (and tourist) indicator to the portraits while they're rooting about in that particular system, that would be awesome.

Edited by NoMrBond
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