Devnote Tuesday: New Format!

[Whirligig Girl]

As I said on twitter, not really keen on this new layout. I liked seeing what each individual dev had to say about their own work over the previous week, really. It was easier to digest that way rather than picking apart a single block covering it all.

I agree. These notes were also kind of short today.

[KasperVld]

I agree. These notes were also kind of short today.

We shared a ton off news this week, there isn't too much left of it

[Whirligig Girl]

We shared a ton off news this week, there isn't too much left of it

*of news since last devnote.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

As I said on twitter, not really keen on this new layout. I liked seeing what each individual dev had to say about their own work over the previous week, really. It was easier to digest that way rather than picking apart a single block covering it all.

I agree. Interesting devnotes, though!

[smjjames]

*of news since last devnote.

That's true....

[Zylark]

Rather than getting the sound out of each cylinder, we're hearing it through the manifold, muffler and finally out the chromed exhaust.

Not a big fan, as I like the technical stuff. I want some under the hood news. If you go from Imperial to Metric on the threads and bolts keeping together the engine and gearbox, I want to know about it.

All in all though, I am just complaining because you changed stuff, and that entitles me to complain. So there!

---

Too much?

Not enough?

between 0 and 255, lesser being simple, more being with detailed diagrams and schematics...

...

I'd like it more detailed and nuts and bolts - a solid 200 at least.

Edited August 25, 2015 by Zylark

[MadChris48]

You guys should hire a proofreader for your devnotes and other "official" announcement formats. I won't try and police your tweets and forum posts, of course, but uh... lemme sum this up:

You shouldn't use run on sentences they are hard to read.

In that light I volunteer. I concede that I don't have professional experience in the field of copy editing (yet) but I can assure you I'm really good at it, and I can't be the only one here raising an eyebrow over your grammatical issues.

Oh my, this. Whereas I don't really care how the dev note content is presented (as long as it is informative), the biggest turn off was the grammar and punctuation. How wretched. If this were free of errors I would have taken the change in stride, but this is a literary train wreck. Please try to proofread before publishing. This is your image, make it a good one.

Thanks for clearing up the threads/cores and explaining some PhysX stuff for folks. Performance gains are speculative and hardware specific, but hopefully it'll be awesome. I really enjoy reading about the more under the hood bits and welcome more tech-y information.

Thanks to you all for creating an incredible game.

~madchris

Edited August 25, 2015 by MadChris48

[Merandix]

As it is now, I prefer the oldy format... But This has potential. Having one person write it all isn't a bad plan at all! I'd say drop the silly magazine style quotes... It's an annoying writing mechanic that should be killed with fire. In stead, perhaps include titels like 'ui-work' ... 'community' etc... Break it up and make it less a monolithic block of text. Try some things for a few weeks, and ask the community AND the devs what they like best. There's plenty of potential in having a single person writing the devnotes.

[Alshain]

I kinda liked the old format better. However, maybe if you gave subtitles to each topic this one could work. There are just certain things I personally don't care about much, while others may like different information. For example, being a programmer I enjoy Harvester's detailed descriptions of the complications he has while attempting to make everything meld.

All that said, if this is easier and wastes less dev time, I would rather the job get done a little sooner that spend time telling me about the job that should be getting done a little sooner.

[Tarmenius]

This week we’re consolidating everyone’s news into one article to improve readability, we hope you like it.

We shared a ton off news this week, there isn't too much left of it

How much of that news got "consolidated" into this article? I feel like there was some stuff left out

---

Since there's a new format for the DevNotes and we're all providing feedback, I feel it's a good time to say I miss these. When I first discovered KSP (Dec 2011), it was these blogs that really set SQUAD apart from other developers. It kept us informed, which meant there was a lot less speculation and a lot less room for misinterpretation. Sure, it probably impacted HarvestR's productivity, but I believe it was more than made up for in the relationship it fostered between SQUAD and the players. Plus, it seemed as though he genuinely enjoyed sharing. And as an indie developer, shouldn't that be more important anyway? If there's anything to be learned from the development of KSP, it's that open communication is vital to preserving a positive atmosphere in the playerbase. It's my opinion that the instances of community backlash against SQUAD for various actions is directly related to the disappearance of these kind of blogs and the openness they brought with them. And while I understand the fear of similar backlashes in the future, withholding communication in the way we've seen over the past 2 years is only making those fears a reality.

Another key point is that those blogs were usually featuring work and systems which were already done (or mostly done) and the hurdles which had been overcome. Since then, that fear I mentioned has driven a more defensive communication style "Here's what we're planning," instead of "Here's what we've done." But while prefacing everything with "Things can change in any way at any time" is good CYA, it means that anything that follows won't actually tell us anything reliable (the source of speculation) and excessively qualifying every statement only comes from a place of fear and weakness. As game developers who want to interact with their players, you must grow some really think skin. Harsh criticism will come, regardless of how well you communicated. That's one price of being in this industry. So, since you're already making changes to the way you communicate anyway, consider keeping us in the loop about what's actually been done in a given time frame going forward. It doesn't even have to be weekly, really. Remember, we can't get outraged at things that are already done when we had no idea what the original, nebulous idea had been in the first place.

[Vallius]

I'm a little puzzled about how SQUAD can say they're so close to QA with Kerbal 1.1 when staging and orbits still need work. I think you guys are doing great--but you're essentially rebuilding KSP in Unity 5. If I were you, I wouldn't make any promises about how close it is until you've at least gotten to QA.

The new devnotes are okay I guess. If there's little to share, this is fine format, but I actually appreciate when you guys get into the nitty gritty details of your work. Besides, the challenge of communicating your progress can shed light on better methods. (It certainly helps in my line of work.)

[basic.syntax]

Instead of individual developer notes, this format is "News from Squad," written in one voice.

This could take more time than before, since one person has to rework each contributor's comments into an article format.

[Red Iron Crown]

Instead of individual developer notes, this format is "News from Squad," written in one voice.

This could take more time than before, since one person has to rework each contributor's comments into an article format.

My guess would be that that one person is not a developer, so it's likely a net win in development time.

[NovaSilisko]

Instead of individual developer notes, this format is "News from Squad," written in one voice.

This could take more time than before, since one person has to rework each contributor's comments into an article format.

That's what I was thinking, too. They're still being asked questions and describing what they're doing, but now that information is getting filtered into an article form, which is going to take more time out of someone's day to assemble it.

Edited August 26, 2015 by NovaSilisko

[Alshain]

I'm a little puzzled about how SQUAD can say they're so close to QA with Kerbal 1.1 when staging and orbits still need work. I think you guys are doing great--but you're essentially rebuilding KSP in Unity 5. If I were you, I wouldn't make any promises about how close it is until you've at least gotten to QA.

They didn't say how much work they needed, just that they needed work.

Hopefully the orbits thing will help stop or minimize the floating point jitter. There is nothing more annoying than trying to put a satellite network around Minmus.

[Sarayakat]

I like the new devnote format. Much more professional. Keep up the good work.

[KraKKer]

You guys should hire a proofreader for your devnotes and other "official" announcement formats. I won't try and police your tweets and forum posts, of course, but uh... lemme sum this up:

You shouldn't use run on sentences they are hard to read.

In that light I volunteer. I concede that I don't have professional experience in the field of copy editing (yet) but I can assure you I'm really good at it, and I can't be the only one here raising an eyebrow over your grammatical issues.

Wow. Almost all the sentences in your reply are run-on sentences. You may want to take a gander at you grammar book again before offering your services.

I like the new layout. If it improves the team's workflow, I'm all for it. There are some spelling errors but it reads well.

Many people are not comfortable with change. It's scary and out of our control. Don't worry people. Everything will be alright.

[Superfluous J]

Felipe has been focussing on the staging interface and the orbit splines. For the latter we use an external tool called Vectrosity, which handles drawing lines on screen. It seems that just like Kerbal Space Program, Vectrosity was overhauled for the new Unity UI system, which means that a lot has changed with it now, which in turn means that our orbits are all messed up and need fixing. This is a good opportunity to rewrite the code that draws the orbit, as it’s never been one of the most efficient parts of the game.

If this means what I think it means (No more vanishing conic patches right as your predicted path gets close to the world you're aiming for) then I have one word: YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

If it doesn't mean that, I have another word, but this forum would auto censor me

After last week’s Squadcast there have been questions about how exactly multithreaded PhysX will work in Kerbal Space Program, One of the biggest improvements is that is optimized for multi-threaded processing. The short answer is, we aren’t sure how it’ll work exactly. The insides of PhysX are hardcoded deep under Unity’s hood, which means we have very little access to it from our end. </p><blockquote><p><i><b>“ Our own code hasn’t changed to support multithreaded physics simulation, so how exactly it will handle KSP objects like multi-rigidbody vessels, is not something we can see in detail.†-Felipe (HarvesteR)</b></i></p></blockquote><p>There also seems to be some confusion about the difference between the terms multi-threading and multi-core. When we talk about cores, we are generally talking about hardware. Software, however, deals with threads. Threads and Cores are related, but they are different concepts altogether. Threads are virtual, abstract entities used by software to split their workload for separate. Cores are the hardware used to actually process multiple threads at the same time.</p><p>What this means for KSP is that there’s no way to know which CPU cores will get used for any given vessel, part, or anything along those lines, and we’re also not sure how simulation is split into separate threads. The way PhysX handles its multithreaded execution is internal to PhysX, and we don’t really get to see behind those curtains… That’s not a bad thing though. We get to focus on making the game on top of the physics engine, and PhysX handles the low-level simulation/computation stuff.</p>

Thanks for all this. It pretty much answers my question in that other thread. I may even quote this over there if nobody beat me to it.

- - - Updated - - -

Regarding the format, I like it. The old way was harder to read all at once and jumped around, and it was fairly obvious that some people were just writing stuff to write stuff. I'd rather they write code than "stuff" just to get in the devnotes. Also, I frequently (see above) quote multiple parts of the article and the html formatting of the OP (with no whitespace) was a huge pain to wade through. It's still the same old html brick-o-text, but now it's easier to strip out what I don't want to quote and include what I do.

[federicoaa]

I hope the conics rework allows for better mouse interaction.

Examples:

During planet transfers, it's very hard to click on the current orbit, the node almost always wants to be placed in the orbit after encounter.

Second, during escape/encounter trajectories, it is impossible to place a node before PE.

[Bluelogic32]

I like the new format better. The devnotes are much more interesting and easier to read

[selfish_meme]

If this means what I think it means (No more vanishing conic patches right as your predicted path gets close to the world you're aiming for) then I have one word: YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

If it doesn't mean that, I have another word, but this forum would auto censor me

Thanks for all this. It pretty much answers my question in that other thread. I may even quote this over there if nobody beat me to it.

- - - Updated - - -

Regarding the format, I like it. The old way was harder to read all at once and jumped around, and it was fairly obvious that some people were just writing stuff to write stuff. I'd rather they write code than "stuff" just to get in the devnotes. Also, I frequently (see above) quote multiple parts of the article and the html formatting of the OP (with no whitespace) was a huge pain to wade through. It's still the same old html brick-o-text, but now it's easier to strip out what I don't want to quote and include what I do.

Hehe they essentially said, we don't know! I don't blame them I tried reading the PhysX lead developers blog but it does not illuminate me much. I guess the old CPU Performance thread needs resurrecting.

[Rassa Farlander]

I did not like this week's new format. There were multiple typos and errors. I felt there were parts that lacked context and detail that would usually be included.

Other than that, the content itself was fine. With the addition of new spaceplane parts, Id like to see some new rocket parts someday as well.

EDIT: Seems you should read KasperVLD's article from a few days ago, and then this makes more sense. These devnotes almost seem redundant because that article was posted before....

Edited August 26, 2015 by Rassa Farlander

[Virtualgenius]

Why dont they put the new format to a vote

[Claw]

I too am in favor of the old dev notes.

What I'm also in favor of is that it's okay if they are unpolished. I'd rather hear more about what's going on (in an rough state)...than to wait longer and hear less, just so that it's beautifully formatted. Unfortunately, it gets nitpicked either way.

Cheers,

~Claw

[kreutzkevic]

I'm on the fence about it. I prefer content to format any day of the week. I felt that there was way less information in the new kind of devnote than before. It could just be a slow week, however.

That said, I totally understand the devs' would like to spend more time working and less time talking about it. It all depends on how long it actually takes to write 10 lines about what you are doing...

And here's a tip from the late Sir Terry Pratchett:

“Why are you always in such a hurry, Mr. Lipwig?â€Â

“Because people don’t like change. But make the change happen fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.â€Â

― Terry Pratchett, Making Money