Devnote Tuesday: New Format!

[Albert VDS]

I prefer the old format, you can pick what you want to read and you get to see who is really working and who's slacking (an entire week to say you can't talk about X? To rig bones to a mesh?).

Yes, because surely you can deduce all work a person has done that week by what he/she wishes to share or not.

[Zoidos]

I can't believe I missed DNT... What's happening to me???

To be honest, I liked the old layout better with every member of the team posting their own point of view. But hey, it's your game, your site, your baby, so whatever lifts your payload.

- - - Updated - - -

...Besides, now that the devs are off the hook for the 10 minutes it would take to update us on their work...

I can tell you from experience that regular 10-minute tasks can be the biggest pain in the butt in your workweek....

[PDCWolf]

Yes, because surely you can deduce all work a person has done that week by what he/she wishes to share or not.

Well, you can certainly compare it to the updates themselves, and for me the math works (no work in weeks = lousy and empty updates). Most tangible work comes from people not even mentioned in the updates (mod devs hired at the last minute)

[Bobnova]

Not sure on the new style.

Xbox One is sort of exciting, sort of terrifying.

[basic.syntax]

Well, you can certainly compare it to the updates themselves, and for me the math works (no work in weeks = lousy and empty updates). Most tangible work comes from people not even mentioned in the updates (mod devs hired at the last minute)

I would say visible, instead of tangible. The main developers have built the foundation, modders extend it.

[Wintersdark]

Also not entirely taken with the new format. I really preferred the personal per-dev format.

[Nightmare]

I personally perefere the old format it was something unike in a way, now it is like every other dev team report, the difference is what keeps ksp living for me not the mainstream at all.

[Sirine]

My vote for old layout.

[Guest]

“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)

So what you're saying here is you guys have no idea if we will see a performance increase from the new PhysX, or that it will do anything useful at all. That's a big change since last week, when we all heard about new performance capabilities paving the way to a 64bit application.

The Unity 5 update in itself brings major changes to many game systems, and delivers a very solid performance boost, via the new version of PhysX being able to multithread across your processor cores. Perhaps more importantly the Unity 5 update has proven to make the game far more stable on 64 bit platforms, meaning a 64 bit client for Windows and possibly Mac OSX is something we’re looking into very seriously for this update. - KasperVld

OR: It could just be that thanks to this new DevNote format, it is far too easy to take a quote out of context, hmm?

I tune into the DevNotes to hear directly from the developers not to read an "abridged and edited" version of the weeks events.

Why are the developers so dead-set on hiding from the community?

Hi everyone and welcome to a newly formatted devnote! This week we’re consolidating everyone’s news into one article to improve readability, we hope you like it. - Squad

In all the other comments sections of all the other DevNotes I've read, not a single person has complained about it being "too hard to read".

Edited August 27, 2015 by Guest

[Superfluous J]

So what you're saying here is you guys have no idea if we will see a performance increase from the new PhysX, or that it will do anything useful at all. That's a big change since last week, when we all heard about new performance capabilities paving the way to a 64bit application.

Not knowing how something works does not mean you can't notice a benefit.

I have no idea how my TV works but know it can display a better screen than the old TV I moved out of my parents' house with.

Why are the developers so dead-set on hiding from the community?

I'd hide from us too. We can be jerks sometimes.

In all the other comments sections of all the other DevNotes I've read, not a single person has complained about it being "too hard to read".

But in most every one there have been very strong hints that they are a huge pain to write.

[cfds]

To me this looks just like an attempt to hide that only two of the n persons featured in the "old" dev notes did actually develop the game...

[Virtualgenius]

So far it looks like the old layout is winning hands down so I guess this means we are getting the new format, going on past experiences

Edited August 27, 2015 by Virtualgenius

[KerbMav]

But in most every one there have been very strong hints that they are a huge pain to write.

I noticed this too, and also the seperate paragraphs often contained repetitive information.

As I see it, the problem is less that the old format allowed to skip paragraphs of (individually) less interesting content more easily, but that these paragraphs were forced into existence at all.

Rather than reading "I did X" and "I helped him with X" and "I made sure those had what they needed to do X", I like to read what X is all about and what it will change in the game and for the player, as well as the reasoning behind doing it at all.

When the community team was busy with a competition or selecting applicants for the testing group, we already knew that it was happening, and new business deals that cannot be publicly discussed, but get announced whenever they are fixed ... no need to read about "doing business stuff" every week beforehand.

This also lessens the "you promised something cool and we think it is not cool just business you lied and stuff" reactions afterwards.

Last but not least, whenever a dev wants to really share something he did, he certainly is free to post a blog entry or something similar, even if it is a twitter message - it will find its way to the forums one way or another, right?

.

.

I would not want either of you two as my employer or superior, in all honesty.

[Alewx]

He didn't say that. Votes on the forum are skewed. Votes anywhere would be skewed because any medium you added votes to doesn't account for the whole population and even those who don't use the forums come here to read the dev notes. So you would have to add a poll in places that don't really support adding polls.

On top of that, it's not a democracy. We can offer our input and Squad listens more than most game companies, but in the end it is their choice.

Well I do not see it that way, but hey that is the personal opinion.

[sarbian]

Do we have any hints as to whether U5 will allow PhysX calculations to run on the GPU? Most (maybe all) modern graphics cards will do PhysX using only a small % of their power, and with KSP being generally CPU limited, offloading it is almost certainly the way to go whenever possible

The GPU stuff for Physix is and was always limited to some computation only (mainly particles).

[sjwt]

Felipe has been focussing on the staging interface and the orbit splines.

I for one am dreading the loading screen each time we now go to a vessel.. I can hear that voice, over and over and over in my head...

Re..R..Re..RE..Reticulating Splines.

[Superfluous J]

I for one am dreading the loading screen each time we now go to a vessel.. I can hear that voice, over and over and over in my head...

Re..R..Re..RE..Reticulating Splines.

I think that should be in every loading text ever. I used to have an mp3 of it long before I had a cell phone. If I could find it again, I'd make it my ringtone now.

...at least for a little while. "modem answering" is a pretty sweet ringtone, especially when it happens in public and I get a few smiling nods from around the room.

[Red Iron Crown]

I think that should be in every loading text ever.

I agree, with the exception of actual spline reticulation programs. Their loading screens should say "Simulating Cities".

[Terwin]

I'd like to see a dev note in the new format when they have not just announced a whole slew of things through other channels and they still have some interesting things left to say.

I think the new format has potential, but we have seen a lot of old-style dev notes with lots of interesting things going on, and no new-style dev notes that were not preempted by other announcements, so it is hard to make a comparison just yet.(sort of like trying to compare and contrast a Chevy Volt and a Tesla Roadster when you have driven a volt for years but you have only see one roadster in person, and it did not even have wheels yet)

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

I like the old format a lot better. More to the point, easier to read and digest.

[Eric S]

The GPU stuff for Physix is and was always limited to some computation only (mainly particles).

This. From what I've seen, there's all of one general purpose physics library available that will do connected rigid body physics simulation on GPUs. I'm not even sure KSP would benefit from that, since GPUs are basically designed for highly parallelized work, and connected rigid body physics aren't currently easy to work in parallel, and there are other issues as well, from what I've heard.

[Guest]

But in most every one there have been very strong hints that they are a huge pain to write.

How hard is it to write a few sentences? 'This is what I did this week', followed by a brief description, shouldn't take more than five minutes to write and email to the person posting the DevNotes. Honestly, it's not like I'm asking for a novel. Here, I'll time myself, ready, set, go!

On Tuesday, I had a job interview at First Student, our local school bus company. They were impressed with my credentials as a Commercial Pilot, and promised to call me back for a second interview. On Wednesday I submitted a resume for a maintenance job at a local airport. It is my hope to get a foot in the door at the local FBO, and maybe turn that job into a way to build some flight time. Today I followed up on a couple of applications, and did some work on some YouTube videos, hopefully I can get them posted this weekend.

TIME! That took me 2 minutes and 39.4 seconds to write, completely off the top of my head with no preparation. Don't tell me writing a DevNote is a pain in the ass, because it's not. If you can't take five minutes to write a quick note to the community, then why post DevNotes in the first place? Plenty of developers don't even bother.

You might think I'm a jerk, but I think I have a completely valid point.

[Kiro]

New layout works for me. It contained all the relative important info without the additional fluff from each dev.

Glad to hear 1.1 will be ready for QA soon. Keep up the good work!

[Red Iron Crown]

How hard is it to write a few sentences? 'This is what I did this week', followed by a brief description, shouldn't take more than five minutes to write and email to the person posting the DevNotes. Honestly, it's not like I'm asking for a novel. Here, I'll time myself, ready, set, go!

TIME! That took me 2 minutes and 39.4 seconds to write, completely off the top of my head with no preparation. Don't tell me writing a DevNote is a pain in the ass, because it's not. If you can't take five minutes to write a quick note to the community, then why post DevNotes in the first place? Plenty of developers don't even bother.

You might think I'm a jerk, but I think I have a completely valid point.

Not bad. Now rewrite one knowing that thousands of people are going to read it and cite it in the future as gospel, others are going to actively look for things to criticize in it, still more are going to pound you with questions about the things you didn't do, etc. Be sure to write it in a language other than your native one, too. Devnotes, for better or worse, are now PR activities, which means that language and content have to be carefully controlled and vetted. It takes a minute or two to come up with what you want to say, but likely an hour or more to phrase it in an acceptable way.

I liked the old format better, but I understand the switch. The devs can give their unpolished 2-minute versions to Badie or Kasper or whoever is writing these and let them do the polishing while they go back to developing.

Edited August 27, 2015 by Red Iron Crown

[pandaman]

Actually, I quite like the new format. And there is always scope for an individual Dev to give a more detailed/personal section on occasion if a particular task or subject requires it.