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Devnote Tuesday: The Mother of all Merges

SQUAD

By SQUAD
in KSP1 The Daily Kerbal

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Terwin

Terwin

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Posted
[quote name='SQUAD']Fixing these issues meant Felipe and other developers worked through the weekend and yesterday’s Mexican national holiday.[/QUOTE]
[quote name='klgraham1013']Please, don't do this. If you truly make your own deadlines, than you deserve time off. You deserve time off, even if it pushes a deadline. Don't be like every other game company and assume "crunch" is a necessary part of life. People are more important than products.[/QUOTE]

Agreed, as a developer I am well aware that as the number of hours per day increase on a project, the amount of effective work on that project usually goes down(and can easily go negative).
For most people, going past 8 hours/day gets greatly decreasing returns and going without proper mental rest(weekends, and other breaks) can easily push individuals and teams into negative territory(where you are introducing more bugs than you fix due to mental exhaustion and not thinking clearly).
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John FX

John FX

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Must say it is nice to see a lot of notes about development in the devnotes.

There was a time there where there was not a lot of dev in the devnotes, good to see that is in the past.

Don`t let any naysayers put you off guys, bugfixes and porting are a big job by themselves. Good to see an update finally addressing that.

Now, once the port is done and you have some extra ram to play with, how about a balancing makeover for pure rocketry and more stuff to do once you get a rocket to a destination?

all in the name of science of course.
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StrandedonEarth

StrandedonEarth

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Thanks for all the hard work guys! While I agree with the sentiment that you guys shouldn't overwork yourselves, I also get that it may be more efficient to keep working while all the details are fresh in your head, instead of having to "boot up" your brains after the weekend and figure out where you were in sorting out this massive rebase. Not to mention I bet you guys were dreaming in code and probably dreamed up some insights that couldn't wait for the work week to start.

Keep up the good work guys, but don't overdo it!
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manaiaK

manaiaK

Posted
Posted (edited)
[quote name='klgraham1013']Please, don't do this. If you truly make your own deadlines, than you deserve time off. You deserve time off, even if it pushes a deadline. Don't be like every other game company and assume "crunch" is a necessary part of life. People are more important than products.[/QUOTE]
Seconded!

Edit/Update: actually, fifth-ed. :)

Looking past 1.1, for the longevity of the game I'd suggest that the move to Unity 5 (and having a working Win64 version) is big enough for 1.1. So: feature freeze, massive testing/QA/beta test with modders, then release.

(Mods are a vital part of the game, in both senses of the word vital: alive, and very important.) Edited by manaiaK
further thoughts.
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eddiew

eddiew

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[quote name='manaiaK']
Looking past 1.1, for the longevity of the game I'd suggest that the move to Unity 5 (and having a working Win64 version) is big enough for 1.1. So: feature freeze, massive testing/QA/beta test with modders, then release.[/QUOTE]

Totally agree. Mods have made ksp what it is, but they are suffocating under 32 bit. It is really quite important to get that released - more so than new features. There are mods for all of them, anyway ;)
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Monger

Monger

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So what do we learn from that? Do NOT let branches drift apart for 6 months!
This is insane. Thousands of file changes, hitting the code base at a single moment within a single commit. There is no way to track down single changes beyond this point, making the history of your source control basically useless. This will probably drag down the code quality for months.
We'll see how it turns out, but if I guess right, this makes a christmas release of 1.1 basically impossible.
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Wjolcz

Wjolcz

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[quote name='klgraham1013']Please, don't do this. If you truly make your own deadlines, than you deserve time off. You deserve time off, even if it pushes a deadline. Don't be like every other game company and assume "crunch" is a necessary part of life. People are more important than products.[/QUOTE]

I like this post. It is a quality post.
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pxi

pxi

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Awesome devnotes this week.

[quote name='klgraham1013']Please, don't do this. If you truly make your own deadlines, than you deserve time off. You deserve time off, even if it pushes a deadline. Don't be like every other game company and assume "crunch" is a necessary part of life. People are more important than products.[/QUOTE]

$this ++;

I'm going to be optimistic and hope this was a case of "we're in the middle of this, it's easier to just keep going while it's all fresh in our heads rather than pick it up a few days later and have to figure out where we were when we left off", because I've had a few cases of that over the years. But if it isn't, please don't be those guys. It's not that it's not appreciated, but I'd prefer the next update was a week late, rather than think you guys don't get a half-decent work-life balance.
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Robje

Robje

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Will KSP stop expanding (except for bugfixes and what not) after multi player, 1.1 and some other minor features because the game has been released?
Or
Will KSP remain a work in progress Minecraft style?
If so:
What did the release mean?
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Cornholio

Cornholio

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Great dev notes, maybe the best since the format change.

My opinion on 1.1 is that of everything promised or planned, 64bit is by far the most important feature to release.

I started as a non-modder sticking to a 'classic is best' attitude but eventually realized that this game is a skeleton for mods and addons. I could list (but won't for simplicity's sake) mods that I consider crucial to the game to the point where I would not play the game if one of those mods are incompatible. Most of them are realism/career-mode/planet packs. My list of mods changes every patch: weeding out unnecessary/'not me' and bringing in new candidates.

The modding community has taken hits in certain areas and will take a very large one when 64bit is released. Certain developers will need ample time to bring their mods to compatability with the game and other addons. The sooner this process can start, the healthier the community will be in the future.

Declaring 1.0 as scope complete was an obvious mistake at its release and now in hindsight. This game is still incomplete. According to Steam (over the past several months I have played on versions not attached to steam) I have couple thousand hours of game time on KSP. I have been an avid gamer my entire life but for multiple reasons, this one takes the cake. I love this game, always will. Please fill the whole in my chest where my heart belongs before you give me a new hat and pair of gloves to wear.

Love you, Squad.
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Dr_Turkey

Dr_Turkey

Posted
Posted (edited)
[quote name='klgraham1013']please, don't do this. If you truly make your own deadlines, than you deserve time off. You deserve time off, even if it pushes a deadline. Don't be like every other game company and assume "crunch" is a necessary part of life. People are more important than products.[/quote]

No! We march till victory is ours. Edited by Dr_Turkey
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Robje

Robje

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I happen te be nearly illiterate conserning programming. I have no idea what to expect with this merge, Unity-5 and 64bit. People seem to anticipate this with joy. Am i to expect a performance improvement?
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KerbMav

KerbMav

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[quote name='Robje']I happen te be nearly illiterate conserning programming. I have no idea what to expect with this merge, Unity-5 and 64bit. People seem to anticipate this with joy. Am i to expect a performance improvement?[/QUOTE]

To just answer your question:
Most likely yes.

As well as a more stable game for those players using many mods when it comes to usable memory.
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Esme

Esme

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Wow, excellent devnotes! As several others have said, SQUAD team, please make sure you get a reasonable amount of time out, and don't overdo it! My two penn'orth re 1.1 is I'd be perfectly happy with 1.1 just being the transition to the new Unity engine. That in itself will bring improvements all round. We've only just had some nice extras in 1.05, and, as has also been pointed out, it's not as if there aren;t plenty of mods to choose from if we want something not in teh stock hgame. Take your time, get 1.1 right (I'm against releasing just because teh calendar has hit a certain date on prnciple) - and THEN start thinking about new features. IMHO. As I can't buy you a round of drinks, I must see if I can find someone I can find KSP for as a gift!
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Kobymaru

Kobymaru

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Posted
I gotta say I'm a little worried.

With over 300 Conflicts and a multi-day Merge-a-thon by one single person, I'm afraid that a few Bugs that were fixed in 1.0.5 might be reintroduced in 1.1.
Also, the task of rewriting the UI while trying to keep it looking exactly the same sounds incredibly boring, and if it's boring it's a lot easier to make mistakes and introduce bugs.

All I can say is good luck with the testing. I would be fine with pushing back the release date, but only for the sake of more testing/bugfixing time. NOT for keeping more features. (I do hope that a performance pass and 64 Bit will be in though).
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Curveball Anders

Curveball Anders

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[quote name='One-Way Films']What I think about this weeks devnotes;

[B]A)[/B] Guys, take a tea break every once in a while xD
[/QUOTE]
They're not British, they most likely don't do tea. At least not the British way.

[quote name='One-Way Films']
[B]B)[/B] Take as long as you want with 1.1. Some will complain but everyone (even the inpatient) will thank you when 1.1 is a fleshed-out masterpiece. I'll happily wait another 6 months if it's needed.
[/QUOTE]
The crew is from all over the planet (earth, not kerbin) but Squad is still Mexican.
They're done when they are done. (I think soonâ„¢ is â„¢ by CCP of Iceland ...)

[quote name='One-Way Films']
C) I'll be watching you on Squadcast, doctor. *backs away into shadows*
[/QUOTE]
Do you expect fowl play? Or that the new quack will turn out to be a turkey?

Or that the Doctor will turn out to be just a Doctor?

[quote name='One-Way Films']
D) As I said in B, take as long as you want. Don't cut anything unless our lives depend on it xD

Thanks for being dedicated devs, lads. Thank you for listening to your community and asking for feedback on a regular basis.[/QUOTE]

[B]Lads[/B]?
Lasses are just as good devs, and in my experience even better at listening to user concerns.
(based on personal experience from 30+ years as system designer)
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