Devnote Tuesday: On the eighth day before Christmas, Squad gave to me...

[SQUAD]

Hello everyone!

This week has been busy for everyone and Christmas is around the corner. Jim (Romfarer) is working hard to deliver the git packages and user interface updates on time. Up until Friday’s deadline he will focus on finishing up and tweaking the visual assets, making sure all the buttons, images, scrollbars etcetera are in the right positions and showing up as expected.

Ted has been dealing on with the efficient routine of daily scrums, meetings, QA organisation and so on. He is gearing up for QA testing on the Unity 5 version of KSP, this isn’t to say that we’re starting QA on 1.1, that’s still a fair bit away at the moment. He is concentrating on ensuring that we are progressing towards a stable state for the Unity 5 upgrade and performing a round of QA now will massively help us with that. Dave (TriggerAu) has drawn up a comprehensive list of what we need to test for regressions with the help of QA Team, which will be invaluable.

Our new producer Joe (Dr_Turkey) is planning the Christmas / holidays run. He’s started work on the foundations for a media plan for the future.

More progress come from Bob (Roverdude) working on the probe telemetry interface, setting up the map view’s visual display where the player can get a clear view of their communications network. On top of that he’s finalizing the relay, direct antenna ranges and part configs - launching lots of test rockets in the process!  He found time to finish off an extra goodie for 1.1:    http://i.imgur.com/HFrMERT.png

Nathanael (NathanKell) had another week of miscellaneous fixes and testing the Unity 5 port. On the fixes front, a small quality of life change was to actually note in the solar panel descriptions which solar panel arrays were non-retractable. On the Unity 5 front he has addressed a concern that has often been raised regarding mod compatibility, in particular regarding PartModules: many stock PartModules have -as of yet -required no code changes for Unity 5. A couple of tweaks regarding dealing with audio were needed, and of course the wheel modules have been completely rewritten by Felipe (HarvesteR), but many  modules needed no change at all. Again, we are speaking only of basic PartModules, not assets (parts etcetera) or things that use a user interface other than the part right-click menu or hook in via KSPAddon, and of course this is subject to change, but this still is often asked for and much-desired information.

Dave spent this past week in preparation for the coming “QArmageddon” that we expect will be Unity 5. He brought together an almost absurd amount of test scripts, smoke tests, documents, and notes from the back of bar napkins, and used all this to distill KSP down to a summarized list of areas and tests to make it easier to cover all our bases. Unfortunately this summarised list comprisesover 120 areas and 600 test summaries For example, one test summary is “check all part textures”, so we should be able to knock it out in the morning and be down the beach for the afternoon, right?

Next on the list is refining the methods around the tests and designing a more formal method of tracking progress to ensure we cover as much of this list as possible; not only this time round, but each time we progress.

On to the community Andrea (Badie) is working to bring some special surprise for Christmas and  Kasper (KasperVld) will be attending ESA’s Moon Challenge award ceremony this Wednesday. The culmination of a project that students from around the world worked on for months: designing a moon mission and in some cases using KSP to visualize their concepts. He is looking forward to it!

That’s it for this week, be sure to leave your questions on our official forums, Twitter, Facebook or on Reddit!

Edited December 16, 2015 by DuoDex
Spelling.

[gkorgood]

22 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

He found time to finish off an extra goodie for 1.1:    http://i.imgur.com/HFrMERT.png

Infaltable heatshield HYPE!!!!! (Sauce)

[Endersmens]

Sweet! Loved the pics of roverdude's little addition, looking good! Also, double posted devnotes? Which one is right?  

[CalculusWarrior]

On the eighth day of Christmas, Squad gave to me...

Two dev diaries???

[gkorgood]

Just now, Endersmens said:

Which one is right?  

I'd say the other one, this one has its last sentence repeated.

[LaytheDragon]

Second! (Not that it matters much) I  It doesn't matter. Two posts were merged now.

1 hour ago, gkorgood said:

Inflatable Heatshield Hype!

Does this mean, there is potential we could get in the future other inflatable parts?

But... still...

!0 meter heatshield!

Will it be capable of deflating and reinflating whenever the need arises? (Not that I wouldn't like it if it couldn't be deflated, I'd just eject it, but still...)

Edited December 16, 2015 by LaytheDragon
Fixed a celebratory "Second" that got ruined due to a merge

[RocketPilot573]

Inflatable heat shield? Awesome! It will do nicely on large motherships I imagine. 

[swjr-swis]

41 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

Jim (Romfarer) is working hard to deliver the git packages

It must be the season, but I swear I read this as Jim playing Santa....

[Aragosnat]

I could be mistaken.. Bit is that a heat sheild or some sort of Kerbal floatation device?

[KerrMü]

Hey there

Nice devnotes again.

What is the base size of that decelerator? 3.75m? That looks like an awesome new toy to me. 

[sgt_flyer]

 

2 minutes ago, Aragosnat said:

I could be mistaken.. Bit is that a heat sheild or some sort of Kerbal floatation device?

That's an inflatable heatshield

https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/3x0ib2/devnote_tuesday_on_the_eighth_day_before/

2.5m packed, nearly 10m deployed.

Though, the truss section could be useful for recreating some russian style open latices with much less part count than the strut based ones

[Dman979]

It is a heatshield.

And I was right:

On 12/1/2015, 8:08:05, Dman979 said:

Is this SCRUM? I've been working in a group using SCRUM, so I am now constantly on the lookout for it.

They are using Scrum! It's a project management strategy designed for use with software development, designed to release implementable product in 30-day cycles. @Dr_Turkey, am I right?

[NoMrBond]

34 minutes ago, LaytheDragon said:

Does this mean, there is potential we could get in the future other inflatable parts?

Porkjet's thing is inflatable habs, maybe he can sneak some in?

[Edit] Seriously, look at that magnificent beast

Spoiler

Full album [link]

Edited December 16, 2015 by NoMrBond

[Hobbes Novakoff]

1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

On to the community Andrea (Badie) is working to bring some special surprise for Christmas and  Kasper (KasperVld) will be attending ESA’s Moon Challenge award ceremony this Wednesday. The culmination of a project that students from around the world worked on for months: designing a moon mission and in some cases using KSP to visualize their concepts. He is looking forward to it!

Badie! Where is she, though? I kind of forgot she existed...

[Alshain]

1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

He found time to finish off an extra goodie for 1.1:    http://i.imgur.com/HFrMERT.png
 

At the risk of sounding stupid.... what is it?

EDIT: Oh I see, nevermind.

Edited December 16, 2015 by Alshain

[NoMrBond]

Could someone please merge the two separate DevNotes threads which are both getting posts?

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

More progress come from Bob (Roverdude) working on the probe telemetry interface, setting up the map view’s visual display where the player can get a clear view of their communications network. On top of that he’s finalizing the relay, direct antenna ranges and part configs - launching lots of test rockets in the process!  He found time to finish off an extra goodie for 1.1:    http://i.imgur.com/HFrMERT.png

Sweet inflatable heatshield. Been wanting this in Stock for some time. Next we just need all of Infernal Robotics added, minus the bugs

[SpenSpaceCorp]

Ooo, denote tuesday is here! great to see the denotes up!

Edited December 16, 2015 by SpenSpaceCorp

[DuoDex]

Fixed up a spelling error and merged the double post.

Whoopsies.

[luizopiloto]

25 minutes ago, NoMrBond said:

Porkjet's thing is inflatable habs, maybe he can sneak some in?

[Edit] Seriously, look at that magnificent beast

  Reveal hidden contents

Full album [link]

 now imagine an inflatable blimp and electric propellers... on Eve...

[Tourist]

Nice inflatable heat-shield. Any chance he could sneak in a few habitation modules. The game sorely needs habitation modules for planetary bases. The hitchhiker module just doesn't cut it if your someplace with gravity.  

Edited December 16, 2015 by Tourist

[Dr_Turkey]

1 hour ago, Dman979 said:

They are using Scrum! It's a project management strategy designed for use with software development, designed to release implementable product in 30-day cycles. @Dr_Turkey, am I right?

A unique version of the "guideline" one. But essentially, yes indeed.

[klgraham1013]

RoverDude strikes again.

[Binho]

Yes please to habitation modules! What's the point of a big inflatable heat shield if you don't have a big base to land? Could we merge Porkjet's new hab module version linked above in to the stock game? Please? Pretty please??

What has Porkjet been up to anyways? I miss the old style Devnotes which said what everyone was up to, even if they were on vacation!

Lastly, someone asked this on the last devnotes, but could we get a sneak peak of the new lighting and PBR shading? I'm really curious to see how that looks!

 

Thanks for keeping us updated on the progress of 1.1

[linuxgurugamer]

1 hour ago, Dman979 said:

It is a heatshield.

And I was right:

They are using Scrum! It's a project management strategy designed for use with software development, designed to release implementable product in 30-day cycles. @Dr_Turkey, am I right?

Some Scrum teams use 7 day cycles, my company is using it with a 14 day cycle.  It really depends on how you want to use it