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Devnote Tuesday: 100,000 likes

SQUAD

By SQUAD
in KSP1 The Daily Kerbal

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SQUAD

SQUAD

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Hello everyone!

QA has started for update 1.1 and as always that means we’re taking features from “developer stable” to what the average person would consider stable. Often times there’s a big gap between the two, but ultimately only the latter type is relevant to a released product.

The testing process also brings welcome breaks away from pure user interface work for the developers. Felipe (HarvesteR) for example has been hard at work making sure the mesh colliders are compatible with Unity 5’s new way of handling them. Because the colliders attached to rigidbodies couldn’t be concave anymore the fairings needed some tweaking to get them to behave as expected again. This job went quite smoothly: because the fairings are assembled procedurally from user input it was a relatively simple job to change the underlying systems. Instead of a single concave mesh collider the fairings now create a series of small, convex ‘chunks’ that work together as a compound collider for each fairing panel.

While working on the fairings, Felipe also managed to code in a much requested feature: when the fairings are closed they now create an invisible physical joint (like a strut) that secures the payload inside to prevent the payload wobbling. Of course, once you deploy the fairing this structural support also vanishes and we’re already looking forward to all the rockets that fail as a result of this oversight. In case of interstage fairings, the joint is created against the interstage ‘cap’ part. That means fairings also get a new use as a stack-reinforcement strut of sorts. Which will eventually break off. And adds weight, and cost. But it does make stacks really solid.

On to bugfixing then: while we’ve tasked Felipe to take a look at map view splines and orbit context menus Mike (Mu) is still hard at work on the user interface, fixing miscellaneous bugs throughout the game in general and in the new settings screen in particular. Jim (Romfarer) notes one particularly critical bug with the Application Launcher that was fixed due to an excellent performance by the QA team who provided us with high quality bug reports with solid reproduction steps, which helped us to connect the dots on a list of bugs that at first seemed unrelated, but ultimately proved to have a common cause.

Ever since joining the team Nathanael (NathanKell) has been hard at work squashing bugs at a leopard’s pace and this week is no exception. His time has been spent between some bugs that popped up due to Unity 5’s new physics system and working on the tutorials. In fact, the latter has to do with the former as a lot of the physics systems in KSP have changed in recent times and the tutorials sometimes needed to be updated to reflect that. If you have some small tips to improve the tutorials please leave a comment on our forums.

As Technical Producer Ted has dug himself into the QA trenches. He’s enjoying himself though: seeing the project come together is very satisfying from a project management point of view, and the progress the developers are making are very easily kept track of. We’ll be sure to take good care of him over the next weeks though, as the constant managing of new (sometimes critical) issues while still battling the old ones can be quite stressful. With everyone focused on a common goal we should be able to contain the flood of issues that has come our way this week, some of which even kept the QA team from being able to test the game in the first place.

It’s not all bugfixes around the office though: Chris (Porkjet) has been polishing the landing gear effects and animations. A new six-wheeled model is making an appearance in the game and it’ll be replacing the largest landing gear, while the other models have also been swapped with the next biggest models – and rescaled to match their size. The result is a selection of four different sizes of landing gear, while your favorite craft files will not be affected between 1.0.5 and 1.1.

In addition to the landing gear Chris, with help from Nathanael and the experimental test team, has started working on a concept for overhauling the rocket parts in a similar fashion as the plane parts. This is more of a long-term plan, which will most likely start showing up in version 1.2, but regardless it’s good to get the planning phase started.

Bob (RoverDude) has been finalizing the telemetry interface for the relay system. Specifically this has meant he’s tackled the task of making the game draw lines in the map view to show lines of communication used to control craft. It’s a fine balance between information and keeping the screen from becoming a huge spider web like appearance.

In community news, we’d like to celebrate that our Facebook page has hit the magical milestone of 100,000 likes today! With the new Vine account that we’ve set up and the upcoming holidays that means we have quite a few things to celebrate.

Finally, a personal message from Joe (Dr Turkey) to Elon Musk:

Elon, if you’re reading this, congratulations! Exciting times you have brought upon us. Let’s talk exciting things then! Much love and admiration, Joe and the KSP team. I hear trades are all the rage these days.

That’s it for this week, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr – and leave your comments on our forums, Facebook page or on the Kerbal Space Program subreddit. We’re looking forward to your questions.

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tater

tater

Posted
Posted (edited)

More plane parts I'll never use. If wheels (landing gear) worked even a little realistically on any terrain that is not actually a runway, they'd not be seen as terribly useful.

Edited by tater
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swjr-swis

swjr-swis

Posted
Posted
48 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

A new six-wheeled model is making an appearance in the game and it’ll be replacing the largest landing gear, while the other models have also been swapped with the next biggest models – and rescaled to match their size. The result is a selection of four different sizes of landing gear, while your favorite craft files will not be affected between 1.0.5 and 1.1.

I welcome the new landing gear sizes, but I also mourn the loss of the one distinct one - especially since it was the only one that fit well with most of my tiny craft and I've been using them all over the place. <sob>

Hopefully some good soul will restore them in the historical/original parts mod.

 

51 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

a concept for overhauling the rocket parts in a similar fashion as the plane parts. This is more of a long-term plan, which will most likely start showing up in version 1.2

And the hype train for 1.2 has left the station... :D

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Dman979

Dman979

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So... I'm happy to hear that the QA is going well. But is anyone else annoyed by the lack of steerable landing gear? There are no large/medium steerable gear, and it doesn't look like we'll be getting them any time soon.

Other than that, I'm really looking forward to this!

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LaytheDragon

LaytheDragon

Posted
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1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

Finally, a personal message from Joe (Dr Turkey) to Elon Musk:

Is Dr. Turkey trying to strike a deal with Elon Musk like the deal with NASA that gave KSP 3.75 meter "NASA parts"?

The new 6-wheeled landing gear looks very useful, and it's good that the bigger one-wheeled landing gear will finally not be huge, too.

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WeirdCulture

WeirdCulture

Posted
Posted

QA Yeah!

But please... for all Kerbals sake... take your time

DO NOT WORK THOU THE HOLIDAYS! Take time for families and friends... WE can wait. No game release can calm down an upset partner.

It's Holiday (Pastafarian here), or Christmas, Chanukah, International Day of the puking rainbow unicorn,  whatever you guys celebrate..

Eat until you roll and drink until you have to roll :D

 

 

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Bloody_looser

Bloody_looser

Posted
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41 minutes ago, KingMonkeyNuts said:

Will the new landing gear be steerable? And will they have landing lights? I can see that the current (1.05) medium and large landing gear both have lights on the parts, but they don't seem to seem to do anything.

So much this. Otherwise it'll be actually a loss of the only working landing gear. Fancy models are cool, but landing gear being a sliding death stick is not.

Some clarification on this matter would be appreciated.

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Whirligig Girl

Whirligig Girl

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10 minutes ago, Motokid600 said:

Squad have you looked into extending the load range so we can replicate SpaceX properly? ( properly. Not boost to 80+km on a ridiculously steep trajectory )

Perhaps this is what Dr. Turkey is talking about. Maybe we'll see a 0.23.5 Asteroid Redirect Mission style interim update in partnership with SpaceX?

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r_rolo1

r_rolo1

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12 minutes ago, GregroxMun said:

Perhaps this is what Dr. Turkey is talking about. Maybe we'll see a 0.23.5 Asteroid Redirect Mission style interim update in partnership with SpaceX?

That would be nice. We definitely need some longer and sturdier landing legs in stock like the ones of the Falcon-9 1st stage, just for starters :D

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