Devnote Tuesday: Going through Max-Bug

[SQUAD]

Hello everyone!

Normally we’d be telling you how we got back to work after our holiday break, but due to a noticeable lack of holiday break other than a day off for Christmas and new year’s we just continued working as we did over the past weeks. We hope everyone had a great time during Christmas and New Year’s eve, we sure did!

Everyone’s fully focused on the QA process now: the deadline for console certification is creeping ever closer, and Flying Tiger rely on the bugfixes for the Unity 5 version of the game which  we’re working on. Ted noted that we’re currently at “peak bug”, where we can see the number of new issues in QA decrease, balancing nicely against the fixes the developers are implementing. The equilibrium and trend mean that we expect to see the number of ‘open’ issues decrease steadily over the next weeks. That is of course not just good news for people waiting to play KSP on the console, it also means that update 1.1 is coming closer. There’s definitely a few weeks of QA testing left, though.

A special role in the QA process is filled by Steve (Squelch) and Mathew (sal_vager), who have been brought on board to speed up the process of testing for the 1.1 update. Mathew was very pleased to see a long-standing Linux specific bug in Unity fixed, so that the gizmos display properly again. Steve and the rest of the QA team seem to have found most of the major user interface bugs, and the severity of the issues on the bugtracker is steadily decreasing.

Mike (Mu) has tackled issues that stemmed from the fact that we were still new to the Unity 5 user interface system when we started working on the upgrade. A pretty major redesign around the interface event and render sorting systems has fixed several open issues and has replaced a few hacky solutions that were put in place earlier. These changes have made the project much easier to work on.

Meanwhile, Jim (Romfarer) has been working on the Research & Development part list tooltips, making sure that this part of the interface runs on the same systems as the other part of the editors (VAB and SPH). Ultimately this will result in nicer part lists in the R&D building with the same spinning parts and tooltips as you’d find in the editor. The advantage on our end is that we’ve consolidated a good piece of code, making things just that bit more manageable.

In a shocking turn of events we’ve done even more work on the user interface: Bob (RoverDude) has been working on the screens that manage the Narrow Band Scanner, converting them to the Unity 5 user interface. Brian (Arsonide) has applied that same conversion process to the renderers that display map and navigation waypoints, making the code more efficient under the hood – adding to an impressive list of optimizations that await!

Nathanael (NathanKell) and Dave (TriggerAu) partnered up this week to work on the tutorials: over time some of them have become outdated as the game changed, and this needs to be fixed. Some good examples are the way you do gravity turns, or even things such as thrust ratings on engines that have changed causing issues with the default craft that you were sometimes provided with. A lot of you responded to Nathan’s call-to-action and provided very useful feedback: thank you!

Chris (Porkjet) has continued planning the start of overhauling the rocket parts in future versions. Special attention is being paid to ways to make the parts more versatile while staying true to the lego approach that KSP has. We’re reading suggestions in the forums, and the QA & experimental test teams have also provided useful feedback for this process. One feature we’re looking into with special interest is giving some engines the ability to switch their attachment between multiple sizes automatically. We’ll have to see how well that would fit in with the game.

On the community end we were very happy to see the response to the Vines we released over the weekend. Dan (danRosas) released the last one on New Year’s eve: it shows a rocket with a special package of Jeb’s Fireworks. They already received a good amount of loops, but if you haven’t seen them yet then we do invite you to head over to our Vine page. Together with the release of the vines we’ve held a number of giveaways to celebrate the holidays, and the winners will have been contacted by now. One lucky forummer even won a poster signed by an astronaut, and it will be hard to top that with any prize in the coming year.

The forum’s await their first major update since we migrated to IPS 4. Version 4.1.6 has been released, and we’re currently figuring out when we can best perform the update. Expect a small amount of downtime later this week or the next.

The end of a year also calls for reflections, and Joe (Dr Turkey) has been hard at work making inventory of the development team’s achievements over the past few months and putting that against the work that still awaits them. A lot of work is definitely still ahead, but 2016 is looking like it might be a mighty fine year for us. After working with NASA, Asteroid day and ESA we’re even looking into other cool partnerships!

That’s all long term though, for now we wish you a very happy new year!

[Guest]

Looking good.  I can't wait for 1.1!

[silversliver]

2 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

One feature we’re looking into with special interest is giving some engines the ability to switch their attachment between multiple sizes automatically.

 

Procedural attach points? WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Keep up with this and the revamped rocket parts!

[johnnyhandsome]

First!

Edited to add: All sounds good, take your time. If we have to wait 64 days for 64 bits, that's totally cool.

Edited January 5, 2016 by johnnyhandsome

[r_rolo1]

I can see sal_vager happy to solve that very irritating bug, indeed

Good to know that the work in general is progressing smootly, but no not delude yourselves: "peak bug" is always about 1 to 24 h after version release

[Wallygator]

Fab!  well done and happy new year to all of Squad!

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, juanml82 said:

And I'm the first to reply.

 

2 minutes ago, johnnyhandsome said:

First!

Nope.

[smjjames]

Quote

One feature we’re looking into with special interest is giving some engines the ability to switch their attachment between multiple sizes automatically.

Could you guys give an example of what you mean by this?

[Hotblack Desiato]

very good news.

 

just one thing: nobody forced you to work through christmas. a few days off wouldn't hurt at all, and since we don't know your release date, we don't know either, if you had to delay it for a bit.

[KerbMav]

2 minutes ago, smjjames said:

Could you guys give an example of what you mean by this?

I think it means a 1.25m engine will morph to attach to a 2.5m tank seemlessly?

[r_rolo1]

Just now, smjjames said:

Could you guys give an example of what you mean by this?

I would assume this is probably inspired by the Vector engine discussions, where, among other things , was proposed that all ( or atleast some more, like the skipper or the mainsail )the engines should have no "butt" part by themselves ( like the Vector has not ) and that that part should be procedurally generated according with the size of the part they were attached to, engine shroud style.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

14 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

giving some engines the ability to switch their attachment between multiple sizes

AWESOME!!!!  I loved this in Ven's stock revamp and would LOVE to see it in stock.

[NoMrBond]

In terms of overhauling the rocket parts, would you consider harmonising all engines to use the ModuleEnginesFX system?

I don't just mean updating older engines from moduleEngines to ModuleEnginesFX, but specifically moving the RCS parts away from ModuleRCS and onto ModuleEnginesFX (gaining the the newer modules capabilities like particles, and being able to make sound), while adding a config flag as to whether the part takes input from the RCS or Engine system by default (or exclusively).

Then there could even be a toggle for (some) engines between accepting RCS and Engine control inputs, such as the linear RCS port, or OP10 where it makes sense.

[klgraham1013]

Will we finally have a consistent aesthetic for rockets in 1.2?  My fingers are crossed.

[Hysterrics]

Ok, this dev note is just awesome.

Another forum update? Sweet. I know some people won't like this, but I for one like change. Can't wait to see what's going on there.
1.1 sounds like it's got a lot in store for us. Can't wait. Stable 64 bit KSP is going to be a blast.

 

[Wahgineer]

Size adapting engines? REEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

18 minutes ago, smjjames said:

Could you guys give an example of what you mean by this?

See this:

And this:

That way, you can use one engine for 1.25m and 2.5m rockets.

[smjjames]

3 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

See this:

And this:

That way, you can use one engine for 1.25m and 2.5m rockets.

Cool.

IMO they should all have that functionality.

[Tourist]

1 hour ago, Hotblack Desiato said:

very good news.

 

just one thing: nobody forced you to work through christmas. a few days off wouldn't hurt at all, and since we don't know your release date, we don't know either, if you had to delay it for a bit.

Not entirely accurate my friend. Dr Turkey, I assume encouraged the hard work over the break and from past posts we have discovered he has an affection for pitchfolks..... which I imagine would hurt quite a bit.  

Edited January 6, 2016 by Tourist

[GeneCash]

Sigh. Took me over an hour to realize "max-bug" is a play on "max-q" [facepalm]

Anyway, this isn't just a simple conversion to a newer version of the game engine... this is Squad doing KSP Done Right.

I haven't waited so eagerly for a new version of a game since the HALO series...

This is going to be the mother of all release parties... I hope there's going to be a suitably epic YouTube animation...

[KasperVld]

11 minutes ago, Tourist said:

Dr Turkey [...] has an affection for pitchfolks..... which I imagine would hurt quite a bit.  

They do

[almagnus1]

Hmm.... maybe look into getting in touch with the Russian side of things, as you've already worked with NASA and ESA, why not them too? =D

[Yakuzi]

Great devnotes!

One question: since you're releasing the various console versions soon, will that mean all features will be fully incorporated/worked out (e.g. terrain scatter with collision meshes, updated rocket parts, long list of other stuff...)?

[SpacedCowboy]

Oh, This is too good! Just when I thought things were slowing down. "Some engines the ability to switch their attachment  between multible sizes automatically",,, Hold me down, I'm freakin' !

[Superfluous J]

Procedural fairings. Procedural engine butts. I hope this is a trend.