Devnote Tuesday: Wednesday Edition II

[Jim DiGriz]

4 hours ago, Azimech said:

Actually I believe it's not about having emotion but the rational insight the customer just doesn't like such sloppiness and it could create the feeling more things might be wrong or worse.

"All your base are belong to us." A classic example of commercial suicide in the most extreme form. Five years after releasing their product, Toaplan went bust in '94.

Given the defect rate in all the existing text in the game, what makes you think that they're about to release an "All your base" with KSPedia?

[Azimech]

3 minutes ago, Jim DiGriz said:

Given the defect rate in all the existing text in the game, what makes you think that they're about to release an "All your base" with KSPedia?

Well ... did you read back to where the quoting started?

[Atlas2342]

Aww, no antennas? But, but there will be new parts right? RIGHT?!

[mattinoz]

8 hours ago, Arsonide said:

 

A small clarification on this feature: the ETA of the next maneuver node is shown by slowly alternating it with the MET of the vessel as shown in the screenshot. Everything is still sorted by MET, so it's just a small quality of life feature to kind of grab the player's attention. It is not a sort, but that might be something worth looking at if and when we start displaying more information here, but for the moment it's just a small addition to see vessels that need your attention at a glance.

It's as if a million voices screamed out YES then were suddenly silenced....

[Jim DiGriz]

50 minutes ago, Azimech said:

Well ... did you read back to where the quoting started? 

 

Yes, I've read the whole thread.

 

[Superfluous J]

While I'm disappointed that sorting by maneuver node time in the Tracking Station is not actually being implemented, I was actually a bit disappointed that it WAS being implemented.

If you're in flight, the Tracking station is 3 scenes (and 2 load times) away. I'd rather have a single "This is the ship with the next maneuver node" indicator somewhere in the FLIGHT screen, where these things should be. And, of course, the map screen. Which should have all the functionality of the Tracking Station, and maybe even be indistinguishable from it.

But this won't affect me anyway, as I'll not stop using KAC until it's been completely implemented into the game.

[nli2work]

serious question Squad: will any of 1.1's stock assets be in standard unity asset bundle format or still in the old MU format?

[mattinoz]

17 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

While I'm disappointed that sorting by maneuver node time in the Tracking Station is not actually being implemented, I was actually a bit disappointed that it WAS being implemented.

If you're in flight, the Tracking station is 3 scenes (and 2 load times) away. I'd rather have a single "This is the ship with the next maneuver node" indicator somewhere in the FLIGHT screen, where these things should be. And, of course, the map screen. Which should have all the functionality of the Tracking Station, and maybe even be indistinguishable from it.

But this won't affect me anyway, as I'll not stop using KAC until it's been completely implemented into the game.

Can't we have both... in time?

I mean Squad don't need to solve every frustration in a single release. They can break them in to piecemeal solutions making it easier for them to do more regular releases.

So hopefully this is just step one and we can get a central sorted list down the the track and a notification system they can pop up a ui of the next  node on the list on to any screen in the game. Better still if the pop up follows some rules so this ui is only on screen for nodes in the next hour or so game time or if the node you created for the active flight is after the next in the list. That way if the pop-up is on screen you know to not just go wrapping off in to the future.

[He_162]

Do you believe space elevators will work in update 1.1, or are there going to be issues with that, like in current KSP?

[FullMetalMachinist]

27 minutes ago, He_162 said:

Do you believe space elevators will work in update 1.1, or are there going to be issues with that, like in current KSP?

I haven't heard that they are extending the size of the physics bubble, so I would assume it's staying the same. So no, I don't think space elevators will work. (Which is unfortunate, because that would be really fun to play with.) 

[vosechu]

Thank you for posting screenshots and links, I always love it when you do that! It gives me something really visual to connect with! 

[Ser]

6 hours ago, nli2work said:

serious question Squad: will any of 1.1's stock assets be in standard unity asset bundle format or still in the old MU format?

Haven't they told just about it in previous Devnotes?

13 hours ago, razark said:

Frankly, it's too much for me.

I've used it.  It's great.  Does everything I could possibly want from a communications system.  However, last time I tried using it, it bogged my computer down way too much.  I'm guessing it probably has to do a lot of processing to track network nodes, compute paths, select shortest path to a command point, draw all the lines, and whatever else it may do.  So, while I like it and am not opposed to it, it's just not possible for me to run a communications network and fly a spacecraft, as well.

Are you sure the RT is responsible for your slowdowns? Never experienced anything like this with the largest network built about 10 sats.

Edited February 11, 2016 by Ser

[egoego]

I really hope you use links for cross referencing in the KSPedia pages. Otherwise you need to explain abbreviations (like SRB) in every page

But the screenshots look nice and KSP really needs them to help new players understand the game.

[lextacy]

6 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

 

 

6 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

While I'm disappointed that sorting by maneuver node time in the Tracking Station is not actually being implemented, I was actually a bit disappointed that it WAS being implemented.

If you're in flight, the Tracking station is 3 scenes (and 2 load times) away. I'd rather have a single "This is the ship with the next maneuver node" indicator somewhere in the FLIGHT screen, where these things should be. And, of course, the map screen. Which should have all the functionality of the Tracking Station, and maybe even be indistinguishable from it.

But this won't affect me anyway, as I'll not stop using KAC until it's been completely implemented into the game.

Agreed. It seems as if Squad wanted to add KAC functionality, but only 5% . I have no use in the tracking station other than flying a craft and timewarping. Now what I would really like to see in the tracking station is filters such as:

- Hide orbital crafts that share the same orbital plane. 

  This allows for one to check on which satellites need maintenance with out others blocking your view. Basically you filter out all planes , but the one you specify.

-Tags : You assign a tag to a craft such as "GPS"

  This is to group crafts like gps, interplanetary probes, atmopherics, solar probes, radiation probes, TDRS, communication ,ect

Having these features will really clean out your tracking station and make sense of whats going on around your planet.  Just my 2cents

[Luis]

11 hours ago, LadyAthena said:

 

If you're getting your panties up in a bunch over some spelling errors, you're missing the big picture, and you kinda deserve all the agitation you're giving yourself. The errors are within reasonable range, it's not like they have extreme grammar issues, and massive spelling mistakes.

The fifth screen has a sentence that reads:

"Once we've touched down we can use this scanner to ground truth the planet and improve our orbital survey accuracy." (my emphasis)

I'm pretty sure that's an extreme grammar issue, since I have no idea what it's trying to say.

[Warzouz]

11 hours ago, TriggerAu said:

I like it too, was really happy when we got that one working. Technically the background is a separate layer in game with transparency on the image layer so we can put in differnt backgrounds without changing the content. That said its quite fun to create backgrounds that dont distract from the content too much, but thats a whole nother discussion really, and thanks for the feedback

That's a cool feature to have to background separated from the foreground. I suppost KSPedita will allow modder to create some kind of ingame help for their mod. I suggest to allow the background to be used for those to-be-created help. I also soggest some kind of way to show clearly if a feature is stock or modded (maybe some automatic mod name embeding in the background (?)

Will you publish a basic toolkit (a PSD-like file) so modders can create images with coherent design ? (Image quality, size, font-type, font size, colors..)

Finally, something you can't change, but I regret you uses images to be embeded. It's very static, not language translatable, and finally. You should have looked into Nadeo (Trackmania) emebedeed browser they used few years ago (in Trackmania United) called MANIALINKS. At that time, it was a simple XML (that could be generated by a HTTP server) which could handle images, textes, internal links (not URL nor script, for security, if I remember ). The feature was even able to install mods, tracks and car models without exiting the game. This feature allowed website to show contents directly in the game.

I must point that Nadeo was a 12 people team at that time.

[Speadge]

as for the KSPedia, please make sure not to switch "you can use" and "we can use" that often. it really confuses people (at least me)
=> i.e. on the orbital ore scan screens.

[hermes47]

1 hour ago, Luis said:

The fifth screen has a sentence that reads:

"Once we've touched down we can use this scanner to ground truth the planet and improve our orbital survey accuracy." (my emphasis)

I'm pretty sure that's an extreme grammar issue, since I have no idea what it's trying to say.

Nope, that's perfectly legit grammar. Ground truthing is when one obtains information by direct observation, rather than just via inference. Eg, the orbital survey scan can be thought of as inferring what in a certain area based on things like albedo and local gravity fluctuations, but the surface scanner directly looks and measures to determine exactly what's at a point. It ground truths.

[richfiles]

I would like to say, I got a good punny chuckle at the vessel names in that tracking station screenshot! 

I also second the idea of additional sorting option in tracking. Sort not just by vessel name or by soonest maneuver node, but by launch order, by SoI, etc.

[razark]

4 hours ago, Ser said:

Are you sure the RT is responsible for your slowdowns? Never experienced anything like this with the largest network built about 10 sats.

Slowdown occurs with a RT network in place.

Slowdown did not occur with RT removed.  (The functionality was removed.  The parts were left in place to allow loading the save file.)

[nli2work]

5 hours ago, Ser said:

Haven't they told just about it in previous Devnotes?

No, they just said 1.1 Parttools "uses Unity AssetBundles rather than .mu files", nothing about existing assets themselves.

Reason I ask is that if stock assets are in *.asset format; it will be much easier to extract them for reference than MU format. 

Edited February 11, 2016 by nli2work

[sackfalte]

I play KSP x64 on Linux, so I don't really care about x64 functionality for Windows (other than not having to reboot every time).

 

What I care about is lag and framerates. I have an i7 4790K, 16GB RAM and a GTX 980Ti (not a reference system, but definitely above average) and from 150+ parts upwards, the lag really becomes noticeable.

Physics time is set to the absolute minimum. If I remember correctly, hyper-threading is enabled via launcher script (not sure about that one).

 

What's the hold-up? Why can't my EUR 1500 PC deal with this game once I build anything even remotely more complicated?

What good are 8 cores if only 1 is used, or if the performance boost isn't x8 (yeah, too simplistic, I know..)?

Could the GPU aid in physics calculation as it can in parallel-processing for - say - calculating hash-tables?

Are there other/better physics engines that would be more suited for this kind of game?

 

Btw, don't get me wrong, I love the game, and I know some of my statements may over-simplify matters, but... come on 

[Buster Charlie]

17 hours ago, razark said:

 

It's been a while, so perhaps I'm missing something...
But if all the antennas can reach anywhere with no delay, what's left from Remote Tech besides the computer?  It seems like you've just described a way to remove Remote Tech from Remote tech.

The computer was nice, though.  I've gotten a new computer since I last tried.  I need to give it another shot and see if I can use it now.

I was thinking the same thing, however I probably would have gotten in trouble if I responded directly.

I love RT, I enjoyed the challange, but after restarting my game many times I've switched to antenna range mod because to be honest even though I find it very fun, I found myself managing my network more than I did exploring and flying. Antenna range allows me to give satellites a purpse while not having to micro manage it.

 

So I appreciate the appeal of fans and dismissal of people who don't like it, I don't understand the point of remote tech if you disable every feature that makes it remote tech.

 

Having said all that,  I support the stock integration of something simpler, because it'll  provide some depth and meaning to the communication parts, and satellite contracts,  and like others have said maybe the more complicated mods can springboard off the stock system for more optimized code.

[John FX]

18 hours ago, Azimech said:

If I visualize this correctly ... you mean two wheels with a loose structural panel in between?

pretty much. two wheels running against each other and then you move the edge of a structural panel inbetween and it should get flung away rather than do something weird. I imagined horizontal and vertical to see if gravity direction mattered.

Another test would be to run only one wheel and see if it runs the second wheel passively. I can imagine someone who makes complex things like stock helicopters or turbos would be interested in the results

[John FX]

21 hours ago, Arsonide said:

 

A small clarification on this feature: the ETA of the next maneuver node is shown by slowly alternating it with the MET of the vessel as shown in the screenshot. Everything is still sorted by MET, so it's just a small quality of life feature to kind of grab the player's attention. It is not a sort, but that might be something worth looking at if and when we start displaying more information here, but for the moment it's just a small addition to see vessels that need your attention at a glance.

So why not have a decent sort feature for craft in flight where they can be sorted in various ways?

Seems like such an obviously good idea that it`s really puzzling that it`s not being done.