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Devnotes Tuesday: Wednesday Edition III!


SQUAD

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Hello everyone!

This week has been busy for everyone. Felipe (HarvesteR) has been working on a comprehensive save upgrade system. The idea is to, whenever possible, allow the game to upgrade old saves by applying any modifications it determines to be necessary, and output data that the new version can load. This is something we felt was necessary now that we’re out of early access, and save-breaking can’t be considered an ok thing to do anymore.

The upgrade system is module-based, so we can add more upgrade modules to it in the future, whenever we need to change game data in old files. It can target both .craft and .sfs files, and operates at the ConfigNode level - which means data is parsed from the file text, but not yet applied to anything in the game - so it should (theoretically) be able to update any old data to whatever new format we need it to be in.

The first upgrade module we’re writing is one to upgrade the old save data for wheels, landing gear and legs, extract from them what persistent data we can, and re-save that under the new format. That way 1.0.5 and earlier saves should be able to load in 1.1 without wheels deciding to ignore their saved states which would likely cause entertaining, but generally counterproductive effects (think of rovers parked on slopes, stuck in place only by the persistent state of the brakes).

Mike (Mu) and Dave (TriggerAu) have great news: KSPedia and PartTools are complete! They are focusing on fixing a few content issues and on making life easier with some better import/export scripts. The systems will enter QA testing this week and the initial internal feedback has been really good. In memorial of last week’s feedback Dave have this short poem/plea:

While penning KSPedia text,

I drafted lines that were not the best.

Spelling misteaks, comma’s and many a full stop

Adjusting words so lines don’t crop

I’m stuck now talking in rhyming verse,

Not sure if “its” or “it’s” is worse.

With an excessive use of punctuation,

Can you forgive my grammaration?!

Old bugs! Jim (Romfarer) has been working on bugs that have been around for a long time. He managed to fix one of them in staging where the stage list would split symmetry groups in editor while detaching and attaching parts. This bug has been in the game for years. He also investigated some backend bugs which at the moment don’t seem to cause many issues with the exception of the flow algorithms in Engineer’s Report, which throw an error. Normally this sort of error message would simply be suppressed, but since the flow algorithms in the Engineer’s Report are the prototypes for the fuel flow overhaul it is important to get issues such as these fixed. Nathanael (NathanKell) Fixed even more bugs, but this week he focussed his efforts on performance, optimizing  the thermo and the temperature gauge system, the Unity 5 changes we had to make to it had slowed it down a lot, but it’s now running better than ever. Testing, reporting, reading, suggesting, and debug sessions for Steve (Squelch) all week. Devs are fixing bugs faster than he can report them and they’re even reporting their own along with the fix. Frantic pace in other words. Also Bill (taniwha) has been plugging away at bugs, most notably fixing docking ports locking up due to the game being saved between the magnets engaging and the ships docking.

Bob (Roverdude) wrapped up work on the new inflatable heat shield.  Which surprisingly required a few changes to different part modules to make it work the way he wanted.  For example, it is not re-foldable once it’s out. It also has its own fairing, as well as a built in omni-decoupler  but one that is not in the staging menu (to prevent ‘accidents’). One thing to note is that this part serves mostly as an aerobrake with thermal resistance being secondary, so Bob got to do a lot of testing with interplanetary aerobraking for both Jool and Eve. This is something we think you are going to like and of course, here’s a gratuitous screenshot showing the new heat shield stowed (2.5m) vs. deployed (10m)

Brian (Arsonide) worked on those little things that add up over time, like getting refunds when vessels cluttering the space center are removed, science labs triggering science contracts properly and contextual objectives telling you how much crew capacity or fuel the target vessel already has. There were also some not so little things though, like integrating a few parts from the Asteroid Day mod as a nice surprise for the community. The Probodobodyne HECS2, Communotron HG-55, and OX-STAT-XL Photovoltaic Panel have been rebalanced and integrated into 1.1 as stock parts. Due to the extra functionality of the Sentinel Infrared Telescope, that will remain in the official addon for now, so look for an update for that after 1.1 drops!

Just call sal_vager mr Spellchecker this week, He’s been going over the KSPedia with a critical eye, doing his best to rid it of Aussie-isms, typos, incorrect usages of there, their and they’re, didgeridoos and G’days.

Nathan (Claw) got down and dirty, learning the ins-and-outs of the new UI this week and trying to help tidy up the last few bits. Probably more of interest to the kerbonauts out there, he managed to tackle a few long standing issues such as “what’s the first click for on the re-root tool?” Even better, vessels in atmosphere within range of the active vessel are no longer deleted during quickload, and he adjusted the “switch to” logic so users can cycle between nearby craft upon quickloading. Fairings also received a bit of attention, and the dreaded “cannot activate while stowed” issue for interstage fairings has been fixed, though it requires rebuilding your interstages to take effect. While digging in there, he also discovered a previously uncharacterized bug when building fairings that people probably noticed but couldn’t quite put their finger on. They should be a bit easier to connect now!

Joe (Dr Turkey) is working or at least that’s what he said in Las Vegas getting ready for the DICE Awards.

On the community side Kasper is away on study leave this week, but through the devnotes we  would like to thank Sircmpwn for his work on creating and maintaining Kerbalstuff. Kasper and Badie hope a resolution to the closure of the website will be found quickly. The SpaceDock project is looking promising so far.

That’s it for this week, be sure to read the KSP forums, follow the KSP Twitter and Facebook accounts or follow us in any other place you can think of.

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10 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

While digging in there, he also discovered a previously uncharacterized bug when building fairings that people probably noticed but couldn’t quite put their finger on. They should be a bit easier to connect now!

So I don't have to put my rocket on it's head anymore to use it for interstages? :D

edit: Also YAY for pointless hype and devnotes!

Edited by Temeter
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8 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

Jim (Romfarer) has been working on bugs that have been around for a long time. He managed to fix one of them in staging where the stage list would split symmetry groups in editor while detaching and attaching parts.

Thank you.

8 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

There were also some not so little things though, like integrating a few parts from the Asteroid Day mod as a nice surprise for the community. The Probodobodyne HECS2, Communotron HG-55, and OX-STAT-XL Photovoltaic Panel have been rebalanced and integrated into 1.1 as stock parts.

Yay!

8 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

Probably more of interest to the kerbonauts out there, he managed to tackle a few long standing issues such as “what’s the first click for on the re-root tool?”

It does nothing.  I'm guessing there's no second click now?

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11 minutes ago, regex said:

It does nothing.  I'm guessing there's no second click now?

The mechanics of it now are that the first click will select the stack of parts to be re-rooted, and the second click will select the new root for that stack. If it's not the main stack that's being re-rooted, that second click will define the local root (i.e. the connecting part) of that secondary stack.

So lets say a user starts with the main ship stack, then pulls off a subsection to put to the side. The re-root tool now allows re-rooting either the main craft or the subsection to the side. Previously, the re-root tool would not allow modifying the stack placed to the side. Part stacks pulled from the sub-assemblies or merged from another craft file also allow re-rooting while holding them, or after being placed to the side if there's a need to get a better view of the stack.

Edited by Claw
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1 minute ago, Claw said:

The mechanics of it now are that the first click will select the stack of parts to be re-rooted, and the second click will select the new root for that stack. If it's not the main stack that's being re-rooted, that second click will define the local root (i.e. the connecting part).

Sounds ideal. What was the old mechanic?

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Lots of juicy details in these devnotes! Thank you. :D

I do have a question, though: will 1.1 finally fix surface lag? Ever since I started playing, the game has practically been a slideshow inside the atmosphere of a planet, or even on the surface of an airless planet/moon, unless I keep the camera pointed away from the ground. I'd really love to see this fixed so I can have some fun with rovers and the like.

Lastly: even in stock, with a fresh game, my KSP always crashes during re-entry unless I have aerodynamic settings at minimal. Is there a memory leak there? Will this be fixed anytime soon?

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4 minutes ago, Mitchz95 said:

I do have a question, though: will 1.1 finally fix surface lag? Ever since I started playing, the game has practically been a slideshow inside the atmosphere of a planet, or even on the surface of an airless planet/moon, unless I keep the camera pointed away from the ground. I'd really love to see this fixed so I can have some fun with rovers and the like.

This.  Seriously.  PQS lag is the worst.

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10 minutes ago, Claw said:

The mechanics of it now are that the first click will select the stack of parts to be re-rooted, and the second click will select the new root for that stack. If it's not the main stack that's being re-rooted, that second click will define the local root (i.e. the connecting part) of that secondary stack.

So lets say a user starts with the main ship stack, then pulls off a subsection to put to the side. The re-root tool now allows re-rooting either the main craft or the subsection to the side. Previously, the re-root tool would not allow modifying the stack placed to the side. Part stacks pulled from the sub-assemblies or merged from another craft file also allow re-rooting while holding them, or after being placed to the side if there's a need to get a better view of the stack.

So if I understand this right, this should be useful for detaching part of an already built ship as a subassembly, right?

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1 minute ago, akron said:

Awesome! Keep up the great work! Although I'm still waiting for the Dev note that says "We began the sound overhaul"

I'd like an overhaul, too, especially one that implements my mood music idea. However, at this point, I'd prefer them to QA the excrements out of the Unity 5 version of the game to iron out all the bugs, release that, and THEN focus on niceties like graphical and auditory eye/ear candy.

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8 minutes ago, godefroi said:

Sounds ideal. What was the old mechanic?

The old mechanic was that if you clicked on a part group to the side, it would say something to the effect that "there are no valid parts to attach by." i.e., you could only re-root the main ship's stack.

1 minute ago, juanml82 said:

So if I understand this right, this should be useful for detaching part of an already built ship as a subassembly, right?

Depends on exactly what you mean by that. You can pull off part of the ship and set it to the side, then re-root it before making it a subassembly (which should hopefully make it easier to use later). It doesn't affect the "detaching" piece.

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