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Devnote Wednesday: Tuesday Edition

SQUAD

By SQUAD
in KSP1 The Daily Kerbal

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SQUAD

SQUAD

Posted
Posted
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Hello everyone!

How often can a message be repeated before it becomes repetitive? Well, we certainly hope that our message of “we’re close, and we’re getting closer” from the past months has gotten boring yet. If you follow the development updates with a keen eye for detail you’ll see that every time there’s that little bit of news that sets the week apart from all the others. And this week is the same as previous weeks in that regard. Are you still with us? Good, let’s go!

The save upgrading system we mentioned last week has been coming along nicely. Felipe (HarvesteR) put together the different parts that were required to upgrade save games from 1.0.5 to 1.1, the wheels specifically. A system that rewrites text files sounds simple enough, but the amount of work doesn’t quite reflect that: there are literally dozens of ways to load various types of save files in the game. Just a small sample: loading a game from the main menu, starting scenarios, quick-loading, reverting a flight, loading craft files in the editor, loading subassemblies, merging ships, and editing vessels from the launch dialog.

In case the upgrade process fails, the game will present the player with a number of options and aside from the ones you know (i.e. delete the incompatible file) we’re looking to add the option to load the game regardless so that people who want to try and fix their saves manually can do so. This is not something we anticipate to be needed with stock save files, but in case of modded games it might come in useful.

Speaking of modding, modders will be able to use the savefile update system to their full advantage: just tag your UpgradeScript subclasses with the [UpgradeModule] attribute, and upgrade away. Please do take into account that the upgrade pipeline handles the file data itself, so it doesn’t have direct access to other sources of data such as the .cfg file for a part. Ideally, upgrades should get done with as little dependence on off-file data as possible. Felipe also added an upgrade base class called PartOffset which will allow you to rotate and offset parts in a save file.

Staging is a part of the game that has received a major overhaul over the past weeks, and we’re happy to be able to report that Jim (Romfarer) is closing up shop on this part of the overhaul. This is one of the cases though where a bug proved to be too illusive to fix: docking and undocking can produce unreliable results with regards to staging in 1.0.5 and also in 1.1, but changing the way it works could (and as any software developers knows would) produce many unanticipated problems. Although a lot of time went into researching this bug we had to make a decision and not address this particular issue.

There are of course plenty of issues that we can address: Brian (Arsonide) has been hard at work tackling various issues surrounding science labs, and in particular the use of more than one lab at a time. When you fill up your first lab and still have data to spare, that data now properly “bounces” to the next one. To balance out this change, the data is no longer copied, but actually physically sent to the lab. This means that if you want to fill three labs, you need three sets of data. If you recover a lab that has science in it, that science is also properly recovered. If you have a lab, the “Process in Lab” button no longer disappears if there is a problem, but rather, greys out to tell you what is wrong. The tooltip on that button is no longer measured in data units, but tells you explicitly how much science you are getting with an estimate of how long it will take to get it based on the scientists that are there. Overall, a major set of changes!

In last week’s devnotes we discussed the new heat shield decoupler that Bob (RoverDude) worked on. As it turns out, the behaviour where it wouldn’t stage by default turned up a few bugs in the “stageability toggle handling” system that Nathanael (NathanKell) had been working on, so those were quickly fixed. While tackling this issue Nathanael also added the ability for any stock module to toggle its staging action by a mere .cfg change. For example, ModuleRCS can be edited in such a way that it won’t activate until it is staged.

Mike (Mu) and Dave (TriggerAu) spent their week going over the feedback that resulted from the KSPedia QA tests. Interfaces were reworked, font colors had to be adjusted and around a dozen new sets of information were added. It’s a lot of micro-work that should hopefully result in a very helpful system overall. Mike and Ted are also putting the finishing touches on the new PartTools and they’ve been discussing a processual change to the upcoming experimental testing process. No doubt more on that in the coming weeks.

PEGI has come through with the rating, meaning Kerbal Space Program is now officially labelled PEGI 3. Joe (Dr Turkey) has been ‘rather excited’, though we cannot confirm nor deny reports of him running a marathon backwards when the news came in. Console certification is coming along nicely as well. We’d almost forget that Joe travelled to Las Vegas to represent Kerbal Space Program at the DICE awards there. Although we were nominated twice, we sadly didn’t win an award. The trip was well worth it though, and in Joe’s own words: it was beautiful in unexpected ways. Dan (DanRosas) provided him with handouts and swag® to hand out at the convention and also worked on the console manuals for KSP.

On the community end Kasper (KasperVld) took a week off to study for exams and to write to meet thesis deadlines, and Andie (Badie) was suddenly faced with a double workload. We do apologize for the third ‘Wednesday’ edition of the devnotes last week. When looking at it, we’re quite proud we’ve managed to limit it to three occurrences in all this time.

The rest of the team has been tackling odds and ends on the bugtracker, and known issues: parachutes now open if they are below their full-deploy altitude, regardless of their air pressure setting, gimbals operate a bit faster, cluster engines can have varying output across their thrust transforms, manoeuvre nodes can now be placed properly on hyperbolic trajectories (you can more easily place that manoeuvre node to plan your Duna capture burn), vessels no longer explode when the root part overhangs the edge of the launchpad, and loading Space Center saves via the in-flight quick-load menu no longer end up with unexpected vessels in focus. This is, of course, just a selection of bugs and by no means covers everything that has been fixed. A big thanks here goes out to Nathanael, Steve (Squelch), Mathew (sal_vager), Nathan (Claw) and Bill (Taniwha).

The author did not find a willing victi.. volunteer to write this week’s poetry, so a half-assed attempt at a Rondeau is made by yours truly.

A Kerbal livestream

Kerbals always launch their rockets high and wide,
In the pod the pilots sat closely, side by side.
Setting foot on Minmus was the mission statement,
To taste ice cream for science and amazement.

Your aim is off, mission control soon cried,
‘But I can fix this’, the player then replied.
He pleaded for his audience’s engagement:
Kerbals always launch their rockets high and wide.

No matter how much the player tried,
The doomed pilots could not escape the cursed ride.
They dropped into the Sun for their audience’s entertainment.
And even though these brave pilots fried.
Kerbals always launch their rockets high and wide.

As a final note, our heartfelt congratulations go out to Steve who become a grandfather over the weekend.

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Vallius

Vallius

Posted
Posted

So is the couple/uncouple system more or less broken in 1.1 than 1.0.5? Overall, I haven't had any significant issues yet (but then my newest save hasn't progressed to large space stations yet.

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KasperVld

KasperVld

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, Vallius said:

So is the couple/uncouple system more or less broken in 1.1 than 1.0.5? Overall, I haven't had any significant issues yet (but then my newest save hasn't progressed to large space stations yet.

Less broken, definitely. This is just one issue that we won't tackle because it would introduce a range of other problems.

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SgtSomeone

SgtSomeone

Posted
Posted (edited)
14 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

 

Kerbals always launch their rockets high and wide,
In the pod the pilots sat closely, side by side.
Setting foot on Minmus was the mission statement,
To taste ice cream for science and amazement.

 

Your aim is off, mission control soon cried,
‘But I can fix this’, the player then replied.
He pleaded for his audience’s engagement:
Kerbals always launch their rockets high and wide.

No matter how much the player tried,
The doomed pilots could not escape the cursed ride.
They dropped into the Sun for their audience’s entertainment.
And even though these brave pilots fried.
Kerbals always launch their rockets high and wide.

I don't care if it was half-assed, it's beautiful. 

Also, glad to hear about the parabolic maneuver bug fix. It was always a real pain to hover my mouse along until I could make one. 

Edited by SgtSomeone
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Redneck

Redneck

Posted
Posted
28 minutes ago, KasperVld said:

Less broken, definitely. This is just one issue that we won't tackle because it would introduce a range of other problems.

nothing a quick patch after release cant take care of

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