Devnote Tuesday: Arrivals and Departures

[SQUAD]

Hello everyone!

It’s the week after the vacations, which makes for little material to write the devnotes. Fortunately the experimental testers have been hard at work to make sure a long list of issues awaits the developers so that they can dive right back into their day jobs.

Despite the fact that Felipe (HarvesteR), Mike (Mu), Ted and Jim (Romfarer) were on vacation last week progress on bug squashing continued in strong fashion: Dave (TriggerAu) reports that the larger part of the 60+ issues have been squashed this week were fixed by Nathanael (NathanKell) and Nathan (Claw). Dave himself has been putting the finishing touches on the KSPedia system, tweaking the layouts to improve readability.

To help with the testing process Brian (Arsonide) created a system that will create rotating auto saves. This was done because testers often submit save files from just after a bug has occurred, and getting a save from just before it happened was more a matter of luck than anything else, especially so if the bug does not have a documented reproduction process. This system will also be available to the general public once we are out of testing. It may also help players if something really bad happens to their saves, like a rogue add-on eating all of their vessels.

All in all we’re steaming ahead towards the pre-release branch, and experimentals is going more smoothly than we originally anticipated. If this keeps up, and if we can squash a few bugs that are holding back the pre-release branch so far then this part of testing is already coming tentatively close. That is, of course, a big if.

On the development side Chris (Porkjet) has been busy with various graphical and shader tweaks. This week in particular he’s creating masks for the IVA overlay feature that DasValdez showed off on his channel the other week. This process involves adding meshes around each internal space with a special shader, masking off some things while leaving certain areas visible to make the parts look similar to a cut-out on a technical drawing.

Also on the agenda this week is the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, where Kerbal Space Program can be found at several booths, including those of Razer, Microsoft and of course Flying Tiger. Andie (Badie) and Dan (danRosas) are flying out to the event, so you might run into one of them if you get a chance to visit!

With Andrea preparing for and attending GDC, Kasper (KasperVld) has been busy handling the community side of preparations for 1.1: documentation for the pre-release is being created, new people have been added to the Media Group and media plans have been written. Plenty of things going on then, so we’ll skip the poetry for this week and focus on getting that pre-release out there as soon™ as possible. See you next week!

[tdonovan4]

Great news!

[benjee10]

Personally loving the IVA overlay feature and looking forward to what that may lead to in the future. Ultimately I doubt it'll have much impact on performance for the majority of players and it really really cool. 

[Vallius]

Devnotes are quite nice

But without some poetry

perhaps too concise.

[Raptor9]

Can't wait for the pre-release twitch streams to start. 

[Promii]

Rotating auto-saves sounds like a potential life saver! (Literally, in some cases)

[Vallius]

Hmmm, cutaway views of our vessels. It's a nice graphics touch, but I don't see the utility of seeing the internals of manned vehicles.  Unless... ;-)

[JPLRepo]

Just now, Vallius said:

Hmmm, cutaway views of our vessels. It's a nice graphics touch, but I don't see the utility of seeing the internals of manned vehicles.  Unless... ;-)

I've seen a lot of comments about this on the other thread that was running on this. But my modding mind starts to race with ideas on what I can do with this and the potential uses for it in the future.

[KroShan]

8 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

On the development side Chris (Porkjet) has been busy with various graphical and shader tweaks. This week in particular he’s creating masks for the IVA overlay feature that DasValdez showed off on his channel the other week. This process involves adding meshes around each internal space with a special shader, masking off some things while leaving certain areas visible to make the parts look similar to a cut-out on a technical drawing.

i was totally surprised when is saw that on imgur. will this feature be in 1.1?

Congrats on the quick progress - seems your code is quite polished

[captainbinary]

Cutaway views is looking pretty nice, looking forward to the future posibilities either by you or modders.  Rotating auto-saves sounds amazing, would we be able to set the amount of auto-saves for it to store in the options? Or will there be a set amount.

 

Keep up the great work Squad!

[Arsonide]

2 minutes ago, captainbinary said:

Rotating auto-saves sounds amazing, would we be able to set the amount of auto-saves for it to store in the options? Or will there be a set amount.

It is a configurable setting, so you can have none, ten, or a hundred. Every time the game autosaves, it'll copy the save to a "Backups" directory, before overwriting it.

[captainbinary]

Just now, Arsonide said:

It is a configurable setting, so you can have none, ten, or a hundred. Every time the game autosaves, it'll copy the save to a "Backups" directory, before overwriting it.

That is brilliant. Thankyou for the quick response.

[Promii]

8 minutes ago, Vallius said:

Hmmm, cutaway views of our vessels. It's a nice graphics touch, but I don't see the utility of seeing the internals of manned vehicles.  Unless... ;-)

From a cinematic or screenshot making standpoint, the ability to see the crew without having to be behind the eyes of one of them in IVA-view is pretty great.

[worir4]

I'll write the poem this week (terribly).

Suns and beaches set on the horizon
On the other work awaits

For 1.1 the future brightens
However hoping not to miss the set dates

An awesome feature the IVAs may be
It is 64 bit that we all want to see.

Edited March 16, 2016 by worir4

[basic.syntax]

The "cut-away" view feature looks/sounds awesome.  Kerbal Ant Farm? 

This would require more animation work, AND some kind of Kerbal accessible/navigable IVA for every part - including suitable structure bits, but, imagine seeing your kerbals clamber through sections of craft, and through air locks, when you ask them to move from one place to another. KSP could be on the path to a detailed third-person view and control scheme.

[AlamoVampire]

Ugh. The cutaway thing IS an intended feature?!?! What a waste of dev time!!! It looks to have NO use! That time would have been better used on something that isn't pure pointless fluff. #DISAPPOINTED I seriously hope that bs can be shut down with a toggle and isn't a replacement for first person IVA. If it IS a replacement the borked and borked badly. Here's hoping I'm freaking out needlessly. #hopeimwrong

[godefroi]

#thisisnttwitter and also #squadmakeschoicesonfeaturesnotus

 

[FullMetalMachinist]

2 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

Here's hoping I'm freaking out needlessly.

You're freaking out needlessly. 

And as far as "wasted dev time" goes, I think the devs are in the best position to decide what is worth working on and what is a waste. 

[theonegalen]

Squad, thank you for all the hard work, especially to all the modders/former modders who were brought on, and whichever genius at Squad it was who decided to start that process!

As for the new cutaway feature, it looks fun and harmless.

Edited March 15, 2016 by theonegalen

[Eric S]

1 minute ago, AlamoVampire said:

I seriously hope that bs can be shut down with a toggle and isn't a replacement for first person IVA. If it IS a replacement the borked and borked badly. Here's hoping I'm freaking out needlessly. #hopeimwrong

Das mentioned a new onscreen button that toggled this, so it really doesn't sound like an IVA replacement.  As for the amount of work, it's funny how many times an interesting project can come out of taking a needed break from a main project or that apparently unrelated changes can lead to interesting new features.  More than once during development, I've written someone a note saying "You know, since we're already making changes X and Y, adding Z would be trivial, does that sound like something you want?" and received the answer "Yeah!"

 

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

3 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

Ugh. The cutaway thing IS an intended feature?!?! What a waste of dev time!!! It looks to have NO use! That time would have been better used on something that isn't pure pointless fluff. #DISAPPOINTED I seriously hope that bs can be shut down with a toggle and isn't a replacement for first person IVA. If it IS a replacement the borked and borked badly. Here's hoping I'm freaking out needlessly. #hopeimwrong

It can be toggled, don't worry. It's an optional thing in the f12 menu, from what I hear.

[worir4]

4 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

Ugh. The cutaway thing IS an intended feature?!?! What a waste of dev time!!! It looks to have NO use! That time would have been better used on something that isn't pure pointless fluff. #DISAPPOINTED I seriously hope that bs can be shut down with a toggle and isn't a replacement for first person IVA. If it IS a replacement the borked and borked badly. Here's hoping I'm freaking out needlessly. #hopeimwrong

Who knows, it may be the for-coming of a new feature that I think we all would really like.... (Moving in IVA)

[BT Industries]

22 minutes ago, JPLRepo said:

ments about this on the other thread that was running on this. But my modding mind starts to race with ideas on what I can do with this and the potential uses for it in the future.

Agreed this could add some interesting possibilities for modders

15 minutes ago, basic.syntax said:

The "cut-away" view feature looks/sounds awesome.  Kerbal Ant Farm? 

This would require more animation work, AND some kind of Kerbal accessible/navigable IVA for every part - including suitable structure bits, but, imagine seeing your kerbals clamber through sections of craft, and through air locks, when you ask them to move from one place to another. KSP could be on the path to a detailed third-person view and control scheme.

That would be sooooo cool

11 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

Ugh. The cutaway thing IS an intended feature?!?! What a waste of dev time!!! It looks to have NO use! That time would have been better used on something that isn't pure pointless fluff. #DISAPPOINTED I seriously hope that bs can be shut down with a toggle and isn't a replacement for first person IVA. If it IS a replacement the borked and borked badly. Here's hoping I'm freaking out needlessly. #hopeimwrong

I think this was more of a feature that was accidently stumbled upon and was added in because it is really quite harmless. I don't think this was a planned feature

But I'm glad it now is!

[Guest]

HYPE!  I'm really excited for 1.1!

[JohnnyPanzer]

14 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

Ugh. The cutaway thing IS an intended feature?!?! What a waste of dev time!!! It looks to have NO use! That time would have been better used on something that isn't pure pointless fluff. #DISAPPOINTED I seriously hope that bs can be shut down with a toggle and isn't a replacement for first person IVA. If it IS a replacement the borked and borked badly. Here's hoping I'm freaking out needlessly. #hopeimwrong

You keep saying that. It may seem pointless to YOU, but the large nummer of posters expressing excitement over the feature means that it is, without a question, NOT pointless.