Devnotes Tuesday: Hard work and GDC!

[Ser]

2 hours ago, legoclone09 said:

I'd make a heatshield that turned the ablator into Ore. Extremely useful, clearly.

And turned water into liquid fuel as well? Or science to electric charge, for example

[justidutch]

Quote

• Added a "Return to 1x time warp" keybinding, default is /

This makes me very very happy!!!!

[NathanKell]

7 hours ago, JohnnyPanzer said:

I assume the point is to allow for more realistic behaviour of heatshields, i.e. they could keep their mass even after Being "spent". 

At least that would be my guess.

According to my reading on Mercury / Gemini etc not all that much of the ablator material is in fact vaporized; rather, it undergoes a chemical change and becomes charred. Like how if you burn something you get ash, not just smoke. This explains how to reconcile the fact that the Mercury heat shield was something like 100kg of ablator, but the after-reentry mass was only "a couple pounds" less.

[Zoidos]

11 hours ago, Scotius said:

Aaaandddd....this is photo of me and other poor, unlucky people who didn't jump on Steam bandwagon, but instead chose to trust SQUAD's own store. Or got onboard long before Steam version was a thing.

If you have bought KSP before it was available on Steam, you can transfer your licence to Steam. There is an option for that in the Squad Store (dunno exacxtly how, it was posted in the pre-release announcement a few weeks ago).

[Rune]

20 hours ago, SQUAD said:

Who wrote them this week? Or, since I suspect everyone does and it's stitched together afterwards... who was supposed to proof-read it? 'Cause they either didn't, or their english is atrocious. I am a non-native speaker, and I can find more than a few grammar mistakes there... And yeah, my first language is Spanish, just like squad staff, and I still can't make sense of the way they made the mistakes.

1 hour ago, Zoidos said:

If you have bought KSP before it was available on Steam, you can transfer your licence to Steam. There is an option for that in the Squad Store (dunno exacxtly how, it was posted in the pre-release announcement a few weeks ago).

I know I can... but the reasons I wanted to steer clear of steam remain, so I won't. Most of the store buyers use it for principles, I think (give squad all the monies!).

 

Rune. Here's hoping next week I don't care about such trivial things, because I am busy playing 1.1.

Edited March 30, 2016 by Rune

[JohnnyPanzer]

1 hour ago, NathanKell said:

According to my reading on Mercury / Gemini etc not all that much of the ablator material is in fact vaporized; rather, it undergoes a chemical change and becomes charred. Like how if you burn something you get ash, not just smoke. This explains how to reconcile the fact that the Mercury heat shield was something like 100kg of ablator, but the after-reentry mass was only "a couple pounds" less.

Sounds pheasable to me. Again, I have no experience with actual Ablator materials, but having worked for ten years as an industrial insulator, my experience is that insulation materials will lose some of it's mass by absorbing heat, but far from all of it. If the ablator is ejected as it is spent (as someone mentioned above), I suppose a total loss of mass would be suitable. At any rate, I welcome the change in code, as it could certainly be used to create some very interesting heat shield mods.

[KerbonautInTraining]

Quote

To help with the testing process Brian (Arsonide) created a system that will create rotating auto saves. [...] 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.

From an old devnote.

Is this still gonna happen? Really looking forward to it.

Edited March 30, 2016 by KerbonautInTraining

[NathanKell]

@KerbonautInTraining it's in the pre, yes.

@JohnnyPanzer yeah, I'll be using it in RO.

[Zoidos]

15 minutes ago, Rune said:

I know I can... but the reasons I wanted to steer clear of steam remain, so I won't. Most of the store buyers use it for principles, I think (give squad all the monies!).

 

Rune. Here's hoping next week I don't care about such trivial things, because I am busy playing 1.1.

Honestly I don't know, neither can I imagine the reasons you are referring to that speak against steam. I have been using it for years and never experienced any real issues. OTH, I am rather easily satisfied when it comes to such things (I also never got the issue with Curse vs. Kerbalstuff, I got my mods, that's what matters). But I trust that you have your reasons and respect that. However I am sure that you are aware that this is your personal choice that keeps you from the pre-release.

You can always deactivate automatic updates of the game in Steam which makes you pretty much independent from updates (be it the steam client or KSP) and ensure that you have a working copy of the game. 

Anyway, I too hope that 1.1 will be available for everyone soon and people will forget this whole topic over how awesome the new version is.

[Rune]

7 minutes ago, Zoidos said:

Honestly I don't know, neither can I imagine the reasons you are referring to that speak against steam. I have been using it for years and never experienced any real issues. OTH, I am rather easily satisfied when it comes to such things (I also never got the issue with Curse vs. Kerbalstuff, I got my mods, that's what matters). But I trust that you have your reasons and respect that. However I am sure that you are aware that this is your personal choice that keeps you from the pre-release.

You can always deactivate automatic updates of the game in Steam which makes you pretty much independent from updates (be it the steam client or KSP) and ensure that you have a working copy of the game. 

Anyway, I too hope that 1.1 will be available for everyone soon and people will forget this whole topic over how awesome the new version is.

Reason #1: 100% of my money goes to Squad this way. Otherwise, they split it with Steam.

Reason #2: I don't want steam installed on my computer, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I think of it as bloatware (which is what I call a program that is always running in the background and only serves to launch other programs). I run a lean and mean install, with everything tweaked so it is just as I like it, and no extras weighing it down. Steam would take all that from me.

 

Rune. And yeah, it's a conscious choice of mine, I know... which says absolutely nothing about whether doing the pre-release was either a good, bad, or meh idea.

Edited March 30, 2016 by Rune

[Majorjim!]

4 minutes ago, Rune said:

Reason #1: 100% of my money goes to Squad this way. Otherwise, they split it with Steam.

Reason #2: I don't want steam installed on my computer, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I think of it as bloatware (which is what I call a program that is always running in the background and only serves to launch other programs). I run a lean and mean install, with everything tweaked so it is just as I like it, and no extras weighing it down. Steam would take all that from me.

 

Rune. And yeah, it's a conscious choice of mine, I know... which says absolutely nothing about whether doing the pre-release was either a good, bad, or meh idea.

On a modern PC steam will have zero noticeable impact on anything. I respect your choice man, I didn't know you where not a steam user.. I just think that is a poor argument to not use it. I have had no problems in the many many years I have used it. The money argument I cannot comment on, I have no idea how much Squad lose on a steam sale, if any.

Edited March 30, 2016 by Majorjim

[Rune]

4 minutes ago, Majorjim said:

On a modern PC steam will have zero noticeable impact on anything. I respect your choice man, I didn't know you where not a steam user.. I just think that is a poor argument to not use it. I have had no problems in the many many years I have used it.

You know you have a PC that, compared to mine, could VTOL on CPU cycles alone.

But still, reason #1 is the really strong one, I'm a principle guy and I will always support small businesses I like over well-established industry behemoths.

 

Rune. Another thing that might surprise you: I've run a Win7 install for... is it four years now, or more? Anyhow, no antivirus was ever installed and of course no formats or anything. Purrs like a kitten, and boots up lightning fast.

Edited March 30, 2016 by Rune

[Majorjim!]

14 minutes ago, Rune said:

You know you have a PC that, compared to mine, could VTOL on CPU cycles alone.

But still, reason #1 is the really strong one, I'm a principle guy and I will always support small businesses I like over well-established industry behemoths.

 

Rune. Another thing that might surprise you: I've run a Win7 install for... is it four years now, or more? Anyhow, no antivirus was ever installed and of course no formats or anything. Purrs like a kitten, and boots up lightning fast.

I have used it for a long time even on slow machines. But I respect the support reason, and you know, you can do what ever you want! I can confirm 1.1 runs like a dream!

[basic.syntax]

I also respect Squad's direct supporters. Steam provides a powerful lure of frequent sales. More than just a launcher, it removes app installation complexity. It's good in that regard, for less technical users. I haven't had to look at Installshield or "next" buttons and their associated decisions, in a long time. (Many decisions that used to need making during installation, have moved into app's option and configuration screens.)

[Zoidos]

1 hour ago, Rune said:

Reason #1: 100% of my money goes to Squad this way. Otherwise, they split it with Steam.

Reason #2: I don't want steam installed on my computer, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I think of it as bloatware (which is what I call a program that is always running in the background and only serves to launch other programs). I run a lean and mean install, with everything tweaked so it is just as I like it, and no extras weighing it down. Steam would take all that from me.

 

Rune. And yeah, it's a conscious choice of mine, I know... which says absolutely nothing about whether doing the pre-release was either a good, bad, or meh idea.

@Reason 1: this is a simple business decision: i can sell 1000 units of a product with 10 bucks profit per unit or i can sell 100.000 units of the same product with 1 $ profit per unit. Steam is a service that helps small indie devs distribute their products to a broad playerbase they would never reach by their own means. this of course has its price (this is capitalism, after all). I see your point and I share your preference of the little company over the big mammoth but in a way, steam tips the scale towards the former. This might of course just be my point of view.

Not trying to convince you or anything, but you do have the choice to turn steam off or disable automatic launching. Since ksp has no drm, you don't even have to run steam to play ksp. Just a thought.

[Mikki]

Errm... yeah please excuse this but i must get rid of it somewhere...
SQUAD RULES!

[CAKE99]

On 30/03/2016 at 11:00 AM, SQUAD said:

One thing to keep an eye on with 1.1 is that rover wheels now get stressed based on weight distribution of the rover and wheel slip. So if you put cheap wheels on a rover carrying four tons of fuel and drift it into a hill the wheels will pop, even if you did not necessarily hit anything or drive very fast. This means the player needs to focus more on not only how their rover is built, but how they drive it as well. Drive responsibly!

Will there be a cheat to disable that?

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, CAKE99 said:

Will there be a cheat to disable that?

I would assume there already is one. Indestructible parts or whatever it's called.