Devnote Tuesday: PlayStation debut!

[SQUAD]

Hello everyone!

Today is the day of our American PlayStation 4 release! We’re very excited to welcome thousands of new people into the world of rocket science! This is the first step of our global consoles releases: XBox One will follow globally this Friday, with the exact date for the Playstation 4 release for Europe to follow soon. Later this year we also plan to launch a Wii U version of the game. Newcomers to our community will join the ranks of many great people willing to help each other learn, who challenge one another to come up with incredible ideas and who share a passion for everything related to astronomy and rocket science. Once again: welcome!

The release of the PlayStation 4 version of Kerbal Space Program has kept our community and PR team busy: Kasper (KasperVld) and Andrea (Badie) have been monitoring responses, viewed the first impressions of livestreamers, kept a lookout for articles and handled the hundreds of questions you’ve sent us by email or on social media. Add on top of that going through requests for review codes, working with Pablo (Paul Amsterdam) on social media campaigns and dozens of other tasks and you’ll understand that this has been a very busy week on the PR front, with more to come!

Development for update 1.2 still continues of course, and much like last week the developers have been stuck in the trenches with code optimisations: removing foreach() loops and linq statements. It’s a very technical story, but ultimately it will help run the game more smoothly by reducing the amount of ‘garbage’ that is created in the memory and that has to be removed regularly. It may not be the most exciting news, but as Jim (Romfarer) put it: the exciting part of this update is yet to come, or, as Mike (Mu) commented: the project is down a few thousand files, and most of the code has been brutally optimised, it’s faster to compile, and has had various APIs changed to make more sense.

Worth mentioning is Brian’s (Arsonide) work on adding a few nifty common sense features such as an event that fires when a vessel’s part count changes. Normally developers and modders have to poll this in an update method, because on occasion parts can be modified without the normal vessel modification event firing. While working on that he also added a standard “vessel changed” event, which funnels many events into one when a vessel docks, explodes, or is modified in any conceivable way. No longer should we need to watch more than one event just to see when a vessel changes. This allows us to cache a lot of things in our part modules instead of polling the vessel’s parts every single frame. Lastly, in addition to a list of vessels, FlightGlobals now also keeps a list of loaded vessels. This saves a lot of needless iteration, as before we had to check every vessel in the game just to find the ones near the player.

Bill (Taniwha) has been working on the orbit targeting code, an area of the game that has caused many a player some confusion: “where did my intercept go?!?” or “where did that intercept come from?!?”. Contrary to what your instincts may tell you about this, KSP is actually very good at finding intercepts, but only when there is just one. In contrast, the intersection of two conic sections will, in general, have up to four points of close approach (or local minima in the distance function), though most orbits will have up to two. This raises several problems:

• Although the solver will always find one valley, and it tries to find a second, the conditions of the two orbits may be such that KSP winds up finding the first valley a second time and has no way of knowing if that’s because there was only one, or it got stuck.
• Even if the game does find a second valley, when there are three or more, the question becomes which two did it find?
• Lastly, when there are more valleys than what KSP has found, the game can bounce around the available valleys sometimes showing one set, other times showing another set.

All this results in display errors for the interceptions, whether they be with other spacecraft, or with orbital bodies. Bill is making solid progress getting the game to ‘Find ALL the valleys’ and to then make informed decisions as to which valleys to use for the targeting display and patched conics. This may sound like a complicated math problems (and it is!), but ultimately we hope that the intercept predictions will function much better, which will help everyone plan their mission with the precision they’re looking for.

This week we also announced that we’re preparing to clean up the bug tracker to complement the clean-up the developers are performing on the code. We’re asking the community’s help with this, as we suspect many of the thousands of bug reports that are currently listed on the bug tracker are related to issues that have either been fixed, or that are perhaps caused by for example mod interference. If you haven’t read the developer article yet we encourage you to head over to the forums and give it a look. Once the bugs have been reviewed Mathew (sal_vager), Steve (Squelch), Dave (TriggerAu) and the other members of the QA test team will categorise them and forward those which still need fixing to the developers for review.

A notable bug-fix this week that’s worth highlighting is Nathan’s (Claw) successful effort to hunt down and fix the bug that was causing docking ports to break and Kerbals to get stuck while on EVA. That issue is now resolved in our development builds, and work continues to turn those builds into something for everyone to enjoy.

That’s it for this week! As always you may ask us questions on the official KSP forums, on Facebook and on Reddit!

[swjr-swis]

So... crowdfunding the bug tracker? <grin>

Edited July 12, 2016 by swjr-swis
linky

[BT Industries]

That's great! Soon the knowledge of rocket science in the general population will double!

T

[AlamoVampire]

Day AFTER PS4 US launch? Looked yesterday on the PSN store and nothing... Looked at 330am cdt nothing... I do hope console users enjoy KSP  

[cubinator]

Yay! No more rapidly jittering encounters!

[Tourist]

Hey @SQUAD is Australia part of the European release, or is it some time later?

I've checked and it does not seem to be part of the US release.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Tourist

[basic.syntax]

Heroic feats of maths research are underway; I see news on more than one front, of optimization progress towards a smoother-running KSP, that is often overlooked or overshadowed by pretty pictures or new game content. Keep up the good works!   

[TriggerAu]

1 hour ago, Tourist said:

Hey @SQUAD is Australia part of the European release, or is it some time later?

I've checked and it does not seem to be part of the US release.

Pretty sure Aus is tied into the Europe group - from memory they have three "regions" - US, EU and Asia. Us lucky peeps are part of the region furthest from us  

Thats from me looking around a bit and memory's from PS3 support article

[Dman979]

So, if I understand this correctly, then the game will run even faster?

We've already transferred the game to the newest version of Unity, to make it run more smoothly. If you're removing all the excess checks, functions, and as you put it, garbage, it should run at mostly green time?

This is wonderful news!

[Alshain]

1 minute ago, Dman979 said:

So, if I understand this correctly, then the game will run even faster?

We've already transferred the game to the newest version of Unity, to make it run more smoothly. If you're removing all the excess checks, functions, and as you put it, garbage, it should run at mostly green time?

This is wonderful news!

It always depends on your system and what you have in physics range.  There will always be an upper limit.  But hopefully you can fit a bit more than you could before.

[Dman979]

2 minutes ago, Alshain said:

It always depends on your system and what you have in physics range.  There will always be an upper limit.  But hopefully you can fit a bit more than you could before.

Well, obviously. But it's like cleaning your room- once you get rid of the trash you've left lying around there for 5 years, it suddenly has a lot more space to hold all your new creations, and you can walk around without tripping on junk.

 

On a less technical note, I'm looking for a volunteer to do the poem for the devnotes. @SQUAD- really? It's tradition!

[Alshain]

Just now, Dman979 said:

On a less technical note, I'm looking for a volunteer to do the poem for the devnotes. @SQUAD- really? It's tradition!

I don't know if you can call something only a few months old a "tradition".  Personally I could do without the poems.

[Tourist]

39 minutes ago, TriggerAu said:

Pretty sure Aus is tied into the Europe group - from memory they have three "regions" - US, EU and Asia. Us lucky peeps are part of the region furthest from us  

Thats from me looking around a bit and memory's from PS3 support article

I feel the need to thank you for the response and for the hard work, in an authentic and culturally appropriate way.

Ahem..

Cheers Mate. Grouse job youse lads and sheilas are doing, good onya. Have a couple of longys on me. Strewth, I can't wait to give it a burl.  

Ahem...

Thanks  

Edited July 13, 2016 by Tourist

[nightingale]

4 hours ago, SQUAD said:

Worth mentioning is Brian’s (Arsonide) work on adding a few nifty common sense features such as an event that fires when a vessel’s part count changes. Normally developers and modders have to poll this in an update method, because on occasion parts can be modified without the normal vessel modification event firing. While working on that he also added a standard “vessel changed” event, which funnels many events into one when a vessel docks, explodes, or is modified in any conceivable way.

Keep doing those things you do, @Arsonide.  

[EBOSHI]

You accomplished a great achievement! And I am convinced that you will enlarge the world of Kerbal in future.

I remember a devnote written that the clean up of the source code is premise work of the Extensions of KSP. I can suppose that the work is difficult, but you beat monsters and hope that you set sail to the next voyage.

Apart from it, is the console version sold in Japan (Asia)?

[Apollo13]

I hope one of the top bugs to fix is the exploding lander legs, which has been reported multiple time in multiple versions.

[Archgeek]

5 hours ago, SQUAD said:

A notable bug-fix this week that’s worth highlighting is Nathan’s (Claw) successful effort to hunt down and fix the bug that was causing docking ports to break and Kerbals to get stuck while on EVA. That issue is now resolved in our development builds, and work continues to turn those builds into something for everyone to enjoy.

Does that mean that Claw fixed multi-docking?  That'd kick cheeks!  I've seen several beautiful docking systems (using stuff like opposing clampotron jr.s on each axis) that I was quite saddened were broken, but I'm not sure if this is the same bug.  By break do we mean "become unresponsive or fall off" or "claim to be docked but fail to act like a proper joint, giving no resistance under thrust"?

[Jovus]

This is one of the most exciting devnotes to date.

[p_gper]

Nice to see the development going. Any update from RoverDude antenna system?

 

[Deserdi Verimas]

I know exactly the problem that you're having with intercepts, having tried to tackle the same problem myself when working on a KSP calculator. Best of luck to you guys! 

[WeirdCulture]

8 hours ago, SQUAD said:

It’s a very technical story, but ultimately it will help run the game more smoothly by reducing the amount of ‘garbage’ that is created in the memory and that has to be removed regularly. It may not be the most exciting news, but as Jim (Romfarer) put it: the exciting part of this update is yet to come, or, as Mike (Mu) commented: the project is down a few thousand files, and most of the code has been brutally optimised, it’s faster to compile, and has had various APIs changed to make more sense.

this are the most exciting news!

[sal_vager]

5 hours ago, Dman979 said:

On a less technical note, I'm looking for a volunteer to do the poem for the devnotes. @SQUAD- really? It's tradition!

 

Well I wrote a song but it was too long and not considered to be representative of KSP in its current state, I should have wrote this for the start of 1.1 QA.

Spoiler

Oh hey ho

To be sung by games testers (after many a beverage)

All features are broken
Starting is a lottery

Crashing every step you take
No time to stop for tea

Developers are stressing
No end to bugs be found

But the offices are ringing
Of the testers singing loud!

Oh hey ho
The bugs will go
Onto the resolved pile

Oh hey ho
The devs do know
What should make players smile!

Programmers are scrambling
Trying to meet deadlines

Downing too strong coffee
Peering through bloodshot eyes

Blisters pressed to keyboards
No respite can be found

But the offices are ringing
Of the testers singing loud!

Oh hey ho
The bugs will go
Onto the resolved pile

Oh hey ho
The devs will know
What could make players smile!

But spirits remain buoyant
Devs dream of trips away

Mulling methods to unwind
Helps them through their days

Thoughts of chilling by the beach
The sea the only sound

But the offices are ringing
Of the testers singing loud!

Oh hey ho
The bugs will go
Onto the resolved pile

Oh hey ho
The devs all know
What would make players smile!

 

[timmers_uk]

It was certainly fun playing on PS4 for the first time yesterday, though a number of times I got caught out by the SAS disengaging whilst having the mousey pointer enabled. I've never had so many people watching me make a complete hash of launches - I had the full set - forgot docking ports, forgot chutes, 360 flip during ascent. Fun times.

[QPDO]

The American Playstation 4 Release? Not a single word about it being "American" in all the posts in the last weeks and suddenly it's american. That's terrible PR guys! I wouldnt expect a name and shame game, but a serious company wouldn't go all Ubisoft (including deleting threads) about it if there wasn't a huge mistake. A mistake that can happen and would be recieved with more humour if it was explained and announced in time.

Edited July 13, 2016 by QPDO

[monstah]

Okay, there's been some asking for Steam Achievements for quite some time, and others disagreeing. One of the arguments against it was the fact Steam was only a part or the player base, and Steam Achievements were exclusive (which is a pretty fair argument, IMO). I can't find sources so I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that the devs were against it, too.

But, now there's PSN trophies? *sigh*