Devnote Thursday: Tweaking and Turning Gears

[LukeTheYeti]

On ‎8‎/‎25‎/‎2016 at 0:01 PM, Alshain said:

Professional testing company.  Now we are talking here.  I can not be more pleased to hear that.

VMC may be a professional testing company but they're also the butt of a lot of jokes (I work for another testing company in the same area).

[NoMrBond]

4 hours ago, passinglurker said:

I hope not there isn't a way to unpack bundles

While they can't be unpacked, I believe mods which are reusing stock assets (textures and the like especially) should be able to continue doing so, but the method of referencing them will change.

This will probably need some baked in support added somewhere deep in KSP's part loading innards.

[passinglurker]

49 minutes ago, NoMrBond said:

While they can't be unpacked, I believe mods which are reusing stock assets (textures and the like especially) should be able to continue doing so, but the method of referencing them will change.

This will probably need some baked in support added somewhere deep in KSP's part loading innards.

Reverse engineering is important to how some people learn and remember how to mod 

[magnemoe]

On 25.8.2016 at 8:53 PM, AlamoVampire said:

6th? Also probes are now all or nothing in throttle? Wt heck? How can you fine tune orbits using only a sledge hammer now?

One tips is to reduce power on the engine, optionally spiders becomes very useful engines. 

[richfiles]

4 hours ago, sPeaRr said:

@richfiles So they're fixing the save game glitch on pc branch by sal-vager borrowing an xbox to troubleshoot? Uhhu.  I lost enough of my time on their bugs and now I'm supposed to sift through dev notes, twitter and forum posts to get info on when they're going to get it fixed? A far more gratifying way to spend my time is to complain to anyone and everyone that will listen and then go play something else that won't disappoint me.  Try to imagine playing through a stock interplanetary mission and you get back safe and sound only the game doesn't save right and when you load the next day you never flew the mission.  Plus freezing, plus nodes disappear, plus sticking interface, plus plus plus. That's not fun, and it's been like that since release.  

If it's an xbox specific issue, then Flying Tiger is responsible for fixing that. Squad's team has practically no console experience anyway, and would not be much help, so how about giving Flying Tiger the time to figure it out, and get the patch submitted to the console manufacturers for approval.  Just a thought. All non console specific bugs will always lag being fixed on the consoles, cause those bugs have to be fixed on PC first, then ported over, then approved.

As for your complaints on Console gameplay... Hmm, on PC I have had:
✔︎ Saved data lost
✔︎ Freezing
✔︎ Sticking Interface
✔︎ Ships randomly falling apart (That was an interesting one from 0.90... just... parts would just let go of each other when bumped by ANYTHING!  )
✔︎ Plus, plus, plus...

Enjoy your self gratification on someone else, cause I'm done listening to your obnoxious whining. These people work their butts off to create this incredible game! Give them a chance to work through the bugs, and give the company handling the port a chance to work through console specific bugs, and above all else, please don't blame Squad or Flying Tiger for the submission delays imposed by the console manufacturer's approval process. They have absolutely no control over that.

[Nerfclasher]

It was about time 

[juanml82]

39 minutes ago, richfiles said:

If it's an xbox specific issue, then Flying Tiger is responsible for fixing that. Squad's team has practically no console experience anyway, and would not be much help, so how about giving Flying Tiger the time to figure it out, and get the patch submitted to the console manufacturers for approval.  Just a thought. All non console specific bugs will always lag being fixed on the consoles, cause those bugs have to be fixed on PC first, then ported over, then approved.

As for your complaints on Console gameplay... Hmm, on PC I have had:
✔︎ Saved data lost
✔︎ Freezing
✔︎ Sticking Interface
✔︎ Ships randomly falling apart (That was an interesting one from 0.90... just... parts would just let go of each other when bumped by ANYTHING!  )
✔︎ Plus, plus, plus...

Enjoy your self gratification on someone else, cause I'm done listening to your obnoxious whining. These people work their butts off to create this incredible game! Give them a chance to work through the bugs, and give the company handling the port a chance to work through console specific bugs, and above all else, please don't blame Squad or Flying Tiger for the submission delays imposed by the console manufacturer's approval process. They have absolutely no control over that.

0.90, however, was still early access/beta. Bugs are to be expected, even big ones. From 1.0, it's a released product, and it has to be held to a higher standard.

[richfiles]

13 minutes ago, juanml82 said:

0.90, however, was still early access/beta. Bugs are to be expected, even big ones. From 1.0, it's a released product, and it has to be held to a higher standard.

All those things have happened in 1.x, save for the one bug.  Even so, I noted the one event occurred in 0.90...
and I only mention it, because in retrospect, it was absurdly hilariously annoying! 

KSP is a sandbox game that has enjoyed continual development. New developments can have bugs. a digit in the version number doesn't make them immune from bugs. Still better than some of the bug ridden shovelware some of the giant software companies inflict on both PC and console gamers. I'd say Squad's standard is far higher than a lot of the big names to start with! LOL Try the barf that is Activision's Pro Skater 5! Even absolute gems of games have still been stinkers in the bug department. Anything Bethesda. 'Nuf said. They make gold, pure gaming gold... but it's not without it's defects.

Edited August 26, 2016 by richfiles

[klgraham1013]

2 hours ago, LukeTheYeti said:

VMC may be a professional testing company but they're also the butt of a lot of jokes (I work for another testing company in the same area).

Did you look at Flying Tiger's history before the console ports?  I really wouldn't be surprised if your words about VMC were true.

Edited August 26, 2016 by klgraham1013

[Guest]

On 8/25/2016 at 2:43 PM, SQUAD said:

Brian (Arsonide) added IContractObjectiveModule: an interface that modders can use to define valid antennae, or power generators, or docking ports, and so on for contracts to utilize and check. In 1.1.3 there was a way for mods to do this by modifying a configuration file, but it was not very flexible or extensible. The interface will allow them to do that in a way that does not require ModuleManager, and that gives them a lot more flexibility. Further modding tweaks were added by Jeremie (Nightingale), who made it so that mods can now add their own custom difficulty settings to the new game screen, rather than each mod needing to have a custom settings button in the space center.

Finally, Nathan (Claw) started out the week adding a few more quality of life changes and fixing some odds and ends, such as ablator turning as dark as a black hole when fully burnt, and fixing some issues with the buildings at KSC and KSC2 turning different colors. He then switched gears and hopped on board the CommNet train, stressing the system and running through the multitude of test cases to ensure the Kerbals can phone home when appropriate.

This is why I like that they hire modders.

[Padishar]

On 26/08/2016 at 1:30 PM, DMagic said:

All of this talk about 32 bit not being supported, or not being able to add new features because of RAM issues is ridiculous. Stock KSP is no where near the 3.5GB RAM limit

Why do people keep posting as if the limit on 32 bit windows is 4 (or 3.5) GB?  The limit is actually about 1.7 GB and stock KSP will easily exceed this before getting to the main menu if you set the texture resolution to full.  In short, the game is already restricted on 32 bit to half res textures and there isn't a lot of headroom for large saves even then. Of course, most 32 bit machines are rather cpu and gpu limited too so you generally have to reduce all the settings anyway to get reasonable performance. 

Edited August 27, 2016 by Padishar

[Elthy]

RAM is dirt cheap now and there is no OS anymore without a 64bit version. Also CPUs without 64bit support are so outdated they wont run KSP anyway. There is no reason left to care about 32bit...

[DaMachinator]

1 hour ago, Elthy said:

RAM is dirt cheap now and there is no OS anymore without a 64bit version. Also CPUs without 64bit support are so outdated they wont run KSP anyway. There is no reason left to care about 32bit...

Only if you have a job...

That said, most new computers come with 8 GB RAM. The CPU is probably not going to be good enough to run the game with the clock green.

[Elthy]

If you had the money to buy KSP you also have the money for more RAM. KSP costs 40€, 4GB RAM about 15€.

[Kerbart]

25 minutes ago, Elthy said:

If you had the money to buy KSP you also have the money for more RAM. KSP costs 40€, 4GB RAM about 15€.

Not everyone is a late adopter. Many of us have bought KSP for $20 or less. If you're playing on an older machine (not exceptional if you bought KSP when it was only $20) you might even run into issues trying to upgrade to more than 4GB in the first place.

[StahnAileron]

3 hours ago, Padishar said:

Why do people keep posting as if the limit on 32 bit windows is 4 (or 3.5) GB?  The limit is actually about 1.7 GB and stock KSP will easily exceed this before getting to the main menu if you set the texture resolution to full.  In short, the game is already restricted on 32 bit to half res textures and there isn't a lot of headroom for large saves even then. Of course, most 32 bit machines are rather cpu and guy limited too so you generally have to reduce all the settings anyway to get reasonable performance. 

I imagine it's because 4GB is the maximum addressable memory space 32-bit allows. 3.5GB is usually taken as the practical limit after OS and hardware overhead is taken into account. You give the public an easy bit of info to digest and they'll always mold it to their needs rather than actual fact. Actual RAM limitations is wholly dependent on the actual environment being run.

Personally, I've gotten 32-bit KSP to hit the Out-of-Memory crash at around 3.5-3.6GB (sometimes a little higher). This is on Win7-x64 Ult with 16GB RAM onboard, i7-4771. Since I had the physical RAM to spare and the OS was smart enough to give KSP essentially a full 32-bit virtual address space because of that, it worked out well for me overall. (At least until the unofficial 64-bit version managed to get mostly stable on my system somehow...)

Of course, the above was on a 64-bit system and OS that could handle doling out the memory spaces like that for 32-bit software. A 32-bit platform would have lower memory spaces. If I recall, 32-bit software in 32-bit (NT-based) Windows only gets a (virtual) 2GB address space to work with by default. (You'd have to set a flag for higher memory assignment, and even then, it only goes to a 3-1 split max for Program-OS from my understanding, at least back in the XP x64 days.,.) So yeah, even if you have a full 4GB of RAM in 32-bit Windows, you're never gonna be able to use that much for a running program in practice. (Hardware assignments take up a decent amount and the OS needs to reserve a chunk for itself.) 1.7GB on 32-bit Windows sound about right in actual usage.

[Ultimate Steve]

I don't know what is weirder:

1) The devnotes were released on a Thursday.

2) I didn't notice the devnotes until Saturday.

[Andem]

My point is, as soon as anyone says that we can't add X feature because the 32bit version won't be able to run it, drop support of the 32bit version. That simple.

[klgraham1013]

5 hours ago, Kerbart said:

Not everyone is a late adopter. Many of us have bought KSP for $20 or less. If you're playing on an older machine (not exceptional if you bought KSP when it was only $20) you might even run into issues trying to upgrade to more than 4GB in the first place.

Some hobbies take money.  That's a part of life.

[Eric S]

8 hours ago, Padishar said:

Why do people keep posting as if the limit on 32 bit windows is 4 (or 3.5) GB?  The limit is actually about 1.7 GB and stock KSP will easily exceed this before getting to the main menu if you set the texture resolution to full.  In short, the game is already restricted on 32 bit to half res textures and there isn't a lot of headroom for large saves even then. Of course, most 32 bit machines are rather cpu and gpu limited too so you generally have to reduce all the settings anyway to get reasonable performance. 

 

Because KSP is large address aware (to the best of my knowledge), which bumps it up to 3GB if your OS is set up to allow for that.  I know that before 1.1, I'd usually be running in the 2.5-3GB memory utilization range after a  while on a modded install.

Now, I know older versions of windows need to be told to boot in a mode that allows for large address aware applications, but I get the impression that that defaulted to on for Windows 7 and later.

 

[Curveball Anders]

9 hours ago, Padishar said:

Why do people keep posting as if the limit on 32 bit windows is 4 (or 3.5) GB?  The limit is actually about 1.7 GB

Would you mind posting any explanation of this quite strange statement?

I revived an old XP-32 box, copied over KSP and my latest career and sandbox saves.

Full graphics and a few mods, it pulled 2.2G, and my 32bit 4 (or 3.5) G system didn't crash at all (it did get a bit strained, the AGP 1GB AMD GPU in that box was a wee bit taxed).

So from a purely scientific viewpoint I'd like to know how you ended up a limit of 1.7.

[steve_v]

1 hour ago, Curveball Anders said:

So from a purely scientific viewpoint I'd like to know how you ended up a limit of 1.7.

Might have a partial answer to that one: Depends on the version of Windows one is referring to, from the horses mouth: "The virtual address space of processes and applications is still limited to 2 GB unless the /3GB switch is used in the Boot.ini file."

That's 2GB though, I too wonder where 1.7 comes from.

Edited August 27, 2016 by steve_v

[StrandedonEarth]

Great devnotes. And for those concerned about antennaes, well, turn that option off, or,

Edited August 28, 2016 by StrandedonEarth
Original version was hurried. Now I had time to tweak it.

[Andem]

Sudden thought @RoverDude, do the Antennas need to be deployed to communicate or should they work when retracted?

Edited August 28, 2016 by Andem

[StahnAileron]

3 hours ago, steve_v said:

Might have a partial answer to that one: Depends on the version of Windows one is referring to, from the horses mouth: "The virtual address space of processes and applications is still limited to 2 GB unless the /3GB switch is used in the Boot.ini file."

That's 2GB though, I too wonder where 1.7 comes from.

I'm guessing it's just the 2GB virtual address space minus overhead. Though technically the overhead should be accounted for in the 2GB reserved for the OS and system hardware. The virtual address space is typically dedicated to the application alone, as I understand it. On the flip side, I think I've seen KSP 32-bit crash on me below the 4GB limit on a 64-bit system due to "low memory". This was usually during a scene transition/revert. If I recall, older versions on KSP has bad memory management/leaks during scene transitions and/or reverts. This might be why I was seeing crashes at the 3.5GB - 3.7GB mark rather than the full 4GB (or beyond) on occasion. As such, I used to save and quit when I got to 90% memory space usage for 32-bit KSP. I think it's just theoretic versus practice. (Plus how the windows task manager reports memory usage doesn't help. There are several memory readouts. They don't read the same.)

Anyway, I'm thinking the cries for killing 32-bit is mainly due to mods. KSP doesn't exactly use the most efficient method of memory management. I don't see why they need to load and keep everything in memory rather than some streaming of assets. Models in RAM, sure, but every texture? Going 64-bit is the equivalent of throwing more manpower at the problem rather than using what you have better. It'll work, but you'll probably regret it later (because it doesn't scale well...)

I'm still waiting for more of the "game" part of KSP to get fleshed out before complaining about 32- vs 64-bit and the addition of extra content. True gameplay beyond the sandbox experience is poor to non-existent or a poor implementation (read: excuse) of gameplay mechanics. Sandbox is cool and all, but there's little incentive for me to do anything in it other than what I can come up with on my own. This might work for some people, but it's not what I'd call a "game" in the typical sense.