Devnote Tuesday: 1.2 is getting ever closer!

[Arsonide]

3 minutes ago, Capt Snuggler said:

If the answer is not "yes" then it must be "No".

Unfortunately these things are not this binary. Right now the answer is "Not in 1.2", as originally stated. In the meantime the community will have access to the assets.

[Streetwind]

38 minutes ago, Capt Snuggler said:

They have only said the assets will be given to modders.

Considering nobody knows what "the assets" actually are, because of how vague that section of the devnotes was, I'd avoid jumping to conclusions before I see them.

Oh, and on topic of being vague: we were never told what the "rocketry part revamp" would entail, either. Everyone just made up an interpretation in their own head. The only thing we all agree on is that we'd like to see such a thing - but the "thing" is different for everyone.

It's really kind of silly, if you think about it: a feature with a scope that was never defined, but is occasionally teased, eventually stops showing up in the dev notes. People ask, but receive no answer - this goes on for months, to the point where it looks like Squad staff is actively trying to avoid talking about it in any way, shape or form. Then an announcement is made that some parts are going to be released to the modding community, but the announcement can be interpretated both as "these are from the rocketry revamp" and "these are not from the rocketry revamp". When asked for clarification, none is given.

Not sure if internal confusion at Squad, or professional level trolling...

Edited September 7, 2016 by Streetwind

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, klgraham1013 said:

To each his own.  I'm a firm believer that honesty is almost always best.

As am I with respecting privacy.

[Capt Snuggler]

49 minutes ago, Arsonide said:

Unfortunately these things are not this binary. Right now the answer is "Not in 1.2", as originally stated. In the meantime the community will have access to the assets.

Thanks for the reply Arsonide.

So the assets may or may not be added to the stock game at some point in the future.

That's a shame.

7 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

As am I with respecting privacy.

It was previously mentioned the rocket parts were due to be retouched.

If I get a PM from a mod or staff telling me to stop asking about it - then I'll stop asking about it. until then, I still want to know - so I'll keep asking.

Edited September 7, 2016 by Capt Snuggler

[StarStryder]

9 minutes ago, Capt Snuggler said:

It was previously mentioned the rocket parts were due to be retouched.

If I get a PM from a mod or staff telling me to stop asking about it - then I'll stop asking about it. until then, I still want to know - so I'll keep asking.

They weren't talking to you.  Different thread of conversation entirely.

[Hydrothermalventclam]

Yay!!!!  So excited!

[Capt Snuggler]

13 minutes ago, StarStryder said:

They weren't talking to you.  Different thread of conversation entirely.

its was regarding the same topic. ie whether porkjet's recent work will become stock and if its a privacy issue to keep asking about it.

Edited September 7, 2016 by Capt Snuggler

[Majorjim!]

6 hours ago, Arsonide said:

There are a great deal of new parts that @RoverDude has made for the new communications network stuff, so I'm not exactly sure why you feel this way.

Are we going mad? Squad said that rocket parts where getting a much needed graphic pass and Porkjet was doing the work.

 Then we hear nothing. Now we hear that no we are not getting that much needed rocket parts update we are maybe getting the parts as a mod.

Come on Squad.. Why are we not getting the stock rocket parts update you said we where?

 

5 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Yeah, I'm also super confused about which parts are meant.

Me too now. So much for clarity.. These dev notes are as clear as mud.

Edited September 7, 2016 by Majorjim!

[StahnAileron]

2 hours ago, Arsonide said:

Unfortunately these things are not this binary. Right now the answer is "Not in 1.2", as originally stated. In the meantime the community will have access to the assets.

So this kinda sounds like the parts will (perhaps) make it into a future release while the assets are released now for modders to use. The latter part of my statement is meant to imply how the stock assets in the game are used by some modders to save RAM and mod bulk (keeping mod size minimal. Is this (one of?) the intentions of releasing in-house assets early for modder use? I know some modders either dislike or don't do things like texturing (time constraints, lack of skills, etc.) There's also the focus on stock-alike appearances some of us place value in.

If my scenario is the intended use case (rather than some of the other seeming worse-cases imagined so far), it makes perfect sense to me. Especially in regards to textures since that seems to be the most time-consuming aspect of part mods. If this is true, it should put to ease some of the concerns a few have expressed to date.

[tater]

So which parts are not being included? Is it really the update on rockets to not make them look ugly, as they certainly look now? What possible benefit does anyone get from the frankly required update of rocket parts as a mod? We already have a mods to make rockets not look awful, why would we bother with another mod to make rockets look less awful, the entire point is to dump the old parts entirely to clean things up.

I'm frankly sort of stunned, I glazed over it the first time I read the notes I guess, because they were so unclear (I had no idea what parts they were discussing).

[passinglurker]

The vagueness over the rocket revamp is mildly disconcerting, but this is tempered by the satisfaction of watching some of the stock purists lose thier minds over this. Modding isn't taboo and honestly its just as fast to crack open blender as it is to try to mold the planet express ship or enterprise out of wing panels.

Edited September 7, 2016 by passinglurker

[Terwin]

2 hours ago, Capt Snuggler said:

But they haven't said it will be in the next release. They have only said the assets will be given to modders. other people in this thread have asked for clarity and have not gotten it.

Will Porkjet's Revamped Rocket Parts be made stock?     If the answer is not "yes" then it must be "No".

Of course I'd be delighted to be proven wrong. Please tell me I'm wrong!

Squad has a standing policy of not talking about future features.

Occasionally this is ignored/bypassed and people get very concerned when a single lapse does not lead to a waterfall of information.

Personally, I would be very surprised if the finished version of these parts was not in a later version(possibly even as early as 1.2.1), but SQUAD does not want to get backed into a corner should PorkJet get hit by a bus or some such. 

13 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

Are we going mad? Squad said that rocket parts where getting a much needed graphic pass and Porkjet was doing the work.

 Then we hear nothing. Now we hear that no we are not getting that much needed rocket parts update we are maybe getting the parts as a mod.

Come on Squad.. Why are we not getting the stock rocket parts update you said we where?

 

Me too now. So much for clarity.. These dev notes are as clear as mud.

I thought it was very clear: the rocket part revamp was not complete in time for 1.2, but they have some resources from it that they can make available for those moders who want their parts to look like stock parts.

 

As a developer myself, I am quite aware that 'scheduled for' comes with a giant asterisk, and is generally information that is not released outside the company without good reason.(I seem to recall SQUAD mentioning that the RPR was 'scheduled for' 1.2 way back when, and if the revamp was not complete, I am not at all surprised that it was not mentioned in recent devnotes).

 

I'm excited about the new mechanics and RoverDude's USI-MKS revamp that he is planning to release for 1.2, even if any 1.2 Caveman games will no longer have easy access to the Tundra biome just west of the runway...

 

Questions:

Will 'splashed down in the highlands' also be going away?(it was over near the badlands, found it when trying to get splashed in the badlands)

Will probes without a narrow band scanner on-board have access to the ore information on a previously scanned planet?  

Will the 'ground proofing' detailed results be visible in the scanner when previously collected for that biome? 

 

 

[Red Iron Crown]

5 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

The vagueness over the rocket revamp is mildly disconcerting, but this is tempered by the satisfaction of watching some of the stock purists lose thier minds over this. Modding isn't taboo and honestly its just as fast to crack open blender as it is to try to mold the planet express ship or enterprise out of wing panels.

Console players, though.

[Frozen_Heart]

So hyped for this new relay network. I've always launched satellites just for RP reasons, now they will actually be useful.

As for the rocket parts. What I'm hoping Squad means is that the parts weren't finished for 1.2, and will come later, but they are releasing the models early for modders. Worst case is that Porkjet is leaving and the rocket overhaul is no longer happening, and what is done so far is being released to modders. 

[StahnAileron]

Just now, passinglurker said:

The vagueness over the rocket revamp is mildly disconcerting, but this is tempered by the satisfaction of watching some of the stock purists lose thier minds over this. Modding isn't taboo and honestly its just as fast as trying to mold the planet express ship or enterprise out of wing panels.

There's only 2 big things I would consider being stock truly important for: Craft sharing and the console ports.

Craft using only stock parts are guaranteed to load in any unmodded stock installation of KSP (by this mean the user has neither added nor deleted anything.) Some player don't want to jump through hoops installing mods they don't have to get a craft loadable, especially if it's mods they would never use normally.

Consoles just can't use mods, period. KSP kinda lives by mods though, so the more stock-included items and features, the better for them.

Also, it's plain just easier to have to deal with one update cycle for KSP itself than however many disparate update cycles for the number of mods one has installed. Yes, there is something like CKAN, but some modders don't directly support it (they'll just defer you to the CKAN people or whoever it was that placed their mod on CKAN) and some users (like myself) don't like the idea of installing separate third-party software just to support a game. (If KSP integrated a form of mod manager, sure. Pretty sure the modders would be more likely to support it as well.)

[passinglurker]

Quote

stupid forum bugs

[Alshain]

8 minutes ago, StahnAileron said:

There's only 2 big things I would consider being stock truly important for: Craft sharing and the console ports.

<snip>

How about having balanced parts?  Because mod parts are very often not balanced with the stock game.  That's why I avoid using mod parts.

[Wabbit]

Any word on a fix for the incredibly annoying wheel-blocking problem?

[passinglurker]

17 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Console players, though.

the people I see panicking are known pc users so no problem there

 

1 minute ago, Alshain said:

How about having balanced parts?  Because mod parts are very often not balanced with the stock game.  That's why I avoid using mod parts.

You made me laugh so hard right now  

wait you are serious? 

Dude stock ballance is a joke, its terrible, its garbage, its layers and layers of neglect, early access era ideas, and changes in direction there is no balance.

They had plenty of chances to fix it too even a little tweak here or there to the grossest parts while they were hotfixing the aero in 1.0 5 stinking times. 5 hotfixes where they could have slipped in a simple config edit to things like the the mk1-2 pod, mk2 landercan, 1.25m engines, monoprop and xenon fuel mass ratio's, so on and so forth.

But they didn't and now with 1.1 they can't without haveing to redo the tutorials. I had to start making my own mod to bring balance to my game. Modding is the only way to get balanced parts.

[Arsonide]

6 minutes ago, Wabbit said:

Any word on a fix for the incredibly annoying wheel-blocking problem?

There is no more wheel blocking.

[FullMetalMachinist]

10 minutes ago, Wabbit said:

Any word on a fix for the incredibly annoying wheel-blocking problem?

The wheel-blocking problem isn't a problem, it's a fix to an even worse problem. The version of Unity that Squad is using for this update fixes the worse problem, so I assume that the wheel-blocking will just go away. 

Edit: Arso-ninja'd

Edited September 7, 2016 by FullMetalMachinist

[Wabbit]

Just now, FullMetalMachinist said:

The wheel-blocking problem isn't a problem, it's a fix to an even worse problem. The version of Unity that Squad is using for this update fixes the worse problem, so I assume that the wheel-blocking will just go away. 

Ah, thanks. 

[Alshain]

3 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

the people I see panicking are known pc users so no problem there

 

You made me laugh so hard right now  

wait you are serious? 

Dude stock ballance is a joke, its terrible, its garbage, its layers and layers of neglect, early access era ideas, and changes in direction there is no balance.

They had plenty of chances to fix it too even a little tweak here or there to the grossest parts while they were hotfixing the aero in 1.0 5 stinking times. 5 hotfixes where they could have slipped in a simple config edit to things like the the mk1-2 pod, mk2 landercan, 1.25m engines, monoprop and xenon fuel mass ratio's, so on and so forth.

But they didn't and now with 1.1 they can't without haveing to redo the tutorials. I had to start making my own mod to bring balance to my game. Modding is the only way to get balanced parts.

You made me laugh so hard right now

Stock balance is mostly fine, it could use a little tweaking but only in a few small places.  Yes, the mass in on the MK1-2 needs work, but 1 or 2 over massed parts doesn't qualify as "no balance".

[tater]

I guess it doesn't matter to me about rocket parts since the stock parts are so ugly I've been trained to not use them at all by now.

[passinglurker]

9 minutes ago, Alshain said:

You made me laugh so hard right now

Stock balance is mostly fine, it could use a little tweaking but only in a few small places.  Yes, the mass in on the MK1-2 needs work, but 1 or 2 over massed parts doesn't qualify as "no balance".

Its not fine when the stats conflict with each other so you can't add a part that doesn't conflict with one thing or another without getting told its imbalanced. 1.25m engines are a good example of this which is why I replaced them entirely with a set of engines balanced around the poodle, skipper, and aerospike creating a consistent set in a variety of sizes. consistency is the key to good balance, and stock has massive gaps in its consistency

Edited September 7, 2016 by passinglurker