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KSP Weekly: Jeb’s adventures around the world and more!


SQUAD

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Welcome to KSP Weekly, everyone! This week has been a very interesting one; with lots of advancements, contests and Jeb’s adventures. Without further ado, let’s begin!

Let’s start on the QA front. This week saw us in week two of Experimentals testing for 1.2.2. Fixes and other enhancements, as well as investigating public reports that may be relevant to ongoing work for the upcoming patch.  Additionally, improved colliders continued to be tested and the results have been good. Localization testing continues at a rapid pace, as well, and everyone has been having fun with all the different keyboard layouts.
Some interesting findings have been that,  the UK ‘Tea’ key is working but the crumpet key is missing, all four X’s on the Australian layout are present, and the Canadian layout correctly swaps the R and H keys. The US layout now types ‘#1’ with every press, the Latin American layout has beaten everyone at office football, and tests of the Dvorak layouts efficiency in KSP have been inconclusive.

Alongside the test teams, the developers have also been getting things ready for the release of 1.2.2. For example, an interesting fix this week included an issue where the OrbitDriver would have trouble placing a ManeuverNode when there was no orbit patch that matched that time - this commonly occurs when the node is in the past and the vessels flight path changes SOIs.

At the same time, the programmers also had to work with with everyone on localization pieces: strings that we need to include, adjusting what is the key value for some objects and layouts and spacing for KSPedia layouts. They’ve also been at work figuring out the best solution for the keyboard layouts based on the Q.A team feedback and switching embedded text in images for separate text components, and slight changes to .cfg files. Similarly, we refactored and  completed the localization set up for PartModule and all sub-classes.

However, bug fixing and localization wasn’t the only task this week for the development team, as we mentioned in the last edition of KSP Weekly, we are working on the Design for future installments, so naturally, this continues and the whole team is working hand in hand on which aspects need looking at.

We have been listening to all the concern about what happened to the Rocket Parts Revamp and we wanted to shed some light on that topic. The reality is that the development focus had to shift towards other matters, that is why we decided to make the already completed parts from porkjet’s PartOverhauls public, which you can download here.
Despite the change in priorities, this doesn’t mean that we will put this project aside indefinitely, we may continue porkjet’s work in future installments, but for the time being it is not within our immediate work plans.

Our artists have also been quite busy working on images and textures that will be localized and also spending some more time focusing on artwork as well as modeling. And with the holiday season looming in the distance, they’ve also started to work on some collectibles for you guys.

In other news, we are immensely happy to see how many of you participated in the Kerbals Around The World Contest, so much so that we decided to create a Jeb Kerman’s account on Instagram @justjebthingsksp in homage to a popular twitter hashtag that emerged after this year’s TwitchCon and we want the awesome KSP community to keep sharing Jeb’s adventures around the world. Any post you share here will be posted in Jeb’s account. People that are into social media channels need to use #JustJebThings and #Share, so that we can identify your pictures and post them. Regarding the contest, we will announce the winners on Monday, so if you haven’t voted for your favorite entry, now is the time to do so!

We also want to take this opportunity to remind you about the Kerbal Kalendar initiative, where we will be uploading little collectibles in our forum for a limited time, learn more about it here, because we will have giveaways for you as well!

That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news!

Happy launchings!

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Good read as always :) - It's makes me very sad to hear the rocket part revamp is being indefinitely suspended. Porkjet did some fantastic work there and this game is in serious need of a face lift. Head over to Galileo's Stovk Visual Enhancementsthread to see what I mean. Also, what do you mean by "localized" in reference to images and textures? I don't know what localizing is.

Edited by Avera9eJoe
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2 hours ago, Redneck said:

Well thanks squad you addressed at least one of the issues

@SQUAD Could you also give us an update on the console version status pretty please? And the Schmelta-vee thing we were promised almost 2 years ago? I mean, KerbalEdu already has a delta-v calculator so why cant we have it in stock KSP?

2 hours ago, SQUAD said:

Our artists have [...] started to work on some collectibles for you guys.

Ow dear gawd no... why not have the artists focus on the much needed rocket part visual overhaul instead?

Edited by Yakuzi
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1 minute ago, Yakuzi said:

Ow dear gawd no... why not have the artists focus on the much needed rocket part visual overhaul instead?

+1, or however the kewl kids indicate "I agree" these days.  We got a Porkjet revamp of airplane parts for Kerbal Space Program (which is great for the people who place Kerbal Spaceplane Program), but the rocket parts are still an arbitrary and mismatched mess of pieces.  I would *love* to see rocket parts that are visually consistent as part of the stock game.  Heck, even parts that look like rocket parts - not barrels stacked on top of one another - would be a plus.

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40 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

We have been listening to all the concern about what happened to the Rocket Parts Revamp and we wanted to shed some light on that topic. The reality is that the development focus had to shift towards other matters, that is why we decided to make the already completed parts from porkjet’s PartOverhauls public, which you can download here.
Despite the change in priorities, this doesn’t mean that we will put this project aside indefinitely, we may continue porkjet’s work in future installments, but for the time being it is not within our immediate work plans.

 
 

Amazing how easy honesty is.  I'm sure someone will argue NDA's and company secrets and all, but I really don't see how this sort of honesty hurts any company in any real way.  Endearing yourselves to fans is the best way to get them to buy your next product.

14 minutes ago, Yakuzi said:

And the Schmelta-vee thing we were promised almost 2 years ago?

Was it promised, or mentioned that they're looking into it?  Those are two different things.

Edited by klgraham1013
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39 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

we may continue porkjet’s work in future installments, but for the time being it is not within our immediate work plans.

 

... we may ...

In other (non-businessman-speech)

It was dropped like its hot.

 

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11 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Was it promised, or that they're looking into it?  Those are two different things.

Max said "expect" which goes paired with... well with expectations. I agree it wasn't a clear promise but he was lead producer at the time he published his statement. Then again, making any statement in the software industry doesn't mean anything anymore these days it seems :(
Still, there's a delta-v calculator in KerbalEdu, wouldn't be too much of a hassle to port it to stock KSP, right?*

*As long as FTE doesn't perform the port

Edited by Yakuzi
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46 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

Some interesting findings have been that,  the UK ‘Tea’ key is working but the crumpet key is missing, all four X’s on the Australian layout are present, and the Canadian layout correctly swaps the R and H keys. The US layout now types ‘#1’ with every press, the Latin American layout has beaten everyone at office football, and tests of the Dvorak layouts efficiency in KSP have been inconclusive.

Ok, I'll admit it- you got me to laugh. :D

But lack of a crumpet key is a game-breaking bug. Right, @sal_vager? I hope you fix that soon!

46 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

Alongside the test teams, the developers have also been getting things ready for the release of 1.2.2.

Ohh! 1.2.2!

46 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

We have been listening to all the concern about what happened to the Rocket Parts Revamp and we wanted to shed some light on that topic. The reality is that the development focus had to shift towards other matters, that is why we decided to make the already completed parts from porkjet’s PartOverhauls public, which you can download here.
Despite the change in priorities, this doesn’t mean that we will put this project aside indefinitely, we may continue porkjet’s work in future installments, but for the time being it is not within our immediate work plans.

Even though this isn't what I wanted to hear, thank you for saying it anyway.

 

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47 minutes ago, Avera9eJoe said:

…Also, what do you mean by "localized" in reference to images and textures? I don't know what localizing is.

"Localization" being "allowing the user to select a language for game text." What they've been talking about for the past couple of weeks has been changing the game text itself, but what they've said here is that there are a number of images and part textures that have English text in them. Since this isn't actual text data, you can't dynamically swap it out. So they're recreating the images (or parts thereof) with the appropriate words.

Which sounds like a lot of work.

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1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

We have been listening to all the concern about what happened to the Rocket Parts Revamp and we wanted to shed some light on that topic. The reality is that the development focus had to shift towards other matters, that is why we decided to make the already completed parts from porkjet’s PartOverhauls public, which you can download here.
Despite the change in priorities, this doesn’t mean that we will put this project aside indefinitely, we may continue porkjet’s work in future installments, but for the time being it is not within our immediate work plans.

Our artists have also been quite busy working on images and textures that will be localized and also spending some more time focusing on artwork as well as modeling. And with the holiday season looming in the distance, they’ve also started to work on some collectibles for you guys.

so basically we aren't getting rocket parts for christmas because some one thought the artists time would be better spent on t-shirts, coffee mugs and plushies...


but what about part ballance? I held my tongue about it during 1.2 pre-release because I expected it would be done with the revamp in 1.3 it honestly hurts knowing if you didn't buried your heads in the sand and actually were honest about what was happening with the revamp when it was happening I could have done something so that I would at least have better part ballance.

Part masses are all wrong, and Career mode as it stands now is a mess many features are still proof of concept, progression through the tech tree is rough as there is no sense of flow as you either bog down in the early game out of frustration or you leap over the first 4 tech tiers cause you found an exploit in the unbalanced part stats. It doesn't feel like I'm engineering a rocket when I build it feels well hacky... single player isn't an excuse to half bake ballance, and I can't gift this game or any collectables to others when what is supposed to be the actual game mode part is still full of half baked parts and mechanics that have barely been touched since thier initial implementation. And now you want to shift priorities to merch instead? the statement is appreciated but it doesn't restore my faith in you just yet.

Edited by passinglurker
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5 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

Carreer mode as it stands now is a mess many features are still proof of concept, progression through the tech tree is rough as there is no sense of flow as you either bog down in the early game out of frustration or you leap over the first 4 tech tiers cause you found an exploit in the unbalanced part stats. It doesn't feel like I'm engineering a rocket when I build it feels well hacky... single player isn't an excuse to half bake ballance, and I can't gift this game or any collectables to others when what is supposed to be the actual game mode part is still full of half baked parts and mechanics that have barely been touched since thier implementation. And now you want to shift priorities to merch instead? the statement is appreciated but it doesn't restore my faith in you just yet.

 

I wouldn't hold my breath.  Career mode's problems lie with it's spine.  They would need to burn it down and rebuild.  I can't see that happening until KSP2.

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1 hour ago, Yakuzi said:

 

@SQUAD Could you also give us an update on the console version status pretty please? And the Schmelta-vee thing we were promised almost 2 years ago? I mean, Kerbal edu already has a delta-v calculator so why cant we have it in stock KSP?

 

All those who had promised such things are now gone from Squad.  The new crew hasn't promised anything...yet.

Quote

Ow dear gawd no... why not have the artists focus on the much needed rocket part visual overhaul instead?

Because these artists are not 3D game part modelers like Porkjet and Roverdude, but do art for things like the static displays, game trailers and other publicity stuff.  Porkjet was the main guy, and he's of course gone now; Roverdude is more into the anciliary stuff like the ISRU parts, radiators and now the new antennas in 1.2, don't think he's going to (or is even willing to) take over Porkjet's role.

Completely unsolicitated, I nominate @Kartoffelkuchen to replace Porkjet as the new rocket part guy. :D

 

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The "Shmelta-V talk" has been very hot in the 1.1 and 1.2 development threads, conclusion is "if one can come up with a simple, very efficient, not buggy code to calculate Delta-V, SQUAD devs will definitely take a look at it". KER and MechJeb delta-v calculations are very bulky and still have bugs.

I don't grieve about parts revamp, because we have tons of part mods to fill that niche. Just maybe a little, because there are "pure stock" streamers like EJ_SA.

There are lots of other things I'd like SQUAD to take a look at.

This week's Devnotes were quite informative and we should appreciate that. Plus "The Daily Kerbal" is almost back, and that's another very positive movement.

Edited by Enceos
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