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KSP Weekly: Implementation beats oration


SQUAD

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Welcome to KSP Weekly, everyone. This week has been full of work on consoles, the pre-release and, of course, the Making History Expansion, so without further ado, let’s dive in.

This week QA have been hard at it again, but with the most excellent help from the public too. Thank you so much all for the reports that have been submitted so far, they really do help. We have already been identifying problems with the current localization, and many of them have been fixed, or are in the process of being fixed right now. New Pre-Release builds will be hitting Steam and the Store soon. Work also continues with the expansion, and the new parts are being tested alongside the existing parts to check that they not only function as they are intended, but also with the knowledge that the players use them in unintended ways - Such is KSP and the unbridled imagination of our players. Console work has also progressed, and it does look like the save problems might be a thing of the past. Those issues are of considerable importance, so all potential scenarios are still being tested as the UI and input system are refined.

In addition to the usual bugtracker work, Technicalfool has been painstakingly driving rovers and aircrafts over every suspicious looking lump and bump on the runway, giving JPLRepo useful information on any seams he can find. Trying to jump the runway with a rover or haul some giant into the air is great fun, until a gap into Krakenspace flips you onto your roof and reduces the vehicle to a debris field. But now all of them seem to have been dealt with and they are looking great.

Sal_vager has been fiddling with Unity player settings in an attempt to work around a bug with Linux windows resizing, so this week he passes the poetry night mic to Toasty_buns from the Steam KSP forum:

KSP History

A long time has passed since early KSP

Where monoprop engines were totally OP

Firing our rockets against neon green grass

Watching Bill and Bob panic, whilst Jeb stays badass

SAS forces displayed in bright blue

No science equipment or mystery goo

Several parts and a crude parachute

But nevertheless we all had a hoot

Flash-forward a bit and we get map view

Wait, is that a moon? Can I land there too?

Stacking tanks high in a desperate bid

That moon will be mine! And that’s what we did.

We launched our rockets with absolute glee

“Dude! Look what I did in KSP!”

Then came the atmos, plane parts galore

Spaceplane+ was rolled out the door

Flapping our wings we took the skies

Planes work on Duna? What a surprise!

And yet KSP continued to grow,

Adding more things to improve the show

Relays, networks, atmosphere tweaks

Enough to keep us amused for weeks

Now Squad reveal their latest mystery

The expansion named “Making History”

We’ll roleplay the Soviets, Americans too

Don’t worry China, we’ll get round to you.

Now let’s move to the development field, where we’ve been taking all the great feedback and bug reports for the localization Prerelease, and rounding things up to improve each iteration as we go. For example, aside from some UI tweaks and missing texts, we re-jigged the KSC MiniBiomes system to work correctly no matter what language you have selected, amending and adjusting science for save files across languages. Also we’ve spent a bit of time fixing a few small poly issues with the level 1 Runway, too.

Similarly, we worked on the Russian possessive forms, several autolocs still showing up in the game and some unlocalized strings (like the agency names on contracts or some tooltip messages). In addition, we did some adjustments to the Map Nodes: Now the scale should be better, and these shouldn’t be “jumpy” while these move in the map, jumpy orbits are a different issue, however.

Furthermore, we are happy to announce that we will embed the Ambient Light Boost function in for an upcoming Prerelease version next week. This adds two sliders to the settings to tweak the ambient light levels in the renderer in map mode and flight-mode. You can lighten it significantly and darken it a bit as well.

On other news, the work on the Making History Expansion is ramping up. Adding UI components and Part Tests. Part Tests allow missions to test parts on a vessel for certain conditions. We've also been busy adding part actions. Part Actions allow things to happen on parts during a mission. Additionally, a set of UI prefabs have been added to support the Mission Builder logic. The player will make use of this set of prefabs to create and visualize missions. The prefabs set includes visual representations like nodes, connections, actions and parameters.

Our artists continue working on parts, parts, parts. Roverdude, for example, spent this week focusing on some of our Soviet-inspired parts - and learned along the way that yes, a Kerbal will in fact fit through a 0.625m airlock, helmet and all!

And Leti, after finishing up The Kerbal Chronicles (which now you can download as a PDF!) design, is going back to not-secret-anymore UI work for the new Mission Builder. Iterations are now on early stages, as we’re trying to make decisions on wireframe versions.

This week Robbonaut has been looking at the Design for the Expansion - going over what we have worked on so far and making sure it’s airtight for the developers as they work on it.

He also wanted to take this opportunity to let you know a bit more about the Mission Builder and it’s background. The Mission Builder takes inspiration from the Challenges we’ve noticed that you set yourselves on the Forums. We saw these and wanted to come up with a system that replicates these within the game and that allows you to build and share Missions far and wide.

We’ve also noticed some chatter on the Forums speculating about what a “Mission” might actually be in regards to the Mission Builder. Well, Robbonaut can confirm that when using the Mission Builder you as players will be able to select and place Objectives and link them together into a Mission.

For example (in fairly simple terms) you might have a Mission that consists of an Orbit Mun Objective, then a Plant Flag on Mun Objective, and finally a Return Home Objective. Those 3 Objectives then make up the Mission as a whole. Obviously these are basic examples at this stage and we are of course planning lots of different, more in-depth Objectives for you to use and add into your Missions.

We will of course be divulging more as we continue with development and as ever we would love to hear your suggestions as to the types of Objectives you’d like to see.

Last but not least we welcome our newest member of staff to the ranks of QA. Bruce, also known as Bewing, has been most engaged and helpful for a long time, and can now get his hands even dirtier with the new tools available to him. Here’s a little something he wrote to let you know a bit about himself:

I got dual degrees in Math and Physics from UCSB quite a long time ago, and got published once – so technically I’m a scientist. But I didn’t go that direction. Instead I did C programming and sold computers in a small business I owned.  Now my business does virtual reality photography. And I have a funny hobby of being an inventor. When I look at things, I sometimes get ideas on how to build them better. And then better and better. It makes life into a fun puzzle!

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 and development updates!

Happy launchings!

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12 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

Our artists continue working on parts, parts, parts. Roverdude, for example, spent this week focusing on some of our Soviet parts - and learned along the way that yes, a Kerbal will in fact fit through a 0.625m airlock, helmet and all!

no pics? *sigh* now you're not even trying to alleviate my unease about paying real money for parts guess I'll just have to drop a donation on @Beale too so that I can some day make a potentially regrettable blind purchase with a clean conscience...

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24 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

Part Actions allow things to happen on parts during a mission.

Hello Apollo 13, and Soviet failures. So, hypothetical scenario: I buy DLC, install DLC. I continue existing Career game. Will parts randomly fail/malfunction?

Just to be clear, I am in favor of this. I also think it could add more usability for engineers.

 

23 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

Roverdude, for example, spent this week focusing on some of our Soviet parts

Will the Making History Expansion add another game mode (ex: Sandbox, Science)? If so, will we be able to use these new parts in a Career game?

Overall, I love the way the DLC and ksp as a whole is shaping up. I can't wait to participate in challenges using Mission Builder!

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1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

Furthermore, we are happy to announce that we will embed the Ambient Light Boost function in for an upcoming Prerelease version next week. This adds two sliders to the settings to tweak the ambient light levels in the renderer in map mode and flight-mode. You can lighten it significantly and darken it a bit as well.

Thanks for adding a bit more darkness.  It's a little thing you didn't need to do, but some of us immersion junkies will enjoy it.

1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

He also wanted to take this opportunity to let you know a bit more about the Mission Builder and it’s background. The Mission Builder takes inspiration from the Challenges we’ve noticed that you set yourselves on the Forums. We saw these and wanted to come up with a system that replicates these within the game and that allows you to build and share Missions far and wide.

So, my hopes of it being a contract proposal system for career are for naught?  Disappointed.

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Congratz to @bewing! It's always fun being an idea person; it gives your mind lots to chew on. I just wish I was more capable of turning my RL ideas into reality, but KSP sorta lets me do that!

Great poem, toasty_buns!

Mission Objectives, sounds great! I'd suggest being able (but not having to) define an inventory of parts available to attempt a mission with (i.e. You only have one Mainsail in stock, but there are five Sparks to work with. And only one OX-STAT). Or even just a fixed budget to work with.

cgZb1BN.png

E: It's been awhile since I've been inspired to "Keep Calm"

Edited by StrandedonEarth
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"Console work has also progressed, and it does look like the save problems might be a thing of the past. Those issies are of considerable importance, so all potential scenarios are still being tested as the UI and input system are refined." 

Hm. Early. This. Year? I think not.

Okay, on a less serious note.. you misspelled issues and it's killing me. 

Edited by James M
OCD
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1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

Objectives and link them together into a Mission.

That sounds very linear.  Will the ability to say set three objectives x,y,z and then allow the player to complete them in a different order say y,x,z?  (And if so can the mission builder force the player to do it in the x,y,z order if desired?)

Edited by kBob
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So much good updating info :).  Have I missed any pricing options for the Expansion DLC?

I suspected as much about the smaller docking ports being passable.  Probably more so than some of the airlock doors?

Peace.

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4 minutes ago, kBob said:

That sounds very linear.  Will the ability to say set three objectives x,y,z and then allow the player to complete them in a different order say y,x,z?  (And if so can the mission builder force the player to do it in the x,y,z order if desired?)

Indeed there is that and so much more.

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Will missions be accessed in a way similar to scenarios or could you say, load a mission into your current career save to do? If the latter, will players be able to set fund and reputation rewards for completing the mission?

Either way, I look forward to the release of Making History.

Edited by KerbalSaver
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A two kerbal Gemini pod can't come soon enough, I'm just reaching that point in my current career game play through and it kills me every time to have to leap straight from Mercury to Apollo...! Will there be an appropriately scaled LES?

Edited to add: keep up the good work, you folks rock

Edited by BLUESTREAK
Added good wishes
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I'm very surprised and desappointed to see that the 9 langages promised arn't present. Just 4 languages !!!!

What about French, German, Portuguese ? We have no news and you do not talk about it anymore. Blackout radio about this. Do you cancel this languages ?

 

Languages the most spoken in the world (wiki):

1) English (Native in KSP)
2) Chinese (release 1.3)
3) Spanish (release 1.3)
6) french  ???
7) russian (release 1.3)
9) Portuguese  ???
12) German ???
13) Japanese (release 1.3)
15) Italian  ???

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14 minutes ago, mustard said:

I'm very surprised and desappointed to see that the 9 langages promised arn't present. Just 4 languages !!!!

What about French, German, Portuguese ? We have no news and you do not talk about it anymore. Blackout radio about this. Do you cancel this languages ?

 

Languages the most spoken in the world (wiki):

1) English (Native in KSP)
2) Chinese (release 1.3)
3) Spanish (release 1.3)
6) french  ???
7) russian (release 1.3)
9) Portuguese  ???
12) German ???
13) Japanese (release 1.3)
15) Italian  ???

I also would like to point out that our friends from India are quite numerous on this planet, that this country has a space program and is quite a "IT oriented" country. So I think that in the logic of expanding KSP, a patch for India is more than necessary!

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