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KSP Weekly: The art of making missions


SQUAD

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Welcome to KSP Weekly, everyone. While looking at our calendar for upcoming important dates, we realized that next week it will have been 56 years since soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin completed the first manned space flight, orbiting the Earth in 108 minutes, as well as 36 years since shuttle Columbia became the first winged spaceship to orbit Earth and return to an airport landing. Both of these historical events happened on April 12, only 20 years apart from each other and just a week later we’ll witness the final chapter of Cassini’s remarkable story, which has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004 and will begin its dive into Saturn’s atmosphere on April 26. It is amazing what we can achieve when we set up our minds to do something great and certainly gives us some hope despite our otherwise sometimes “messy” behavior as a species, but I digress. We’re here to talk about everything Kerbal and this week wasn’t anything short of exciting. We keep moving forward with Making History and the upcoming update for our console ports, so without further ado, let’s dive in.

A couple of weeks ago we spoke a bit about what constitutes a Mission in the upcoming expansion. Today we want to go into a bit more detail about how a Mission is created.

At its core the Mission Builder takes its inspiration from Visual Scripting methodology. Using the Mission Builder, players will lay out their missions graphically rather than using a system where they type out lines of code. This of course makes the system accessible to a wider section of the community and of course means more awesome content for all!

As mentioned, each Mission will comprise of Objectives (nodes), but there will also be other types of Nodes that can be placed down to flesh out and expand your mission. One of these other Nodes types are what we are calling Constraint Nodes. Constraint Nodes will provide rules for players of your Missions. Things like Must use or Can’t use part x, or Complete this Objective in under x Days (in Game Time). There are many more of these, and we’re working hard on generating a big list for you guys to use - as usual we will share more of these with you all in the coming weeks.

There is much more to this and we’re looking forward to share more information with you all over the coming weeks. It also goes without saying that we are extremely excited to see the sorts of Missions that the Community will produce.

But now lets move towards the QA department, where localization testing is getting down to the fine detail now, and the last few strings and translations that were either eluding us, or needed code logic adjusted before they were applied are in the process of being done. The volunteer language specialists continue to impress with the dedication they are showing. A few non localization bugs have been uncovered during testing translations, and because of translations. These have been quickly dispatched by the development team. Console testing continues, and the build frequency is really ramping up with both platforms being brought into sync now. More Mission Builder part testing, and sample craft building and evaluation has also been going on while the developers work on getting the interface and backend code consolidated. The guys at Blitworks are eager to take on any input about UI and control issues from the QA Team.

Correspondingly, our friends at Blitworks have helped us develop a new maneuver node control scheme, which according to our testers greatly improves upon the previous one, which were adjusted using the cursor mode, in contrast with the newer scheme that uses the joysticks in combination with the Left and Right Shoulder Buttons for more precise and easier maneuver node adjustments.

In other regards, the development team has been hard at work with the Making History Expansion.

For example, devs spent time finishing off development of a new Vessel and Part ID system that modders will also be able to leverage and provides persistent IDs for all Vessels and Parts for their entire lifecycle. This is core expansions functionality that will allow missions to do all kinds of crazy stuff.

Similarly, devs have been working on basic graphics for the expansion. Nodes that you can place and drag around, lines to connect the nodes, and some little elements that you can place inside the nodes to make them exciting. As well as working on its core/base UI and implementing the first bits of the expansion logic within the UI, while also coding functionalities for some of the new capabilities that will be available for missions.

But that’s not all, the devs were able to deliver this week the first version of the Expansion System, which includes an Expansion Builder tool for the devs and uses a stock version of the Asset Bundle Manager unity package. We also automated a process to rebuild and clean expansions and exposed development options, something which will be very helpful during this development phase to facilitate the work among all the development team.

Naturally there was some bug squashing and cleaning of the bug tracker for the Localization branch. This week alone, more than a dozen of them were resolved and the works will continue until we’ve dealt with all of them. One example was that in some languages the text did not fit on the current size of some windows and as smaller text is not an option, we will have bigger windows for those particular cases!

The art department has also been busy with the expansion either working on some of the new American-inspired parts, tweaking specular maps and playing Tetris with UV layouts. Time was also spent on developing the wireframes and user flow for the UI of the Mission Builder, which is in itself an exercise on clarity. We will start implementing them into the game for their first test pass. Our artists have also started to work on making new IVAs to be included in new parts for the expansion. And just like the rest of the team they had some localization tasks, as well, fixing localized textures and working on the KSPedia, which continues to improved thanks to the dedicated team of volunteers helping us out with this process. Volunteers, we salute you!

Finally, we encourage you, creative KSP players to show off your best space stations on our latest KSP Challenge thread - Space Station Week!, click here to learn more.

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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Could whoever write these try, in the future, to more clearly separate discussion of the various development branches?

Right now there are three separate things being discussed (localization and its pre-release, expansion, and console), sometimes all in the same paragraph. I don't remember any explicit confirmation of which version the console release is targeting, but even if it's the same as one of the two PC versions it should still be discussed separately. The same goes for the localization and expansion discussions.

Just in this post the basic structure, in regards to the different development branches, goes:

Expansion -> Localization -> Console -> Expansion -> Console -> Expansion -> Localization -> Expansion

This is not a recipe for clarity.

Edited by DMagic
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1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

The art department has also been busy with the expansion either working on some of the new American parts, tweaking specular maps and playing Tetris with UV layouts.

Good to hear I look forward to the results, but could we trouble you to give a polish pass or replacement to the stock 3.75m parts that you will no doubt use(rhino engine and kerbodyne fuel tanks) for the Saturn IVB stage of Saturn V? They were originally implemented in early access as place holders and it shows they were UV mapped inefficiently and weren't given the pixel density needed to look good against modern parts. It would be tragic if they clashed with or held back the quality of such an iconic rocket as the Saturn V.

Edited by passinglurker
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1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

For example, devs spent time finishing off development of a new Vessel and Part ID system that modders will also be able to leverage and provides persistent IDs for all Vessels and Parts for their entire lifecycle.

Sounds useful!

29 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

They were originally implemented in early access as place holders...

Honestly, I'm not sure how true this statement is.  Despite our opinions, it seems much of the art in KSP may have never been considered place holder.  ...except maybe those early IVAs.

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15 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Honestly, I'm not sure how true this statement is.  Despite our opinions, it seems much of the art in KSP may have never been considered place holder.  ...except maybe those early IVAs.

I suppose you may have a point in the sense the squad has played things by ear but its hard to deny that recent additions have left older parts behind to the point that they might as well be considered placeholders now, Besides consistent art will pay for itself if players see the development of DLC resulting in the coincidental update of old parts the dlc will sell like hot cakes. 

EDIT: At the very least replacement assets with more resource efficient UV mapping will save ram and storage on consoles giving them more room to buy more dlc as it comes out.

Edited by passinglurker
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Amazing stuff. If I played on console I'd be sending Blitworks a fruit basket for removing yet another "works like a mouse but actually works nothing like a mouse" control.

And the mission builder is really starting to sound like what I wanted it to be. Though I hope it can also be used to plan my own missions.

Edited by 5thHorseman
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24 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

And the mission builder is really starting to sound like what I wanted it to be. Though I hope it can also be used to plan my own missions.

Do you ... think you'll only be able to share missions and not play them yourself?

Or do you mean for career mode?

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29 minutes ago, regex said:

Do you ... think you'll only be able to share missions and not play them yourself?

Or do you mean for career mode?

Sorry I mean, have out be a useful tool in the mission planning stage of play, with no regard for making a challenge or story for others to undertake.

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6 hours ago, SQUAD said:

 

For example, devs spent time finishing off development of a new Vessel and Part ID system that modders will also be able to leverage and provides persistent IDs for all Vessels and Parts for their entire lifecycle. This is core expansions functionality that will allow missions to do all kinds of crazy stuff.

 

I'm excited about it (like any modder out here, I'm sure). But does the last phrase mean vessel and part ids will only be available if the expansion is installed? Then it's not going to be very useful because most modders won't want to lose players without the expansion and will still have to code the old way.

Edited by garwel
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1 hour ago, garwel said:

I'm excited about it (like any modder out here, I'm sure). But does the last phrase mean vessel and part ids will only be available if the expansion is installed? Then it's not going to be very useful because most modders won't want to lose players without the expansion and will still have to code the old way.

 

I read this as being function needed in the game core to allow expansions (and more officalish mods). Yet again I'm an eternal optimist so now curious which way it should be read.

Speaking of Optimism. Great to be reading Dev Notes that read like there is a real direction to focus development. 

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This was interesting to read. I like it.

7 hours ago, SQUAD said:

As mentioned, each Mission will comprise of Objectives (nodes), but there will also be other types of Nodes that can be placed down to flesh out and expand your mission. One of these other Nodes types are what we are calling Constraint Nodes. Constraint Nodes will provide rules for players of your Missions. Things like Must use or Can’t use part x, or Complete this Objective in under x Days (in Game Time). There are many more of these, and we’re working hard on generating a big list for you guys to use - as usual we will share more of these with you all in the coming weeks.

Lets see how much complexity they allow. Sounds good so far.

Will it be possible to use them as conditions? If X, then Y, else Z, something like that.

7 hours ago, SQUAD said:

Correspondingly, our friends at Blitworks have helped us develop a new maneuver node control scheme, which according to our testers greatly improves upon the previous one, which were adjusted using the cursor mode, in contrast with the newer scheme that uses the joysticks in combination with the Left and Right Shoulder Buttons for more precise and easier maneuver node adjustments.

I dont´t use the console versions, but always thought about how annoying it must be to tweak a maneuver node with a controller. Speaking of which, is there any chance that the controller scheme will be ported to PC in the future?

7 hours ago, DMagic said:

 

Could whoever write these try, in the future, to more clearly separate discussion of the various development branches?

 

That would be nice.

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I am pleased that a new system has been developed. I am looking forward to seeing it on the game!

10 hours ago, SQUAD said:

One example was that in some languages the text did not fit on the current size of some windows and as smaller text is not an option, we will have bigger windows for those particular cases!

Our character width, Hiragana notation and Katakana notation will surely require a lot of space ...

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10 hours ago, DMagic said:

Just in this post the basic structure, in regards to the different development branches, goes:

Expansion -> Localization -> Console -> Expansion -> Console -> Expansion -> Localization -> Expansion

This is not a recipe for clarity.

The article did seem a bit all over the place. I had to re-read the article and sections multiple time to digest the article as a whole. I think it's primarily due to what you brought up and continual usage of the phrase, "the devs"... who are the devs in question, which department are they from. Specificity in this case would have been nice. Anywho, the content is fine, the structure could do wish a little polishing. :D

I did especially appreciate the new persistent vessel/part ID. Does this mean we could potentially see something that allows for the ability to re-root a vessel in flight! :o 

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6 hours ago, garwel said:

I'm excited about it (like any modder out here, I'm sure). But does the last phrase mean vessel and part ids will only be available if the expansion is installed? Then it's not going to be very useful because most modders won't want to lose players without the expansion and will still have to code the old way.

It will be required in the core code.

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It's really nice to have Squad be able to talk about what they are doing again. You can feel the passion in this KSP-Weekly. I do have to agree that the excitement caused for quite a bit of confusion due to the rapid fire topic changes. I had to reread several sections to figure out what area was being discussed. Of course some topics are beyond my understanding anyway, but they sound like good things to come.

I'm looking forward to someone setting up the mission builder to teach gravity assists, so I can learn how others use Eve to get to Jool.

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Squad please dont make dlc.We need KSP 2 not dlc.This game looks like 2010 game.Game need much better graphics,multicore optimization,new contract system,air water physics .....This way you can sell this game full price and I know every KSP player gonna buy this game.We need new game not dlc please

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2 hours ago, ktmemp said:

Squad please dont make dlc.We need KSP 2 not dlc.This game looks like 2010 game.Game need much better graphics,multicore optimization,new contract system,air water physics .....This way you can sell this game full price and I know every KSP player gonna buy this game.We need new game not dlc please

This is a common reaction and shows why @SQUAD should take the suggestion to update the art assets of stock parts used in the DLC missions. It would show the players and most importantly the skeptical players the DLC can be good for the development and refinement of the base game and in turn result in the sale of dlc simply as a gesture of support.

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1 hour ago, passinglurker said:

This is a common reaction and shows why @SQUAD should take the suggestion to update the art assets of stock parts used in the DLC missions. It would show the players and most importantly the skeptical players the DLC can be good for the development and refinement of the base game and in turn result in the sale of dlc simply as a gesture of support.

I want to support game with full price 60-70 even 100 $.We only need new game engine more detailed planets missions physics.We do not need dlcs modes provide the same thing.We need new game from scratch.When using 50+ mod game running around 20 fps and using only %50 cpu %50 gpu.This is not acceptable and we need new desing fresh start.Everyone played this game already we need something new.I hope you understand me.

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3 hours ago, ktmemp said:

Squad please dont make dlc.We need KSP 2 not dlc.This game looks like 2010 game.Game need much better graphics,multicore optimization,new contract system,air water physics .....This way you can sell this game full price and I know every KSP player gonna buy this game.We need new game not dlc please

Have you read the forum? Judging the forum most players apparently can't afford the expansion even at $10. How would they be able to buy it at a "full retail price" of $60-$100?

Add to it, that developing a new version of the game, based on how you describe it, from scratch will likely take 2-3 years. Now maybe this is were all the programmers that left KSP went to—Squad is developing KSP2 in secret—but more likely is that it's not happening. 

Third, the appeal of KSP is its concept. Sticking closer to real world physics than practically any other game (even in its genre), the ability to be used as a learning tool, and as in inspiration. I'm not sure how much more "better graphics" would expand the KSP userbase. It's not bad to begin with, and being "perfect" won't make it sell better.

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