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KSP Weekly: Watch out for the Asteroids!


SQUAD

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7 hours ago, TheKosmonaut said:

Besides the fact that I think you linked to the same comment twice, I don't know why you're so affixed on textures, which are entirely replaceable. I, myself, hardly ever use stock parts anymore and I doubt you're a "purist" for stock parts, either.

I've been over this before if the texture is bad chances are the rest is bad making it more trouble to bother fixing vs. outright replacement mesh and all. This piece in particular has grevious variances in texel density, and UV mirroring where there should have been space allotted for ambient occlusion. Couple that with RD-signature irritatingly high saturation colors, and low fidelity everything else, and It frankly becomes the fugliest official thing I've seen since the NASA update.

7 hours ago, TheKosmonaut said:

I've said it before, the parts are, IMHO, not the crux of this update. Rather, the whole mission planning mechanic seems to be the meat of it.

Look this is simple for me if the parts are krap then I don't have time to learn and use the mission builder because I'll be to busy customizing mods and making my own mods to compensate for squads failings. If they had made these parts to meet or exceed the standards set by thier previous lead artist then I could relax a bit and use those new parts instead of haveing to install or make my own, but instead they insist on regressing in quality, and charging extra for it. I will not support this my money would be better spent donating to mod authors that care about the quality of thier work.

Edited by passinglurker
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2 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

Look this is simple for me if the parts are krap then I don't have time to learn and use the mission builder because I'll be to busy customizing mods and making my own mods compensate for squads failings.

If that literally takes up all of your attention and time then I dont know what to tell you. It's not actually rocket science.

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Just now, TheKosmonaut said:

If that literally takes up all of your attention and time then I dont know what to tell you. It's not actually rocket science.

It takes up more time than I want it to a guy usually wants some left over to actually play, and we aren't all blessed with relativly open schedules.
 

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16 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

It takes up more time than I want it to a guy usually wants some left over to actually play, and we aren't all blessed with relativly open schedules.
 

I have been there, too. These days, I rarely play the game anyway. I work about 50-60hrs/wk so getting time for anything other than my own family and getting a shower and ~6 hours of sleep in. That said, I tend to have a pretty specific set of mods to go through (RO/RSS) so it's a long process but it's one I have almost completely memorized so setting up a fresh install takes <40 minutes usually. 

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Just now, TheKosmonaut said:

I have been there, too. These days, I rarely play the game anyway. I work about 50-60hrs/wk so getting time for anything other than my own family and getting a shower and ~6 hours of sleep in. That said, I tend to have a pretty specific set of mods to go through (RO/RSS) so it's a long process but it's one I have almost completely memorized so setting up a fresh install takes <40 minutes usually. 

That may be true but you're not trying to find quality replacements for the majority of assets and then arrange them into an intuitive and balanced progression.

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8 hours ago, TheKosmonaut said:

Besides the fact that I think you linked to the same comment twice, I don't know why you're so affixed on textures, which are entirely replaceable. I, myself, hardly ever use stock parts anymore and I doubt you're a "purist" for stock parts, either.

I've said it before, the parts are, IMHO, not the crux of this update. Rather, the whole mission planning mechanic seems to be the meat of it. It's just a bit unfortunate that we can't really see what *that* entails other than a couple of mentions here and there, and other things I've seen around. 

OK but not everyone might feel the same way. Personally I'm not especially excited by the Mission Builder or the Making History mission pack. From what we've seen so far they appear to be catering to aspects of the game (challenges and replica craft building) that I'm not really into. However a new set of nice looking parts that work  nicely with the existing part set so that I can work them into my own designs - that might persuade me to buy the expansion.

Squad are competing with free mods. To do that, it would seem sensible for all aspects of the expansion - including 'easily replaceable textures' to be as good as they can be.

I presume Squad are also hoping that the expansion will expand their player base, especially after all the effort they've put into localisation. If they're hoping to persuade new players to buy a 5 year old game, then a good first impression is vital. Johnny Newbie likely won't care that a mere 40 minutes of installing mods will give him a superior KSP experience - he's going to want something that looks good straight out of the box.

Yes, yes, gameplay should beat eye candy but eye candy really helps. 

Edited by KSK
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9 hours ago, TheKosmonaut said:

I've said it before, the parts are, IMHO, not the crux of this update. Rather, the whole mission planning mechanic seems to be the meat of it. It's just a bit unfortunate that we can't really see what *that* entails other than a couple of mentions here and there, and other things I've seen around. 

I think a big part of the problem, at least for some people (because the forum isn't a singular entity, but is a collection of individuals with their own opinions that might contradict others...), is that the low quality of the existing rocket parts has basically always been a concern. From the original parts dating from whenever, to the current parts, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the NASA parts, there have always been complaints. And most of the original authors are quick to agree with those complaints. 

Then PorkJet was hired and we got those nice, high quality space plane parts, with distinct, but consistent styling, followed by many dev notes discussing the overhaul to the rocket parts and even a taste of what those might look like.

Now that we have a set of these high quality parts, I think the expectation is that anything added beyond those should at least be of a similar level of quality, even if they aren't the same style and don't follow the same design practices. So far what we've seen seems to vary significantly in quality, the Apollo parts are OK, but have some internal inconsistencies and maybe questionable design decisions (there is a thread dedicated to that somewhere), and the new command pod just looks like an upgraded version of the existing 2.5m pod. But the other engine that was shown earlier and some of the other parts look great. And to be fair about this new engine, the real RD-107 also kind of looks like a cheap plastic toy.

As for the mission builder, I think one of the dev notes a few weeks or months ago more or less explicitly stated that it is an in-game, formalized challenge creator. It would be nice to know if there is any kind of integration with career mode, but I'm not expecting much.

Edit:

Here is the quote:

On 3/24/2017 at 8:47 PM, 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.

 

Edited by DMagic
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2 hours ago, DMagic said:

It would be nice to know if there is any kind of integration with career mode, but I'm not expecting much.

They have said you will not be able to use missions in career, any questions about a career connection have been replied to in the negative.

It is nice to see some of the differences between missions and contracts being explained, it seems much clearer now. I like that you can set up a scenario with for example multiple ships in orbit of multiple moons around Jool and, for example, make a mission to connect them all into a single station around Dres. With the ability to fill them with arbitrary amounts of fuel I can see some of the missions being shared will be quite hard even for experienced players.

I hope there will be nothing in the way of the mission editor being used with mods, realism overhaul for example.

Would anyone at @SQUAD like to reassure us we can make missions in RSS/RO?

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On 30/06/2017 at 11:14 PM, TheRagingIrishman said:

A successful qa period is a boring one. Having nothing to report means that they haven't found any major problems. 

or the testing regime is less than effective (just saying - as it is a logical counterpoint without further evidence provided - and the prior supplier definitely had issues)

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53 minutes ago, Wallygator said:

or the testing regime is less than effective (just saying - as it is a logical counterpoint without further evidence provided - and the prior supplier definitely had issues)

Although we can safely assume there were people aware of those issues, even if only retrospectively, and that those issues are likely to be a reason for the supplier change and affect the choice for the new supplier. As a result the same issues are unlikely to be current because they are the impetus for the most recent change. Not to say other issues are not present, just that the least likely current issues are the ones that caused the change because they are the ones people would be most conscious of at the moment. To just state the opposite point without considering the underlying system is not logical, just a counterpoint.

So as they say, no news is good news.

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9 minutes ago, John FX said:

Although we can safely assume there were people aware of those issues, even if only retrospectively, and that those issues are likely to be a reason for the supplier change and affect the choice for the new supplier. As a result the same issues are unlikely to be current because they are the impetus for the most recent change. Not to say other issues are not present, just that the least likely current issues are the ones that caused the change because they are the ones people would be most conscious of at the moment. To just state the opposite point without considering the underlying system is not logical, just a counterpoint.

So as they say, no news is good news.

 

I still find it difficult to assume a positive without evidence.  Supplier failure can be attributed to a multitude of aspects - many of which are outside of the suppliers scope. And just because there has been a supplier change is no assurance that any or all issues are mitigated.

By the way, I have great respect for your contributions and posts.  This one I personally find difficult to comprehend - no worries - we all have different viewpoints based on our personal and professional experience and mine may be occluding my comprehension.  No need for further discussion IMO. But I will ponder your post :)

 

 

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9 hours ago, RoverDude said:

All parts shown are WIP (work in progress).  That is all.

This has never been said by anyone official ever and really it would have prevented a lot of drama over the previous weeks if it was. Please make sure the PR team are more clear about this in the future since this is the case

EDIT: Also when do we get to see the final version of previously shown parts since we were being shown WIP's the whole time?

Edited by passinglurker
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27 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

when do we get to see the final version

When it's released.  Until then, everything is just a WIP, with the possibility of never even being released.

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On 7/1/2017 at 11:07 PM, CobaltWolf said:

That's fantastic news! @nestor, more generally, can we expect similar *functionality* things (like mesh switching... I suppose, part module type stuff) to be included in the base game? Obviously the mission planner stuff is great, but if I want to use something like the mesh switching functionality, I'd rather not lock it to only my users who own the DLC. On the other hand... I'd understand and think there's sufficient reason if similar features were locked to the DLC.

Also, am I correct in saying there will be a 'drm' of having the DLC content in asset bundles? Is there anything else we should know (how it affects load times, for instance)?

Re the load times with the current amount of UI content in there its not much at all - there's more time taken by the new parts loading than the assetbundles atm. Obviously we are still adding more to it as well so that will grow, but its currently a small bit if you have the expansion installed at the loading scene and then no detectable diffn after that

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Just now, TriggerAu said:

Re the load times with the current amount of UI content in there its not much at all - there's more time taken by the new parts loading than the assetbundles atm. Obviously we are still adding more to it as well so that will grow, but its currently a small bit if you have the expansion installed at the loading scene and then no detectable diffn after that

Are the new parts not packed in asset bundles?

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Not currently, and (this is my personal opinion not an official final decision type thought so take with a grain of salt) I dont imagine they will be due to the challenges that would cause for modding and things like MM, etc. 

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40 minutes ago, razark said:

When it's released.  Until then, everything is just a WIP, with the possibility of never even being released.

And this is the correct answer.  All parts still have to survive contact with QA, Experimentals, final art reviews, etc. (and some have already had some of their original geometry, textures, etc. changed based on QA feedback).  

Some parts still have mesh work to do, some have additional texture work to do, etc.  Some I'd consider to be within a stone's throw of being in their final state.  Some are dog-eared to have their textures tweaked.  Heck, some got tweaked between the time their screenshot was made for KSP Weekly, and the actual release of the relevant post.

Some will likely get more updates as their alternate textures are built up.  Some that were previously close to finished have had to be revisited because I wasn't happy with how the part sets came together when making historic rockets in the VAB, or we found out that some geometry caused issues with the IVAs, etc. and some parts have been tweaked/changed more than once at this point for all of the reasons above and more.

I have said repeatedly that everything is subject to change,  So yeah, I'd say nothing is set in stone until the final release build :wink:

 

 

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Another week, another couple sentences of noise in regards to consoles.  No real progress, no estimated release date. 

Perhaps if they just keep rephrasing the same sentence over and over again, maybe they won't ever have to release an update?

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Just now, Swacer said:

Another week, another couple sentences of noise in regards to consoles.  No real progress, no estimated release date. 

Perhaps if they just keep rephrasing the same sentence over and over again, maybe they won't ever have to release an update?

They're paying a company to work on it.  I doubt they're intending on that money going to waste.

This is a company.  Money is everything.  The work being paid for now will be released, just as the FTE port got released.

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On 30/06/2017 at 11:14 PM, TheRagingIrishman said:

A successful qa period is a boring one. Having nothing to report means that they haven't found any major problems. 

Aahh but would they tell us they had?

 

Additional:

Just had a thought (rare I know)

Blitworks is/was boasting that the new port would be 1.2 loud and clear (last year) will it now be 1.3 on release?

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  • 2 weeks later...

For the users who were promised free dlcs if we bought it before the certain date, how will we redeem our copy? I transferred my KSP to steam a while ago; will I just get a key from the KSP store?

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