KSP Weekly: The Neutron Star Merger

[Raphaello]

2 hours ago, Wallygator said:

I find myself more interested in the Unity upgrade than the "Making History" module - I wonder if I'm the only person who thinks this.

Nope, I think so too.

Edited October 22, 2017 by Raphaello

[klgraham1013]

7 hours ago, Wallygator said:

I find myself more interested in the Unity upgrade than the "Making History" module - I wonder if I'm the only person who thinks this.

You're not.

[Yakuzi]

7 hours ago, Wallygator said:

I find myself more interested in the Unity upgrade than the "Making History" module - I wonder if I'm the only person who thinks this.

 

Same here.

[MiniMatt]

Find the engine upgrade interesting in the context of KSP being acquired by Take 2. Though I'm just wildly speculating business arrangements one assumes that T2, as the owner of KSP, decided an engine upgrade was worthwhile, and decided they would pay Squad to carry out that work.

I assumed that the sale to T2 would contract for existing publicly pipelined work such as 1.3x and the DLC but future work on the existing game would be up in the air and subject to the hard-bitten commercial realities of a publicly traded company.

That continuing development of KSP is both funded and deemed to be commercially viable is rather pleasant to hear.

[Johnny Wishbone]

5 hours ago, MiniMatt said:

That continuing development of KSP is both funded and deemed to be commercially viable is rather pleasant to hear.

This wams the cockles of my heart as well.

That said, none of us outside of Squad know the details of the agreement between them and T2. My understanding was that the Kerbal IP was sold to T2, not necessarily the game, so T2 could make all kinds of other Kerbal related stuff (including games), but the current game remained firmly in the hands of Squad. Even if I'm wrong about this, we still don't know if there were special agreements made in the contract between the parties that guaranteed development of the game through a certain point. Game updates aren't decided on a whim; nobody woke up this morning and said "lets update the game to 1.4!" These things are planned well ahead of time, and for all we know, Squad could have had the 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 updates already planned before the sale and made assurances that these would be done before any hard stop to the game is made.

I may not always agree with the decisions Squad has made with regards to the development of this game, but I can't say that they've done a bad job or haven't lived up to their word. Yes, there are still features that were promised many years ago that probably won't ever be implemented, but I'm willing to give a pass on that stuff since the core gameplay has been solid and continues to improve with every release. Squad has been very good stewards of this game since its inception and allowed the developers a lot of leeway to create the game we have today. Lets have a little faith in them to keep up the good work.

[Terwin]

There seems to be a lot of surprise being voiced over the plan for 1.4.

I always figured that Making History and any future DLC was all about funding continued development,  and that is one of the reasons I was planning on getting it even if I do not bother to install it very often.

As far as an art pass and upgrading graphics options, I consider those 'nice to haves' which will eventually be addressed once the developer's vision of what KSP can be has been fulfilled(assuming development continues that long, which is another reason to buy the DLC).

I would be surprised if they upgraded to the latest and greatest graphics options with the new engine, as I hope development will continue for a while, and there will be newer graphics options (that will no doubt require their own re-works) in later versions. 

[Mako]

A 1.4 update was pretty much guaranteed (I suppose it could have just been a 1.3.x update) since they'll need to do something to the base game to make the DLC function, but the Unity upgrade isn't required for the DLC (unless the plan is to make use of something provided by the Unity update in the DLC) so that aspect comes as a welcome surprise. There is also the additional localization work that should be coming at some point, though that seems like a minor version update so I wouldn't be shocked to see a 1.3.2 or a 1.4.1 with that work if it's not rolled into 1.4.

 

@Johnny Wishbone

As far as I understand it, owning the IP means owning all existing and future incarnations of a thing, so in this case Take-Two owns this title now. It is my understanding that in this situation Squad is still an independent developer (i.e. Squad is not owned by Take-Two), and Take-Two is "paying" Squad to continue working on KSP. I put paying in quotes, because it could be Squad is working under contract as part of the purchase price of the IP, or Squad might have negotiated a contract for the work outside of the purchase. Heck, in theory the DLC, and any money from the sales, will belong to Take-Two, but I suppose that is something that could have been negotiated as well. There's no real way to know unless someone talks, and really it doesn't make much difference one way or another. We're all just still along for the ride, and that's not a bad thing I think. The only thing I can say with relative certainty is that at the moment Take-Two owns KSP and has the final say in what happens to their product.

[jakebomb]

OH boy, Awww Geez -- I cannot wait for the expansion! I'm especially excited about the new parts, and very happy to hear adjustments are being made to the fairings. I use fairings in nearly every thing I build; especially for custom-like transition parts between mk2 space plane parts and standard 2.5m parts. Keep up the good work! : D

[NoMrBond]

I wonder if the Squadites have a wishlist for what they want to achieve with the 1.4 update, and which features of Unity 2017.1 they want to flex? (props to RoverDude and JPLRepo for the engine update trolling long game too  )

Or if the whole thing will be played close to the chest to avoid promissory drama (a depressing possibility)

Fingers crossed we'll hear more about it soon rather than soon™

[Just Jim]

18 minutes ago, NoMrBond said:

I wonder if the Squadites have a wishlist for what they want to achieve with the 1.4 update?

I don't know about everyone else, but that last Unity update they did seemed to make my game run so much smoother... I'd be happy if all the new one did was to improve the game-play and FPS even further. 

[John FX]

On 21/10/2017 at 4:30 AM, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

Looks like the "KSP development is dead" crowd that always seems to be around will have to sit on their hands through at least one more update.

I am a member of said crowd and whilst I think any development of the type we used to get has stopped, it seems that a unity update is something deemed worth doing.

It is telling that the fact there will be another update is news in and of itself.

[Mako]

21 minutes ago, John FX said:

It is telling that the fact there will be another update is news in and of itself.

Until they add support for the DLC to the base game there will always be at least one more update coming. Also, they have confirmed several times that they still intend to add additional localization work. If 1.4 brings the Unity update and nothing else, there will still be at least one more update coming. After the DLC release (and additional languages), then it truly is anyone's guess what will happen. It's even possible that Take-Two and Squad haven't worked out all the details that far out yet.

The community has never really been informed of detailed plans beyond the next update and I doubt that will change now. The arguements against informing the community are thin and I disagree with them, but I'd be a fool if I wasn't able to recognize this pattern after so long.

[something]

So yeah Monday was exciting as it could be. Having a certain scientific background, here's some additional information.

The detection paper is publically available at PRL as are all GW (gravitational wave) detection papers so far: PRL 119, 161101, 'GW170817: GW170817, PRL 119, 161101

The intro text says the GRB (gamma ray burst) came 7s after the GW signal. According to the paper it was 1.7s.

The alert wasn't sent immediately but after the LVC (LIGO VIRGO Cooperation) received the GRB notification. When that notification was checked with GW triggers and a possible detection was seen a process within the LVC started which saw the release of yet another notification about an hour later. When the location data was available about 4-5h post event,  a new, updated notification was sent. About half a day after the event, some telescope detected a 'new dot in the sky'.

The text says the signal lasted for about 100s. This needs some clarification. The sensitivity of a GW detector is a complex function of detection frequency which is dominated by various sources of noise. If we talk about the signal length, we need to keep in mind, that we are talking about the length the signal was observable in our detectors. That was about a hundred secinds. That said, LIGO published data featuring 2048s in length (after noise substraction) See here.

Pinning the source down on the sky took several hours since one of the Ligo detectors suffered a glitch and Virgo suffered data transmission problems if I remember correctly.

MMany of the GW170817 related papers are available at PRL, go have read ; )

 

[Pthigrivi]

1.2 really did marvels for the game. So many things were patched up. Still, a lot of the heavy lifting is being carried by mods. Kudos to the modders, but so many of the aspects that are really critical to the game just aren't accessible for out of the box players. Scatterer and visual enhancements, KER, precise node and Kerbal Alarm Clock seem totally essential and it would be fantastic to see some of that folded into stock. That's not to say we need everything KER does, but giving stock players access to delta-v information and timing aids for hitting transfer windows without needing mods or opening up a browser seems pretty important. Its a shame how many players never go interplanetary, but its not hard to understand why. With some of those tools, an bit more tidying up around career mode and a art pass on some of the older parts and I think we'd be in great shape.

Edited October 26, 2017 by Pthigrivi

[Redneck]

On 10/20/2017 at 3:00 PM, SQUAD said:

 

 the team started to work on upgrading the project to Unity 2017.1. This implementation will be included in the upcoming 1.4 Update of KSP.

 

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!

 

 

@JPLRepo I dont know if you guys are aware but devs from other games are starting to have issues with Unity 2017. Just a FYI in case you are not aware.

link below:

Spoiler

https://www.planet-nomads.com/2017/10/12/update-to-unity-2017-not-happening-rollback-imminent/

 

Edited October 27, 2017 by Redneck

[PaperAviator]

On 10/20/2017 at 4:00 PM, SQUAD said:

Part Explode Node (Action type): This node will allow you set an explosion event for a part and trigger it at a given moment during a mission. There is a different Node for whole vessels by the way.

HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM