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KSP Weekly: Godspeed, John Glenn

SQUAD

By SQUAD
in KSP1 The Daily Kerbal

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SQUAD

SQUAD

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Welcome to KSP Weekly everyone. This Sunday it will be 19 years since John Glenn returned to space aboard shuttle Discovery and became the oldest person ever to fly in space, being 77 years old at the time. Glenn is one of the greatest figures in space history, who sadly passed away last year, and this anniversary is the perfect excuse to talk about the amazing achievements of this true legend.

John Herschel Glenn Jr. was born to a middle class family on July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio. He took his first flight in an airplane with his father, who was a Great War veteran, when he was eight years old. He became fascinated by flight, and built model airplanes from balsa wood kits. Glenn also developed an early interest in science, particularly aeronautics, and a sense of patriotism that would lead him to serve his country later in life. He joined the American war effort in 1942 by entering into the Naval Aviation Cadet Program. The following year, he completed his studies in engineering and was deployed as a Marine fighter pilot in the Pacific front of World War II. After the war, he continued with the Marine Corps and served during the Korean War as a Marine Fighter Pilot. He received many honors including the Distinguished Flying Cross six times and eighteen Air Medals. He then enrolled in the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School and then joined the Naval Air Test Center’s staff of flyers. In 1957, he made the first supersonic transcontinental flight across the United States, flying from Los Alamitos to New York in under 3 hours and 23 minutes.

As a response to the launch of Sputnik I, President Eisenhower launched the Space Race and on October 1, 1958, NASA was established as a civilian agency to develop space technology. One of its first initiatives was publicly announced on December 17, 1958. This was Project Mercury, which aimed to launch a man into Earth orbit, return him safely to the Earth, and evaluate his capabilities in space. Glenn applied for and was granted a position as a test pilot for NASA. When NASA received permission from the president to recruit its first astronauts from the ranks of military test pilots - and although Glenn barely met the requirements, as he was near the age cutoff and lacked a science-based degree - he and six others, including Gus Grissom and Alan Shepard, were selected and went through rigorous training and became known as the Mercury Seven.

On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 spacecraft during the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission, becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, and the fifth person and third American in space. He received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1962 and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990, and was the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven.

Glenn resigned from NASA in 1964 with the intention of starting a career in politics, was able to win the elections to the Senate in 1974, and served for 24 years until January 1999. In 1998, while still a sitting senator, Glenn became the oldest person to fly in space as a crew member of the Discovery space shuttle (STS-95). John Glenn is a true testament that with hard work, determination, and attitude, one can achieve anything. Truly an inspiration for us all. Godspeed, John Glenn. And now, KSP development.

[Development news start here]

For starters, this has been an interesting week in terms of optimizing aspects and functionalities within the Making History Expansion. One of these optimizations involved the Celestial Body viewer within the Mission Builder’s Graphic Action Pane (GAP). We wanted to shorten the load time for the viewer when a parameter was clicked and/or changed. To understand why this was a tricky optimization, we firstly need to remember that KSP procedurally generates the terrains of the planets in order to optimize resources and automatically create large amounts of content using an algorithm. Specifically, we use Procedural Quad Spheres (PQS), which are formed by mapping each point in a cube surface onto a sphere. These cubes can subdivide themselves into smaller ones and simultaneously gives us pretty good control over how these subdivide, so we can set the level of detail on any given point. This translates to being able to zoom into a planet and seamlessly get the terrain details as we close in from orbit-to-ground. As we had noticed that planet PQSs weren’t loading fast enough when viewing them in the GAP, we needed a way to optimize that. The developers went around this by starting to load the texture details after a 70% zoom towards a planet. By doing so, we avoid a slowdown when parameters are changed, letting players switch between planets with ease, while also allowing interaction with planets without loading PQSs. In a nutshell, faster interaction overall when using the tool.

The team has also been working the method that organises a Mission - which turns the flowchart like mission into a list of objectives. As the mission can branch and join, it needs to group objectives up into these paths, which makes it a little more interesting than a simple conversion to a list.

Last week we mentioned that we were working on new textures and configuration for the fairings, remember? Well, as we were doing that, we noticed a problem that has been in the game since the first fairings were introduced, and has probably been a headache for modders who have been trying to set personalized textures to their fairings. One of the developers was able to identify and fix that problem as he was working with the artists on these parts. Basically, the UV mapping that the fairings had, wasn’t displayed in an homogeneous way and so, it distorted the textures projected onto the models. See the image below.

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This image represents how the UV Mapping was display onto the fairings. The UV horizontal axis had a miscalculation, resulting in some very noticeable issues when using a checkerboard pattern. The vertical axis, in the other hand, was based on the height of the model instead of taking the distance between each vertex in the model into account, as well. As a result, the UV cubes were stretched and deformed if the fairings were set with irregular shapes. Once the issue was detected, it was easily fixed. You can see the current representation through the checkerboard pattern of the UV Mapping for the fairings in the image below. Big difference, right?

tumblr_inline_oyhw2yXfk21rr2wit_540.png

And that’s not all, we also implemented Bump Map support for the fairings too, which basically creates the illusion of depth on the surface of the model using a very simple lighting trick. This way, no additional resolution is added to the model and we get a cool depth look for the new fairing textures. The team also added a separate UV Map for the fairing caps, so now, we’ll be able to set individual textures for those caps. Cool, right?

The artist were not only busy with the fairings, but they continue working on the geometry and textures for new parts, as well as on new textures for old parts like the 1.875 Tank!

In other news, we noticed that some people were interested in knowing if we were going to implement the Shuriken Particle System into the game once we update to Unity 2017.1. We want to take advantage of the various improvements to that this engine upgrade allows, so the short answer is: Yes (It’s actually being worked on currently)!

We are also happy to announce that we are updating the Game Demo to our last Update 1.3.1. The demo was very outdated and we thought it did not accurately represent the game anymore. With this update, potential players will be able get a real glimpse of what KSP currently is. We’ll make an announcement once the new Demo is online.

KSP on consoles continues to be thoroughly tested and improved as feedback comes in. Some of the most interesting improvements we saw in the latest build, include a bug that threw an exception when trying to switch controller presets from the mini settings, and another one that inverted the camera axes when a particular preset was selected. Inverting the axes in the mini settings menu fixed the issue in the Editors, but broke it everywhere else. Luckily, the conjoint effort of the QA team and Blitworks is allowing us to detect and fix these issues before anyone can experience them.

Finally, we encourage you to participate in our latest KSP Challenge - The KSPooky Haiku Challenge. This one is different from past challenges. It’s a seasonal challenge based on a fun Mexican tradition. Click the link and learn about it and share your Kerbal-themed Haikus, whether it’s on the Forum or through Twitter. Let’s have fun, share and enjoy the KSP Haiku Challenge!

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!  

PD: Do you want to help the victims of the Earthquakes in Mexico? You can do so by donating to any of these non-profit institutions. Your contributions will make a huge difference:  

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Cpt Kerbalkrunch

Cpt Kerbalkrunch

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Posted (edited)

First!

And great news on the Unity update. Not to mention talk of going over old parts (even if it's just the 1.875 tank for now). Talk like that's bound to make some people extremely happy. :)

And the guys who wanted pics embedded directly into the weekly are gonna be happy, too.

Edited by Cpt Kerbalkrunch
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DMagic

DMagic

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8 minutes ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

First!

And great news on the Unity update. Not to mention talk of going over old parts (even if it's just the 1.875 tank for now). Talk like that's bound to make some people extremely happy. :)

I think they mean old parts as in old Making History parts (unless there is a stock 1.875m tank that I'm unaware of); that would reflect the WIP status of all the previews and images they've been showing us.

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Cpt Kerbalkrunch

Cpt Kerbalkrunch

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Just now, DMagic said:

I think they mean old parts as in old Making History parts (unless there is a stock 1.875m tank that I'm unaware of); that would reflect the WIP status of all the previews and images they've been showing us.

Yup. Just realized that. I thought they were talking about the Oscar B for a minute. :blush:

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Chris_2

Chris_2

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Are we getting close to any release? I mean, really, for those of who don't care about the localization it's been over a year since there has been any update to the game.

New textures for old parts is great, but please tell us there will also be a proper balancing of the parts. Some of the part stats are so incredibly off (weights mainly), I'd consider KSP still an unfinished / beta game until that is fixed.

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linuxgurugamer

linuxgurugamer

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6 minutes ago, Chris_2 said:

Are we getting close to any release? I mean, really, for those of who don't care about the localization it's been over a year since there has been any update to the game.

New textures for old parts is great, but please tell us there will also be a proper balancing of the parts. Some of the part stats are so incredibly off (weights mainly), I'd consider KSP still an unfinished / beta game until that is fixed.

So I guess you don't care about all the bugs which were fixed?  and you are still playing on 1.2.2, since you don't think 1.3 or 1.3.1 has any other improvements?

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Chris_2

Chris_2

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Posted
Just now, linuxgurugamer said:

So I guess you don't care about all the bugs which were fixed?  and you are still playing on 1.2.2, since you don't think 1.3 or 1.3.1 has any other improvements?

You're right that all the bug fixes are nice and sure are necessary, but in 1.2.2 personally I didn't encounter any big bugs... I'm literally still flying the same crafts that I've designed and could fly in 1.2.2.

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0111narwhalz

0111narwhalz

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13 minutes ago, Chris_2 said:

I mean, really, for those of who don't care about the localization it's been over a year since there has been any update to the game.

 

2 minutes ago, Chris_2 said:

You're right that all the bug fixes are nice and sure are necessary,

I think these two statements are directly contradictory. Also, "works for me" is a very thin argument.

I bet @passinglurker is happy about the fairing business.

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MOARdV

MOARdV

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1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

Last week we mentioned that we were working on new textures and configuration for the fairings, remember? Well, as we were doing that, we noticed a problem that has been in the game since the first fairings were introduced, and has probably been a headache for modders who have been trying to set personalized textures to their fairings. One of the developers was able to identify and fix that problem as he was working with the artists on these parts

This makes me happy.  The procedural fairings have been a bit ... off ... since they showed up.  I'm glad it was a bug, and it's being fixed.

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theJesuit

theJesuit

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2 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

The kerbals are usually on the inside. So who's playing the checkers? :o

 

A draughts-y kraken...

And clarity on a 1.875m size tank would be good as well.  Is that a part from prior to .13.1?

Peace!

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genbrien

genbrien

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, klesh said:

Will that fairing fix be included in 1.4 or will we have to purchase the DLC to receive it?

usually fixes are  patched in the game without the need of a DLC. DLCs are extra content, not fix for games

might be different for KSP but I really doubt it

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klesh

klesh

Posted
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14 minutes ago, genbrien said:

usually fixes are  patched in the game without the need of a DLC. DLCs are extra content, not fix for games

might be different for KSP but I really doubt it

Naturally.

However, we have this line this week:

Quote

Last week we mentioned that we were working on new textures and configuration for the fairings, remember?

And last week, the only mention of "fairing" was this line:

Quote

The team is also working on new textures and configurations for the 1.875m and the 5m fairings.

Additionally, the fairing they show this week, to me, appears to be a 5m one. Its unclear as to whether "the fairings" as mentioned this week in reference to last week is only including the fairings mentioned last week (1.875 and 5m, from the DLC).  Since we've never had DLC for this game before, no one knows what will or will not be included with it in terms of fixes to the main game. I'd never noticed a fairing texture bug before, so perhaps it'll only be included on these new fairings which have historical-like textures or somesuch.

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Redneck

Redneck

Posted
Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, Natokerbal said:

tumblr_inline_oyhw2yXfk21rr2wit_540.png Looks like some new parts are in the menu

Just because you guys see some "parts" in there doesn't mean they are going to be in the new release. They may be in there just for testing\debugging or whoever took the screenshot may just had custom parts in there. Doesn't mean anything IMO

Edited by Redneck
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