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Kerbal Space Program 1.4.3 and Making History 1.2 is live!

UomoCapra

By UomoCapra
in 2018

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superm18

superm18

Posted
Posted
16 hours ago, Papa_Joe said:

You may have a long wait.  there is no such thing as bug free code... I've been programming for over 30 years... still have not achieved bug free code.....

 

Does that say more about you as a programmer or programming in general?! ;) 

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Papa_Joe

Papa_Joe

Posted
Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, superm18 said:

Does that say more about you as a programmer or programming in general?! ;) 

Both :D.   

I've never claimed to be the best programmer in the world.  However it is axiomatic that code is by nature a creative endeavor, and therefore is never perfect.  There is always something I've not considered, or uses cases made of the software that were not planned for. 

As for my skills,  I've written great defensive code in my career, and I'm proud of my work, but there is always someone around the corner that teaches me something newer, better, faster.

I'm grateful to all who contribute to the KSP modding community, and would never consider myself "better" than anyone else here. 

Edited by Papa_Joe
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Mrcarrot

Mrcarrot

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, Kerbital said:

It's ModuleManager. Sarbian, the author of ModuleManager, does this on April 1st every year.

I am aware of this. Apparently, you have not read the previous few messages.

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maceemiller

maceemiller

Posted
Posted
17 hours ago, MechBFP said:

Holy crap, is it just me or does this version jack up the frame rate like no one's business?
This game is running smoother than melted butter for me now.

 

I am quite happy. :)

Cant wait to see if its just you or KSP itself...either way, lets play!!!

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Snark

Snark

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, superm18 said:

Does that say more about you as a programmer or programming in general?! ;)

I would say very much "programming in general".  I've been a professional software engineer for nearly a quarter-century myself, and there are always bugs.  Doesn't matter how diligent you are, doesn't matter how careful or skilled you are.  There are always bugs.  Always.

There are always bugs, because software is extraordinarily complex-- like a machine with many thousands of moving parts-- and the number of potential interactions among those parts is astronomical, especially given that there's ongoing change in the system in most cases.  It's simply not mathematically possible to test everything.

It's better to have fewer bugs, yes.  And one can certainly adapt one's coding style, design expertise, schedule, and testing budget to try to reduce the bug count.  Which software developers do.

The problem is one of diminishing returns.  Anything that reduces bug count costs money.  And as the code quality increases and the bug count decreases... the cost per bug to find the remainder gets higher and higher.   Getting to "zero bugs" would require infinity dollars, which no one has.  Which means there is such a thing as "over-testing", i.e. devoting so many resources trying to get the bug count down that you starve other important tasks of resources-- e.g. feature development.  Also, since companies exist to make money, every dollar spent on anything comes out of the bottom line.  That means to spend a dollar on anything-- development, testing, marketing, whatever-- the expenditure has to be justified in terms of "this will pay off more than a dollar elsewhere."

So, yes, bugs are a thing.  And, ultimately, it's generally economic factors that determine how buggy a product ends up being.

  • If you're developing crucial system software for some important piece of medical equipment or airline avionics or whatever, such that people die if a bug happens?  Well then, you just accept that the software is going to be excruciatingly expensive to develop, and spend literally thousands of dollars per individual line of code, and take a huge amount of money and time to produce a fairly small (but highly bulletproof) piece of software.
  • On the other hand, is it a silly little game that people spend the equivalent of a couple of movie tickets on?  And then get thousands of hours of entertainment out of, without needing to pony up any additional cash?  ...Then you're not going to get something bulletproof.  Because bullet-proofing is really really expensive.

Note that the above is just a description of how software development in general works.  This is not a particular statement about Squad, or whether it's "justified" or "blame-worthy" that KSP has the number of bugs that it does.  Would I like there to be fewer bugs?  Yes.  Would it be a lot nicer that way?  Sure.  However, not knowing the specific details of the economics behind KSP (e.g. how many copies have they sold, what are their development expenses, etc.), then I don't feel that I'm in any position to point fingers.

In software development, like anything, you get what you pay for.  But KSP does not strike me as being a heavily-financed game, as software goes:  it sells for cheap, it doesn't generate additional revenue as it goes on (until MH came along), and it's somewhat of a niche market (I don't think it sells tens of millions of copies).  I'm having trouble seeing it as generating a gargantuan revenue stream.

And if one hasn't paid much, then there tends to be a ceiling to what reasonable expectations one can have.

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Delbrutis

Delbrutis

Posted
Posted (edited)

Thank you Squad Nice work ! I can now change my resolutions and save settings. Most of the really bad graphical bugs and Z fighting under Linux seem to be cured. Now I can actually play the DLC. Bravo have a gold star.:targetpro: You get a extra star and maybe some cookies if I can use my joystick and turn back on aero effects again without having a seizure.:confused: I will have to see how missions are now that I can actually play the game? This patch looks really good so far. Thank you for all the hard work! :D 

Edited by Delbrutis
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JPLRepo

JPLRepo

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

Hurrah.  Another name I can constantly roll my eyes at along with FAT-455 and Big-S.   I know.  I'm anti-fun.

Are those Kerbals 1 to 1 scale cardboard cut outs?  ...and how can I get one? 

See.  I'm not completely anti-fun.

No they are not cardboard cut outs. The one on the right is me. and the one on the left is TriggerAU. :sticktongue:

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Mrcarrot

Mrcarrot

Posted
Posted
15 minutes ago, JPLRepo said:

No they are not cardboard cut outs. The one on the right is me. and the one on the left is TriggerAU. :sticktongue:

So... you program the very universe in which you live? Interesting...

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Klapaucius

Klapaucius

Posted
Posted
59 minutes ago, Snark said:
  • If you're developing crucial system software for some important piece of medical equipment or airline avionics or whatever, such that people die if a bug happens?  Well then, you just accept that the software is going to be excruciatingly expensive to develop, and spend literally thousands of dollars per individual line of code, and take a huge amount of money and time to produce a fairly small (but highly bulletproof) piece of software.
  • On the other hand, is it a silly little game that people spend the equivalent of a couple of movie tickets on?  And then get thousands of hours of entertainment out of, without needing to pony up any additional cash?  ...Then you're not going to get something bulletproof.  Because bullet-proofing is really really expensive.

 

I really like this quote.

 

I am new to KSP., having started a few months ago, actually somewhat by accident. I work in public library and we have programs for kids.  One of the programming guys wanted to put this together and I had to learn the game. I've never been a gamer, and while I was keen to help teach, I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to learn this blasted thing.  I was constantly flying by the seat of my pants until one weekend I just sat down with a set of tutorials from Nerdy Space Man (who, I think, for an absolute beginner, is the best there is at getting you up to speed) and got myself educated.

Fast-forward to today, and I am hooked. It is a very fun way to spend time when I just need a break from other things.  And while the game is of course not 100% analogous to real life, I have nonetheless learned a ton about orbital mechanics.  It is encouraging me to get back on the Khan Academy, dust off my very rusty math skills, and start doing some proper calculations.  Bugs or no bugs (and yes, the landing gear issue was really annoying), I was happy to pay the initial $30 (or whatever it is in $US) and happy to pay the extra $15.  More importantly, the developers realized they had stuffed up and made it right, and they took the time to add some new features at the same time just to smooth things out a bit.

So, if some guy who was not even into gaming can pay a total of US$45, surely those into gaming can pony up.  I've already spent about 300 hours; that works out to 15 cents per hour.  The Last Jedi cost me $10 for 2 hours.  A days skiing, even with a discount pass, is at a minimum $60.  A beer at the local pub cost $10.  I do video editing and made a documentary film. Subscribing to Adobe costs me $20 a month.  In short, KSP is small change especially considering just how complex this is.  This is not online Mahjong, or Tetris.  And if they were not charging for it, how would it survive?  

Incidentally, that film I made cost about $20,000 to complete. It was posted online for free, but I was able to do that by crowdfunding and biting the bullet with out-of-pocket expenses. If you did not pay for KSP upfront, someone would have to in some other way, either via Patreon or Indiegogo or something else.  

 

PS. The Mission Builder may have been ostensibly designed for creating missions, but I find I spend a lot of time just playing for myself with it. It's a great way to set up challenges for yourself, such as building ships you can launch directly from the surface of Eve, building planes to fly around Laythe, etc. It's a brilliant test-bed.

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Mrcarrot

Mrcarrot

Posted
Posted
8 minutes ago, Klapaucius said:

PS. The Mission Builder may have been ostensibly designed for creating missions, but I find I spend a lot of time just playing for myself with it. It's a great way to set up challenges for yourself, such as building ships you can launch directly from the surface of Eve, building planes to fly around Laythe, etc. It's a brilliant test-bed.

I abuse it to put rovers on Duna when I'm lazy...

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PikzelBoy

PikzelBoy

Posted
Posted

In 1.4.2 I got a strange glitch where all my UI turned tiny. I can still read it but it is really annoying. I happened on a loading screen and I do have the DLC. I cannot make my UI normal again. Has this glitch been fixed and does anyone know how to fix it?

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Gordon Fecyk

Gordon Fecyk

Posted
Posted
21 hours ago, NoMrBond said:

If you have the GeForce Experience app installed you may need to use ctrl+alt+F12 rather than just alt+f12

Being a GeForce Experience / NVidia Share user, I prefer re-mapping the keys in NVidia Share to ALT-5 through ALT-9, and similar, just below the function keys. These don't seem to mess with action groups or with the alt-function menus.

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Cavscout74

Cavscout74

Posted
Posted
35 minutes ago, PikzelBoy said:

In 1.4.2 I got a strange glitch where all my UI turned tiny. I can still read it but it is really annoying. I happened on a loading screen and I do have the DLC. I cannot make my UI normal again. Has this glitch been fixed and does anyone know how to fix it?

I was getting that in 1.4.1 occasionally - mostly if I tabbed out while in a load screen.  In my case, it was just the graphics resetting to maximum resolution & I had to go back to the main menu & reset to what I was using.   I haven't had it happen yet in 1.4.3, but I only played for maybe 2 hours so far.

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JPLRepo

JPLRepo

Posted
Posted
19 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

I was getting that in 1.4.1 occasionally - mostly if I tabbed out while in a load screen.  In my case, it was just the graphics resetting to maximum resolution & I had to go back to the main menu & reset to what I was using.   I haven't had it happen yet in 1.4.3, but I only played for maybe 2 hours so far.

It’s a known Unity bug for the version KSP is currently running.

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LameLefty

LameLefty

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, PikzelBoy said:

In 1.4.2 I got a strange glitch where all my UI turned tiny. I can still read it but it is really annoying. I happened on a loading screen and I do have the DLC. I cannot make my UI normal again. Has this glitch been fixed and does anyone know how to fix it?

 

38 minutes ago, Cavscout74 said:

I was getting that in 1.4.1 occasionally - mostly if I tabbed out while in a load screen.  In my case, it was just the graphics resetting to maximum resolution & I had to go back to the main menu & reset to what I was using.   I haven't had it happen yet in 1.4.3, but I only played for maybe 2 hours so far.

 

18 minutes ago, JPLRepo said:

It’s a known Unity bug for the version KSP is currently running.

@linuxgurugamer maintains a mod (one of his hundreds!) called AnyRes Continued that lets you change game res on the fly with no ill effects. It's listed as 1.3.1-compatible but I was using it in 1.4 - 1.4.2 without any problems.

 

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Azimech

Azimech

Posted
Posted

Built a car in 1.4.2. External commandpod to EVA the kerbals to their seats. Used the new DLC wheels. In 1.4.2 everything goes fine. In 1.4.3 when I seat a kerbal, the wheels break.

Could be a mod. Has anyone else noticed this behaviour?

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