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KSP Weekly: The Moon Race


SQUAD

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Welcome to KSP Weekly! On Monday an exciting contest was unveiled by Airbus Space at the International Astronautical Congress in Bremen, Germany, promising to develop technologies for a trip to the moon in 2024. The European Space Agency, the Mexican Space Agency, Airbus, Blue Origin and Vinci Construction are supporting this competition which aspires to incite a new private-sector moon race.

The contest, appropriately called “The Moon Race,” is a global initiative that aims to boost Moon exploration and enable the demonstration of key technologies required for its sustainable exploration, as well as foster global entrepreneurship.

Not much has been revealed, but according to its website participants will be able to sign up in 2019, with prototypes due in 2020 and technology development – including a test in a lunar-like environment – targeted for some time in 2021, setting the stage for a Moon mission in 2024. Teams will have the chance to apply for parallel technology streams in manufacturing, energy, resources and biology.

The project’s organizers say more will be revealed next year, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing. We are certainly excited to see what comes out from this initiative, and we hope that their goals are achieved and that these efforts help to bring us closer to becoming a multi-planetary species.

[Development news start here]

Kerbal Space Program 1.5: Dressed for Success is around the corner and this week we wrapped up some of the final elements within this update. For instance, after compiling all the feedback shared by our beloved community, we have made some adjustments to the helmets of the new EVA/IVA Space Suits, and we’d like to show them to you. Here are couple of gifs for you to fully appreciate the new suit in different environments: EVA in Space and EVA at the KSC.

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Click here to see the high-res image.

We have been listening and taking note from the feedback you have provided us with, so check out these updated parts, too!

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Click here to see the high-res image.

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Click here to see the high-res image.

The team also completed the revamp of the Probodobodyne Stayputnik Command Module. Needless to say, this part is influenced by the Sputnik satellite, and as such we wanted to make some adjustments to make this part look closer to its analogue. To achieve this and as with all the other parts we’ve revamped for this update, the specular, normal and diffuse maps have been redone from scratch. This is also one of the parts that benefits the most from the new shader, but an image speaks a thousand words, so take a look for yourself. Click here to see a gif with the new Stayputnik in motion.

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Click here to see the high-res image.

Bug fixing was included in this week’s agenda and among this final sweep, we implemented an auto spring/damper to the wheel suspension system in order to diminish involuntary bouncing. We also adjusted the wheel friction and suspension parameters to tackle this problem. We expect that this will improve the behavior of the wheels and legs in the game.

We also want to take this opportunity to talk about our plans on future updates to the game. With the intention to continue advancing KSP and give our players exciting new content and features to look forward to, as well as to improve our processes, from 1.5 onward we will deliver updates approximately every 3 months. These quarterly updates will keep offering exciting new content that will improve our players’ game experience. We are also working hard to limit the impact on mods in various ways, and by providing regular updates we hope to give the modding community a better idea on development timings.

Finally, we want to let you know that this is going to be the last KSP Weekly in its current format, but don’t you worry! This doesn’t mean that we will stop giving you development news; on the contrary, the reason we’re doing this is to reinvent the way we give updates to our fans. We want to provide you with more relevant, substantial and focused updates about everything that happens within the KSP HQ. The idea here is quality instead of quantity. The new development news format will be called KSP Loading…” and will be a newsletter that compiles all the current developments of KSP intermittently between each update. We will however share small bits of day-to-day developments more casually throughout our social media channels - e.g. screenshots, short videos, and Devblog posts among other cool things. Let us know if you’d like us to keep sharing news and interesting facts about space, and we’ll find a spot for such posts as well.

[KSP Vault]

Let’s hold a minute of silence for all the Kerbals that met their maker when Call Me Kevin decided to make his own space agency.

On the other side of the skill spectrum, ShadowZone sent a 300,000kg statue to Eeloo. This might be one of the most impressive feats we’ve witness in KSP. If you haven’t, don’t miss it, you won’t be disappointed…

Have you seen cool KSP-related content that you consider worth highlighting? Share it with us and help us give content creators more exposure. :)

Remember that you can also share and download missions on Curse, KerbalX, the KSP Forum and the KSP Steam Workshop.

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!


*Information Source:

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FIRST!! hehe

and...the new parts look great! I'll leave the technical review to those who know a lot more about modeling than me. My "average OCD player" opinion is that these are a huge improvement.

Loving the new suits too.

Will the reflective qualities of all these different parts look correct when mixed and matched? different materials will have different qualities, but hopefully there's an overall aesthetic that makes them look like they belong in the same time period in the same universe.

Edited by Tyko
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1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

... from 1.5 onward we will deliver updates approximately every 3 months... We are also working hard to limit the impact on mods in various ways, and by providing regular updates we hope to give the modding community a better idea on development timings.

I fear that this is going to put unrealistic time contraints on your development team causing content to be rushed out that does not meet the quality standards that you say you aim to target... it has been said before by ex-staff members and even by HarvesteR himself very recently that these concrete deadlines caused you major headaches, so I don't understand why you would impose even more constricting timelines upon your team. But hey ho! That's your decision. 

With regards to a 3 monthly update for developers... this is pretty garbage unless you really clamp down on the API. If you release 4 updates a year just because you have to, you could potentially be causing more chaos to the modding community with regards to compatibility than there already is. Mods carry KSP as I am sure you must know from your Analytics data... don't aggrevate the mod developers into doing uneccessary work, they are giving your game life.

EDIT: The above paragraph sounded very negative so I want to give a little bit of reasoned clarity. If restraint is made to ensure that 'limiting the impact on mods' is held in the forethought of development then its not too much of an issue. Maybe if the dev team had more open dialogue with a sizable group of prolific mod plugin/part/art developers this would cause much less issue as developers could get a pre-warning on changes that may affect their mods and also feedback could be given from the mod developers to the core game developers to promote lateral thinking with respect to the impact that is made.

Aside from that, I quite like the Stayputnik although it had a great baseline to work from with the old part; I like it.

Edited by Poodmund
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31 minutes ago, Tyko said:

FIRST!! hehe

and...the new parts look great! I'll leave the technical review to those who know a lot more about modeling than me. My "average OCD player" opinion is that these are a huge improvement.

Loving the new suits too.

Will the reflective qualities of all these different parts look correct when mixed and matched? different materials will have different qualities, but hopefully there's an overall aesthetic that makes them look like they belong in the same time period in the same universe.

In testing, when we mixed the new tanks with existing Mk1 tanks/fuselages, folks had a hard time telling which was which.

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56 minutes ago, Dafni said:

so something like a "finished game" is not even on the agenda? hmmm, interesting.

I mean do you not want updates. I understand the frustration over an unfinished game but I want new updates too. 

2 hours ago, SQUAD said:

[snipped the entire OP]

Keep the weeklies 

Edited by Deddly
Please don't quote the whole OP :)
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Hey @SQUAD those updated parts look amazing!

I'd have one wish in 1.5 that needs to be fixed. The camera shadow bug that entered since KSP went to Unity 5 is back in 1.4+. I would very appreciate if you guys could find another fix for this! @JPLRepo
 

 

Edited by damonvv
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Hey guys.

 

Hey.

They listened.

lossy-page1-800px-National_Museum_of_Nuctumblr_inline_pg51c1t3N01rr2wit_540.jpg

That's a checkered FL-T400. They got rid of the top stripe on the RT-10. We got not one but TWO plain-ish variants of the 1.25m tanks.

 

They're listening, guys. 

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I'm really loving what I'm seeing here! Looks great! And a big hug to you for giving us white helmets with red stripes - they look so nice :)

I'm not the kind of person who likes regular updates with software, but I do like regular news. That's just my personal preference, though, and I'm sure you know what you're doing. I'll reserve judgement until I see what the new newsletters are like. :P

One request, though; is there a possibility that news released via social media can be copied to the forum somewhere? I've seen many users here who don't and won't use social media.

Edited by Deddly
Speeling
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*Thank you* for adding the red stripes to the helmet.  I also like the two-tone white + gray look for the helmet, which provides a little more visual interest.

The Stayputnik Mk2 is a nice improvement, and I like all the variants for the 1.25m tanks.  It's nice to see older parts finally getting an art pass, instead of us getting yet another spaceplane update while us rocket types are stuck with stacked barrels.

I am concerned about the plan to release updates every 3 months.  I've been developing software for a long time (as in, I started before some of the people playing this game were born).  Having a 3 month deadline is going to be hard to stick to, unless the releases are minor updates.  There've been a few releases were KSP needed multiple fix releases (1.4.5, most recently) that will make a 3 month schedule harder to maintain, unless the plan is "Oh, those game-breaking bugs will be fixed in the next release in three months".  I also sincerely hope that the API will be locked down, so existing interfaces aren't at risk of breaking every three months.

BTW, as a recommendation: Please throw a bone to our console players.  Let them know they're not forgotten if there are still plans for updates to the console version.  There has been nothing in the official notes for them for a while. I doubt that the 3 month release schedule will apply to them due to the overhead of qualifying console releases.  And if the console version is frozen as-is, let them know that, too.

It doesn't affect me personally, but I feel for the console players hoping for some scrap of information.

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@SQUAD

Glad to see the iconic kerbal EVA suit retain its red stripe. They really define kerbals as they tool around outside. I do wish the IVAsuits lacked collars and were more like the outfits that the ISS crews wear. That would really rock.

Edited by Angel-125
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1 hour ago, Poodmund said:

I fear that this is going to put unrealistic time contraints on your development team causing content to be rushed out that does not meet the quality standards that you say you aim to target... it has been said before by ex-staff members and even by HarvesteR himself very recently that these concrete deadlines caused you major headaches, so I don't understand why you would impose even more constricting timelines upon your team. But hey ho! That's your decision. 

With regards to a 3 monthly update for developers... this is pretty garbage unless you really clamp down on the API. If you release 4 updates a year just because you have to, you could potentially be causing more chaos to the modding community with regards to compatibility than there already is. Mods carry KSP as I am sure you must know from your Analytics data... don't aggrevate the mod developers into doing uneccessary work, they are giving your game life.

EDIT: The above paragraph sounded very negative so I want to give a little bit of reasoned clarity. If restraint is made to ensure that 'limiting the impact on mods' is held in the forethought of development then its not too much of an issue. Maybe if the dev team had more open dialogue with a sizable group of prolific mod plugin/part/art developers this would cause much less issue as developers could get a pre-warning on changes that may affect their mods and also feedback could be given from the mod developers to the core game developers to promote lateral thinking with respect to the impact that is made.

Aside from that, I quite like the Stayputnik although it had a great baseline to work from with the old part; I like it.

 

4 minutes ago, MOARdV said:

I am concerned about the plan to release updates every 3 months.  I've been developing software for a long time (as in, I started before some of the people playing this game were born).  Having a 3 month deadline is going to be hard to stick to, unless the releases are minor updates.  There've been a few releases were KSP needed multiple fix releases (1.4.5, most recently) that will make a 3 month schedule harder to maintain, unless the plan is "Oh, those game-breaking bugs will be fixed in the next release in three months".  I also sincerely hope that the API will be locked down, so existing interfaces aren't at risk of breaking every three months...

 

I feel here I can add some info from a dev directly, and hopefully alleviate some of that uncertainty. Its definitely not a plan to say whatever's in the development version at the end of three months is what gets released - there's been no "deadline" to push it out the door in this process. It is the next iteration in our improvement of processes becoming more mature and complete. We've been improving these over time for the last few years. 

For example, if you look at 1.4 there were 6 releases in 4 and a half months, those releases take time, planning and resources. And while we did have a lot of releases we were very careful with API changes that affect mods (since 1.3 we've been very careful with what API changes happen in revision releases). Even then we saw that the mod users (and authors) were getting pain from the "when will your mod work in 1.4.x" when almost all mods only needed a code update to go to 1.4.0 when the API changed and the versioning was causing pain with incompatibility messages that in a lot of cases didn't need a recompile. 

The process we are using doesnt preclude a "hotfix" for game-breaking bugs and making people wait 3 months, it includes a process to assess these sort of things and decide if the severity and impact of them means we should release a hotfix.

To clarify, the intent is certainly not to rush anyone in any team (and ive not seen that from this cycle at all), and its not a "deadline" where a big list of stuff is chosen at the start of a 3 month period and everyone is told to have it all done in 3 months (thats unprofessional as hell, and unnecessary pain for everyone). It does give everyone an idea of around what time frame the next release will be, so we can all have an idea of when that's coming

It's the latest iteration in our aim to continuously improve our processes and provide better experience.

 

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