KSP Weekly: The Moon Race

[Deddly]

25 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

So...not to be rude but basically; you're going to blast disparate parts of the development news across the 4 corners of the internet to a bunch of people who don't care, instead of catering to your most involved players who all congregate here? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

He did say later on that everything will also be announced on the forum. But remember there are many, many KSP fans out there who don't use the forum at all. 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

23 minutes ago, Deddly said:

He did say later on that everything will also be announced on the forum. But remember there are many, many KSP fans out there who don't use the forum at all. 

Fair enough, and I appreciate that; but I can't help but feel we'll be getting our "amalgamated news" quite late as I assume they'll have to wait to have enough collective little pieces to make something out of, so I basically have to look for it myself on social media or be the last to know? (This was also kind of my point, let's say only 5% of players visit this forum; those are the 5% of the players who actually care about development news, the other 95% are casual players who likely don't read patch notes or have any desire to be involved in the progress of the game. They just play it.)

I realize boycotting social media is a personal choice, and one I'm ultimately responsible for the consequences of; but this is a bit of a negative change from my perspective at least. As, prior to this I was getting a weekly update on the latest development news basically delivered to my front door step, but oh well, I guess I'm just griping. I follow the development of a few other indie games and frankly I've always preferred Squad's weekly, reliable updates over the sporadic, scattered "mini-blogs" the other devs seem to prefer.

Seeking new customers/players is important, certainly. Not trying to be a stick in the mud but this forum basically is the only social media I partake in, I won't be going elsewhere for my news so I'm just hoping that bringing the news here to us doesn't get neglected/fall through the cracks is all. Not exactly looking forward to the umpteen scattered, duplicate threads we'll have whenever a single rogue news item pops up on reddit or twitter, made by posters trying to bring it back here either. (Although I realize their hearts are in the right place, it might be a bit of a mess.) I do however have the utmost faith in our excellent moderator team to keep it sorted though!

Edited October 6, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Poodmund]

As 1.5 is being sold mainly as an art pass, I noticed that nothing has been said about the Lead Artist role within any of the KSP Weeklys. With Leticia's recent departure as Lead Artist does the community have a new face to welcome into the SQUAD/Kerbal family or is the spot potentially open for someone out there to get their hands on and direct the future of Kerbal Space Program's aesthetic?

@UomoCapra @Darth Badie, I appreciate this may be internal affairs but if there's a new member of the team I thought it'd be nice to display a warm welcome from the fans.  

[Gotmachine]

People need to chill out about the update cycle.

Compared to most games, KSP is very mod-friendly, the API and codebase is super stable since 1.0. Excluding the super complex mods that deeply mess with physics, the vast majority of mods made in 2014-2015 for the 1.0 version can be recompiled on 1.4.5 with only a few trivial changes. The reason why a lot of mods from this era has been abandoned is most likely because a lot of modders, including me, don't have much time or interest to work on them. Since KSP is very mod-friendly, you can create mods quickly and easily. That mean that a lot of mods get created by a lot of people, then gets abandoned because they move on to other games or activities. To a certain extent, I think this is also happening with the "major" mods that have been supported for 4-5+ years by the same authors. They lost interest. People from Squad is aware of this, and they actually have done quite a good job since 1.3 at being very extra careful not to break anything and making their task easier.

And my answer to the "I would prefer to have a finished game" is : you have it, it's called version 1.0.5. A game that is "finished" is a dying game. There is and will forever be bugs to be fixed, performance to be improved, physics to be made more accurate, graphics to be made nicer, features to be reworked or added. We should be grateful that Squad is still adding content and refining the game for free so many years after release.

[Tyko]

18 hours ago, Poodmund said:

Secondly, with specific regard to your post, I appreciate that a great number of mods only required recompiles to get functioning in 1.4.* but the prior patch release scheme and large changes to the code base since 1.0 causing mods to be rewritten, refactored etc. has driven a lot of developers away from maintaining their mods, KER, FAR and Sigma: Dimensions being prime examples where authors have lost interest in publicly releasing their mods and its a testament to how many mods LinuxGuruGamer now maintains. I just feel its pertinent to say that if you want mod developers to continue to maintain their mods, its worth making their lives as easy as possible (but I am sure that yourself, JPLRepo and RoverDude know this in a deep-rooted manner coming from that background into the vanilla-Dev roles nowdays).

Wow, as a read this I realized just how much I rely on LGG's mod support to keep playing the game. This is a precarious situation...folks, keep sending money LGG's way. His combined work is worth at least as much as a couple $15 DLCs...

22 minutes ago, Gotmachine said:

To a certain extent, I think this is also happening with the "major" mods that have been supported for 4-5+ years by the same authors. They lost interest. People from Squad is aware of this, and they actually have done quite a good job since 1.3 at being very extra careful not to break anything and making their task easier.

The biggest risk I see are all the kopernicus based mods. Since that's version locked to a particular KSP version if @Thomas P. and team ever walked away an entire category of mods would fail   

[Errol]

21 hours ago, SQUAD said:

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.

 

Am I th only one nervous about this? I remember years ago when the wheels were completely borked they had all kinds of trouble fixing them. There was talk of mysterious unidentifiable phantom forces acting on landed vessels causing them to slide across the surface when they should be at rest. I remember the solution at the time was to apply an arbitrary counter-acting force, since they couldn’t find an actual way to stop it. 

There has also been a lot of developer turn over since then. 

How confident are the devs that they can work on those systems without summoning the kraken again?

[Redneck]

@squad remember when us players told you that porting to consoles was a bad idea? But you guys did it anyways? So i am asking you again this time....Don't use social media strictly for your development news. Your forums (as always) are priority. At least here there are rules. You get on social media there are no rules. Swearing,hate,trolling,fighting,personal attacks, run rampant there. I got one question.... why? what do you hope to gain by doing that? More users? Wrong! All you are going to gain is more problems

EDIT:badie said they will still be posted in forums...so thats cool with me! 

Edited October 6, 2018 by Redneck

[Majorjim!]

20 hours ago, Dafni said:

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

THIS!  It makes building time consuming complex craft pointless as they just get broken every six months by updates.

Edited October 6, 2018 by Majorjim!

[Shadowmage]

40 minutes ago, Gotmachine said:

Compared to most games, KSP is very mod-friendly, the API and codebase is super stable since 1.0.

Yep.  While certainly there can be mod breakage between updates in KSP -- it is nothing like the pain I experienced when modding Minecraft in the post 1.0 era.  So many major engine changes, it was a complete rewrite for every version update.  Eventually it got old, and I moved on (well, that and the M$ buyout...).

While I'm often a bit critical of some of the development decisions around here, the KSP devs really have done a good job at not making API-breaking changes.  Many of the breakages I've encountered haven't actually been because of KSP code, but because of Unity code changes during engine-version upgrades.  Ohh, and the few times I've had to report modding-related interop issues -- they've been very reasonable in getting the issue fixed.  Again, contrast that to Minecraft -- good luck getting anything changed in that codebase...

Granted, my mods don't deal with aero stuff like FAR or stock planetary systems like Kopernicus, but I write a lot of plugin code and very rarely have I had to fix it due to changes in the KSP API.

[klgraham1013]

31 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

THIS!  It makes building time consuming complex craft pointless as they just get broken every six months by updates.

Correction.  Every 3 months.

[Redneck]

I am sure i might have some negative comments on this but I am going to say my piece regarding frequency of squad updates vs breaking mods. I see alot of talk in this thread about squad updating to frequently and changing the API thus breaking the mods. But at same time we ALL want squad to make the game better with more features and whatnot with meaningful updates. So i got a question: How do the players expect squad to accomplish all that if people are going to be poodleing about it when they do? It is like dammed if they do and dammed if they dont. You guys are putting squad in a very awkward position it seems to me. Update the game and make it ever cooler and funner then it is now or dont update so mods can catch up (when they get around to it in their free time or maybe never) Personally me, I am on squads side this time. I want the game to move forward in development thats why i bought the game in 2011. Mod makers well, as always, maintain your mods and play catch up even if they change the API on occasion. Mod making is strictly voluntary no mod maker is obligated to update or continue a mod its totally at their discretion and at their convenience. I do have one request though to the mod makers. If ,for whatever reason, you decide to no longer continue to update your mods consider passing the torch to another modder or if that is not a option communicate with people your intentions of no longer updating the mod. To just abandon a mod and leaving people hanging with no communication (even PM's you do know we know if you have read them right?)is just uncool

Edited October 6, 2018 by Redneck

[ThirdOfSeven]

Basically update every 3 months makes any serious project in this game nearly impossible without freezing it on your PC and not getting updates anyway (cause anything like career or crafts may break). It is what I have to do anyway with any attempt to do modded let's play series. Why don't modders then choose version they consider "stable enough to be worth modding" and linger behind official like it was for Minecraft, for example (1.6 was "nice for mods" for few years until 1.7 become "more or less stable")? And if you wanna release for new KSP version, go for it, just keep mod for older versions and its code available (even if you don't support it).

I think even if API is stable enough and it is only recompile issue, not every mod author will keep interest in game forever anyway and will not come in time to release new recompiled "official" version. And mostly we get "outdated" mods not only cause it is hard to rewrite, test and fix bugs for new version, but cause people take break from even keeping an eye on this game. Nothing will solve this.

Edited October 6, 2018 by ThirdOfSeven
despite reading it after writing, after posting, I had something to fix

[Redneck]

5 minutes ago, ThirdOfSeven said:

Basically update every 3 months makes any serious project in this game nearly impossible without freezing it on your PC and not getting updates anyway (cause anything like career or crafts may break). It is what I have to do anyway with any attempt to do modded let's play series. Why don't modders then choose version they consider "stable enough to be worth modding" and linger behind official like it was for Minecraft, for example (1.6 was "nice for mods" for few years until 1.7 become "more or less stable")? And if you wanna release for new KSP version, go for it, just keep mod for older versions and its code available (even if you don't support it).

I think even if API is stable enough and it is only recompile issue, not every mod author will keep interest in game forever anyway and will not come in time to release new recompiled "official" version. And mostly we get "outdated" mods not only cause it is hard to rewrite, test and fix bugs for new version, but cause people take break from even keeping an eye on this game. Nothing will solve this.

Fair enough. I guess what i am asking is "How would the community, if they had their way, solve this problem?" tell squad "Hey dont release cool stuff so often?" What IS the solution? if any?

[Darth Badie]

2 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Fair enough, and I appreciate that; but I can't help but feel we'll be getting our "amalgamated news" quite late as I assume they'll have to wait to have enough collective little pieces to make something out of, so I basically have to look for it myself on social media or be the last to know? (This was also kind of my point, let's say only 5% of players visit this forum; those are the 5% of the players who actually care about development news, the other 95% are casual players who likely don't read patch notes or have any desire to be involved in the progress of the game. They just play it.)

I realize boycotting social media is a personal choice, and one I'm ultimately responsible for the consequences of; but this is a bit of a negative change from my perspective at least. As, prior to this I was getting a weekly update on the latest development news basically delivered to my front door step, but oh well, I guess I'm just griping. I follow the development of a few other indie games and frankly I've always preferred Squad's weekly, reliable updates over the sporadic, scattered "mini-blogs" the other devs seem to prefer.

Seeking new customers/players is important, certainly. Not trying to be a stick in the mud but this forum basically is the only social media I partake in, I won't be going elsewhere for my news so I'm just hoping that bringing the news here to us doesn't get neglected/fall through the cracks is all. Not exactly looking forward to the umpteen scattered, duplicate threads we'll have whenever a single rogue news item pops up on reddit or twitter, made by posters trying to bring it back here either. (Although I realize their hearts are in the right place, it might be a bit of a mess.) I do however have the utmost faith in our excellent moderator team to keep it sorted though!

Hey, no worries every post we make about KSP Loading... will be posted in all our social media channels including the forum 

[Frozen_Heart]

Are people seriously complaining about KSP being updated because it might break their mods?

[Delay]

@Darth Badie I think it's the frequency of the new format that's causing complaints.

Or is that also a weekly format?

[nestor]

10 hours ago, Sirad said:

Those promised, regularily frequent Updates, will they be free of Charge ? Or will just now enter the monetarising aspect of the new Owner enters Place ?

This announcement is about the free updates. 

[klgraham1013]

24 minutes ago, Redneck said:

How would the community, if they had their way, solve this problem?

Finish the game and let the modders do the cool stuff?

[AVaughan]

28 minutes ago, Redneck said:

Fair enough. I guess what i am asking is "How would the community, if they had their way, solve this problem?" tell squad "Hey dont release cool stuff so often?" What IS the solution? if any?

I wasn't saying "Don't update the game".  What I was arguing against was squad releasing a small update every 3 months.  I think the community would be better served by larger/more substantial updates 6-12 months apart. 

Edit: And also do enough pre-release testing that they can get the new release stable in a few weeks.  Ideally on the first attempt.

Edited October 6, 2018 by AVaughan

[Redneck]

4 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Finish the game and let the modders do the cool stuff?

When you say finish the game what do you mean? Squad has said they have alot more stuff they want to do. 

[ThirdOfSeven]

1 minute ago, klgraham1013 said:

Finish the game and let the modders do the cool stuff?

They will have to release updates with bugfixes to fix it anyway and it will take some time to finish it this way. I suggest community to choose their "finished" version without developers having to decide which version it is, basically. Only thing we need from developers in this case is to keep such version available as "older release" on Steam Only problem is competition between Squad and new amazing stuff they will add and ugly old "stable" version missing this stuff and I don't think we will be able to resist...

[Sirad]

31 minutes ago, nestor said:

This announcement is about the free updates. 

THIS is Great!

Well now im really thinking about taking of my Tinfoil Hat...

[Darth Badie]

39 minutes ago, Delay said:

@Darth Badie I think it's the frequency of the new format that's causing complaints.

Or is that also a weekly format?

The frequency will be depending on how much news we have but you don’t have to worry, this will be a good change for the community. We always listen and will keep doing so. 

[Darth Badie]

3 hours ago, Poodmund said:

As 1.5 is being sold mainly as an art pass, I noticed that nothing has been said about the Lead Artist role within any of the KSP Weeklys. With Leticia's recent departure as Lead Artist does the community have a new face to welcome into the SQUAD/Kerbal family or is the spot potentially open for someone out there to get their hands on and direct the future of Kerbal Space Program's aesthetic?

@UomoCapra @Darth Badie, I appreciate this may be internal affairs but if there's a new member of the team I thought it'd be nice to display a warm welcome from the fans.  

Thanks for the suggestion, we will consider it  

[klgraham1013]

56 minutes ago, Redneck said:

When you say finish the game what do you mean? Squad has said they have alot more stuff they want to do. 

I mean finish development?  Like what 99% of other games do?  ...and Squad saying they have more stuff they want to do doesn't really get me excited like it once did.  That ship sailed long ago.