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KSP Loading...: No Place Like Kerbin


SQUAD

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Welcome to our official newsletter, KSP Loading…!  If you want to learn about all the current developments of the KSP franchise, then this is the place to be!

Kerbal Space Program Update 1.9 on PC

Another orbital period has completed, and as human tradition has it, it’s a good time to reflect on past achievements as well as look forward to goals we set for ourselves during this new decade. 2019 was a great year for us: We released several major updates and a content-filled expansion on PC. KSP Enhanced Edition also got some deserved attention with the History and Parts Pack and the Breaking Ground Expansion, as well as a considerable amount of free content. Not too shabby, right? And 2020 is looking great for KSP fans, too! For starters, we’re kicking off the new year with update 1.9, which will not only include performance and graphical improvements, but some new neat features that we’re excited to show you. Not to mention Kerbal Space Program 2 and some other stellar surprises we have currently in the VAB for you. For the time being, and for this KSP Loading in particular, we’re going to focus on some of the stuff that is going to roll onto the launchpad in Kerbal Space Program 1.9: No Place Like Home! So buckle up:

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Terrain Revamp for Kerbin

In addition to the revamps of Moho and Dres that we’ve shown you already, Kerbin has received major visual improvements. With detailed high-quality texture maps and (because there is no place like home) an Ultra Quality shader option, the Kerbal home planet is looking better than ever. Check it out!  

f9bb38835745d09287b577f8ac1a88288348fb83

Click here to see the full hi-res gallery

Drain Valve

Kerbal Space Program 1.9: No Place Like Home! will also include a new part that works as a release valve for parts with drainable resources, such as monopropellant, ore, liquid fuel, oxidizer or xenon. This part will also allow you to set the drainage over a specific amount of time, a feature that will undoubtedly come in handy. 

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Click here to see a high-res image.

Part Revamps

RE-M3 “Mainsail” Liquid Fuel Engine

One of the heaviest and most powerful large-diameter Kerbal engines is getting a well-deserved makeover. We’re talking, of course, about the Rockomax Conglomerate’s RE-M3 “Mainsail” Liquid Fuel Engine. With its new geometry, textures and emissive map,  this humongous engine has never looked so good. Additionally after listening to your feedback, we’re including Mid and Bare variants.

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Click here  to see high res images.

RE-I5 “Skipper” Liquid Fuel Engine

Rockomax Conglomerate’s RE-I5 “Skipper” Liquid Fuel Engine has also been modernized by our art team. Brand new geometry, variants, textures and emissive maps have given one of our favorite medium sized engines a befitting fresh new look! And after listening to your feedback, we’ll be including Bare and Truss Mount variants.

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Click here to see high res images.

BACC “Thumper” Solid Fuel Booster

With reliable performance at a good price, the Rockomax Conglomerate’s BACC Solid Fuel Boosters have always been a popular choice to get the massive bulk of large multi-stage rockets off the ground. This large SRB is finally getting a physical renewal to better match its place in our SRB lineup. Check it out!

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Click here to see high res images.

Quality of Life Features

Additionally, Kerbal Space Program 1.9: No Place Like Home! will include several quality of life features, mostly drawn from our players’ feedback. Some of the inclusions are: an adjustment to the time warp system that removes restrictions on warping at certain altitudes; a new cheat menu option that will allow you to place your craft above the surface of any celestial body; a search box for the R&D Tech Tree; and a new Screenshot Mode that will allow you to pause the game, move the camera and take the best shot by hitting the Escape key and then F2. There are several more QoL features we’re sure you’ll appreciate, too!

Blade improvements 

Rotor blades in the Breaking Ground Expansion are getting some improvements by adding cyclic and collective deflection controls. This will ultimately help players have better control of their bladed vehicles, whether it is a traditional single-rotor helicopter or a drone-like quad-copter. There’ll be a Devblog explaining the details about these improvements coming up soon, so stay tuned.

New Stock Craft for Expansions 

With this update, we are also including a few new stock craft that take advantage of Breaking Ground’s parts and demonstrate how we used the new blade functionality! We’ve also added easy access to some of the historical craft from Making History. So, if you just want to pilot cool crafts or retro-engineer the heck out of them to create your own, you’ll surely enjoy these; we certainly had a lot of fun building and testing them!

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

That’s it for this edition. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates!

Happy launchings!

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Some of the inclusions are: an adjustment to the time warp system that removes restrictions on warping at certain altitudes; a new cheat menu option that will allow you to place your craft above the surface of any celestial body; a search box for the R&D Tech Tree; and a new Screenshot Mode that will allow you to pause the game, move the camera and take the best shot by hitting the Escape key and then F2.

OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!

Love that this game is still getting support like this! The new parts of course look great, and thanks so much for the new fuel drain part!

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13 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

an adjustment to the time warp system that removes restrictions on warping at certain altitudes

YEEEEEEEES! 
My god that makes me happy inside.

Also love the skipper and mainsail changes, excellent job. 

I still gotta finish reading the rest of the post but this is all looking excellent.

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The Mainsail is looking much cooler than it did when you originally showed it, great! Also, thanks for the variants on it and the Skipper, they'll be nice for clusters :)

Also, Kerbin is looking properly sharp now. These texture updates are really making me want a computer that's actually graphically capable :/

And finally, good job on that Thumper. The old one looked like it was made from paper or something. Thanks a lot for the continued support!

Edited by RealKerbal3x
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New Skipper and Mainsail models are now incomparably more beautiful than the previews. Great job! Although I’m not sure that turbopump exhaust is supposed to be glowing hot like this. I think it should look like regular smoke instead.

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- The new triplanar shader added to Kerbin and, as with the other bodies, good surface detail texture... great! Kerbin looks decent now. Sounds like we'll be getting a ScaledSpace texture overhaul too from what was said so that should really help bring Kerbin up to the standard of mods. :D 

- The fuel drain is super handy in super specific cases. The Smarts Part mod was always a great addition so having a similar fuel drain part in the stock game is handy.

- The Mainsail and Skipper revamps, where to start? The Mainsail looks better by several factors of magnitude. Its still an odd choice of inspiration for the Mainsail engine but as far as the actual art goes it looks decent. The Mid and Bare variants show a little bit of greebling which translates into "this looks like a complicated rocket motor" which is what it is and the additional textured shrouding on the Full variant breaks up the surface geometry of the pipework. Even just improving the shading on the generator pipes adds a lot of depth to the overall look to give multiple areas of interest to the eye which was sorely lacking in the drab original revamp concept. Its a shame there is no Rockomax Orange on it though. :( As far the Skipper revamp goes, its okay as it seems on a similar standard level to the other recent revamps and the DLC engines... again I personally think its a bit of a shame there is no Rockomax Orange accents on the Bare/Truss variants but overall it seems like a solid upgrade over the original now that the Bare/Truss variants have been added. I think going forward the community would not expect anything less as a quality standard has been set. 

- The Thumper revamp is, I guess, similar to the other SRBs in the game now. 

- Now the real meat and potatoes: 

  • Being able to override the altitude warp limits - AWESOME! No longer will you be stuck in 5x time warp trying to escape some of these tiny moons gravity wells. 
  • A mode that is akin to the mod VesselMover - AWESOME! Really nice feature that will not only allow players to explore albeit a little cheat'ily but it will be very helpful for mod testing/debugging.
  • R&D Search - AWESOME! How did it take this long!?!? :D This is obviously a big QoL buff in terms of player frustration. 
  • Screenshot Mode - AWESOME! When the in-flight actions group editing was found to allow for making great screenshot compositions I wondered how long it would take for something like this to make it into the game. Now we can do SQUAD's promo for them! 

- Rotor blade improvements... I personally don't play around much with airplanes but I know there are many that were disappointed in the lack of prop control in flight so this sounds like a solid improvement.

All in all, sounds like a very solid patch. These QoL additions alongside a bunch of bugfixes (I hope) are the kind of thing that the core audience really love. I hope there are plenty more when it comes to planning for KSP 1.10 and beyond... but lets get our hands on KSP 1.9 first I guess. :sticktongue:

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2 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

New Skipper and Mainsail models are now incomparably more beautiful than the previews. Great job! Although I’m not sure that turbopump exhaust is supposed to be glowing hot like this. I think it should look like regular smoke instead.

Nertea and I have your back, my dude. You'll see in due time. ;)

Spoiler

BlueOrigin.jpg

 

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BACC “Thumper” Solid Fuel Booster

A very nice improvement from the old one! The old one was incredibly boring., and this new one actually looks like could exist in real life!

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and a new Screenshot Mode that will allow you to pause the game, move the camera and take the best shot by hitting the Escape key and then F2

Now this, this is a very very, very nice addition. The current camera system (With the middle mouse button and all) is quite nice, but this will remove most of the limiting factors while making incredible screenshots.

 

11 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I doubt it. In the hi-res album there are several images that unmistakably show existing locations on Kerbin.

He's refering to the fact Kerbin originally came from an example in a noise map generator

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The addition of the variants and turbomachinery on the Skipper and Mainsail make them so much better, both easier to use and more visually interesting. Thank you very much for going back and adding those. I will say, if you are still accepting feedback on the Mainsail, I'd like to cast my vote in that the orange cowling was the better color option of the two previously shown and state that I'm going to miss the little yellow accent it had in its original model, it just doesn't feel like the same engine without it to me (on a side note, how old is the standard liquid rocket engine plume? Is it something that we should expect to see replaced at some point?).The terrain revamp on Kerbin looks very nice, the sand now looks like sand which is great (didn't it used to be effectively palette swapped grass or am I misremembering, its been a while since I've been over there). Quality of life improvements are always welcome and I look forward to picking apart the BG example craft and figuring out how the new propeller mechanics are supposed to work (one thing adjacent to the propellers that I would like to note, if there were an option to tie the KAL in to read airspeed velocity or other flight variables instead of just using time, being able to program propeller blades that adjust to the optimal angle based on a curve over that would be amazing, just a thought I figured I'd share). The yellow orange banding on the BACC... I'm not certain what my opinion on that is yet. I don't hate it, but I'd definitely want to see it in use, next to other rocket parts before I decide whether or not I like it. Over all, I'd like to express that I'm quite looking forward to 1.9.

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Any chance we'll get orange versions of the 5m tanks? i mean. SLS is a pretty big deal right now, seeing that its about to fire up and all, and it would be nice to make one that doesn't look like it came right out of 2010. 

Other than that i have to say that the mainsail, and skipper variants are literally a dream come true for me! ive waited so long to be able to put them in clusters and the day has finally arrived! thanks squad!

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1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

Rotor blades in the Breaking Ground Expansion are getting some improvements by adding cyclic and collective deflection controls. This will ultimately help players have better control of their bladed vehicles, whether it is a traditional single-rotor helicopter or a drone-like quad-copter. There’ll be a Devblog explaining the details about these improvements coming up soon, so stay tuned.

But will they have sound?

Speaking of sound, it would be great if Chatterer could be made stock.

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In addition to the revamps of Moho and Dres

What is this "Dres" you speak of... ? ;)

Edited by Bombaatu
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Any word on if/when enhanced edition will get the 1.7 maneuver node update that you just skipped in our "considerable amount of free content." You didn't exactly word that correctly what you should of said was we charged you the same amount as pc but didn't give you all the content they got. 

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9 minutes ago, Bombaatu said:

But will they have sound?

Speaking of sound, it would be great if Chatterer could be made stock.

The missing sounds for the BG rotors and such is still what baffles me. Especially the literal rotary engines for planes/helos. I'm totally surprised a mod hasn't arisen yet. Maybe everyone's just hanging on, waiting... :)

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