Dragging Along

[NeSProgram]

Love the bug status updates

[Starhawk]

1 hour ago, pbau5 said:

Honest question, how are people completing these "return to Kerbin" objectives with the SOI trajectory issue... and staying sane?

Check out this thread.

Happy landings!

[Strawberry]

4 hours ago, The Aziz said:

I'm only curious whether those top priority bugs are all scheduled for next patch, or given their current status, some may be still left for the patch after that (or even later)? I know there's no timeline on 0.1.3 right now but how likely it is that the patch will wait until all of those are fixed completely or at least partially?

I'm guessing its mostly just see how it goes for the patches, I doubt that all of them will get in. That being said, I feel like there will be some major bugs to where by the internal deadline, they're basically done but just need some more time in QA. I know yall have been reluctant to do hotfixes, but if inline drag needs a week more of testing and every other bug yall wanted to do is done, it seems good to just release the patch and do a hotfix for that specific one a week later.

 

[Falcon Aerospace]

Will ya'll add part variants? It would work well with the engine mounts.

Edited June 3, 2023 by Falcon Aerospace

[RayneCloud]

Great update, but if I have one single nitpick, it's that the last titles have been a little... well.. concerning/dark/etc? Not sure how to put it really. 

[jebycheek]

Will the game turn actually fun for most people on the next update? or is it still going to be pretty dull I wonder.

Edited June 3, 2023 by jebycheek

[asmi]

7 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

the introduction of axial tilt to KSP2

I, and almost every developer of RSS and RO, would hug the entire team for this feature alone! We've collectively spent countless hours trying to convince KSP1 devs to implement axial tilt, but they resisted, and - judging by the troubles you're having - for a good reason.  This limitation of KSP1 made modelling Earth axial tilt so awkward for us, when we had to "tilt" the entire Solar system instead. Now I'm super glad that it won't be neccessary anymore for KSP2! 

[Nicrose]

Love these new updates! Thank you for taking our criticism and following through <3

[Yellowburn10]

It really is appreciated that these updates are being more transparent. I can understand being hesitant about sharing such details with the community, but having greater understanding of the current progress of things can put to ease the minds of many people. Even if you guys don't have a fix for something right now, or don't have it all ironed out yet, it's still assuring to know that it's being worked on.

[LoSBoL]

Another great update, very much appreciated. Working on bugs and performance as expected, some nice new parts and we know the next patch will come somewhere this month. One thing left out though, I'm interested in what to expect from the 'bigger and better patches'. What can we expect from QOL feautures and expansions of the base game we have now? Maybe the next weekly update can expand on that a little?

Edited June 3, 2023 by LoSBoL

[Streetwind]

I've always wanted an engine between the Spark and the Terrier (even in KSP1, where I installed a mod to get one), so I'm gonna be all over the Cornet.

The cool animation and high Isp are just a bonus.

[Pat20999]

15 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

Good afternoon, Kerbonauts.

This week, we’re working on many of the same bugs we were working on last week (one aspect of our increased transparency is likely to be that you get to share in the joy of waiting for the oven to go "ding"). We did see some encouraging movement on a few items, but I’ll keep the original ten bugs on the list until we’ve got bona fide QA sign-off on them.

Bug Status
For most of this list, investigation and/or testing is ongoing. Areas that saw significant change have been marked in bold:

1. Vehicles in stable coasting orbits sometimes experience orbit instability/decay
   • Status: possible fix in progress
2. Trajectories change when vehicles cross SOI boundaries
   • Status: fix in progress
3. Certain inline parts cause aerodynamic drag numbers to spike
   • Status: fix being tested
4. Returning to craft from VAB causes craft to go underground (possibly related to Kerbals and landed vehicles dropping through terrain while being approached)
   • Status: possible fix being tested
5. Decoupling events result in various issues including loss of control, incorrect controllability of decoupled subassemblies, loss of camera focus, and other issues
   • Status: may have many causes, but some fixes in progress
6. Save files get bigger over time (TravelLog experiencing "landed" status spam)
   • Status: fix being tested
7. Opening part manager causes major frame lag
   • Status: experiments ongoing
8. Major post-liftoff frame rate lag immediately above launchpad (associated with engine exhaust lighting)
   • Status: fix being tested
9. Root parts placed below decouplers cause issues with stage separation
   • Status: under investigation
10. Vehicle joints unusually wobbly, some part connections unusually weak
    • Status: under investigation

Issue 2 - Trajectories change when vehicles cross SOI boundaries
We have three engineers looking at this and we have already ferreted out a couple of issues - the introduction of axial tilt to KSP2 introduced some discrepancies, and our SOI transit handoff math had some inconsistencies as well. A few other issues surfaced in the simulation code, and we’re assessing both the impact of those issues and the scope of work required to correct them.

Issue 3 - Certain inline parts cause aerodynamic drag numbers to spike
This bug is the one that saw the most movement this week. Our investigation of the spiking drag numbers revealed that we had a problem with drag occlusion — there is special code that reduces the frontal drag impact of a part that is blocked by another part, and in some cases we were seeing inline parts behave as though they weren’t shielded from airflow at all. In some cases, we were also seeing the opposite - wide parts that should have been creating drag were not having their frontal drag assessed at all. Of course, this latter case would rarely register as a problem, whereas the initial problem manifested in all sorts of unpleasant ways - essentially, parts positioned aft of other problem parts behaved like airbrakes, affecting both the overall drag and stability of the vehicle. Even weirder, these drag occlusion issues only arose when a vehicle was built horizontally!

This problem has been corrected. In fact, it’s been SO corrected that after we fixed it, we started to get messages from QA that aircraft felt too fast! We checked the numbers, and they’re correct. We’re still testing this fix, but it’s looking very good for the upcoming update. The details of how this problem was analyzed and corrected would make a very interesting dev diary from Chris Adderley, if he ever gets a few moments to spare.

Issue 8 - Major post-liftoff frame rate lag immediately above launchpad (associated with engine exhaust lighting)
Quick clarification: engines had previously each spawned a point light that cast shadows. While this was very pretty, it wasn’t great for performance (and this impact was increasingly pronounced at high engine counts). We have turned off shadow casting for those lights and are seeing an improvement in framerate near the launchpad.

Bug Reporting Progress
I also mentioned last week that we were exploring ways of communicating our current priorities more clearly, as well as giving members of the community more agency to communicate their own experiences and priorities to us. With that in mind, Dakota Callahan and the Community Team have begun to make some changes to the Suggestions and Development subforum. We’ll get into more detail about our specific implementation next week, but Dakota has already shown some of his work in that subforum - he’s taking several steps, including creating a new Bug Hunter member role, reformatting threads so that they can be up-/down-voted (this is just for bug threads), adding recommended tags/prefixes, and setting up a system that allows administrators to combine duplicate issues. This will start as a pilot program, and its success will hinge on how useful the community finds it and how maintainable our team finds it. The best possible outcome would be that players use the subforum to surface the issues they find most pressing, and our devs have the ability to ask directly for additional context. Again, I’ll provide more detail about this new structure when it’s fully in place, but in the meantime check out Dakota’s post - he’s got some great ideas!

Engines
After posting footage of the three new deep space methalox engines that will be arriving in update v.0.1.3.0, we’ve been asked by a few people what those engines can really do. Our Lead Producer Nestor Gomez (of KSP1 fame) suggested that we share some stats in the time-honored old-school way - with cool blueprint-style graphics!
Without further ado, here are the three new engines (with special thanks to Matt Poppe, who continues to do amazing work on everything he touches):

I have run a few missions with these engines, and I can attest that they’ve opened up quite a few new capabilities - ones that will become invaluable when the R + D progression enters the picture and nuclear thermal engines are not yet in reach.

Community Highlights
Last week, we did a space station challenge! Several of your impressive submissions can be seen over on our recent Community Highlights post. Some of this stuff is just nuts.

Check out this shot from <[I Flaze I]> on Discord:

Or how about this bad boy from HitchHacker:

I also really love this plane from spartandh211 (I’m a sucker for creative coloring tricks):

And then of course there’s a little sax-playing... cricket? From @The Space Peacock:

Be sure to check out that thread for even more fantastic creations. Thanks to all who submitted!

Weekly Challenge
This week’s challenge is technically about landing, though given Gilly’s low gravity, it might just as easily be called a docking challenge. Here are your goals:

• Primary goal: Land on Dock with Gilly
• Secondary goal: Dock with Gilly, plant a flag, and return safely to Kerbin
• Jeb-level goal: With just a jetpack, de-orbit from above Gilly, dock with Gilly, plant a flag, and return to your orbiting spaceship, then return to Kerbin
• Val-level goal: As above, but capture into the Eve system by aerobraking

Share your submissions over here on the forums  or over on Discord in #ksp2_challenges.

Good luck to you all, and see you next week!

How many patches till the science update?

[aKaGorganZola]

12 hours ago, Nightside said:

If the upcoming release can manage to  decrease the min spec a little bit  I'll finally hit SPACE on buying the game. 

Not expecting a finished game, but would like to check it out  if a 6-year-old rig can handle it.

Just here to say I'm running some pretty old hardware and have been pleasantly surprised by how it handles the game. Granted I'm mostly a console gamer so 30fps is completely ok with me but I'm seeing steady mid 30s during launch and in atmo and that only gets better as the stages get smaller. 

I've got an OC 3770k and a 1080ti that just has whatever afterburner decided was a good tune. 

I'm still mostly waiting on more updates but not for any performance needs, I just need/want a little more direction in the game that I can really get sucked into

[ArmchairGravy]

Thanks, Nate for keeping us informed on progress. I'm hoping the trajectory issue gets resolved so I can get back to some interplanetary missions.

[000PainKiller000]

What does axial tilt means? Kerbin has an axis now, like Earth? 

[pat1x1]

Science update still on track for later this year?

[PDCWolf]

12 hours ago, jebycheek said:

Will the game turn actually fun for most people on the next update? or is it still going to be pretty dull I wonder.

The following is what I gather from these last few weekly updates:

1. If your boredom comes from missing features, the reality is 0.1.3 is looking like it'll only introduce parts and bugfixes so, mechanically, it'll still be the same game, with the same "stuff to do" in it.
2. If your problem comes from the game being buggy, 0.1.3 does seem like it will include some important bugfixes, but nothing on the performance side so far.

My answer based on those is "no", unless there's really a specific bug that's stopping you from having fun and you're lucky enough for it to be included in 0.1.3

30 minutes ago, 000PainKiller000 said:

What does axial tilt means? Kerbin has an axis now, like Earth? 

They confirmed long ago that some planets would have axial tilt (yes, as you say, planets with their axis of rotation inclined off the equator). I do however think they won't dare change any of the original KSP planets to include the feature, much less Kerbin and its moons, which are the basis for learning the game for any new player.

---------------------

It's great to see the progress on bugs and some proper breakdown of what's going on with them, seeing why they exist, the systems they touch or depend on and such is infinitely more interesting that "we fixed some bugs, we're working to fix others", that's literally the minimum of what we have to assume you're doing already, so those types of updates really added nothing to the table.

I do however find it a bit worrying that 2 weeks ago you expected to have the timing for 0.1.3 ready to communicate, but it's been 2 weeks since May 19 and have no word on what happened. A simple "The timing for the update failed to meet our expectations and so we can't communicate it" or even better, something more specific like "we still are targeting June" would've been miles better than not saying a single word about it. "not June 30" seems to be looking a lot like June 29 with this kind of silence, and I'm not sure that's what you want, specially once we add the fact that news on re-entry heating -which dates pretty much back to release and one of the earliest dev updates- have also gone cold (pun not intended).

Edited June 3, 2023 by PDCWolf
Do plants have axial tilt?

[Kerbart]

17 hours ago, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

June  

More specifically, they said something along the lines of "and we don't mean June 30" so that points to June 23.

[Jeddak]

Id like to  see an updated Roadmap, I feel like we are now almost 4 months into early access, and still a major part of the game is missing and we just keep getting hints about it being on the horizon!!!  We can assume by these numbers https://steamdb.info/app/954850/charts/ theres significant influx of development funds, it can just be for a engine adds and bug fix every other week.   A specific roadmap for the AAA  game price would nice, so many games these days take 2 or 3 years and die out before any real progress,....  

[Dantheollie]

20 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

I also really love this plane from spartandh211 (I’m a sucker for creative coloring tricks):

 

That thing is a beaut! Can't stop staring at it   

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

21 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

specific implementation next week, but Dakota has already shown some of his work in that subforum - he’s taking several steps, including creating a new Bug Hunter member role, reformatting threads so that they can be up-/down-voted (this is just for bug threads

@Dakota

Dakota - please be explicit about what a upvote or downvote means. 

Example: absent explicit rules, one player might downvote the OP because they have the same problem and it makes them mad; another player might upvote the OP because they appreciate the poster highlighting the issue.  Both want it fixed but they cancel each other out. 

 

Question - is there a way to have two votes?  One for the problem and another for how critical it is? 

[Upvote] Yes, I experienced this issue and would like it fixed 

[Midvote] This is a medium-priority issue. 

 

Example: some people are strongly opinionated about whether stars should be visible while in the vicinity of a CB.  A few of us agree, a few of us disagree - but ultimately it's a low priority low impact issue favored by a few for QOL / immersion and doesn't need to be a priority.  Having a two tier vote would give more granulated responses. 

21 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

specific implementation next week, but Dakota has already shown some of his work in that subforum - he’s taking several steps, including creating a new Bug Hunter member role, reformatting threads so that they can be up-/down-voted (this is just for bug threads

@Dakota

Edit - also, two in a row.!  You guys are hitting the right tone with these.  Appreciate the pivot! 

[joratto]

41 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

More specifically, they said something along the lines of "and we don't mean June 30" so that points to June 23.

Last Friday before the 30th. Checks out.

[Yellowburn10]

2 hours ago, 000PainKiller000 said:

What does axial tilt means? Kerbin has an axis now, like Earth? 

Not Kerbin, but other planets will have a tilt. 

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

This update is more like it.

 

Love the way the bug tracker is integrated with the forum and has a voting system and it’s more clear what’s being worked on. 

 

I like this new approach much more and it keeps us better in the loop, please keep up this  up. 

[Starhawk]

4 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

I do however think they won't dare change any of the original KSP planets to include the feature, much less Kerbin and its moons, which are the basis for learning the game for any new player.

In fact, Moho has 7 degrees axial tilt, Dres has 13.6, and Eeloo has 33 degrees tilt, among others.
Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus have 0 axial tilt.

Happy landings!