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Devnote Tuesdays: The Really Hot Edition

SQUAD

By SQUAD
in KSP1 The Daily Kerbal

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SQUAD

SQUAD

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<p><img src="https://31.media.tumblr.com/0ff9377afa68dc3ad3fe6844aaf1bd38/tumblr_inline_niv1j4WCHk1rr2wit.jpg"/></p>

<p><strong>Felipe (HarvesteR)</strong><span><strong>:</strong> Working on the stability overlay this week, to make it easier to visualize how an aircraft will behave in flight. The test itself works already, and the output does match the expectations for the flight handling of known craft. The big challenge now is finding a way to display this data, which is quite dense, in a way that is as intuitive as can be, but without oversimplifying. The original idea was to draw stable and unstable ranges, based on the assumption that instability would have a more or less clear boundary. Testing shows that this isn’t the case, and there are small variations which need to be visible for the tests to make sense. </span></p>

<p><span>Based on the dev output alone however, following its guidance I was able to construct a nice, stable craft which flew just as the overlay estimated it would, so that was good. We’re past the technical part of this feature, and it’s now largely a design problem… Which isn’t saying it became any easier however. Be that as it may, the overlay is coming along nicely, and I can already say I wouldn’t like to have to build spaceplanes without it anymore.</span></p>

<p><strong>Mike (Mu):</strong><span> Well, the drag system is all but finished. The change in flight dynamics is fun but we will require a rebalancing of a number of parts. We will be merging in the updated lift dynamics and then hoping to push it to the QA team later this week so they can have a play. I’ve been also looking at implementing a new re-entry heat system to run alongside. This should all make for a much more interesting atmospheric experience!</span></p>

<p><strong>Marco (Samssonart):</strong><span> Apart from working on that experiment I mentioned last week I worked with Ted to identify a couple problems that have affected the tutorials on the last few updates and that we were unaware of, I added it to the to-do list that’s starting to come along for the tutorial overhaul we have planned for 1.</span></p>

<p><strong>Daniel (danRosas)</strong><span><strong>:</strong> I have been working on the female Kerbals long before the announcement. Now that it’s public knowledge, I can talk about them! It’s been a while since we started doing concepts, playing with the shapes, the texture ideas, how it would affect the current rig for the Kerbals, silhouettes, and all those processes involving character design. Right now I’m moving the default kerbal joints and adjusting them to the female version, also painting weights to try and do afterwards some retargeting inside Unity. There’s one issue though, since we did the Kerbal EVA system before Unity 4, we’re only using Mecanim on the facial animations. Everything else is running under the Legacy system. Right now we need to figure out how hard it’s going to be to implement the default EVA animations into the adjusted rig for the female model. If it doesn’t work there’s a couple of paths we can take. One of them involves doing the retargeting inside Maya (and since we’re talking of more or less 100 animation loops, it’s probably the last option). My main concern right now are the facial animations, I’m afraid they’re going to break once we add the rotations and translations of the default Kerbal face. Fortunately we’re talking here about single states that are blended into Mecanim (happy, sad, excited and scared plus variations), so creating new ones should take one day or two tops. </span></p>

<p><strong>Jim (Romfarer)</strong><span><strong>:</strong> First of all, I just want to thank everyone who commented on the Engineer’s Report features last week. The part where you listed up the things you were “always†forgetting when building rockets and planes. This week I’ve been going over the comments and turned it into actual features for the app. It’s not too late to come with more suggestions though as most of the tests still have to be written. But i just want to stress that the point of the app is not to hold your hand while you build, it is more a tool to alarm you of possible issues which may be hard to spot during construction but would lead to major grief later on. Such as “hatch obstructed†this was a really good suggestion. </span></p>

<p><span><strong>Max (Maxmaps):</strong> .Finalizing the plan for the update. Reentry heat is in, as you have probably already read. Also coordinating with collaborators to make sure they know what we’d like to see from them. As usual, they are all fantastic to work with. I’ve also been assigned to take on the task of delivering the best tutorial experience possible, thus my digging into Reddit and just about every community resource I can (often being sneaky about it) to find out where new players need a hand, and where they just need us to get out of the way.</span></p>

<p><strong>Ted (Ted):</strong><span> It’s been a nice and busy week here. I’ve spent today coming up with nicknames for all of the engines we have in-game so that it’s a tad easier for people to refer to each engine - no more “the big bell-shaped one from the ARM update”. They’re pretty catchy I should think and I’ve implemented them this afternoon.</span></p>

<p><span>Moving on, I’ve been working out the dates for the QA Team to start QAing each of the features that are to go in 1.0 and writing up a few documents to store the vast wealth of information that pertains to that.</span></p>

<p><span>Additionally, I’ve been working with the Developers to provide brief reports on the features they’ve been working on for the QA Testers to give initial feedback on. It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t have to be done, but really does make everything a lot more efficient when QA begins. Everyone knows what the feature is, we’ve already had the feedback about understanding the feature and that has been implemented so it’s mainly QA bugtesting that remains.</span></p>

<p><span>Finally, I’ve been working with the Experimental and QA Teams to ensure that the prioritised list of bugs to be fixed for 1.0 is accurate and reliable.</span></p>

<p><span><strong>Anthony (Rowsdower):</strong>. I’ve been working on various KSP-TV related things. I’ve talked to a few people who might be interested in auditions. We’ve also been talking about various changes to the on-screen layout at various intervals. Stay tuned.<br/></span></p>

<p><span><strong>Rogelio (Roger):</strong> Just improving the orange spacesuit as I did for the white one some months ago, I’m adding more detail on the model, some elements that were just painted texture are turning into modeled elements. I have to re-do the UV atlases and of course improve the textures. Also I did a couple of images for the blog and I’m waiting for approval on another proposals .I did for an image that will be in game.</span></p>

<p><strong id="docs-internal-guid-8ca1a614-2ddc-5369-4651-98f5f5ca9ec8"><br/><span>Kasper (KasperVld): </span></strong><span>A lot of things are happening at the same time, but sadly there’s not much to share at this point. I’ve listened with great interest to the discussions the guys had regarding 1.0, and other than that I’ve been away from the computer, in meetings and on the phones quite a bit. </span></p>

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DundraL

DundraL

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Alright, looks like next patch will be quite a bit of change! Glad to see you guys advancing on so many fronts with this one.

Also, any more specific news on specific part tweaks being considered? Im curious about whether you guys are aiming for a rehash across the board or are looking to try and keep the overall capabilities as to what was possible before?

Another thing for Harvester, do you think you could sneak out a pic of the unfinished overlay? (watermarked with "unfinished", "demo" etc to prevent any confusion) I am really curious as to what data is shown, and would love to come up with ideas to show it differently depending on how simplified it should be. Also, any thoughts on keeping both the simplified and "data rich" versions in-game? I cant speak for everyone but I'm sure there are a great number of us in the community that would prefer a "data rich" version of the indicator.

Edited by DundraL
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CalculusWarrior

CalculusWarrior

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...I’ve spent today coming up with nicknames for all of the engines we have in-game so that it’s a tad easier for people to refer to each engine - no more “the big bell-shaped one from the ARM updateâ€Â.

Best part of the update by far! :) I've always found the large engines to be difficult to describe, due to their unwieldy names.

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Rakaydos

Rakaydos

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Couldnt they just implement DRE into stock to create re-entry heat? I mean, they could probably implement tons of mods into stock and not do anything themselves if they so wanted, lol.

It was mentioned in another thread that the new aero model gives everythig they need to calculate rentry heat, without needing a separate plugin.

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Bill Phil

Bill Phil

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First off:

It seems like 1.0 will be amazing!

Second off:

If reentry heat is being added as well, perhaps clouds ARE in order....

Third off:

The stability overlay looks like a very helpful tool!

In short:

I can't wait.

Oh, and what about the resources? Any news on that? Or will it come later in the development of 1.0?

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federicoaa

federicoaa

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Jim: Will you have TWR indication in the engineer report? Before using KER it was a common problem for me to not have enough TWR in the second stage, so it'd be nice to have a warning for low TWR, or simply showing the number for the last stage.

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Vallius

Vallius

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"Waaaaaahoooooo!" :cool:

Now Jebediah can literally go down in flames of glory in stock. He'd prefer it that way.

So does this mean we will also have stock heat shields, or do different parts simply handle reentry heat better than others?

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NFUN

NFUN

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How can their be a "new" something when the "old" something did not exist? Either way, glad this feature is finally being added.

I suppose they are considering the flame effects to be the old system.

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FlowerChild

FlowerChild

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How can their be a "new" something when the "old" something did not exist? Either way, glad this feature is finally being added.

Well...they did have flamey visual effects :)

The question remains though on what they're going to do with shielding. Heat might be easy to implement with the new aero system as they said, but shields are really the other part of the equation here that complicates things substantially.

Regardless, I'm very happy to see this making it into stock as Deadly Reentry is one of the few "must have" mods on my list. It brings a heck of a lot of interesting gameplay considerations and tension to the table that makes for a far deeper experience overall.

Edited by FlowerChild
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