basic.syntax

If any game mechanic is such that players might spend most of their use of it, skipping through it, its probably not worth much development time and effort. Look at what XCOM: Enemy Unknown did: significant events get a new or updated scripted animation or video cutscene, as the player makes discoveries. Researching found artifacts doesn't require you to look at them in a 3D scene; the player really just wants the tech advance that comes from the research. Same goes for alien autopsy: yuk! icky! - that would have been a huge amount of work to make "interactive." Intercepting a UFO is a largely hands-off affair, because the most important thing to the player should be: did I succeed in shooting down the UFO? It's not meant to be an air or space flight combat sim. The focus is on the turn-based strategy game, which comes next. XCOM focuses on decision points, to the exclusion of some immersion. Related: EVE Online likes to talk about immersion, but they don't spend development time on it, without a good reason. Frequent station docking and undocking is a core game activity. Their developers have specifically not created animations for this, because the dynamics of the game are such that you would skip it most of the time. Where they felt they had a good reason, they created an immersive transition animation to replace an old "loading..." message and screen change after a gate jump, to mask the un-skippable underlying game mechanics.

@minwaabi: Your steps 1-3 are the insurance that will protect against major changes. I now have separate & independent copies of .25, .90, and will make yet another copy of the Steam-maintained "1.0.x" installation, when Squad announces that "1.1" is very close to release. KSP doesn't care what folders you run it from, I have run these separate copies / versions side-by-side, with no problem. Old saves in new game versions: I don't have any problem loading up .90 saved craft in 1.0.2, except for air changes making some of them difficult to fly However, the big tech tree overhaul affected career games. Parts that were researched before, might be locked after. This can be worked around. Also, sometimes squad will change a part, causing weirdness. For example, in .25, the “Inline Reaction Wheel†was shrunk, and renamed to "Small Inline Reaction Wheel," and made less powerful than the Advanced Inline Stabilizer. This picture shows a craft created in v.24, and loaded into v1.0.2. It goes from VAB to launchpad, and flies looking just like that Echoing raidernick - 1.0.3 is expected to be a minor update, mainly small changes to how parts and craft behave in air. I'm not worried. But nothing prevents us from making a copy of 1.0.2 right now, to be absolutely safe v1.1 will be a major update. I expect saved game problems, for good reasons. Already they have told us in this week's devnotes, that wheels will be different, and in last week's devnote, that asteroids will be different. I would prepare for any craft attached to asteroids after the v1.1 update to look different, at the very least. Asteroids might be the same general sizes, but because they are generated with random surface contours, I don't expect the shapes to be the same; some parts or craft may be buried under the surface, or floating over it (Something like the reaction wheels picture, linked above.)

The mass does encourage one to jettison them, as soon as practical. I worked my way up to them in a career game, went through various challenges of learning to balance lift with draggy upper parts, and was impressed how that all went away, once encased in a stock fairing. I'll take that mass vs. drag reduction trade, every time. (I also installed Claw's stock parts work around, which allows tweaking panel separation force, and number of vertical splits.)

From the starting position on the runway, move out at a heading of 45 degrees. You'll see it off to the left, before you run into the water.

This started out as a RL science question - It could still get back there

Yeah... We'd gladly eat up whatever they are willing to share; Maxmaps is dropping hints of great things in store once the codebase is moved to U5. (Another Devnote Tuesday has come around - yay!) But, every feature they mention that doesn't end up happening for one reason or other - gets argued to death; I understand why many companies are shy about talking about their plans.

I'm against spending time on Steam achievements, in general. But, the "Worlds First" records / contracts, are an in-game form of Achievements, and you can see the list of those accomplishments in the Mission Control building / Archives tab (completed contracts.) Since these are the same for every player, I think they do deserve more help in the future, like, getting their own tab in Mission Control & sort by date.

EVE:Online (10 years old) has been going through this same question. Over the last year they have been removing color from some icons, causing consternation among those used to the old icons. Their usability studies show that players are able to identify icons faster by shape alone, than when color is added. That's not to say color isn't helpful... it's just proven to be "less helpful" than distinctive shapes. (And so, they are also going back and forth with players over the shapes, lol.)

That would be great fun... if your other obligations permit I imagine these part descriptions read in a mostly straight documentary-style voice, to punch up the absurdity. The kiosk voice in Doom 3 is one that I think of.

I think that they think, that they have spoken on this subject. The Thread started April 17th. KasperVld responded in post #105, on April 20th. Maxmaps addressed this subject directly, in a Reddit AmA the day before 1.0 launched, on April 26. Also keep in mind, Squad "lost" a week this month, due to a well-deserved break after patch 1.0.2 was released.

I think I'm going to hack some of this into my KSP part description. First thing I do when new parts come out, is read their descriptions to see what slightly bent nuggets of Kerbal wisdom might be there. That sense of humor has been absolutely essential in my view, leavening what would otherwise be a dry space sim.

I don't have accounts in any of the other places squad folks might post info, but, reading is free. I just check the link for KSP and maxmaps twitter every so often, clicking past any invitations to sign-up.

Before 1.0: Read PNG format image > use CPU to compress/convert > DDS format image loaded into memory 1.0: Read DDS images into memory They also did some optimization so that the SPH and VAB use the same code now, so switching ships and scenes should be a bit faster. Edit: I'm loading KSP 1.0.2 with No parts mods, No extra textures. The only thing I am currently loading more than a vanilla install, is Claw's patch fixes. Windows 8.1, i5 -3570K, 16GB ram, Crucial M4 128gb SSD It takes from clicking on the shortcut I use, to seeing the load screen: 10 seconds. From the beginning of the loading screen, to seeing the "Start Game" option: 25 seconds. Note that I had just exited KSP, this was a restart, so that is the fastest my system can possibly start KSP.

I would agree that it is not realistic, in the sense that early rocket builders never had a parts limit imposed on them. Apparently this is a debatable concept even inside Squad, but, I think adding an easily overcome early-game 30-part count restriction to mass/dimensions, is as legitimate of a game concept to include, as other arbitrary things folks come up with in the spacecraft challenge thread. It's a puzzle challenge. Again, the key part for me is the first tier restriction is easily overcome. I think it's less easily overcome than it could be, perhaps due to the missing upgrade Tier, which may have increased the planned first upgrade cost. Tier 0 was planned from the beginning but yanked close to release after forum outcry over design and polish. The intended cost and limit numbers may have been compressed. 3-tier 30/255/unlimited could become something like 4-tier 30/125/255/unlimited. I don't think they would increase "30", because the most the first batch of contracts intend for us to do, is achieve orbit & perhaps fly by the moons. They might go even lower when Tier 0 is finalized.

That was a fun experiment, I'll be paying close attention to asymmetrically placed struts in future craft. The only difference between the two sides below, is double strutting on one of them.

Yes, its a problem. R.I.C. concurs in this thread: Assymmetric flameouts an issue again? We got the impression intake air flows would be fixed along with fuel flows, based on this Squadcast, but perhaps it slipped through the cracks due to complications.

That's in HarvesteR's actual devnote, what you have there is a later reply in the thread. It was discussed back in post 133; I side with Master Tao and said the same, back there. The evidence in code, exposed by Claw's mod patch show that his "we" meant Squad, not the players. Squad chose to implement one particular method, but by 1.0 launch day had heard this feedback. I agree with / also find it a minor annoyance, that fairing shapes aren't very persistent if you need to move parts around. At least they are quick to draw/build.

I've seen this book mentioned somewhere, recently 'Rendezvous with Rama' style Alien Artifacts

LoL. Studies of this phenomenon are in progress! I wonder if the fortunes of Squad and the future of KSP could be predicted, based on where the figures are placed, in each show

I think the thread needs some examples to get it started. One thing which occurs to me are the reaction-wheel-powered vehicles and helicopters, which were possible in .90. This also sounds like a job for infernal robotics... but that would take this thread out of the realm of the [stock craft] tag.

KSC administrators* discourage this "other space agency" idea, while evidence of its existence is brought back near-daily, by our intrepid crews. The Kerbal government MUST hold hearings soon - the public has a right to know! *My accusing eye is cast suspiciously on Mortimer "Mr Burns" Kerman. Sometimes, the guilty actually look guilty.

If Squad allowed biomes regions visible as part of regular game play, I wouldn't want to see the extreme colors used in the debug overlay. The new scanner parts tell you (in words) the biome region names.

This waits for me in backed-up installation of .90. I haven't got around to finishing the mission. Have various pix and video clips, It was going to be quite a project, putting it all together. I designed the thing with KER, so I'm confident the final stage will make orbit. The 'side car' was a fun challenge, it's counter-weighted by the tank column on the opposite side & would be jettisoned close to the ground. Cargo bay is full of science gear for my career game. A refueling tanker went ahead of it, this entire craft was to deorbit and land, after a refill. The insane 20 m/s impact tolerance on those engines makes them ideal for use as "landing legs".

I had some weirdness, in a simple 4x symmetry fuel feed into a central tank and engine. The outer engine/tanks drained un-evenly; One of the outer four was full and not draining, but its engine was firing normally. I did a manual fuel transfer between two tanks to level that out. But of course the drain rate problem continued, and engines quit at slightly different times, causing minor problems I could tell something was not quite right, when I decoupled the finally empty outer engine/tanks: one of the engines of those four, drifted away from its tank like the node attachment was made of chewing gum. Which is possibly a rare, but legit "Kerbal" building material

It's described in the forum FAQ, here.