Damien_The_Unbeliever

Counter-factual timeline: 17 hours ago, Squad post an announcement that they're looking to recruit an "Extended Experimentals" team. They give a run down of how it will play out but don't say "Steam Only" (despite them already being aware that it will only work there). They also let anyone interested fill in a form: Name:____________ Email:____________ Delivery platform: Store / Steam / GoG So, forward to right now. All I can see so far is upside. There's a lot less moaning (and, as an added bonus, far fewer "sign me up" posts). Of course, some of you (if you've applied) are living with false hope, but so be it. Fast forward to R - 3 Weeks. Squad looks through all of the applications. And basically say "Yes" to anyone who selected Steam and "No" to everyone else. They then send email instructions to those they've said "Yes" to with nicely personalised instructions on how to obtain access through Steam (see, that's why they needed to ask). All the "No" people are informed (but, without having a reason to suspect, what are the chances that anyone will work out the pattern to who was accepted?) R - 2 Weeks - the extended experimentals team get access to 1.1 builds. Builds more like 1.0.0, 1.0.1 or 1.03 rather than 1.0.2, 1.0.4 or 1.0.5. R - 0 Weeks - the final build of 1.1 is made available to everyone. Now, aside from it requiring Squad to be deeply deceptive, what, *materially* is different in this timeline versus the one that's actually been announced?

They aren't giving you contradictory descriptions, which should clue you in to the fact that they're acting correctly. It's not like they give you different biomes, or one says that you're landed and the other in space.

So, here's a preliminary build, it's MIT licensed and the source is here. The Zip contains a LaunchNumbering directory, that should be inserted into the GameData folder. So far, it's very preliminary. It'll work best for new saves where you haven't already launched vessels with the same name (since I don't attempt to find existing vessels and de-conflict the names) The first launch will be recorded as "Initial launch" (via the notices at the top of the page) and will not be renamed. Every subsequent launch of vessels with the same name will have a number appended (and a separate notice will tell you what it's been named). Any feedback gratefully received. Initially, any changes to behaviour will only be possible by editing the save file, since (given the expected 1.1 changes), I don't think it's worthwhile to learn UI at the moment. Currently, the save file will have sections that look like this: SCENARIO { name = LaunchNumberer scene = 5, 6, 7 SERIES { name = Scishot BLOC { vessel-hash = 1 vessel-count = 2 bloc-number = 1 bloc-roman = False vessel-roman = False bloc-shown = False } } } Presently, you can ignore most of these settings (I.e. they have no effects). If you set vessel-roman to True, then I'll start generating the numbers as roman numeral rather than digits. This was originally planned to be used to mark "Blocs" (I.e. variations in the vessel), but this isn't working yet. For an existing save, you can populate a SERIES section with an appropriate name and an appropriate vessel-number, and I'll start numbering vessels with that name and the next number.

I've now got the basics hanging together - every launch gets numbered, if it doesn't already end with a number. I'll try working out how Kerbal Stuff works and then will share an early version with people.

Thanks for the replies. I'll try adjusting things tonight and see how it holds up.

So, I've started coding this up this morning, and I'm making (very) slow progress. The basic concept seems to work, but there are a number of places where things don't seem to work quite right. If anyone familiar with writing small Add-Ins could offer some feedback here, it would be much appreciated. The code should be visible at https://github.com/Damien-The-Unbeliever/KSPLaunchNumbering.git So, the first issue is that I'm directly inheriting from Unity's MonoBehaviour. Is there a more appropriate KSP base class for an Add-In that doesn't (currently) deal with any form of UI? The second is finding an appropriate "time" to do my work against any particular vessel. At the moment, I'm resorting to putting code in a FixedUpdate handler and keeping a local list of vessel IDs that I've already worked on. Initially, this list was a static member (as was the other member) and before I started trying to do persistence, this seemed to work. It just didn't look very clean to me, and it also had the issue that it didn't operate correctly in the face of reverting saves. So, I've started trying to do persistence, and that's where I'm currently broken. I want to persist most of my data within the game's save file. So, in my Awake, I'm adding handlers to GameEvents.onGameStateSave and GameEvents.onGameStateLoad. (I've also switched the members to be instance members rather than static at this point - it seemed "correct"). But it just doesn't seem to work as I imagine it will. So, for a simple Add-In, are these the most appropriate events to load/save data in the save file? And are local, non-static members the appropriate way to model my local data? Any assistance with the above issues (or any other stylistic feedback) would be appreciated.

Okay, I'll admit I've only done a cursory search, so I may have missed an existing mod. I want to be able to build a ship in the VAB, name it (say) "Spearfish" and launch it. Once it's in orbit, I want to go back to the space centre and launch another copy of the same. And again. And again. And then be able to visit the space centre and see that I have "Spearfish", "Spearfish 2", "Spearfish 3" and "Spearfish 4" in orbit. Bonus points if, having modified the "Spearfish" rocket and launched it a new time, it somehow gets marked as "Bloc II" (whether that involves restarting numbering or not, I'm not sure). So, does such a mod exist? (I haven't found one). If not, I'd be happy to start working on one (I'm a programmer by trade, but not too experienced in game programming), but not too sure where to start.

Ooh. Ooh. Another one I'd really like to see the end of, particularly on DevNote threads: "This thread is long. Therefore, I'll ignore everyone's preceding contributions, including post #6 (which asks exactly the same question) and post #11 (which contained a reply) and instead I'll lengthen the thread even further by asking incredibly obvious question?" (Admittedly, the bit in italics is usually just implied rather than included in the question, but still... Do people not realise that a thread being long means there's a good chance that their question has already been asked *and answered*, if they'd care to browse through the topic for five minutes?)

How about threads titled "a b c Thread"? Well, gee, thanks for clearing that up. I guess that's a Thread. I wonder what all of these other things in the forum are.

I know it's been stated elsewhere - the follow on contracts don't currently use the categories at all. It uses heuristics to decide "hey, this looks like it could be part of a satellite constellation" or "this could be a space station" and then generates contracts based on that assessment. Not saying it's not doable, just that it's not currently part of its process.

I find it oddly calming to sometimes take a few hours and just move a rover around to complete a ground survey or (as you suggest) cover multiple biomes. It gives the game a different "pace" for a while.

Closest I can find is 5th horseman's comment here. He references the "previous squadcast" but when I go looking for the summary, I can't find a matching entry.

One way to check whether your orbit is polar - turn on the "Biomes visible in map view" option in the Debug (F12) menu. The polar biomes on the Mun are circular. If you focus on Mun and rotate the map view until your orbit is a straight line, you'll be able to assess how polar your orbit is by how close to the centre of the circle your orbit gets.

Yes, but when the whole point is to ask the question "does this landing technique work?", if the answer is no, you've not got a lot of people crying about lost equipment.

Probably for those buttons down there on bottom left (I see four - share on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Email. YMMV) It's not necessarily sharing anything with FB at this time, but probably has to load the logo from there

[quote name='Hotaru']What I don't understand is what's wrong with leaving the section accessible to everyone as a locked archive. I can't see what possible harm could come of that, and yet repeated requests for exactly that have so far been ignored.[/QUOTE] This entire thread, all 19 pages of it so far, has existed for less than 6 hours. Maybe, just maybe, they're going to spend some time *thinking* about what's been said before responding?

Why is it any more confusing with Kerbals than anywhere else? If Kadam Kerman and Keve Kerman produce offspring, surely their offspring (Kabel Kerman and Kain Kerman) also receive the Kerman surname? (Of course, the purpose of surnames in such a society is still worthy of investigation) Why does the introduction of *genders* means that surnames are more of an issue?

For all those claiming that KSP moving to release means that it should be complete; consider this - Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0 is 1985. Are you claiming that because they made it a release, they should have stuck with that version's quirks and defects forever more? For all its faults (please, leave arguments behind about which current version is obviously best and why no later version counts), Windows today is better than it was 30 years ago. The same can be said for any modern operating system, or (generalising), *any* popular software product that isn't just a flash in the pan. I *love* the fact that KSP doesn't seem to just be a one-off, "release it and we're done" product. They moved to version 1. That *did* allow them to enter several competitions recently which they won. It's a good product. And I don't expect it to stand still.

[quote name='MrOsterman']I don't have a real "fix" except, perhaps, for Squad to include more ~toggles~[/QUOTE] The problem is, people think that adding toggles will magically fix things. In fact, all a toggle does is increase the amount of testing that either [I]has to take place[/I] or gets [I]skipped[/I]. If you've seen things like the bug reports where an out-of-date Asteroid Day mod caused gender/profession issues, perhaps you'll start to realise that apparently unrelated pieces of software [I]can[/I] and [I]will[/I] interact in surprising ways. So, you have 4 on/off toggles. In order to [I]thoroughly[/I] test your code, you out to try to run through a full test suite with every combination of those toggleable settings. So, that's 16 different combinations that should be tested. If you add one more toggleable option, you now have to test 32 different combinations of those settings. Every on/off toggle you add [I]doubles[/I] the numbers of potential combinations. Toggles with more than two possible positions explode the number of combinations even quicker. So, people saying "please include more toggles" are either saying "please massively increase your testing workload" or "please release a system that has more and more untested configurations".

Remember, we're talking Rep here, not money. Most businesses have no means of measuring their "rep" anyway. But if you set up a business that offers to do lots of space work, and people come to you asking you to do space work, and you keep turning them down, are you sure that "word of mouth" about your business isn't going to turn somewhat negative?

It's a multi-choice poll. Voters can vote for multiple options. If every voter had chosen to only vote for one option, then the percentages would sum to 100 (or very close). As it is though, many voters have voted for more than one option. If every voter had voted for every option, then every result would be 100%.

Okay, so how would *you* measure the mass remotely? Remember, mass doesn't affect the orbit.

One advantage of the clunky style is that, even without a craft file, you can readily comprehend how a craft has been put together. (Of those parts you can see in pictures). A smooth/no seams style would make it impossible to tell, from screen-shots, whether you were looking at one large tank of the appropriate size or multiple smaller tanks joined together. If you're arguing against such differentiation in tanks (i.e. someone who plays sandbox exclusively rather than career) then that's different from asking for an "art pass".

I'd be the first to admit that my aesthetic senses are quite dull - but for me, the most important thing about the parts is what they can do and where they can take me. I don't care all that much what they look like. If everyone favours consistency above all else, why not just have them all complete white, featureless blobs?

I felt too committed to it, didn't want to break out to find/remap keys (similarly, during an earlier part of the mission, I really wanted to leave the power at full forwards. I could remember the trim controls (Alt+ WSAD) to set it up but felt nervous doing so because I couldn't remember what I'd need to do to cancel trim if an emergency emerged). It was actually fun to see what the rover was capable of when being mis-used.