Superfluous J

It's a cargo bay that sticks to the back of your plane, and opens backward into a ramp. So you can land, open the door, and drive a rover out.

Lots of goodies on this one, and 0 gameplay. Lets get to it. 10 minutes I drop a time stamp, so if you can find a spot in the video more easily. Something in "quotes" means it was directly said, though I frequently don't bother with that. [brackets] are those rare times where the accent barrier keeps me from understanding something, and italics are descriptions of what Max is doing in the game, with asides and commentary by me where I feel the desire. This episode was only 26:25 long. 0:00 They're going to keep them shorter. After the show, they're going to put anything they show here "in the usual channels" They had a meeting over the week. They are 99.999999 percent done with Unity 5. Game has been ported to U5. Now that this is done, only a couple tweaks/UI changes left. They need to analyze it, "can we share with the world" Is it worth its own update? Yes. It's big enough to be 1.1, all on its own. But they can also throw in a bunch of extra content. So U5 + parts! Q&A is starting for Unity. U5 means: New PhysX. Now you can only use 1 core for your vessel. New PhysX can split your ship over multiple cores. "You can expect the game to run way better." Great for "Whackjob kind of ships" Still no numbers yet. They want to show in video exactly how good it is. This can make the game run on consoles. Which is why things are being ported now. U5 also means moving to a new client to build the game on. 64 bit native. So they can load everything for the game without crashing the editor. So, default compiling is 64 bit. So from now on they'll be creating 64 bit native executables. "Blowing the doors wide open for the modding community." Max gives up on the pretense that he's going to play at all today. KSP will only break when you hit your personal RAM limit. 10:00 Trials at the office this week, 9GB of ram, the game was "purring like a kitten." The next release is 1.1. 64 for everyone. Windows AND OSX. They have scrapped 90% of the UI in KSP. Currently 3 systems. They scrapped that. The new U5 system is so much better. They look exactly the same (or almost) but work better. NathanKell has joined, like RoverDude Arsonide and Porkjet have. He is optimizing KSP code, catching old bugs that bug modders, and is also working on framework for localization. tl;dr: More efficient UI. More efficient processor usage. 64 bit native. That's enough to be 1.1, but they've also been letting the modder collaborators "run amok" Article in forums about RoverDude's antenna diversity. That will be in 1.1. Not only do they have different uses, but they will become VITAL. Assuming you turn on those difficulty settings. Arsonide: Contextual Contracts. Contracts based on things you have built. Add a lab to the space station. That satellite at Laythe, put it into a NEW orbit. Not adding breadth. Adding depth. PorkJet: Instead of telling, he shows. We've seen the images already, so I won't bother with a link. Also, I'm lazy. I love the new Mk1 capsule. I love the new cargo bay. 20:00 (Talking about the clouds in screenshots) "By the way these are taken on PorkJet's install where he has mods and all that. We are not doing clouds... yet. I am underlining that yet" U5 allows far more memory use. It's not for 1.1. But don't count on KSP looking like it does now, in the future. Max trolls a bit about an update cost. Totally gets the chat with it. FTR it will cost $0.00 No Squadcast next week. KasperVld will be on instead. Max will be at PAX. Save games should be compatible.

FTR, it starts getting cold enough for jackets here in late September, and while there is usually one nice weekend in November (nice = can walk outside for indefinite periods of time without your face freezing) it's cold from October through March, and usually even into April but by then we don't care and go out anyway. October snows are by no means common but neither are they rare. However that all said, January and February are easily the 2 coldest months, and February is always the worst. March is usually pretty bad too, but like November can sometimes have a nice weekend just stuck in between blistering cold weeks. But I wasn't talking about any of that. I was talking about the officially unofficial designation of seasons that others have already specified and that of all the definitions, I personally prefer: having them start at the appropriate equinox or solstice.

The "seasons" will stay 1/4 of the year, so will grow as the year grows. Who knows if they'll resemble the seasons we have now but probably. Mars has visible Summer/Winter seasons, after all. They'll still generally stay where they are. What we call "Summer" in the Northern Hemisphere starts on the longest day of the year, and ends halfway down to the shortest day of the year. Winter is the same only it starts on the shortest and goes up to halfway to the longest. Lag in how the hemisphere heats and cools causes the hottest and coldest days to start after the longest and shortest days of the year, and that shouldn't change all that much within reason, especially if we're magically moving the Earth to cool it down. And yes, I'm ignoring that it wouldn't work, we couldn't do it, and if we figured out a way to do this thing that wouldn't work, it'd likely kill us

Also, this is not a KSP question.

Someone recently (I thought it was GregroxMun but my memory sucks) posted a full custom part config that essentially eliminated the need to use the default categories. If you used that, you could set up your favorites and they'd only be one click away, not 3. Same number of clicks anything else is, really. Instead of clicking "command pods" you'd click "my favorites" and then your part would be there just like the Mk1 capsule is there in command pods.

While I technically agree, sometimes you just gotta do it, especially early in career. It's far easier to get a wide lander into LKO than it is to land a tall skinny lander on sloped ground on Mun.

I can't really tell based on the images, but that ship looks okay just eyeballing it. Maybe it's your ascent path and gravity turn? If you supply a .craft file I'll take it for a spin. If I can get it into orbit I'll film it and put it on YouTube so you can see how I got it done. If I can't, then I would be willing to say it needs more fuel or a rework of staging, engines, etc.

Aha MrChumley, I finally got to view your Imgur album (I'm at work so had to wait for down time) and I see the problem. Yes, you need to get a Kerbal out there. I don't suggest swimming. I suggest using those parts from the lander, maybe plus a few parts you'll find lying around KSC if you so choose (the reliant or swivel in particular may come in quite handy) to fly over there. at the very least, a couple Fleas separated by decouplers should do it. Send a pilot over, land via parachute, and then fly the plane back. THEN claw it. I will make the description a bit more verbose to remove some confusion.

Amusingly, I've been warming up to the idea of simplifying things by spawning everything in one contract, and allowing the player to go from thing to thing, claw it, drop it, and then move on to the other thing. It'd save a lot of time on the player's part and not be any harder than it is now, just less grindy. Yikes. I was afraid of that. I'll install the Stock Bug Fixes and - assuming it works - will make it a requirement. If it doesn't work... I'll have to rethink this whole thing. Maybe just require you to recover the parts after an EVA'd Kerbal gets within a couple meters of it. I think this is likely due to the problems described above. Hopefully the Stock Bug Fixes will correct it. I was having terrible troubles with forcing the breaks on in the .craft file. Like, they would not toggle back off ever. Especially if I then gift the craft to the player, I don't want any weirdness. Maybe also make TweakableEverything (which I believe includes a brake toggle) a required mod as well I *thought* I put the car in the low point of a valley, but have fiddled with it since (due to nightingale's sky car problems) so maybe it moved a bit. I noticed this as well. I don't know what the problem with the engines is. I was going to try to add an empty stage before the engines but haven't gotten around to it. I was able to right click the engines and "Activate" them, and then fly the plane back to the KSC to claw it. Note, that is not strictly necessary. All that is necessary is getting a claw attached to the plane. The problem is, with the tools you have available getting a claw attached to the plane on the island is not very easy. I tried everything I could think of and gave up. Side note, the plane used to be a "crashed plane" in the mountains. I made it a functional plane on the island specifically so you didn't have to get a claw to it. Thanks I'm really enjoying making it.

You know what? I'm not just cool with this, but excited about it. Let companies shovel money at Space X instead of the NFL. Tell you what. I volunteer to personally place that can on the moon.

One last thing, I'm having weird issues after completing a few of the contracts. I lose all ability to target, or even see the little HUD markers for nearby things. I had 3 grabby cars and a part scattered around KSC and couldn't see any of them. I went back to the Space Center screen and the markers had them up in the air and far away. I went to the tracking station and back and they came back to the correct positions. I went back to my grabby car, and could see the stuff visibly but still lacked the UI markers. All in all it was weird. I don't know if it's in any way caused by your mod or I'm just experiencing Claw Weirdness, but without a solution I'm not sure how well the whole contract pack will work. Maybe I'll try it with Claw's stock bug fix for the Grabber. Not sure if it'll help, but here's my output_log.txt from the session where that all happened. I had the full debug messages on if that helps. [defunct site link removed by moderator]

Haha! I thought I tested the grabby car the last time I made a change to it. I think I will start leaving the altitude off and just setting the height for all of these. I think if you get close enough to it, it'll fall. Though I also think it'll be too busted to complete the contract Here's one I altered and tested. [defunct site link removed by moderator] - - - Updated - - - Each contract category will have its own list, so I'm not sure that's a big deal. The starter rocket parts and plane parts share a list but that may change. Good idea. It says it in the contract, but in the title is a good idea as well. Agreed. It's at least implied that you get all the parts that were on the thing you grabbed, but not actually ever said. If "By design" you mean "I know about it" then yes I wasn't 100% sure how forcing recovery of the vessel that started out as 2 vessels would react. I'm not recovering "grabby car" but a conglomeration of the two. It's on my to-test list. I agree. I have some plans for making them less grindy as a whole, including repurposing one of the science parts as a "remote scanner" so you can grab a part in orbit of Jool, scan it, and have it become available back home. Also, the three current "vessel" contracts are not all there will be of those, and those are kind of "part packs" with unique requirements. Like the next one: Go up and fetch the Kerbonational Space Station, and somehow bring it to the ground intact Oooh I like this idea. I've been trying to figure out how to give multiple parts with one recovery, without ending the entire contract pack in 5 quick grabs. The goal of this pack is that science doesn't matter. I don't touch it, but you never have to get it. I'm actually doing this as an alternative to the way parts are unlocked now. That's what I'm hoping. There is a (surprisingly large) minimum of parts you need to get going, and another minimum of parts you need to be able to get to LKO, Mun, Minmus, and beyond. So at the start I'm having a bit of fetch glut. But after that I'm hoping to spread the remaining parts throughout the system both in sets (like the 2 included, one of which actually works) of 2-4 per planet/moon, and in unique bases and stations here and there. I'm hoping that "OMG I get the NERVA!" excitement will outweigh the "OMG another fetch quest!" boredom. I wholeheartedly agree! Iiiinteresting. - - - Updated - - - Actually I just looked at the documentation, and I don't see a way to specify that a vessel be recovered to end a contract. Is there a way to do this?

Not sure how much you can tell from the configs, except my syntax preferences I know it functionally works. I want to know how hard it is to complete certain steps. In particular, nailing the final contract where you scavenge the plane. Here's a link, which I should have put in the last post I guess [defunct site link removed by moderator] You MUST have modulemanager (and contractconfigurator, obviously) installed. No other mods are required nor are they explicitly supported yet. Part mods in particular are not supported. I don't even currently support all Squad parts. Which is exactly why it's in pre-alpha. And whatever you do, don't load this on an already-started save. I have no idea what it'd do

Not only understood, but expected. And as always, thanks. That's why I said "The player shouldn't be able to use them without having unlocked the parts or anything like that." I figure this is the best place to post this, as people into the mod are more likely to read this here than anywhere else. I'm at the point where I'd like people to test the pack. Should only take a half hour or so, and it's right now in pre-alpha. Once you've played for a half hour or so on a brand new save, you'll have to stop because there's nothing left to do. I just would like to know first off if everything is explained well enough, and if anybody can break anything or feels anything is too hard or too easy.

I don't hate spiders, but they will not live if they come in my apartment. It's not personal. It's just a fact of life.

I'm getting deeper into my contract pack and I found something that I'd like to be able to do that isn't strictly NECESSARY, but would be cool. You have functionality to spawn .craft files in the world. Would it be possible to - using a behavior - gift the craft files to the player? The player shouldn't be able to use them without having unlocked the parts or anything like that. Essentially I'd like to just copy the craft file from my ContractPacks folder into the currently running game's ships\VAB or ships\SPH folder. That way when the player collects a vessel, it's kind of putting that vessel in their garage so they can use it later. My thought would be that the file would be gifted after the contract was completed. This doesn't need done with parts like the change I requested for SpawnVessel, just actual .craft files. And like I said it's not a biggie, it would just be cool

Extremely cool. Thanks for sharing. I may add an "all" category to the top of each list. I wonder if we can modify this with a modulemanager config? That way each mod could include its own parts, if the modder so chooses.

I would suggest you give any of the mods on My mod list for my series a look, but in particular: Contract Configurator (More stuff to do) Field Experience (Less going back home which can turn off viewers) Science Alert (Get science quicker and therefore be less boring to viewers) USI Life Support (which I prefer to Snacks. Note this does add parts, but I don't think you can have a decent life support mod without a couple parts. Even with Snacks, I ended up using an add-on that added a few dedicated snack storage parts) Waypoint Manager (if for no other reason than so your viewers see how cool it is and demand it get implemented in stock) And while not for career in particular, no one creating KSP videos should live without Ambient Light Adjustment. You're doing your viewers a disservice by not using it.

Like several others, I like #2 and #3, but dislike #1. One thing I like about KSP is I don't have to remember a lot. Well, KSP with KAC, at least I don't want to have to keep futzing around with a base to keep it "fresh," and if I want to send up a base 20 years before the crew gets there, I don't want to have to worry about it degenerating over time. However, I love the idea of being forced to give crews larger quarters for longer voyages, and one of the biggest problems with the mod currently is that if you do screw up and run out of food, it can be insanely (and unreasonably) difficult to resupply.

I would like to see proof of that. I have never tried with any real determination, but the few times I've been in the area my ship went from floating sedately to exploding instantly. And I've never seen a picture or video of it. I have vague memories of someone saying you could in the past, but they "fixed" that.

Ah yeah. I was sure that the engine and tank by themselves would be enough to aerobrake from Mun. Probably just the capsule would have been fine but I was bringing those home anyway. Really didn't even need the decoupler when all is said and done but, barely any dV cost and when you only get one shot, may as well err on the side of caution.

In my current career, I've sent 2 landers to eve, yet have 3 things landed there. IOW Eve's so easy to land on, you can do it by accident! More seriously, they're both just the same as their similar counterparts, only degrees harder. Tylo is like Mun, only harder. Eve is like Kerbin, only harder. If you have decent TWR and enough dV, Tylo's not really all that hard to land on. Likewise, if you've got heat shields and take care aerobraking, Eve's not that hard to land on either. Now taking off, that's another story. Eve is second only to Jool in the difficulty scale, and that's only because Jool is impossible to land and take off from.

...by bringing a heat shield? And I wasn't really thinking in terms of "dV." I was thinking in terms of "big rocket go high fast."

I did a thing. (Splash Screen may or may not be from the actual attempt)