Devnote Tuesday: is it March already?

[Hcube]

I don't care about unity 5, i literaly NEVER get any bugs in stock, and while i do not approve squad for going directly in 1.0 i am sure that they will make a wonderful update with only minor issues. I trust squad because they are reliable (even though they are somewhat kerbal).

I'm excited about re-entry heat, resources and FAIRINGS. Lets stop debating about another beta and 1.0 or unity 5 and actually talk about the devnotes !

[bdito]

I don't care about unity 5, i literaly NEVER get any bugs in stock, and while i do not approve squad for going directly in 1.0 i am sure that they will make a wonderful update with only minor issues. I trust squad because they are reliable (even though they are somewhat kerbal).

I'm excited about re-entry heat, resources and FAIRINGS. Lets stop debating about another beta and 1.0 or unity 5 and actually talk about the devnotes !

Agreed.

[kofeyh]

I don't care about unity 5, i literaly NEVER get any bugs in stock..

Oh you get them alright, but at present the big one won't (generally) affect you unless you increase the games memory footprint (eg extend via mods). There is at least one (possibly two?) major memory leaks in KSP 0.90.

Work with any tweakable part for any extended period of time and you can see the game's memory footprint grow at quite a considerable rate. There is also still a major decoupler bug that at certain speeds decouplers experience phantom forces. Nullref's also occur in stock. So there is a bit going on, even if you don't always see it.

I will be quite keen to see if these long standing issues are resolved, more so that any of the added content.

I honestly don't give a monkey's if the game is missing some features when it hits 1.0 - as long as it is stable then it'll gain far better reviews that something that has all the bells and whistles people seem to want for 1.0, but is an unstable mess.

Edited March 6, 2015 by kofeyh

[NoMrBond]

I honestly don't give a monkey's if the game is missing some features when it hits 1.0 - as long as it is stable then it'll gain far better reviews that something that has all the bells and whistles people seem to want for 1.0, but is an unstable mess.

Adding a whistle to a well running train is a bonus, adding a whistle to a crashed train is a waste

[Superfluous J]

i literaly NEVER get any bugs in stock

Really? You've NEVER had your predicted path simply vanish as you were tweaking a maneuver node to get a close encounter with your target?

You've NEVER inexplicably not been able to place a maneuver node on a path?

You've NEVER tried to change the location of a radial decoupler with the translation gizmo and had it clip halfway into your fuel tank?

You've NEVER staged away radial decouplers and had them blow up your central stack because they eject DOWN instead of OUT?

Or do you mean you've literally never had a GAME CRASHING bug? That, I believe.

[Starwaster]

Really? You've NEVER had your predicted path simply vanish as you were tweaking a maneuver node to get a close encounter with your target?

You've NEVER inexplicably not been able to place a maneuver node on a path?

You've NEVER tried to change the location of a radial decoupler with the translation gizmo and had it clip halfway into your fuel tank?

You've NEVER staged away radial decouplers and had them blow up your central stack because they eject DOWN instead of OUT?

Or do you mean you've literally never had a GAME CRASHING bug? That, I believe.

Well that's entirely possible. I don't think I've seen the first one myself.

• The second one I find to be fairly predictable. Or at least I've only noticed it when trying to place a node fairly close to my ship on a hyperbolic plot. If that is what causes it to bug out and you don't ever place nodes under those conditions then you won't see the bug occur.
  
• The third one... maybe he doesn't use the gizmo that much. If it's bugged and you don't use it, how are you to know it's bugged?
  
• The fourth one... That seems to happen primarily when strutting the part that you want decoupled. Which most of us do, I think, but you can get away with not strutting if your design is light and you don't mind your SRBs flopping a little. I've never seen an unstrutted part decouple improperly with the radial decouplers. (I would like to add the even more infamous 'eject inwards towards your fuel tank with much force' btw...)
  
• Last one, stock unmodded install is more stable.
  

[JimmyAgent007]

Really? You've NEVER had your predicted path simply vanish as you were tweaking a maneuver node to get a close encounter with your target?

You've NEVER inexplicably not been able to place a maneuver node on a path?

You've NEVER tried to change the location of a radial decoupler with the translation gizmo and had it clip halfway into your fuel tank?

You've NEVER staged away radial decouplers and had them blow up your central stack because they eject DOWN instead of OUT?

Or do you mean you've literally never had a GAME CRASHING bug? That, I believe.

Ive never had game crashing bugs, some issues with the claw when I was doing something funky, the maneuver node issues and the radial decouplers i get sometimes. Never had them clip through my tanks though. What are some other common stock glitches? Mine are few and far between so I cant recall what they might be.

[Robotengineer]

Really? You've NEVER had your predicted path simply vanish as you were tweaking a maneuver node to get a close encounter with your target?

You've NEVER inexplicably not been able to place a maneuver node on a path?

You've NEVER tried to change the location of a radial decoupler with the translation gizmo and had it clip halfway into your fuel tank?

You've NEVER staged away radial decouplers and had them blow up your central stack because they eject DOWN instead of OUT?

Or do you mean you've literally never had a GAME CRASHING bug? That, I believe.

I've had all of the above and more. Sometimes I wonder if the people who say there aren't many bugs in KSP play the game at all.

[bdito]

I've had all of the above and more. Sometimes I wonder if the people who say there aren't many bugs in KSP play the game at all.

If most are like me, the game is so heavily modded I never know if it's a stock bug or a mod bug.

[Robotengineer]

If most are like me, the game is so heavily modded I never know if it's a stock bug or a mod bug.

I play heavily modded as well, however all of the bugs mentioned by 5thHorseman are stock bugs.

[Superfluous J]

What are some other common stock glitches?

Symmetry needs a LOT of work. When you can and can't switch from radial to mirrored, and how mirrored chooses to mirror based not on absolute coordinates but includes the rotation of the craft, works esoterically at best and simply doesn't work at worst. Also, re-placing symmetrical items frequently breaks action groups, so the one you actually placed is still in the action group but the other ones are not. That's a great one to find out about on your way down to the surface of Duna, when you hit the parachutes and only one goes off.

There are more, but I've reached the end of those that I can think off just off the top of my head. Those (and the ones I listed before) are my personal hates. Not being able to see what my maneuver node will do right at the most important time makes me want to strangle.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think I've seen the first one myself...

If... you don't ever place nodes under those conditions then you won't see the bug occur.

...maybe he doesn't use the gizmo that much. If it's bugged and you don't use it, how are you to know it's bugged?

...I've never seen an unstrutted part decouple improperly with the radial decouplers....

...Last one, stock unmodded install is more stable....

For the "I've not seen them" replies, I'm afraid that Squad hasn't either and won't fix these stock bugs in 1.0 because of it.

For the last 2:

* Watch the Squadcast from 2 weeks ago. Maxmaps (who wrote devnotes right here in this thread) had it happen to him and trust me, nobody in the comments was shocked when it happened. He was, though. It was as if this was a rare occurrence.

* Of course it's more stable. Except I can use PreciseNode to fix (or work around) the maneuver node bugs and can use the "Stock Bug Fixes" mod to fix (among other things) the radial decoupler bug.

My game would be far more stable if I didn't need to mod away all the problems with the stock experience.

[White Owl]

I've never seen that maneuver node issue because I always use Precise Node. I wasn't even aware it was a problem.

[magico13]

* Watch the Squadcast from 2 weeks ago. Maxmaps (who wrote devnotes right here in this thread) had it happen to him and trust me, nobody in the comments was shocked when it happened. He was, though. It was as if this was a rare occurrence.

Wait, they didn't know about the radial decoupler bug that they added during 0.24.2? Seriously? Has anyone at Squad tried flying the Kerbal X since then? It's ridiculously obvious with that craft. I used to use it for kOS testing in 0.23/early 0.24 until that bug appeared and started causing all of my (tested and frequently used) designs to suddenly destroy themselves under otherwise normal conditions.

Is the maneuver node bug just that occasionally (read: frequently) when tweaking things your intercept randomly disappears for absolutely no reason and will randomly pop back into existence with minute changes and then disappear once you tweak it back to a previously working configuration? That's one of my favorites lately. Oh, no, I didn't really need to see what my Duna periapsis was going to be, nor did I need to know when I was going to enter the SOI.

I'll give Squad one thing. There may be a lot of bugs right now, but that's fine because they're still adding things. Once release comes around, I won't be as complacent. Thankfully the game is ridiculously fun to me despite the bugs (so thank you Squad for that!) and there are modders out there (thank you Claw!) who fix the very obvious things that need fixing to be able to play the game properly at all.

[BudgetHedgehog]

Wait, they didn't know about the radial decoupler bug that they added during 0.24.2? Seriously? Has anyone at Squad tried flying the Kerbal X since then? It's ridiculously obvious with that craft. I used to use it for kOS testing in 0.23/early 0.24 until that bug appeared and started causing all of my (tested and frequently used) designs to suddenly destroy themselves under otherwise normal conditions.

Is the maneuver node bug just that occasionally (read: frequently) when tweaking things your intercept randomly disappears for absolutely no reason and will randomly pop back into existence with minute changes and then disappear once you tweak it back to a previously working configuration? That's one of my favorites lately. Oh, no, I didn't really need to see what my Duna periapsis was going to be, nor did I need to know when I was going to enter the SOI.

Yep, that node bug. I get it frequently when I go to Minmus. Usually for polar injections. Get intercept, lower PE.. bit more.. BOOM! Looks like I'm not going to intercept Minmus any more. Carry on 'lowering' PE, get intercept again, PE is underground. Tweak back out and disappears again..

And they know about it, it's on the public bugtracker... And I suspect they pretty busy making the game to have time to play it though and I find it hard to believe they would pass it to QA and THEY wouldn't notice it.. Given the amount of talk everywhere about it, a thread about it and a mod to fix it, Squad would have to be intentionally ignoring it to not know.

Also, it was added in 0.24.1

[regex]

And they know about it, it's on the public bugtracker... And I suspect they pretty busy making the game to have time to play it though and I find it hard to believe they would pass it to QA and THEY wouldn't notice it.. Given the amount of talk everywhere about it, a thread about it and a mod to fix it, Squad would have to be intentionally ignoring it to not know.

Some of those issue likely come from floating point errors, converting back and forth between floats and doubles. In a case like that, saying "Unity not us" is actually true because, IIRC, Unity uses single-precision floats. Unity 5 should (hopefully) deal with that issue, and is one of the biggest reasons to actually upgrade. Otherwise KSP will remain "Floating Point Error: The Game".

Also, it was added in 0.24.1

Pretty sure it's been around before then.

[magico13]

Pretty sure it's been around before then.

I think at that point he was talking about the decoupler bug but I'm not sure. That one was added during one of the bug fix updates of 0.24. I thought it was 0.24.2 but it might have been 0.24.1

[BudgetHedgehog]

Yeah, the changelog for 0.24.1 includes "Fixed an issue with some decoupler modules failing to apply ejection forces when activated". That fix broke them in a different way. Course, with 0.24.2 coming the next day, not a lot of people had a chance to encounter it. And 0.24.2 was just a tweak for right-clicks not registering anyway.

And yes, I was talking about the decoupler bug. Sorry, I quoted two paragraphs and responded to them out of order.

[Superfluous J]

Wait, they didn't know about the radial decoupler bug that they added during 0.24.2? Seriously? Has anyone at Squad tried flying the Kerbal X since then? It's ridiculously obvious with that craft. I used to use it for kOS testing in 0.23/early 0.24 until that bug appeared and started causing all of my (tested and frequently used) designs to suddenly destroy themselves under otherwise normal conditions.

I can't speak for Squad as a whole, but Maxmaps didn't know about it. If you do you either have the mod that fixes it, or you build around it.

Of course on his second attempt he blew up the center stack by aiming sepratrons at it so maybe he just doesn't play much

Is the maneuver node bug just that occasionally (read: frequently) when tweaking things your intercept randomly disappears for absolutely no reason and will randomly pop back into existence with minute changes and then disappear once you tweak it back to a previously working configuration?

read: always. I don't think it's possible for me to set up a minmus encounter with a periapsis below about 50-100km without having to resort to guesswork for both the maneuver node AND the burn.

[regex]

Sorry, I quoted two paragraphs and responded to them out of order.

NBD, sorry for taking it out of context.

[lincourtl]

I don't think it's possible for me to set up a minmus encounter with a periapsis below about 50-100km without having to resort to guesswork for both the maneuver node AND the burn.

Huh. Isn't that interesting. I've never had that happen to me with Minmus, but every single damn time for all of the outer planets.

[astecarmyman]

On a not particularly similar topic, we are thrilled to see the release of Unity 5, and look forward to digging into it once we’ve released 1.0, as development on the next update is far too advanced now to throw something as complex as an engine update on top of it.

*Hype intensifies*

does this mean I can finally run over 9000 parts without breaking the game?

[Rath]

I Think destructable buildings were very important because when my 10000 ton rocket smashes into the R&D center at 100 meters per second it should do something.