Squadcast Summary (2015-04-11) - Arrangement Of S.H.I.E.L.Ds Edition!

[Eric S]

No heatshields?

They said no dedicated heatshield parts. It's not the first time they said that either. First time I remember it was over two years ago, so this wasn't a matter of not making the deadline. It looks like they have a vision for reentry that doesn't quite line up with your vision. Or maybe they plan on using something that's already in the (v1.0) game, like fairings. There's quite a lot of wiggle room in what has actually been said, and we don't have enough info to really evaluate this.

As for complete, they said that the game would have everything that they originally envisioned would be in the game. They also said that development of the game would continue. Yeah, I expect some fan reviews to be upset by a non-final 1.0, but to be honest, anyone looking at the game from the outside probably wouldn't realize that there's some minor stuff missing.

I'm I saying that 1.0 is going to be close to perfect? Nope, too soon to tell. I've always been sceptical of devs that say they're going to fix everything in a single patch, but at least it sounds like the game will be less buggy (especially memory leaks, which are a major issue with 0.90). The major functionality is going to be there. We won't know how well it hits the target until we get our hands on it.

Edited April 11, 2015 by Eric S

[cantab]

One thing I forgot to point out before: There's no such thing as rounded fairings in KSP at all. They're all using triangle-based meshes, as that's what your video card renders~

True...but pedantic and irrelevant IMHO. It's perfectly straightforward to make things that look quite round enough. Ie 90% of parts in the game.

[Majorjim!]

True...but pedantic and irrelevant IMHO. It's perfectly straightforward to make things that look quite round enough. Ie 90% of parts in the game.

100% agreed! Limiting the fairings to pointy ones is not good at all. It is perfectly possible to impliment rounder cones.

Come on Squad!! What are you doing??

[GusTurbo]

100% agreed! Limiting the fairings to pointy ones is not good at all. It is perfectly possible to impliment rounder cones.

Come on Squad!! What are you doing??

I watched the 'cast, and I believe Max said you could also make round ones.

[Kerbart]

That sounds to me like squad doesn't understand that a released game is meant to be feature complete. If they're skipping this to try and push 1.0 out then that suggests that there needs to be a 0.95 before it.

I take offense to that statement. 0.91. At best.

[Yukon0009]

Or hopefully, they choose to give wings and structural panels heat shielding.

[Karriz]

I think every part will have a set amount of heat tolerance. Wings and structure parts would be more resistant than solar panels, for example.

Logically, they'd be resistant enough to withstand a re-entry, because otherwise the game would be broken.

[Renegrade]

True...but pedantic and irrelevant IMHO. It's perfectly straightforward to make things that look quite round enough. Ie 90% of parts in the game.

Yeah, but using the point-by-point drawing system, you can ALSO draw round-LOOKING fairings. They won't be actually round, but then again, the other, third party fairings, aren't actually round either.

It will just be click-ier, that's all.

The no-round-fairings bit is the pedantic and irrelevant thing (actually more like wrong and irrelevant), as you can draw them as close to round as you like~ I seem to recall reading somewhere that the fuel tanks have a very small number of sides (relatively speaking) of something like... 24 or 32 or such. Making a payload fairing by hand that's rounded would be about half that in terms of clicks, and that's probably overkill unless you routinely zoom all the way in during launches.

Here's an example of a 5-click profile, with the clicks highlighted:

Would take like nine clicks total to make it like that at both ends.

The discussions of aero from Squad before implied fairly heavily that the shielding effects will be available to modders and parts and such, so it should be easy to adapt fixed and procedural fairings to the system.

The only real problem with them (barring bugs and shortcomings in the actual implementation, and the bit where Maxmaps said that the fairing "forgot" the definition when removed, which could suck if he didn't actually delete the part) is that they are the same profile all around - ie. you couldn't fairing a flat shape without wasting a lot of space (and thereby cross-sectional area and thereby drag). However, ALL of the fairings I've seen from mods have this same problem too.

[Whirligig Girl]

As cool as having fairings is, I will be super honest when I say that the moment I saw the model for the fairing I was disappointed. They look too bare and boring. A little ridge on a edge of a fairing piece or maybe construction out of corrugated metal would look so much better!

[Hcube]

As cool as having fairings is, I will be super honest when I say that the moment I saw the model for the fairing I was disappointed. They look too bare and boring. A little ridge on a edge of a fairing piece or maybe construction out of corrugated metal would look so much better!

I agree that the yellow line thing makes them look weird, but then a corrugated metal look would'nt be good either i think... What i REALLY whish for is having a BIG mission flag painted on the fairing, and maybe give it the "style" of the flag : if you choose a gray-blue one, it would appear on the fairing and the rest of the fairing would also be mostly gray-blue. See what i mean ?

Cause the mission flags are never painted on the launchers, and that's too bad. IRL, most rockets are covered up with small "sticker-like" flags.

[Gkirmathal]

Squad has patched a whole ton of bugs and RAM leaks - "KSP is behaving waaahaahaaay better now". No 64bit yet though, not yet.

This makes me feel more warm and fuzzy on the inside about 1.0 Especially if that mean 'better stability' when modding.

The fairings look good but in my opinion they seem rather segmented, as in several separate parts. Which is something I personally tried to avoid when looking for my current fairings mod PF.

[Daze]

The fairings construction should be very good if it would be possible to have "snap" after maybe 50cm and locked inclination. Also i would like to see a discret quantity of option for them, like "number" of fairings, the possibility to export them in subassemblies so it is possible to have "standard" fairings and *notveryimportant* to have the possibility to change decal or color

[smjjames]

As far as the fairing textures, maybe they're intentionally leaving it that way so that modders could fill in with their own textures?

[klgraham1013]

Precisely. You don't need blunt-shaped ablative heat shield for Mach 6-7, you just have to use something that's a bit more heat resistant than plywood.

Normally that shouldn't be a problem, but I suspect Jeb's Junkyard builds primarily out of plywood and duct tape..

Yes, but I'd much rather have a nice looking heat shield than structural plates beneath my rover. It's also why I would use nice looking fairings as opposed to wing parts.

[Kerbart]

Come on Squad!! What are you doing??

Well, they're trying to implement a boatload of new features, that should have gone into versions .91, .92, .93, .94, .95 and .96 in a gold release version that really should just be focusing on removing that last few bugs (the ones that weren't squashed in said versions .91, .92, .93, .94 ,.95 and .96)

[klgraham1013]

Really?

No heatshields?

Building tiers left out?

I know that squad does not care that much about details but - this time didn't they said the game will be complete?

I don't know but either they are very brave or they don't care about ratings from gaming sites. I don't think they will achieve this rating 4Players Link When they publish in an incomplete state on the other hand why really care? They sold many copies and should have made their profit.

And not to forget there is a mod

They probably figure that since they've sold so many copies of an incomplete game already, that selling an incomplete finished game won't affect sells much.

[Kerbart]

As far as the fairing textures, maybe they're intentionally leaving it that way so that modders could fill in with their own textures?

When you're working yourself to the bone to get the "gold 1.0" release out you're going to focus on what is essential, everything else will be left out. The real problem here is rushing the 1.0 version. Fairings should have been a .91 release. Fixing the bugs we're going to find with the fairings a .92 release. Adding features that we, the community, consider "lacking" a .93 release. And THEN and ONLY THEN when fairings are solidly in play, the .95 release would be having the long awaited atmospheric model, and you'd need another two or three releases to tweak it and to have the fairings interact with it nicely.

In parallel, and along the same path, you'd be introducing heat shields. First cosmetic, but get the 'procedural heat shields' right and once that's in play introduce re-entry heat (and consequences) in .95

Same for the buildings, deep space fueling, career overhaul, etc. You would want to have a handful of version so by the time 1.0 comes out the game is "perfect"

I really, really think that 99% of the people on this forum would have no problems at all with a 1.0 version whose "modest" features are that all the bugs have been squashed, as that would have been an epic achievement. And THEN Squad can focus on adding features like Infernal Robotics, KAS, Life Support and other cool stuff to new releases updates. Where I now think we're going to see a pretty long procession from 1.0 to 1.13 of bug fixes.

[klgraham1013]

Come on Squad!! What are you doing??

I, currently, default to this statement most of the time.

edit: Yeah, there's snark there, but no heat shields, flaps, other required aero parts, delaying features to push out 1.0. I take this way to seriously.

Edited April 11, 2015 by klgraham1013

[r4pt0r]

"They make a desert and call it peace."

hidden text to make the spacing look nice-Tacitus

"They make a second Beta and call it 1.0."

more hidden text for spacing-Me

Theres no point in it klgrahm1013. In my head I will just call 1.0 .95 instead. There is a huge thread where ~75% of people think its too early still for 1.0. Squad is still doing it anyway, so just enjoy .95 when it comes out.

[r_rolo1]

Ok, I've been in the Squadcast yesterday and TBH I don't see where people here got the idea that all the fairings would be pointy. Maxmaps said specifically than that would not be the case and that the pics he had with pointy fairings were just because he had designed them that way for aesthetic reasons.

That said, I'm not so hot ( pun intended ) on the fairings departement , or better said , on the lack of mention of ablative shields, especially with Maxmaps saying somewhere in the yesterday Squadcast that up to this point he wasn't able so far to do a sucessful reentry with a plane on the new atmo model on default settings. Not that max is the best pilot in KSP history , but i find that kind of statement worrying ...

[TMS]

"They make a desert and call it peace."

hidden text to make the spacing look nice-Tacitus

"They make a second Beta and call it 1.0."

more hidden text for spacing-Me

Theres no point in it klgrahm1013. In my head I will just call 1.0 .95 instead. There is a huge thread where ~75% of people think its too early still for 1.0. Squad is still doing it anyway, so just enjoy .95 when it comes out.

I still refer to it as 0.27.

[Pthigrivi]

Hmmm yeah,.. I do hope curved nose cones are implemented. I mean I'll deal if I have to make them from segments but it would be nice. Could be an easy tweakable option. I'll also sign on to say I'm a little bummed that we're skipping heat shields, but so long as it's physically possible to do an interplanetary aerocapture with stock parts I'm cool waiting for 1.1.

[Merinsan]

Ok, I've been in the Squadcast yesterday and TBH I don't see where people here got the idea that all the fairings would be pointy. Maxmaps said specifically than that would not be the case and that the pics he had with pointy fairings were just because he had designed them that way for aesthetic reasons.

That said, I'm not so hot ( pun intended ) on the fairings departement , or better said , on the lack of mention of ablative shields, especially with Maxmaps saying somewhere in the yesterday Squadcast that up to this point he wasn't able so far to do a sucessful reentry with a plane on the new atmo model on default settings. Not that max is the best pilot in KSP history , but i find that kind of statement worrying ...

"I find that quite worrying too. But I find this a little more worrying:

Fun fact: Squad sometimes actually uses Danny2462's videos for bugfixing. If they can replicate the steps and consider it severe enough, they will patch it. But sometimes, they just think 'oh, attaching 2 claws to a kerbal breaks the universe? How about you just don't do that..'"

Not fixing a bug because it's not something a "normal" user shouldn't do is foolish IMO. Bugs like this often have a root cause that can create other issues. Sure, if you can't reproduce the problem, ignore it, but ignoring it up front is just lazy.

[problemecium]

I hope that cursor is optional. Call me strange but I prefer the system default cursor, especially after I went to all the trouble of making myself a custom one. Plus it's too tilty.

And can I mention yet again that "Danny's 2 Klaws on a Kerbal Glitch" wasn't discovered by Danny and doesn't require a Kerbal? Or even 2 Klaws actually? Just drive any old thing into a Klaw on another ship. I posted a bug report about it way back when the Klaw first came out. I guess I should start making videos so people notice...

[Red Iron Crown]

"I find that quite worrying too. But I find this a little more worrying:

Fun fact: Squad sometimes actually uses Danny2462's videos for bugfixing. If they can replicate the steps and consider it severe enough, they will patch it. But sometimes, they just think 'oh, attaching 2 claws to a kerbal breaks the universe? How about you just don't do that..'"

Not fixing a bug because it's not something a "normal" user shouldn't do is foolish IMO. Bugs like this often have a root cause that can create other issues. Sure, if you can't reproduce the problem, ignore it, but ignoring it up front is just lazy.

You're taking the wrong message from that. No bug gets ignored, but they do get triaged and prioritized as developer/tester time is finite and they need to spend that time wisely, i.e. on the most critical bugs that affect the most people. If the only way to reproduce a bug is through an unlikely scenario then it is less of a priority to fix than bugs that are more easily and commonly tripped.