Shoddy Job with the VAB/SPH...

[BagelRabbit]

*This post has been brought to you by one of the most OCD people on the Forum. Sorry if any of the below statements bother you.*

Hello everyone! This is UpsilonAerospace.

Recently, there have been quite a few little things that have been bugging me immensely with the Vehicle Assembly Building and the Spaceplane Hangar. If someone at SQUAD took maybe fifteen minutes to mop these up, the game would look a lot more polished and professional, in my opinion. The lack of this polish is quite worrying to me, and (with all due respect to SQUAD) it comes off as shoddy and careless.

I should mention before I get any further that the Engineer's report and other features are very nice... but they don't help my frustration much.

So, here's what I dislike about the VAB/SPH.

> The Clouds. It's adding insult to injury that we can't get clouds in 1.0, except for the ones hanging outside of the VAB/SPH. This is misleading to new players ("The sky looks different in the VAB/SPH than it does in the game! Has some part of my install gone wrong?") and it's been there for far too many versions.

> Part Rotation. When you mouse over the parts arranged on the right side of the screen, there is an enlarged image of the part rotating. With some of these (the Mk2 Lander-Can), the part doesn't rotate about its center, but instead traces a wide loop: the 'center of revolution' appears to be the hatch. With some of these (Big ol' "Mammoth" engine cluster), the part is located too high up, so that the top of it is off the little image. With some of them (the Command Seat), there is no image of the part at all. This is one of those things that could probably be fixed without much trouble, so it's strange that it still exists.

> Part Specs. For many engines, the basic part specifications next to the part image have a scroll bar next to them, as they are ever-so-slightly too large to fit on the lines provided. If the scroll bar is used, the additional information to the right of it flickers in and out precariously.

> Grammar Errors. There are some pretty serious grammar errors in part descriptions. My personal favorite is this one, in the 'Flea' booster's description: "The RT-5 can be seen in use at many space programs, perhaps possibly because it is the only option for many space programs, but nevertheless, this small booster provides a nice kick to launch small payloads to considerable heights." This sentence is a train wreck. Other errors that appear commonly are joining an independent clause to a dependent clause using a comma and the word "and" (seen in the Mobile Processing Lab, among other places); starting or ending the description with a sentence fragment (very common); and improper lists ("The 'Drogue' parachute is small, deploys high up, and certainly not enough to stop you smashing into the ground..." - Radial-Mount Drogue 'Chute).

>Reusing Descriptions. This is especially true with the structural wings. Structural Wings of type B, C, and D and Swept Wings of types A and B all have the exact same, incredibly undescriptive two-sentence description. Likewise, the five types of Wing Connectors say only "A vaguely wing-shaped board;" "A vaguely wing-shaped board. Use at your own risk;" or "Found in a trash bin next to the wing factory." All three of the Mk3 cargo bays say the exact same bland little statements as well. Typing a description should take only a couple of minutes, so reusing descriptions strikes me as lazy (sorry). It seems as if this problem has only gotten worse as the versions progressed: the earlier parts' descriptions seem to be much more high-quality that the ones used today.

It would be so easy to fix these things. Unless you know something about programming that I don't (which is definitely possible), it seems as if these little issues would take only a couple of minutes to address. And yet, they weren't addressed... for KSP's biggest release.

This is one of my top priorities in the coming hotfix. Can you please, please take a little while to fix these things, guys?

If you find any other errors with "the little things," please let me know. Sure, they're little, but when combined, they become much larger.

Thanks for your time.

-Upsilon

Edited April 29, 2015 by UpsilonAerospace

[Hcube]

Engineer's report and other features are nice...

I'd rather say bugged. Useful, sure (i do like it) but bugged.

About the list that uses a scroll only for half a line of text not fitting: 100% agree. It also bothers me a lot... maybe resuce the font size could help ?

The clouds : we will get them some day anyway. Tis only a matter of time i guess.

cant talk about the grammar errors since english is not my mother language. (i must say i didnt exactly spot them, it all looks fine to me... anyone care to explain ? )

I'd like to see those fixed some day, but right now i think that overall 1.0 is good enough (in fact, it is very good) for us not being too picky about such small things. And there's also the fact that 1.0 arguably includes some pretty major oversights (*cough*, fairings, *cough*, heatshields *cough cough* ) wich are WAY more important IMO.

[Bill Phil]

I agree for most points. However, the RT-5's sentence is mostly okay... except for the "perhaps possibly". Only one of those two words is needed, as well as mentioning "space program" too many times...

[Robotengineer]

I would like to add that the part descriptions can be misleading. Some descriptions suggest part failure, even though it's not an element of the game.

[sal_vager]

I would like to add that the part descriptions can be misleading. Some descriptions suggest part failure, even though it's not an element of the game.

Fluff (Fiction).

[Azimech]

That's some heavy OCD stuff, yeah.

Have you seen that screw on the runway? Driving me mad. No-one ever sweeps the runway anymore.

[BagelRabbit]

I'd rather say bugged. Useful, sure (i do like it) but bugged.

I personally haven't found any bugs with it yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were some.

About the list that uses a scroll only for half a line of text not fitting: 100% agree. It also bothers me a lot... maybe resuce the font size could help?

That would be a nice, simple fix. Or maybe you could slightly lengthen the bar itself. Either way, I can't imagine this would take much time or effort.

The clouds : we will get them some day anyway. Tis only a matter of time i guess.

Until we get clouds, I feel as if the game shouldn't show clouds on some bits but not on others... it's not really an unreasonable request.

cant talk about the grammar errors since english is not my mother language. (i must say i didnt exactly spot them, it all looks fine to me... anyone care to explain ? )

The phrase "can be seen in use at many space programs" is a wordy way of saying "is used in many space programs." The phrase "perhaps possibly" is a little painful to me, for obvious reasons. It uses the phrase "many space programs" twice in a row, which is a no-no. This thing isn't technically a run-on sentence, but it is quite long and thus a bit difficult to read. The last bit of the sentence would read better if it didn't have an adjective before every noun - "small booster," "nice kick," "small payloads," "considerable heights" - although I'm just being pedantic with that last one. Nonetheless, this sentence is one that I would rework extensively if I were SQUAD.

I'd like to see those fixed some day, but right now i think that overall 1.0 is good enough (in fact, it is very good) for us not being too picky about such small things. And there's also the fact that 1.0 arguably includes some pretty major oversights (*cough*, fairings, *cough*, heatshields *cough cough* ) wich are WAY more important IMO.

I'm sorry for being picky (and yes, I'll readily admit that I am). However, many important things to fix have already been covered many times, and this hasn't yet been covered, even once. This isn't my biggest priority for bugfixes in 1.0, but it's certainly something that I want to see.

I would like to add that the part descriptions can be misleading. Some descriptions suggest part failure, even though it's not an element of the game.

Fluff (Fiction).

I'm fine with adding 'fluff' to parts' descriptions, as long as they have some indication of how the parts work. If a part has a bit of backstory followed by an explanation of its usage, that's great! If it doesn't have anything that informs players of how to use it or what it is used for, it's pointless. After all, the descriptions are written mostly for newer users why don't have a good idea of how the parts work. If the parts' descriptions are vague or contain only non-useful information, is there really a point to having a description at all?

That's some heavy OCD stuff, yeah.

Have you seen that screw on the runway? Driving me mad. No-one ever sweeps the runway anymore.

A screw on the runway is a cutesy Easter-egg. What I'm talking about are some tiny (and not-so-tiny) things that SQUAD didn't pay attention to. There's a big difference there...

-Upsilon

[Azimech]

To each his own. Personally, I feel this list should be at the very end. You're not going to polish the floor while still building a ceiling.

The order should be:

Performance, Unity 5, X64, multiplayer, materials/joints overhaul, fluid dynamics, hydraulics, mechanical switches/proximity sensors, life support .... 200 more things.

But hey, good to have diversity :-)

[Vectura]

There are also a fair few spelling errors in the science reports file

[Spacepetscompany]

To each his own. Personally, I feel this list should be at the very end. You're not going to polish the floor while still building a ceiling.

The order should be:

Performance, Unity 5, X64, multiplayer, materials/joints overhaul, fluid dynamics, hydraulics, mechanical switches/proximity sensors, life support .... 200 more things.

But hey, good to have diversity :-)

You are if you've declared the building officially "complete" (1.0).

[BagelRabbit]

To each his own. Personally, I feel this list should be at the very end. You're not going to polish the floor while still building a ceiling.

The order should be:

Performance, Unity 5, X64, multiplayer, materials/joints overhaul, fluid dynamics, hydraulics, mechanical switches/proximity sensors, life support .... 200 more things.

But hey, good to have diversity :-)

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of this analogy.

What I'm dealing with here isn't making the game more expansive, better-running, or more accurate to physics. But I would prefer that SQUAD takes some time to fix the little things that are wrong with this update before diving headlong into the bigger stuff.

SQUAD has a certain internal schedule that it needs to follow, and like all game companies, it must budget its time well. Pretty much all of the things you mentioned would likely take days or even weeks to code. The stuff I'm recommending (while it is less significant) would probably take an hour or two, tops. In other words, SQUAD could fix all of this stuff that I want to fix and add the stuff you wanted, no problem. Or, they could just put it off for another version, for no real reason at all.

Oh, and I also agree wholeheartedly with Spacepetscompany's statement:

You are [going to polish the floor] if you've declared the building officially "complete" (1.0).

If the game is supposed to have any semblance of completion, all aspects of it need to be polished. SQUAD has done a reasonably good job with some aspects, but it's done a poor job with others. There's really no way to say "But it's not important!" when it's basically the first thing you see upon starting a new game. There's no way to say "We can fix it later!" when it was already supposed to be fixed by now.

Again, though, I seem to have a different set of priorities than others. As Azimech says, I guess it's good to have diversity

-Upsilon