Devnote Tuesday: Slow News Day I

[SQUAD]

<figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="92" data-orig-width="480"><img data-orig-height="92" data-orig-width="480" alt="image" src="https://40.media.tumblr.com/0ff9377afa68dc3ad3fe6844aaf1bd38/tumblr_inline_npc49sO55N1rr2wit_540.jpg"/></figure><p><b>Max (Maxmaps)</b></p><blockquote><p><b></b>Hi guys,1.0.3 .has started a long experimentals

period through which we’ll try and find the best balance compromise that

makes the game as challenging as it can be without detracting to the

fun of it. However, it is most likely that 1.0.3 won’t see public

release for the next two weeks. While Felipe, Mike and Jim will be

checking progress and doing minor changes, they are officially on a two

week vacation as of this Monday. This is due to the fact that the studio

worked nonstop from the release of 0.90 to 1.0, including several

weekends and overtime being put into it. Even after the release, we dove

face first into the Unity 5 upgrade, and several milestones have been

accomplished in it.</p><p>We figured this was the best moment for a

break for them as there is a lull in their abilities being required

while we find the perfect balance for 1.0.3, and the rest of us at Squad

will do our best to make sure this is accomplished while they rest.</p><p>On

my personal devnote, I’ve been finalizing deals several of our business

partners. I would love to share more on those, but due to agreements

with said partners, they will remain pretty big (and cool!) surprises

for just a little longer. </p></blockquote><p><b>Alex (aLeXmOrA)</b></p><blockquote><p>My last devnote post, guys. Yesterday, I helped TeacherGaming with the launch of KerbalEDU including KSP 1.0 features. All schools that have purchased this version should be enjoying it. This was my last contribution to the KSP Team since from now on I’m no longer working at Squad anymore. It’s been a great adventure working on this huge and amazing project. <br/></p><p>As one of the initial core members of the team, I remember the early days working with Felipe and trying to build the first rocket made of cylinders in Unity. I’ve seen it grow and become the game it is now, but none of this could have happened without all the support from you, the KSP community. I really want to thank you for being there since the beginning and for being part of those crazy fans out there that love the game and spent a lot of time playing it. All your feedback and comments let us know how to direct and create a great game. <br/></p><p>It’s been a pleasure and honor working with the team, they’re excellent people and I hope their “trip†to take Kerbal Space Program beyond what it is already right now, will be extraordinary. Thank you Squad and Kerbal Space Program for everything. I’m leaving, but taking a lot of experiences with me. <br/></p><p>Hope to see you soon again! Good bye.</p></blockquote><p><b>Marco (Samssonart)</b> <br/></p><blockquote><p>Last week I was feeling ill and couldn’t make it my devnotes in time, sorry about that. These last few weeks I’ve been learning my way around the new Unity GUI system, it’s awesome, it’s very flexible, modular and more efficient than anything we’ve tried before, this alone will mean a performance boost for KSP. Aside from that I am learning how to give maintenance to the older build servers, the ones in Mexico HQ. And I am resuming improvements and testing for the patcher, so as soon as we have access to the new server’s Rsync the patcher will be pretty much ready to go.</p></blockquote><p><b>Daniel (danRosas)</b><br/></p><blockquote><p>I’ve been gathering some promotional images, videos, etc for Max and Kasper. I’ve done a list of tweaks I want to do to the Kerbals, now that everything is looking better on Unity 5. I’m also making good use of time, now that everything is moving at a better pace than before the release, to learn new tricks.</p></blockquote><p><b>Ted (Ted) <br/></b></p><blockquote><p><b></b>It’s been a rather uneventful past week. We’ve got 1.0.3 in Experimentals, getting tested away by the Experimental Team. Though activity is a tad low due to the significant effort put in by so many for 1.0, it’ll hopefully pick up soon! I’ve been doing production-type tasks and sorting out our internal documentation, making things as seamless as possible for all involved when it comes to designing and developing updates.</p></blockquote><p><b>Kasper (KasperVld)</b></p><blockquote><p> It’s been a rather quiet week, mostly because HarvesteR, Mu and Romfarer are now enjoying some well deserved time off. We’ve seen some changes in the studio, and even though Rogelio and Alejandro will of course be missed, I’m sure that both them and us will be able to move forward.</p><p>To me, one thing stood out in the community this week: DK returned to streaming and after moving to another state he was struggling to make rent. Within minutes a few very generous people in the community bonded together to help him out. I think that’s something that’s rarely seen in the gaming world, and I’m very proud it happened in this community.</p><p>A final (very cool) note is that KSP is going to be part of a display in a German museum from August until April next year! If you live near Karlsruhe you can take a look at <a href="http://zkm.de/en/event/2015/08/globale-global-games"><b>their website</b>.</a></p></blockquote><p><br/></p><hr><p><i>Felipe (HarvesteR), Mike (Mu) and Jim (Romfarer) are enjoying a well earned two week vacation</i></p><hr>

[Alshain]

The team is shrinking fast

Good luck on future endeavors Alex.

[hoojiwana]

Fairly disappointing that 1.0.3 is still weeks away. Why exactly did the team opt to work on Unity 5 things when they (presumably) knew they had vacation time coming up and would be unable to work on a needed hotfix?

[Alshain]

Fairly disappointing that 1.0.3 is still weeks away. Why exactly did the team opt to work on Unity 5 things when they (presumably) knew they had vacation time coming up and would be unable to work on a needed hotfix?

I was a little surprised by that too since Harvester said "days not weeks" last week. Nevertheless, better to take some time and get it right than risk irritating everyone with something not good.

[smjjames]

What does (or did) Alex do? Art?

Also, Max, the formatting for your paragraph is a bit screwed up somehow.

Anyways, you guys definetly deserve a break.

Even though I really want those heat system memory leaks fixed (I suspect theres some other memory leaks in that system besides the tempgauges), PLEASE do a really good experimentials phase?

Not trying to be demanding, just trying to say 'could you guys do an efficient and excellent experimentials phase and take your time with it' in a nice way, or something.

[RocketPilot573]

Vacation is indeed well deserved! Though getting 1.0.3 out a tad sooner would have been nice. Also best of luck Alex!

[smjjames]

Fairly disappointing that 1.0.3 is still weeks away. Why exactly did the team opt to work on Unity 5 things when they (presumably) knew they had vacation time coming up and would be unable to work on a needed hotfix?

I guess they wanted to see what work and stuff they'd have to do before going on vacation? Better to dive facefirst into it sooner than later.

[Yakuzi]

Thanks so much Alex and all the best with whatever you'll get up to next!

Thanks for taking the time to get 1.0.3 right Squad, please consider doing this for future updates as well.

[KasperVld]

What does (or did) Alex do? Art?

Alex was one of the original devs, though in the last few years he's mostly been doing things in the background. Keeping everything running smoothly so to speak, and he's also supported the KerbalEDU guys a lot.

[Wiseman]

Sounds like it's not so much that it's going to take weeks to actually develop the patch, rather they're tweaking numbers and having the experimentals team see how each one feels. Max talked about that in the Squadcast, as well, that this patch is more "tweak it until it feels just right" than anything else.

[Caelib]

For those going on vacation, enjoy your well-deserved time off

[pandaman]

Much as I was hoping for 1.0.3 soon I'd rather they took time to fix as many bugs and get the best balance they can.

So a bit of a longer wait now is sort of good news. Like being told Santa can't deliver your present at Christmas because it's too big to fit in the sleigh with all the others, so he's making a special journey at new year instead.

[Robotengineer]

Enjoy your time off! It's kind of sad to see another dev go, but hopefully my earlier prediction of a dev exodus will not come true. Glad to here 1.0.3 is getting a long experimentals.

[softweir]

The team is shrinking fast

Good luck on future endeavors Alex.

I assume that when referring to "days not weeks", Harv meant "days to fix the bugs, not weeks". The weeks will be spent BALANCING the parts, and that is always a long, slow and difficult process when done properly. After all, the test team have to run many playtests with different balance schemes, argue over how perceived problems should be fixed, have tantrums because other people don't agree*, reach a compromise and then test again.

* Tantrums not included in basic price. WARNING: throwing tantrums at faces is dangerous! Always ensure adult supervision while playing with tantrums.

[jjwb22101]

Thanks for everything Alex! It's been nice having you around, and best of luck in your future endeavors. I think this leaves just Felipe for devs who have been with us since the beginning, unless I'm missing something. Thanks for the update guys, even though I was hoping for an earlier release for 1.0.3 to fix some of the bugs in 1.0.2.

[basic.syntax]

Also said in last Friday's SQ was that they didn't like discovering an unpleasant bug with 1.0.1 and having to snap out a 1.0.2, six hours later. I think they want 1.0.3 to be the Last Patch, so the entire team can move on to Unity 5.

[Laie]

Fairly disappointing that 1.0.3 is still weeks away. Why exactly did the team opt to work on Unity 5 things when they (presumably) knew they had vacation time coming up and would be unable to work on a needed hotfix?

I presume it was the other way round: From the sound of it, the hotfix appears to be mostly done, what remains is balance stuff. They found that the devs aren't really needed for the thorough testing phase and gave them some time off. I guess they're still on call in case another memory leak is discovered, but balancing requires no programmer.

The last weeks (nay, months) were pretty intense, and the next ones will be too. This year there will probably be no good time to take a break, but breaks are necessary and right now seems to be not too bad.

[HafCoJoe]

See you later . It's been a good trip so far, and I hope it continues!

[Wallygator]

Change is always good as long as focus can be maintained. A bit of new blood in the dev circle should be a good thing. Best of luck to those leaving and welcome to any joining in. The dev team needs to evolve and balance just as much as the game

Cheers to all!!

[smjjames]

Also said in last Friday's SQ was that they didn't like discovering an unpleasant bug with 1.0.1 and having to snap out a 1.0.2, six hours later. I think they want 1.0.3 to be the Last Patch, so the entire team can move on to Unity 5.

Yeah. 1.0.2 which ended up introducing another bug, or maybe the memory leak was already there.

I agree though, they really need to take their time with it and experimential test it as deeply as possible.

[GusTurbo]

I always look forward to dev notes. I hope the team gets a refreshing rest.

So how's about implementing this:http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/124031-1-0-2-Stock-Clamshell-Fairings-%28June-1%29

Edited June 2, 2015 by GusTurbo

[Robotengineer]

Change is always good as long as focus can be maintained. A bit of new blood in the dev circle should be a good thing. Best of luck to those leaving and welcome to any joining in. The dev team needs to evolve and balance just as much as the game

Cheers to all!!

To evolve, one needs new devs. Right now its just extinction.

[Wallygator]

To evolve, one needs new devs. Right now its just extinction.

Not necessarily.

Teams can improve through a number of channels assuming quality leadership.

[Tourist]

Sad to see so many leaving, but is to be expected at the end of a project. Good work Alex and good luck.

Personally I'm glad they delayed the update to deal with balancing. Not that I think it is unbalanced now.... but many do, so I think Squad needs to have a good think, and more importantly be seen to be really thinking about the balancing. So that when the decide on the final balance, people can at least see it was a decision made with considerable attention. They will still not please everyone of course.... they ultimately need to make the decision in the best interests of the game (and the company) as a whole.

[basic.syntax]

To evolve, one needs new devs. Right now its just extinction.

I heard a rumor in the SQ I transcribed. I never made a big deal of it, just left it out there, wondering if people would pick up on it. People don't seem to comment on blogs.