1.03/1.04 Reactions

[Richy teh space man]

I think that after going into the full version of the game, ie 1.0, save breaking and changing how craft perform in and out of atmosphere shouldn't be taking place. I'd be okay with this if this was KSP 0.91.4, but it's frustrating having to relearn how crafts work every other update. At this point I'm wondering if there's any point to even playing, since 1.05 may break them again..

Please Squad just pick an aerodynamic and heating model and stick with it, constant changes to it are off putting.

[Warzouz]

It's obvious that 1.0 was released too soon.

1- 0.9 wasn't a beta, it was an alpha. (beta is usually full-featured)

2- 1.0 was still a beta (many feathures were heavily tuned between 1.0 ans 1.0.2 and again on 1.0.4).

3- Save games are broken (1.0.2 viable missions aren't viable in 1.0.4). That's also an indication of a beta.

Overall, KSP is playable for a long time, but in a "beta" status. That doesn't mean the game is not enjoyable, it's a very good game. The real question is : is the game still in beta ?

As I become more expirenced, I notice that the game is harder to get in for new players. Proper reentry is a good challenge for regular players, but that can be overly complexe for players that discovers the game as the game itself don't give any hints on how to do it properly, same for MPL, ISRU, heat or even dV and TWR...

Sure it's a discovery game, but I find there are too many things to discover on the first few rocket launches. Learning curve becomes steeper and steeper. I thing the game is harder to get in today than it was when I got in (in beta 0.9)

[includao]

While it could be understable that in a game of this complexity things are going to break even if it's not beta anymore, I think they need to do a better job on this. Fix what is in the game already and give priority to stability, mod support (official x64 client), performance.

- - - Updated - - -

This Unity upgrade, going on past experience, will then lead to more game breaking bugs and career breaking fixes.

If this gives us stability, performance, mod support (x64 official client support), I'm in...

[Ryds]

While it could be understable that in a game of this complexity things are going to break even if it's not beta anymore, I think they need to do a better job on this. Fix what is in the game already and give priority to stability, mod support (official x64 client), performance.

- - - Updated - - -

If this gives us stability, performance, mod support (x64 official client support), I'm in...

So am I and everyone else but it would be nice to have a freeze on the current version, once bugs are fixed, so that we get the chance to actually play it for a few months.

[marce]

Haven't started with 1.0.4 (or .3) yet, still waiting for all mods to be updated or confirm compatibility.

So I'd like to hijack this thread a little: changelog says there have been updates to the flight integrator. Are phantom forces reduced now?

I'm getting tired of seeing every single station I build eventually either leave the solar system or crash into a planet, because the orbit changes all the time if timewarp isn't active

[Nigeth]

In my experience no it has not reduced phantom forces. That's actually one of the issues that plague my now abandoned career save. I have two crafts - one surfaced on Eve and another splashed down on Laithe - where the phantom forces make the solar panels disintegrate whenever I switch to them. When I revert to launch sometimes planes flip over or turn sideways. When I revert to launch sometimes my whole rocket yanks sideways and the rocket including launch clamps ends up at an 45° angle. I once lost an atmospheric analyzer mid flight while in transit from Kerbin to Jool that was stowed away in a service bay because it broke off. A few times when I was rotating my craft (with "q" and "e") the solar panels fell off. I could go on. Once my whole ship simply broke apart mid flight.

The whole issue where the physics "wind-up" changes orbit and/or velocity once the game switches from physics-less to physics mode is still there also

[marce]

In my experience no it has not reduced phantom forces. That's actually one of the issues that plague my now abandoned career save. I have two crafts - one surfaced on Eve and another splashed down on Laithe - where the phantom forces make the solar panels disintegrate whenever I switch to them. When I revert to launch sometimes planes flip over or turn sideways. When I revert to launch sometimes my whole rocket yanks sideways and the rocket including launch clamps ends up at an 45° angle. I once lost an atmospheric analyzer mid flight while in transit from Kerbin to Jool that was stowed away in a service bay because it broke off. A few times when I was rotating my craft (with "q" and "e") the solar panels fell off. I could go on. Once my whole ship simply broke apart mid flight.

The whole issue where the physics "wind-up" changes orbit and/or velocity once the game switches from physics-less to physics mode is still there also

Thanks for the update Nigeth.

In the meanwhile I'm pretty sure it's not only a float vs. double problem.

There has to be an issue in the engine or SQUAD would have fixed it already, they simply can't not see this and it's also a problem of not modded installs as well, so it should reduce Felipe's "fun" also.

/hijack end

[Levelord]

I think that after going into the full version of the game, ie 1.0, save breaking and changing how craft perform in and out of atmosphere shouldn't be taking place. I'd be okay with this if this was KSP 0.91.4, but it's frustrating having to relearn how crafts work every other update. At this point I'm wondering if there's any point to even playing, since 1.05 may break them again..

Please Squad just pick an aerodynamic and heating model and stick with it, constant changes to it are off putting.

I've been saying this for the better part of this year, but unfortunately the KSP fanbase thinks that asking for SQUAD to make a decision and commit to it instead of being inconsistent and changing the core physics of the game on a whim, as an irrational request. So I'm just sitting on my ass at the moment watching what changes, because as far as I'm concerned I'm simply wasting my time playing this game when my progress is always being reset to zero and my knowledge accumulated from the fan-touted 'more realistic' physics rendered obsolete because the fabric of reality keeps changing.

I'm not even asking SQUAD to not change the game or improve it. I just want them to be consistent and have a clear goal and commit to it instead of having a see saw of increasing drag/lowering drag/increasing lift/lowering lift like a clueless schizophrenic.

I'll quote an older post I made in another thread which sums up my position:

13th June 2015, 10:24

I was prepared for the expected changes from 0.9 to 1.0 which introduced a myriad of things such as re-entry heating in addition to the aerodynamics. As expected I had my entire 0.9 fleet obsolete and had to re-design them (they weren't air hogging or aerodynamically draggy) due to the changes to engine ISP, engine weight changes, reduce wing count, and to account for the fact that tubular tanks now contribute to lift. I also changed my ascent profile accordingly to a steep one to avoid overheating.

Come 1.01, 1.02, SQUAD changed the aerodynamics again with new drag values and re-entry heat. My ships had to go through another round of re-designs from scratch (to remove further wings) and my ascent profile had to change to a radically different one with a shallower climb. While you may regard as the aero changes as small, they do impart very large changes to ship design and ascent profiles. I'm mainly a SSTO builder so these changes are very noticeable in crafts that operate within very narrow margins.

Knowing that the aerodynamics is still incomplete and not in it's final form, I have heard that 1.03 may have yet another aero tweak again. If not in 1.03 it's a definite certainty that the aero will still change somewhere down the line later, and that always means that I will have to put my career mode on hold halfway to fiddle around in sandbox mode trying to get things to work from the drawing board again.

I know it's not addressed to me, but I think you might underestimate how much time some players like myself spend trying to master the new aerodynamics only to realize that this becomes pointless in an aero model that is still subject to changes every few months.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/122688-Something-doesn-t-seem-right-here?p=1965188&viewfull=1#post1965188

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/122688-Something-doesn-t-seem-right-here?p=1978057&viewfull=1#post1978057

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/122574-Radial-mounted-parts-on-atmospheric-flight-performance

Edited June 26, 2015 by Levelord

[Geschosskopf]

I see everything from 0.9 on as steps in the wrong direction. Granted, there were a lot of good ideas and long-desired features added to the game in this interval but most of them turned out to have negative impacts that outweighed any good they did. Therefore, over this period, the game has become less fun and more broken. I blame this on KSP losing sight of its roots. It's trying to become something it was never meant to be, or was at least precluded from being by basic decisions made way back in its early development.

[SoWeMeetAgain]

Nope, just the Devnote Tuesdays (They're posted on Reddit as well). It's where the devs and PR guys fill the community in on the happenings of KSP. Which is exactly what you are looking for.

EDIT: Looks like it was a squadcast, not a devnote tuesday. So yea, they could have done a tiny bit better.

Agreed

eh, I bought a "finished product" (it's not marked as alpha or beta or anything), it auto updates as all games do on default, updates should never ever break save files unless absolutely necessary, that means certainly not on accident like here.

[Tankman101]

eh, I bought a "finished product" (it's not marked as alpha or beta or anything), it auto updates as all games do on default, updates should never ever break save files unless absolutely necessary, that means certainly not on accident like here.

I'd call the sillyness with the heating necessary.

[Nigeth]

It's only "necessary" if the stock heating is not "realistic" (whatever that means) enough for your tastes. I'd argue instead that the default game mechanics of a game that is targeted at a broader audience (KSP even has an enducational version) should never cater to the hardcore crowd and instead aim for a system that is "fun" and maybe even "challenging" but not necessarily realistic.

The fact that DRE, real fuels and FAR exist and can be installed when you want things to be more realistic and, well, more deadly make me wonder why people even argue for a more realistic stock aerodynamic and heating model.

[Pixel of Life]

I agree with SoWeMeetAgain - save breaking changes are alright when a game is still in alpha/beta, but in a full release? No. It's unacceptable, especially when it happens this often. I don't think KSP was ready to leave early access just yet.

That said, things are working rather nicely now. I've played 1.0.4 for a few hours now and haven't found anything gamebreaking.

[rkman]

I'm not even asking SQUAD to not change the game or improve it. I just want them to be consistent and have a clear goal and commit to it instead of having a see saw of increasing drag/lowering drag/increasing lift/lowering lift like a clueless schizophrenic.

I think Squad is not being schizophrenic, they just gave themselves to little time to balance heating and aero. All versions since 1.0 did have some issue with one and/or the other that needed to be fixed, and fixing it turns out to be difficult.

I am going on the assumption that the game will only be truly finished some time after the migration to Unity 5.

[monstah]

I'm probably turn off Steam auto-updates and rever to my 0.90 savegame until some indefinite time in the future when the changes don't force me to start over every time. My career was progressing fine there, all my favourite mods worked, and I've never touched stock aero in quite sometime so it makes no difference to me.

Is nuFar 1.0.x only?

[eddiew]

At first I was

Then I was

Now I'm

[stevehead]

Squad's QA has been questionable at best lately I have to say. There are too many bugs released that make me wonder how in the world did they let those slip by into the release if they had been properly play testing their own game? The temperature gauge memory leak (1.0.2) should have been detected easily through edge case testing numerous overheating parts at the same time, the launch clamp bug (1.0.2, fixed?) should have been noticed at some point if they had been doing numerous launches, the heat shield problem with 1.0.2 -> 1.0.3 saves should have been discovered if they had been testing 1.0.2 saves on 1.0.3, and the exception spam with the parachutes in the VAB in 1.0.4 (not sure if present in 1.0.3) should have been detected as soon as they started testing building crafts in the VAB (not familiar with actual Unity development, but shouldn't there be some debug tool that easily alerts you to uncaught exceptions while playing the game during development? Although I'm not a game developer, but if I'm programming something, I certainly know when uncaught exceptions occur during my development/testing). In addition to the bugs, the constant back-and-forth balancing of game mechanics (e.g. new heating and aero) that should have been tested in alpha/beta is very off-putting.

I understand Squad is a small team and do not have the resources and manpower that these large AAA game companies have, especially with a game as complex as KSP. But something needs to be done. KSP is no longer an early-access game and they cannot be expected to allow these obvious game breaking / annoying bugs and balancing issues through into what most people expect to be a, more or less, finished product; I say "finished" loosely because new features/improvements are certainly welcome, but if they were to just stop KSP development for whatever reason minus minor bug fixes, the game should be able to stand on its own at this point.

The easiest solution would be to give all players (not a selective group such as modders and youtubers) a chance to publicly test a release candidate before proper release. This will effectively increase the testing manpower many-fold, allow Squad to polish the release, and not have to go through this constant mess of having multiple releases in such a small amount of time. Public tests work for other games such as WoW (PTRs) and Minecraft (snapshots).

Edited June 26, 2015 by stevehead

[inigma]

Here's the Reaction.

[Mikki]

Hi all

I have voted the Game is complete, in my personal opinion its on the same level like other highend PC products, aka ARMA series, Flight Simulator X, Morrowind, ... its different and a class of its own, i think it has done PC game history.

SQUAD are AWESOME.

Greetings

[foxkill2342]

Cool bug. You are part clipping which I believe has something to do with it. In a physics sandbox game you can't expect 100% perfection. There are literally limitless numbers of part combinations. I don't expect Squad to be able to anticipate this kind of bug. I feel 1.03 really reached a good balance point with aero/heating and reentry. I haven't had as much time to play, but all the big issues that were raised are pretty much gone. I do feel they went overboard with the radiators, but I guess I will have to play around with them some more.

[Foxster]

So its just me getting near-instant runaway heatplosions if you go too quick too low?

[Frannington]

Here's the Reaction.

Lord, the stuff you builders put up with. Good luck, Inigma. Still an admirer of your outstanding work.

So I found that KSP was using 91% of my memory (Win7 32bit, 4GB) and discovered that my scenery, display and control settings had defaulted back to something that my pathetic rig can't handle, (as in it was no longer using half textures and was using software anti-aliasing).

I don't mind resetting them once in a while, but the updates are coming thick and fast and my sim time is limited. Does anyone know in which file those settings are held please?

[Geschosskopf]

I don't mind resetting them once in a while, but the updates are coming thick and fast and my sim time is limited. Does anyone know in which file those settings are held please?

Settings.cfg.

[SoWeMeetAgain]

I'd call the sillyness with the heating necessary.

no, it was not necessary the way it was done

if they indeed knew this would break the save files (which they didn't, let's be realistic here), they should have taken measures to convert the save files

yes, write an extra little save-patch program just to keep the save files compatible

yes, extra work

yes, paying customers, not beta testers

Here's the Reaction.

pure awesome, that explosion, nice

[Tankman101]

no, it was not necessary the way it was done

Spoken like a person that has never coded in their life.

Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't.