Squadcast Summary 2015/08/07 - The Duna Attempt

[Robotengineer]

Proot does some beautiful work but he is far from the only one. Have you seen pingopete's work with the EVE overhaul? I don't use RSS but never the less, it is absolutely beautiful. Personally I would prefer Squad provide the infrastructure and some artwork of their own as well. Then make sure that, like EVE, artists can substitute their own easily. While they are at it, they can add a native ability to add other artwork like Texture Replacer. These mods are fine, but it would certainly be better if the game could auto-detect new textures the same way it does new parts.

The reason I chose to highlight Proot's work is because A) I personally prefer it over BetterAtmospheres or AstronomersVisualPack, and Proot is the only one currently working on his project.

I have seen pingopete's work, and have been watching it for a while now. He is so good in fact that it is almost too real for KSP, at least from the screenshots he show in his thread.

On the subject of visual enhancement, a stock version of DistantObjectEnhancement and PlanetShine would be great.

[Eric S]

Unity 5 as a revision before 1.1, ie a "1.0.5", seems like a very bad idea because it's almost certain to break loads of mods, quite probably requiring mod devs to do more than a simple recompile to get them working again

Agreed. It's been my general expectation in X.Y.Z versioning that changes in Z shouldn't break API compatibility. In fact, OS dynamic linkers in some OS assume that to be the case, and if a program asks for version X.Y.Z of a dynamic library and X.Y.(Z+1) is available, then that higher version is what the runtime gets linked against. This means that any non-backwards compatible changes require incrementing X or Y.

Given that Unity 5 will break any mods that include wheels at the very least, I don't think 1.0.5 would be an appropriate version number.

[Alshain]

Agreed. It's been my general expectation in X.Y.Z versioning that changes in Z shouldn't break API compatibility. In fact, OS dynamic linkers in some OS assume that to be the case, and if a program asks for version X.Y.Z of a dynamic library and X.Y.(Z+1) is available, then that higher version is what the runtime gets linked against. This means that any non-backwards compatible changes require incrementing X or Y.

Given that Unity 5 will break any mods that include wheels at the very least, I don't think 1.0.5 would be an appropriate version number.

1.0.4 broke a lot of mods. You guys who are obsessed with version numbers should seriously look into a classic piece of literature called "Romeo and Juliet".

[Eric S]

1.0.4 broke a lot of mods. You guys who are obsessed with version numbers should seriously look into a classic piece of literature called "Romeo and Juliet".

Not obsessed with them, just noting what's referred to as a violation of the principle of least astonishment. It's a trivial thing, but it doesn't change the fact that i disagree with it. It won't bother me if they do release it as 1.0.5, it's just not the decision I would have made.

[Superfluous J]

Not obsessed with them, just noting what's referred to as a violation of the principle of least astonishment. It's a trivial thing, but it doesn't change the fact that i disagree with it. It won't bother me if they do release it as 1.0.5, it's just not the decision I would have made.

I don't think there's one person on this forum who can say the version numbering from 0.25 to present is a string of decisions they'd have made.

[basic.syntax]

That's exactly my point, it's not a "bug fixing update", it's an API change. It's not like they're sitting down for two~three months doing nothing but bug-fixing... The Unity 5 changeover will introduce as many bugs as it squashes, that's just simple development, has nothing to do with Squad in particular.

I think the phrase "API change" trivializes their efforts.

[regex]

I think the phrase "API change" trivializes their efforts.

You're obviously not a programmer then. It's also not properly an "API change", it's an "API update", my bad.

[basic.syntax]

You're obviously not a programmer then. It's also not properly an "API change", it's an "API update", my bad.

All right, you did not suggest an API update could be a trivial effort. My bad.

[monstah]

I really need to watch these Squadcasts myself, if they weren't in my work hours. They sound quite hilarious

Me? I'm happy someone transcribes them so I don't have to watch.

Did it a couple times. Almost ripped my hair off.