Squadcast Summary 2015/09/04 - But Who Will Rescue the Rescuers?

[Superfluous J]

Note: Twitch hates letting people watch their videos conveniently, so the time stamps may not be great. I'm trying here.

10 minutes I drop a time stamp, so if you can find a spot in the video more easily. Something in "quotes" means it was directly said, though I frequently don't bother with that. [brackets] are those rare times where the accent barrier keeps me from understanding something, and italics are descriptions of what Max is doing in the game, with asides and commentary by me where I feel the desire.

Squadcast was just over an hour.

0:00

He's going to try to rescue 2 Kerbals in a 3-pod ship with a pilot (Val) on the launch pad.

They have an internal date for 1.1 but no public date.

QA should start up next week, "if everything goes right."

Q: 1.1 before Christmas?

A: It's not that far away.

He launches, low throttle 1.2ish TWR. I am glad I trimmed my nails because they'd be digging into the desk.

Granted, his rocket is wide and short and has 5 swivels and 4 solids, so maybe it's better he's keeping it slow.

Q: How does QA work "these days"?

A: Bugs go into the private tracker. They decide what needs to be done, prioritize...

Gravity turn over, he's got an apoapsis, no side tanks, and needs to burn 1300m/s to circularize.

Q: Integrated Graphics Chips, how well will it run?

A: There are limits. It'll definitely run better than 1.0 did but "integrated is harsh."

10:00

Q: What about N-body errors?

A: Max (and I) doesn't understand the question. KSP does not use N-body physics.

If you're talking about floating point errors, there just are floating point errors in computing.

He sets up his first encounter. It's hours away and he time warps at like 50x the whole way

Q: Are there frequent cries of "what was I thinking?" as they go through old code.

A: <long answer> Yes.

3 UI systems, have been completely redone.

With 2 burns, he gets a 3.2km encounter. His orbit is wonky though.

3rd burn, he's 2.1km.

They are in general doing a pretty extensive "buff pass."

NathanKell is familiar with old bugs, and bugs that involve mods.

20:00

Just making sure each update has more polish than before.

He gets within 2.1km, flips the ship around, burns retrograde to slow down relative to the rescue Kerbal, then goes towards him at 12m/s.

He's in the physics bubble, I'm not sure why he's not just jumping to it and going 2km EVA.

He comes to a relative stop at about 100m, then EVA's over.

He decides to - because he's not got solar panels, to go for the 2nd Kerbal. I would have done it

He burns retrograde, but relative to the target not his orbit.

Actually he burns prograde by accident

He realizes he's in target mode as well.

Squad was up for golden joystick and golden [cube?]. These are Unity awards. People can apparently vote on these. Any links would be appreciated.

Graphics are not where Squad wants them to be. They're always running out of space to put stuff.

With 64 bit, they're going to do a graphics overhaul.

He burns off a ton of speed, and has a pretty steep re-entry. But he's only going 1500m/s so should be okay. Plus he has a heat shield.

Q: Will PorkJet be doing the stock parts?

A: They want to complete the spaceplane stuff. After that, he may be moving to rocket parts.

He runs out of charge, but the heat shield is keeping him going the right direction. He lands whit no problems.

The first parachutes tried to behave like cloth. If you think part count hurts FPS, cloth on top of that "wasn't good."

30:00

He edits the ship to remove a capsule and add solar panels.

RealChutes does a better job and is more realistic, but doesn't do cloth simulation

Q: Supersonic parachutes?

A: Max does not know if that's reasonable.

Q: Mach 2 on Mars.

A: The atmosphere is very thin on Mars.

He launches, tilts, I pay more attention to this text file than the video to maintain my sanity.

He burns his Ap too high, but otherwise has a decent intercept. He goes for it, burning at the intercept point to circularize, so he intercepts at the AN.

He does this burn kind of by burning retrograde relative to target, and then AAAAGH I CAN'T WATCH THIS HE DECIDES TO AIM AT TARGET.

Okay I'm better now.

He burns prograde, but is still relative to target. So he aborts and lands.

It would have been so pro if he'd just burned retrograde relative to target to begin with.

Q: Images?

A: No. Bugfixes don't translate into images.

He poses to chat if he should start allowing reverts.

Ironman you're much more involved. Reverts has less waiting.

I vote Ironman, personally.

40:00

Splashdown, recover, he adds a battery.

Launch. I again ignore it. Though I can feel it eating at my brain from my peripheral vision.

I notice when his side engines stop burning because his G meter drops. Note to self: If using stock, that's a good trick.

He notices eventually

He gets another decent encounter. He tries to burn relative to the target on purpose, but burns prograde relative to target, not retrograde. He quickly realizes it's wrong and decides to just go for circularization first.

During this time he's talking about Twitch vs YouTube streaming. It's not directly related to KSP so I'm skipping it.

50:00

He burns, gets a good encounter.

Max plans on modding KSP to the brink when 1.1 comes out, to show off how well KSP can handle it.

He gets very close, relative stops, and gets the Kerbal.

He then hits the spacebar, ejecting his fuel and engines(!)

The rescued Kerbal gets out and pushes. 4 units of fuel gets the Pe to 71.

Max goes around an orbit to Ap again, then one more EVA retrograde burn.

Q: 128 bit?

A: Come on, now.

4 more units of fuel, Pe is now 59.

He does one more 4 unit push, Pe is now 49.

Next week, re-entry!

Edited September 5, 2015 by 5thHorseman

[Alshain]

Q: Are there frequent cries of "what was I thinking?" as they go through old code.

A: <long answer> Yes.

Just FYI, this is true for every developer that was, is, and ever will be. It also goes hand in hand with "Why didn't I document this better?"

Thanks for the write-up 5thHorseman.

[regex]

I notice when his side engines stop burning because his G meter drops. Note to self: If using stock, that's a good trick.

It's a good trick regardless. IRL solid fuel boosters are generally still burning when they're jettisoned, and RO models this, so the G meter is a good general indication of when to pop them off (I usually right-click them and watch the thrust, though).

[NFUN]

Your italics got a bit messed from in the middle, but that's ok. Thanks!

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Am I first? Probably not. Nice work, and all that sounds very exciting.

[federicoaa]

Thanks again.

[Yellowburn10]

I for one am interested to see Max play KSP 1.1 with a crapload of mods installed to really see how performance has improved.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

Personally, while I love SPP stuff and Porkjet's Mk2 overhaul, I would prefer to keep the current rocket aethetic than his more sleek approach

[Mitchz95]

Thanks for the transcript. Glad to see they're updating the graphics soon!

[passinglurker]

Personally, while I love SPP stuff and Porkjet's Mk2 overhaul, I would prefer to keep the current rocket aethetic than his more sleek approach

The way I see it the old parts have to go for efficiency sake they are terrible with ram some are shoddy stand in's and others like the mk1 pod aren't even modeled to the standard size.

Unfortunately no matter what they do to them some one some where will be unhappy that is how change works so instead I will support then no matter the style as long as they are more efficient

[Superfluous J]

Just FYI, this is true for every developer that was, is, and ever will be. It also goes hand in hand with "Why didn't I document this better?"

Thanks for the write-up 5thHorseman.

That was about 90% of the <long answer>

- - - Updated - - -

Your italics got a bit messed from in the middle, but that's ok. Thanks!

Oops. That's what I get for posting and going away for 5 hours

Fixed. Also fixed a couple spelling errors that were real words so passed spell check.

Edited September 5, 2015 by 5thHorseman

[BudgetHedgehog]

Cheers for the writeup, 5th!

I'm looking forward to the stated performance of 1.1 with mods.. It's frustrating for me that KSP is so easily modded but is capped at 3.5GB of RAM.. Yeah, I'm stoked.

[TMS]

I'm looking forward to the stated performance of 1.1 with mods.. It's frustrating for me that KSP is so easily modded but is capped at 3.5GB of RAM.. Yeah, I'm stoked.

Remember to leave at least 7 GB of RAM for memory leaks.

Good news about Porkjet. It would be good to see KSP finally get a cohesive aesthetic in its art assets. Looking forward to that.

I seem to look forward to this write up more than I do the Dev notes. Thanks 5th.

Edited September 5, 2015 by TMS

[Deddly]

I wonder if the remoddling of the rocket parts will reflect the fact that they all come from different manufacturers

[Renegrade]

I'm looking forward to the stated performance of 1.1 with mods.. It's frustrating for me that KSP is so easily modded but is capped at 3.5GB of RAM.. Yeah, I'm stoked.

Easy there - temper expectations! We all know that getting hyped up always leads to disappointment.

64-bit support will ease the memory restriction, but it isn't going to summon extra performance magically out of the aether. CPU-heavy mods will still eat KSP for breakfast~

[panzer1b]

The way I see it the old parts have to go for efficiency sake they are terrible with ram some are shoddy stand in's and others like the mk1 pod aren't even modeled to the standard size.

Unfortunately no matter what they do to them some one some where will be unhappy that is how change works so instead I will support then no matter the style as long as they are more efficient

I like the new stuff, although i do feel that some have changed alot from the start and may not fit everyone's preferences. For example the leerjet cockpit wont work for fighters anymore, lucky for me i never use frontally mounted cockpits anyways (rear cockpits look cooler/sci-fyi and tend to protect the pilot from incoming flak much more and even if the entire craft is destroyed, there is usually a cockpit left). Overall i probably will still not use the MK1 and MK2 front cockpits so that change has no effect on me really. As for engines, i welcome ANY changes to jets appearance wise, the stock ones arent that bad (the basic jet actually looks decent, turbojet is garbage though), but they could use an overhaul. And who doesnt like the new jet they are adding for ME-262 replicas or really any German WW2 jet (i think its even called a "jumo" after the jumo-004 used in the 262s). As for the massive jet, it wont see any use for me as virtually every one of my airplanes are designed to go into space, somewhere where a low altitude jet is worthless. Its something i might mess with for jet propelled tanks, but in general very limited useage for that thing unless you are actually into conventional airplane designs like 747s or whatnot (which my sci-fi star-fighters are not).

Really the only thing im dissapointed in is that (from what ive heard and understand) the lag with higher part counts isnt going to be improved in any meaningful way (its not going to allow us to have 1000 parts loaded without massive lag like before), so this part kinda sucks. Maybe im wrong on this, but i dont have high hopes that super high part count ships will be doable, guess im still gonna stick to making super part count efficient (but not super well armored) capital ships, and stick to minimalistic ground bases too, with tanks that also have under 100 parts each.

Still, given how 1.0 increased lag across the board (especially in atmo), you cant really get any worse at this point (and if it does, i can always stick to 1.04 as a last resort, 0.90 has better performance, but the new aero is too good to give up for less lag with capital ships).

[Renegrade]

Still, given how 1.0 increased lag across the board (especially in atmo), you cant really get any worse at this point (and if it does, i can always stick to 1.04 as a last resort, 0.90 has better performance, but the new aero is too good to give up for less lag with capital ships).

A fellow named Murphy dropped off a letter for you. It reads, "challenge accepted!".

Let's not taunt Murphy, eh?

[pxi]

Just FYI, this is true for every developer that was, is, and ever will be. It also goes hand in hand with "Why didn't I document this better?"

Have written code, can confirm.

Note: Twitch hates letting people watch their videos conveniently, so the time stamps may not be great. I'm trying here.

...

During this time he's talking about Twitch vs YouTube streaming. It's not directly related to KSP so I'm skipping it.

*BROKEN RECORD MODE ENGAGED*

I'd still love it if Squadcast was mirrored to the KSP youtube channel. (Think of all those extra eyeballs!)

And thanks as usual for the summary!

[smjjames]

Max plans on modding KSP to the brink when 1.1 comes out, to show off how well KSP can handle it.

That'll be fun to see.

He'll have to wait a bit until most of the mods are updated for 1.1 to be able to do that. He also needs to watch out for mod compatibility issues and make sure all the dependencies are correct.

[peachoftree]

That'll be fun to see.

He'll have to wait a bit until most of the mods are updated for 1.1 to be able to do that. He also needs to watch out for mod compatibility issues and make sure all the dependencies are correct.

That's what CKAN is for

[Superfluous J]

*BROKEN RECORD MODE ENGAGED*

Those two sentences actually have nothing to do with each other. The first is my opinion about how crappy Twitch is, the second is a summary of a non-ksp conversation that I felt should be mentioned, but didn't need documenting.

If I'd added 'Though if Squadcast were on YouTube I'd be able to download the video and use a decent program to watch it.' (which I almost did) you'd have a point.

[smjjames]

That's what CKAN is for

Only thing though is that I've noticed that CKAN seems to cause more problems than it solves. If he installs something wrongly, the loading might freeze. At least he has RoverDude, PorkJet, and a few other modders on the SQUAD team to help him out if he runs into trouble.

Or he could ask in the community, no shame in that.

Really though, I hope he doesn't waste a squadcast having to troubleshoot problems with mods XD But I guess the point is to show that they can all be loaded and KSP runs just fine.

Edited September 6, 2015 by smjjames
Finish sentence, derp

[Alshain]

Youtube mirroring and Youtube live-streaming are two different things. I would be up for mirroring, many people do that. Youtube live-streaming is awful. Max was talking about live-streaming specifically.

[Superfluous J]

Youtube mirroring and Youtube live-streaming are two different things. I would be up for mirroring, many people do that. Youtube live-streaming is awful. Max was talking about live-streaming specifically.

Yup, which is why I didn't care about it. I hate live streaming and want to never watch it. Maybe for some tournament or something but just for people watching games? Video editors were created for a reason, and the 50% of most games that are B.O.R.I.N.G. is one of them.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

I wonder if the remoddling of the rocket parts will reflect the fact that they all come from different manufacturers

Good point! Hope they do that