Squadcast Summary 2015/09/11 - Max's Coccyx

[Superfluous J]

Note: I've changed from 10 minute gaps to 15 minute gaps. Anybody who downloads Twitch videos will probably be able to figure out why.

Every 15 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, or I want to say an aside about something Max said about KSP development. 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

Squadcast started 3:10 in to the recording.

Max is in space, in 2 lander cans bringing 2 Kerbals home.

1.1 is still going on.

Q to stream: Would you rather have the unity update (64 bit, optimizations, etc) sooner or wait longer and have things like antenna overhaul thrown in, "far later"?

[Personally, I don't care that much but would rather wait for content and get it all in one thing.]

They've tweaked heat for planets with thicker atmospheres. So heat is more "friendly I guess" [unknown if this would be in he "Unity Only" update or not.]

The pods all afire but coming in nicely.

Q: Is part count lag fixed?

A: There will always be a part count limit. The limit will be higher now.

New version of Unity will multi-thread. All physics will not be on one core. Different things will be on different processors.

Q: One ship using multiple threads?

A: "I believe so" but he will have to check.

Chutes open, long drift down to the sea.

Q: What will 64 bit do to the game?

A: [We all know that answer. ] No physical changes. You won't notice much [except I assume performance on large ships] for non-modded games. Modded installs will notice they can mod a lot more

Splashdown, he saved 2 scientists. He was hoping for pilots.

He looks through contracts. He decides to do 2 of them, flyby Mun, then land on Minmus to plant a flag? He decides yes.

He wants to share more about 1.1, but it's not something with a lot to share.

15:00

Multiplayer is still being worked on. Login interface, kinda boring but needs to get done.

He launches Valentina on a slightly modified Mun lander.

Q: Will the wheels turn smoothly, instead of instantly?

A: It will be like in a car game. You'll like it. It even has a proper suspension model. [so I'm guessing that's a yes?]

He finally tilts at 6km, still going only 150m/s. I wonder how far this rocket could go with a proper gravity turn and maybe 2-4 less engines.

He gets into orbit, should have just enough fuel to get to Minmus via Mun, maybe slowing down at Minmus a bit with the transfer stage.

He nails the Mun encounter to get a Minmus encounter, by going out far enough to let Minmus catch up. Take the Mun encounter out and this is about how I do it.

He does the burn...

They are leaning towards releasing U5 upgrade "sooner rather than later."

He nails the Mun encounter, but not the Minmus one. He opts to fix that at Mun Pe.

"We might have a picture for you guys after this."

30:00

With a 9m/s burn he gets a Minmus encounter. It's really south though.

RoverDude has some antenna models they can show you after this.

When he gets out of Mun SOI, he realizes that he's really south of Minmus. 13m/s at Apoapsis though an he gets a collision.

"Let's call that a landing."

He time warps past Minmus (Something I won't fault him for anymore, as Stock doesn't give you ANY tools to stop this) and gives himself infinite fuel just to go back.

He checks R&D to find a biome to land on that hes' not been on before. He's only landed on the Lowlands.

He Alt-F12s a biome map, still can't tell what biomes he's over. He wishes for a way to tell what biome you're over.

We'd like that too!

He drops the transfer stage with a teeny bit of fuel in it, which I guess makes up for the infinite fuel thing

He makes a Hitchhiker's reference, at least I think he does.

He almost tips over on landing because his ship is really tall. He opts to go elsewhere to land. This "elsewhere" seems a little steeper, and he almost tips over again. He's also coming down too fast, and in caps-lock mode so his RCS isn't doing much work. When he bounces, he's not correcting his pitch to land the 2nd time retrograde.

3-4 tries total, he lands.

45:00

He realizes that the rocket will fall over if Val gets out. He tests by turning SAS off, and the rocket somehow stays upright. Must be all that fuel in the bottom bringing the COM down far enough.

He plants his flag, gets back in the ship, and launches.

...straight up. Then he turns to 90 eventually.

He doesn't check map mode so burns to escape by accident, he decides to go with it. He has plenty of fuel so no bigs.

He retro burns at Ap, his Pe down to 59. Way too high.

Another tease for the antenna pic.

His "aerobrake" barely affects his orbit, so he burns, bringing Ap down, then warps to Ap and burns to bring Pe down.

Everything gets SUPER hot but somehow nothing blows up. It probably would have just been solar panels.

A totally successful mission!

Cool new antenna pic (thanks Bloody_Looser!)

He takes a break from about 57:00 to about 58:30 due to a crash of - I think - the software he was using to show images.

1:00:00

He shows another pic, this one of him landing during his parachuting. Again, a link would be appreciated!

He was a few newtons of force away from fracturing his tailbone. Ouch!

Edited September 12, 2015 by 5thHorseman

[Scotius]

Thanks for the report, 5thHorseman. So, Squad is still undecided if they should give us Unity upgrade, or add more stuff? Tough choice for us...but longer stay in the development could mean more bugs found and squashed. So, IMO - keep working guys

[Bloody_looser]

5thHorseman, here's antenna http://i.imgur.com/lf6eiWn.png

[Poodmund]

Would rather that they wait and just release a more polished bug-free 1.1 solely for the modding communities sanity.

[EladDv]

i think harvester needs to come up and say once and for all what is up in terms of multiple threads for a single ship, maxmaps is not a programmer and thus (sadly) is not savy enough to answer that question

[severedsolo]

Would rather that they wait and just release a more polished bug-free 1.1 solely for the modding communities sanity.

I agree, but we don't know how much the U5 upgrade will just fix. Every week in Dev notes, we hear about vast swathes of code that have been re-written for U5. It's possible alot of the old bugs will simply disappear. I doubt it, but you never know.

I really don't care either way, but I think alot of people won't be happy if there are no new features.

[Superfluous J]

I don't think we have enough information to answer the question, really.

Let's say the choice is "U5 tomorrow and the rest of the stuff 2 months from now" vs "Both of them together in 2 months" then sure, give us U5 now.

If the choice however is "U5 in 1 month and the rest of the stuff in 4 months" vs "Both of them together 3 months from now" then I'm more willing to wait.

[hab136]

He time warps past Minmus (Something I won't fault him for anymore, as Stock doesn't give you ANY tools to stop this)

Right-click on the orbit and then "Warp to".

[Bloody_looser]

Right-click on the orbit and then "Warp to".

Lel, gamedev didn't read game documentation.

Oh, wait...

[Red Iron Crown]

Enough being coy about multi-threading already. The question we all want to know the answer to is:

Will a single ship be able to load up more than one CPU core?

You don't need to delve into Unity internals to check this. Just load up a very high part count ship and watch the CPU monitor.

[Starhawk]

Thanks 5thHorseman!

Congratulations Max on a completely successful mission!

And kudos for the Hitchhikers Guide reference.

My two cents: I would prefer if the next update is released later. That gives more time to find problems and more time to add polish.

Happy landings!

[Superfluous J]

Right-click on the orbit and then "Warp to".

Yeah that doesn't work on hyperbolic trajectories. Or did they fix that in 1.0.4? I use KAC which is far more civilized.

Edited September 12, 2015 by 5thHorseman

[Xavven]

Quick spelling correction for the title: Coccyx (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccyx)

[Superfluous J]

You don't need to delve into Unity internals to check this. Just load up a very high part count ship and watch the CPU monitor.

But that's EASY. We need this to be DIFFICULT.

- - - Updated - - -

Quick spelling correction for the title: Coccyx (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccyx)

You know I thought that was wrong. Google didn't ask me "Did you mean...?" so I figured it was right. Clicking on the link, I see the correct spelling.

Corrected in the OP. Thanks!

[Darnok]

My two cents: I would prefer if the next update is released later. That gives more time to find problems and more time to add polish.

I am against this, IMO better would be to release sooner and then Squad should take month or more to check bugs section and make patches every week.

[goldenpsp]

Honestly I'd rather see the U5 upgrade come out sooner rather than later. This gives modders a chance to get their mods updated. Further updates with just new features are less likely to break mods the way the U5 might.

[selfish_meme]

I think the problem is 'some' things will be in different threads, like maybe thermal, while physics will be another, so yes it is multithreaded while not necessarily producing a high part count.

[Alshain]

Is that a new antenna or a DTS-M1 overhaul? I ask because it looks exactly like the DTS-M1 from Ven's SPR.

[razark]

I appreciate these summaries, but I wish there was a better separation of the useless gameplay stuff from important development information. Maybe we should double your pay?

i think harvester needs to come up and say once and for all what is up in terms of multiple threads for a single ship, maxmaps is not a programmer and thus (sadly) is not savy enough to answer that question

Enough being coy about multi-threading already.

If the answer was "yes, multiple threads per ship", I think they would have been broadcasting that fact. The fact that they have been so quiet and non-committed may be the answer itself.

Edited September 12, 2015 by razark

[OddFunction]

Give us Unity 5 first, and the extra content later.

I cannot wait for the various improvements made, and I don't really care about the extra content, so release release release

[Superfluous J]

I appreciate these summaries, but I wish there was a better separation of the useless gameplay stuff from important development information. Maybe we should double your pay?

I'm open to suggestions. Bold or underline instead of italic? Something crazy like

 tags or something?

Two things I'm a bit leery of is having the news be something other than normal text, and not interspersing the two. I'm more adamant about the 2nd one, as it would be a LOT more work (triple my pay!) and also it would eliminate using what he's doing as a reference when trying to find the location of the news piece you'd like to watch yourself.

If the answer was "yes, multiple threads per ship", I think they would have been broadcasting that fact. The fact that they have been so quiet and non-committed may be the answer itself.

I'd agree with this if it wasn't Squad Also, over the past few Squadcasts they (well Max) HAVE been broadcasting that fact, in every way possible without actually broadcasting because nobody does that anymore.

[Norpo]

...The question we all want to know the answer to is: Will a single ship be able to load up more than one CPU core?

This, I mostly want to know because right now my ships are limited to < 100 parts because of the single-core limitation, and individually my laptop cores are very meh, with multithreading in a single ship I could see a serious improvement (my laptop has quite a few cores), perhaps enough to get me interested in KSP again.

This is the one thing I really want to know about 1.1/U5, and in theory it shouldn't even be that hard to test.

[Superfluous J]

Honestly I'd rather see the U5 upgrade come out sooner rather than later. This gives modders a chance to get their mods updated. Further updates with just new features are less likely to break mods the way the U5 might.

This is not only the best argument about releasing U5 first that I've seen, you've changed my (not really well-set) mind about the whole thing.

- - - Updated - - -

Is that a new antenna or a DTS-M1 overhaul? I ask because it looks exactly like the DTS-M1 from Ven's SPR.

It also looks exactly like a real antenna on Hubble. I suspect both were modeled after that, and neither was modeled after the other:

[razark]

I'm open to suggestions. Bold or underline instead of italic? Something crazy like

 tags or something?

I think color-coding might work. It would make it somewhat easier to find when doing a quick scan. (Keep the info in black text, and post the gameplay stuff in white text? I like that one.)

I'm honestly not sure what would work for me and keep the work minimal for you. I'm sure you can think up something that will keep me happy, though. It's what we pay you for, right?

[color=#FFFFFF]And I'm just happy to get the information in a format I can consume, anyway. Thanks![/color]

[OddFunction]

@5thHorseMan

The current format is fine. It takes like 2-3 minutes to read as is, and the bits relating to development often stick out even without emphasis.

In my opinion if you are sitting through a one hour podcast for our sake then I think it is a small thing on our part to spend a few minutes reading it.

My 2 cents.