Squadcast Summary 2015/09/25 - The Heart To Heart On Sleeve Episode

[Superfluous J]

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. Green text is descriptions of what Max is doing in the game, with asides and commentary by me where I feel the desire. If you want to watch the episode yourself, you can find it at http://www.twitch.tv/ksptv/profile/past_broadcasts

Squadcast was just over an hour.

0:00

Squadcast started 1:45 in to the recording.

Max is ill, he was last week as well (why there was no Squadcast)

He buys Nuke engines

"A thing happened" They won 2 Unity awards! Best Gameplay (by Unity) and Community Choice (from the community)

They get the awards on Tuesday.

As he's sick, he's just going to do a simple Mun/Minmus flag planting mission.

Q: What did you decide about 1.1?

A: U5, but "beefier" than that.

The more they put into the engine overhaul, the better it gets.

They feel bad that it's taken 6 months and it's still not out.

They don't want to rush it and make it not as good.

He takes his standard Mun/Minmus lander, replaces the middle engine with a nuke, and adds a docking port so his lander can re-dock and be taken to Minmus from Mun.

He launches. He's worried about TWR but is at half throttle.

He had a family emergency and then got sick.

His parachutes go off in his 1st stage. He aborts The parachutes disengage!? That seems like a bug.

He EVAs and Val lands on the ground, alive.

15:00

Launch #2, with fixed parachutes.

They want a release date, but this is the biggest update ever to the game, so they simply don't know.

He gets a space apoapsis before ditching the non-nuke engines, and actually has a pretty good ascent.

He realizes the Nuke has no gimbal

There are things they are not touching.

Graphics, sound. They want to overhaul those, but that's not part of this update.

He does have monoprop, so can keep aimed.

He needs a 3 minute burn to reach orbit, and is 30 seconds to apoapsis. He's concerned. I'm sure he ca do it, so long as he aims up a bit.

Q: How close to QA are we?

A: They need to be comfortable with the quality level of the game before it goes to QA. The big stuff is ironed out, then QA can take it.

At this stage, it's not ready for that yet.

They've decided to NOT split 1.1 into 2 updates.

He doesn't make orbit, and instead brings Val back home.

He [well, the chat] finally realizes he's carrying tons of O2 that he doesn't need.

Val explodes and dies. I'm not 100% sure why.

Overhauling the UI has been a goal for years, but there were always bigger things to do. Now, they are doing it because they have to overhaul it anyway.

He launches again, now with Nellan Kerman.

Short of it: They're not ready for QA, and are not sure when they will be.

Max discusses the Mythical Man Month, and how you can't just throw programmers at a project. However, the programmers (modders) they HAVE added have been great.

30:00

He ditches the launch stage, and is burning his nuke right away to hopefully reach orbit.

TriggerAU is joining the team as well. He has a mod that teaches you how to use the game from the ground up.

KSP has a steep learning curve. Mods like Triggers allow people to learn to play KSP by themselves.

Max thanks the modding community "for existing." And the ones they've culled are "modding ninjas."

He reaches orbit.

He's looking for a term for people who know so little about something that to them it looks very simple.

Chat helps him: Dunning–Kruger effect.

Max used to be that way, but now that he's in the industry he knows things are a lot more complex.

They made a mistake scoping out 1.1, but that's how life works sometimes.

He gets a pretty bad Mun encounter. He burned too early in his orbit around Kerbin so is reaching Mun's orbit after Mun has passed by.

He "fixes" this by burning more to hit Mun faster.

KSP has won awards and is very successful, but "the only reason KSP exists is because KSP fans found us."

They don't feel like they've done enough with the game to thank the community for what we've done for them.

Max has been a gamer since he was 3. At 15 a friend of his couldn't understand how he could play video games anymore [Now that he was old enough to know better, is the impression I got. I've been there, too. I get that now, sometimes].

45:00

He played WOW a lot, and was on a WOW podcast even. He was in University at the time.

We went into Biochemistry, hated it, went into business and liked it, but didn't think he could ever make a career out of video games.

HarvesteR on the other hand always wanted to make video games as a career.

He was going to quit from Squad to pursue his dream, and his manager counter offered.

Then "you guys came around."

He gets into Mun orbit, detaches from the transfer stage, and comes down.

Lots of heart-to-heart about KSP, Squad and the community. Everybody should watch from about 43:00 to about 52:00

http://www.twitch.tv/ksptv/v/17753697

Q: Any non-KSP plans for Squad?

A: Let's wrap up KSP first.

He stops 11km of the ground and falls straight down.

He wastes a lot of fuel coming down. He ends up with half his fuel gone.

He does a very nice landing, though.

I don't see how he'd have the fuel to get to Minmus. His transfer stage has no O2 and it was even getting low on LF.

Q: Procedural planets like No Mans Sky?

A: It would affect the general experience. It would make everybody's experience different, making it hard to relate to your friends.

[for "procedural is not random" outrage, see 50% of the replies to this thread]

[HAHA right after typing that:]

Q: Procedural is not random

A: You are correct, but it would be effectively random, [or there's no reason to make it procedural]

Q: Will the shader improvements in U5 let you do more stuff with surface details?

A: "Strong possibility" but all upgrades are being put off until next update.

They keep up with the modding community, and have seen *everything* they have made.

"Once we change some things that will help how the game behaves we are totally doing those things we are totally making KSP look as beautiful as it can look."

He makes orbit, but is essentially out of fuel.

1:00:00

Max says he has a question for us, but the following distracts him and he never asks it

He realizes his transfers stage has no probe core, so to dock he has to go get it. And he doesn't have the fuel to get there.

[Also, no oxidizer!]

So next stream: Rescue Nellan!

Edited September 26, 2015 by 5thHorseman

[nightingale]

Procedural is not random!

Great summary, as always. Glad to see that everything's going into 1.1 (makes it easier to deal with mod breakage if it all happens at once).

[AlanP]

look at you getting all fancy with two colors. Nice.

Thanks for the report.

[Superfluous J]

look at you getting all fancy with two colors. Nice.

Thanks for the report.

It's actually exactly as hard as italics, and makes stuff stand out more, I think.

While making the notes, I prepend "in game" stuff with ` and append it with ~. I used to then search/replace with [noparse] and [/noparse] but now I search/replace with the color tags.

[TMS]

A heart-to-heart about KSP, eh?

Do I need a rabies shot before opening up Twitch?

Edit:

Hmm, I had to switch off the third time he protested that the community were happy with 1.0 and that it was regarded as complete, but that they (Squad) felt they should continue development as they owed the community more...

You mean... like a finished product???

Edited September 26, 2015 by TMS

[basic.syntax]

Thanks 5th! It's becoming more and more clear that the v1.1 overhaul has involved a lot of hard work, they literally had to reinvent the wheel for this one! Major chunks have been rewritten, but they're not out of the woods yet; I think they are still wearing 'under construction' hardhats, over at Squad. (Some of those rocket building tools are very heavy!)

[yorshee]

Aw man, I regret not watching this one live.

[Jasper_f]

Once again, thank you for the amazing summary 5thHorseman! I have to admit that I'm feeling a bit sad thanks to the contradicting news the past couple of weeks: (week 1) they're really close to QA, (week 2) they´re getting closer to QA, (week 3) almost ready for QA, (squadcast with maxmaps) not sure when they will be ready for QA.

I think I'll stop waiting for the upcoming update, restart a campaign, and pray to the kraken the save will not be that badly broken when 1.1 hits.

[rkman]

Lots of heart-to-heart about KSP, Squad and the community. Everybody should watch from about 43:00 to about 52:00

It used to be hard to find, but now there is like no way at all to get to past streams?

http://www.twitch.tv/ksptv/

[basic.syntax]

Hmm, I had to switch off the third time he protested that the community were happy with 1.0 and that it was regarded as complete, but that they (Squad) felt they should continue development as they owed the community more...

You mean... like a finished product???

What constitutes "finished" will always be in the eye of the beholder. Squad felt they delivered enough of their original roadmap, to call it 1.0.

Players that have dipped into the Mod community, don't feel it's "finished" until they've added a bunch of those. Mod makers in general who build new ideas to extend KSP, move someone's idea of the finish line, with each new addition.

- - - Updated - - -

It used to be hard to find, but now there is like no way at all to get to past streams?

http://www.twitch.tv/ksptv/

http://www.twitch.tv/ksptv/profile/past_broadcasts

[rkman]

http://www.twitch.tv/ksptv/profile/past_broadcasts

Yeah, found it thanks to google.

Though no link to that on the KSPTV front page is there? Which is like, why would anyone want to hide past broadcasts?

[Superfluous J]

Yeah, found it thanks to google.

Though no link to that on the KSPTV front page is there? Which is like, why would anyone want to hide past broadcasts?

Yup. That's annoyed me since day one. I've added a link to the post and think I'll add one to every post from here on out.

[Vaporo]

The procedural vs random argument has always bugged me. I'm sure that the developers knew when they originally said it (and certainly know it by now) that "procedural" does not technically imply "random" if the game uses a hard-coded seed that everyone has. It's just that, after working in an environment where every knows what you're talking about, you tend to use those words that all of your co-workers know when talking about your projects to someone else.

However, creating an entire universe procedurally could imply millions or billions of planets and just as many possible experiences. The rarity of two players arriving at the same planet that's not in the few dozen stars immediately surrounding Kerbin would be so astronomically low that there would be effective randomness. Think of Space Engine. How often do you come back to the same star after you've forgotten where it is? The odds are a billion to one.

Even if you limit the universe to just a few hundred stars, think about how many planets that implies. Thousands, at least. Right now, there are few enough bodies that I can name them all off without much thought. But if there were thousands of planets, this wouldn't happen. The basic solar system, plus a few other particularly interesting bodies in nearby systems, would be all that the community would be able to refer to quickly without giving some kind of coordinates.

I'd like to see a modder flex some programming muscle to make completely procedural planets happen, but I understand Squad's reasoning behind keeping to just the one system.

Edited September 26, 2015 by Vaporo

[yorshee]

I just watched the VOD, that speech about the KSP community and the game's growth was very sweet.

[pandaman]

Thanks for the effort 5th, much appreciated.

Adding the link is a brilliant idea.

[TMS]

What constitutes "finished" will always be in the eye of the beholder. Squad felt they delivered enough of their original roadmap, to call it 1.0.

Players that have dipped into the Mod community, don't feel it's "finished" until they've added a bunch of those. Mod makers in general who build new ideas to extend KSP, move someone's idea of the finish line, with each new addition.

I tend to think of the situation as being more akin to a used car salesman who implies he's doing you a favour by throwing in the tyres for free.

As you say, eye of the beholder.

[Caelib]

I am not one to get completely hung up on aesthetics, but a new stock skybox/clouds/graphics can't come soon enough ... really looking forward to the post-Unity update(s)!

[Superfluous J]

I tend to think of the situation as being more akin to a used car salesman who implies he's doing you a favour by throwing in the tyres for free.

As you say, eye of the beholder.

That would only be a fair comparison if the ad that brought you into the dealership said you were buying a car without tires and there was no guarantee they'd have any for you, now or in the future.

[TMS]

That would only be a fair comparison if the ad that brought you into the dealership said you were buying a car without tires and there was no guarantee they'd have any for you, now or in the future.

In this analogy, the "tyres" are something that prevents the unmodded game from bugging out constantly.

It might not have been explicitly stated that I'd get these tyres in the advert, but any fair-minded buyer would expect it to be the case.

[rkman]

Q: Procedural is not random

A: You are correct, but it would be effectively random,

[or there's no reason to make it procedural]

The reason to do it procedurally is not to make it effectively random (though still effectively the same for all players) - the reason would be that procedural is faster than creating every system, every planet and moon by hand, even if it'd be just a hundred systems.

However, procedural is by no means a magic bullet. It would still be a whole lot of work to make it work well and look nice.

Edited September 26, 2015 by rkman

[boxman]

Yeah, found it thanks to google.

Though no link to that on the KSPTV front page is there? Which is like, why would anyone want to hide past broadcasts?

Because twitch/amazon claims that no one wants to watch them ;\

This is why I prefer youtube streaming. Not only is it easy to find the archives, but they are not deleted after a few weeks and you can even rewind in middle of the stream itself.

[Superfluous J]

Because twitch/amazon claims that no one wants to watch them ;\

This is why I prefer youtube streaming. Not only is it easy to find the archives, but they are not deleted after a few weeks and you can even rewind in middle of the stream itself.

In Twitch's defense, the number of views on each video in the KSPTV archives are measured in dozens, at best. Squadcast is the only one that even has a shot at triple digits.

Of course, part of that could be that they're impossible to find without help.

[Jodo42]

The procedural vs random argument has always bugged me. I'm sure that the developers knew when they originally said it (and certainly know it by now) that "procedural" does not technically imply "random" if the game uses a hard-coded seed that everyone has. It's just that, after working in an environment where every knows what you're talking about, you tend to use those words that all of your co-workers know when talking about your projects to someone else.

However, creating an entire universe procedurally could imply millions or billions of planets and just as many possible experiences. The rarity of two players arriving at the same planet that's not in the few dozen stars immediately surrounding Kerbin would be so astronomically low that there would be effective randomness. Think of Space Engine. How often do you come back to the same star after you've forgotten where it is? The odds are a billion to one.

Even if you limit the universe to just a few hundred stars, think about how many planets that implies. Thousands, at least. Right now, there are few enough bodies that I can name them all off without much thought. But if there were thousands of planets, this wouldn't happen. The basic solar system, plus a few other particularly interesting bodies in nearby systems, would be all that the community would be able to refer to quickly without giving some kind of coordinates.

I'd like to see a modder flex some programming muscle to make completely procedural planets happen, but I understand Squad's reasoning behind keeping to just the one system.

I'd love to see this as well. Obviously a difficult feat, but think of the possibilities!

My ultimate dream for the game is that every "star" that can be seen in the Skybox could be visited. Each would have its own seed which would be used to procedurally generate its planets. All you'd have to do to tell another player how to get to the system you went to would be to give them the seed (probably only accessible via F12) or, in a more gameplay-oriented manner, tell them where the star lies in the skybox. There might be an online star chart where users could select the star they wish to go to and, so long as somebody had been there before and uploaded the system's contents to the chart, visitors could then see those contents. It would be a big community project, to map the stars and their planets.

Outlandish and improbable, I know, but it's just a dream.

[boxman]

In Twitch's defense, the number of views on each video in the KSPTV archives are measured in dozens, at best. Squadcast is the only one that even has a shot at triple digits.

Of course, part of that could be that they're impossible to find without help.

And that is because they never believed in it in first place. Have you ever tried searching for archived videos??

It is near impossible. Even before they started deleting the archives their search engine would give you a bunch of results of non working videos.

Even if you look directly under a twitch channel, you will have to browse through each page manually with no ability to search for a certain game/video.

But still even then certain streamers get hundreds of views on their archived videos.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

"They don't want to rush it and make it not as good."

Great! Spend as long as is needed, devs.