Squadcast Summary (2016/01/14) - Squad have a doggy edition

[MiniMatt]

Look forward to 5thHorseman (and Owl before him) writing up the Squadcasts each week but I think he's been busy the last couple. As this week I found myself uncharacteristically in possession of free time I thought I'd jump on in as a one time deal. This won't be as good as 5thHorseman's writeups, and I'm very unlikely to be able to writeup again in future. I'm a bit lax with timestamps, video can be found at http://www.twitch.tv/ksptv/profile/past_broadcasts

Squadcast was an hour and fifteen minutes, hosted this week by DasValdez. Guests were Dr Turkey & Kasper. AND THE SQUAD DOG.

DasValdez is making a Dreamchaser in stock KSP.

Squad dog says hello in the background. Sounds bigger than a terrier, smaller than a retriever. Also sounds very happy. And sounds like someone hid his squeaky toy.

DasValdez has a general appreciation for hinges and moving parts, think he's making some unsubtle hints to get more infernal robotics style bits in squad stock. Nasa can make hinges he notes. Squad reps note that Nasa budget has more zeros at the end.

Dr Turkey notes that KSP got a bad steam review! The reviewer gave (I think) 4/20 score due to a lack of cats in the game. It's all about the dogs here mate. Roverdude apparently has plans on a cat(apult) powered craft propulsion mod.

(24 mins) Unity 5 QA is ongoing and different to 1.1 QA
Everybody's crunching

(27 mins) 1.1 is running on Unity5 - they're just two different QA streams. Release version will be 1.1, running on U5
(29 mins) Significant boost to gamespeed is anticipated due to rewrite

(30 mins) KSP development expected to continue, no plans otherwise, but clearly at somepoint before heat death of universe it will stop

1.1 will not be out next week

"No VR plans yet, but would be cool, would be fantastic. Resource/benefit ratio not yet there to throw dev time at it."

(33 mins) Extra localisation is planned, no ETA yet, working on a framework.

(35 mins) System spec requirements not thought to change.

Console work doesn't limit PC branch. Console work has helped PC branch by "forcing" better work practices & clean up/optimisation of code.

Console & PC are two seperate builds, one won't limit the other.

Dreamchaser build is looking *pretty* (clippy, but pretty).

(40 mins) Multiplayer is coming, working on it, it's hard backend work (sounds like it's a way off, not 1.1)

Hiring professionals for translations.

Nod to Prison Architect, it's great. (it is)

Dreamchaser made it to the runway without exploding. Balance is going to be a bit whacked.

(45 mins) Squad do most builds. Edu & console builds are worked on by seperate companies.

Hiring talented modders has been a success for Squad.

Dreamchaser engine clipping on cargo bay prevented their firing.

(48 mins) Question on PhysX support - unsure, if U5 runs PhysX then KSP 1.1 will have PhysX

Dreamchaser now exploding out it's fairing. 1.1 will have auto invisible strutting inside fairings (think this was mentioned in devnotes)

(52 mins) Steam achievments - developing an achievements system for console, arguments on either side as to whether to take this to Steam - sounds like no decision made either way yet

(57 mins) Bug on fairing drag in 1.0.5 being applied in front of fairing - unsure if that's fixed in 1.1

There exist KSP bumper stickers.

(1h 6mins) - back on acheivements, making the console ones as fun as possible (ie. not kill 1000 rats), still open either way on Steam implementation, welcoming feedback

Dreamchaser booster stage took out the spaceplane hangar in spectacular fasion.

(1h 10mins) Squad doggy barks goodbye. Doc Turkey & Kasper depart.

(1h 15mins) Fin.
 

No new screenshots or any particularly groundbreaking game news, but SQUAD DOG!

 

Edit: Whilst we wait for the all important SQUAD DOG news, have my very own Kerbal Kitten:

 

 

Edited January 15, 2016 by MiniMatt
kittens, date correction

[katateochi]

Ok so really important question: what's the dog's name!? K9 Kerman? 

 

[Superfluous J]

Thanks for this. I actually might have had time for this but do in no means mind not having to do it, so much that I'll at least double if not triple negative that.

I actually poked into the stream, and just saw DasValdez doing his thing. Nothing against him but I really only watch these for the info and I thought there would be none. Happy to see there actually was some.

[Warzouz]

Thank you,@MiniMatt, for you time

[Kerbart]

Can you change the subject line? Or did you decide to review a squadcast from a year ago?

[Motokid600]

Yea my cat likes to swat at the kerbals walking around as well. 

Edited January 15, 2016 by Motokid600

[monstah]

Significant boost to gamespeed is all I needed to hear

[MiniMatt]

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

Can you change the subject line? Or did you decide to review a squadcast from a year ago?

Ooops! First month of any new year I'm always writing duff cheques  Corrected (hey, neat, I'm pretty sure we couldn't do that on the old forums).

[KasperVld]

3 hours ago, katateochi said:

Ok so really important question: what's the dog's name!? K9 Kerman? 

 

Tito

 

[Sanic]

4/20

So KSP is MLG.

[nohelmet]

VR KSP would be so awesome! I'd pay money for that.

[Alshain]

Why not add the achievements to Steam if you are doing it for consoles?  It wouldn't affect other PC versions of the game, it would just be something extra for Steam.  I understood the point when it was no for everybody but if you are adding them for consoles it would just be silly to ignore the same feature in Steam. (I hear GOG has added Achievement support too)

Edited January 15, 2016 by Alshain

[Foxster]

Morrison's Ibuprofen FTW!

[problemecium]

For the sake of informing the populace:
KSP has always had PhysX. Unity 5 has a newer version of PhysX (3.3 if I recall) than Unity 4 had, and boasts multithreaded physics. Though the structure of KSP is apparently not being changed to leverage this particular feature, the new PhysX version that comes with Unity will indeed be present, and we can assume that the engine backend will attempt to make use of any physics optimizations wherever the game doesn't prevent it.

[klgraham1013]

8 hours ago, MiniMatt said:

Nasa can make hinges he notes. Squad reps note that Nasa budget has more zeros at the end.

I'm pretty sure zeros aren't the issue.  I'd wager it's more about priorities or the devs simply not liking robotic parts.

[Superfluous J]

29 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

I'm pretty sure zeros aren't the issue.  I'd wager it's more about priorities or the devs simply not liking robotic parts.

I always assumed it was the huge bug caused by docking moving parts together. If a fix was found for that I would expect robotic parts in the game not too long after.

[HafCoJoe]

8 hours ago, katateochi said:

Ok so really important question: what's the dog's name!? K9 Kerman? 

 

 

5 hours ago, KasperVld said:

Tito

 

 

Thumbs to Katateochi and Kasper for keeping it real

Edited January 15, 2016 by Avera9eJoe

[r_rolo1]

Just wanted to point out that the Infernal Robotics modders budget has less zeros ( atleast on the right of the significant digits ) than SQUAD  

All in all , good news , but nothing actually earth-shattering. And as a side point, be careful about who you hire for the translations: if you go cheap, you'll get some chump from a Languages course that , while probably well versed in both English and the language he/she will translate, will know very little ( if anything ) about rockets and physics. That is a recipe for literal translations that ultimately don't make any sense.( like happens in so many games  )

Spoiler

On unrelated news, I know a certain r_rolo1 that has done some scientific papers translations to Portuguese on olden days. Completely unrelated , I swear

Seriously, this is not a plug. I just shudder when I see a hack job of a translation that some games have because I know I can do better than that ... and given some of the text already in game, I can see some phrasing that probably will give some google-translate quality translations if who does it is not well versed in both the languages involved in the translation and in physics ...

 

Edited January 15, 2016 by r_rolo1

[Sandworm]

>>> Console & PC are two seperate builds, one won't limit the other.

I really hope this is true.  I've seen a couple developer agreements that stated the console version must be essentially the latest and greatest.  The console version was not to lag behind any other version in terms of features.  In such cases the console version does limit as new features cannot be pushed to any version until they are ready for console, which can take more testing/money/time.  There is also a growing body of evidence that some AAA PC games have been deliberately hamstrung so that they do not better their console versions in terms of graphics.  I hope squad hasn't signed any such agreements. Of course if they have, they wouldn't be able to tell us as such things are locked behind NDAs.

See the Watchdogs graphics fiasco: http://wccftech.com/e3-2012-graphics-watch-dogs-deliberately-turned-off-pc-next-gen/

Edited January 15, 2016 by Sandworm

[klgraham1013]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

I always assumed it was the huge bug caused by docking moving parts together. If a fix was found for that I would expect robotic parts in the game not too long after.

Is this to do with a vessel docking to itself?

[Superfluous J]

43 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Is this to do with a vessel docking to itself?

I have no idea the details, just that IR + docking = bad. There are warnings all over the IR thread and I've never had a good experience myself with it either. Because of these bad experiences I've essentially sworn off of IR until they say they've fixed that, but I have no expectations about it. I *DO* expect Squad to not implement something that buggy into the main game, and likewise expect they *WILL* implement it quickly once a way to do it without the bugs is found.

I don't know why "whatever works for the claw" can't be adapted to IR style hinges. The claw has some issues but I think they're mostly fixed, and it has a hinge and is useless without attaching things together in-game, which to my knowledge is handled like docking. Obviously there is some reason it won't work, or one of the very smart people who mod for this game would have done it by now.

Also let me stress this: I'm not dogging on the IR guys. It's a very cool mod and the bugs aren't their fault. But they're there and Squad would get (and deserve) a lot of community flak for implementing it into the stock game.

[selfish_meme]

2 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

I always assumed it was the huge bug caused by docking moving parts together. If a fix was found for that I would expect robotic parts in the game not too long after.

We do this all the time with stock builds and I have never found it to be particularly buggy

 

52 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Is this to do with a vessel docking to itself?

This is more likely and would probably require a docking port code rewrite so it did not build a new joint/resource tree

Edited January 16, 2016 by selfish_meme

[GeneCash]

14 hours ago, MiniMatt said:

video can be found at http://www.twitch.tv/ksptv/profile/past_broadcasts

"No supported video backend available; Flash not installed"

I wish they'd move to YouTube, or Twitch would get its excrements together, because I'm certainly not installing that security abomination called "Flash"

[Superfluous J]

6 hours ago, selfish_meme said:

We do this all the time with stock builds and I have never found it to be particularly buggy

You hook Infernal Robotics parts together with docking ports in stock?

[selfish_meme]

37 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

You hook Infernal Robotics parts together with docking ports in stock?

Sorry you said moving parts, was not aware it was IR you were talking about