The Grand KSP 1.1 Discussion Thread

[boostme]

As a long-time 64-bit Linux player I must say that 1.1 is by var the _least_ stable version of KSP I've ever played. The game crashes often when I stage or edit the staging in flight.

And the wheels are insane - like they're made of tissue paper or something. Yesterday I tried to land a 20 ton tanker on Minmus (where it weighs 1 ton - that's 250kg per wheel). I'd touch down on the Great flats at less than 1m/s and the wheels exploded. I eventually got it down by putting it down on the solar panels and gingerly rolling it onto its wheels for g. sake! Then I found that the wheels exploded if I went faster than 2m/s or activated warp on a mirror flat plain. It took me _forever_ to drive 3km.

Besides that I'm having a blast. I quite enjoy figuring ways around issues like this. Every mission is an Apollo 11. However, I do hope that the wheels get fixed soon.

Also did anyone notice that the offset tool goes bananas with the tier 1 undercarriage (not the nose wheel)? You just can't get those things into position!

[Basto]

Squad has been a little silent in this thread but that's probably just because they have been hard at work fixing things. Can't wait for the Devon notes later today. Keep up the hard work guys!

 

[XrayLima]

Hurrah for feedback!  Glad to hear.

Given the size of the hill they had to climb I think Squad did an amazing amount of work getting to here.  Honestly.  A full engine update is no mean feat.  I think they were rather carpet bombed by the pre-release and the number of bugs found and probably had been a little optimisitic on when they thought it would be ready or how long the pre-release bugs would take to fix.  I'm guessing they were forced by prearranged events (Steam sale etc) and forum pressure given the storm around the pre-release to release when they did even though they knew they had several hundred bugs still sat in the pre-release tracker alone.  In hindsight, I really wish they'd done a Devnote Tuesday at the same time as the release, holding their hands up and saying "Yup, it's still not 100%, prob 85%, we're working on it but it's still fun and it'll get better, honest"  Instead it feels like they dropped 1.1 and ran and hid for a bit which stirred folks up.  Hopefully an update today will calm a few vocal voices down.

[Majorjim!]

3 hours ago, Basto said:

Squad has been a little silent in this thread but that's probably just because they have been hard at work fixing things. Can't wait for the Devon notes later today. Keep up the hard work guys!

 

I will be amazed if this patch, patch fixes the wheels and legs. I heard it will require the next unity update. 

[XrayLima]

Aye, maybe. Not heard that myself, but then again not heard much really! Maybe I need to lurk in more detail! But at least they should be in a position to confirm that, and give some rough ideas as when they are hoping that update might be.

[pandaman]

Even if 1.1.1 can't fix the issues fully it's possible that they were able to make some tweaks and balance adjustments to improve things for now.   Although 'balance' adjustments can be very subjective as to whether it's an improvement or not. 

[Andem]

21 hours ago, sp1989 said:

So I posted about this concern for the pre-release and many people said that because it was the pre-release they hadn't put the finishing touches on it. Im sorry I don't really like the way the game looks. Especially in the VAB. Outside of the VAB the game looks pretty much the same, but in the VAB I don't like the way the textures look on the left and even putting a ship together it just doesn't seem right to me. Maybe its just me. I want to get other peoples opinions. My graphics setting are not at the highest, however they are no lower than they were in 1.0.5 and lower. 

I agree. The shading in half of the scenes makes me feel like I'm playing a high production value KSP knockoff. It went from great looking and solid in it's style down straight into the UI Uncanny Valley. Please restore the old looks!

 

2 hours ago, Majorjim said:

I will be amazed if this patch, patch fixes the wheels and legs. I heard it will require the next unity update. 

Wait whut? That's terrible! Rovers are easily my favorite part of KSP, I can't wait for another Unity engine to come out!

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 26, 2016 by Andem

[katateochi]

1 hour ago, Andem said:

Wait whut? That's terrible! Rovers are easily my favorite part of KSP, I can't wait for another Unity engine to come out!

From what I understood from discussions with devs during the pre-release, it's not another major version that's required, but an update to the current unity version.  I got the feeling this meant a 1-3 months, but that's just speculation. 

[Padishar]

6 minutes ago, katateochi said:

From what I understood from discussions with devs during the pre-release, it's not another major version that's required, but an update to the current unity version.  I got the feeling this meant a 1-3 months, but that's just speculation. 

Yes, my understanding is that KSP 1.1 currently uses Unity 5.2.4 and the wheel issues have already been fixed in Unity 5.3.x but, unfortunately, that introduces some other issues with KSP that are even more serious so it will probably not happen until KSP can use Unity 5.4.x.  That has recently gone into beta so will probably be evaluated by Squad once the current release and patches are out of the way...

[purpleivan]

I've just come across an unexpected change in behaviour in the VAB that make construction (at least the way I've always done it) a little tricky.

The behaviour used to be that parts that were attached with symmetry turned on, could be selected individually in the staging menu, by clicking on the symmetry group, which would open it, then another click on a part in that group, allowed it to be dragged around the build menu on its own. This allowed easy symmetrical placement of tanks and engines, which could then have the their decouplers dragged into separate stages, to create asparagus staging.

However this ability to move single parts of a symmetry group around the staging menu seems to have been disabled.

Now after opening a symmetry group in the staging menu, the single icon opens out into the number that symmetry was set to (e.g. 4) as in previous version and clicking on one of the parts in that symmetry group still causes the icon frame to be removed (to identify it as selected) but instead of then being able to then drag just that one part, the whole symmetry group is dragged.

I've tried the obvious alternative behaviours that might have replaced the old one (e.g. right or middle mouse click on the part) but nothing seems to allow me to move a single part of a symmetry group on its own around the staging menu.

Has anyone else encountered this?

Edited April 26, 2016 by purpleivan

[Majorjim!]

Just now, katateochi said:

From what I understood from discussions with devs during the pre-release, it's not another major version that's required, but an update to the current unity version.  I got the feeling this meant a 1-3 months, but that's just speculation. 

Yes that is what I meant, not unity 6 or anything silly like that, just not a quick fix sadly..

[Andem]

2 minutes ago, Majorjim said:

Yes that is what I meant, not unity 6 or anything silly like that, just not a quick fix sadly..

Well, that's better... still makes me sad tho... 

Edited April 26, 2016 by Andem

[Majorjim!]

Just now, Andem said:

Well, that's better... still makes me sad tho... 

Me too.. I hope at least legs that do not explode during feather soft touch downs are introduced.. It kinda breaks the game.

 

Just now, Padishar said:

but, unfortunately, that introduces some other issues with KSP that are even more serious so it will probably not happen until KSP can use Unity 5.4.x.

citation needed as I have not heard that mentioned anywhere by anyone.

[Padishar]

6 minutes ago, Majorjim said:

citation needed as I have not heard that mentioned anywhere by anyone.

I'm pretty sure that nasty issues in 5.3.x were mentioned in a devnote sometime in the last few months...

Edit: In fact, a post in this very thread from a Squad dev linking to a Unity release note:

 

Edited April 26, 2016 by Padishar

[Jacke]

7 hours ago, Basto said:

Squad has been a little silent in this thread but that's probably just because they have been hard at work fixing things. Can't wait for the Devon notes later today. Keep up the hard work guys!

 

Good to hear.  I hope this is truly a few steps forward without one or more back.

 

5 hours ago, XrayLima said:

Hurrah for feedback!  Glad to hear.

Spoiler

Given the size of the hill they had to climb I think Squad did an amazing amount of work getting to here.  Honestly.  A full engine update is no mean feat.  I think they were rather carpet bombed by the pre-release and the number of bugs found and probably had been a little optimisitic on when they thought it would be ready or how long the pre-release bugs would take to fix.  I'm guessing they were forced by prearranged events (Steam sale etc) and forum pressure given the storm around the pre-release to release when they did even though they knew they had several hundred bugs still sat in the pre-release tracker alone.  In hindsight, I really wish they'd done a Devnote Tuesday at the same time as the release, holding their hands up and saying "Yup, it's still not 100%, prob 85%, we're working on it but it's still fun and it'll get better, honest"  Instead it feels like they dropped 1.1 and ran and hid for a bit which stirred folks up.  Hopefully an update today will calm a few vocal voices down.

 

I sort of agree with @XrayLima, but in retrospect I think it would have been better if, in the parlance of a much graver historical misdecision, they'd put their "engineer hats" on and mulled it over, even went for a Flight Controller's "GO or NOGO" to their staff, as well as the most senior of the Prerelease testers.  I think that engineering decision would have had them go 1 or 2 more Prerelease versions farther, perhaps a week or two, and done what I think they need to do for 1.1.1 (see below).  Because engineers know management and business too, and nothing rots management and business like failure.

 

19 minutes ago, Padishar said:

Yes, my understanding is that KSP 1.1 currently uses Unity 5.2.4 and the wheel issues have already been fixed in Unity 5.3.x but, unfortunately, that introduces some other issues with KSP that are even more serious so it will probably not happen until KSP can use Unity 5.4.x.  That has recently gone into beta so will probably be evaluated by Squad once the current release and patches are out of the way...

I agree, as the underlying issue is from Unity 5.2.4, only with a Unity upgrade (a grave decision that has to be vetted thoroughly) will the final fix on wheels and legs be possible.  Hopefully with the feedback from 1.1, Squad can improve the quality of their workarounds so those beasties behave.  That (and some other fixes) are my hopes for KSP 1.1.1.

[Majorjim!]

Just now, Padishar said:

I'm pretty sure that nasty issues in 5.3.x were mentioned in a devnote sometime in the last few months...

Edit: In fact, a post in this very thread from a Squad dev linking to a Unity release note:

 

Nothing in there says anything about nasty issues affecting KSP as you said here:

 

Just now, Padishar said:

unfortunately, that introduces some other issues with KSP that are even more serious

[Kerbal01]

Im not seeing a x64 option for 1.1 mac. how to enable?

[basic.syntax]

Every time they move to a new version of Unity, they have to go through a huge amount of testing and problem solving; it's never been easy. Over in this thread players checking the release notes saw it comes with a new version of Mono, and support for the "metal" graphics API for OSX; which could lead to performance gains there, but who knows, might introduce new problems that need solving just for OSX.

The specific wheel problem that Arsonide was commenting on that waits for Unity 5.3, is Squad's "wheels blocked" work-around, preventing craft destruction, that occurs when wheels are placed too close to other parts. "Blockage" also occurs when suspension travel on a moving vehicle takes the wheel too close to another part. 

Things like jitter / excessive bouncing, landing legs breaking too easily when attached to certain parts in certain ways - may be possible to improve inside Unity 5.2.4 that we have now.

[Auriga_Nexus]

So my opinion on 1.1... I'm liking the optimizations so far, since I can now play with larger ships without the massive lag issues I had before. It seems the in-game TiDi always went to yellow if I was launching anything bigger than a sounding rocket, so I was pleased to launch a medium-sized orbiter with no framerate drops or TiDi issues as a prelim test.

Then I prepared to get back into it in full, and that's when I encountered the bugs. Seriously Kraken fthagn much? I have never had as many crashes before - and I'm not talking soft crashes, I'm talking random, immediate CTD's on Windows.

Thankfully this specific bug I believe to be the culprit is one that Squad is aware of and working on, but it has made the game more or less unplayable for me now. So sorry, but KSP is going back on the metaphorical shelf for another couple of releases. I don't have the time or the patience to deal with it.

[Luke Skycrawler]

4 hours ago, purpleivan said:

I've just come across an unexpected change in behaviour in the VAB that make construction (at least the way I've always done it) a little tricky.

The behaviour used to be that parts that were attached with symmetry turned on, could be selected individually in the staging menu, by clicking on the symmetry group, which would open it, then another click on a part in that group, allowed it to be dragged around the build menu on its own. This allowed easy symmetrical placement of tanks and engines, which could then have the their decouplers dragged into separate stages, to create asparagus staging.

However this ability to move single parts of a symmetry group around the staging menu seems to have been disabled.

Now after opening a symmetry group in the staging menu, the single icon opens out into the number that symmetry was set to (e.g. 4) as in previous version and clicking on one of the parts in that symmetry group still causes the icon frame to be removed (to identify it as selected) but instead of then being able to then drag just that one part, the whole symmetry group is dragged.

I've tried the obvious alternative behaviours that might have replaced the old one (e.g. right or middle mouse click on the part) but nothing seems to allow me to move a single part of a symmetry group on its own around the staging menu.

Has anyone else encountered this?

Yes, it's quite annoying and it's surprised me this is the first anyone else has complained about it, at least that I have found as I've been prowling the forums for this issue looking for an answer. My only solution to keep asparagus stages symmetrical is to go ahead and build as usual to get my CoM and CoL where I want them, and this is where I'd usually separate the stages and place the Seperatrons and chutes, but now I'll use 4x of the cubic struts as placemarks and then I'll go to 1x and grab what I want to place and then Alt copy and place the rest one at a time. PITA...

[steve_v]

2 hours ago, Auriga_Nexus said:

Then I prepared to get back into it in full, and that's when I encountered the bugs. Seriously Kraken fthagn much? I have never had as many crashes before - and I'm not talking soft crashes, I'm talking random, immediate CTD's on Windows.

Yeah, and it's not only the Windows player that randomly crashes either. KSP on GNU/Linux went from zero crashes, even heavily modded, to random CTDs every 1-2hrs (native heap corruption / mono issues AFAICT) and a bunch of graphical glitches, with no mods at all. Going through the extensive list of "known issues" and disabling some GPU driver optimisations improved this from a CTD every 3rd scene change.

Hell, I've even seen 1.1 go zombie and trigger the kernel SMP lockup detection code. (BUG: soft lockup - CPU#[x] stuck for [xx]s! [KSP.x86_64]) This is slightly disturbing.

While performance has improved (though I'm not seeing the "huge" performance boost claimed TBH) stability has gone seriously downhill, add to this the several "CTD on startup" issues, windowed mode freaking out so badly it's actually crashing certain window managers, and the dodgy transparency and other graphics issues... KSP feels far more "beta" than the beta releases ever did.
As for wheels... Borked. Just don't get me started on how borked... They're still a minor issue next to the crashing though, IMO.

The more I play, the more I see this is a buggy, crashy mess. Unity issues (the cost of using a cheap lousy game engine) perhaps, but nevertheless "Release quality" this is not.

Edited April 27, 2016 by steve_v

[katateochi]

5 hours ago, purpleivan said:

I've just come across an unexpected change in behaviour in the VAB that make construction (at least the way I've always done it) a little tricky

I was still able to separate a group of 4 symmetrically placed engines into 2 separate stages. This is just a test setup of 4 engines; added empty stage, clicked to open group, clicked on two engines to deselect and then dragged the remaining two selected into the empty stage.  

There does seem to be something a bit different about how that process works though. 

It is however not possible to hold ctrl and click on multiple separate items to move them together (that has been reported to the tracker).

[Jacke]

6 hours ago, purpleivan said:

I've just come across an unexpected change in behaviour in the VAB that make construction (at least the way I've always done it) a little tricky.

The behaviour used to be that parts that were attached with symmetry turned on, could be selected individually in the staging menu, by clicking on the symmetry group, which would open it, then another click on a part in that group, allowed it to be dragged around the build menu on its own. This allowed easy symmetrical placement of tanks and engines, which could then have the their decouplers dragged into separate stages, to create asparagus staging.

However this ability to move single parts of a symmetry group around the staging menu seems to have been disabled.

It's definitely changed, but it appears you can still split up parts from symmetry groups between stages.

In 1.1, when you click on a symmetry group in the staging display, it opens up to a list of all the parts, each one outlined in green.  When you hover the mouse pointer over a part in the staging list, whether outlined in green or nothing, the staging list part becomes outlined in white and the respective part(s) on the spacecraft becomes outlined in green.

What you do now is click on the ones you *don't* want to move out of the current stage, which toggles off their green outline in the staging list, until just the ones you want to move are outlined in green,  Then you click-and-hold on one of the green outlined parts and drag them to a different stage.

If you want to get more fancy with symmetry groups, the mod Part Wizard can break and remake symmetry groups.

Edited April 27, 2016 by Jacke

[ringerc]

Enjoying giving this a go. I can't *believe* the performance improvement. My laptop would've melted on the default settings, now it's merely slow for a simple mission. Truly impressive.

The typeface change is ... interesting. Brings me back to the early days of unhinted anti-aliased text when type renderers used to smooth text without considering the pixel grid. Now, where are my glasses... Places like the engineers' report entries where non-antialised text are used are dramatically more readable by contrast. AA text is fine for larger typefaces, but should be DISABLED for smaller type or correctly hinted, pixel-grid-aware text should be used. As-is it's pretty horrid.

Also when I split and re-stack a rocket to insert a stage or something, it seems to randomize the staging even more than 1.0.5 did. If I had {decoupler,engine} {decoupler,engine} and split then reconnect I get {decoupler} {decoupler} {engine} {engine}. Not super helpful.

The main issue I'm having right now is that my saves have vanished. All dialogs in the game that list a set of choices are blank - the game load dialog, flag picker, the mission picker when I start a new dummy game, etc. They worked yesterday, but today all are blank. I haven't knowingly made any changes but the game has crashed repeatedly, so maybe it mangled some state in one of the crashes. If a clean install doesn't solve it or it comes back I'll raise it here.

(It's gone from rock-solid x86_64 in 1.0.5 on my Fedora box to very flakey on 1.1. Do you have a crash report / upload page where I can send cores and logs? Disabling the optional shader use seems to have helped a bit...)

Edited April 27, 2016 by ringerc
added info

[purpleivan]

4 hours ago, Jacke said:

It's definitely changed, but it appears you can still split up parts from symmetry groups between stages.

In 1.1, when you click on a symmetry group in the staging display, it opens up to a list of all the parts, each one outlined in green.  When you hover the mouse pointer over a part in the staging list, whether outlined in green or nothing, the staging list part becomes outlined in white and the respective part(s) on the spacecraft becomes outlined in green.

What you do now is click on the ones you *don't* want to move out of the current stage, which toggles off their green outline in the staging list, until just the ones you want to move are outlined in green,  Then you click-and-hold on one of the green outlined parts and drag them to a different stage.

If you want to get more fancy with symmetry groups, the mod Part Wizard can break and remake symmetry groups.

Thanks for the info, I can confirm that works exactly as described.

It's actually pretty straightforward to use, possibly better than the old method, but I didn't think of trying that as it's pretty much the opposite of how it used to work, i.e. deselect the parts you don't want to move, rather then selecting the one you do want to.

At least that little mystery is satisfactorily solved now.

Cheers.