New Messages update 1.4.2

[rayceeya]

Hey, so since update 1.4.2, I'm now getting a ton of useless messages regarding my contracts.  Like if I'm supposed to test a certain part at speed and altitude, I'm getting messages telling me I'm at the required speed or altitude even if I don't have the part on the craft.  When you have like a dozen contracts going at the same time, it gets really irritating, because I'm getting messages constantly and none of them relate to what I'm actually doing.  This is something that cropped up as soon as I installed 1.4.2.  

Is there a way to turn this off?  

I'm running a stock install with no mods.  The only weird thing I can think of is I started this career in 1.4.0 and carried it through until 1.4.2.

 

Thanks in advance

[Schmelge]

Yes I have the same thing and it's super annoying. I get new doublets everytime I switch crafts too. 

[Onigato]

Thirded. It's not every contract, it's not every check-mark, but it is happening for things like "Place a satellite in orbit of Mun", and then triggering "Be stable for 10 seconds!" on my rover. On the ground. 20Km from the KSC.

[Schmelge]

Just now, Onigato said:

Thirded. It's not every contract, it's not every check-mark

Yupp exactly this. Not all contracts but always the same markers though

For me at least

[magico13]

It was part of the update that is looks like they didn't mean to ship as-is. I think they meant to log to the debug log, but instead they are logging to the message app. From the changelog for 1.4.2:

* Fix contract parameter completion to catch errors and contract parameters now log info messages when their state changes.

[Onigato]

So, when does 1.4.3 drop to fix that?

[rayceeya]

So no quick fix, we just have to wait it out until the next update?

[Snark]

55 minutes ago, Onigato said:

So, when does 1.4.3 drop to fix that?

Squad is generally not in the habit of announcing release dates ahead of time.  (Making History was very much the exception.)  So the answer is basically going to be "as soon as it's ready," and it's unlikely we'll get any more information than that.

2 minutes ago, rayceeya said:

So no quick fix, we just have to wait it out until the next update?

Pretty much, yeah.

[rayceeya]

Well, at least I'm not the only one.  I'm sure they're on it.  I was worried it was something wrong on my end.  I guess I'll stay stock a little longer.  I miss my mods

[Vanamonde]

This is a known bug, and so, moved to support. 

[Schmelge]

4 hours ago, Snark said:

So the answer is basically going to be "as soon as it's ready," and it's unlikely we'll get any more information than that.

That is very, very bad and sad for us that have mods. Especially since they seem to be very keen about their modding community.

They dont have to announce the hour they are releasing, but at least roughly what day or at least week so I can go offline mode..

[Snark]

8 hours ago, Schmelge said:

That is very, very bad and sad for us that have mods.

Why do you say that?

Not criticizing you or anything, I'm just genuinely puzzled and would like to know.  I use plenty of mods myself, and I write plenty of mods, and the particular timing of KSP releases doesn't faze me in the slightest.  I don't see that it really matters one way or the other whether a patch releases today, or tomorrow, or next week, or next month.

Clearly it matters to you, somehow-- I'm curious, what's the issue this causes for you?

Besides, it seems to me it's not bad for you.  It's good for you that they don't announce a schedule (even if that may not be obvious to you).  Because that's how software gets made.  If they announced well in advance when the patch would be... I can just about guarantee you that you wouldn't like the result.  (Speaking here as someone who's been shipping commercial software for a living for a few decades.).  Explanation in spoiler section, for the curious.

Spoiler

I can tell you that as a customer who wants a quality product with as many features and as few defects as possible, you really don't want an announced date.  Why is that?  Because software takes an unpredictable length of time to get right.  It's the nature of the beast.  If you try to force a particular schedule on it, almost always the result is that the thing that gets released is buggier, or feature-incomplete, or otherwise not-what-you-want in some way.

I've noticed that this seems to be a common misunderstanding among folks who use software but aren't involved in its production.  People tend to think of software as just being a machine like a car:  complex, sure, lots of moving parts, sure, but fundamentally a straightforward and orderly thing with completely known and understood behavior patterns.

If there's something wrong with your car, and you take it in to the mechanic, and he sees right away that your transmission is shot and you need a new one, he can tell you right there how long it's going to take him to fix it, and he'll be pretty accurate about that.  And it's really good for you that he can tell you that, right?  Because you need your car, and if there's a period where you can't have it while it's in the shop, you need to be able to plan around that.  If you hand it to the mechanic and ask "when will it be ready" and he says "well, maybe in an hour, maybe a day, maybe a month"... that's probably not a mechanic that you'll bring your business to again any time soon.

But the thing is... software is not like a car.  It really isn't.  It's harder than that.

The mechanic can tell you pretty accurately how much time it will take him to swap out your transmission because it's a standard part.  You're driving a Civic and he's swapped the transmission out of hundreds of Civics and it's the same process every time and so he can tell you an accurate time because he really knows his business and he's working with standard components.

Software... isn't.

A developer fixing software isn't like a mechanic fixing a car.  It's a lot more like a surgeon fixing a person.  Yes, the surgeon is highly trained and knows a lot.  Yes, the surgeon knows that when he opens up this patient on the operating table, the heart's going to be over here and the kidneys will be over there and there will be this little wiggly thing over here that you'd better be really, really careful not to snip.  But it's also the case that every human body is different, and in particular every injury or tumor is different, and the surgeon can't know exactly what he'll find until he gets in there and can see it and explore what's going on.

Imagine if someone dear to you had an emergency medical problem.  You rush them to the hospital and shortly they're open on the operating table.  The suspense is killing you-- how long will this take?

Well... tell me, which one of these scenarios would you prefer:

• The surgeon says to you "I'll be done by 3PM because I have a golf game scheduled then.  Whatever we've gotten done by then, we'll just sew 'em up and hand 'em back to you by 3:00.  Great, huh?  You'll be home in time for dinner."
• The surgeon says to you "sorry, I won't know what I'm looking at until we get in there.  We'll get this taken care of as soon as we can, but it'll take a while and we can't tell you exactly how long it will take because we can't sew them up until the problem is taken care of."

I dunno 'bout you... but if it were my mom on the operating table, I'd sure as heck want the second case.  I care about having it done right a lot more than I care about how long it takes.

And software is like that.  No software is perfect, ever.  There are always bugs-- and reducing the number of them takes the company time and money.  There are always more features you want than you have time to develop-- and each feature costs the company time and money to add.

All software is developed in a triangle of time, quality, and money.  You can't have all three.  Want something on time at high quality?  It's gonna be expensive.  Want something cheap at high quality?  It's gonna take a really long time.  Want something fast and cheap?  It's gonna be crap.

As a customer, you care about quality, and you care about cost.  You want software that's not full of bugs, and you don't want to have to pay an arm and a leg for it.  Which means if you want those two things, you have to understand that the time element is going to be left dangling, and they can't tell you when it will be.

If they do tell you when it will be... then either they're going to have to charge more money, or else they're going to have to cut corners on quality.  That's nothing about Squad, it's just how software production works, for everyone.  So... in this case, they're producing a free patch, meaning that they're not making any money at all from the patch, and every engineer-hour they spend fixing it is a significant monetary cost to them.  Which means there's no wiggle room on the "cost" axis, here-- that's already nailed in place.

Which means, basically, either you give them the freedom to say "it'll be ready when it's ready" ... or you nail them down to a specific release time and accept that the thing you receive will have extra bugs in it.

Which do you want?  I'd prefer the less buggy product, myself.

 

8 hours ago, Schmelge said:

They dont have to announce the hour they are releasing, but at least roughly what day or at least week

Nope.  Not gonna happen-- and for the reasons I describe, you really don't want this to happen, it would be bad.

Actually, announcing an hour would be the easy thing ("whichever day we release, it'll be at 3PM" or whatever).  It's the day and the week that are basically impossible to decide in advance, without arbitrarily lowering quality and increasing bug count.

 

8 hours ago, Schmelge said:

so I can go offline mode

Huh?  What are you talking about?  "offline mode"?  I have no idea what you mean-- KSP is an offline game, it's not network play or anything, and I'm having trouble understanding what being online or offline would have to do with KSP fixing bugs.

If you're concerned that you don't want the patch for some reason-- e.g. if you have mods that you're worried will get broken by the update, and you don't want to add the update until the mods are updated, too-- then that's clearly not a problem, you simply don't update until the mods are ready.  (Though honestly, I expect that the vast majority of mods would be completely unaffected by any upcoming patch-- they'll just be fixing bugs here and there, not tinkering with the "bones" of the system.  Except for the very few mods that are explicitly version-locked, like Kopernicus, I expect most mods will be just fine.  Heck, my own mods went from 1.3.1 to 1.4.2 without needing an update, and that was a major update.)

Clearly this is something that's important to you (and, from the way you've written, I'm guessing that it has something to do with why you think you need to know when the patch is coming out) ... but I don't understand what that is.

Could you explain a bit?  If you've got some technical problem, perhaps it might be possible to help with that.

[Gordon Dry]

Actually the only fix is to use the newest Contract Configurator mod, it got a workaround:

KSP didn't spam a single message since I use the latest version of CC.

[Schmelge]

Hi Snark! And thank you for a very elaborated answer!

 

First of all I want to start with apologizing if my comment came off as ignorant and cranky, it certainly wasn't meant to if that's how it was perceived.

1 hour ago, Snark said:

Well... tell me, which one of these scenarios would you prefer:

Ofcourse I would want my mom to be taken care of the surgeon is example 2, but the same surgeon would most likely, or at least hopefully come to me after the operation and tell me - So everything went well, your mom will be okey, she will be waking up in about 1 hour so give her some time and then you can be on your way home.

I would be very uncomfortable with a surgeon operating on my mom and then when he is done he just walks passed and out to the golf course. Information is always the key to everything right? At least for me, I feel more comfortable doing anything knowing as much as possible. 

 

1 hour ago, Snark said:

There are always bugs-- and reducing the number of them takes the company time and money.

Oh indeed there will always be bugs and I'm happy to give the one I'm purchasing a product from, time to kink them out. 

 

2 hours ago, Snark said:

Which means, basically, either you give them the freedom to say "it'll be ready when it's ready"

Yes! That's exactly what I want! I want them to tell me that the update is ready for release! If it was a vanilla install I had I wouldn't have any problems at all with how it works, but right now it's more of a surprise - "Oh I woke up this morning and now my game is updated and now I can't play anymore because of version locked mods.

2 hours ago, Snark said:

Which do you want?  I'd prefer the less buggy product, myself.

Of course I want a less buggy product, however, I would also want the right to chose if I want to update the game. I would like to continue to play on my older version of the game, not being forced to update it to play. I would be a very happy camper if I didn't get any notice at all about a coming update, as long as when I launch the game I get a prompt saying "Hey there is a new update! Would you like to update to our new awesome version?"

Give me the choice at least, don't force it on me.

It's one thing if we are talking about multiplayer games, BF, CoD, CS etc. Ofcourse the update needs to be forced because of bugs that give possibilities of exploiting the game to your own advantage etc. But in a singleplayer offline game, I should be the one to decide if and when I want to update. 

This is turn would give me time to wait until I see that all mod creators of the mods I use have gotten their time to update.

I gave money to Squad - They gave me the right to use their product - I give them all the time they need to come with updates - They let me choose if and when I want to use the update when it's available. That, at least in my eyes, is a pretty fair deal.

2 hours ago, Snark said:

 I use plenty of mods myself, and I write plenty of mods // Speaking here as someone who's been shipping commercial software for a living for a few decades

Okay so take for example a company that develops the main system for a bank. The bank of course uses a bunch of other systems as well. 

Would you as the developer

• Push a new release of the main system to the bank without notice and hold your thumbs that it doesn't break 50% of the other systems
• Or would you contact the bank manager and tell him that you have a new version ready to be tested with the other programs before it's pushed out to all the banks computer

2 hours ago, Snark said:

So... in this case, they're producing a free patch, meaning that they're not making any money at all from the patch

No that money should have been budgeted from the very beginning. If you plan to make a completely new product you usually plan at least roughly, "if we take this price and get this amount of sales, how long can we support the product" Squad could have, if they wanted to, just stopped working at 1.0 if they wanted to, but of course they didn't cause that would not have been very good business, you would lose a lot of your clients for when it's time for 2.0. When you get to the point that the money from your sales are about to run out, then you release an expansion/DLC to get more funds. Consumers get more content and producer get more funds. 

I am very grateful that squad releases updates, that is definitely not my issue.

2 hours ago, Snark said:

Huh?  What are you talking about?  "offline mode"?  I have no idea what you mean-- KSP is an offline game

I bought the game through steam. And maybe, that is the main problem. Steam autoupdates, there is no choice. You can choose to set update download to the middle of the night if you want to but as soon as you try to launch the game you will be prompted to update before playing it.

That is steams fault not squads of course. But from my understanding I can't move the install folder anywhere else and still be able to update either. When I click the update button in the ksp launcher it takes me to a page explaining I have to log in to the store and go to "products purchased" to get the new version. I never bought KSP through the site so I wouldn't have any purchase history. And therefore, the way for me to install updates is to leave it in the steam folder and let it be auto updated  Cause I really want the update, it not a question about that, I really really want to the update, but I want the mods to be ready and updated before I do that.

One way I see it would work is that the "play game" button in steam would start the launcher instead and in the launcher you can have a check box for autoupdate.

2 hours ago, Snark said:

if you have mods that you're worried will get broken by the update, and you don't want to add the update until the mods are updated, too-- then that's clearly not a problem, you simply don't update until the mods are ready

Thats the whole thing. I don't have the choice when I'm on steam.

 

Lastly, I want to apologize again, this time before hand in case any of the things I just wrote is taken the wrong way, my intention is not to be angry/cranky/ignorant in any way.

If you have a solution for my problem I would be very grateful

 

Kind regards - Schmelge 

[Snark]

7 minutes ago, Schmelge said:

Ofcourse I would want my mom to be taken care of the surgeon is example 2, but the same surgeon would most likely, or at least hopefully come to me after the operation and tell me - So everything went well, your mom will be okey, she will be waking up in about 1 hour so give her some time and then you can be on your way home.

Sure.  But by the same analogy... as we sit here waiting for the next KSP patch, it's not the "surgery done, mom's waiting for an hour to recover and then you can go home."

Rather, mom's currently open on the operating table.  Therefore the time is uncertain.

Software's like that.  Unlike the surgical example, these days there's really not much of a "recovery time" involved.  Whenever the surgery stops-- i.e. they decide they're "finished" (e.g. enough bugs fixed, enough tests done, whatever) and stop tweaking code... then at that point, releasing the patch is basically pushing a button and then things happen really fast.  I don't know how long it takes with their system (it'll need time to percolate through Steam's servers and so forth), but I'm guessing it's probably an hour or two at most-- maybe even just minutes, for all I know.

So all this unpredictable waiting and wondering "when will it ship?"  -- the answer is that the surgeon's still in surgery, so they probably don't know.  And by the time that they do know... they'll be done, and it'll probably be only an hour before the release so there's not really much point in making an announcement then.

10 minutes ago, Schmelge said:

I would also want the right to chose if I want to update the game. I would like to continue to play on my older version of the game, not being forced to update it to play.

Sure.  And you have that.  If you don't want to update, don't update.   It's as simple as that. Nobody's "forcing" you to update.

Heck, I occasionally see posts from people who are still playing KSP 0.90 because they don't like the new aero.  Going that far back is kind of an outlier, but I know that quite a few people are still playing KSP 1.3.1, either because they're very attached to mods that haven't updated, or (for some) they take issue with the new EULA, or whatever.

So, it's totally possible.  KSP has no DRM, it's  not like it's one of those games that forces you to sign into a server somewhere before you can play it.  So you can stick with whatever version you want.  It's always been that way.

14 minutes ago, Schmelge said:

Okay so take for example a company that develops the main system for a bank. The bank of course uses a bunch of other systems as well. 

Would you as the developer

• Push a new release of the main system to the bank without notice and hold your thumbs that it doesn't break 50% of the other systems
• Or would you contact the bank manager and tell him that you have a new version ready to be tested with the other programs before it's pushed out to all the banks computer

The second, of course.

However... need I point out that "ultra-secure bank systems deployed across thousands of branches for hundreds of millions of customers and responsible for hundreds of billions of dollars in assets that will cause unimaginable economic and legal shockwaves if there's any problem at all, which have to be bullet-proofed against highly motivated hackers and organized crime and so forth" is not the same thing as "funny little rocket ship game developed by a handful of people for maybe a million customers, sold for the cost of a couple of movie tickets"?

Different standards apply.

17 minutes ago, Schmelge said:

No that money should have been budgeted from the very beginning. If you plan to make a completely new product you usually plan at least roughly, "if we take this price and get this amount of sales, how long can we support the product" Squad could have, if they wanted to, just stopped working at 1.0 if they wanted to, but of course they didn't cause that would not have been very good business, you would lose a lot of your clients for when it's time for 2.0. When you get to the point that the money from your sales are about to run out, then you release an expansion/DLC to get more funds. Consumers get more content and producer get more funds.

A fair point, and there are plenty of arguments that can be made on both sides of that, and plenty of arguments are in fact being made in other threads elsewhere, and when it comes to the economics of releasing software, I suspect nobody will be surprised when I say that I've got a few thoughts on the matter myself and could natter on for pages and pages.  But that's not really what we're talking about here, so I'll skip that for now if you don't mind. 

18 minutes ago, Schmelge said:

I bought the game through steam. And maybe, that is the main problem. Steam autoupdates, there is no choice. You can choose to set update download to the middle of the night if you want to but as soon as you try to launch the game you will be prompted to update before playing it.

Well, I got it through Steam, too.  I think there's an option in Steam to specify "don't update".

But you don't actually need that functionality, whether it's actually there or not.  Because you just do what every KSP player since the dawn of time has done (at least, every player who cares about not updating), and just keep a pristine copy of KSP in another folder that Steam doesn't know about.  And play from there.

20 minutes ago, Schmelge said:

But from my understanding I can't move the install folder anywhere else and still be able to update either.

Well, of course.  That's the point.  Putting the folder elsewhere is specifically because you don't want Steam to update it.

So you have the Steam installation folder, which you just leave in place and let Steam muck with as it likes to, so it's kept up to date.  And then you have your non-updated folder, which is what you actually play from, and nothing inside that folder will ever change until and unless you want it to.

And then along comes a Steam patch, and it updates its folder, but you aren't disturbed in the slightest.

And then, at some point if and when you decide to update to the new version, you just re-copy the Steam folder (with the current version) to a new place to play from; move your mods over (or install them from scratch, if they've got new versions); copy your saves folder across so you can continue playing your same career; and there you go.

So, there it is.  Takes about two mouse clicks and a few seconds.

Sorry for not mentioning this earlier-- it's such an overwhelmingly common solution since forever that it didn't occur to me that this might be your problem.    So I assumed you must have some other issue.

23 minutes ago, Schmelge said:

If you have a solution for my problem I would be very grateful

How's this one? 

[adsii1970]

6 minutes ago, Snark said:

So all this unpredictable waiting and wondering "when will it ship?"  -- the answer is that the surgeon's still in surgery, so they probably don't know. 

Just as long as the patient doesn't die on the table, using this example, of course...

[Snark]

4 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Just as long as the patient doesn't die on the table, using this example, of course...

Oh, when they're done, then they know.

That just happens to be one of the possible varieties of "done".

[Schmelge]

17 minutes ago, Snark said:

And then, at some point if and when you decide to update to the new version, you just re-copy the Steam folder (with the current version) to a new place to play from; move your mods over (or install them from scratch, if they've got new versions); copy your saves folder across so you can continue playing your same career; and there you go.

So, there it is.  Takes about two mouse clicks and a few seconds.

Sorry for not mentioning this earlier-- it's such an overwhelmingly common solution since forever that it didn't occur to me that this might be your problem.   

It actually never really occured to me that I could do this.... quite embarrassing tbh..

Quote

So I assumed you must have some other issue.

yeah I just had an argument with my wife and she told me the same thing. That I have a lot of issues xD

Quote

How's this one? 

well... it solves my whole problem. so I would say it's a good one  is there a way to do this and still have steam track your ingame hours too?

[Snark]

19 minutes ago, Schmelge said:

 is there a way to do this and still have steam track your ingame hours too?

Not as far as I know.  Basically, the whole point of this exercise is "Steam is being obnoxious and won't shut up, so let's evict it from the premises."  Which means that the ingame-hours tracking "baby" gets thrown out with the forced-updates "bathwater".

Of course, as much time as I sink into KSP... I'm kinda glad that it doesn't track my hours, it would probably be embarrassing.

[Capt. Hunt]

It's worth mentioning that we probably will get the proverbial "The surgery went well, your mom will be waking up in an hour," when it's done and they're ready to release the patch.  It's not like they'll sew her up and shove her out the door in a wheelchair.

[Mun Moo]

Hello.
Since developers like specifics when fixing bugs (at least I do), I will try to be more specific as to the nature of the bug:
The bug only occurs in contracts that have multiple conditions required to fulfill the contract that are NOT independent.
For example, a Tourism contract or a Take <science measurement X> at <place Y> <altitude Z> will NOT spam you but a "test part X" contract will.
Thanks.

[rayceeya]

10 hours ago, Gordon Dry said:

Actually the only fix is to use the newest Contract Configurator mod, it got a workaround:

KSP didn't spam a single message since I use the latest version of CC.

Thanks mate, but I think I'm just gonna wait until the next release.  Maybe spend some time playing around with the new making history missions or build something crazy in sandbox.  But it's really good to hear someone found a workaround.

[bonyetty]

1.4 surgery done bill payed 

1.4.1 mom rolled out the door 

1.4.2 wheelless wheelchair supplied

[Curveball Anders]

Before people go to far with the analogies I would like to point out that KSP is a bit of entertainment software.

If it's buggy it's users gets miffed.

It's quite extreme to compare that to software where bugs can (and do) kill people or software that causes hilarious amounts of money in damage.
(Like just the other day when MS Azure AD went down for several hours locking over a million corporate users out from their docs, mails and chats).

It's a game. it's not running your grannie's heart monitor, it's not controlling your bank account and it's not related to you corporate desktop.

 

[Schmelge]

23 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

it's not running your grannie's heart monitor

Seeing what some modders have achieved in this community, it wouldn't surprise the slightes if someone could actually make one that does