Kerbal Space Program 1.9: "There’s No Place Like Home” Grand Discussion Thread

[Neilski]

23 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

Ya everything gets set to low by default. They rarely update the priority in there. 

So maybe there's a shadow bug tracker with the "real" priorities... Or a big printout stuck to a dartboard

[Shadowmage]

9 minutes ago, Arugela said:

Does any of the graphics setting offload to the GPU instead of the CPU? Or more importantly do any of the setting reverse and take if off the GPU and put it on the CPU. I'm trying to optimize the settings for max performance.

Nope.  Nothing user configurable will change any process from GPU to CPU or vise-versa.  The things that are calculated on CPU in KSP will continue to be so, likewise with the GPU-bound calculations.

Physics are entirely CPU (collision detection, thrust/impulse/force mechanics).
Game system updates are entirely CPU (thermal system, resource system, comm-net).
Procedural terrain system is CPU (PQS system, creating planetary meshes from input data)
Rendering dispatch is entirely CPU (animating meshes, updating object positions).
Rendering rasterization is purely GPU (drawing triangles from mesh data).
Post Processing effects are (mostly) GPU  (mostly seen in mods, e.g. Scatterer)

 

'Optimizing for max performance' in KSP is much more a matter of ensuring the maximum possible single-threaded CPU performance, and providing an adequate GPU for the little bit that it is used.  Overclocking your CPU by ~10% will likely offer far larger (and more tangible) benefits than any change in the KSP game settings/options.  (note:  I only recommend overclocking if it is something you are 'in to'; it is, by itself, not a solution for anything)

[ansaman]

On 2/18/2020 at 12:33 AM, Space Nerd said:

My probe shakes when its landing legs are extended, is that the "hinge bug" people are talking about?(My probe does have a hinge in its robotic arm)

My probe shakes when I drink too much coffee.

Edited February 19, 2020 by ansaman
to make freestanding post

[ansaman]

Checking out the looks of the new graphics, I did a flythough of the river and canyon complex east of KSP (latitude = -1.089319 longitude = 18.135708). It is gorgeous and fun to fly. The new screenshot maneuver mode makes it easy to compose nice looking wallpapers. Imgur link: https://imgur.com/gallery/5eoirow

[sturmhauke]

On 2/18/2020 at 2:25 AM, Brikoleur said:

servo behaviour in mirror symmetry is still broken if you disallow full rotation and constrain the angle...

I've discovered part of a patch fix. I've asked for help developing a MM patch, but in the meantime you can edit the craft file manually. If you search for "mirrorRotation = True" and set it to "False" in the craft file, the servo will act like it did in 1.7.x.

 

[schwank]

the maneuver nodes bug is really really bad. You guys need to release a hotfix for this ASAP, seriously.

[dok_377]

2 hours ago, schwank said:

the maneuver nodes bug is really really bad. You guys need to release a hotfix for this ASAP, seriously.

Squad doesn't know what a hotfix is. Wait four months (or even more) or live with it. That's the agenda here. Players don't matter. 

[sturmhauke]

3 minutes ago, dok_377 said:

Squad doesn't know what a hotfix is. Wait four months (or even more) or live with it. That's the agenda here. Players don't matter. 

Well that's a little harsh. I might be critical of some of their practices, but if they didn't care about their players at all this game would have died before I ever got into it in the first place, and we wouldn't be here talking about it now.

[dok_377]

17 hours ago, Neilski said:

I was a little disappointed to see that the bug with second (and subsequent) maneuver nodes was assigned low priority.

Then I checked the bug tracker and of the 157 open bugs updated in the last 100 days, 153 of them are low priority. Of the 10 bugs marked Resolved in the same period, 9 were low and one was very low priority.
Hmm... I don't know how they are actually prioritising the work but that field appears to be pretty irrelevant.

Some time ago there actually was a way to set your own priority. But they got rid of it and now it's all set to low by default. And you know what else they did that's completely and utterly ridiculous? THEY ALLOWED EVERYBODY TO CONFIRM BUGS. Not a singular developer needs to even check that stuff now, any random person can confirm any bug. That seems like a good decision the first time you think about it, but If I had to guess, that is why they lose track of them. They are just opening the bug tracker and seeing a bunch of "Confirmed" there and think to themselves "Hmm, that one is confirmed, it must be confirmed by another developer, so my work here isn't needed" and they just ignore it. 

1 hour ago, sturmhauke said:

Well that's a little harsh. I might be critical of some of their practices, but if they didn't care about their players at all this game would have died before I ever got into it in the first place, and we wouldn't be here talking about it now.

It was a little harsh and that's completely intentional. The past three releases piled up so many bugs, I just can't be all good and sympathizing anymore. This needs to stop for the sake of the community that love this game. 

Edited February 20, 2020 by dok_377
I don't want to go completely over the top.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, dok_377 said:

It was a little harsh and that's completely intentional. The past three releases piled up so many bugs, I just can't be all good and sympathizing anymore. This needs to stop for the sake of the community that love this game.

Come on man. They just ported the whole thing over to a new version of Unity, which got rid of some apparently-insoluble issues (the garbage collection stutter for example), and opened the way for a whole bunch of other things they couldn't do before (the better shaders, more efficient rendering etc).

That's a major refactoring effort and given the size of the team, the release schedule, and the age of the codebase it's guaranteed to cause any number of bugs. Doing it at all was going above and beyond the call of duty. 

Yes a few stabilisation releases are necessary at this point and releasing 1.9.0 before working out the kinks in 1.8 was possibly a mistake, but implying that they don't care is blatantly unfair.

[dok_377]

12 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Come on man. They just ported the whole thing over to a new version of Unity, which got rid of some apparently-insoluble issues (the garbage collection stutter for example), and opened the way for a whole bunch of other things they couldn't do before (the better shaders, more efficient rendering etc).

That's a major refactoring effort and given the size of the team, the release schedule, and the age of the codebase it's guaranteed to cause any number of bugs. Doing it at all was going above and beyond the call of duty. 

Yes a few stabilisation releases are necessary at this point and releasing 1.9.0 before working out the kinks in 1.8 was possibly a mistake, but implying that they don't care is blatantly unfair.

That's why they need to do something the whole community is begging for at this point: the ONLY BUG FIX release. Do not add anything, just fix the bugs. To show that they really care and not just half care. Whole four months should be more than enough to at least close some of the more significant ones. But are they going to do that? Highly doubt it. 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, dok_377 said:

That's why they need to do something the whole community is begging for at this point: the ONLY BUG FIX release. Do not add anything, just fix the bugs. To show that they really care and not just half care. Whole four months should be more than enough to at least close some of the more significant ones. But are they going to do that? Highly doubt it.

Cool.

What do you think they'll do instead?

[dok_377]

28 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Cool.

What do you think they'll do instead?

What do you think? As usual, just going to introduce more features that are not necessarily needed and pile even more bugs on top (not intentionally, of course. I'm not saying that they do this on purpose), with some fixes for the previous ones. I follow the development of this game from like 2013, maybe even longer than that, and to be fair, I NEVER seen even one singular release devoted to just fixing bugs and nothing else (I'm talking about major releases, not about x.x.1 x.x.2 x.x.3 etc). If you are implying that I can't be 100% sure that they are not going to do a release of just bugfixes - maybe you are correct. But the history of releases says me something completely different. I would be absolutely surprised if they are going to listen and the next patch is going to only fix bugs. If that happens, I'm going to be the first at the door screaming at the top of my lungs that I wasn't correct and how much I regret saying stuff like this. But for now, we have what we have. 

Edited February 20, 2020 by dok_377

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, dok_377 said:

I NEVER seen even one singular release devoted to just fixing bugs and nothing else (I'm talking about major releases, not about x.x.1 x.x.2 x.x.3 etc)

I believe SQUAD are using semantic versioning for their releases (or attempting to, anyway). That means that if a release only contains bugfixes, it is a patch level release (x.x.1) by definition. 

[dok_377]

1 minute ago, Brikoleur said:

I believe SQUAD are using semantic versioning for their releases (or attempting to, anyway). That means that if a release only contains bugfixes, it is a patch level release (x.x.1) by definition. 

Anyways, I don't want for people to think that I'm some kind of villain here. I'm not trying to disrespect or bring Squad down by any means. I just love this game too much and don't want it to drown in bugs. It needs attention. That's why I'm so vocal about it, I don't usually do this stuff. 

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, dok_377 said:

Anyways, I don't want for people to think that I'm some kind of villain here. I'm not trying to disrespect or bring Squad down by any means. I just love this game too much and don't want it to drown in bugs. It needs attention. That's why I'm so vocal about it, I don't usually do this stuff. 

I agree, a few patch releases would be most welcome at this point.

I'm just super happy they did do the Unity upgrade for 1.8 and am willing to give them a quite a bit of slack for that. And I do trust them to get to bug-squashing, eventually -- they do have a track record of making a series of x.x.1 releases when necessary too.

[Ogberi]

2 hours ago, dok_377 said:

What do you think? As usual, just going to introduce more features that are not necessarily needed and pile even more bugs on top (not intentionally, of course. I'm not saying that they do this on purpose), with some fixes for the previous ones. I follow the development of this game from like 2013, maybe even longer than that, and to be fair, I NEVER seen even one singular release devoted to just fixing bugs and nothing else (I'm talking about major releases, not about x.x.1 x.x.2 x.x.3 etc). If you are implying that I can't be 100% sure that they are not going to do a release of just bugfixes - maybe you are correct. But the history of releases says me something completely different. I would be absolutely surprised if they are going to listen and the next patch is going to only fix bugs. If that happens, I'm going to be the first at the door screaming at the top of my lungs that I wasn't correct and how much I regret saying stuff like this. But for now, we have what we have. 

I have worked with a software package for the last 13 years that I hate. The vendor has a horrible habit of bundling bugfixes with 'enhancements', which invariably break things.  I have literally yelled at the CEO of said vendor, 'FIX THE BUGS, RELEASE A PATCH AND DO NOT ADD ENHANCEMENTS.' To his face. In a meeting, with my CEO present.

 

I'm still employed, but nothing changed. We still get patches with enhancements & bugfixes, which usually break unrelated things. It is the nature of the beast, and indeed of 90% of the software vendor behavior. No matter what the application. Bugfix only patches are generally issued to correct an issue that critically breaks the app. This is just life, and we have to play by the rules set beyond our control. I'm not bitter, I simply sigh and start testing. Again.

But at the end of the day, KSP is a great game, it isn't critically broken, and I have the option to stay at an earlier release that works. That is good enough until a newer version fits my needs.

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, Ogberi said:

I have worked with a software package for the last 13 years that I hate. The vendor has a horrible habit of bundling bugfixes with 'enhancements', which invariably break things.  I have literally yelled at the CEO of said vendor, 'FIX THE BUGS, RELEASE A PATCH AND DO NOT ADD ENHANCEMENTS.' To his face. In a meeting, with my CEO present.

 

I'm still employed, but nothing changed. We still get patches with enhancements & bugfixes, which usually break unrelated things. It is the nature of the beast, and indeed of 90% of the software vendor behavior. No matter what the application. Bugfix only patches are generally issued to correct an issue that critically breaks the app. This is just life, and we have to play by the rules set beyond our control. I'm not bitter, I simply sigh and start testing. Again.

But at the end of the day, KSP is a great game, it isn't critically broken, and I have the option to stay at an earlier release that works. That is good enough until a newer version fits my needs.

You hit the nail on the end. Also in my experience all vendors are like this. In fact ALL software development period is like that. 
It is what it is, and I too just sigh and accept it now. 

[Neilski]

On 2/20/2020 at 11:31 AM, dok_377 said:

THEY ALLOWED EVERYBODY TO CONFIRM BUGS.

Hey, good joke dude!
Obvs, it's such a completely crazy idea that I don't even need to go and check if you're serious..

Meanwhile, when someone is assigned to a bug, surely that requires actual dev. input?

[dok_377]

1 hour ago, Neilski said:

Hey, good joke dude!
Obvs, it's such a completely crazy idea that I don't even need to go and check if you're serious..

Meanwhile, when someone is assigned to a bug, surely that requires actual dev. input?

I think so. That's the only thing that can be set only by the actual developer. 

[steve_v]

On 2/21/2020 at 12:41 AM, Brikoleur said:

Yes a few stabilisation releases are necessary at this point and releasing 1.9.0 before working out the kinks in 1.8 was possibly a mistake, but implying that they don't care is blatantly unfair.

Unless you happen to be running GNU/Linux (and bought the game only because it was listed as supported), in which case you haven't had a release that works properly since 1.3.1. 
Breaks input support completely in 1.4, leaves it broken until 1.8.
Introduces all manner of graphics-related screwups with 1.8, doesn't bother doing anything about it for 1.9. Pretty clearly doesn't care.

Bugs happen, and that's fine. Leaving a serious bug unfixed for over a year while spitting out more than a dozen releases and several major new features, that's not caring.
Finally fixing said bug (not Squad btw, that was Unity) only to introduce different bugs, then leaving them unfixed while another major release comes out - that looks a lot like more not caring.

As for the bugtracker, I'm pretty sure it's either some kind of joke or simply a token gesture to make us think they take our concerns seriously.
Reporting stuff there certainly doesn't get it fixed, that's for sure.

Edited February 24, 2020 by steve_v

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Unless you happen to be running GNU/Linux (and bought the game only because it was listed as supported), in which case you haven't had a release that works properly since 1.3.1. 

I can believe that Linux players aren't a priority for SQUAD, yes. There just aren't that many of you and multiplatform support is a PITA. It would probably make economic sense for them to drop Linux support altogether -- I can't believe it's bringing in more revenue than it costs.

[Hotel26]

Just now, Brikoleur said:

to drop Linux support altogether

I've always assumed that using the Steam platform gives Squad a leg-up on Linux support.  I might be wrong: is there any other delivery avenue these days for KSP other than Steam?  Economics or not, "dropping" something that has been since the start(?) would cause incredible bitterness.  (I speak personally.)

 

[steve_v]

Just now, Brikoleur said:

I can believe that Linux players aren't a priority for SQUAD, yes.

Then Squad should not have misled GNU/Linux players as to their intentions. They only acquired my support in alpha by means of this lie, and I will absolutely call them out on it.
 

3 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

It would probably make economic sense for them to drop Linux support altogether

It would also result in considerable backlash, as well as my personal and undying scorn.

I'm already not buying anything else they ever produce, I kept my promise and bought the DLCs when input support was fixed and I'll not make that mistake again.

[Hotel26]

I wish Private Division well with KSP2 and that it makes it big.  May KSP2 have all the "realism", weapons, multi-player, Death Stars, mayhem and whatever else people who are railing for new stuff say they want.  It can be Windows-only and that suits me too.

All I want for Christmas is is that PD turn over the KSP 1 source to the public domain as a gesture of good will -- or failing that -- allow a buy-out from a kick-start kind of deal organized by the many die-hard fans of KSP1.

I look at how well KSP has been run by the (former?) idealogues at Squad; how superbly the talented community of KSP modders performs; the dedication of those who oversee our forum, etc, and I'm full of confidence that KSP can live forever -- or at least, outlive this grizzled writer!

 

Edited February 24, 2020 by Hotel26