I thought I've seen everything

[Kerbart]

A new version always brings anxiety: will everything work?

So, I make a new folder for 1.11, copy over the game, copy over the mods I use in 1.10 (yes, I enjoy living dangerously).
Of course there's the usual warning about mods. Yeah yeah yeah...
New career, build simple first craft: mk I pod, mk 16 parachute, flea SRB. Off we go.
Chute opens at 1,000m. Craft continues to plummet down at more than 100m/s. RIP Jeb.
Wait, whut?

It must be mods, right? Remove all mods, and then add them back one by one to see what breaks the game.
No mods: RIP Jeb
WAIT, WHUT?

Run game from Steam folder. Jeb lives.
Copy game over from Steam folder to my "1.11 folder". Jeb dies.

Validate Steam download. Copy folder over again.
For the sake of faster testing, just double-click ksp_x64.exe. Jeb lives
Run the game through the start menu (with a batchfile for the -popupwindow command line argument). Jeb dies. The plot thickens.
Run the game with a command file from the 1.11 folder with -popupwindow and Jeb lives.

So, what did I learn?

In 1.10 you can start the game from any directory and things will work fine.
In 1.11 you can do the same, and almost all things will work fine - except your parachutes. They'll open, but not slow down your craft

I got the same results with or without mods. I filed a bug report in the tracker but doubt it'll be fixed -- it's easy to fix on my end by inserting cd 1.11 game folder in the command file that starts the game -- but it is by far the weirdest thing I've encountered in KSP (and I've been playing since 0.18)

 

[Superfluous J]

I run KSP 1.11 through CKAN with a bevy of mods, and popupwindow, and my parachutes work fine. In fact I've been very happy with the game's state. I'll try it via my "run any ksp version" batch file next time I play and see if that's different.

One question: do you drag and drop folders or xcopy? I gave up on xcopy long ago and just drag all the new files in when upgrading.

[king of nowhere]

perhaps they take a bit longer to slow down a craft now? try to set the chute opening at 1500 m instead of 1000 and see if jeb lives

[Snark]

On 12/19/2020 at 12:02 AM, Kerbart said:

I filed a bug report in the tracker

That's great, but... care to include a link to the bug report, for those of us who may be curious to follow along? 

 

[Kerbart]

On 12/19/2020 at 1:29 AM, Superfluous J said:

I run KSP 1.11 through CKAN with a bevy of mods, and popupwindow, and my parachutes work fine. In fact I've been very happy with the game's state. I'll try it via my "run any ksp version" batch file next time I play and see if that's different.

One question: do you drag and drop folders or xcopy? I gave up on xcopy long ago and just drag all the new files in when upgrading.

Well, usually I use a Python script to copy everything from Steam (except saved games, everything in gamedata that is not Squad), settings and a few other files) over to the game folder. That was of course my first candidate, so then I just used drag & drop. Eventually after I found out what the issue was I tested and learned that the way it was copied did not influence the problem.

On 12/19/2020 at 1:33 AM, king of nowhere said:

perhaps they take a bit longer to slow down a craft now? try to set the chute opening at 1500 m instead of 1000 and see if jeb lives

The MK-16 has the hair-raising habit of waiting really long after passing 1,000m on the way down, so I agree that maybe it takes longer could be a factor. But visually the chute is completely expanded with zero influence on the velocity, where it works as usual with the "alternate" method of starting the game.

49 minutes ago, Snark said:

That's great, but... care to include a link to the bug report, for those of us who may be curious to follow along? 

My bad!

https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/26888

 

Again it's a very low priority issue and I'm not upset if it doesn't get fixed (although I'm sure knowing about this might help a kerbonaut or two who are struggling with the same). I just have a... let's call it academic interest in it. Game doesn't run unless you explicitly specify the startup directory? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ So be it. I'm just fascinated by the fact that if affects one very specific aspect of the game, and the rest works just fine. That's the part that really bugs me.

Edited December 20, 2020 by Kerbart

[OHara]

There have been a couple similar reports from new players (or at least new forum members) lately (link link). 

The old-timers suspected that 'PartDatabase.cfg' might be corrupted, as that holds the numbers for drag and used to become corrupted rather often, but we haven't heard back from the victims of the problem.

[Starhelperdude]

the parachutes of the BDB apollo work perfectly fine in 1.11

I don't know if this information is relevant for this discussion

[SBKerman]

I installed KSP 1.11 using the downloadable installation package from GOG (I don't use Steam) and started the game with the command file. The parachute works fine with this setup, but I did notice that if you don't change directories, the game creates PartDatabase.cfg in the directory where the command file is located rather than in the actual game folder. If the problem is caused by this file then this might have something to do with it.

[Arugela]

On 12/19/2020 at 12:02 AM, Kerbart said:

A new version always brings anxiety: will everything work?

So, I make a new folder for 1.11, copy over the game, copy over the mods I use in 1.10 (yes, I enjoy living dangerously).
Of course there's the usual warning about mods. Yeah yeah yeah...
New career, build simple first craft: mk I pod, mk 16 parachute, flea SRB. Off we go.
Chute opens at 1,000m. Craft continues to plummet down at more than 100m/s. RIP Jeb.
Wait, whut?

It must be mods, right? Remove all mods, and then add them back one by one to see what breaks the game.
No mods: RIP Jeb
WAIT, WHUT?

Run game from Steam folder. Jeb lives.
Copy game over from Steam folder to my "1.11 folder". Jeb dies.

Validate Steam download. Copy folder over again.
For the sake of faster testing, just double-click ksp_x64.exe. Jeb lives
Run the game through the start menu (with a batchfile for the -popupwindow command line argument). Jeb dies. The plot thickens.
Run the game with a command file from the 1.11 folder with -popupwindow and Jeb lives.

So, what did I learn?

In 1.10 you can start the game from any directory and things will work fine.
In 1.11 you can do the same, and almost all things will work fine - except your parachutes. They'll open, but not slow down your craft

I got the same results with or without mods. I filed a bug report in the tracker but doubt it'll be fixed -- it's easy to fix on my end by inserting cd 1.11 game folder in the command file that starts the game -- but it is by far the weirdest thing I've encountered in KSP (and I've been playing since 0.18)

 

Is it an ironic joke about not using the main folder being like not having a working parachute?!

[Krazy1]

On 12/18/2020 at 9:02 PM, Kerbart said:

RIP Jeb.

I'm not really helping here but I have to ask what happens if Jeb bails out and uses his own chute? Same I suppose. 

[Kerbart]

3 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

I'm not really helping here but I have to ask what happens if Jeb bails out and uses his own chute? Same I suppose. 

I was at the start of career - Jeb. Couldn’t use the parachute yet. Besides, therefore precious little time. To do that, and I can’t do that for *every* mission.

But it would save Jeb, normally. I’ll have to test it.

[Krazy1]

6 hours ago, Kerbart said:

Jeb. Couldn’t use the parachute yet.

I rarely use the parachute but this says pilots can always use it:

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/EVA_Parachute

[JPLRepo]

I can recreate the error in various KSP versions. Don't believe it's new to KSP 1.11.

[Vanamonde]

Looks like this has turned out to be a known bug, and so thread moved to Support. 

[djr5899]

I had the same problem with chutes not opening when I loaded 1.11.0 for the first time.  Was completely stumped but then, I noticed the Min Pressure value on the chutes.  In 1.11.0, it appears the minimum pressure value is set to 0.04 by default.  I'm not sure what the default was in 1.10.0 and below (I think 0.1), but I adjusted the Min Pressure value on the property of any chute placed on a craft to 0.1, and I never had the problem again.  So maybe the default Min Pressure value on the chutes changed in 1.11.0?