Kerbal Space Program 1.11.1 is live!

[VoidSquid]

30 minutes ago, Rakete said:

Yeah, but i updated my vehicle/lifter/ssto arsenal to new standards already... they won't run on older game versions.

I've lost maybe 2, or 5 hours, before reverting, but for me, absolutely worth it.

*your mileage may vary*, isn't it? 

31 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Not if the older version has anothet bug that you won't tolerate.

The very one bug in 1.10.: fuel transfer for me.

In the meantime, fellow KSP players did find workarounds. I can live with that.

Better a known devil than an unknown Beelzebub. 

Edited February 7, 2021 by VoidSquid

[Poodmund]

I think a fair bit of frustration with the public bug tracker is lack of communication and transparency. There are bugs on the tracker that are well documented, well known and have existed on there for over a year with no response from anyone on the QA or development team. This breeds frustration. I appreciate that these issues may have propagated over to the private tracker but without notice, communication or confirmation that this has either happened or even any kind of acknowledgement that the issue has been read, I am sure you can appreciate some of the misgivings that some people have towards the current state of the tracker.

Examples:

- Flickering Orbit Lines issue, very well know bug, been around for over 4 years, clear reproduction steps, significant lack of communication: https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/13101

- Antenna PAW information showing incorrectly relative to difficulty settings, 2 year old post, very clear reproduction steps, in depth information even with suggested fix or areas for resolution, complete lack of communication: https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/19996

Communication is key. I understand you cannot express information like, "we will fix this issue in due course" because that is 'kind of' declaring it will be fixed but confirmation of something along the lines of, "we have reproduced this internally" would let the author and any other contributors know that the issue they are posting about has been screened and tested.

Edited February 7, 2021 by Poodmund

[VoidSquid]

Just now, Poodmund said:

with no response from anyone on the QA or development team

including resolved and (so far) ignored bugs. Some feed back would be a good thing.

2 minutes ago, Poodmund said:

This breeds frustration

 

2 minutes ago, Poodmund said:

I am sure you can appreciate some of the misgivings that some people have towards the current state of the tracker.

This.

Nothing to add, @Poodmund worded it exactly.

[Krazy1]

57 minutes ago, VoidSquid said:

Probably a redundant question, but simply playing an older version, not an option?

Why go back when every version has bugs? Older versions had bigger bugs I think. 1.10 broke fuel transfer.  The editor is broken in every version.  

On the bright side... 1.11 fixed craft drifting on the ground. EVA construction does add a new dimension to the game. At mid-career being able to pull a  gravioli detector off a satellite and stick it on a lander is great. You can launch with fragile stuff in storage and put them on in space or vice versa. You can build an entire tiny probe to return science. It would be hard to go back.

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

That's the problem with the current development process: there's no stable release of the product, ever.

I had "glued" docking ports in KSP 1.8 - disaster.  I haven't experienced it since then but they're still messing with them:

 Fix being unable to assign the Undock Action on Docking Ports. We have reverted the 1.11.0 fix in favor for a different solution in the future.

[VoidSquid]

6 minutes ago, Krazy1 said:

Why go back when every version has bugs? Older versions had bigger bugs I think.

Bigger / smaller, personal perception, isn't it.

7 minutes ago, Krazy1 said:

1.10 broke fuel transfer. 

Which I did mention couple of times in earlier posts. Annoying bug, but in the meantime we know workarounds. Don't have those for the newly introduced bugs from 1.11.x

[Krazy1]

All true @VoidSquidDidn't mean to argue... just frustrated with the path the game is on.

[VoidSquid]

1 minute ago, Krazy1 said:

just frustrated with the path the game is on

You're not alone here  

[Rakete]

49 minutes ago, Krazy1 said:

On the bright side... 1.11 fixed craft drifting on the ground. 

 

It did what !? If I park a heavy ssto on the runway it still drifts so somewhere even with activated brakes.

 

And yes. I don't want to revert to older versions as they lack many nice features. What is the point in bugfixing, when the answer is: go play an older version. Doesn't make sense, eh? I think a product should develop to less bugs, not to a piling up amount due to introducing x (afterwards well documented and reported) bugs while fixing only y bugs with x > y.

 

Yeah I know, I'm putting pressure on the devs by writing this. But that's what a customers expects. And this is what we in the car developement have to bear in mind too. If each of our model upgrades made things more buggy, we would get in serious trouble with our bosses.

[Krazy1]

26 minutes ago, Rakete said:

It did what !? If I park a heavy ssto on the runway it still drifts so somewhere even with activated brakes.

Oh... bummer. I've been mostly playing with rovers and landers on the Mun. It seems much better there. I have had trouble with really big TweakScale wheels vibrating and skating all over on Kerbin - there's more discussion over on that thread. If the gear are vibrating constantly, even slightly, it can slide around. You probably tried this but it might help to turn off the automatic spring/ damper and make the damper value greater than the spring value (like 1.4 / 1.0). I believe there's some complex oscillations with the invisible landing gear autostruts, the bending of the airframe, springs in the landing gear and the way the game engine computes all of those springs.

[Lisias]

6 hours ago, Rakete said:

Yeah I know, I'm putting pressure on the devs by writing this. But that's what a customers expects. And this is what we in the car developement have to bear in mind too. If each of our model upgrades made things more buggy, we would get in serious trouble with our bosses.

Not to mention some more tragic consequences, right Boing?

I had worked on this industry in the past. Wrote a iPod stack (iPods were a thing at that time) for an auto-radio on my times as SiemensVDO/Continental/Schaeffler-Gruppe/God Knows who owns who nowadays.

You make a mistake that drives away the driver's attention from driving and something bad happens, you are toast.

You fail to do something completely irrelevant to withdraw you from a chain of events that cause an accident, you can be sued.

It's hugely frustrating to know how things can be hugely better by doing simple and easy things - people do way better on hugely more demanding and complex industries due exactly these simple and easy things that nobody cares nowadays, as it appears.

I let 10% of such amount of bugs I see here leak to my clients, and loosing my job is the least of my problems - I get sued my pants off. Simple like that.

 

7 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

just frustrated with the path the game is on.

And more frustrated you get as you understand what's happening and how easy would be to prevent some of the most pesky bugs we had or have now.

[FleshJeb]

11 hours ago, Lisias said:

Not if the older version has anothet bug that you won't tolerate.

That's the problem with the current development process: there's no stable release of the product, ever.

Every new release solve some problems of the previous, but also shoves a lot of new bugs or misfeatures - and only some of them will be solved next release, when new bugs and misfeatures will be added.

I've spoken to a few old-school players that are just DONE. I've spent a good chunk of the weekend reading patch notes and rolling back versions to test them. 1.7.3 runs brilliantly, but the maneuver node editor is still kicking the crap out of my navball. I think I'm joining the 1.3.1 club so I can get rid of it and the atrocious re-skins.

[dok_377]

10 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

1.11 fixed craft drifting on the ground. 

No, it didn't. Not in any case, anyway.

 

10 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

EVA construction does add a new dimension to the game.

It was not working so great in 1.11.0 to begin with, but in 1.11.1 it's broken beyond use. 

[Rakete]

4 hours ago, Lisias said:

Not to mention some more tragic consequences, right Boing?

I had worked on this industry in the past. Wrote a iPod stack (iPods were a thing at that time) for an auto-radio on my times as SiemensVDO/Continental/Schaeffler-Gruppe/God Knows who owns who nowadays.

You make a mistake that drives away the driver's attention from driving and something bad happens, you are toast.

You fail to do something completely irrelevant to withdraw you from a chain of events that cause an accident, you can be sued.

It's hugely frustrating to know how things can be hugely better by doing simple and easy things - people do way better on hugely more demanding and complex industries due exactly these simple and easy things that nobody cares nowadays, as it appears.

I let 10% of such amount of bugs I see here leak to my clients, and loosing my job is the least of my problems - I get sued my pants off. Simple like that.

 

And more frustrated you get as you understand what's happening and how easy would be to prevent some of the most pesky bugs we had or have now.

Yeah, nowadays everythings matures in customer's hands due to rushed releases, driven by the guys in suits - the management.

 

But even if the consequences are not as servere as an accident in a car. Imagine your entertainment system stops working after an update, or the air condition can't heat anymore, due to software bugs due to lack of testing. Result: The customer is annoyed. Will he buy your brand again? Will he tell others how good your brand is? Will he use the services, which you offer around your product? You get it. 

If the brand I am working for would offer such buggy car systems and visual annoyances, devs like me would be fired. Have you ever had any visual bugs on car entertainment or your chassis and have to accept it? No? Right. Especially visual things are severe to many customers, directly followed by functional bugs. Nobody wants an ac system, that does not heat your car in winter. How long would you accept this status until fix? Is your solution downgrading to an older model of your favourite brand, with less features? It is the dev's/management's decision, how many features should be introduced in each increment and how many are manageable in terms of keeping the bug level low - not the customer's.

 

I think, KSP is at a point, where several bugfix loops are desperately needed.

I would suggest:

-Some bugfixloops without feature increments - as soon as possible.

-bundle the upcomming features in a paid DLC to finance proper testing and bugfixing.

-try to work through the huge amount of well documented bugs and glitches.

 

 

Edited February 8, 2021 by Rakete

[Lisias]

Oukey, now I'm the Good Cop.

 

16 hours ago, VoidSquid said:

I've lost maybe 2, or 5 hours, before reverting, but for me, absolutely worth it.

*your mileage may vary*, isn't it? 

I'm way more conservative on updating: I never ditch a working installment - I still have my old 1.4.3 and 1.4.5 rigs with the savegames and add'ons installed as they were when I migrate to 1.7.3 (I jumped over all the other ones). Worst case scenario, I fire them up and start playing from where I left.

The disk space is not too much of a problem if you compress the files (it also saves some time on loading).

 

3 hours ago, Rakete said:

Yeah, nowadays everythings matures in customer's hands due to rushed releases, driven by the guys in suits - the management.

CD Project Red comes to my mind. Perhaps going nuclear would be the only way out of the mess the whole Software Industry had shoved themselves in.

(oukey, perhaps not that good cop).

 

3 hours ago, Rakete said:

bundle the upcomming features in a paid DLC to finance proper testing and bugfixing.

That would work on an ideal World, but I'm afraid that the KSP's Revenue Model had shifted away from paying users. What would be the new Revenue Model, I don't know but, as always, follow the money and you will get your answer. Someone is paying for the party.

 

5 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

I've spoken to a few old-school players that are just DONE. I've spent a good chunk of the weekend reading patch notes and rolling back versions to test them. 1.7.3 runs brilliantly, but the maneuver node editor is still kicking the crap out of my navball. I think I'm joining the 1.3.1 club so I can get rid of it and the atrocious re-skins.

I find it terribly heart-breaking - but I completely understand you. And I agree, had Squad issued a 1.7.4 release with some more pressuring bug fixes, and boy I would one of the most satisfied consumers even nowadays.

When they finally got a grip on it, they changed Unity versions and had to start all from scratch again on 1.8.0 - and I find it, as I said, heart-breaking. Looking back, the 1.8.0 release should be exactly a ported 1.7.4 to the new Unity, with the whole 1.8.x series focused on fixing regressions. You can bet your SAS things would be way better if they started to create new things on the hypothetical 1.9.0 only.

I don't necessarily agree that the re-skins are atrocious - they are pretty IMHO. But, granted, not exactly needed - they could shoved all of that on a DLC as far as I care, or perhaps someone could release a new Add'On called UnStock?  I'm pretty sure some die hards would like to have the old look and feel (I like the old Mark1 Cockpit more than the new one, the way - but the new one is splendid for some civil aviation crafts I like to build!).

Oh, and by the way, I would buy a new DLC called "The Barn"  I hope there're more like me around - and that KSP would do it before someone else does (as by then, I will probably switch hobbies - there's a new guy on the block going Crimson Skies style that it's almost getting me on it).

Nowadays KSP is prettier, it's faster, there're new and well polished toys to play with. It's ok to prefer the old ways (I do, by the way), but this doesn't means that the new toys are worthless - there's a place for them. Had Squad managed to allow us to choose the toys we want (instead of hardcoding support on KSP guts and forcing their hand on the matter), they would be handling a lot less heat.

This does not need to be a zero sum game.

 

4 hours ago, dok_377 said:

It was not working so great in 1.11.0 to begin with, but in 1.11.1 it's broken beyond use. 

This is where things get me absolutely mad about. Now they don't have even the new feature working right - and good luck trying to download 1.11.0 from Steam at least, as the last notice I had is that the depots were removed (as well as a huge lot of other historical ones, terrible - Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it! - George Santayana). Now I'm probably the only one that can check things on every KSP version ever released on Steam - and, believe me, this is way far from ideal.

A release breaking the flagship feature followed by a terrible decision to prevent rolling back to the release where it was working - not exactly the best way to satisfy your users.

(humm.. I'm a failure as a good cop...)

Edited February 8, 2021 by Lisias
Moar tyops!

[VoidSquid]

4 hours ago, Rakete said:

I think, KSP is at a point, where several bugfix loops are desperately needed.

We had the same point already with KSP 1.4, and it took until 1.6 when old, critical bugs were finally fixed, if you remember.

  

2 hours ago, Lisias said:

I still have my old 1.4.3 and 1.4.5 rigs with the savegames and add'ons installed as they were when I migrate to 1.7.3

So do I, makes reverting very easy and painless. Those 4-5h were just the time playing 1.11.0 before I decided to revert back to 1.10.1 

Personally, while I think robotics, EVA construction, etc. are nice features, I never had a NEED to use those. Imo, better to fix bugs properly instead of adding new optional features plus breaking stuff that used to work fine.
 

Edited February 8, 2021 by VoidSquid

[Krazy1]

4 hours ago, dok_377 said:

 

15 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

EVA construction does add a new dimension to the game.

It was not working so great in 1.11.0 to begin with, but in 1.11.1 it's broken beyond use. 

I just met the  EVA construction kraken myself.  Just terrible. 

Furthermore, EVA jetpacks are sometimes not refilling fuel when entering a ship. Just walked 250m on the Mun. How do you even break that? 

Is this a game or an affliction?

[Anth]

I think the EVA construction was DLC worthy.

Maybe that's the reason its having so many problems because its just a free update.

I really hope for a 1.11.2

[Lisias]

39 minutes ago, Anth12 said:

I really hope for a 1.11.2

Frankly... Nowadays I'm dreaming on 1.7.4...

[VoidSquid]

58 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Frankly... Nowadays I'm dreaming on 1.7.4...

I remember the constant stuttering of 1.7.3 every half minute or so for half a second, don't want to have that back. I was quite happy with 1.9.1, and 1.10.1 is ok too for me.

I'm wondering though, why does almost everyone immediately upgrade to every new version, even very experienced players as I can see on Twitch? And obviously, most folks are fine with all the newly introduced issues instead of reverting to an older, more stable (read: less critical bugs) version. Beyond my understanding.

Edited February 8, 2021 by VoidSquid

[dprostock]

I guess they all kept the purchase receipt for the product, didn't they?

[Lisias]

2 hours ago, VoidSquid said:

I remember the constant stuttering of 1.7.3 every half minute or so for half a second, don't want to have that back. I was quite happy with 1.9.1, and 1.10.1 is ok too for me.

The stuttering I worked around with MOAR MEMORY  and fixed Add'Ons (and GCMonitor) - I forked almost everything and the kitchen's sink to use on my 1.7.3 as time passed because the maintainers weren't supporting 1.7 anymore, and I think I detected and solved some memory leaks. But not all of them - but in a way or another, it ended up working for me.

On KSP >= 1.8.0 I got some really bad memory leaks on KSP itself. My KSP starts up with less than 4G of allocated memory - but as I play, reverting to launch, then quitting to main menu and selecting another game, etc, the memory footprint grows up to 15G before my whole machine starts to stutter. I had memory leaks on 1.7.3 too, but not so severe (unless I shoved a lot of add'ons on it, on KSP >= 1.8 I have the problem on a vanilla or minimally modded installment).

We need to remember that not everything is over Squad's shoulders - a huge lot of problems on the Unity 2016 era were due faulty add'ons - on the first year of my tenure on TweakScale I detected so many flaws and errors on everything that uses TweakScale in a way or another, some of that bad interactions leading to instant CTD of KSP (when lucky). It was that NaN and Infinity on the physics engine stunt - boy, that was a hell of a year until I managed to get things tight. We still have one or two severe memory leaks on add'ons nowadays, mostly due third party closed source libraries that are terribly coped with the C# runtime.

And we have Unity - a serious source of problems by itself.

 

2 hours ago, VoidSquid said:

I'm wondering though, why does almost everyone immediately upgrade to every new version, even very experienced players as I can see on Twitch? And obviously, most folks are fine with all the newly introduced issues instead of reverting to an older, more stable (read: less critical bugs) version. Beyond my understanding.

Almost everyone that publish content, you mean.

Most users limit themselves to the "What did you do in KSP today?" thread, and some others keep their own blog for KSP - and some of these last ones are running pretty older KSP installments, some even on 1.2.2 yet.

Content publishers, at least the ones I attend now and then as time allows, don't have a long term commitment with the savegame - the goal is to produce a nice 20 to 30 minute video, not to have a longterm mission that would last multiple KSP releases. So the current bugs are easily avoided by not creating content that use them.

Just my 2 cents, though.

 

Edited February 8, 2021 by Lisias
I hate grammars... :/

[dprostock]

Wouldn't it be more sincere to recognize that KSP is on edge or lacks the means to improve it or correct mistakes and stop wasting our time waiting for something that's never going to happen? The user is not to blame for the swings of the Studies and the hiring of developers.

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, dprostock said:

Wouldn't it be more sincere to recognize that KSP is on edge or lacks the means to improve it or correct mistakes and stop wasting our time waiting for something that's never going to happen?

NDAs and Sincerity are mutually exclusive concepts, sir.  

You can bet your SAS there're people dying to open their big mouth and tell us what's happening. But they can't, and I understand them - there're things I told here that at that time when I was working on some companies, that would render me jobless for life - and a nice law suit shoved up where the sun don't shines. There're some details that even nowadays I keep shut, and I won't even talk about the consequences about disclosing such things.

Besides... Trying to figure out the internal politics of corporations are fruitless. It's perfectly possible that we could have some very good news in the near future and this tragic sequence of events we have nowadays are the less expensive way for them to reach that goal - or you can be right, and all of this is going belly up. There's a fifty-fifty here, we just don't know.

Accepting the bad fifty is Game Over, so I prefer to keep bashing their SASes hoping for the other fifty.  Our altercations here could end up being used as an argument for changing some goals and internal processes - corporations may be evil, but most people inside them are good.

 

2 hours ago, dprostock said:

The user is not to blame for the swings of the Studies and the hiring of developers.

But it's up to us to react about. Corporations need money, it's all they care about (and for good reasons, they have a very expensive party to pay for). We manage to convince them they are going on very unprofitable path on the long run, they will change their ways - probably not exactly the way we want, but near enough to be profitable for them on the long run - and for us, as our profit is getting a good game to spend our free time.

This does not need to be a zero sum game.

[dprostock]

58 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Accepting the bad fifty is Game Over, so I prefer to keep bashing their SASes hoping for the other fifty.  Our altercations here could end up being used as an argument for changing some goals and internal processes - corporations may be evil, but most people inside them are good.

 

[VoidSquid]

Not so long ago:  

On 1/9/2021 at 1:45 AM, Lisias said:

What I'm seeing on KSP is something different : something as a "deadline driven development model". They have a deadline to meet some business demand, and quality and stability is just not a requirement. It's like the customers of KSP aren't us, players, but someone else - you know, someone must be paying the bills around here, and apparently we are not that guy.

The one with the money call the shots. We are the ones calling the shots? So we are not the guys paying the bills here - and so, we are not the customer (what, sometimes, makes me wonder if we are the product, after all).