Release KSP2 Release Notes - For Science! Milestone v0.2.0.0

[Intercept Games]

KSP2 For Science! Milestone v0.2.0.0 Release Notes

New Features and Content

• Added a new game mode called "Exploration Mode"
• Added Mission Control and R&D Center buildings
• Added a Tech Tree with 4 tiers
• Added the Mission Tracker App
• Added 11 primary missions and 30 secondary missions
• Added the Research Inventory App
• Added 9 new Science collection parts
• Added several unique points of interest throughout the Kerbolar System
• Implemented thermal system for part heating
• Implemented re-entry VFX
• Implemented delta-v tools in both VAB and Flight
• Added fully-functional buoyancy system for floating vessels
• Implemented a new Audio Ambience System
• Added the first iteration of the Cheats Menu (ALT+F8)
• Added a boat dock environment
• Added two new tutorials
• Added new messages to the Cadet Orientation System
• Added dozens of new items to the Kerbal Variety System
• Added the K0 starter rocket stock vessel

Bug Fixes 

Construction

• Fixed: Attaching a subassembly to another part using the stack attach node of a symmetrical child part causes crash
• Fixed: LES "Bottle Rocket" Solid Fuel Booster appears as a white box icon in the staging stack
• Fixed: Assembly Anchors cannot be changed on non-launch subassemblies
• Fixed: Copied decouplers are not copied to a new stage
• Fixed: Symmetrically-placed parts remain held and cause a Null Reference Exception after removing and reattaching an edited subassembly
• Fixed: Area around staging stack in the VAB is camera movement dead zone

Environments

• Upgraded water refraction for Kerbin and Laythe
• Adjusted Eve's ocean waves
• Adjusted ocean waves on Kerbin and Laythe
• Adjusted Eve's ocean underwater surface visibility
• Fixed: Visual artifacts appear in Jool's atmosphere while within Jool's SOI in flight mode
• Fixed: Visible steps in cloud rotation due to low float precision
• Fixed: Cloud shadows cause light flickering on vessels in low Kerbin orbit while on high quality settings
• Fixed: Clouds dissapear at some locations when set to low quality
• Fixed: Height mismatch between local and scaled clouds under medium quality settings
• Fixed: Eve's upper atmosphere has a semi-sharp upper border
• Increased resolution for close-range terrain textures on all celestial bodies
• Fixed: Laythe low quality clouds have a pixelated glow effect on them
• Fixed: Terrain appears pixelated when seen up-close
• Fixed: Dres ridge and some other decal-based landforms don't have proper collision
• Fixed lighting flashes when loading new scenes or changing vessels
• Updated collision mesh for Air Traffic Control Tower
• Fixed: Negative scale errors reported in log files

EVA

• Fixed: Loading a game that was saved while an EVA Kerbal was holding onto a vehicle causes the Kerbal to fall off the vehicle
• Fixed: If a Kerbal jumps during time warp while in flight mode, the Kerbal becomes unresponsive
• Fixed: If ladder is shaking, Kerbal resting on ladder becomes offset over time
• Adjusted jetpack material to better match kerbal spacesuit

Flight & Map

• Implemented reinforced joints system and accompanying player-adjustable joint mode settings
• Overhauled buoyancy behavior
• Fixed: Acceleration under time warp stops working after reaching specific in-game time (UT) while in orbit around some CBs
• Fixed: Buoyancy displacement incorrect for parts with variable drag cubes
• Fixed: Landing legs deployed at high speed are ripped off of the vessel
• Fixed: Vessels sink or are destroyed due to mistmatched terrain colliders
• Fixed: Vessel falls through the ground when camera moves more than ~2500m away from it
• Improved issue where rovers flip after driving a short distance from their load origin location
• Fixed: Visual drift on several engines when using high timewarp
• Fixed: Vessel's parts move out of place when switching to a rocket in orbit while at the KSC or Tracking Station"
• Fixed: Vessels end up in a bad state when switching away from the vessel in orbit
• Fixed: Vessel's parts are out of place after disengaging timewarp at very low orbit around Mun
• Reduced floating point precission loss on rotating reference frames
• Fixed: Ship is destroyed when switching away from the vessel while engines are running
• Fixed: Two docked vessels become stuck and unable to undock after a third vessel is docked
• Improved trajectory AP/PE values changing when saving and loading while in orbit around any CB
• Added AP/PE display to maneuver trajectories appearing within SOIs
• The projected trajectory and the actual trajectory now both show periapses for the targets in relative SOIs after a maneuver has been performed
• Fixed: Kerbals appear as vessels in Map
• Fixed: Orbit tag displays incorrect celestial body name
• Fixed: "Time warp to Point" appears as an option for planned trajectories
• Celestial body name is shown on both the default and expanded view of every AP/PE marker
• Changed "Enter/Exit SOI" marker to "Encountering/Leaving CB Name"
• Orbital markers inherit the color of the current trajectory or planned maneuver trajectory
• Fixed: Vessel and other icons clip into celestial bodies in map view
• Fixed: Maneuver gizmo can still be manipulated if the player pauses while manipulation is occuring
• Added "control" and "focus" to kerbal action buttons in Tracking Station to align with vessel actions
• Fixed: Returning to KSC while paused in another SOI breaks KSC
• Reduced the frequency of "Solar Panels Ineffective" notification
• Fixed: VesselOutOfElectricity message event does not trigger when EC is exhausted
• Fixed: Notification does not display when trying to increase time warp past the limit using hotkeys
• Fixed: Player receives "Loss of Control" notifications when discarding boosters
• Fixed: "Vessel out of EC" notification fires when the vessel or kerbal doesn't have EC to start with
• Fixed: Staging a vessel collapses the Delta-V information in the staging stack
• Fixed: Vessel continues to accelerate after resuming control from Tracking Station, and turning off engines
• Fixed: Vessels on launch clamps are not considered landed when at the launchpad
• Fixed: Throttle sometimes jumps to 100% when passing 20km altitude above Kerbin
• Fixed: Some engine gimbals don't work when offscreen (e.g. in Map mode)"
• Added Vessel loss prompt when using the Escape Menu option to leave flight while vessel is on a collision course
• Adjusted flight report to remove revert options from vessels that are currently in flight or have been recovered
• Fixed: Map UI info panel fails to display buttons and flight information for EVA kerbals
• Fixed: Portraits for both Kerbals are not present when docking vessels that have one Kerbal each
• Fixed: Jetpacks sometimes show up in kerbal portraits
• Fixed: Tooltips on map items duplicated due to camera distance
• Fixed: EC values from destroyed electrical parts remain in the Vessel Resources UI
• Fixed: Flight HUD velocity displays decimals but only updates on integers at velocities above 999 m/s
• SAS vector hold indicator now displays appropriate highlight when selected
• Fixed: Temperature gauges stay on screen when switching scenes
• Fixed: Disconnected parts sometimes remain linked when joints are broken between parts
• Fixed: Kerbol not visible betwen altitudes of 1000 MM and 750 MM in flight
• Fixed: Deployed parachutes that have moved from the parts bin to the first stage do not stage properly
• Fixed: Vessels landed on CBs other than Kerbin can be recovered using Info Panel in Tracking Station
• Fixed: Part destruction causes assertion error
• Fixed: Recovering vessel causes Null Reference Exception
• Fixed: Looking directly at Kerbol from a semi major axis of ~25,210,000,000 m or more causes error flood
• Fixed: Tracking station shows shows incorrect values for atmospheric pressure, sphere of influence and rotational velocity for CBs

FX and Audio

• Fixed: Ambient sound stops working when leaving flight view and coming back
• Fixed: Audio events do not persist when entering the main menu upon exiting or saving a game
• Fixed: Audio mutes on text entry on Campaign screen if you use numpad 1 or 2
• Fixed: Audio does not detect collisions with non-terrain objects correctly
• Fixed: Water impact splash does not change with part velocity
• Fixed: Water splashes spawn at incorrect orientations
• Fixed: KSC ambient music plays while in Cadet Orientation mode
• Fixed: Math issues in water level detection vs part bounding boxes caused apparent hovering of floating vessels

Menus and Settings

• Changing from Full Screen to Windows maintains resolution settings
• Graphics Settings for resolution now default to the current resolution, if present on the dropdown
• Fixed: Some accessibility settings do not visually update UI to represent saved setting state
• Fixed: Graphics quality settings do not apply correctly when selecting medium quality
• Fixed: General settings don't have descriptions for all options
• Fixed: Part animations in Main Menu display incorrectly
• Updated KSP2 Credits

Modding

• Changed unit culture to be invariant for some text parsing scenarios

Optimization

• Improved performance of SimulationObjectView by returning pre-cached components
• Improved performance of loading stock vessel metadata by only reading from meta json files
• Moved buoyant force algorithm to job system to address spinning of floating parts and to improve performance and stability
• Improved water detection performance
• Terrain rendering time reduced by ~30-50% based on location
• Removed separate re-rendering of cloud edges to improve performance 
• Fixed: Cloud resources not released after changing cloud quality settings
• Optimized shadow rendering for clouds
• Fixed: Light bulb parts cause performance issues
• Fixed: Frame rate drops when generating new Kerbals using the Kerbal Manager in the VAB
• Fixed: Memory leak in PartBehaviorSystem

Parts and Stock Vessels

• Fixed: "RF-AD-XL 2500" fueled adapter model is invisible
• Fixed: "Tuba" engine experiences attachment offset at high warp speeds
• Fixed: Landing legs and wheel parts under compression fully extend during timewarp
• Fixed: Landing legs have issues when switching to map while they are extending or retracting
• Fixed: Labradoodle engine moves out of place when timewarping at 1,000,000x speed in flight
• Fixed: Already-deployed shrouds sometimes reappear when game is reloaded
• Added heatshield functionality to existing heatshield parts
• Fixed: DTS-M1 antenna collider stuck in deployed state
• Fixed: Surface attach node definition for MK3 engine mount is missing
• Added bottom node to inflatable heat shield
• Fixed: Stack-attached parts incorrectly detected as contents of a cargo bay
• Fixed: Missing drag properties for some structural parts
• Improved clipping of landing legs through terrain and other surfaces during time warp
• Minor tuning pass on many parts, including Command and Structural drag cube and buoyancy scalars
• Tuning pass on drag cubes for all parts
• Fixed: "Goliath" engine fan doesn't animate when throttled up/down

Saving and Loading

• Fixed: Title freezes at loading screen after reverting to the VAB several times from flight
• Fixed: Save files take a long time to load, and in some cases the vessel is absent after loading
• Fixed: Struts don't appear on a vessel if the vessel was previously loaded onto a launch pad
• Fixed: Close button doesn't work in the Workspace File Name input field inside the Save Worspace dialog
• Changed "vehicles" to "workspaces" in VAB Save/Load menu titles to reduce confusion
• Fixed: Save Workspace menu shows vehicle names instead of workspace names for player workspaces

Tutorials

• Fixed: Title crashes after deleting parts during tutorial 1 and then quitting to main menu
• Added a setting to disable Cadet Orientation after creating a campaing
• Fixed getting stuck on the final step after using time warp to reach a stable orbit trajectory during tutorial "Establishing an Orbit"
• Fixed voice over getting stuck when player fails tutorial "Manipulating Orbits"
• Fixed: Tutorial highlight overlaps Altimiter in the Flight Cluster
• Fixed: Engineer's Report and Flight Planner crowd one another in the VAB tutorial
• Updated arrows position for several tutorials

UI/UX

• Updated UI for the KSC launchpad menu
• Updated UI for the Training Center
• Updated Launchpad Menu UI
• Updated UI on the KSC Menu
• Updated visuals for alert notifications panel
• Updated visuals for UI Notifications 
• Passive notifications moved to the top of the screen
• Updated UI for all app windows for stylistic consistency
• Fixed: Alert & Passive Notifications don't scale properly when switching between resolutions
• Fixed: Passive notifications remain on screen indefinitely when the game is paused
• Updated boat launch icon
• Consistency pass on KSC facility icons
• Updated color for scrollbars
• Increased font size for Game mode descriptions
• Updated UI on tutorial arrows and indicator areas
• Resized tutorial arrows
• Tutorial gifs display at consistent size
• Fixed: Fuzzy edges on the VAB Tool Bar UI
• Fixed: UI does not properly highlight when hovering on the save vehicle save/load menu
• Fixed: Ellipses have incorrect vertical position due to font issue
• Fixed: Action Bar Bento Menu button text runs into edge of box
• Fixed: Text misaligned when viewing EVA controls in flight
• Fixed: Text is cut off and illegible in the Time Warp and Breadcrumb UI while on the lowest fullscreen resolution
• Fixed: Text cut off in Training Center due to scroll masking

 

Known Issues

If paused in-flight, switching to Mission Control causes the loading screen to hang

Workaround: press '>' to resume time

Orbit Surveys are difficult to run on small celestial bodies

Workaround: geostationary or big elliptical orbits should allow the player to run those experiments. The intention of this part is for it to scan the regions underneath the vessel as it moves over them - however right now it pauses when a new region is encountered, something that occurs a lot when moving fast over some CBs. We are internally testing improvements to this so the part can get its data with less babysitting

Miscellaneous text issues in missions, i.e. debrief text repeating

Significant amounts of text went into this update, so of course a few things slipped through the cracks. Even if they're minor, please do report them!

Separators below a root part will cause improper separation causing loss of control

Workaround: Consider using decouplers instead of separators if you are running into this issue

Solar panels are sometimes blocked when in Jool's sphere of influence even when Kerbol is in clear view

After staring at the sun from Jool's 'surface', black dots may appear and persist even when transitioning back to the KSC

Surface-attached lights don't turn on properly when launching for the first time

 

Common Workarounds

If you run into an issue, the first thing you should try to save and reloading. We have found many common issues to be quickly fixed using this method. You could additionally try reverting to launch.

Performance may degrade over very long play sessions, but restarting the game client should fix this.

 

A Note on Heat

It's important to keep in mind that the Part Heat system in KSP2 is different than KSP1, so do not expect parity in this area. Tuning the numbers for the heat system will be a long-term project, so feedback is appreciated!

 

SUBMITTING BUG REPORTS AND FEEDBACK

If you'd like to provide feedback about this build, there are many different ways to do so:

Submit Feedback through the Game Launcher

Suggest a Change on the Forums

Join us on Discord to discuss potential changes

Bug reports should be shared to:

KSP Forums Bug Reports

[Nicrose]

Super excited!

[VlonaldKerman]

Dub.

[Ace27]

Wow! This is quite comprehensive. The team has been hard at work, that's A LOT of fixes. Can't wait to play it. Keep up the good work!

[Nicrose]

Is there a way to look at your current mission inside of the VAB? I feel like that will be very important later on when planning missions

[DibzNr]

FOR SCIENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Yang366]

Wow! What an impressive list of fixes & features.

Can't wait for patching to end!

 

[Wheehaw Kerman]

On reading this, and watching some of the early content creator vids, I’m feeling vindicated in my confidence in the devs.  It feels like the game has turned a corner.  Thanks, IG, and keep up the good work.

[Hanlet06]

Siiiiiiiiiii

[wasml]

That's an impressive list of additions and fixes! Looking forward to taking this for a spin.

[Mikki]

THANK YOU! I just watched Matt Lowne`s YouTube on this update and i am deeply impressed and very satisfied where KSP2 is going, water physics are insane and heating effects are excellent. Everything is most appreciated in this update, there has been alot of work done on the major game mechanics too, omg it is awesome!

I wish you all a well deserved new years holiday and a healthy new year! You are just great!  

Edited December 19, 2023 by Mikki
done

[The Aziz]

4 hours ago, Intercept Games said:

Fixed: Maneuver gizmo can still be manipulated if the player pauses while manipulation is occuring

I think you did the literal opposite of what the community has been asking for for the last 10 months.

[Vortygont]

4 hours ago, Intercept Games said:

Added bottom node to inflatable heat shield

YEEESSSS!!!!! YEEESSSSS!!! Finally! 

[Scarecrow71]

9 hours ago, Intercept Games said:

Added 11 primary missions and 30 secondary missions

Only 11 primary missions?  Are there plans to add more?  I'm not talking about colonies or interstellar here; I'm talking about core gameplay in the Kerbolar system.

[Superfluous J]

11 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Only 11 primary missions?  Are there plans to add more?  I'm not talking about colonies or interstellar here; I'm talking about core gameplay in the Kerbolar system.

I've seen 4 of them already:

1. 10km
2. space
3. orbit
4. flyby/orbit mun (it's a bit conflicting)

Presumably, the remaining 7 are:

1. land on mun
2. flyby/orbit minmus
3. land on minmus
4. leave kerbin's SOI
5. flyby/orbit another planet
6. land on another planet
7. ???? Profit ?????

It's been 12ish hours, I'm sure by now someone has seen them all

[Wheehaw Kerman]

7 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Only 11 primary missions?  Are there plans to add more?  I'm not talking about colonies or interstellar here; I'm talking about core gameplay in the Kerbolar system.

I think it’s a safe bet that we’re going to see *a lot* more missions as the game expands.  Each roadmap item is loaded with mission potential with the possible exception of Multiplayer (?).  Resources could drive a bunch of missions in the Kerbolar system…

[ShadowZone]

Great update all around! The game still needs work, but I like to see the progress made.

Here are some stats in regards to bugfixing:

	Total items	Community	% of total
0.1.1	281	42	15%
0.1.2	173	36	21%
0.1.3	165	17	10%
0.1.4	81	9	11%
0.1.5	86	11	13%
0.2.0	156	0	0%

I'm curious: the rocket icon signifying fixes that were aided by the community is missing in the current release notes. Is this deliberate or an omission?

Edited December 20, 2023 by ShadowZone

[gluckez]

wow, nice work to all the devs!
before this update, I played a total of about 4 hours. Since this update launched, I have played 6 and I don't want to stop xD

[The Aziz]

On 12/19/2023 at 6:45 PM, Intercept Games said:

Fixed: Kerbol not visible betwen altitudes of 1000 MM and 750 MM in flight

I don't know what the 1000MM is, but I know one thing for sure - the sphere is still not visible in most of the system.

[MechBFP]

6 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

I don't know what the 1000MM is, but I know one thing for sure - the sphere is still not visible in most of the system.

Module Managers of course!

Anyway that stands for Million Meters.

[kerbalinitzator]

On 12/19/2023 at 10:53 PM, The Aziz said:

I think you did the literal opposite of what the community has been asking for for the last 10 months.

why?

 

[ArmchairGravy]

Medium nose cones need to be dropped down to the other medium items instead of being 5 tiers away from when medium tanks are unlocked.

[The Aziz]

5 hours ago, kerbalinitzator said:

why?

 

Because people wanted to be able to plan the maneuvers in pause (like, it's the most logical thing) but they treated as bug and took away the only thing that sort of allowed it.

[Kerbart]

2 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Because people wanted to be able to plan the maneuvers in pause (like, it's the most logical thing) but they treated as bug and took away the only thing that sort of allowed it.

"The game crashes when I press the X key"
"We fixed it; you no longer have to press the X key to make the game crash"

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

"The game crashes when I press the X key"
"We fixed it; you no longer have to press the X key to make the game crash"

You jest, but I work with  developers like this far too often. Anyway, I am sure they got the point lol.