Thoughts on Update?

[lammatt]

I don't know if it's just me, but the update (thanks Steam, btw) broke pretty much everything. I reinstalled and it's still broken - VAB and SPH randomly stop working, buttons cannot be pressed, game stops responding, and that's with only 3 parts on screen.

Then there's crashes. Oh god, the horrors. I only did this a couple of times, but after crashing a plane when landing (what is this "improved" ASAS you speak of?), I noticed that parts only break off and don't actually disappear when they explode. The explosions just kept on going and going for what seemed like an eternity, then my game crashed (persumably due to particle overload by all the explosions).

The new buildings look cool and all, but Squad, you need some serious QA revamp.

same here.

[Kimberly]

Yeah I didn't have an end flight either. Don't know if it's an oversight or a change. There's a now a "Recover Ship" button, but there's no end missions stats there.

Oh and this thread reminds me of this: http://xkcd.com/1172/

You can (and could) get your flight report at any time by pressing F3. It just happened to pop up when you ended a flight before, but now End Flight has been removed.

[Gaiabladegold]

New ASAS feels like Mechjeb's smartASS, which I much preferred anyway. Waiting on mechjeb to come out of hiding, then I shall build anew.

[stoani96]

its obviously a bug, lets just stop complaining about it, file some bug reports, and the affected people can play .20 until its fixed

bugs you say? good that they tested the game for so long!(sarcasm)

(i also have a project running with a friend, im the guy who does the computer stuff(programming) and.... yeah, i just dont want to work. and everytime my friend asks or we talk about it, i say that i did something a few days ago or i will start the great working in a few days. and i always add, that that just takes its time!

that reminds me a bit of squad...)

[Grumplestiltskin]

The new update is incredible...so far it's exactly what was described in the demo vids, etc. SAS is spot on. I built a few new rockets and they all cut like butter straight through the atmosphere and into orbit. Great work, squad!

EDIT1: I have now managed to reproduce a few of the issues people are complaining about. For me, simpler rockets with few engines (even if the ship is large) work very well. However, as I add complexity, and most importantly, more simultaneously firing rockets something goes wrong. They are still carefully flyable, but they do tend to torque in one direction even after adding reaction wheels, etc, and they are touchy as hell on the controls. Small inputs at the wrong time can send you into a spin.

EDIT2: Flying a manned rocket that was unstable with an Inline Advanced Stabilizer, and Inline Reaction Wheel became much more stable with an Advanced ASAS, Large....which is a bit confusing. I though the Inline Advanced Stabilzer 'comes with flight computer'?

Edited July 25, 2013 by Grumplestiltskin

[Guest]

The new update is incredible...so far it's exactly what was described in the demo vids, etc. SAS is spot on. I built a few new rockets and they all cut like butter straight through the atmosphere and into orbit. Great work, squad!

That's been my experience, too. I even took the test rocket up au naturel (no interstage struts), and there was no appreciable wobble or over-steering.

[A Fat Pokemon]

Heh, I like that there is hitchhiker pod IVA finally haha

[Tw1]

Enjoying the faster loading times, and the new space center.

The new SAS is working well with planes for me, but not so well with rockets, you need a lot of SAS to hold a simple one steady, and they're not so light any more.

One other disappointment is the new island runway. The texture is really ugly, and it's got these nasty bumps at the end that catch your plane if you don't quite stop in time, or don't quite land on the runway. No more of the nice seaside scenery, or flat space for trying to boat. Some of the coast lines could do with some smoothing.

The Mun looks good in the map view, (though still think they need some sort of mask over the maria to reduce craters there.) But haven't been to it yet.

The VAB and SPH interiors are looking awesome. Looking forward to checking out the space center properly later.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Tw1

[Ming]

I'm probably in the minority when it comes to building really big heavy lifters with 1000+ parts. But, that's what I really enjoyed doing and for the most part my designs worked just fine. Well, not anymore with this latest update. I'm totally stock, no mods at all and my big lifters just crumble on the launch pad, or if launched fall apart shortly there after . I have 340+ hours of experience with KSP so I know enough to build wobble free and mass centered designs. Also, I noticed when I'm depressing the shift key to throttle up that the thrust indicator just creeps slowly upwards. In 2.0 the thrust indicator moved quickly. I don't think there are bugs as such, rather it's a KSP update that simply left big rocket builders, like me, out in the cold. Not mad here just really sad I can no longer do those big design projects.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Ming

[ddavis425]

I have a feeling that the new ASAS was created with spaceplanes in mind. It works fairly good when flying planes, but when I try to use the ASAS with a rocket it performs extremely poorly.

As far as the rest of the update goes, I am satisfied. The new space center is incredible, though there are some bugs with the ladders. The Mun looks and feels amazing. I haven't visited the other improved planets but Eve looks great in the map view. Crew Management doesn't really do anything right now so I have nothing to say about it.

One more thing that I don't understand is the craft recovery system. The Recover button needs to be on the escape menu, as it is now I have to go through two loading screens to get to that button in the tracking station.

[Aragosnat]

I don't care for the new S.A.S. do to it is to weak to the point where I want it to act like what it says it should. I need to add way more S.A.S. Then one would think is needed at least for probes. I liked how the S.A.S. was in 0.20 for probes and Command Moduals without the A.S.A.S. added on. Where if you had S.A.S. on it would eventually cancel out the momentum. For myself. That is all the S.A.S. should be doing. I do miss the Kung Fu Death Grip of the Old A.S.A.S. though.

Edit: Forgot to mention. I do love the rest of the update. Enjoying the view of the KSC at night and enjoying the Mün do to the fact my old saves still have working ships there for some reason. Also found out why Jeb never came back to being available. He was hiding on the Mün as well as a few other stranded forgotten Kerbals.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Aragosnat

[ecat]

Mostly high points, only two low points so far: finding the VAB/SPH symmetry bug still exists and I had to manually patch Loly into the recruits list - can't play without him around these days.

I had a ship which had inexplicably developed a habit for disassembly on the launch pad after a restart flight, under 21 it's now behaving itself, so far. A bug fixed perhaps.

Matching all settings I did a small time trial with a 460 part ship. 21 looks about 10% faster loading into VAB and maybe 20% less lag (20 reached 5.7km in 2 minutes real time, 21 reached 6.7km in 2 minutes real time). Only one set of tests and mods etc could also be having some effect, etc, etc.

The old ships I've tried so far have all worked, including a +2000 part monster.

I'm not a big user of SAS/ASAS but did try out 6 reaction wheels on my large Cupola based space wheel, 12 RTGs and I was still running out of electricity when running with NERVAs into final orbit... That's a lot of power.

[little square dot]

Can't you people be happy? Way to praise the Artists for all their hard work... I'll hate to be around when they make Jool better.

The ONLY complaint I have is that I don't really like the new ASAS implementation.

haha...

Hilarious comment aside, there are a number of people who need to stop throwing temper tantrums and focus on helping the devs to sort this out.

It's called feedback. It's how games are developed... pretending a problem isn't there like a fanboy is far more damaging to the game than the many people having issues actually telling the devs so they can fix it. It didn't stop wobbling... it's made it worse. that's the point.

While I agree with your comment, it doesn't necessarily reflect what has happened in this thread, and in several others for that matter.

If anyone finds the game to be unplayable, surely they can manage to submit a report before finding something else to do while they await a fix. The sun will surely rise tomorrow, even without KSP tonight. Five deep breaths.

[flyin_ruski]

The mods I had downloaded all seem to still work (didnt really care if they did or not), my station is right where I left it, the new ASAS works fine for me, and the new KSC and Mun look FREAKIN AWESOME!!!!! They even added a few new parts and a new IVA and the new update came out a day before my birthday.

This is one OUTSTANDING update. Fantastic work Squad !

[astropapi1]

I'm loving the new update, but I don't understand the new SAS/Reaction wheel thing.

Would be great if C7 made an article on it. .)

[allmappedout]

I'm very impressed by it (probably why I sank almost 5 hours into it last night...on a work night...urgh, paying for it this morning).

The reaction wheel/SAS system for me has worked exceptionally well. The only things I have noticed are the following:

1. If you have multiple gimballing engines you can still sometimes get a cascade effect, particularly when the thrust is high. On one of my rockets I built, with a middle skipper and 4 mainsails surrounding it, in order to be able to pull off the gravity turn without unplanned disassembly, I had to disable gimballing on two of the mainsails, otherwise the entire craft flipped out as I moved away from 90deg.

2. When the SAS is providing a significant input into the PID system already (such as a plane that is nose heavy and thus requires a high amount of pitch up), any attempt to correct it seems to forget the previously required pitch up (ie: your input starts back at zero, rather than where the PID controller is currently applying the force). As a result, it's hard to trim the craft with SAS on, as the trim resets that axis, and effectively de-binds it from input control.

In both cases, I've found that enabling precision mode has helped a lot, but I think the second is a bit of an issue in terms of expectation vs reality.

Apart from trying to build a knock-off A10 and F16 replica (only one of which turned out well...i'll give you a clue, it's not the one with the off-centre engines), I stuck a Geosync satellite over KSC, and the beginnings of a space station. I have been very impressed with how little lag there seems to be (except when pointing at Kerbin, there's a bit of a spike, but that *always* happens).

[Sheherezade]

well. I had to shed my old ribbons for this, but I'm happy to say I love the new version. I was able to get my first ssto into orbit.

yet, the new asas needs major getting used to, but I will withhold judgement until I play with it awhile to get a feel for it.

I like how the graphics are rendered a lot smoother considering I only have a 2.3ghz processor with stock intel graphics processor.

I like how you can pick astronauts now and hope to see more development in the near future.

Good Job Squad. Good job.

[muckratz]

agree, the it feels like flyin without asas however, i to love the new version!

[EvilotionCR2]

EVERYTHING is perfect except the new ASAS while docking.

[magnemoe]

Even though I turned off Steam updates, it started the update and I couldn't stop it, my 0.20 is dead, along with lots of mods.. I did this when 0.20 first came out and I do it once more....back to Minecraft for the time being

This is my main issue with steam, no way to run multiple version of an game and the do not update setting is broken.

no for most games this is not an huge issue, even games with lots of mods like skyrim as the update rarely breaks stuff, for skyrim it was the script extender and it was updated in a day or two.

However for ksp this is critical, new updates breaks saves and mods as the game is under development, the updates changes fundamental stuff not just, fix bug and perhaps add some features.

[cypher_00]

Tried launching a fairly simple rocket with a polar probe but it kept drifting up or down with ASAS enabled. Added more reaction wheels and that helpt a bit but not much so i kinda hated the new ASAS. Then i build a larger rocket with a Orion style craft on it and it kept straight and smooth on course. I can now keep ASAS and RSC on from launch untill landing without it draining the RSC tanks so now i'm loving the new ASAS!

Need to test more with smaller rockets tho, could be it was just top heavy or something.

[Doc.Solveberg]

I wonder why you can't select a crew member for the External Command Seat. Bug? Oversight? Not intented?

Also I'm a bit confused. Shouldn't the new "recover" option be for the career mode and the old "terminate flight" for sandbox?

[allmappedout]

I wonder why you can't select a crew member for the External Command Seat. Bug? Oversight? Not intented?

Also I'm a bit confused. Shouldn't the new "recover" option be for the career mode and the old "terminate flight" for sandbox?

The devs wanted to build a bit of reality into the sandbox - you can't just make spacecraft disappear, so they built a new process tree for dealing with it. The terminate flight button is still in sandbox, but now only accessible through the Tracking Station, and it comes with a warning. Recover is necessary to factor in the Astronaut Complex.

[Doc.Solveberg]

The devs wanted to build a bit of reality into the sandbox - you can't just make spacecraft disappear, so they built a new process tree for dealing with it. The terminate flight button is still in sandbox, but now only accessible through the Tracking Station, and it comes with a warning. Recover is necessary to factor in the Astronaut Complex.

Ah okay, makes sense. Thanks.

[Titler]

I thought I was going to like it; it really looked like they'd done a great job converting older saves across... All my ships were there, including the mothership I was so proud of building ready to carry re-usable Eve landers. But then I found I couldn't end the flight and swap to another without Alt-F4ing KSP entirely. So I tried loading the Munbase and Minmusbases I'd built in orbit, with their already attached and tested landers... Computer performance was worse than ever, and when disconnected from their parent station, Mechjeb was unable to control them at all. And then they'd teleport 50 foot or so back into the station and explode. Then I tried the original, working Lander/Rover combination that had been left on the Mun, from before the days of designing with Delta V in mind... it was a working, roving historical artefact, so ASAS problems shouldn't be an issue, all it had to do was rove around. But I noticed that rising up the new crater slopes, for some reason it wanted to constantly turn into the slope, and it nearly toppled over until I manually corrected it. So even that wasn't working really.

So. I was left with just being able to look at, but not use months worth of creations. And having to re-learn rocket design and go back to orbital flights, and then testing munshots and.... And wait for updates to Mapsat maybe so I have a target to go look at when I arrive. And most of the bugs being marked as [NoFix] on the forums in the meantime. And so my interest was just completely lost. I had a lot of fun messing around with the Alpha, but I think I'm done now, until the feature set is about complete... See you nearer v1.0 chaps.