Am I to understand that KW has been cancelled?

[voleurinconnu]

Well, if this is the end for KW, I'll be sad to see it go, it's one of the few part mods that I really came to enjoy, but if Kyle and Winston have more important things to do then so be it, hopefully someone else can pick up the task of updating this mod though, it'd be a shame to see it fall into disuse and disrepair, it's too good a mod for that.

[Guest]

I was a KW die-hard for a long time. But now with KW's indeterminate future, the advent of Procedural Fairings, AEIS, and the fantastic rework of NP, the only KW parts I'm hanging on to are a handful of engines. While it's sad to see this pack fall by the wayside, the void it has left is swiftly being filled.

[Van Disaster]

I still prefer the KW style above everything. I'm using NP right now, but it's not quite meshing with my usual build style ( other than gigantic 5m efforts ). Hats off to everyone involved with both, though.

[Nuke]

i think i liked np better, while kw had some pretty good looking engines, np had more glue parts. b9 looked awesome but its just way too big. but im trying to get away from these megapacks. install both those, and b9, and my half meter pack, and you can never find anything without another plugin. at least till the game gets better at handling big mods.

Edited July 29, 2013 by Nuke

[alacrity]

KW is one of my constant reinstalls for every KSP update... it is a bit of a mem hog as noted but wirth it for some of the parts that I seem to not be able to do without. The bigger range of engines is my fave parts for the more choice I get in thrust to ISP.

I am a bit of a parts whore tho with KW, Nova, B9 , and NukeMod, I tend to have to say some prayers during each load up to see if it survives or insta crashes. I would hate to see any of the big Parts Mods die and would be willing to help in maintaining any of them being dropped by originators.

Alacrity

[TG_bigboss]

I loved KW for the engines and clean design mostly. Less parts for my rockets because of the huge tanks and efficient engines. If they do update it...it will need some serious work to optimize it like B9's pack is.

[Captain Sierra]

KW is great but is a leading resource hog on my computer. It is one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) mods I run. I love the parts. They are beautiful but it just causes problems. It really needs some work, mainly just optimization. KW was never really canceled but it's devs have been quiet for a while and the thread was closed down after some nasty arguing (I will not bring up details or personal opinions of the matter). If they come back, it will be reopened and that mod will become even better and more awesome than it is now.

[dave4002000]

KW allows me to be more efficient at Kerbal destruction, and occasional mission successes. I would be saddened with its discontinuation.

Take it as you will, but there are people who appreciate it being updated and very much like the parts.

^^I could not have said it better myself. Every single one of my, dozens of, active space vehicles has KW parts on it. I've used this pack for as long as i can remember and it is the first thing i install after a new KSP installation.

I don't understand why so many people feel a sense of entitlement when it comes to mods being updated. These guys and girls do this in their free time and share their creations with us for free. If a mod author doesn't wish to continue then that is, solely, their decision to make. I'm still hoping KW gets updated but, if it doesn't, i completely understand why.

[esinohio]

I just hope the creator of the KW mod is doing well. When people go poof the worriers like myself start to wonder!

[cxg2827]

BUT, it's a resource hog at half a Gig (in a game that can only effectively use 2 GB, that's a liability).

I'd like to see KW get updated and optimized.

I love KW parts as well. Taking notes from ialdabaoth, I was able to reduce the pack size from its ~400MB to 288MB. Definitely helped with loading and less frequent crashes.

I'm hoping that Winston continues to support this pack though.

[Event Horizon]

I want 64bit KSP loooong before high poly models. As is I'm running about 2/3 graphics (1/2 res textures and render set to fast), just to have a handful of mods installed. I guess it's fine if your playing vanilla and launching satellites and tiny landers....but imo thats only fun for so long.

32bit program and 700part count ships launching 160ton landers....highpoly models get to be a huge problem

You don't even really need 64bit capability. Just have each mod run as its own process that's bridged to the main KSP process. This gives mods its own RAM and CPU usage which should improve usage from my limited knowledge of how computers work. Either way, I'd love to be able to utilize some of my 32GB of RAM in something other than composing music.

Although I'm not sure if that's easier than making KSP 64bit capable.

[frizzank]

I am by no means trying to compare my work to the wonderful work done on KW. I just wanted to inform everyone that NovaPunch is still ongoing and this is the new art direction for NovaPunch -\/.

It is influenced by the look of KW, while still trying to be in the same style as the stock parts. If you haven't seen the latest update, it's night and day compared to the old version and still in ongoing development. (Current discussion is what new stuff to do with nuke engines?)

[HeadHunter67]

Taking notes from ialdabaoth, I was able to reduce the pack size from its ~400MB to 288MB. Definitely helped with loading and less frequent crashes.

How is that done?

[cxg2827]

How is that done?

Here is what he said. You have to do some checking on these, but from memory, the following are rescales of one another

-Nose cones

-1m, 2m, 3m stack decouplers

-Engine Decoupler shrouds (on these you need to fix the rescale for the 2m and 3m parts)

-1m, 2m fairing wall and cones

-1m, 2m expanded fairing wall and cones

-1m,2m,3m fairing bases

-1m, 2m, 3m expanded fairing bases

-1m,2m,3m monoprop tank

-3m 1/3rd fairing wall, and expanded 1/3rd fairing wall

-3m 1/3rd cone and expanded 1/3rd cone

Also, Winston - note that every part that you guys made duplicates of at different sizes, can now be merged into a single directory to save space.

For example, right now you have three directories: /KW1mExpandedFairingBase, KW2mExpandedFairingBase, and KW3mExpandedFairingBase.

You could instead have ONE directory: /KWExpandedFairingBase, with a single model.mu file, model000.mbm file, and model001.mbm file, and then three files called part1m.cfg, part2m.cfg, and part3m.cfg

I've edited my own cfgs to do exactly this; if you'd like send me a PM and I can send you my KW directory.

[Omicron314]

I really hope KW Rocketry will not be cancelled. I've messed around with NovaPunch a bit but it can do some weird things to my game. I love the simplicity and elegance of the parts, and would be quite sad to see it go.

[LawnDartLeo]

I fear the day that mods like KW and NP stop working because of lack of updates will be the day that KSP looses a lot of players. This is not pointing a finger of blame and spite at those people who contribute, I am very thankful for what they do and am relieved to see my mods still work with every new patch. That being said, I hope that Squad takes the modding community into consideration with every next patch as (permanently) breaking a popular mod may cause people to give up on KSP.

[Tiberion]

I wouldn't worry about it; even if KW and NP disappeared tomorrow, someone else would fill the void with their own rocketry mod soon enough.

I'd rather them keep improving and expanding the game, giving mod authors more tools to work with, even if that means some extra work to adapt to a new version. And that's a reality anyway, since this is Alpha software.

[NoMrBond]

I would very much like it if Winston and Kyle continued updating KWRocketry

But I also want them to be updating KWR because they enjoy doing so, and want to be doing it, I'm just not sure if that could even be the case any longer

[HeadHunter67]

Here is what he said.

If I could use KW with a smaller footprint, I'd gladly re-add it to my mod mix. I'll have to contact him about that.

[GavinZac]

You don't even really need 64bit capability. Just have each mod run as its own process that's bridged to the main KSP process. This gives mods its own RAM and CPU usage which should improve usage from my limited knowledge of how computers work. Either way, I'd love to be able to utilize some of my 32GB of RAM in something other than composing music.

Although I'm not sure if that's easier than making KSP 64bit capable.

Plugins could use separate threads, yes - but that only affects CPU usage, which is rarely an issue with KSP. What is an issue is memory, and since each thread needs to access the main memory, it's shared amongst all of them, making threads useless for that. No, there is no real way to have mods that sometimes add up to 1GB of memory usage - ISAMapSat, KWRocketry et al - use 'separate' memory - KSP still needs an address to find them, and that address must be somewhere in KSP's 4GBs.

Today's mod friendly games use a LOT of memory, simply because they are very free and open to loading in new models and so on - in the old days, graphics were produced by maths and functions, rather than loaded from PNG files. That is why Space Invaders originally fit on 8kb chips, whereas modern recreations take up 'only' 1mb. It's much easier to draw the sprites and load them from disk than writing code to produce them. It's been a LONG time but I remember writing maths functions to draw fractals on an old Amstrad and it was *infuriating* at times, but what are you going to do when the whole computer has 128kb RAM to function?

Theoretically, a procedural parts game would use a lot less memory - one type of capsule that can be scaled, one type of engine that can be scaled, one type of fuel tank that can be scaled, etc; and the parameters for each type could be set in game procedurally from that scaling and from options the user chooses. This is part of why Spore - useless as it was - was able to share creations to every other player - everything was sculpted from the same few parts, just procedurally adapted with a bit of maths by the player.

However, if we want to keep mods, the mods just need to be better at being efficient, memory-wise, Squad need to optimise memory usage (it's understandable that it has to *work* before you can optimise it, so we won't worry about it just yet), and the holy grail is that the Unity Engine finally gets its 64-bit version that seems to have fallen by the wayside. Even then, KSP is so far entrenched at this point it might not even be possible if Unity *did* manage to modernise.

Edited July 30, 2013 by GavinZac