Devnote Tuesdays: The Temporary "First Contract Edition" Thread

[Red Iron Crown]

If a resources mod were to be made... (I don't actually care about resources, I'm just confirming that there is a correlation, and that something might follow it)

There are several already.

[FleetAdmiralJ]

There are several already.

Which of course means if resources are ever implemented in the future, it is clearly a sign that Squad only gets their ideas from modders and never start exploring things like 64 bit until someone makes a barely stable version of it despite the fact that they've basically said for quite a while that they have been looking at the possibility of 64 bit for a while.

edit: yes, i'm being sarcastic

Edited June 25, 2014 by FleetAdmiralJ

[Guest]

This update looks promising. I'm really looking forward to it, hopefully performance will improve on my laptop (my main will probably remain 32bit for a while, but I'll eventually switch over).

Still, I wish Squad implemented something like LoD...

[LadyAthena]

Which of course means if resources are ever implemented in the future, it is clearly a sign that Squad only gets their ideas from modders and never start exploring things like 64 bit until someone makes a barely stable version of it despite the fact that they've basically said for quite a while that they have been looking at the possibility of 64 bit for a while.

My response is who cares? Better they do something great whether they were influenced by modders or not, than take the bs route that 95% of other companies do and say "well modders are already working on it, now we don't have too!" regardless of how stable it is.

Quit bashing on Squad, both you and Javster should be ashamed of yourself.

[Red Iron Crown]

LadyAthena: I think FleetAdmiralJ was being sarcastic. This forum needs more explicit sarcasm tags.

[FleetAdmiralJ]

LadyAthena: I think FleetAdmiralJ was being sarcastic. This forum needs more explicit sarcasm tags.

Thus the heh

But yeah, Squad isn't perfect (I'm still wondering how they'll deal with recovering craft, etc. with the money part of the game - I'm sure there will be things that need to be fined tuned) but yeah, it's entirely possible, if not likely, that they were already working on 64 bit before the recent modifications were posted on the forum. It's easy to make a thing which sort-of works (so long as you don't use many if any mods, of course. KAS was making my ships explode). It's harder to make a 64 bit version that actually works and is stable.

Edited June 25, 2014 by FleetAdmiralJ

[jBeta]

Which of course means if resources are ever implemented in the future, it is clearly a sign that Squad only gets their ideas from modders and never start exploring things like 64 bit until someone makes a barely stable version of it despite the fact that they've basically said for quite a while that they have been looking at the possibility of 64 bit for a while.

It may possibly be true that they realized their official builds in 64 bit are better than the hack, so they thought it was time to release it provisionally so people don't start judging the game based on that. Or... it could just be a coincidence. Launching a new platform build in less than a month (the time from the 64-bit hack post) does not generally happen.

I only care a little about RAM really (as I have never used much more than 2GB for KSP,) but I am REALLY hoping the physics calculations are faster in 64-bit. I don't know how the game is coded though. I couldn't get it to work on my Linux install to test that hypothesis.

EDIT: Oh, sarcasm. sorry

[Red Iron Crown]

It's possible too that they realized that at least some players were willing to accept some bugginess to play 64-bit. Maxmaps posted some good info in the 64-bit thread:

Hey Lilleman!

Just dropping by your thread to give you props. 64 bit development had been something we were working on on our spare time and behind the scenes for... a long time now! Like there was talk of small cleanup and fixes the day I was hired back in May 2013. (I've been here over a year now, wow) but due to the significantly higher expectations that the community has taken over our development, we felt 64 bit was still rather unstable and not really ready to be brought kicking and screaming into the public eye. Work continued on and off, with the release of 23.5 marking another 'yeah its not really showable yet'. Yet here you came! Enterprising and quite the explorer like most of our players seem to be, and you figured out how to access the work that had been done on the 64 bit client without having to wait for us to make it public.

This thread has been monitored constantly and quietly since you showed it to the world, and the response was far beyond our expectations. Thanks to this we've now grown confident enough to bring our work on the 64 bit version to the general public. Granted, it is very much at an experimental state and bugs in 32 bit will be prioritized, but consider this an eye opening experience and a thank you for helping us in seeing that sometimes we can show you guys the sausage production facilities and not have it end up with everyone hating hotdogs.

I'll be sticking with 32-bit as I don't use enough mods to warrant 64-bit and it will apparently still be buggier than the 32-bit release.

[Kamuchi]

x64 awsome!

Bugs or no bugs, it being officially added make my rack of 290x`s purr xD

[dtoxic]

x64+16gb ram all the mods are go yay

[Maxmaps]

Steam does not "support" 64-bit games natively. If you try to launch any game, regardless of operating system, it will launch the 32 bit version by default. However it will also distribute any file the developer/publisher gives it, include 64-bit executable and often can be handled through parameters on the steam shortcut. In short, you will get it, you just have to force it to run. Funnily enough, HL2 used to have a 64 bit version and Valve chose to explicitly remove it and force all users to use 32bit. I have no clue why, as the 64 bit version worked just fine for me.

The steam client itself has no need for 64-bit, it's not running more than 4GB of ram by itself and does not interfere with the programs it executes if they are forcibly instructed to run as 64 bit.

I'm not sure where you are getting this information but so far our 64 bit Windows testers have transitioned seamlessly to the 64 bit version via Steam automatically. Steam's interaction with actual game executables doesn't really go past throwing an overlay inside the game. All we really need to do is tell Valve 'hey here's our 64 bit executable, make sure this one installs and runs on 64 bit Windows' and that's it. No forcing required!

[HafCoJoe]

Twelve pages already wow! BOY do I look forward to this update and there are so many good things released!! 64-bit windows confirmed! Updating some part aesthetics! More engines! New videos! SOON!!!

Thank you all so much!

[Eric S]

If this was meant to suggest that they only started working on 64-bit after "someone else already figured out how to do it" I would suggest that they've probably been working on this quite a while. And presumably making it a lot more stable than the current hack that is out there right now.

No maybe about it. At least one dev has commented on the stability of KSP running in 64-bit mode every time they've updated the version of Unity that KSP uses ever since the 0.18.4 update (not sure if any comment was made for that version, and I wasn't following the devs closely enough to comment on any Unity updates prior to that one). In fact, the last Unity update left at least one dev excited about the progress. It was also the first time that whatever dev made the comment didn't say "It's getting better, but it's still not stable enough."

I've been following this out of intellectual curiosity for a long time. The first time I saw a dev comment on 64-bit mode, they said that they were seeing random crashes every few minutes, and they couldn't figure out what was causing the crashes, but they were pretty sure that the crashes were caused by bugs in Unity. The next time they were looking at updating the version of Unity, I hopped over to the Unity developer site and went through the version logs, and yes, there was at least one bug fixed between KSPs unity updates that would have guaranteed that Squad couldn't have made a stable 64 bit executable. Basically, that specific bug was that raycasting, something that KSP is doing several times a second if you've got an engine throttled up, and other times as well, was causing random crashes in win-64.

That said, I don't think Squad was putting a lot of effort into a win-64 executable until recently, because until recently, Unity wasn't stable enough on that platform for how KSP uses unity.

[kiwiak]

64 bit means ksp will be using latest version of unity

does it means that we will get multithreading too?

[NovaSilisko]

64 bit means ksp will be using latest version of unity

Unity has supported the exporting of 64-bit builds for a long time now, but they and KSP have never gotten along due to reasons unknown (well, I guess they're known now if a 64-bit build is coming)

[ericwdhs]

Everything in .24 sounds gold, but 64 bit. Wow... Just... wow...

As for the name, I didn't like any of the choices all that much, but Contractual Obligations beat the others for me, so I picked that. Write in answers won't likely get picked unless a lot of people put in the same one, but I would have gone with something simple like:

KSP: Commerce

KSP: Economics

KSP: Contracts

KSP: Budgets

KSP: Finances

[OopsThatNotWork]

64-bit! Yes! If its nice and stable I'm going to be installing mods like there's no tomorrow.

I second this idea.

[Alshain]

I'm not sure where you are getting this information but so far our 64 bit Windows testers have transitioned seamlessly to the 64 bit version via Steam automatically. Steam's interaction with actual game executables doesn't really go past throwing an overlay inside the game. All we really need to do is tell Valve 'hey here's our 64 bit executable, make sure this one installs and runs on 64 bit Windows' and that's it. No forcing required!

Interesting. Well maybe my info is outdated. This is the common answer we gave back on the legacy Steam support forums back when I trolled there, I know for a fact at one point it was the case but things do change, improvements are made, so... yay! Glad it's that easy.

[FenrirWolf]

No maybe about it. At least one dev has commented on the stability of KSP running in 64-bit mode every time they've updated the version of Unity that KSP uses ever since the 0.18.4 update (not sure if any comment was made for that version, and I wasn't following the devs closely enough to comment on any Unity updates prior to that one). In fact, the last Unity update left at least one dev excited about the progress. It was also the first time that whatever dev made the comment didn't say "It's getting better, but it's still not stable enough."

I've been following this out of intellectual curiosity for a long time. The first time I saw a dev comment on 64-bit mode, they said that they were seeing random crashes every few minutes, and they couldn't figure out what was causing the crashes, but they were pretty sure that the crashes were caused by bugs in Unity. The next time they were looking at updating the version of Unity, I hopped over to the Unity developer site and went through the version logs, and yes, there was at least one bug fixed between KSPs unity updates that would have guaranteed that Squad couldn't have made a stable 64 bit executable. Basically, that specific bug was that raycasting, something that KSP is doing several times a second if you've got an engine throttled up, and other times as well, was causing random crashes in win-64.

That said, I don't think Squad was putting a lot of effort into a win-64 executable until recently, because until recently, Unity wasn't stable enough on that platform for how KSP uses unity.

Yup, it makes me sad how many people think there's some sort of conspiracy here or that SQUAD only bothered messing with it after someone on the forums felt like splicing some files from the Unity dev environment into his copy of KSP. The truth is that the results we see in the 64-bit thread are the result of work on SQUAD's part (and Unity's too, naturally), not the cause of it.

What happened here was a positive feedback interaction between the devs and the community, and I don't see why some people have to immediately try finding fault in it somewhere. Us KSP players like to think of ourselves as more scientifically minded individuals, yet some of us will still jump to strange conclusions without taking the time to do the research and actually know what's going on before passing judgment.

[Superfluous J]

i run all stock. any benefits to running the 64 bit version?

More crashes.

No really there's no in-game benefit to 64 bits. If it had multithreading that'd be a whole different story. But the only actual real benefit is you're helping test the 64 bit version in a stock game - something that most people won't do considering the whole point is to add tons of mods. It's possible that crashes in your game are far more beneficial to Squad than most any other crashes in most any other installs.

[Eric S]

64 bit means ksp will be using latest version of unity

Sticking with 32 bit wouldn't hold them back from using the latest version of Unity, and using 64 bit wouldn't force them to use the latest version either. I haven't heard that they're upgrading Unity again in 0.24, though I might have missed it. KSP is currently running using Unity 4.3.3, 4.5 is out, 5 has been announced, and they're talking about 4.6. I doubt that Squad is going to jump to any version of Unity that they haven't had time to test, so at any rate, there will be times we're not running the latest version of Unity regardless.

does it means that we will get multithreading too?

KSP already does some multithreading, though not in the physics simulation, which is where the CPU bottleneck is most visible. However, the latest released version of Unity doesn't support a version of PhysX that can multithread the physics simulation. This is changing with Unity 5, but that hasn't released yet (announced yes, released no), and the devs have shown interest in Unity 5, but have not commited to upgrading to Unity 5.

Edited June 25, 2014 by Eric S

[Claw]

I probably won't be using 64-bit for some time (unless someone wants to donate to the new computer fund, ha!). Although I'm glad those who want it will get it (but don't forget, be careful what you ask for)...

But still, I'm super excited for 0.24! Can't wait to see the economics mechanics.

I wrote in a name: Kerbal AeroSpace Hagglers (KASH).

[BudgetHedgehog]

We asked about this a patch or two ago, and we'd hoped that the solution would involve automatic dependency resolution. The solution Mu implemented will resolve dependency load order, but it requires you to manually declare your dependencies and add an attribute to assemblies that are referenced. (Note that this can't be done with third-party dependencies.) It also adds versioning on top, which I think has hurt adoption of the system. The .NET framework already has an assembly naming, versioning and dependency resolution system, so I'm not sure why Mu went with the manual approach. I'm interested in this situation being improved, but as far as I know, nobody's asked for it in 0.24. There are a few other plugin loading issues that I'm told have been fixed, however.

Sorry for the late reply, I didn't see your post. I'll be honest, I don't know what most of that means.. could you ELI5?

[Helix935]

“But in a nutshell, yes, 0.24 is going to be released in 64-bit for Windows too.â€Â

YES 64-Bit now i can stop navigating the minefield that is downloading mods for current 64-bit which has caused constant spontaneous crashes for me

[helldiver]

More crashes.

No really there's no in-game benefit to 64 bits. If it had multithreading that'd be a whole different story. But the only actual real benefit is you're helping test the 64 bit version in a stock game - something that most people won't do considering the whole point is to add tons of mods. It's possible that crashes in your game are far more beneficial to Squad than most any other crashes in most any other installs.

I have to agree as well. KSP's main problem is resource loading and the botched job that it does of that.

Priority number 1 right now for Harvester and team is to fix the resource loading issue. The crux of the game isn't stock which only gets you so far. Where KSP begins to shine are the numerous mods that add content to a game severely lacking it.

We can't add interesting and good looking mods (particularly IVAs) if your resource management, memory allocation, asset loading, isn't on par.

The vast majority of my downloaders want to use the KSOS but they also want to use 15+ mods. They're all using active texture management, something that should be stock with KSP.

Why are shared resources loaded multiple times in the same instance?!

If two IVAs share the same texture (but different UVs), we have to make copies of the Texture twice! That makes absolutely no sense. This is the first game I've seen do this. We haven't done this since the 90's I think.

My suggestions:

-KSP should have built in asset management with real time loading/unloading of resources (textures primarily).

-KSP needs an improved texture look up system. Allow us in our Configs to set specifically the location of the texture used by the part. This would allow us to have multiple parts use a single large texture map. For an example of this, see my Phase II satellite parts mod which has all the parts use a single texture for external and a single texture for internal.