Devnote Tuesdays: The "Progress is Progressing Progressively" Edition

[SQUAD]

<p><img src="https://31.media.tumblr.com/0ff9377afa68dc3ad3fe6844aaf1bd38/tumblr_inline_naxv1g3JKa1rr2wit.jpg"/></p>

<p><strong>Felipe (HarvesteR)</strong><span><strong>:</strong> Essentially completed the stuff I was working on last week, which is still not discussable I’m afraid, but now I’m moving on to the much less secretive Difficulty Options panel. This panel will be available when starting a new game (and possibly also through the in-game settings dialog), and will allow you to set up parameters which affect gameplay, like whether crews can respawn or will be perma-killed, whether reverting flight is allowed or not, and so on. Turning off all ‘allowances’ should make for a brutally hard challenge. Zero room for error when you can’t rewind time if things go wrong. </span></p>

<p><span>I’ve got the panel itself working, and it’s already possible to set up a few basic parameters. It also features a few presets to make setting up less finicky, and a ‘custom’ option which opens up all parameters for you to tweak. I’ve also updated the main menu code a bit to use proper Input Locks, like all other scenes do, instead of awkward, conflict-prone flags to control whether menu items are clickable or not. This won’t change much on the surface, but the code is cleaner and easier to maintain, which is always a good thing.</span><strong><strong><br/></strong></strong></p>

<p><span><strong>Alex (aLeXmOrA):</strong> </span><span>The changes to the KSP Store website are now done, but not live yet. I did some last tests and I’m waiting for authorization to release them. Also, I’m setting everything for a server migration that is scheduled for this Thursday at 8:00.pm CST because our hosting service provider has to move all their clients to a new Data Center. This will cause a website outage (KSP Site and Wiki will be affected, maybe KSP Forums too) for at least 10 hours, maybe more. </span></p>

<p><strong>Mike (Mu):</strong><span> I’ve been implementing the new logging system, FlightLog, for vessels and kerbals. The latter having both a career log and a current flight log. FlightLog paves the way for future improvements to kerbal career prospects, advancement, and gives us better reporting on where things have been and what they’ve been up to. Of course the whole system is moddable, allowing custom events and entries, so mod-makers can use and abuse it as they see fit.</span></p>

<p><strong>Marco (Samssonart): </strong><span>The core of the crew transfer feature is implemented, so I’m fixing a few bugs that surfaced quickly. There was this really cool one that allowed you to duplicate Kerbals. Basically, when you transferred a Kerbal, put it out on EVA, then got it back on the ship, it was duped. It was a fun little bug, it was still a bug and need to be squashed, sorry. Other than that I’m improving mouse hit detection for this feature.</span></p>

<p><strong>Daniel (danRosas)</strong><span><strong>:</strong> Moving on in the assets modeling list. Right now, we’re in about 10% of the 64 assets on the list. We also planned the full schedule, and it’s extremely tight, but not impossible. It’s been interesting to merge the style and aesthetics of the three artists, in order to give the most inside the Universe of the game. </span></p>

<p><strong>Jim (Romfarer)</strong><span><strong>:</strong> This week i’ve been applying some polish to the Administration facility GUI. Mostly small re-designs to make it adhere to the backend Mike is setting up for it. But since more details will be revealed on Max’s Kerbalcast interview, i thought i’d share an update to the mun mission i posted last time. <a href="http://imgur.com/a/sZ6FS"><strong>HERE</strong></a> is the link to that mission btw.<br/></span></p>

<p><span>It was bugging me that i wasn’t able to return the plane to Kerbin after the mun-landing and the mission wasn’t single staged to begin with. So i re-designed the plane, made it into a single staged version and threw away a bunch of fuel tanks. This plane has two important features: 1. A lot of air intakes so you can almost get to orbit using a single turbojet engine. 2. The jet engine is put on top of an atomic rocket motor. This is mostly for mass reasons but it also makes it easier to pass the burnout threshold. Using two jet engines while passing that threshold usually means the plane will start spinning because the engines doesn’t burn out at the same time. <a href="http://imgur.com/a/eipMs#HArDbk1"><strong>HERE</strong></a> are some screenshots from the mission. And now it is bugging me slightly that i had 75 oxidizer units left, scrapping that off would likely mean an even lighter plane. Help me answer this question please: What is the least amount of liquid fuel you need to bring a kerbal to the mun and back?</span></p>

<p><strong>Jesus (Chuchito):</strong><span> Hello everyone, I know it is just has been a while since my last update. These days I have been installing the network backbone at the office, punching down some UTP wires and the like, planning the reallocation of the ONTs to another place inside the office, also I have been working in some changes to the KSPM server requested by Felipe.</span></p>

<p><strong>Max (Maxmaps): </strong><span>Had a pretty fun interview with the guys over at <a href="http://kerbalpodcast.libsyn.com/"><strong>KERBALCAST</strong></a>, who everyone should listen to regardless of any Squad presence because they’re hilarious and quite entertaining. You really, really should listen to this week’s episode though. I explained a bit on what the admin building is for. Other than that, I’ve been lending a hand with direction regarding the huge art project Roy and Dan are neck deep into and seeing it progress nicely. With the help of HarvesteR, I also wrote an article you guys will get to read later in the week regarding everything that’s coming in 0.25. The push for getting this baby into QA is real.</span></p>

<p><strong>Ted (Ted):</strong><span> Over the past week I’ve been continuing on with the KSP Tester applications with the end in sight. I’ve now narrowed it down to a selection, half of which I’ve already sent e-mails out to. Still to do is narrow down the final ~20 for the team and then we’re done!</span></p>

<p><span>Moving on, I’ve been following along with what the team has been developing and ensuring that we’re all up-to-speed on the features and when they’ll be needing testing. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to it after this paperwork!</span></p>

<p><strong>Anthony (Rowsdower): </strong><span>So that survey I talked about last week is still being refined. Sorry for the delay on that. In other news, I’m crossing T’s and dotting I’s with our newest KSP-TV team member. I’m going to announce who it is when we’ve got times confirmed, but if you’ve been watching what the channel’s been hosting as of late, you might know who it is Finally, I’ve got some contests in the works, the first of which will be announced at the beginning of September.</span></p>

<p><strong id="docs-internal-guid-0674c3db-14cb-17dc-dafa-2f427d7310a5"><br/><span>Rogelio (Roger):</span></strong> Still Modeling new assets and experimenting with textures trying to get to a better result for the art style planned between Nick, Dan and me. It’s been hard to unify it because each one of us has a defined art style but we’re getting there and each day is easier to get to the same point. I’m really exploring new techniques of digital painting and getting good results. Also I’ve doing a lot of research on video game warehouse design, lighting styles and even old in-game space center fixtures to inspire myself and do better work for you guys.</p>

[Whirligig Girl]

HypeTrain has arrived at the HypeTrainStationOfDevnoteHype

[Rowsdower]

The episode of Kerbalcast with Max just went up, btw.

[Whirligig Girl]

Speculation time: The assets are city buildings.

[Mesons]

Surely even regex can't complain much about this devnotes!

Also: great title for this one. Who comes up with the titles?

[regex]

A difficulty options panel, finally! Thanks guys, not as meaty a read as last time but still much better than the current average. Keep up the good work and news!

[dryer_lint]

Forget the other Daily Kerbal articles. Can we just have devnotes all week long?

[Whirligig Girl]

Actually, yeah that'd be great.

[NoMrBond]

Awesome, I hope the difficulty panel also has a 'stock' switch so that, even though I have a bunch of mods installed, I can still run a totally stock game without needing a separate install

Further refined, a fine grained approach where we could yes/no mods per save (This one has FAR, this one uses TAC-LS, don't want to use RemoteTech2 for this one etc)would be awesome

[Rowsdower]

A difficulty options panel, finally! Thanks guys, not as meaty a read as last time but still much better than the current average. Keep up the good work and news!

Like I said, it isn't always going to be chock full of activity, but we're definitely on a better, regular road. I'll tell you that much, though. If it's meatiness you require, step one is listening to Kerbalcast. Step two is seeing what Max and HarvesteR worked on later in the week

[Endersmens]

Woah... a difficulty panel? This could means lots of things. This could mean for the future, when they update the atmosphere, we can set it to still mess with the soupy, buggy, and fun old atmosphere. (this has been suggested for a long time) however, that's just personal speculation. These last two devnotes have been rather entertaing, and worth the wait. I've finally gotten back to hitting refresh all day on tuesdays.

oh also, where can i find the link for the maxmaps cast where he talks about the admin building?

[cpast]

Can someone who can watch video summarize what the admin building is?

[Rowsdower]

Can someone who can watch video summarize what the admin building is?

Kerbalcast is a podcast, btw. It's in audio form.

[Superfluous J]

Further refined, a fine grained approach where we could yes/no mods per save (This one has FAR, this one uses TAC-LS, don't want to use RemoteTech2 for this one etc)would be awesome

I don't think it's possible to agree with this more.

[ColdWarrior000]

These Dev notes just keep on getting better and better every week! CHOO CHOO Hypetrain is leaving early!

[Andrew Hansen]

Nice devnotes, but more importantly, nice Squadcast. This upcoming cinematic sounds interesting because the word "Universe" was mentioned. This has my head swimming with ideas!

Looking forward to the detailed development update later on in the week.

[Apollo13]

HypeTrain has arrived at the HypeTrainStationOfDevnoteHype

Gotta disagree. Very little hype. Lots of good info on what's actually happening. Two weeks of excellent DevNotes. I must be in Bizarro World.

@Rowsdower: keep up the good work. You're becoming more like a Kommunity Advocate versus Kommunity Manager.

[WololoW]

Like I said, it isn't always going to be chock full of activity, but we're definitely on a better, regular road. I'll tell you that much, though. If it's meatiness you require, step one is listening to Kerbalcast. Step two is seeing what Max and HarvesteR worked on later in the week

I don't like the decision to let this information out on a non-official medium. It was talked about a lot 2 weeks ago that squad needs to keep official announcements on the official forums or website. Having max talk about the largest secretive feature we have encountered in a long time on a non-official talk show is pretty disheartening and kinda shows me that you(Squad) don't really want to break all official news through official outlets.

If I am wrong and KerbalCast is now an official outlet, I will add it to my bookmarks and follow it as much as I can.

If I am right and KerbalCast is an unofficial show about Kerbal things, I am personally a bit upset that I was assured that official announcements (like what the admin building does) would be done through official avenues. (Linking to an unofficial site or webcast does not = an official announcement; Writing out a post (on these official forums) on what he said about the Admin Building on KerbalCast does = official announcement.)

I apologize if this comes off rude, as that is not my intention. I am trying to convey my sadness that all official KSP info isn't collated in one location for people to read. (Also, I am uninformed on this, but is there a Closed Caption or transcript for KerbalCast? If not this is grossly disregarding the hard of hearing.)

Other than that, nice devnotes~

Congratulations to the applicants that have been selected to join the QA and Experimental teams!

[Superfluous J]

This upcoming cinematic sounds interesting because the word "Universe" was mentioned. This has my head swimming with ideas!

Sadly the way the term "universe of the game" as used just means "all the things that this game encompasses." In other words, they're not expanding the game to include an entire universe, just exploring more fully what the game currently has. Which sounds good to me

[regex]

Like I said, it isn't always going to be chock full of activity, but we're definitely on a better, regular road.

What I'm talking about when I say "meaty" is more technical dev stuff, devnotes, if you will. These are starting to deliver that, so I have no real complaints.

[Rowsdower]

I apologize if this comes off rude, as that is not my intention. I am trying to convey my sadness that all official KSP info isn't collated in one location for people to read. (Also, I am uninformed on this, but is there a Closed Caption or transcript for KerbalCast? If not this is grossly disregarding the hard of hearing.)

Sorry to see your sadness on this one. We like the guys at Kerbalcast and wanted to support them by giving something a bit on the exclusive side. While Kerbalcast isn't considered an "official" channel, Max is appearing on there in an official capacity, delivering news that is ok'd by us at Squad and plugged directly in the devnotes. Think of it as a media interview, but more for the community. You'll be hearing more about the admin building in that note that Max talked about in the devnotes.

[WololoW]

Sorry to see your sadness on this one. We like the guys at Kerbalcast and wanted to support them by giving something a bit on the exclusive side. While Kerbalcast isn't considered an "official" channel, Max is appearing on there in an official capacity, delivering news that is ok'd by us at Squad and plugged directly in the devnotes. Think of it as a media interview, but more for the community. You'll be hearing more about the admin building in that note that Max talked about in the devnotes.

I can get behind that I guess. Although the last sentence in my post should be something you think about / plan for. (I am not certain that it applies here, but ADA law is setup specifically to try and make those with disabilities have equal opportunity to those without.)

[Whirligig Girl]

Gotta disagree. Very little hype. Lots of good info on what's actually happening. Two weeks of excellent DevNotes. I must be in Bizarro World.

@Rowsdower: keep up the good work. You're becoming more like a Kommunity Advocate versus Kommunity Manager.

It was only a branchline trip. It's not really meant to be a real HypeTrain.

[Rowsdower]

I can get behind that I guess. Although the last sentence in my post should be something you think about / plan for. (I am not certain that it does, but ADA law is setup specifically to try and make those with disabilities have equal opportunity to those without.)

For that, you'd have to talk directly to the Kerbalcast guys. It's something to think about for channels we have direct control over, though.

[Roadkill]

Jim (Romfarer):

Help me answer this question please: What is the least amount of liquid fuel you need to bring a kerbal to the mun and back?

Totally depends on ship design and the lengths one is willing to go to. If you leverage things like kraken drives and infini-glide along with ion drives, then you can go to the mun and back, or anywhere else for that matter, on zero liquid fuel. I've never tried, but it may be possible with just solid rocket boosters and ion drives, or just ion drive alone, even without control surfaces and infini-glide.