The 0.25 Waiting Room, now boarding passengers heading to Hypetown

[The Jedi Master]

The HypePlane is running on fumes now. If Media Team doesn't come soon, we might fall out of the sky! But don't worry, you can find parachutes underneath your seats.

[FleetAdmiralJ]

That's the nature of the beast. A lot of non-programmers aren't going to understand that work in Unity 4 to work around issues is likely to be wasted effort (or even have a negative impact) once Unity 5 porting happens, and it sounds like it won't be long at this rate before Unity 5 is a real thing.

Old kludgey bugfixes of yesterday become the new kludgey bugs of today...

Anyhow I'm getting a bit hyped about Unity 5 beta approaching...and the possibility of bugfixes in 0.25. Maybe they'll squish that "can't make a maneuver node at all in pure stock" bug that started happening in 0.24~

Ugh that bug is annoying where you can't make the node. There are supposed to be physics improvements in Unity 5 as well right?

[Whirligig Girl]

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/kerbal_space_program/b/pc/archive/2014/10/02/squad-developer-explains-0-25-update-changes.aspx?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

We have this now!

[Milkshakefiend]

We have this now!

Ok, I'm feeling the hype now. Dat cargo bay!

[The Jedi Master]

And we are no longer in danger of falling out of the sky! I like all the little changes that make things more intuitive and convenient.

[problemecium]

I like how you can hold a key to turn off surface attachment now. That's gonna help a bunch with docking ports and structural plates.

[CalculusWarrior]

And we are no longer in danger of falling out of the sky! I like all the little changes that make things more intuitive and convenient.

I agree, that crew transfer system has to be the best method I've seen yet, improving on the one treating kerbals like fuel, and being vastly more easy to use than the Crew Manifest of old.

[SpaceCannon46]

I say that hype trains are a bit overused, but a hype tank would be useful.

[sp1989]

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/kerbal_space_program/b/pc/archive/2014/10/02/squad-developer-explains-0-25-update-changes.aspx?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

We have this now!

Hope when rockets and planes crash they look as good as the VAB exploding!

[RocketPilot573]

The HypePlane is running on fumes now. If Media Team doesn't come soon, we might fall out of the sky! But don't worry, you can find parachutes underneath your seats.

Just a little longer... Rowsdower said in the dev notes that media vids are on October 4th. Also, if we're running out of fuel cant we just get a tanker over here for in flight refueling?

[Yellowburn10]

Get the hype train refueled! We've got to prepare for the weekend media updates, and hopefully soon after the update!

Side note, did they ever confirm that the mk. 2 probe core would be in the game?

[Red Iron Crown]

I agree, that crew transfer system has to be the best method I've seen yet, improving on the one treating kerbals like fuel, and being vastly more easy to use than the Crew Manifest of old.

I'm not sure from the video if it is implemented Connected Living Space-style, where it matters which parts are between the crew transfer source and destination. The demonstrated ship had what should be passable parts connecting them, but whether this was a requirement or just coincidence is unclear.

[Renegrade]

'Hard' has the sliders set to 60%? That's equivalent to a 1.67x cost increase.. we were playing with 6x minimum with the MM configs. Custom it is, then! (unless they've rebalanced payouts and removed science from oh, almost everything, or made the science tree like seven times more expensive or so)

Thank goodness for those sliders though

Ugh that bug is annoying where you can't make the node. There are supposed to be physics improvements in Unity 5 as well right?

Yep! Unity 5 supports multithreading, which is stated to bring a substantial improvement in performance (plus I imagine it's optimized too). I can assure people it won't be 100%*number-of-cores (multithreaded never is, outside of some really specialized easily-dividable problems like Mandelbrot fractals), but an increase of up to 2.5x for quad+ machines wouldn't be too surprising.

I like how you can hold a key to turn off surface attachment now. That's gonna help a bunch with docking ports and structural plates.

Totally - that's a nice feature that we've needed for a while. Those little things like that can really reduce the frustration whilst building, which in my opinion, is more useful than flashy stuff..

Side note, did they ever confirm that the mk. 2 probe core would be in the game?

They didn't directly, but you can see it in the SPH while the plane is being shown.

I'm not sure from the video if it is implemented Connected Living Space-style, where it matters which parts are between the crew transfer source and destination. The demonstrated ship had what should be passable parts connecting them, but whether this was a requirement or just coincidence is unclear.

I suspect it's the latter. I think they see it as an EVA shortcut. Hopefully it's easily moddable though so CLS and BTSM people can continue on as normal.

Edited October 3, 2014 by Renegrade

[JenBurdoo]

I notice he said nothing about experience for Kerbals - is that being pushed back then?

[Xacktar]

I wonder what counts as connected enough to transfer kerbals... can I transfer them through tiny docking ports? Through girders? Through asteroids?

[Captain Vlad]

I really, really, really want that cargo bay.

[Red Iron Crown]

Yep! Unity 5 supports multithreading, which is stated to bring a substantial improvement in performance (plus I imagine it's optimized too). I can assure people it won't be 100%*number-of-cores (multithreaded never is, outside of some really specialized easily-dividable problems like Mandelbrot fractals), but an increase of up to 2.5x for quad+ machines wouldn't be too surprising.

I've heard from some of the computer science types around that the type of physics calculation a KSP ship represents (a chained rigidbody problem) is not easily threadable, if at all. At best we might see one thread per craft in the physics bubble, but individual ships will still be all one thread. I don't have the math/CS background to evaluate that, but I'm keeping my hopes in check and planning my next PC build around single thread performance.

[Nobilis]

I am the only one around here who cannot open the game informer link?

Can someone link the video? The the website of the video?

[FleetAdmiralJ]

'Hard' has the sliders set to 60%? That's equivalent to a 1.67x cost increase.. we were playing with 6x minimum with the MM configs. Custom it is, then! (unless they've rebalanced payouts and removed science from oh, almost everything, or made the science tree like seven times more expensive or so)

That's a good question - what constitutes increasing science costs? Getting less science from missions, making the price of buying stuff with science higher (I'm assuming this is definitely the case), or both? I doubt they've removed science from places, but I do wonder if they reduce how much you get from collecting science or not.

I wonder if there is a plan to essentially save custom game modes either for your own use (so you can just select your custom settings at the start of a new game and go) or to share?

I notice he said nothing about experience for Kerbals - is that being pushed back then?

I have not heard anything about that this update, so I'm assuming that they are probably not doing that. At one point I think I heard something about them wanting to implement some sort of Final Frontier system earlier but that it got pushed back because it wasn't ready enough. Perhaps in 0.26?

I've heard from some of the computer science types around that the type of physics calculation a KSP ship represents (a chained rigidbody problem) is not easily threadable, if at all. At best we might see one thread per craft in the physics bubble, but individual ships will still be all one thread. I don't have the math/CS background to evaluate that, but I'm keeping my hopes in check and planning my next PC build around single thread performance.

Yeah, you could see the problem in that, if a calculation relies on another physics calculation, you can't do the first calculation before the other. Perhaps what one could do is do calculations in parallel until it is forced to wait on another calculation ton continue. That might at least marginally speed it up. Where it might help is if you have TWO large ships near each other in physics range, perhaps the two ships can be calculated in parallel, at least until they dock, but yeah, a single ship may have to still be calculated in series since all of it's parts affect all of it's other parts, at least in theory.

Edited October 3, 2014 by FleetAdmiralJ

[lukeoftheaura]

According to posts at the Unity forums, the first public Unity 5 beta should be coming out in the next few weeks. If that's the case, there's no reason why Squad couldn't at least start on it, even if they still do a few more Unity 4 releases in the mean time.

I don't think any of us would be that upset if we had to play 0.25.X (for bug fixes) for 3 or 4 months while Squad shifts focus to the updated engine. Since it'll be a public beta, that means features shouldn't change that much to release and most of those changes should be bug fixes...at least that's how it should work...should, will, and does aren't always the same.

Or just use Linux because you'll have full 64bit support and a better KSP experience.

Personally, I'd rather Squad focused on OpenGL more than anything else because us Linux users don't have the best of graphics when compared to Windows and DirectX. Seeing as we (Linux users) can easily run 4GB and more in mods without Active Texture Management, we can live with the lesser graphics if Squad doesn't bother with OGL. And Windows KSP uses less RAM with OpenGL, which is another reason for Squad to focus on it. Oh, and anti-aliasing not working with AMD GPU's. Not really sure if either one, OGL or AMD AA, is a KSP or a Unity4 issue. I should check AA with the latest AMD 14.9 drivers now that I'm thinking about it.

And I feel like a crackhead needing my fix whenever new KSP versions are soon to be released.

I agree. ksp should be opengl 3 (or at least have an option for opengl...)

[Renegrade]

I've heard from some of the computer science types around that the type of physics calculation a KSP ship represents (a chained rigidbody problem) is not easily threadable, if at all. At best we might see one thread per craft in the physics bubble, but individual ships will still be all one thread. I don't have the math/CS background to evaluate that, but I'm keeping my hopes in check and planning my next PC build around single thread performance.

I do have the CS background to evaluate that, but not the physics background. 'Chained rigidbody' (and my own KSP experience) implies that the state of a part relies on the state of the parts around it, which will put a big dent in any multithreaded gains (You can't process part B if it's dependent on state from part A, which means handing part B to thread #2 isn't going to help, and may in fact incur extra overhead from thread synchronization that would make it slower AND more costly than a single-threaded solution).

That being said, there might still be opportunities for gains if any pre- or post-calculation has to be done (do any vectors or matrices need to be normalized etc?). Also, I've heard some alarming things in the past about Unity 4 not being thread-safe in some manner or another (I don't know the Unity context, nor even remember what was said clearly, unfortunately), but that could mean that Squad's own code is stuck behind fat mutexes for large periods of time while Unity goes about it's business.

Without being able to see the code, it's all guesswork from this end...but my number above is a maximum estimate, so it still stands (well, unless they can magically pull a 100% efficient solution out of their .. uh, hat, and blow past that figure..)

Anyhow, you should always keep single-threaded performance in mind in any case. There's a significant chunk of problems that cannot be solved more efficiency with a threaded solution, and in the end, it may turn out that KSP is one of them

That's a good question - what constitutes increasing science costs? Getting less science from missions, making the price of buying stuff with science higher (I'm assuming this is definitely the case), or both? I doubt they've removed science from places, but I do wonder if they reduce how much you get from collecting science or not.

From my understanding, the Science slider (indeed, all sliders) increases or reduces the income, as in a 60% slider will take a 40 science gain *0.6 = 24. (they talked about it before in the videos and blogs, and that's what they pretty much said). I was converting it to costs, as the old user-provided MM configs did that for Funds (as MM can't address contract income, only part costs..).

My thoughts are that 60% doesn't seem very hard as:

- I've played MM configs with 10x part cost multipliers before, it's still doable, if very grindy (that's equivalent to 10%). The standard multiplier is 6x for those mods, or 16 and 2/3 percent income.

- There's allegedly 75k science in the Kerbol system, and the tree is supposed to be about 10k long, so you really only need 13 and 1/3% science returns - or less, since there's apparently no limit to asteroid and contract science.

So I think the 'hard' setting should really be more like 20-30% gains tops.

I wonder if there is a plan to essentially save custom game modes either for your own use (so you can just select your custom settings at the start of a new game and go) or to share?

That would be neat, although I didn't see any template buttons, unfortunately :/

Anyhow, the sliders and settings are one of the things I'm most hyped about. Exploding buildings can stuff it, I want my difficulty sliders!

No word on decoupler fixes though .. gotta know if it's time to remove that decoupler fix from my sig or not

@kerbingamer376: -force-opengl

[TonyC]

I voted Hype Shuttle, but I really wished the Hype vehicle was a completely OP warpship capable of reaching 0.9999c.

I love the classified feature though ! (I also hope the destroyed versions of the buildings will be more polished)

[Sky_walker]

News from Miguel Piña

Main design and goals for 26 fully on paper now. Will write blog about it post 25 launch. Expect biomes on all bodies.

[edit:] source: Twitter.

Edited October 3, 2014 by Sky_walker

[FleetAdmiralJ]

News from Miguel Piña

[edit:] source: Twitter.

NICE! Also, I dunno if there is any way to embed a twitter post (get on it kasper! ), the link is here:

https://twitter.com/Maxmaps/status/518040350716600321

Also, off topic but I remember seeing an article about how gaming companies were getting scammed by people pretending to be YouTubers trying to get game codes. Unfortunately it doesn't look like Squad was excluded from that. Just saw the tweet about that on MaxMaps twitter as well and thought about it.

Edited October 3, 2014 by FleetAdmiralJ

[Shania_L]

What is the purpose of destructable buildings?

The terrain isnt destructable, infact the only destructable things currently are the parts themselves. Sure its cool looking, but how often are you actually going to hit the KSC with a ship? Hell I think I'm doing well getting a ship to re-enter on the right hemisphere let alone on the KSC itself. As for liftoff, well if you dont drop your boosters till after climbing 2,500m then they will never hit the ground anyway.

I can only forsee these buildings as becoming a massive cost for newer players in career mode who still have difficulty breaking the 2km altitude record, ofcourse there are those who will deliberately destroy them (because, you can). Beyond that though waht does it add?

Also, what are the effects of a destroyed building? If say a rocket detonates 500m off the pad and sprays 20 solid boosters all across the KSC taking out both VAB and SPH, can I no longer launch any vehicles?

I get that its in development and that the video said they have big plans, hopefully including a fully destructable terrain system, I'd just like a bit of info into the reasoning why this is being done.

Shania.