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Devnote Tuesdays: The "Walt Doesn't Make Blue Keth" Edition

SQUAD

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SQUAD

SQUAD

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<p><img src="https://31.media.tumblr.com/0ff9377afa68dc3ad3fe6844aaf1bd38/tumblr_inline_ncdowtebOQ1rr2wit.jpg"/></p>

<p><strong>Felipe (HarvesteR)</strong><span><strong>:</strong> Experimentals is upon us again and things are moving at a very intense pace to make sure all the features we’ve added are stable and polished. The upgrades we did to the issue tracker last week are definitely showing their worth now though, as there have been several cases of issues that were technically low-priority and would have been dismissed earlier as unimportant, that rose to the top of the list after receiving several votes. Sometimes a very mild, small detail can have a major subjective impact on the way the game plays, and issue voting lets us finally measure this perceived importance for all issues. </span></p>

<p><span>Besides that, most of the work this week and the last was basically bugfixing and adding polish to the things we’ve implemented. The Strategy system and the Admin Facility were met with very positive responses overall, but I must say I’m very happy to see how the new spaceplane parts are turning out. </span></p>

<p><span>I must warn however, that several SP+ parts do replace old parts, and it’s very likely that some spaceplane designs can become weird or misaligned. This won’t actually break saves, but ships featuring those old parts won’t look their best until rebuilt in the editor. For most cases, simply detaching and reattaching the misplaced parts will do. We decided it was for the best to simply bite the bullet on this one, because there is no point in having old parts linger around, wasting our already cramped memory space, just for the sake of delaying this inevitable change. </span></p>

<p><span>If you want to start preparing your saves for the release, I recommend recovering all ongoing spaceplane missions. The parts that have been most changed are the C7 delta wing and triangular wing sections, standard and small control surfaces, and minor changes were done to the mk1 fuselages and cockpit, and the entire mk2 set. I know it’s a bit of a hassle to have to do this, but trust me when I say it’s going to be well worth it!</span><strong><strong><br/></strong></strong></p>

<p><strong>Alex (aLeXmOrA): </strong><span>Last week I took a 5 day vacation in Querétaro to celebrate Mexican Independence Day (September 16th - “Fiestas Patriasâ€Â). It was a really nice time of relaxation and fun with the family. I needed that a lot. When I came back to the office on Wednesday, I set everything for the Server Migration (second attempt) scheduled for Thursday night. Unfortunately, the migration failed and we had to suspend it and I set the sites back online. This week, I cleaned our databases and made some reports. Also, I’m testing the last tweaks to the KSP Store website.</span></p>

<p><strong>Marco (Samssonart): </strong><span>Last week and also this one, we’ve been deep in QA and experimentals.Luckily not too many bugs have surfaced on my part and the ones that have were not that serious - the NavBall appearing in weird places and things like that. What has been keeping me busier than I expected is getting the arrow indicator for the maneuver vector on the IVA NavBall. Since all of the vectors share the same relative position to the center of the sphere and all is managed through rotations, it’s a whole different thing than for the staging NavBall. I’m taking the dust cover off my old math books for this one.</span></p>

<p><strong>Daniel (danRosas)</strong><span><strong>:</strong> It’s been almost a month since we started working on the asset production. That task is going well, walking small steps to Kerbal kind. On the other hand, I helped prepare the Kerbals that are going to be advising your administrative actions on the Administration Building. </span></p>

<p><span>One of those Kerbals is <a href="http://i.imgur.com/FlqiM8X.jpg"><strong>MORTIMER KERMAN</strong></a>, </span><span>which quoting @maehlum â€Âis going to think <em>"You spent the whole budget on SRBs and snacks?!"</em>. .It was interesting to play with his face, since he’s the first Kerbal that has got wrinkles and some bags under the eyes. The <a href="http://i.imgur.com/qveA9lb.jpg"><strong>FIRST ATTEMPT</strong></a> had grey hair</span><span> (my main visual support was Mad Men’s Roger Sterling, which could be slightly biased by my effort of going through season 6), but talking with Felipe, it didn’t look well with the background and the environment. Then I added some facial spots and other details, but got a little <a href="http://i.imgur.com/QATdLix.jpg"><strong>CREEPY</strong></a>. A bit too old. On the other hand, there was an interesting discussion: How do Kerbals get old? What are their muscles in their face? So far, we haven’t seen Kerbals grow old. .We know that they move their mouth, and that they can speak, smile and cry. But, since it’s mostly a toon character, grounded slightly on a human face, it was a tough call to make the wrinkles and to spot them in their proper place. .There’s this other scientist guy, which is mostly Wernher’s intern, which overlooks Science and Research funds, since Wernher is too busy to be bothered with such small talk. <a href="http://i.imgur.com/uNUizJZ.jpg"><strong>WALT</strong></a> is the most intriguing Kerbal in the Admin Building</span><span> (of course he’s got nothing to do with that other Walt, nor is he in the same line of business, though somewhere in the project folder I’ve got a blue extinguisher waiting to be used). He’s the PR and likes to wear a Hazmat Suit to the meetings. I’m not so sure if he’s got some sort of illness that could make Kerbalkind extinct (at least in his mind), or if he’s just preventive about his working environment. He’s wearing <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/NASA_SCAPE_protective_suits.jpg"><strong>THIS</strong></a> NASA suit</span><span> with a slight color variation. We don’t want the hazmat suit to be mistaken with the EVA suit, and be launched on a mission instead!</span></p>

<p><strong>Jim (Romfarer)</strong><span><strong>:</strong> It’s been a week of modifying older GUI elements and fixing bugs. Among other things I added a feature so you can scale the ContractsApp while in vab and sph. I also added the Application Launcher to the tracking station. The ContractsApp, MessageSystem and all mods will be visible in there where applicable. As for bugs i fixed one bug that has been around for a long time in one form or another where parts are picked in vab/sph when you have the loading or flag menu right above the part.</span></p>

<p><span><strong>Max (Maxmaps):</strong> </span><span>Been spreading myself across tasks this time around. Keeping contact with you lovely people on the forums and offsite communities, making sure that the massive art project goes as planned, and also helping as much as I can to get the new update in your hands. Scripted the prerelease features video already, but you guys are gonna love what the media team is cooking up.</span></p>

<p><strong>Ted (Ted):</strong><span> Now that we’re firmly in Experimentals, we’re racing through the issues and the builds (as those of you that lurk steamdb will know!). The new testers are settling in well and filling the tracker to the brim with some good and tasty issues for the developers to eat up. It’s been a very busy week to say the least, but I’ve managed to grab a few moments to make some improvements to the part folders. I’ve renamed almost all of the Squad part folders so that they’re both better organized in the editor part menu and so that they better reflect the part title in-game. Additionally, I’ve renamed the part config files to be the same as the part folder name, that should help a lot when having tabs of them open in Notepad++.</span></p>

<p><span>0.25 is shaping up nicely, though we still have a handful of areas to polish and refine so that they’re at their best when they arrive on your hard drives!</span></p>

<p><span><strong>Anthony (Rowsdower):</strong> I can’t believe we’re almost at the end of the month already. Time’s flying by isn’t it? Not much for you all this week except to remind you that our Coub contest will be coming to an end on October 4. Also, by chance, would any of you modders out there be interested in showing off what you do on KSP-TV? Hit me up with a forum PM if interested.</span><strong><strong><br/><br/></strong></strong></p>

<p><strong>Rogelio (Roger):</strong><span> I’ve been doing some changes to the assets I’ve been modeling along with Max and Felipe, I think we’ve finally gotten to the same visual style. This week, I went crazy fixing some Maya issues. Many of my models seem to have just disappeared. Later on, I noticed that they, in fact, didn’t disappear. They just weren’t assigned to a shader and it was really annoying to reassign shaders. On the other hand, I’m really happy with the new stuff we’re cooking for you guys. Today Dan put together some of the stuff we’re modeling and it really looks nice. We’ll keep polishing the models to make it look even better.</span></p>

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OrbitusII

OrbitusII

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I saw the title preview on the front page of the forums and I knew that the title had to make a BB reference, so when it did I was like

4KJ3SWU.gif

Back on topic... Awesome stuff! Hopefully you can get the issues all shot down quickly so you don't have to delay release like what happened with 0.24. Keep up the good work!

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jandcando

jandcando

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Nice update...I appreciate the devs taking time to communicate even amidst the final throes of getting 0.25 ready.

Samssonart's note broke my brain though. The vectors are different on the IVA navball somehow?

I think that in .25, there will be an arrow that points to the maneuver node vector on the navball to help you find it.

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FlowerChild

FlowerChild

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As for bugs i fixed one bug that has been around for a long time in one form or another where parts are picked in vab/sph when you have the loading or flag menu right above the part.</span></p>

Hmmm...I wonder if they caught variants of this bug like how in the space-center you click through to the various buildings when using the debug menu.

That one is almost as annoying as the VAB thing :)

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biohazard15

biohazard15

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I have a question for Romfarer: would you add a proper support for WQHD resolution in 0.25? There is a couple of GUI bugs with it, most notable is top bar in VAB\SPH (it doesn't scale correctly). Also, GUI scaling doesn't work in VAB\SPH, which means that staging icons are kinda small when compared to flying mode (I use "Medium" setting).

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NoMrBond

NoMrBond

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I don't suppose that this massive art project is an art pass of other planets/ moons? I haven't really seen anyone pick it up in other forums.

A refinement like this I would have thought would be a Beta thing (i.e. polish), but now we're seeing asset polishing all the time (like the SP+ to MK2 and others) so now I just don't know what's going where any more.

Something like clouds, water, ice and other surface detail could be a possibility for the major art project, but in terms of filling in things that actually aren't in the game at all could be either dedicated space station / base parts (life support, ISRU, science?) or progression levels for the KSC buildings. It could always be both?

8gu3q2Q.gif

What else is missing entirely?

I have a question for Romfarer: would you add a proper support for WQHD resolution in 0.25? There is a couple of GUI bugs with it, most notable is top bar in VAB\SPH (it doesn't scale correctly). Also, GUI scaling doesn't work in VAB\SPH, which means that staging icons are kinda small when compared to flying mode (I use "Medium" setting).

Being able to scale the sidebar part (either the window or the scale of the whole scene) of the science screen where would be nice too, needing to scroll through the list and squint to find tiny part pictures (@WQHD) is the opposite of the reason I got a big screen :P

Edited by NoMrBond
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theJesuit

theJesuit

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A refinement like this I would have thought would be a Beta thing (i.e. polish), but now we're seeing asset polishing all the time (like the SP+ to MK2 and others) so now I just don't know what's going where any more.

Something like clouds, water, ice and other surface detail could be a possibility for the major art project, but in terms of filling in things that actually aren't in the game at all could be either dedicated space station / base parts (life support, ISRU, science?) or progression levels for the KSC buildings. It could always be both?

From a previous devnotes

Max (Maxmaps): I’ve been working closely with the art team to get the giant 0.26 project done in time. Which has proven to have a bit of an extra challenge to it due to the fact that we need the art team for a couple more things in 0.25, related to the admin building and what have you.

Not sure where, but I am sure this was suggested to be an unprecedented size art project. Would that mean an art pass in readiness for more biomes outside of Kerbin's SOI? Perhaps it is all the other moons and planets having a Mün styled makeover. I suspect that .26 is where this is heading, not the the .25 update.

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