Devnote Tuesday: "Point sharp end towards space"

[silverfox8124]

@regex, you only really need to adjust for Temperature, assuming they're using the barometric equations. In which hopefully they do the molar masses of air correctly for the planets...

[StrandedonEarth]

It sounds like the aero and engine overhauls are going to be things of beauty, I look forward to it. That said....

<p><b>Jim (Romfarer):</b> I just wanted to clear up some misconceptions about the Engineer’s Report... This means the tests have to run every time you attach and detach a part

Is it really necessary to check every time a part is attached and detached? Vehicles in the editors are works in progress, why check things while they are being worked on? I think a better implementation would be to have an "Engineer's Report" button next to the launch button, with no checks being done until a Report is requested. As a final check, if the vehicle has been modified between the last Report and the Launch button being pressed, then (and only then) there should be a pop-up asking if the player wants a final Report before proceeding to the launchpad

[Nemrav]

What would really up the hype Kasper would be to every once in a while sneak in a "I was looking through the suggestion box on the forum and found something we are now going to implement"... It would also do a great job at stocking flames on forums

More notes are being hoped for (maybe a special guest(s) from our aero specialists on next squadcast)

[RazorWolf19]

Just one thing: the Engineer’s Report should be a toggleable feature. It seems to be targeted at new players, but I can foresee it very quickly becoming annoying to seasoned ones. Other than that, good stuff.

[RocketPilot573]

Fixed ISP? Awesome!

[Yakuzi]

It sounds pretty good Squad, I'm particularly stoked about the realistic ISP. It adds up to be an update with an astounding amount of new features... sure you don't want to sneak in an extra beta iteration, just to be sure or for old times sake?

<b>Marco (Samssonart):</b> Maxmaps and I reviewed the Reddit feedback we got on how the community thinks we should go about overhauling the tutorials. There were a couple more things that surfaced when looking at Reddit’s opinions.

You might want to try out the official forums, I heard they do opinions as well. There's even a thread with tutorial feedback for Maxmaps, aptly named "Tutorial Feedback for Maxmaps".

Nothing on the pilot, scientist, engineer skills though?

Edited February 11, 2015 by Yakuzi

[zarakon]

I always use chase cam when flying planes

I hope it hasn't changed too much!

[Maxmaps]

Nothing on the pilot, scientist, engineer skills though?

You'll see more as they are properly implemented.

[BudgetHedgehog]

Just one thing: the Engineer’s Report should be a toggleable feature. It seems to be targeted at new players, but I can foresee it very quickly becoming annoying to seasoned ones.

You could just.. not open it. How's that for toggleable? Also, lol at ÃŽâ€V readouts being annoying for seasoned players... I can of course speak only for myself, but I'm a seasonedish player and ÃŽâ€V readouts are the only reason I keep playing - if those weren't available in any format, I'd have dropped KSP back in March and forgotten about it. 'Seat of your pants' style playing works great up until the time you realise it's ridiculous to have to launch a craft to see if it'll fly.

[TinfoilChef]

The final conclusion we drew from the survey is that some people think the docking UI mode is basically useless, but we still haven’t decided what we’re going to do about it, other than gather more intel.

While I know that there's plenty of people who consider the docking mode UI to be a waste of time, I consider it an integral part of docking and it's use to be quite intuitive. Please don't go getting rid of it.

[Technical Ben]

Great news on the updates. Sounds like you've kept at full steam ahead, but also taken to heart sensible suggestions, and kept it fun and polite when the silly suggestions come your way.

As to checking every part when attacked... the game already lags a little at times with this. GUI is king with user interaction, and needs to be smooth. So could the "check" be passed to a second thread, to run in the background?

As it's only a player notification (not game engine timing critical), it would not need to be in real time, but could be a second or two later. With say an icon to show "checking/checked/finished" so the player only has to wait when building is finished, and not while building. Granted, the game may need to check if the player has removed said parts before giving the final result, but it would lower the CPU strain, and just check the craft when completely necessary (say at launch, and not at every button press).

[FlowerChild]

Wow. Thrust corrector coming to stock. It looks like there's very little left on my wishlist that isn't making it into 1.0

On the corrector: have you guys considered extending the ISP curves to cover pressure greater than 1 atmosphere? Once you have a thrust corrector, this goes a long way to making the individual planets feel more distinct, and gives purpose to parts like the aerospike, in that they can be configured specifically for operation in high pressure atmospheres like that on Eve.

Anyways, just an additional bit of polish that I find really makes thrust correction code shine and have tangible gameplay impact

[Daze]

Wow, one of the best devnote of last months.

I really really loved the news of the ISP being fixed. (AH-AH pro-fun players, realism win! /sort of irony mode off)

[Whirligig Girl]

Wow. Thrust corrector coming to stock. It looks like there's very little left on my wishlist that isn't making it into 1.0

On the corrector: have you guys considered extending the ISP curves to cover pressure greater than 1 atmosphere? Once you have a thrust corrector, this goes a long way to making the individual planets feel more distinct, and gives purpose to parts like the aerospike, in that they can be configured specifically for operation in high pressure atmospheres like that on Eve.

Anyways, just an additional bit of polish that I find really makes thrust correction code shine and have tangible gameplay impact

That would be brilliant! The Aerospike would need a bit more of a buff to become an Evian engine, because it's TWR is pretty bad. The small radial rockomax engine, meanwhile, definitly needs a nerf.

I wonder, could you just put in the AtmosphereCurve for the Isp of engines something like 5 360 so that at 5 atmospheres the Isp it ought to be according to the predefined curve? Of course, you'd have to manually calculate the curve.

I might try this out. If it's not in 1.0, then a module-manager cfg would be in order.

[FlowerChild]

I really really loved the news of the ISP being fixed. (AH-AH pro-fun players, realism win! /sort of irony mode off)

Did anyone really find that fun though? I'm not sure if I ever heard a solid argument as to why ISP was applied to fuel consumption rather than thrust, and if anything I think it's far more fun when rockets behave differently based on the environment they are in instead of just consuming more or less fuel. It makes the game feel a lot better overall, and more like you're traveling different places.

I might try this out. If it's not in 1.0, then a module-manager cfg would be in order.

Feel free to check it out in BTSM as I implemented that change a long time ago

In the interest of giving credit where credit is due though, I believe the first place I saw such extensions of the ISP curve was in Ferram's KIDS. It really makes a big difference to overall immersion given you wind up feeling like you're in an alien atmosphere instead of just seeing it.

Edited February 11, 2015 by FlowerChild

[Daze]

Did anyone really find that fun though? I'm not sure if I ever heard a solid argument as to why ISP was applied to fuel consumption rather than thrust, and if anything I think it's far more fun when rockets behave differently based on the environment they are in instead of just consuming more or less fuel. It makes the game feel a lot better overall, and more like you're traveling different places.

Feel free to check it out in BTSM as I implemented that change a long time ago

More than a real joke it was a sort of parody of all the realism vs fun threads about aero and procedural fairings.

(I totally agree with you btw)

[Red Iron Crown]

Did anyone really find that fun though? I'm not sure if I ever heard a solid argument as to why ISP was applied to fuel consumption rather than thrust, and if anything I think it's far more fun when rockets behave differently based on the environment they are in instead of just consuming more or less fuel. It makes the game feel a lot better overall, and more like you're traveling different places.

I always understood it to be a simplification (makes TWR estimation/calculation simpler). Glad to hear it's moving to the more correct model of thrust scaling, the not calculating types are likely to be largely unaffected.

/me wonders if G₀ is being corrected as well.

[Caelib]

This is going to be a very exciting release, thanks for the update!

[FlowerChild]

I always understood it to be a simplification (makes TWR estimation/calculation simpler). Glad to hear it's moving to the more correct model of thrust scaling, the not calculating types are likely to be largely unaffected.

I think if you're performing TWR and dV calculations though, you've already got one foot in the realism camp and are likely not a new player. If you're just winging it and launching (which is how I tend to play), the only noticeable impact is that your rockets feel different in atmosphere...which is cool

Edited February 11, 2015 by FlowerChild

[Robotengineer]

On the features side, looking good. Looking forward to realistic ISP. On the other side, how can you not comment about the dV scandal? I also want to say I hate, hate. hate Reddit. Why the heck do you ask the people on there about things that you could be asking us? Heck, why do you even have a forum? It doesn't make any sense if all the 'Official' stuff is on Reddit, Twitter, or Facebook.

[toril]

I'm so happy they fixed the throttle thanks harv!!!!!!!! you have no idea how much that was bugging me.

[Engineer of Stuff]

On the features side, looking good. Looking forward to realistic ISP. On the other side, how can you not comment about the dV scandal? I also want to say I hate, hate. hate Reddit. Why the heck do you ask the people on there about things that you could be asking us? Heck, why do you even have a forum? It doesn't make any sense if all the 'Official' stuff is on Reddit, Twitter, or Facebook.

Yes!

10 chr

[smjjames]

Jim (Romfarer): I just wanted to clear up some misconceptions about the Engineer’s Report design concern feature. Last week I said I was concerned about performance on some of the tests. The design concern feature is not a list of parts a vessel has and has not. It is a set of tests which analyze your vessel for possible issues you may run into. For example a big part of these tests are dealing with resource flow and will prompt when you have resource containers which are not being drained, consumers (such as engines) not getting the fuel they need, etc. And for every of these tests the parts in question are highlighted. This means the tests have to run every time you attach and detach a part and in the case of stack resource flow the system has to check for every resource container, and then trace back from the consumers which of these containers are not being drained.

I could see lag issues coming out of that, especially if you have a complex system.

[NovaSilisko]

I always understood it to be a simplification

Seems to me that it was more just a mistake that was carried over through multiple versions of the engine code, not any deliberate action really.

[Whirligig Girl]

Did anyone really find that fun though? I'm not sure if I ever heard a solid argument as to why ISP was applied to fuel consumption rather than thrust, and if anything I think it's far more fun when rockets behave differently based on the environment they are in instead of just consuming more or less fuel. It makes the game feel a lot better overall, and more like you're traveling different places.

Feel free to check it out in BTSM as I implemented that change a long time ago

In the interest of giving credit where credit is due though, I believe the first place I saw such extensions of the ISP curve was in Ferram's KIDS. It really makes a big difference to overall immersion given you wind up feeling like you're in an alien atmosphere instead of just seeing it.

So it does work? You can just add the number in the config? That is really awesome to know.