KSP Weekly: New Beginnings

Welcome to KSP Weekly, everyone! We’re here to talk about everything Kerbal, so without further ado, let’s begin.



We will start today’s news by saying goodbye to one of our beloved teammates, Nightingale, who has decided to step down from KSP development for personal reasons. His contribution to KSP development has not been unnoticed: He helped bring 1.2 to life as well as fixing key bugs and polishing game features that we are now able to enjoy. Your legacy lives on and we can only show you our gratitude for being a great professional and magnificent human being. Let’s wish him the best in any future endeavor. Here are some words he wanted to share with you all:

It was a tough decision to leave the Squad team, but with everything going on in life I’ve been unable to devote nearly as much time as I’ve wanted to KSP. I’ve got a pretty unpredictable schedule, and I don’t want to put myself in a position where I’m not be able to deliver the level of quality that KSP deserves. I’ve enjoyed my time with Squad tremendously, as it gave me the chance to work with some really great people (they know who they are). I’m excited to see what you guys will think when some of the new things we’ve been hard at work on are revealed. The KSP community’s always been good to me, and I don’t plan on going anywhere. I’d set my modding hat aside for the past month or so, but I’ll be picking that back up shortly. In fact, I already have a few interesting ideas in how I can hook into the… well, I suppose UomoCapra and Badie can tell you guys about that when the time’s right. - nightingale

With Nightingale’s departure there are some adjustments on the team structure, we’d like to share with you:

Jamie (JPLRepo) has now moved from QA manager to the dark side (development) where we know he will shine. Steve (Squelch) takes on Jamie’s former position as QA Manager alongside QA Lead and wingman Mat (sal_vager). We also want to welcome Marc (Technicalfool) whom many of you already know as a moderator here on the forums, who has now joined us as QA Staff. Like many of the current KSP staff, Technicalfool sprouted from this community and we’re sure he’ll be a fantastic addition to our team.

Additionally we want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who responded to the request for Chinese Simplified and Japanese volunteers. The response has been overwhelming and we’ve now got more than enough volunteers to assist with QA of those languages so thanks to all that responded. Unfortunately we have not had enough time to personally respond to everyone who answered our call but we want to thank you all.

It has been another busy week of testing for the QA team. We have been doing yet more localization testing and back end language support along with the usual reporting and testing of bugfixes, as well as some interesting changes to the struts and fuel lines, not to mention some fun bugs with the same which players won’t get to see. The results of this work are hard to specify, or even talk about in an interesting manner, however, some bugs have been uncovered that require fixes, and these will improve the experience for all regardless of your nationality. For example, we will be supporting the full character set in various languages, so no more frustration while trying to name your craft. Mod support, as ever, is being considered during this time with language support being left open and optional for mod makers. Our team of volunteer localization testers have been hard at work checking and making suggestions for improvements in their native languages.

Despite Squad being largely a Spanish speaking company, all of the staff are busy working on other things, so we do require Spanish speaking volunteers for testing. Please send an email to info@kerbalspaceprogram.com with the subject “Spanish Localization Help” if you wish to help?

In the development team we have been enhancing some peer review processes to check/improve on our code standards and commenting processes. We always want to be improving and making it easier for ourselves - no one is perfect.

In the art department the work on the new rigging continues and it’s coming along nicely, this will make any future cinematics look more natural and organic.

In other news, and as promised, we’ve prepared a new challenge for you KSP players who want to get the chance to win this this amazing 3D printed Kerbal IVA Bundle. You can learn more here.

Finally, we want to share with you our plans to refurbish and do a make-over to our Twitch Channel, KSPTV. We have many ideas to make it enjoyable again to watch, but we need time to work on them and make things right. For that reason, the channel will be on pause for a period of time. We are working hand in hand with several streamers to do so and we hope you’ll enjoy it once bring it back to life.

That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news!

Happy launchings!

