Devnote Tuesdays: The Forum Upgrade Edition

Felipe (HarvesteR): So last week I got the new UI widgets pretty much in a presentable state, now moving forward with the rest of the to-do list. Funds are implemented to an essential level, which means they’re far from complete, but the game does already calculate the cost of vessels and charges you for it, or prevents you from launching altogether if you can’t foot the bill. Figuring the cost of a vessel was an interesting thing to work on. Initially, the idea was that the cost of vessels would just be the sum of the cost of every part, but it seemed much more interesting to factor in the cost of the resources contained in each part as well. So for instance, the 10.0 units of Monopropellant on a mk1 pod make up for 12.00 of its 600.00 total cost. On an SRB, on the other hand, the cost of the fuel is a much more significant percentage of the total. Also, this does mean that if you set the amount of fuel in the Editors to less than full, you can make the part slightly cheaper (or a lot in case of SRBs). This system was a lot more tricky to put together than just adding up fixed costs, but it should be much more interesting to play with. I had to go over the cfg values for a lot of parts, to make sure their costs weren’t set to anything less than the cost of the resources they contained (that would have been awkward). Several parts have had some stats tweaked, but most importantly, I’ve tweaked the costs and Isp values on the Mainsail and the Kerbodyne LF Booster. The Mainsail is now the more efficient one, so it should be a more appealing option now, when comparing the two.

Alex (aLeXmOrA): I left everything ready to do the upgrade of the KSP Forums last Thursday, but due to some last minute issues we had to postpone it for today. As you can see, the Forums are now in maintenance mode while I’m running the upgrade script. This process should be completed for this Thursday’s afternoon and then the Forums will be running in the last vBulletin 5.1.1 version. After that, I will start implementing the project I’ve been working with Bob and Miguel (more about that later).

Mike (Mu): Well it’s been a week of changes and improvements to the contract systems and adding some new features to really push the game towards having an actual career mode! Have also created some new controls which add colour and variety to our text. We’re finally moving towards a much more consolidated UI which feels a lot better.

Daniel (danRosas): Going through the polishing of the animation. And since it’s the first time that we are more than 2 guys doing art for different Kerbal related things, I’m starting to supervise those processes, with a little help from Lalo. It’s being fun and challenging :) I’m really confident that there will be plenty of new stuff to show in upcoming months. And probably you have noticed that the name Hugo has appeared on the lower section of the Dev Notes. Hugo is helping out during his summer break, say hi!

Miguel (Maxmaps): Working on some organizational reporting systems for my work as well as helping scout small, cool things that can be thrown into 0.24 for a better experience.

Anthony (Rowsdower): Well the forum is down so you know what that means? Fun with spreadsheets! It’s time to organize things and get into ship shape. It’s also time for some creative thinking. I’ve got a contest idea that you all may have a lot of fun with. In a World Cup sort of mood yet?



Jim (Romfarer): As Mike mentioned, I’m in the middle of consolidating the UI’s in order to make them look more similar. We have also had a lot of small changes and additions to the ui’s over the last months so many of them are due for a polish.

Rogelio (Roger): It’s been a long week polishing textures and lightning the set but the render is looking pretty good.

Hugo (the intern): Finished a couple pieces (OMS Engine and Vernier Engine) for the game. Im now helping Daniel and Rogelio with models for their animations. I just finished a firecracker and I’m currently working on a kitbash of a space rocket. Im excited to see how these things start turning out.