KSP Weekly: Implementation beats oration

Welcome to KSP Weekly, everyone. This week has been full of work on consoles, the pre-release and, of course, the Making History Expansion, so without further ado, let’s dive in.

This week QA have been hard at it again, but with the most excellent help from the public too. Thank you so much all for the reports that have been submitted so far, they really do help. We have already been identifying problems with the current localization, and many of them have been fixed, or are in the process of being fixed right now. New Pre-Release builds will be hitting Steam and the Store soon. Work also continues with the expansion, and the new parts are being tested alongside the existing parts to check that they not only function as they are intended, but also with the knowledge that the players use them in unintended ways - Such is KSP and the unbridled imagination of our players. Console work has also progressed, and it does look like the save problems might be a thing of the past. Those issues are of considerable importance, so all potential scenarios are still being tested as the UI and input system are refined.

In addition to the usual bugtracker work, Technicalfool has been painstakingly driving rovers and aircrafts over every suspicious looking lump and bump on the runway, giving JPLRepo useful information on any seams he can find. Trying to jump the runway with a rover or haul some giant into the air is great fun, until a gap into Krakenspace flips you onto your roof and reduces the vehicle to a debris field. But now all of them seem to have been dealt with and they are looking great.

Sal_vager has been fiddling with Unity player settings in an attempt to work around a bug with Linux windows resizing, so this week he passes the poetry night mic to Toasty_buns from the Steam KSP forum:

KSP History A long time has passed since early KSP Where monoprop engines were totally OP Firing our rockets against neon green grass Watching Bill and Bob panic, whilst Jeb stays badass SAS forces displayed in bright blue No science equipment or mystery goo Several parts and a crude parachute But nevertheless we all had a hoot Flash-forward a bit and we get map view Wait, is that a moon? Can I land there too? Stacking tanks high in a desperate bid That moon will be mine! And that’s what we did. We launched our rockets with absolute glee “Dude! Look what I did in KSP!” Then came the atmos, plane parts galore Spaceplane+ was rolled out the door Flapping our wings we took the skies Planes work on Duna? What a surprise! And yet KSP continued to grow, Adding more things to improve the show Relays, networks, atmosphere tweaks Enough to keep us amused for weeks Now Squad reveal their latest mystery The expansion named “Making History” We’ll roleplay the Soviets, Americans too Don’t worry China, we’ll get round to you.

Now let’s move to the development field, where we’ve been taking all the great feedback and bug reports for the localization Prerelease, and rounding things up to improve each iteration as we go. For example, aside from some UI tweaks and missing texts, we re-jigged the KSC MiniBiomes system to work correctly no matter what language you have selected, amending and adjusting science for save files across languages. Also we’ve spent a bit of time fixing a few small poly issues with the level 1 Runway, too.

Similarly, we worked on the Russian possessive forms, several autolocs still showing up in the game and some unlocalized strings (like the agency names on contracts or some tooltip messages). In addition, we did some adjustments to the Map Nodes: Now the scale should be better, and these shouldn’t be “jumpy” while these move in the map, jumpy orbits are a different issue, however.

Furthermore, we are happy to announce that we will embed the Ambient Light Boost function in for an upcoming Prerelease version next week. This adds two sliders to the settings to tweak the ambient light levels in the renderer in map mode and flight-mode. You can lighten it significantly and darken it a bit as well.

On other news, the work on the Making History Expansion is ramping up. Adding UI components and Part Tests. Part Tests allow missions to test parts on a vessel for certain conditions. We’ve also been busy adding part actions. Part Actions allow things to happen on parts during a mission. Additionally, a set of UI prefabs have been added to support the Mission Builder logic. The player will make use of this set of prefabs to create and visualize missions. The prefabs set includes visual representations like nodes, connections, actions and parameters.

Our artists continue working on parts, parts, parts. Roverdude, for example, spent this week focusing on some of our Soviet-inspired parts - and learned along the way that yes, a Kerbal will in fact fit through a 0.625m airlock, helmet and all!

And Leti, after finishing up The Kerbal Chronicles (which now you can download as a PDF!) design, is going back to not-secret-anymore UI work for the new Mission Builder. Iterations are now on early stages, as we’re trying to make decisions on wireframe versions.

This week Robbonaut has been looking at the Design for the Expansion - going over what we have worked on so far and making sure it’s airtight for the developers as they work on it.



He also wanted to take this opportunity to let you know a bit more about the Mission Builder and it’s background. The Mission Builder takes inspiration from the Challenges we’ve noticed that you set yourselves on the Forums. We saw these and wanted to come up with a system that replicates these within the game and that allows you to build and share Missions far and wide.

We’ve also noticed some chatter on the Forums speculating about what a “Mission” might actually be in regards to the Mission Builder. Well, Robbonaut can confirm that when using the Mission Builder you as players will be able to select and place Objectives and link them together into a Mission.

For example (in fairly simple terms) you might have a Mission that consists of an Orbit Mun Objective, then a Plant Flag on Mun Objective, and finally a Return Home Objective. Those 3 Objectives then make up the Mission as a whole. Obviously these are basic examples at this stage and we are of course planning lots of different, more in-depth Objectives for you to use and add into your Missions.

We will of course be divulging more as we continue with development and as ever we would love to hear your suggestions as to the types of Objectives you’d like to see.

Last but not least we welcome our newest member of staff to the ranks of QA. Bruce, also known as Bewing, has been most engaged and helpful for a long time, and can now get his hands even dirtier with the new tools available to him. Here’s a little something he wrote to let you know a bit about himself:

I got dual degrees in Math and Physics from UCSB quite a long time ago, and got published once – so technically I’m a scientist. But I didn’t go that direction. Instead I did C programming and sold computers in a small business I owned. Now my business does virtual reality photography. And I have a funny hobby of being an inventor. When I look at things, I sometimes get ideas on how to build them better. And then better and better. It makes life into a fun puzzle!

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 and development updates!

Happy launchings!

