Once more, here we are at the beginning of a new update, and I want to share with everyone our goals and ambitions for the upcoming 0.24 release of KSP.
We continue pushing forward with Career Mode, but this update has a few other neat things that should be very welcome additions, be you a Career-driven achiever or a Sandbox tinkerer, something in between, or even extrapolating the ends of that spectrum! We’ve got a lot to accomplish but we feel like this will be a great way to kick off a big 2014 for KSP.
Anyhow…
These are our main goals for 0.24:
Contracts
The first iteration of the contracts mechanic is coming up. At the Mission Control Facility, you’ll be able to take on contracts from a list of offers. Each contract will give you a set of objectives to fulfill, possibly with added requirements, and a deadline. These contracts are going to be dynamically generated off a number of different basic mission templates, and filled out with detail based on how far you’ve advanced in your Career. A feature this large is most likely not going to be complete in a single update, but we feel like we’re off to a very good start with our initial plan.
New Mission Control Screen
It’s been there for a while, but so far no Kerbal has dared enter that mysterious building at the space center. Oh, plus the fact it didn’t have an inside also made it extra difficult. We’re adding a new Mission Control Screen, accessible through the already-there Mission Control Facility, which will present you with a UI where you’ll be able to pick out contracts and decide whether to accept them or pass them by.
Improved Part-to-Part Joints
There is one unassuming line in the Unity 4.3 changelog that made a world of difference to us. I’ll quote it here in fact: “Physics.” Joints can now have separate anchor points configured for both connected rigidbodies. What this means is that the era of rockets ‘dancing’ on top of their engines is coming (finally) to an end. We are completely re-doing the joints, to have much more control over how they link together, and not least, how much we want them to be bendy and wobbly. We’re not eliminating the wobble altogether, as that would actually be removing a lot of what makes failures fun. We’re aiming to have better control over it, so we can have wobbly bits where we want them to wobble, and more rigid connections where things are supposed to be firmly attached.
Multiplayer’s First Steps
This isn’t so much a feature at this point, but it’s worth mentioning in any case. We’re starting work on the core components of multiplayer now, so by the time we’re about done with Career Mode, we’ll already have a solid platform to start building multiplayer features on top of it. Right now, the primary goal is to write the server backend that will run things. There won’t be much to show of this for a while, but we’ll keep everyone posted about the progress being made.
Tutorials Revisited
It’s been a long time since we did the in-game tutorials now. They harken back to ye olden times of version 0.17, and when you consider that 0.18 was when we added maneuver nodes and docking, you start to get a sense of just how much has changed in the game since the tutorials were written. Needless to say then, they’re in dire need of a revision, and that’s what we plan to do on this update, and if time allows, also add a couple of new ones.
And as always, the usual batch of small tweaks and bug fixes that we do as we go along.
And we can’t say this enough, this list isn’t a preview of the changelog for the next update. These are our ambitions, not promises. Some of this might not make it in, while at the same time other things not on this list might be included as well, so the bottom line is, don’t take this as if it was written in stone. (It was, in fact, written on my sweet new G19s keyboard, which the kind folks at Logitech sent to us. And no, they didn’t make me say this).
Anyhow, that’s all the news for now, stay tuned for more as it develops.
Cheers
Sounds good.
G19s rocks btw
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Just for the LUL: PS4 Pro / Nintendo Switch / Wii U
$team, Orishit, Upay, PSN : Athlonic
Kerbal engineer is the only mod I use. It's absolutely not necessary and doesn't change anything about the game other than showing you some numbers. Helps you make your rockets much more efficient being able to see how staging, different sized fuel tanks and rockets, etc change your thrust.
In my opinion, you don't need one single mod to enjoy this game. Getting into orbit is already easy, especially with the maneuver "computer". The looseness of the joints (which is going to be changed in this latest version) is part of the fun of the game. The navball is fine as it is, in my opinion. The rest, to me is just fluff. I don't need a bazillion new parts. I don't have a problem with the chutes and you can already tweak their opening altitudes. Clouds I don't care about because they add nothing to the game for me.
The only thing I personally like from that list (other than the engineer mod) is the reentry stuff and maybe the ejection seats. I don't play around with the planes as it's painfully unrealistic and simplistic but I guess that could be handy. And the reentry heat stuff is going to be added eventually. So I don't have a problem waiting for it to be properly implemented.
I personally think people tend to go a little nuts with mods. I'm sure there are kerbin sex mods, tentacle porn, and anime dolls floating around somewhere. Maybe even a kerbin pony for Bob.
And any mod list would be incomplete without the most popular, most loved, most hated, most controversial KSP mod: MechJeb. (inb4 MechJeb is cheating).
Major stuff
• Asteroids are detected based on distance? from the tracking center and can be added to a list of tracked objects. Objects cannot be targeted if they are not tracked, and their orbits cannot be predicted if you don't have enough tracked data points, but if you do track an asteroid you will be able to see its patched conics display on the map to show how close/far it will pass other planets and moons
* Each asteroid has its own science that can be gathered from it. You can gather samples from asteroids, and you will get new science from each new asteroid even if you are testing the same kind of biome, for instance
• Near-Kerbin asteroids? to allow players to get into the groove of interplanetary without going too far away from Kerbin
• Don't expect fully rigid joints in the next version. Devs don't want to fully eliminate flexing, rather devs want to be able to tune it - fully tell the game what connections will be more or less stable than one another. Rockets will be much more stable, and you can build a taller stack now
• "Enter: the Claw" — the claw from the NASA update can grab almost anything. "If you want to... spear a tank and drain the fuel out of it, you can... If you want to grab a Kerbal by the face, you can" —C7.
• The current placement of parts is not ideal, but it is the best solution given the current situation. Up until the tech tree, all parts were balanced against each other — there was no true advancement, all parts have to have give and take...
* With the NASA parts, at size 3, we have parts that are definitely better in some ways. Missions to Jool are now possible with fewer parts, to cut down lag, make play more fun to fly; more about the payload than hauling the payload
Minor stuff
• LV-1 engines, ion engines, will get a "sizeable boost" to cut down burn times, to increase the fun of using them.
Community stuff
• C7 and Bob/Rowsdower? will have speeches at GDC
• This March 19th, Wednesday, at 4:00PM in San Francisco, Squad are organizing a meetup at the Yerba Buena Gardens by the Metreon (Sony building)
* Same night as the Game Developers Choice Awards for which KSP is nominated
• A special KSPTV marathon is coming midnight Pacific time, Monday March 24th, that will show off cool stuff — asteroids and stuff
• Chad's/C7's sons are adorable
Coming sooooooon(tm)
Serious Rig: CPU : Ryzen7 9800X3D | GC : NVIDIA RTX 5080 FE | Mobo : MSI MPG Carbon X870E | RAM : 64GB DDR5 TridentZ5 Neo 6000 | Case : Fractal Define 7 XL | Cooler : Fractal Celcius S28 Prisma | PSU : Corsair RX1000 Shift | Monitor : LG Oled C2 42" 4K/G-Sync
Mobile Rig : Asus ROG751 JT | i7-4720HQ | GTX 970m | 16GB DDR3 \ G-Sync
Just for the LUL: PS4 Pro / Nintendo Switch / Wii U
$team, Orishit, Upay, PSN : Athlonic
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