Be Excellent To Each Other

Lovely little game, this. Design a rocket, launch it, and try and land on the 'Mun'. It's really rather hard, but quite entertaining.

There's a free version, or pay $10 to pre-order and get new updates to the Alpha.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/

Oh, there's already a thread. Well, this is a reminder then!

Hnnngh!

I know there's another thread, but I like this one more as it has pictures.

I played the demo yesterday. After a bunch of complete disasters and near-orbits I finally succeeded and managed to get a dude into a highly eccentric orbit, but had no clue how to stabilise it. AIR-PUNCHING SUCCESS. I also just pointed the Rocket back towards Earth/Kerbal and hit "GO" to get home. Seems to work ok, but was a terrible waste.

Anyway I thought it was brill, so bought it. (There's a steam sale on and I'm buying 'full price' games?!!?!)

Spent time at work reading the wiki and that. Ended up on actual wikipedia reading crazy articles I don't understand about all sorts.

Just been playing it today. More stuff in the base game and fancier graphics! Played the oribt 101 and orbital swapping/moon landing tutorial (utter, utter disaster). Started a new sandbox, after one or two failed attempts/practices (one of which included going straight up, straight down and landing my pod on the roof of the hanger), I built something so simple but bestly powerful that oribt was easy:



NOTE THE CLEVER USE OF STAGES! All 3 engines fire on launch and use the main fuel tanks. The middle fuel tank will not be used until I jettison the other ones. (or: until they run out, not sure..) I'm suprised it did so well, I thought all that fuel would be ultra heavy and I'd need some solid boosters or something. I'm pretty sure you can launch-to-orbit this without dropping the tanks if you're good at steering.


I didn't think to actually take pictures whilst launching/flying, because who the fuck does that??! Plus: no fancy stabilising computer installed, so I had to keep it pointing straight up all by myself. But here's some of me pootling round in space on an EVA mission after making my poor fellow spend 7 days in orbit. (I kept increasing my orbit until the game let me put it on full-speed-ahead, which is 480 km up). I then attempted to splash down in the sea near the base buy completely messed it up and landed on the other side of the planet in the dark.

Why did you have to mention that game again, especially now when there's a Steam sale on?

To show an example of quality vs quantity

It took me a lot of today and a bit of yesterday, BUT I GOT TO THE MOON. I took some videos along the way. I might edit together all my rockets exploding during their first phase, or the multiple times my (badly designed) lander smacked into the moon rather than landing on it. (One time it landed with to much horizontal speed and took off it's legs/engine, but the pod survived and my dudes could climb out! SUCCESS!!). I eventually managed a really professional-looking landing and managed to get the Kerbals almost home.

Coming back from the moon, got into a decent orbit, slowed down enough so that I'd end up being captured by Kerbal's gravity and do rentry. GOOD. Except something really odd happened at 100m and I smashed into the water, just off the coast of the Kerbal Space Center. NO SURVIVORS

So I reloaded back on the moon and tried again. I ran out of fuel. I reloaded numerous times and lots of things went wrong. Finally I reload and I get back to Kerbal and this time watch INTENTLY as my command pod floats down into the water with it's chute deployed. NOTHING CAN GO WRONG. Except for the fact that the the parachute is attached to the stabilising computer which is attached to the command pod, and it seems that the updraft from the parachute fully opening at low atmosphere is too much force and it just rips the fucking thing off. Absolute shit. I should have properly tested the lander before doing it.

So I reload and put them back into Kerbal's orbit. I don't have enough fuel to make it circular, even using up all the RCS fuel for the 3 tiny, shitty maneuvering thrusters, so I have to make do with a highly elliptical orbit that goes from 70Km to 8Mm or something. Manageable in a rescue scenario, I think. No Kerbals left behind, especially as they have all the moon rocks in there.

So I make a quick rescue rocket to go and meet them in the air. Turns out it's ridiculously hard to match even circular orbits and do orbital rendezvous, let alone a madly elliptical and off-plane one. It requires a lot of fuel, adjustments and patience. I didn't get to _actually_ rescue the guys as I accidentally ended the stranded flight when trying to switch ships in the space center. STILL. I totally would have done, as I was getting close with my rescue ship. (Well, I'd still have to edit the ship file to make the command module have room for them).

http://imgur.com/a/fswhK#0

Nooooooo. Stop making me want it. How 'finished' does it feel? I considered picking it up some time ago and am wondering if there are any things conspicuously missing.

Play the demo! It's an old version that only has a single moon, but the heart of the game is there. The main 'empty' feeling from the game is that there's no 'mission' mode right now, it's juat an open sandbox and you can put as much as you want on your rocket with a complete disregard for budget. That's planned for the future though. But it does mean you have to set your own challenges, and there's no real 'reward' for getting to the moon and back.

It's gettting better all the time, though. I think the next one is introducing structures designed to be proper ISS style satellites and some docking features, which look exciting!

Also: The ship building interface is a bit shit. It's a camera with a fixed orbit, so you can't translate it, and everything has to be placed with the mouse, from what I can tell. Which is a real pain in the dick when trying to piece together big rockets and you need to stick a strut somewhere on the inside.

LOTS OF FUN THOUGH.

(assuming you enjoy orbital maneuvers, which I know you do)

Are saved games from the demo compatible with the 'latest' paid for version? I hate starting from scratch in a game like this.

PS: Thanks for answering.

There isn't a 'save game' in the demo version really as there's no persistence. You start a flight, aka launch a rocket, whatever happens happens[1] and then you 'end' the flight. All the debris and kerbals and so on are gone, with the next flight having a clean slate.

In the current game (which is still in alpha, and that) there is persistence, but it's still just a sandbox, so there's no "progress". You start a flight, aka launch a rocket or a car-thingy or a potentially-space-going-airplane, fly it around a bit and THEN: You can "end flight", which just deletes it, or just "log out" of that ships and go play with another one and it'll carry on floating round in space, etc. Debris also stays, so if you leave a chunk of Mun lander on the Mun, then it stays there!

You can end a flight at any time, as I accidentally did up there^, which just deletes the bit of the ship and the kerbals, but leaves debris around for fun.

I _think_ you can copy your ship designs across from the demo, as all the parts in the demo are in the full game, but they have different stats now and the physics model has changed a bit so they handle differently. For all I know the file format might be different Besides, the rate of change on your ship designs is quite fast, as they appear to be in continual need of improvement, so you might not even care about the demo ships


[1] what happens on Kerbal stays in Kerbal.

I've just realised that Craster didn't take both of those two images, after having seen them elsewhere.

I FEEL SO LET DOWN. I thought Craster also played this I FEEL SO ALONE, LIKE A KERBAL LEFT ON THE MOON BECAUSE HIS JET PACK AN OUT OF FUEL.

Fuck I want to play this again now.

https://twitter.com/KerbalSpaceP/status ... 2453321728

KSP Will increase in price again soon! Get it at 18.00USD while you still can!

— Kerbal Space Program (@KerbalSpaceP) November 28, 2012

The next version, with docking and all that jazz, is coming sooooon. There's some Kerbalcon event happening, and people think they will release the next version after that.

I AM EXCITED

I might buy it cheap now and then file it under 'play later'.

DID YOU BUY?!!
Note: For some bizarre reason the developers have said that you can EITHER get it off Steam OR from their site. If you buy now from either you're stuck with it. And if like me you bought it a while back you get a choice which one you want to use.


Why can't I use both?



I once tried to make a rover out of spaceplane landing gear, but it wobbled to death during take off and I couldn't be arsed. But now there's actual Rover parts in the game. So I made a rover capable of landing on Duna, the Mars-like planet. I gave a parachuteless version a test on the Mun! (Then, after EXPLORING one of the nearby anomalies and parking up for the night, I accidentally END FLIGHT'd the bloody thing).

I might build the kerbals a little moon buggy they can burn around in, though I imagine it's hard to drive. Even driving my tiny rover on the Mun was difficult as it would pick up speed down hill, which, when breaked, would cause it to raise it's tail end up. The first time I tried to slow down it flipped over and asploded

Here's some pictures of the of Lil' Henry Rover and the Big Henry Lander/docking station IN ACTION.

http://imgur.com/a/wT6ei#0







I tried to build a space-shuttle like thing the other day but had a really hard time getting the spaceplane balanced properly so that when it was in space the center of thurst was always behind the center of mass but that it would also behave properly during takeoff. I had shuttles spinning out of control all over the shop

I R IN STABLE ORBITZ!





Next stop: THE MUN!

I had a go of this on Wookie's PC. It's ace. Especially if you don't read any instruction or hint and just mess with it. Might buy.


Also, Grim..., did you do a thing like this?

http://www.distancetomars.com/

I did - that one is nicer, though.

Mine is at http://www.quitethehike.co.uk .

I got into orbitz! then I took a shot at mun and... whazzed past uncontrollably and disappeared into deep space. Bit sad about Bill Kerman
I had a go on the mun lander scenario but only managed to mash into the surface destroying everything but the capsule, the kerbs had a wander about and then sat down to die.

had a go on this ages ago, think I am going to have to buy it now they have more stuff to play with. Look awesome

Congrats!
The atmosphere stops at 78 or around there. So as long as you're above that, it's infinite![1]




TIPS FOR LANDING: Kill all horizontal thrust by pointing your ship sideways and thrusting. This should hopefully give you a really tall and thin arc on the map-view. (You can control the engines from mapview - click the little arrow at the bottom). You want the velocity vector to be pointing to the top of the blue dome after you're done THRUSTING. That way you just float down and only have to worry about not smashing into the floor. Landing legs can usually take a bit of force.






Anyway: I abandoned sending Henry to Duna (aka Mars) because it's on the other side of the shitting solar system right now. (I'd previously managed to map it using the a mapper-probe which I flew there on a completely ad hoc and, as I've now found out, very very very lucky basis!). I instead decided to send a probe out to Moho (aka Mercury) as it's much closer.


CHECK OUT MY MAD SKILLS. See how amazing I am! I managed to line it up so that the ship flies to within 35km of the planet (which I then got down to 6km!). I'M AMAZING. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, those geniuses amongst you might realise that trying to intersect a planet whilst going perpendicular to it is a really bad idea, giving me a grand total of 30 minutes in which to slow down from 8,000m/s SIDEWAYS to roughly the same speed in the perpendicular direction :/ I couldn't get it to happen. So it meant that this took 2 and a half minutes to become this At least I managed to bag a bit of planetary data from my useless flyby. So I reloaded, detached the landers and let them smash into the surface complete their important surface impact mission, though the game clips inside the planet and you can't really appreciate the explosion.

Album.

Still, Duna/Mars is coming in to alignment, so hopefully I can get the rover there properly. But I noticed that Cres was a bit closer, so I'm going to have another test run with a probe on that in the mean time.






[1]Not totally true. You an easily have a 50kx200k orbit. All you have to do is save the ship and switch to another craft. The game only calculates things like atmospheric drag for ships you have loaded. Everything else (including planets) are 'on rails' and just follow the pretty lines. You can even have a 50kx200k orbit with your CURRENT ships and just use time warp to hax it there, if it wasn't for the fact that the game turns of time warp lower than 80k

BEING BILL KERMAN
After Jebediah became the first Kerbal to achieve stable orbit, Bill set his sights higher - a lot higher.
"Go to the Mun!" said his friends - but Bill still thought that was too easy. He decided the only destination for a real challenge was the outer moon Minmus.


BEHOLD THE MOONEY SHOT! This pile of cheap components was going to shoot Bill off the planet in mere seconds, and then take him all the way to the outer reaches of space. Bill hopped in, and the Mooney Shot was dragged to the launch pad.


Whoosh! Bill shot off the pad, a ball of flame trailing behind him. Only a few seconds later, it was time to dump the booster rockets.


With those tubs of lard finally gone, the Mooney Shot finally started to become maneuverable, and Bill quickly set up a 100,000m orbit around Kerbal.


After a small course correction, it was time to dump the secondary rocket too. Bill and his little landing module would be alone in space for a long, long time.


Now, there wasn't much to do but wait.


Bill was a very, very long way from home. But, out of his window...


Minmus!


After some fiddling with vectors, Bill became the first Kerbal to set up a stable orbit around a foreign object. Now, all he had to do was park his tub on the surface.


Totally overshooting his desired landing spot and burning way too much fuel, Bill had to set it down on a rocky hill, with no real idea of what his altitude above sea level would be when he touched down.


Well, the landing gear had worked, which was a bit of a relief.


OMG, it's happening!


ZOMG, IT'S HAPPENING!


HE DID IT!


Wasting no time, Bill hopped out, set up his tripod, and took the picture that was going to have him knee-deep in pussy for the rest of time.


Irritatingly, his ladder didn't work, but Bill had a jetpack to make sure he could get back into the Mooney Shot.


With hardly any fuel left, Bill escaped Minmus' gravity influence and set a course for home.


On the wrong side of the planet, Bill burnt off the last of his fuel in a desperate attempt not to land in the middle of the ocean.


All too soon, the fuel was spent. Bill jettisoned the lander, and crossed his fingers. Not only was he damned close to landing in the drink, but he was coming in at an insane speed. He maneuvered his capsule arse-down toward the planet and did his straps up tight.


AAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHH!


Finally, the insane g-force leveled out, and Bill popped his chute.


Night fell as Bill set foot on Kerbal again, his suit lights shining on his tiny home for the past few days.

Now... Where the fuck was he?

What a hero Bill is. How come Jeb didn't make the journey? Was he still in orbit?

I'm surprised such a tiny little ship made it their and back; very economical But congratulations are still in order. I hope Bill gets a ticker tape parade.

• I notice you have no RCS. Did you just rely on the gimbals of the engines and the tail feathers to maneuver? I guess in space you just used the command pod's torque to turn around?
• Press C to go into internal camera mode. (or hover over their face and click IVA). You can press V to switch between Kerbals if there's more than one in a capsule. Why do this? Depending upon the command module, there's different equipment. Lots of them have RADAR ALTITUDE gagues which you can use to see your true height, rather than smash into the terrain whilst the mean-sea-level-meter at the top of the screen happily reads 5000m
• Right click the ladder when flying your ships. I think you can also right click it when you're controlling an EVA Kerbal. You can right click many things. Some things can only be done outside, e.g. Kerbals can fix rover wheels or re-pack chutes.

ps the list tag is terrible
EDIT: Yes, I see the middle engine is the one with the gimbal, and the outer ones are the slightly more powerful ones.

Wipes away tear at Grim's heartwarming and epic story.

Man, have to buy this now. Payday sun, then, to the mun!

He's out there somewhere

I right-clicked the shit out of it, but nothing happened. Either it got broke, or it was too close to the landing struts to come down.

Next time test the lander on Kerbin first Just attach them to the big red pylons and drop them. Helps see if the legs work, etc. (As in: I once built a lander where the engine nozzle was slightly lower than the legs, resulting in explosions upon landing). Infact, looking at the pictures, yours was cutting it very fine in that regard as well.

ps: Build the grimlet one of these

a) Upcoming items for 0.20

I WANT TO DO THIS
b) Pointless drama about the term expansion

• http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1c0gzr/kerbal_space_program_a_game_which_was_using_the/
• http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/entry.php/634-About-DLC-and-Expansions-for-KSP

Pointless drama results in future free stuff.

Thanks for the tips Pod!

I'm a bit obsessed with this atm but unfortunately not very good at it, I'm having trouble getting into orbit and end up building bigger, heavier rockets that do even less well! Also I have no understanding of how to adjust orbits so just point in direction 'a' and press the go button to see what happens...

There's a tutorial that tells you how to change orbits. It starts you off with a ship in orbit and basically says "point in this direction to make the other side get smaller/bigger". Infact these days the manuever nodes should really help you understand what happens. Just place one down and pull on one of the coloured symbols. Then shift the node around and see how doing that same thing at different points does different things. (green is forward/back, red is up/down, blue is towards/away from planet).

As for rockets: Start small. Try and just get an unmanned probe into space, or a one-kerb capsule. Or: Just copy Grimm's one above (I actually have one similar to that used to get map satellites around Kerbin/The Mun)

I've just noticed Grimm's rocket's tail-fins are completely off centered, even though he used 3-way symmetry and I presume angle-lock when placing. (As the angle lock icon on the menu in the lower left is on). Did it not spin around ?

Nope.
Mad rokkit skills.

Is there any way of exporting it so you can have a go?

Also, are there any plans for multiplayer in the future? That would be incredible.

It's in somewhere like KSP_win\saves\default\VAB\grimmsFirstRokkit.craft . Obviously 'default' will be different if you actually gave your save file a name. (You can also copy that rocket to the KSP_win\craft\VAB folder to have it be a 'stock' part forever, available to all saves, or even move it into the SPH folder in either location to have it take off from the run way It works the same as the launch pad, just looks more absurd)

The developers claim multiplayer is basically impossible due to time acceleration. I kind of agree, but I think they should do some kind of 'ghosting' like in racing games. So you start a new save and have X budget and Y time to get do achievement Z before I do, and you can see me exploding away in the background or something. (There's actually a 'Russian' space center on another continent of Kerbin, see if you can find it ). I'd really like to see that when they start working on career mode, where I assume plugins and stuff won't be allowed.

mmm, just a thought but is there some way we could build a forum rokkit? I'm thinking someone starts it off with a command unit then emails the file to the next person on the list, then that person adds a part and we keep on like that until we have a serviceable rocket/lander/space station. or we could start with a basic rocket in drop box or summat and everyone could just dip in and change it / add to it. what think we? is it possible/fun?

£12.05 this weekend. BUY IT YOU SCUM.



Aside from being great, another reason to buy it is that I start making a plugin the other day. A programmable flight computer! If I ever finish, then those of you that like doing:



will instead be able to type



Or something to that effect. (It's going to be nothing like basic, and I might knock up an LLVM backend)

On reddit I saw someone using a shared dropbox to create a semi-multiplayer experience. here, comments. Basically, the save file is in dropbox and you can see each other's flights when they save, or something. But obviously no real-time interaction.

I also saw some cool plugin that basically displays the ghost-positions of other people's ships and has inbuilt chat, screenshot sharing etc.

Neither are strictly multiplayer.

This really does sound very good....

Nice write-up at Eurogamer today.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014- ... ess-review

When did it become "early access"? It was a full release (albeit one they were updating) when I bought it

Yeah it's been fully accessible for as long as I can remember.

Like your mum

It's become a buzz-word, hasn't it?

What was the version number when you bought it, below 1.0?

Wikipedia suggests this:

Release date(s) June 24, 2011 (alpha 0.7.3)[1]
December 17, 2013 (latest, alpha 0.23.0)[1]

So you bought an alpha, or unfinished, game. Well done, you chump - this is all your fault!

It's always been an alpha. HOWEVER, the current state of the game is better than most actual "finished" games, so it doesn't matter. It just means you get a stream of new features throughout the next few years.

It's basically explained in that article.