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Kerbal Space Program

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Big news, everybody. Kerbal Space Program is now on Steam!

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Kerbal Space Program is a multi-genre game where players create their own space program.

 

In KSP, you must build space-worthy craft, capable of flying your crew out into space, without killing them. At your disposal is a collection of parts, which must be assembled to create a functional ship. Each part has its own function and will affect the way a ship flies (or doesn't). So strap yourself in, and get ready to try some Rocket Science!

 

The game is being built first as an open sandbox. There are no objectives yet. You're free to build anything you can think of, and fly it wherever you want, even into orbit and out to other planets and moons throughout the Kerbal Solar System.

 

Key Features:

  • The Vehicle Assembly Building and the Space Plane Hangar allows players to build spacecraft out of any imaginable combination of parts.
  • Fully-fledged, Physics-based Space Flight Simulation ensures everything will fly (and crash) as it should.

  • Take your Kerbal crew out of the ship and do Extra Vehicular Activities.

  • Fly out to Moons and other Planets.

  • Procedural Terrain delivers detailed terrain at a vast scale. The Kerbal Planet is 600km in radius!

  • Mod-enabled, allows players to create new content and modify the game.

  • Ship systems. Keep an eye out for engine temperatures and fuel levels, and try not to explode.

  • Build ships with multiple stages, and jettison parts away as they burn out.

  • Full control over the ship’s setup allows for complex ships and advanced functionality.

  • Dock spacecraft together to build Space Stations, Massive Starships, or even surface bases on other worlds

 

Planned Features:

  • Take on Missions to attract interest in your Space Program.
  • Manage your Space Program. Hire astronauts, train them, and send them out into space.

  • Research and Develop new technologies to advance your Space Program.

  • Discover new worlds and expand the scientific knowledge of Kerbalkind.

  • And a whole lot more!

 

 

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Here's a story and some images.

#1 Thumb mk II, blast off! I can see my space center from up here!

#2 Orbit around Kerbin achieved. Now waiting for the optimal time to fire the trans-Munar engines.

#3 Velocity is about 3 km/s, trajectory just about right. Should hit the Mun straight on.

#4 The screenshot was a poor one, but I got into orbit around the Mun without problems.

#5 Killed all my horizontal velocity and now I'm waiting for gravity to do its job. I'll use as much of the remaining trans-Munar fuel close to the surface as possible before decoupling the engine and fuel tanks.

#6 The engine crashed into the surface and exploded. The winglets act as landing gears. In Thumb mk I the winglets were too high up and the couplings aren't 100% rigid. They gave away so much that the engine hit the ground and came off of the rest of the rocket. Were there object persistence in this version, they'd still be trapped on the Mun.

#7 We came, we saw, we conquered. Now it's time to head back. I fired the engine, dumped the winglets and headed for orbit. When my orbit took me in 'front' of the Mun (the direction it was heading in its orbit), I fired towards Kerbin. I got back into orbit around it and my trajectory took me through the atmosphere (which would eventually slow me down enough to get back on the surface).

#8 My orbit was too elliptical, and eventually (after 6 or 7 passes) I didn't have enough velocity to miss the surface again, and I re-entered in too steep an angle. This doesn't bode well.

#9 Surely enough, the parachute couldn't slow me down enough. In addition, I missed the water, which is a bad thing.

However, on the Kerbal scale: Success!

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This looks wonderful, I am glad it exists.

(To edit, you have to click the edit post button twice).

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I played this a year or so ago and had some fun building ridiculous rockets and trying to get them in the air, but the game was in a pretty early state and there wasn't a whole lot you could do. I think it was possible to get to the moon, but I never managed to do it. I should probably check out the new version.

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So, as I stated in the first post, I pre-purchased the game last weekend and I've been obsessively playing it since then. And in fact on the 17th, a new version was released that added, among other things, space plane parts (wings and jet engines) and another moon orbiting around the planet.

It's amazing how much depth the mission persistence adds. Now I can have multiple mission flying at the same time, which also means that if I botch the landing on the Mun and break the engine, that crew will remain trapped on the Mun. It also means that decoupling parts while you're in stable orbit will leave those parts there as space junk (although collision with space junk is probably as likely as winning the lottery). As a result I've started dumping my orbital entry engines a bit early even if there's some fuel left, just to ensure they fall back to the planet instead of littering my orbit.

I'll make this recommendation again: if this kind of stuff intrigues you, try the demo. Experiment a bit first, then find some tutorials. Get into orbit and learn to adjust it. Learn how to get to the Mun, and eventually land. Try to get back alive as well. If after all that you feel hungry for more, paying $15 will be a great investment for you.

Story time again. I launched a lander mission to the Mun and tried to land on the dark side. I literally couldn't see the ground, plus I was unaware I was landing on a few kilometers tall mountain. I crashed to the surface way too fast and my rocket blew up. Weirdly enough, the crew pod survived and was trapped on the surface. I launched another mission, but this time I built a a Munar rover by attaching a few sets of wheels on the side. I managed to land a few kilometers away from the first crash site, and drove to it.

VDIBc.png

There's no space walking, so it was up to my imagination to picture the crew from the first pod climbing into the rescue craft. Picking up the pod with another craft is also possible, but it as you can see, it's

. I barely managed to take off, and as I was climbing into orbit, I noticed something weird on the surface.

wxLms.png

I made note of the location of the mystery object and headed back to Kerbin. The crew landed successfully. Later another mission was launched (after experimenting with some mods) to explore the mystery arc. And there it is, even more glorious and slightly more bugged than I thought.

KyvTz.png

Finally, two screenshots of the new moon, Minmus. I made sure not to run into any kind of spoilers about what the moon looks like, etc. before exploring it for myself. So I'll just post the links instead of embedding the images.

1: Minmus from about 70 km away

2: Minmus landscape as seen from the surface

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I've been messing around trying to see if it's possible to reach sufficient speeds on the surface of Minmus to achieve spaceplane takeoff without touching the steering. Unfortunately I'm not sure it's possible.

I get severely depressed when I screw up and Jeb eats it on each new program. Thankfully, there always seems to be a Kerbal in each batch that gives exactly zero fucks. Spinning wildly out of control towards the surface of Mun? Is our RPM above 20,000? No? Who cares.

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I pre-ordered this around six months ago and had a lot of fun with it. The problem is, in this early alpha state, once you have successfully orbited the Mun and made it back, there's not a whole lot else to do, so I haven't played it since. I bought it mainly because I thought it would be a good game in the future though, rather than how it is now. It has a lot of potential once they start working on the mission structure and goals. It has a learning curve though. I was really struggling until I watched a series of Youtube videos on it.

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The problem is, in this early alpha state, once you have successfully orbited the Mun and made it back, there's not a whole lot else to do, so I haven't played it since.

You can always try landing on the Mun or Minmus.

Also the newest version is out. The kerbals can now get out of the capsule.

KSPart1.jpg

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Jetpacks are for small babymans.

JtrkC.png

fQ042.png

(Shamelessly stolen from the SA KSP thread [http://forums.someth...hreadid=3485342] who are slowly becoming mad rocket scientists on a level I will never reach.)

As for having nothing to do after you reach the Mun, it's only limited by how many kerbalian casualties you are willing to inflict for SCIENCE.

cNCff.jpg

(Yes that is a cherry picker for leftovers from failed launches left around your Kerbal.)

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No atmosphere. Low gravity. Astronaut footprints.

Science update:

I managed to get a space station in orbit. It has (literally) tons of excess fuel, and room for a total of 9 kerbonauts (3 in the primary module plus 6 one-kerb pods around it). The very kerbal aspect of this whole project is that I have 6 tanks of RCS fuel, but no thrusters. Originally I had thrusters as well, but I had to move the engines around a bit and forgot to re-add the thrusters.

Vvltw.png

Brave Sherry Kerman on a spacewalk.

Second update:

I decided to decommission the space station and launch an upgraded one before populating it with brave kerbonauts. That, however, was quite an ordeal. I managed to get my recovery craft within 5 km of the space station, and the spacewalk was pretty scary, but went without a hitch. Only after all three kerbonauts were aboard the recovery craft, I found out that I couldn't control the space station through the MechJeb module. I had to send brave Sherry Kerman back to the station to try a true hollywood space movie stunt. He went onboard, turned the station retrograde, fired the engines and jumped out. He got out fast enough to get back to the recovery craft with his jetpack.

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The space station plummeted into the ground (too bad I couldn't see it as I was guiding Sherry). The recovery vehicle de-orbited, opened the parachutes on each of the pods and decoupled them all. All pods landed safely into the sea east of the Kerbal Space Center. Hurray!

Update:

My Munar operations. The rocket car served well until now, but the wheels are experiencing some weird bugs, making it unusable for driving around. I could fly with it though.

ur987.png

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latest version of kerbal space program is getting cockpit views it seems like.

well at least they're working on cockpit view for that space plane module.

someone get chris to play this game. don't think he has, or he would have talked about it on the podcast right? forget ftl chris

giant bomb did a video for it

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Cockpit views/IVA's (Intra Vehicular Activities) are all nice and good, but I'm figuratively shitting my pants about the other planets that will be added in the next version (I think). Going through well over a hundred pages of forum posts is beyond what I can do right now, but apparently there is going to be 4 new planets, and possibly some moons around them:

"Lava planet", Charr

"Venus planet", Eve

"Mars planet", ???

Kerbal homeworld, Kerbin

"Gas giant", ???

Getting to those planets is going to be Fun.

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someone get chris to play this game. don't think he has, or he would have talked about it on the podcast right? forget ftl chris

I'd love to see that on a livestream. It's quite entertaining to watch a complete beginner fail to make it to space. 37 revisions of their rocket later and they start to understand how it works.

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I could consistently get into space but I could never reach the moon. I looked up a walkthrough on Youtube and the solution involved working knowledge of real-life physical concepts and equations. Meanwhile, I was trying to reach the moon by flying my ship straight at it because I was too dense to realize that the moon is a moving object! Also, once I got completely out of Kerbal's atmosphere, my ship would go absolutely nuts and start rotating like crazy in terms of both pitch and roll. Imagine a constantly barrel-rolling ship that was also flipping over from tail to nose at an insane rate. Thankfully the ships always got pulled back into Kerbal's atmosphere and I remembered to include a parachute for my guys at least a third of the time.

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I could consistently get into space but I could never reach the moon. I looked up a walkthrough on Youtube and the solution involved working knowledge of real-life physical concepts and equations. Meanwhile, I was trying to reach the moon by flying my ship straight at it because I was too dense to realize that the moon is a moving object! Also, once I got completely out of Kerbal's atmosphere, my ship would go absolutely nuts and start rotating like crazy in terms of both pitch and roll. Imagine a constantly barrel-rolling ship that was also flipping over from tail to nose at an insane rate. Thankfully the ships always got pulled back into Kerbal's atmosphere and I remembered to include a parachute for my guys at least a third of the time.

If you can get into orbit, it's actually pretty simple to get to the Mun. No math required.

1) Orbit Kerbin around 70-100 km

2a) If you're orbiting the same way the Mun orbits, accelerate when the Mun rises above the horizon

2b) If you're orbiting in the opposite way, accelerate when the Mun sets below the horizon

3) Accelerate until your apoapsis rises to the height of the Munar orbit (your orbital velocity should be somewhere around 3000 m/s)

Now your flight path projection should show an encounter with the Mun.

As for your ship spiralling out of control, adding some SAS modules often works. Also, big is not always better. For my first attempts at getting far away from Kerbin, I kept trying to add more and more boosters and engines. Eventually I started over, and instead of tons of engines, I had less engines with more fuel tanks. I reached escape velocity pretty easily.

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Holy shit guys! Version 0.17 is here! Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh. Unfortunately the Squad servers blew up, so I haven't been able to download it yet. Which, for me, is almost ideal as I might still be able to go to bed tonight. This game is once again going to totally destroy my productivity for at least half a week.

Changelog:

  • Several new Planets and Moons, for a total of 14 Celestial Bodies.
  • Multiple game saves support.
  • Tutorials and Scenarios.
  • Several new Parts, including a NERVA Engine (*).
  • Internal Cockpit Views on several cockpits.
  • Center of mass, thrust, lift and drag visual cues on the construction scenes.
  • Physics Warp: An alternate time-warp mode where you can accelerate time to 2x, 3x and 4x without putting the sim on rails.
  • Much improved visuals in space.
  • And more!

Notice: Tutorials and scenarios. I don't quite yet know what they're like, but I think it could make this game a good option for an Idle Thumbs weekend stream. Someone should let the Thumb Lords know, wink.

(*) NERVA is an acronym for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application. This is going to be fun!

Alternative title for video: Squad server admins during 0.17 release

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYNX_PwDLm4

Update: 15 hours later, servers still down. Starting to experience tremors. Unable to form long sentences. If anyone reads this, please, send video games. Brain reverting to primal state. Is this real life? Am I in a nightmare? What is game? Please, send "Video Games". Send "Video Games" Rodkin.

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Goddamnit, attempting to reach another planet is like trying to throw a strand of spaghetti through the keyhole of a moving door with one eye closed. Using computer assistance (read: MechJeb) might let you at least use uncooked pasta and open your other eye.

This version has really punched me in the gut. I considered myself at least a somewhat accomplished rocketman, but now I feel like a mere video game baby. But, as it has been said, we choose to go to the other planets (and do the other things) not because it's easy, but because it's hard.

Also, it seems there might be some memory leak issues with the new version. I just assumed it was my shitty computer and bit my tongue as much as I could, but there are similar reports by other people on the KSP forums as well. My game tends to crash at least once per four or five launches, sometimes even more often. When you're talking about Kerbal rocketry, there's going to be a lot of launches, and restarting the game isn't the fastest process, either (for me at least).

At the moment, I stand defeated. Hopefully whatever problem there may be with the game gets fixed, so I have a better chance of once again conquering the ever expanding Kerbal universe. If the problem turns out to be with my computer, well, space shall remain unexplored on my part for a much longer time. Final thought: this thread seems to be pretty much my personal KSP blog at the moment.

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Here I am, for the final time tooting my own horn (until someone else starts posting as well, or there's some notable news).

So, despite my crashing problems, both literal crashing of rockets and the figurative crashing of software, I've managed to reach two planets, the Venus-like planet Eve and the Mars-like planet Duna. The Eve mission was actually an unmanned probe, but the Duna mission was a full on kerballed endeavour.

Here are some screenshots from the Eve mission:

Approaching the planet (after having encountered the tiny asteroid-moon, Gilly)

Deep within the atmosphere already

Parachutes have opened, relying completely on them

It was nighttime when/where I landed, and the place is so much more beautiful in daylight

Here's the better documented and more significant Duna mission:

As I approached Duna, I had so much fuel I decided to land on the moon Ike.

Here goes.

A risky landing, and I'd be lying if I told you I managed it on the first try. This place also resembles the Mun very, very much.

Last approach on the final destination, the planet itself: Duna.

That huge crater looks like a good place to land.

The atmosphere is very thin here. I'm below 14 km and the atmosphere isn't very noticeable yet, so I'm going to have to do a partially powered landing. I do have parachutes, but they would open and deploy too close to the surface, possibly pulling the craft apart.

Parachutes opened, but I'm below 9 km

Running low on fuel and cutting it pretty close. Maybe I shouldn't have landed on Ike

How did the brave Kerbals do? *dun Dun DUN!*

Here he is, the Kerbal of the Hour: Jerbald Kerman. My first kerbal to set foot on another planet (not counting moons).

TFEGQ.png

Small steps, giant leaps, etc.

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"Dude... Guys!!! GET OUT HERE, QUICK!"

mJihs.png

"See that?"

sZ2UM.png

vVbZV.png

"Wow! It's fucking nothing"

sX5lN.png

*Ba-boo*, the wizard, horsebag, [credits roll].

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OH MY GOSH. I just got my new computer -- my first in nine years. I played the heck out of KSP when I was housesitting for my mother once; I'm THE MOST EXCITED.

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