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Kerbal Space Program

Burning Bridges

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That's one really nice looking ship :salute:
Also is that an athmosphere I see on Duna? Haven't really done anything in KSP for years.
 

Hellraiser

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Danzig, Potato-Hitman Commonwealth
That's one really nice looking ship :salute:
Also is that an athmosphere I see on Duna? Haven't really done anything in KSP for years.

SVE - Stock Visual Enhancement mod. Also scatterer is installed, which adds atmo light scattering which probably adds to the effect.

Unfortunately the devs are neglecting upgrading the celestial bodies which is the least developed area of the game now. Still no clouds or proper terrain hazards besides slopes in vanilla. Then again that is not surprising as the code for it was written by either Mu or Harvester and both of them left (and at least one is probably working for Valve on something secret). Apparently 1.4 is supposed to upgrade the unity version to the latest one. Here's hoping it does not break anything, like the last major unity upgrade.
 

Data4

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Sep 11, 2005
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Over there.
I'm all but done with the game, myself. Just completely burned out after logging well over 2000 hours in it. Had a good run, but even mods don't do it for me any more. I'd love to see a version of the game with more realistic graphics and a much more interactive universe. Seems like that would be the natural progression. KSP was good for what it is/was, and the cartoony nature of Kerbals added to the quirkiness of it, but as it stands, it would take a complete graphical and features overhaul to get me back into it with any regularity.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Only 2000 hours? What a ripoff, I expect at least 3000 hours of entertainment from my indie simulators.

Seriously though, impressive. I consider it one of the best games I've played and I figure I've logged maybe a third of that and am if not 100% burned out, at least a part way there.
 

Riel

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When I was still a teenager physics was a passion of mine, I actually attended to a Physics degree in Zaragoza university for a couple year but couldn't finish it because I was a Kerbal with max stupidity back then :P A year ago I bought KSP but I didn't have enough time to get beyond basic orbits around Kerbal so I was a bit disappointed but this year I finally had some time to look at some guides and really have it all sink to me and finally I managed to do a munding!!


Long live Jebediah Kerbin the master of retrograde piloting to munland!

And most importantly back to Kerbin:


Yeah, I know there's people doing much more difficult than this, but to me it was like an old dream come true and I wanted to share it and thank SQUAD for it, it takes balls to do something so nerdish as this game and expect not to lose money, I know there are a lot of simplified things but still it is by a very huge margin the best realistic space simulator out there. THANKS!

BTW: Happy new year to all! Next year I intend to land on Dunna!!

PS: Sorry for the quality of the images they are photos I took with my mobile phone.
 

Riel

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Why did you take pictures instead of screenshot them?
To be honest, because I am slightly sane, so I thought about some other people I actually know before all of you who I don't know. But don't despair, I still thought about you all, unimportant people :P
 

Burning Bridges

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"Print" is the key, and the CTRL-V into Irfanview or Paint and "save as".

And if you think that's tedious, get Fraps or something like that.
 

Riel

Arcane
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Messages
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Itaca
Ok since I see you all very curious I will clarify how pictures taken with a mobile camera came to be on the internet. Here it goes this fabulous story:

I took the pictures because it was he fastest way to send them to a friend of mine's phone with whom I was talking about KSP and my first orbit around the mun and back ever just the day before I attempted a landing so I was taking the pictures as the mission was happening to tell him of my progress and potential accidental kerbicide, after I was done (surprisingly successfully since I actually had run the tutorial several times and I always had crashed) I recalled this thread which is were I learnt about KSP so I decided to share, of course by then I couldn't take screen shots so I had to send the pictures.

Yes I know what the PRINT SCREEN button does, thank you!
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Fuck me spacebros, I thought I was burned out on KSP but noooooo. Started another career and it's the most fun one yet, since the time I first managed a Mun landing (only to crash into a mountain after a smooth re-entry).

Starting parameters: baseline Hard difficulty but 2000 sci, 500,000 funds, allow quickloads and reverting flights, and Funds rewards to 100% ('cuz I don't like grinding for funds). I.e. enough funds to upgrade the runway and enough science to skip the very early-game grind I've done so many times.

Strategy: no fucking (vertically launched, disposable) rockets, (horizontally-launched, recoverable) planes only, and no use of MPLs to grind out science -- return or transmit to Kerbin only. Using MPLs to level up Kerbals in space or as a convenience to reset experiments is allowed.

Having to make low-tech space planes made the game fresh again. First it seemed almost impossible to get a plane that could actually do something with nothing stronger than a Reliant for go. And indeed I ended up using some liquid-fuel boosters to get my little Terrier-powered plane into orbit for, I think, two launches. Then I had enough Sci to buy Rockomax tanks and a Skipper.

And then I came up with a really successful design. Meet the Osprey in an early iteration:

bnYmZRI.jpg


This is all Tier 1 tech. The key is that the core is crazily configurable. I can attach cargo to the roof (as here), or the back of the centre hull (which I can also use to recover landers and such, if I add some wing surface below to protect it from re-entry), or where I have the cockpit now, or the fronts of the engine pods (if I have two symmetrical loads, e.g. a bunch of satellites being launched at once, and I can make them reasonably aerodynamic). This is a remarkably docile beast -- it's easy to balance for any of these loadouts, it flies well, climbs well, re-enters well, lands well, and even ditches well in case I miss KSC and have to do that. Heaviest load I've lofted was just under 30 tons, a refuelling launch bound for Minmus. That was roof-mounted, with a triple-Skipper configuration for power and a good many more Rockomaxes at all nodes. It could go even a little higher, as there was a fair bit of dV left over.

The problems with this design are more convenience than capability. Payloads need to be fairly carefully designed to fit on the nodes on the plane, and I need to tweak thrust limiters to deal with thrust torque with larger, asymmetrical loads. Other than that, it's fantastic. The final iteration (for now) of the Osprey is little changed from the original -- some unnecessary bits removed, canards for easier take-off, better control surfaces and landing gear when I got the Sci to buy them, plus my shuttle lost its wings, since after getting docking ports I'm able to re-dock and re-enter as a unit, the same way I got up there. I'm also carrying a little more fuel here since I'm targeting about 150 km orbit rather than 75:

BLnq1ZE.jpg


Finally I got annoyed enough with the finicky payload designs and thrust tweaking that I developed a successor:

ghA6SoB.jpg


This is still a fundamentally Tier 1 design although in this iteration it's using Tier 2 control surfaces and landing gear -- but these are refinements rather than requirements. The main advantages of the Firewing compared to the Osprey are slightly increased maximum payload mass, and much increased payload volume. Just about all payloads go where the intra-system shuttle is docked now (that's designed to survive re-entry when so attached, by the way, so it doesn't need the wing surface to shield it). Since this guy rides high and the CoM is just about where the payload sits, I can stick just about anything there and it'll behave just fine, and without roof-mounted payloads I don't need to make in-flight adjustments to compensate for thrust torque. (I could use the engine pod nose cones as alternative mount points too of course.)

The only steps backward the Firewing takes are related to the return trip: it's considerably more draggy which means it falls out of the sky pretty fast, leaving less room for error if I'm trying to hit the KSC, and it doesn't ditch cleanly: because the nose is so high it tends to pitch forward hard and wants to do a somersault. It's survivable but a bit of a rough ride and occasionally some bits fall off. I'm still working on refining the design to improve these aspects. Launches though are remarkably efficient -- I've managed to get to LKO using with little as 3100 m/s dV.

These things are easier to balance and launch than rockets by the way. Just make sure initial TTW is minimum 0.85 or so (more is better!), point them up at 45 degrees as soon as you can, climb to 10k/500 m/s or so, then follow prograde until Ap is where you want it, and circularise. No delicate balancing of the gravity turn, no aerodynamic surprises giving rockets flipping out mid-trajectory, no agonising tweaking of fuel load and TTW ratio between stages. Just load up, add enough Rockomaxes and fuel to get sufficient dV, adjust CoM/CoL by moving the wings and engine pods forward and back, move landing gear just behind CoM, and fly off.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
I just learned that landing a plane on Duna is not easy, nor is taking off. Damn things go really fast, keep going forever, don't like to pitch, and bounce like a motherfucker when they touch down. Still after some reloading I aced a landing and got back into orbit too.

From now on I'm just going to do atmospheric exploration with it though; that's also cheaper on dV. Next transfer window I'll send up a conventional lander with the crew rotation, that's gonna be way easier. If I ever build another plane for Duna I'll give it a lot more control surfaces. This amount of wing feels about right but damn is it sluggish to respond to anything.

r4DqSw7.jpg


It's docked a bit unconventionally because I used it as a drag element for aerocapture when arriving.

HugS56a.jpg


(Yes that's intentional. I have no ladder so I raised the landing gear to get the plane on the ground so Jeb could climb back in. Is like a camel, LOL.)
 

potatojohn

Arcane
Joined
Jan 2, 2012
Messages
2,646
Sigh. makes me want to reinstall it

Are there any known plans for new versions or sequels? Or is kerbal space program development over?
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Sigh. makes me want to reinstall it

Are there any known plans for new versions or sequels? Or is kerbal space program development over?

Ain't over, Take Two bought it and development is ongoing. They are keeping mum about what exactly it is though and in which direction they'll take it and when. (A console version will be out just now though.)
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Correction to above. They have actually announced a quite a bit of what's going on, I just hadn't been paying attention. There's an overview here: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.co...272-ksp-weekly-looking-forward-to-a-new-year/

In a nutshell, the next stuff upcoming are version 1.4, which includes an art overhaul, additional parts, and a bunch of new features, and a paid DLC called Making History which includes big set of parts inspired by the US and Soviet space programs, a mission editor, and bunch of premade missions based on historical counterparts.
 

Riel

Arcane
Joined
Apr 29, 2012
Messages
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Itaca
There is male semen in a corner of your screen.

While sending photos of your screen is, I have to admit, stupid it is something entirely possible, on the other hand matter transmission over the internet is so far impossible, so if you see something stuck on your monitor it's something on your end.
 

Drax

Arcane
Joined
Apr 6, 2013
Messages
10,986
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Silver City, Southern Lands
I tried reinstalling KSP with a basic modset recently and I was getting like 15-20 fps, pukeworthy.
I don't know why my pc hates kerbals, I have a regular 2gb nvidia card and 12gb of ram, the damn thing should be able to keep at least 30 fps, ffs...
 

Prime Junta

Guest
I tried reinstalling KSP with a basic modset recently and I was getting like 15-20 fps, pukeworthy.
I don't know why my pc hates kerbals, I have a regular 2gb nvidia card and 12gb of ram, the damn thing should be able to keep at least 30 fps, ffs...

If your basic modset includes Scatterer, check the settings. Some of those would bring the Amazon cluster to their knees. In particular check the settings for water.
 

Burning Bridges

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Some of these mods are completely open ended with their RAM demands.

If you scale textures up by 2 you can quickly run out of RAM, do the math. Just because they are there does not mean it's necessary to use the highest versions, install mid or even low versions and see how that goes.

Also I think you may need a new PC soon. Those specs you state are anything but state of the art these days.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
My 'puter is practically a potato by modern standards (it's five years old), and it runs KSP fine at 2560x1440 with stock visual enhancements, just some of them tuned down a bit.

That said, KSP is shit performance wise. For me the big issue isn't FPS, it's stuttering -- if you have more than a few craft up there it starts garbage collecting like a manic cleaning lady and just stops for a half-second every few seconds. Only "workaround" is to not fly all that many craft, in particular terminate all debris immediately. It's been investigated and the damn thing uses and releases megs of memory every second.

I.e. somebody fucked up deep in the code. There really isn't any good reason it should be doing that. All you'd need to keep in memory are the craft name, type, orbit, and current position, and update those every once in a while -- for stuff in high orbits once an hour would be enough, for stuff on suborbital trajectories once every 15 seconds or something -- and that can be done without using and releasing memory. Only start updating faster when you get into RV range, and load the whole shebang when it gets into physics range.
 

Burning Bridges

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WTF man, it runs on Unity, uses C# with all the problems like garbage collection and input lag. There was a time where you had to wait several seconds before the program would even respond to the first input then they sort of optimized that to be bearable and since then they only patted themselves on the shoulder.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Garbage collection as such is not a problem. Assuming it means you don't have to think of memory usage because you have it is a problem. KSP stutters because somebody wrote sloppy code that creates and disposes objects when it shouldn't, not because C# has garbage collection or Unity somehow forces it.

I would not want to write anything large-scale in a language that doesn't have garbage collection. Direct management of memory is fucking PITA and leads extremely easily to subtle bugs that'll only bite you in the ass in production.
 

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