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Everything posted by starcaptain
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I sometimes have this habit of looking at whole numbers and adding their digits together to reduce them, until they're reduced to one digit. I wonder if there's a way to turn it into an algorithm. Example of what I'm taking about; I'll type in a random number. 785655 7+8+5+6+5+5 = 36 3+6 = 9. Is there a name for this?
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Everyone should post in this every day.
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Weirdest space fact that you know
starcaptain replied to sir rocket's topic in Science & Spaceflight
The Sun is no longer the most spherical object we know of. LIGO tried to observe the gravity waves emitted from known pulsars and verified that even though they spin at tremendous speed, the variability of one side of a neutron star to the other is infinitesimal. We're talking nanometers or less of spheroidicity for solid objects many kilometers across, which is far finer than the nebulous atmosphere of our Sun. This may or may not be a wrench in the works of the idea of nuclear pasta, and is a subject of ongoing research. (Nuclear pasta is what some atomic configurations are called, which are theorized to exist in netron star atmospheres. At high levels, atoms blob together, forming nuclear gnocci. At mid levels, these blobs become quite long, becoming nuclear spaghetti. At deeper levels, the noodles form sheets all composed of many atoms smeared together, called nuclear lasagna. ) -
I prepared dinner for my wife, and wrote down the cinnamon bun recipe I'll be using to treat my family, come Christmas.
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Weirdest space fact that you know
starcaptain replied to sir rocket's topic in Science & Spaceflight
Baking in microgravity works about 1/4 speed. Due to lack of convection, heat only works by radiation. The first cookies baked in space took 45 minutes, as well as almost half an hour to cool. Worst of all, the astronauts didn't get to eat them! The cookies had to be returned to earth for study! -
The Spacecraft That Could Allow Interstellar Travel
starcaptain replied to caballerodiez's topic in The Lounge
They're famous for being overly enthusiastic about potential technologies, but often scant on the technical details wherein the devil lies. The article is not very specific in explaining exactly what is Caballero's vehicle concept. It mentions a variety of technologies and crosslinks other PopMech articles but is not very deep about any of them. This is the paper the article refers to. Alberto Caballero's Solar One , unsatisfied with the payload capacity of the Breakthrough StarShot proposal, thought of his own interstellar spacecraft config. It would use a DE-STAR array and a mile-across version of NASA's Sunjammer Lightsail for acceleration, and an onboard portable nuclear fission reactor to power 1TW lasers for the decelleration phase. It also contains this unexplained paragraph: The paper proposes no solutions for structures, mission management, communication, crew resources (it's a manned mission, by the way), and only trace mention for cyro-sleep (NASA's TORPOR project) and protection from subluminal impacts and micrometeorites. Well I'd probably overcome these problems by using a smaller simpler spacecraft whereby there are fewer question marks for safety, and so it's not as big of a deal if it fails somehow. In other words, I favor Breakthrough Starshot by comparison. It may be unwise to go for interstellar missions manned before anything else. -
Wherehaps you heard this informational data content?
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How Flexible Will Game Progression Be?
starcaptain replied to Multivac's topic in Prelaunch KSP2 Discussion
Game progression in my mind is almost certainly going to be bound to just tech limits, just like how Civilization games are. And as for "flexible" gameplay in that regard, I think of two things KSP and Civ" have in common: you choosing where you build, and tech bottlenecks. Seeing as players can put operating bases literally anywhere except floating in the sky[citation needed] the ease and operability of your colonies and launch sites is entirely up to you. This is just like how you can make things harder or easier or strategic for yourself where you put your settlers to start new cities. Near resources? Near a practical landmass? Stuck between mountains? Two doors down? It's your choice. Tech Bottlenecks refers to how the technology tree works. In Civ 5, you MUST research a handful of techs at certain junctures or else you cannot progress further scientifically. If you open up this tree, you'll see that: In the first half of the Ancient Era, you MUST research Pottery, Animal Husbandry, Archery, and Mining. Or else you cannot research past the Industrial era. In the first half of the Medieval Era, you MUST research Theology, Civil Service, Guilds, and Metal Casting. Or else you cannot research past the Modern era. Bottlenecks ensure players conform certain aspects of their design to certain ideas in order to make sure they don't spend too long trying to optimize older gameplay methods. Only opening new innovations when players are hoping for them.- 19 replies
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Props go to the underappreaciated team members, like Programmers, Producers, Tool Developers, and vague job titles like "Additional Content Creators".
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Developer Insights #7 - KSP 2 UX Architects
starcaptain replied to a topic in Prelaunch KSP2 Discussion
I can imagine how daunting the UI/UX task must be for Kerbal Space Program 2. There is A LOT of information to convey even to do something pretty basic. Simplification and streamlining such an interdisciplinary field as play-toy rocket science means there's so many things that must be explained easily through text, sight, sound or action, without sacrificing accuracy of the ideas they're related to. Multiplying that requirement by the number of technologies that are counterintuitive to everyday life (MOST OF THEM) and then another heaping helpful that are speculative and based on future ideas that haven't even been built yet, sheesh. -
Developer Insights #7 - KSP 2 UX Architects
starcaptain replied to a topic in Prelaunch KSP2 Discussion
One subtle thing I can think of when it comes to camera action in the UX: subtle but it bothers me. Camera shake. Camera shake as it existed in KSP1 only made sense when it came to explosions or perhaps some collisions. It had the effect of adding some animated noise to the position of the camera with reference to the player's movement handle. The shake made no sense at all when the vessel was experiencing high-G load or high velocities in-atmosphere. In those conditions, the shake would make more sense as some kind of pull or lean in the direction of the forces. How to implement that, I'm not sure. But I always think of one scene in a movie that did that trick well: The Polar Express. Notice how the camera gets pulled down. That's the visual feel I'd hope for. -
Weirdest space fact that you know
starcaptain replied to sir rocket's topic in Science & Spaceflight
The main limiting factor of why we can't reproduce in space is that a lack of gravity [very likely] hampers the development of a proper cardiovascular structure for a human being. Without the pressure and resistance caused by gravity stresses, an infant's heart would be only strong enough to survive nominal and low-stress microgravity conditions. The physical stresses of being born would [very likely] be fatal. -
I agree with RealKerbal3x. Though exactly what kind of reactors those be is just going to come down to probably "cylinder" shape, "pokey ball" shape, each available in a few sizes and a couple color schemes, and let the flavor text do the rest of the talking for how powerful they are and how long they last until you gotta wack em with a wrench.
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Well the thing is, KSP1 has already actually demonstrated a lot of the benefits and requirements of beamed power indirectly with the communication network thing. Beamed power drops off over distances and requires line of sight between transmitter and user. This makes it tricky to use over long distances or when maneuvering around bodies. I would think that beamed power would be simply explained as "beam power" and not get into the particulars of its visible, infrared, microwave or whatever. Keep it simple, put the details in the KSPedia. Like lots of other things that look gamebreaky in KSP2, my bet is that more powerful tech requires more grind or resources to set up in the first place. A large power generating and transmitting station, for example.
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yes i would like 1 hype please
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How often do you read someone's signature?
starcaptain replied to Miguelsgamingch's topic in The Lounge
The Aziz has a hilarious signature and I always get a crack out of reading it. AlamoVampire's signature basically looks like what I would put if the whole KSP ribbons thing was prettier. Master39's is always eyecatching. -
Voice Actor for KSP 2 Tutorials
starcaptain replied to QvestionAnswerNeeded's topic in Prelaunch KSP2 Discussion
Michael Gambon Brian Blessed Morgan Freeman Maggie Smith James Arnold Taylor Tara Strong John de Lancie Edit: We'd all vote for Sir Christopher Lee if we could. RIP Saruman- 25 replies
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Weirdest space fact that you know
starcaptain replied to sir rocket's topic in Science & Spaceflight
A boring but fiesable solution for both is a hardsuit, the kind that have interlinked pressure vessels surrounding the person. However these have major movement limitations. -
I'm actually thinking about how borders are supposed to be represented in the game, even if they did exist. Like in real life: imagine you were by yourself on planet Earth, with all the buildings there and your little rocket ship to go where you pleased. If you go to places like Russia or Korea or India, you'll see that borders are a thing. But they're just fences. They don't really mean anything unless you have radio chatter snarking at you, telling you to please leave or somesuch. And even if they were implemented somehow, it would not fit in the gameplay core to punish the player for violating airspace-- a distinctive that would vanish if they went high enough anyway. National representation in the game I think is just as cosmetic as the flag you choose. Having rival nations or rival space programs doesn't really fit in my mind with what the game is supposed to be.
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Weirdest space fact that you know
starcaptain replied to sir rocket's topic in Science & Spaceflight
There is such a thing as a black hole that stuffs its gob so fast and generates so much radiation and stuff that it pushes the thing it's eating away. This is called the Eddington limit. -
Kombucha Kefir Kernals Kumquats Ketchup Kale Kiwis Kola nuts Kangaroo meat Korn
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Sub-oceanic trigonal star-map (Knights of the Old Republic) Lightning (if weather systems are present), which on extremely rare occasions will interfere with controls No shortage of flavor text references to various books and movies I think we already have walnut Iapetus reference. Now we need a Death-Star/Pac-Man Mimas reference, and Mass Relay-sticking-out-of-the-surface Charon reference.
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Returning, New, and Speculated Planets of KSP 2
starcaptain replied to a topic in Prelaunch KSP2 Discussion
I want a planet that has mountains taller than its atmosphere. There was a planet like this I think in one of the planet packs for KSP1 but i should hope if involved at all it's a much more interesting environ. Figure 2: the Rover used at this location