KSP Krakens

[Dr. Kerbal]

Tell others about kraken here.

[kerbiloid]

Krakens do not exist.

They are fictonal creatures brought by people to excuse the lack of software debugging on one hand, and lack of money to buy a normal hardware on another one.

Like always, people need somebody to accuse in their own fails and weaknesses, so they invented the Kraken as a whipping boy or a scapegoat. They even put a statue of Kraken on Bop for better effect.

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Krakens do not exist.

They are fictonal creatures brought by people to excuse the lack of software debugging on one hand, and lack of money to buy a normal hardware on another one.

Like always, people need somebody to accuse in their own fails and weaknesses, so they invented the Kraken as a whipping boy or a scapegoat. They even put a statue of Kraken on Bop for better effect.

Endless technical debt!

[Kernel Kraken]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Krakens do not exist.

They are fictonal creatures brought by people to excuse the lack of software debugging on one hand, and lack of money to buy a normal hardware on another one.

Like always, people need somebody to accuse in their own fails and weaknesses, so they invented the Kraken as a whipping boy or a scapegoat. They even put a statue of Kraken on Bop for better effect.

Yeah I get that it's due to the game often being a buggy mess and all but big squid is funny.

[Lewie]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Krakens do not exist.

They are fictonal creatures brought by people to excuse the lack of software debugging on one hand, and lack of money to buy a normal hardware on another one.

Like always, people need somebody to accuse in their own fails and weaknesses, so they invented the Kraken as a whipping boy or a scapegoat. They even put a statue of Kraken on Bop for better effect.

Yeah...I always thought of it as a term for most bugs, really. Ea, Robotic parts shaking to oblivion. I always thought of it as a joke...

Hate to be a nit-picket, but that’s not a statue of a kraken, it’s a dead kraken. Sorry.

[AlamoVampire]

personally, I think the kraken does exist in game. Is it bugs? Is it some malevolent force in the game? Is it something else? I do not know for sure. What I do know is, that the ship pictured below was my first attempt at a manned mission to Eve. That is the lander and its interplanetary stage to get it to Eve. The lander was built in 4X symmetry around the central core. During ascent it flew true with out any hint of instability. Sure mechjeb did the leg work, but, even with mechjeb ive seen imbalances destroy the craft. On the bottom of the central core is an inflatable heat shield. When inflated it covered the whole craft. There was no hint at what was coming. During entry into Eve, it flipped. The crew capsule ended up on the leading end of things. No survivors. Reverted to a quick save, no survivors. Reverted again. Same thing as before, but, I was able to dump the capsule and save the crew, then reverted again. I wanted that lander to land. No dice. All tanks were fully fueled. No idea why it kept flipping. Had to edit the kerbals back to the KSP and then deleted the craft from the tracking station and deleted the craft from the VAB. Haunted? Kraken? No clue. Just a failure at my first try to get kerbals to Eve and back.

 

 

233210062020

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, Lewie said:

Hate to be a nit-picket, but that’s not a statue of a kraken, it’s a dead kraken. Sorry.

Then it's a well-mineralized dead kraken, as it's a static object, like statues.

[kerbiloid]

58 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

personally, I think the kraken does exist in game. Is it bugs? Is it some malevolent force in the game? Is it something else?

It's probably something like calculation with limited accuracy (for better efficiency) over a set of numeric values of greater accuracy, which leads to random unpredictable result inside the accuracy range.
So, the calculation error either grows being applied to greater values, or accumulates being applied to many interacting values.

***

A simple similar example from the accountant calcs.

Say, tax is 10%.

You got  1.55 USD.

Tax = 0.155 USD → 0.16 USD.

So, you keep 90% = 1.55 * 0.9 = 1.395 USD → 1.40 USD.

You have to pay 0.16 USD of tax, and keep 1.40 USD for you = 1.56 in total. Of 1.55 which you got.

After you write 1.55 as gotten, 0.16 as tax, and 1.40 as your profit, comes a kraken tax inspector _{(he's worse)} and krakenizes you for the 0.01 of difference appeared from nowhere.

***

Something like that probably happens in KSP, just instead of taxes and profits this makes vertex coordinates to randomly shift, and the geometrical figures touching each other - randomly intersect, causing unpredictable behaviour of the physical engine,

***

To avoid that 0.01 USD you should not calculaate both values by multiplication, but define the more important one (the tax), calculate it (0.16) and subtract from the total value to get another one (1.55 - 0.16 = 1.39).

But while it's clear in the tax task which one is more important (that one which conjures the old evil force inspector), in KSP you have a pair of equitable vertices, so it requires additional voodoo to make one of them more important.

 

Edited October 7, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Okhin]

It also have to do with discretisation. Which leads us to the smaller step between two states.

In the real word, you can move an object that's 1mm to your left to be 1.1mm to your right. In computer (and in all digital systems) you might not be able to.

Depending on what's your resolution, you might have object to be exactly on one specific mm, so it can be either 1mm away of you or 2mm, or none. But not 1.1. Which means the simulated energy you put into moving the object from 1 to 1.1mm is kind of wasted. It's not really wasted, since the computational system will keep track of it. Or, more precisely, of the closest amount of energy you need to spend by respecting the sample size.

Basically, in real life, E = mc². In computer science, (int) E = (int)((int)m * (int)((int)c^2)). where (int) can be converted in math language as "belongs to N". Sure, you can use floats, but under the hood they're mostly integers with a decimal added at a specific position (which is encoded into the type, which makes float a little bit less efficient storage wise than int. 0 takes a little bit less space in RAM than 0.0 or 0.0000000000)

SO, of course, you can decide that your sample size could be small enough that it does not really have an impact on game. But then, we're simulating space. If you want to be able to have precise docking, you need a sampling size in the millimeter order. Meaning you'll store your distances as millimeters if you want an exact position. And there's a limit to the number of milimiters you can store in memory. For instance, Sun <> Pluto distance is 5,906,376,272 km, which is 5,906,376,272,000,000 mm. That's a big number., which require some thinking when choosing how you'll store it : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_(computer_science)

For instance, if you want to compute the kinetic energy of a ship, you need to use something that can contains the result of a product of an int (which is generally a double or a long int), which takes more memory. Sure, you can then downsize it, if you're not above the limit of an integer.

Or maybe, you nee millimeters only for a local system, an do not need for all your objects, a meter precision might be enough for all the craft that are not around the same planetary body than you. Then you need a conversion between both. Also, you'll loose up to half a meter of precision when entering the local system, which can be an issue if you're on a specific orbit, especially if you're close to an atmosphere (being at 70,000.5 meters above kerbin when exiting local system, can get you reentering the atmosphere on the next load).

So, yes. Kraken lies in sampling and discretisation. And RAM optimisation.

The Kraken in the non discrete beast hiding in the discretisation of the universe which makes everything looks like it's an analog universe while its not. It works most of the time, but sometimes it wakes up and eat your ships because they were questioning the discretisation of things.

[Xyphos]

SPOILER ALERT

Spoiler

 

 

Edited October 9, 2020 by Xyphos