Norpo

42 (+) [insert joke about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything here]

Stock-alike is a blanket term applied to mods that are "like stock", in the sense that they share the same art style and general feel of the stock game (without any mods) FASA is a part mod that adds parts similar to that of real-life NASA rockets, which can be downloaded here.

(quote from devnotes here, emphasis mine) Graphics are being worked on for an achievement system, currently for consoles (it seems), though the achievements may be ported to the PC versions as well. What do you think? Do you think adding achievements to the PC version is a good idea, or do you think they would take away from the games experience/immersion/charm? Do you have any ideas for achievements you'd like to see? I think an achievement system; if well implemented and with good, interesting achievements (not "recover 1,000 pieces of debris") would add a lot to the game, helping add early goals and progress indicators for new players, and add interesting challenges for experts.

That's Waypoint Manager, which allows you to see how far away you are from survey contract waypoints in-flight, and even allows you to make your own waypoints, if you want.

Seconded: While opening up discussion on a topic that was last discussed once 4 years ago, when trees were still a dream and The Mun was the only other place to go to is definitely okay; Duplicate topics where the other topic is still on the front page, and topics that show a severe lack of research before even starting the topic (is mechjeb cheating, gravity turn at 10k fails, how do I get to The Mun [with no other details added in the body other than "plz help" or "like the title says"]) are just plain annoying; A quick Google search would find the answers they need; because those horses aren't just dead; their rotting carcasses has been hauled to a garbage dump and decomposed. Not to mention the fact that the KSP forums aren't the only source of help, there's the Steam community, there's the subreddit (and the subreddit devoted to questions from new players, /r/KerbalAcademy), there's tutorials on the wiki, there's Youtube videos, etc. Even if the answers aren't in the forums, they're probably somewhere. As a rule of thumb; before starting the topic, Google the topic name, first. If you can't find your answer; then start a topic. If a topic is an obvious duplicate (i.e the main topic is on the front page), then it should be reported as such to the moderators (who can then probably merge the two threads) On the topic of forum searches, I haven't had any troubles using the advanced search; and the simple search, if you let the page load for 10 seconds or so works fine; at least from my experience. On another note; Can you (or someone else) link to any examples of these "forum members being aggressed by veteran forum members for starting a discussion which the veteran members consider as 'already discussed' "? It would help to know exactly what exactly we're discussing about; here. Also helpfully, @Tex_NL made a list of Frequently Asked Questions here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/127403-frequent-asked-questions/#comment-2315497

I use no self-imposed rules; I play Sandbox, anything goes. However, I try to think of hard, and entertaining missions. I'm currently trying to link together two asteroids in orbit around Dres (or, rather, Dres-teroids), and so far I've sent a probe to latch onto the first one. (An E class, approximately 2000 tons.) So no self-imposed rules, but loads of self-imposed challenges.

Lost? Nothing is ever lost forever on The Information Superhighway. It was backed up in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, you can read it here: http://web.archive.org/web/20151123030948/http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/entries/3184-On-criticism (The comments are also a good resource, check those out too) EDIT: Links to the other preserved dev blogs can be found here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/126166-help-save-the-dev-blags-wayback-machine-before-theyre-gone/#comment-2292329

"To appeal to a wider audience, Kerbal Space Program will have a major overhaul to the way orbital mechanics work in the next version. Orbit will be achieved by going straight up, once you achieve a specific height, you go into "No-gravity mode", and hover in place. Friction will be added to space so that you don't float away forever; And to make landing easier, parachutes will work on all bodies; including non-atmospheric ones. In other news, we're removing Sandbox mode, as it doesn't fit with the vision of the game." If that happens, I'm going to have to wonder if the devs have been replaced by aliens.

Danger Alerts 1.1 is released! Huzzah! Changes: Completely overhauled GUI, it now looks like it wasn't made just to test random things out Added a new kind of alert, "Resource Alerts", alerts you when you're running low on a resource. Completely adjustable, and you can have more than one. Changed a whole bunch of stuff on the back-end. Bug-Fixes: No bugs found, so none fixed. Download here: KerbalStuff

In the top right of the screen, there should be your name with a little down arrow next to it, click that, then on the menu that drops down select Account Settings. From there, there's a Signature option, use that.

Food Variety: Adds many different types of foods for your kerbals; compatible with any life support mod. Adds apples, pancakes, pie (of all sorts), and cookies, for those long interplanetary missions. Everything is fragile: Reduces impact tolerance of all parts to 10%; most parts now explode at ~0.7 m/s. "Fun" for attempting Tylo landings! Moho or Bust: Replaces all contract mentions of "The Mun" to "Moho", perfect for the player that thinks early career mode is too easy. Everything is a booster: Adds SolidFuel and a solid rocket engine to every single part. (These "improvised" boosters can go off completely randomly with no user input however. No way to turn off the mod.)

Problem is; without being able to reproduce it reliably; it's very hard to track down the bug; while the bug IS very bad (randomly destroying crafts is usually considered "bad") it's likely very hard to fix. That said, I'd imagine the issue has something to do with the fact that KSP recenters the origin on the craft position (in other words, resetting the craft position in the world space to 0,0,0, and moving everything else entirely), and the buildings for one short moment overlapping the craft. I can't know for sure, though, that's just a guess. Still; that's the first time I've seen it happen in orbit (usually it happens on approach with the runway, with a plane going fast), so it seems to happen less frequently the further you go from Kerbin. That could be a clue. Also, the KSC is visible from orbit, so yes, it is being rendered while in orbit, which means the "crashing into the KSC in orbit" bug is very likely the same bug as "crashing into the KSC on runway approach" bug. </speculation>

It impacts fps a bit for sure; but there's literally no risk at all in installing it; you can uninstall it again and it won't affect anything. And it makes the game look so much nicer; I'd say if you're not currently running up against your part limit often; it's worth it. You can always uninstall it again, and it's a small download.

I like the idea; I don't like the execution. The basic concept is basically "People ask questions, people post answers, the best answers get voted to the top." To any programmer who's used Google before, this should sound familiar. Problem is; Stack Overflow (and the whole Stack Exchange network) depend on five core things: 1. Back-and forth asking-questions-getting-answers and clarifications are non-ideal. Avoid this. 2. Don't repeat answers. 3. If you find an answer that needs editing to make it better, edit it (or comment on the answers to make suggest an edit to the OP) 4: The question asker can mark an answer as "accepted", i.e it worked for them. This means the answer will be at the top; for all to see. 5: No opinion-based questions, period. "What's the best X" or "is it better to X or Y?" are locked, deleted, cast into the void. Problem is, this has none of that. EDIT2: Apparently it has the "best answer" feature, but that's it. My mistake. It's more akin to a free-for-all Yahoo Answers style thing, and that's not ideal (have you seen yahoo answers? I've never once found useful advice there) Not to mention most questions asked here would most likely a back-and-forth troubleshooting ordeal, as in "I haz problem!" "Give us a picture, we can help" "Okay, here's the picture" "Try moving the wings back" "It just flips out more, then", "Try moving them forward a bit" "That worked, thanks" Not to mention it's basically a forum with a voting system tacked on, rather than being built around the voting system. The only reason question/answer/voting systems work at all is because they're built around it. On Reddit, you can reply to a post, and that will be voted up, but if someone replies to the reply, then that reply will be stuck onto the original one, so you can see it. In this system, if you want to say "But Norpo, you're wrong because X", you need to make a new post, quoting me, which may or may not end up being right next to my original post. That's bad; discussion over an answer should occur on that answer, not as an answer itself. Stack Exchange sites take a slightly different approach, there's a question, there are answers, and there are comments. Comments can be used for clarification on questions ("when you say you have a 1 Mbit internet connection, do you mean Mbit or Mbyte?"), or on answers ("What do you mean when you say add more wings to the back, exactly?"), to make those better. Furthermore, duplicate answers will be voted down furiously to the bottom, meaning that at the top (non-negative scores, btw, this forum only has upvotes, another discussion entirely) will be unique answers. This, though? This is just a forum with a voting system tacked on. The topic involves lots of back-and-forth communcation, which the current implementation discourages, comments and "answers" aren't distinguished from one another, so it's a mess of "Is this really an answer, or a comment about an answer?", comments aren't always bundled by the relevant context, and it's not really clear what votes should be used for. It's a mess, plain and simple. The only way it could work is if everyone upvotes only actual answers, and even then it's still worse than what it's trying to emulate; you can't "comment" on a question or answer, you can just provide your answer. That's it. It could work; but it'd be more of a "Stack Exchange site"-lite rather than working very well. Where would opinion-based questions go? Here? That wouldn't work with this system at all. In fact; this very question is an example; rating as the default sorting method doesn't work all that well, heck, the top rated answer refers to a previous point in the discussion, and outright says "And by using sort by rating as the default value you'll make discussions hard to follow"; and I agree. TL;DR: forum + sort by rating - comment system = mess For those curious, this is an example of a Stack Overflow question; with answers, and commentary (by me!) EDIT: Follow-up, also, what about the two ordering systems? There will be those that want to follow the stack overflow-esque style of just questions/answers/comments (no comments though in the forums, so we can't use those, which is a mess), and those that want to do a discussion. So you'll have two different types of people; making posts in two different formats. It would be a little bit like having the threads be half in modern-day english, and half like it was written in the 16th century. Possible to read; but difficult to follow.

A little more information would help a bit. What's the computers CPU like? That's usually considered the most limiting factor in KSP performance. Other than that, I don't know much else to do other than lower the settings a bit more; sorry.

Hm, interesting theory, I checked the source code again and it turns out to be true, I found this snippet: <ins class='adsbygoogle' style='display:inline-block;width:336px;height:280px' data-ad-client='ca-pub-0872806560470080' data-ad-slot='6072554020'></ins><script>(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});</script> ...I also found similar snippets scattered throughout the site. So yes, the website creator is probably pushing ads in it; it would explain a lot; like how/why the website is still up after all this time. They can probably afford to do so. Of course, hiding the ads probably goes against every rule in the google analytics book, but meh. Other people have also found this; we're not the first. ...Clever. I don't understand the response, but there HAS to be a meaning to it! (or maybe the creator just put random jpegs in and is trolling us) The creator is a genius, either way. Or just completely insane. Exactly. yyyyyyy.info is ART. By some definitions, anyways. Either that or a very clever money-grabbing scheme: see top quote. Tip for those looking to dig deeper: Google "yyyyyyy.info", you will find results. But probably no answers. I've also discovered a another, closely related site, that may or may not be by the same person: http://www.yyyyyyy.space/

It looks like someone tried to make a web-designing AI... ...Apparently, it found Geocities. Really though, it seems like someone was just purposefully trying to make a terrible websites; I found a few fun snippets in the source code, however, the snippets seem a little... off. Like it was scraping random forum questions, and then eventually meta-comments about the site itself. Truly, this is weird. A few quotes (many are abruptly cut off) "Hey everyone, I have a bunch of objects (30+, each very simple geometry), spread out in the x and z axis. They all lay on on the same y value. What I want to do is have them twirl around in a vortex, then \"flush\" down into a single point. I was thinking of using the vortex field to have them twirl, but I have no" "This is inside my imaginary house, at the moment this is the only room that's finished, unless you count stairs and hallways. I had plants in the corner but took them out as they took about a week to render." "I think there are 3 possibilities of this sight >someone [CENSORED]ed up a code >someone knew exactly what they were doing and had A LOT of free time >secret trading sight for secret data" (had to censor, forums and all that) ...But we're not the first ones to stumble upon this site, http://yyyyyyydotinfo.tumblr.com/ is a site dedicated to "share the neat things I find there". Apparently, the site (that is, yyyyyyy.info) also changes every refresh. What is this site? What is it for? Who made it? Why was it created? Truly these are mysteries to behold; and lo; I have... beholded them? I don't know anymore. I have seen y seven times dot info. I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth, put out my hand, and touched the face of God. I have seen it all; and it was right there. In front of me. The secrets of the universe, in this site. It just takes the right mindset to see it. But I could not understand it. The worlds greatest thinkers must study this site. It is wonderful. ...But why is this not known? Why is it shoved in the backs of societies collective mind? Why is it not as known as, say, Zombocom? We may never know, but this is still a brilliant piece of art, and should be seen by the world. We have struck gold, here, at y seven times dot info. y seven times dot info is the internet. y seven times dot info is LIFE.

It looks like this: Seriously, Wikipedia alone is basically the information in the HHGTTG, let alone what the rest of the internet has. Not to mention most smartphones can contact others, store (and take) pictures, all things that The Guide couldn't. We don't need to wonder what a real life one looks like; we already have one. Only problem is is that it doesn't have the storage capacity of all of Wikipedia on it, so it needs an internet connection.. But if you live in a place with a decent cell connection, that's practically a non-issue. Even then, you could just download a survival guide that contains pretty much all you'd need to know if you get lost when you go to the woods or something like that for future reading.

The WYSIWYG way is to use the "eye" in the editor, it's between the smiley and the table. From there, you can type whatever you want in the spoiler.

On the topic of unofficial names, I've also heard them called spesos (i.e space pesos, pesos are a mexican currency), "kerbucks", and simply, of course, "money" But yeah, officially they're called Funds.

Hm, odd, until it can be reproduced though, I'm going to assume that it's a KSP-side error and not a Danger Alerts error; When crashing at high velocities the game can sometimes crash as well in my experience. It's rare, but it can happen. Still, I'll be on the look-out for it happening in my game. As for the "fields not lined up" bit, that's mildly intentional, a quick hack, and it bugs me too. It will be fixed in the next release of Danger Alerts, along with the new GUI design for supporting settings for multiple types of alerts. The current (old) GUI was never meant to be pretty, it just had to work until I had the patience and knowledge to make a better one. Hopefully this answered your questions, @linuxgurugamer

I'll look into RasterPropMonitor if I want to try to get it working with IVAs, thanks for the suggestion. That's probably *way* in the future though for now. As for DangIt integration, I kind of want the alerts to remain consistent and not fail themselves; I would *hate* to have an alert going off randomly, meaning I have to go into the settings, turn off the sound, then remember to turn the sound on again after I fix it... Still, if enough people suggest it, it can probably be done. I kind of see the alerts being a convenience feature more than anything though; like action groups. But DangIt integration is probably not going to be here for a while; so that may change between now and then, who knows. Working on getting it in the CKAN right now; stay tuned. For some reason netkan.exe seems to be giving me an error validating the file even though I followed the instructions, and I don't want to risk submitting a file to the repository that doesn't work. Still; it's being worked on and is currently top priority. EDIT: The mod is currently being indexed in the CKAN, if it's not in the CKAN now, it should be very soon. Now! It's available in CKAN now. In other news; progress! Low fuel/resource alerts are possible (and easier than I thought), the only problem is implementing it well, I'm thinking it would be best to let the user decide which resources they want alerts for; and how important the alert is for them. If I do that; then it also means it is, by definition; mod compatible, and with ANY mod that adds resources. The only problem is implementing it like that requires me to implement a new GUI, and possibly "alert priorities", and some other things to keep the code neat and clean, so it's easier in the future to add more alerts. Better to get things done right the second time around; than never at all, right? Therefore; the next update to Danger Alerts will probably have to add everything in one fell swoop; new GUI, new alert priority system, new alert-backend system; everything. Better to get everything done right, then release, than release an almost-done-but-not-quite feature which will be near-useless and just annoying. In other words; the next release will take a while, but it will come with a lot of new features and (hopefully) improve the mod. Also, Danger Alerts was featured in Modding Monday, which is nice.

Thanks! I actually hadn't thought about DangIt integration; I'll add it to the list of possibilities, though it will be somewhat low priority for now. I'd like to get my mod playing nice entirely with stock before thinking about getting it to work with other mods. Interesting about the CKAN bit; I'll look into getting it into the CKAN as soon as possible. As far as I can tell it's just raising a GitHub issue with a formatted file attached, so it shouldn't be too hard... Getting it on the CKAN will make it accessable to more users; so I'll work on that right away. I'd like to avoid blatant references in the sounds; copyright and all that, plus keeping it somewhat stockalike. Nothings stopping you from changing the sounds in your own install, however In theory, you can set the sound to anything, just replace the normalAlert.wav in GameData/DangerAlerts/Sounds to any other file (just be sure it's named normalAlert.wav, and that it's actually a .wav file, no idea if it will accept an .mp3, but I haven't tried )

@katateochi, Low fuel alerts are definitely planned, life support is more of a "maybe", some mods already implement alerts for that, but if I get fuel alerts working then I'm sure it would be possible to get low life support alerts working; life support is just another type of fuel, after all. As for the life support sound, in theory if I add a sound specific to life support, then any sound could be put in there by just replacing a file, so if I put in a life support alert you could put in any sound you want in there. v1.0.2/v1.1 update: The mod is functional, such as it is, but it's definitely not finished, as I'll want to add more alerts soon, and currently the code barely has any sort of support for multiple alerts, so I'll have to rewrite quite a bit of code. That's okay, though, it needed rewriting anyways. I was getting tired of looking at that quick hack that is DangerAlertCore's Update() method anyways. After I add extra alerts, I want to add an "overview" screen, like the stock engineers report, but in-flight. It will include all the alerts currently active, like low-electrical charge, and the like. That way Danger Alerts won't just be for landing on planets, it will be for in-flight, making-sure-everything-is-okay. That's in the future though; right now the goal is to get the collision alert working so that it has fewer false alarms, making the code support different alarms better, and getting the GUI to look like it wasn't cobbled together in a few minutes because I needed a GUI to test settings (..which is actually the truth). After that however; more alerts and functionality is the goal, including low-fuel/electricity alerts and life support alerts. If the new GUI and rewrites get done fast enough; the next update will probably have low-fuel alerts, or a heat alert. Also, KSP 1.1 is coming sometime in early 2016, with Unity 5, which means that I may have to spend a bit of time fixing things once that comes out. ...In other news, Danger Alerts has over 250 downloads! Here's my current to-do list, for anyone interested. As always, suggestions, and bug reports are always welcome.

I will say this; even if the Vector is imbalanced/balanced, it's really fun to play with. There was a big discussion over this a while back, and someone made a good point; it's not balanced with the other 1.25m engines, but it's TWR is in the same tier as the 3.75m/NASA parts. The reason it seems so out of place is because it is, it's TWR is in the same tier as the 3.75m engines, not the underpowered 1.25m engines. It's balanced out in Career mode by being unlocked roughly around the same time as the 3.75m engines, and costing about the same. It just so happens to actually be a 1.25m engine.