KevinTMC

My fondness for old versions has a lot to do with what challenges I took on at the time. After trying and instantly falling in love with the demo (0.13.3), I bought the game when it was on 0.15.2. One's first missions--and especially first landing on Mun--will always be special and make that version of the game dear to one's heart...and there was something about the more cartoony and explodey wacky vibe of those early versions that I miss sometimes too. My first forum-driven missions were done in 0.21.1 for the "Doing It Apollo Style" and "Duna Apollo Style" challenges. (My thread recounting my entries in both can still be found here for historical interest. I'm still particularly proud of my engineering and piloting/docking feats on the Duna mission, and think I told the story reasonably well in the Imgur albums too.) After those milestones came the Better Than Starting Manned era, which for me ran from 0.25 (the version I started the "'Better Than Starting Manned' Career Challenge" with, and played BTSM the most on) until FlowerChild understandably got worn out with updates after 1.0.4. My Munar landing on Tier 6 of the Challenge (I dubbed my efforts on that tier "Project Fugu") was a special moment, almost like the first time all over again; but I was proudest of and remember most fondly my Tier 7 missions ("Project Guanaco"), which among other achievements sent a massive convoy to Minmus, which was wildly successful with biome exploration while also fulfilling some sometimes-wacky contracts. Through a combination of life evolving and getting busier, concern over reports of enduring and pesky bugs as more recent versions have rolled out, and never quite getting over the loss of BTSM, I've not managed to get back into the game to the same degree at any point post-1.0.4. (Though I do have an Apollo 11 replica project that I started around the time of the 50th anniversary--all stock parts except for the addition of kOS, so I can automate as much of the flight plan as possible--that's been fun to work on, and that I may even finish before the 55th anniversary. I very much hope the final iteration of 1.12.x is solid enough for me to migrate that project to.)

I also purchased directly from the store (and have not elected to transfer it to Steam). Nevertheless, I know my answer to the question of "how many hours?" with certainty and precision: NOT ENOUGH

Always meant to give Orbiter a spin, especially since HarvesteR himself was into it and it helped inspire KSP. Project Space Station looks rather like a precursor to Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space, which I've played a fair bit of (both the original and the 2013 remake, Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager). Might just have to see if I can get Project Space Station running in an emulator. As for your total-geek-girl historical expertise, I might have to pick your brain a bit about Apollo. One KSP project that I've been tinkering with for a little while is an Apollo 11 replica mission. I've put together the most similar craft I can using stock parts; I hope I'm at least in the ballpark aesthetics-wise, but where I really want to nail the verisimilitude is in the actual flight plan. Have started to learn my way around kOS (okay, so now the craft is stock parts plus kOS units) so I can program flight sequences rather than fly them all by hand...this will make for a better simulation in many respects. There are, however, a few details that have been hard to nail down, even after consulting some flight manuals and reports available online. For instance, I've gotten stuck trying to figure out the orientation of the craft (relative to direction of travel) during transposition-docking-extraction. I am also kinda sketchy on precisely what maneuvers the CSM/LM stack and S-IVB subsequently performed to establish a safe distance and then inject the latter onto a heliocentric trajectory. Anyhow, speaking of programming (and oh dear, this is where I'm really going to get self-indulgent, isn't it)... The C-128 was sweet! We had one of those at the computer store too (new, not on consignment, so yet more solidly out of my price range than the SX-64). Modest FPS or no, sounds like you got way beyond the few stabs I took at programming game-type substances. Knew my way around Applesoft BASIC (I had an Apple II+ that was later upgraded to a IIe), but never got far in machine language. Mostly I tinkered with and expanded games that I had typed in from some books and magazines that I picked up at the science museum. Wasn't too bad at that. Once I tried creating a graphical game from scratch, a simple drop-ball-onto-target thing...boy did that turn out lame. There was not even the slightest approximation of physics; the ball just went on a pre-scripted trajectory based on when the player hit the space bar to drop the (moving) ball. At least it was a polite program--it began by asking for the player's name, then responded with PRINT N$;" IS A NICE NAME." (I see some eyerolls out there...I was still in grade school, okay?) More of a success was the program I wrote (as a high schooler) to create banners, which I printed out on continuous rolls of paper fed into my trusty Epson FX-80 dot matrix printer. (I remember spending a good long while mapping out the letter forms on millimeter graph paper.) Even earned a little pocket money making banners for the odd birthday or retirement party...until Brøderbund put me out of business by releasing The Print Shop. Still not a patch on your lunar lander simulator I think (certainly not as fun surely)...but clearly I'm still proud enough of the project to blather about it here.

Glad you enjoyed them! Yes, I wish I'd gotten pictures of the incident too. Guess I was too busy panicking...er, I mean managing a crisis situation with uncanny poise and a steady hand. I liked your album as well. (Got a good chuckle out of "Did anybody bother to spell check this thing before we left?") You and razark are tempting me to go off on an Infocom/interactive fiction tangent. (I have fond memories not only of the games, but also of some of the more peculiar machines I ran them on. Zork on an Osborne 1 running CP/M, in a college computer lab. Plundered Hearts on a Commodore SX-64 that was on consignment in a computer store where I was working...wish I'd bought that machine off the floor myself. The original Colossal Cave Adventure on a dumb terminal dialed in to a campus mainframe via 150-baud acoustic coupler.) (In related news, I may be getting old.) Thanks so much for starting this thread....I'm enjoying it enough that I've gotten the "Sorry, you cannot add any more reactions today" message after trying to hit too many Like buttons.

The following year, I did a series of Apollo-style challenges, which I gave full coverage in a forum thread (which still exists--yay!--but with broken table-of-contents links and obnoxious Photobucket watermarks--boo!). I bring it up here in part because the mission RobertaME shared at the top of the thread involved old-school fairings cobbled together from structural panels...and I certainly indulged in that here. Witness my Apollo K-X rocket at launch: (Frame rate in the early stages of flight was...not spectacular.) That Apollo-style mission to Duna is still one of my favorites. For the curious, it's documented in two Imgur albums. Part I (29 images, annotated; includes images of mission control and master checklist) Part II (36 images, annotated)

I, too, am still struggling to adapt. Career mode never quite feels right, and isn't truly fun for me, or well-structured and challenging in just the right way, like BTSM was. The time I spent working my way through Death Engineering's BTSM Challenge was truly epic. (I still have half a notion to go back and wrap up Tier 8 someday. Project Heffalump fell by the wayside when I couldn't decide how much contract grinding to do while my first interplanetary missions were en route...and I started running out of free time around then anyway, a situation which has been all too persistent since.) Maybe I should experiment with new career-oriented plugins when I have the time; maybe I should just give up on career progression and find a new challenge to take on in sandbox mode. Anyhow, looking farther back...for many of us, there's no memory quite like the first successful Mun landing. For me that came in 2012. (In my sig, I mention having played since version 0.15, and I'm sure that's where this happened; but in looking up my earliest posts I'm reminded that I did play around some with the 0.13.3 demo version first.) From my very first thread in this forum, here's the list of achievements I set for myself along that path, after realizing how much of a challenge it was going to be, and how many things could go wrong: 1. Reach the surface of Mun 2. Leave non-exploded parts on the surface of Mun 3. Leave a non-exploded capsule containing live kerbonauts on the surface of Mun 4. Leave a complete lander, still with all its parts, on the surface of Mun 5. Leave a complete lander, still with all its parts and upright, on the surface of Mun 6. Leave a complete lander, still with all its parts and upright and with some remaining fuel, on the surface of Mun 7. Land on Mun completely intact, and then take off again 8. Land on Mun completely intact, take off again, and escape Munar SoI 9. Land on Mun completely intact, take off again, escape Munar orbit, and enter Kerbin orbit 10. Land on Mun completely intact, take off again, escape Munar orbit, enter Kerbin orbit, and return safely to Kerbin surface I did achieve all 10 objectives in the end--though checked them off very nearly one mission at a time, if I recall correctly. I've rescued screenshots of that first Mun project from Photobucket (gosh, it has been a while hasn't it?). Cast your eyes on the booster-festooned asparagus beauty that got my Kerbonauts there and (eventually) back:

Oh, is the patcher working these days? I hadn't given that method a try for quite a while.

I'm sorry tone doesn't come across well in forums. I'm quite aware of the longer history of the Kraken (stretching from old Scandinavian lore to more recent mariners' tales). I just thought it was cute that the Kraken is a beloved/dreaded part of KSP history...and now there's going to be an NHL team named the Kraken. (And hey, it's always possible that there's a KSP player out there who works for the new franchise, and is thus extra-pleased with the team name rollout today.)

Well, see, I've been around for awhile (since version 0.15 to be precise)... https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Deep_Space_Kraken

I'm not saying Seattle (where Boeing was founded, and home to an excellent Museum of Flight) had Kerbal Space Program in mind when they named their new NHL team... ...but I'm not saying they didn't either. Going to have to make a new mission flag or three from this, for sure.

Both pictures are 1.10. I haven't observed anything similar--or at least as dramatic--in 1.7.3. Also, I have CELESTIAL_BODIES_CAST_SHADOWS set to False...had thought that might stop it, but had no effect.

In 1.10, I've been seeing a fair bit of flickering from the lighting, as shown below. Also, large slices of some craft have blinked to black and then back again. Performance generally in flight scenes has occasionally gone very poor. Not sure whether the problem is my computer (which is not especially new or powerful), some new inefficiency in the program that is affecting me (1.7.3 runs better on the same machine), or what. Any advice or suggestions for further experimentation would be welcome.

I'm making the jump from 1.7.3 to 1.10; one of the things I haven't seen in the intervening changelogs is any mention of fixing the Munar Excursion Module's weight distribution and RCS thrust. Have I missed anything? And if I haven't...are there any plans to address the M.E.M.'s wonkiness, or is it just going to stay like that?

I managed to destroy the physics of an entire savefile by doing this in an earlier version of KSP. (All the attached craft got weird and noodly...and that was just for starters.) Is it no longer dangerous to attempt this? Would be nice if it is no longer so treacherous. I've been afraid to use the Klaw ever since.

Me too. I feel like an utter fool for having trusted Squad on this. (And I feel so very disappointed to have to say that. I love this game, and the team that made it.) We seem to be getting the silent treatment on this subject now...but I would like to add my voice to those calling for something to help us out...brief access to our old subscriptions lists, or something. I may learn to live with the awful new whitewhitewhite look...I may learn to deal with everything from code to smart quotes being broken in old posts...I may even manage to wrap my mind around this least intuitive and most bizarre set of forum controls I've ever encountered...but with subscriptions gone forever and the beautiful simple functionality of the /subscription.php screen seemingly gone as well, that's really the last straw preventing me from giving the new setup much of a try.

Roger this. One of the things that could bear both better documentation, and rationalization and simplification, is the plethora of options in the settings screen. The graphics settings in particular are obscure to the ordinary user (and it's hard, even testing things out in-game, to tell if one has made appropriate adjustments...or even changed anything at all with the adjustments). And the control settings have gotten especially baroque and labyrinthine...I'm not even sure what my Rumblepad will do outside of basic flight situations anymore, or what I meant for them to do. I had figured out a lot of it long ago, mostly by trial-and-error...but changes in the settings file over recent versions have left me more lost than I was before. (And that, by the way, has been one of the biggest headaches of upgrading from one version of KSP to the next: having to fire up WinMerge and reconcile the new default config file with the one I'd customized for the last version. The other great headache, of course, is mod updating and reinstallation--a situation which I can only hope will stabilize more once KSP has left beta...or whatever else you want to call the state of affairs of being a more-or-less finished product and less in flux.)

Well, feel free to share your progress (or lack thereof), and don't be a stranger to the forums! As I'm sure you've started to see already, there are a lot of knowledgeable and helpful people about. Just whatever you do, don't ask Max for help...

I'm not offended by the Steam key, but was really hoping this package would include the game on old-school physical media, as owning an official KSP DVD would have just made my heart happy. Even if the game isn't exactly final by the scheduled ship date of November, I would certainly expect it to be in a more stable and polished state than it is now, making the permanence of a disc less weird and impractical...though again, maybe I'm just old and silly, but even a disc that wasn't terribly useful for very long would delight me. Such a disc could be made extra-nice if it included a curated collection of top mods (one of the Civ IV releases did this, if I recall correctly), along with assorted making-of stuffeths and whatever else they felt like putting on there. Or--here's a crazy and probably dumb idea--maybe even some temporarily-exclusive content? (There's enough of us real KSP fanatics out there that I'm confident getting, say, a haf-dozen new parts or a little in-game feature a few months ahead of everyone else would produce a non-trivial number of Gamer's Edition sales.) At any rate, I came close to pulling the trigger on this one even though it's a bit disappointing...but that's still a lot of money (that I don't exactly have in my pocket dying to be spent) for not a lot that's really truly gripping. It seems that a lot of people feel the same: the campaign is certainly off to a slow start. If they asked me, I'd advise suspending it for some retooling. If any of what is currently on offer were available separately later, I'd be most interested in the figurines, if the final product turns out to be decent quality. (I don't know quite what to expect there though...does anyone else have a well-founded hunch?) And of course I'd really want Val included.

That would have been a smarter way of going about it, yes. (But then I would have had to go to the trouble of copying the -popupwindow flag over from one shortcut to another...and at the time I suppose that felt like too much work. ) But again, bottom line: I just wanted to make sure that Squad were aware that KSP is, in a limited way, paying attention to what is in the "Start in" field when launched from a Windows shortcut. My guess is that they'd prefer for whatever might be in that field to be ignored altogether (which it seems to be once the program has fully launched).

Oh, it was easy for me to do this. Step one: Create a shortcut that points to C:\KSP_win\KSP.exe. The "Start in" field will naturally be populated with C:\KSP_win. Step two: Make a copy of this shortcut, changing the target to C:\KSP_win_nomod\KSP.exe...but forget to change the directory listed in "Start in". Step three: ??? Step four: PROFIT! As I said, it was caused by my own stupidity, but I thought I should mention it, especially in case there might be people out there who are wanting to redirect their KSP data to another directory. (In which case they'd surely be disappointed that only KSP.log, PartDatabase.cfg, and Physics.cfg moved when they attempted to change the reference directory.)

I previously reported that a craft consisting of just one Mk16 Parachute and one MK1 Command Pod had slammed into the ground at over 16 m/s when descending over land (land altitude was a few hundred meters--not especially high), after a descent that had been gentle until the last 500m, when the parachute's full deployment had been slow to kick in. I've been unable to replicate that precisely. I hadn't even come close, in fact (which surprised me, since prior to that crash, I'd had several rather close calls...some over water and some over KSC). Until just now, when I experienced what certainly felt like a close shave. This time, the craft had a service bay and heat shield attached to the bottom of the Mk16 chute and Mk1 pod. The parachute fully deployed over water--again at the default setting of 500m--with speed between 100 and 105 m/s right before deployment. The chute did manage to bring the craft under 7 m/s for landing, but only after it had dropped below 130m. The craft seemed to spend a longer time than usual at around 60 m/s as the chute was trying to ramp up to full deployment...another couple of seconds and Jeb would have been done for. I know that's not much hard data; I will continue to experiment and report back if I have another fatal accident on the stock Mk16 parachute settings. I will say that the full-deployment performance sure seems to be differing from one flight to the next, and I'm having trouble putting my finger on what might be causing the variance, as the speed right before hitting 500m AGL has been fairly consistent.

This is a small matter, and it was caused by my own stupidity, but I thought it should be mentioned. I have multiple installs of KSP on my Windows 7 PC (downloaded from the KSP store and unzipped into folders). I usually launch KSP via shortcuts on the desktop. Yesterday, when having trouble finding a PartDatabase.cfg, I realized that one of my shortcuts had the wrong folder listed in the "Start in" field on the shortcut, which was causing PartDatabase.cfg to spawn in that folder. I played around with it some more, and determined that no matter where KSP.exe actually lives, the KSP.log, PartDatabase.cfg, and Physics.cfg files will be generated in the folder listed in "Start in". I'm guessing that that is not the intended behavior, because everything else--e.g. save files, craft files, screenshots--appears to ignore the "Start in" setting and stays with KSP.exe in its actual folder.

Thanks for running the tests, Captain H@dock. I'll see if I can replicate the prior result this evening myself. Thanks for the suggestion, Claw...I've given that a try and will see if there's any difference. Is the PartDatabase.cfg file new to version 1.0.x? Seems to me like it is.

I've seen a couple of mentions of this in general discussion, but don't see a thread for it yet. In all versions of KSP up to and including 1.0, the Mk16 Parachute sitting on top of the Mk1 Command Pod (with no other parts) has ensured gentle touchdown in most any circumstance on default settings. This is no longer the case with 1.0.2. The chute is slow to fully deploy, or at least slow to reach its fully-deployed effectiveness. In my game (stock 1.0.2 for Windows downloaded from the website, no mods) this just killed Valentina when she slammed into the ground hard on what was an entirely routine and gentle re-entry up until the final 500 meters. Perhaps this is a natural and even intended consequences of the tweaks that were made to chutes in 1.0.1/1.0.2. If so, then at the very least the default altitude for full deployment of the Mk16 Parachute needs to be set higher, perhaps somewhere from 750-1000m.

That's a helpful perspective, Tiberion. I honestly hadn't thought of that when I found myself asking "how could that bug possibly have slipped by?" I appreciate all the insight you've provided in this thread, and I think it's good for you and KasperVld and Ted to redirect frustration away from the hard-working testers. And of course KSP is a tremendous achievement overall, and I for one have gotten orders of magnitude more value for my money than with almost any other software purchase I've ever made. And 1.0 is a big step forward for the game. But that doesn't mean there's not grounds for criticism in the wake of 1.0...even pointed criticism. A couple of the bugs are puzzling and vexing, but in my view, it's the overall level of polish (everything from lack of graphical polish to inadequate information presented to the player to the continued absence of the first whole tier of KSC buildings) that is the real disappointment, as it is not only a bit below what the 1.0 version number implies, but also below what Squad themselves had been describing as their objectives and expectations for the release. This followed on the heels of 0.90--also a big step forward for the game--objectively falling short of Squad's previously stated parameters for "beta" status (most obviously in that not all major game systems were yet in place). Now it's too late to do anything about the 0.25-->0.90-->1.0 development strategy, and more "told ya so"s will do nobody any good. But it's still appropriate to consider a broader lesson here about overpromising and underdelivering, which can provoke unhappiness with even the highest-quality product. The other major area of concern I have is the state of career mode, which I think is simply not well-enough conceived and executed right now to provide the fun it should, or to get new players hooked and eagerly tackling the learning curve. (I find it's far behind the BTSM mod in fundamental gameplay design.) But that's not so much a bugfixing or polishing or even balancing issue, as much as it's a game design or even philosophical question.