nats

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles?topics=development

Heard rumours that the game is due for release soon, that is fantastic news! Do we have an exact date? Great to hear everything is nearly finished after all this time. Cant wait to play it as intended. How many planets and moons are there in the game now then?

One thing that I dont know - is the quote size of asteroids in meters or miles? Because if size E = 18 meters that is nothing where asteroids are concerned and yet getting hit by an 18 mile asteroid would be a civilisation killing event! I assume its meters because the rest of the game seems to be in decimal but if so the asteroid sizes are rather lame arent they? When you consider that the Chicxub Crater was formed by a 10km asteroid and we have 1.2 million estimated asteroids of 100m or larger it would seem to make the Kerbal asteroids rather puny by comparison. I dont know why you would even bother tracking asteroids smaller than 10m to be honest.

Ah I didnt know they respawned constantly, I thought there was a fixed set of asteroids in an 'asteroid belt'. That isnt as cool than I thought then if they just spawn and despawn. What a shame, I thought that they would be in permanent orbits. Bogs.

The ARM update looks really good, I havent had time to get into it properly yet but I have started off tracking about 40 or so asteroids. Makes me wonder how many asteroids there actually are in the game. Seems to be quite a few though. Certainly the aheer amount of them makes it rather disorientating when you show them on the tracking view, perhaps being able to get rid of the orbit lines temporarily might make things a bit easier to understand? The other thing is - there is no warning as to which of these are large asteroids and which are actually going to hit the planet. I mean NASA will surely have markers on all the large Earth orbit crossing asteroids (the ones that would survive it through the atmosphere). This is the kind of thing we need here, perhaps shaded lines to show the asteroids sizes first, and then perhaps a different colour for large asteroids that will actually hit the planet - red or something. And then I would also love to see a warning that comes up on the screen whenever one of these is detected so I can mount a mission to get rid of it. Maybe this might be the kind of thing coming with the astronomy part of the game I dont know? Also I would say that, considering the amount of asteroids that are obviously in the game, its a bit labourious to have to manually track all of them. I would hope that this could be automated at some point. Otherwise you could spend all of your time in the tracking view! Will any of these asteroids be able to destroy your buildings in the future I wonder or perhaps even end the game if a truly massive one hits the planet? - although what you could do about one of those if you saw one heading your way, I dont know. Anyway certainly this update changes the game somewhat, cheers.

Come back after many moons away and still there is an issue with the pull down bar on your website being obscured by the video pane. This has been around for at least a year. I thought you lot had somebody who looked into website issues etc on the team? How is this something only I seem to notice? Anyway to recreate it: select the community button on the toolbar and see how you cant select anything below the forum button? The video pane is obscuring the rest of the menu.

Probably Space Invaders in an arcade, or a pong-type tennis game on our rubbishy home console.

What about getting some friends over and trying tabletop games or role playing games? I find Traveller is a great scifi RPG game for messing about with designing things, trying out things, playing solo and wth others. And its a nice change to computer games, which do get a bit dull after a while especially these days with all their mass regurgitation - mainstream new games are getting so bloody dull. Elite Dangerous is on the horizon though so there is hope yet. But yeah sometimes I get feed up wth sitting in front of a computer and just feel like getting away for a while. So RPG games, model making, reading or doing sports/gym are all good avenues to explore for taking up some time away from a monitor not to mention indulging in a good social life!

Elite Dangerous is going to be superb, Star Citizen I am not sure about, I liked Wing Commander but not Privateer. The scripting/hand creation of story and planets etc works well with a flight sim storyline but not so well with a exploration/trading type game. So I might get Star Citizen at some point, but Ive already bought Elite Dangerous. Frontier Elite II was one of my favourite games of all time so I am really looking forward to the new Elite game, in fact I have been waiting for Elite IV for about 15 years. Its going to blow everything else away. But at the moment I am playing Buzz Aldrins Space Program Manager early access version and its good fun. I like the historical missions, but it still needs some polishing and gameplay variation incorporated to enabel players to get over critical failures by rushing later programs and the like, at the moment if you get a critical failure it pretty much scuppers your chances of a moon landing on time although you are given till 1974 so thats not too bad.

I have just bought this game myself and its looking really good, very addictive already even without the Race into Space elements introduced yet. Trying to get to the moon by 1969 is flipping tough. And personally I love the way its going to gradually grow to include the Shuttle/ISS missions and eventually Mars. I love NASA spaceflight history though so getting into this game was a no brainer for me.

High diving on Minmus can be fun.

I find it boring as well - but more for the fact that its doing science for new parts! Why? How the heck does science create new parts? New parts should come from research labs, employing technicians, buying materials and using funding. The only thing you should get from carrying out mission science is some prestige and that should provide more funding to the program. I dont see how science is related to parts manufacture at all. It all seems very contrived to me the way it is presently. I think Slitherines Buzz Aldrins Space Program Manager does the whole space program thing far better. But hopefully the end game will be a lot more interesting after they have introduced some of the other game elements like economy and contracts.

I was wondering this as well until now. Did anyone mention this at all? Tumblr what the hell is that? I dont have any intention of going and registering with yet another crappy site to get my news with yet another password that I will forget - Facebook will do fine which is where I get all my gaming news. If Squad dont want to communicate through the biggest social communication site then they are a load of idiots. How to shoot yourselves in the foot marketing wise - follow these guys! .... bloody Tumblr! Get a grip guys, who goes to these places except for computer geek fanatics?

I dont know about being a frame rate killer but I hate the way the water looks and I hate that line that appears as I get close to it as well. Its one of the parts of the game I hate the most in fact.

They should make some science based station modules and make higher level science missions require them to be placed in orbit for several weeks - as they would require vast amounts of electricity putting them ina proper station would be the only real way to do it. And once resources come along in the game and these experiments need constant crew attention and therefore air, food and water etc space stations will really srtart to come into their own.

Whereas I am mildly interested by the content mentioned in the upcoming 0.22 patch it isnt going to change the game much for me. I actually have held off playing the game for a few months now just simply because I am waiting for something big and new to grab me back into the game. I have played a good 240 hours so far and practically all of that has been spent within the confines of the Kerbin/Minmus/Mun area. I have tried station building and going to other planets, and tried the planes (wasnt impressed) after the last patch. I have visited the Mun etc and it was exciting but now I have done it and to be honest its not something I really want to do again now, same for Minmus. The game just feels a bit pointless at the moment. I want something new and exciting to do. I want to play the career and train astronauts, I want to have limits like budgets and meeting missions, I want detailed beautiful planets to visit where I can do science and build authentic bases using local resources, I want to build massive Apollo sized rockets that dont require flaming struts, and I want to be able to construct massive planetary rockets in space. I want to be able to construct moon buggies and lifters on the Mun and I want to be exploring the planets and moons for life etc etc. And most importantly I want it all to fly smoothly and load things quickly because the loading is terrible since the last patch, even with only the 5 or 6 'essential' mods I have installed. There is so much promise in the game and we are getting there ... but oh so slowly! Its very frustrating, but also very captivating. I just hope I havent gone off the game completely by the time its all finished, having played so many of the bits a pieces in the sandbox mode that I dont see anything beneficial in playing the career. I also hope all the new stuff when it arrives doesnt keep lowering the speed of the whole game down, because at the moment that is putting me off playing more than anything else and I have a 6 core computer 12 Gb RAM and a fast card.

Well my playing KSP and EU4 has been completely waylaid by the discovery that the superb Spectrum game 'The Lords of Midnight' has been revamped and released on PC (and many other platforms). This is a game I loved for ages but never finished. I dont know why it was so good but I have never played a game as good as this since. And the strange thing is I prefer simulations more, after TLoM all my other favourite games are sims and stragey games - this is the only adventure game I have ever really liked. Weird! Anyway check it out if you remember it. And if you dont remember it and have a phone or tablet (or PC/Mac) check this out definitely because its made for portable devices (although its still great on a large screen): http://www.thelordsofmidnight.com/

I am starting to fly planes for the first time ever thanks to the new patch and the SAS changes. But I have found them severely lacking in several regards for which something really needs developing in order to bring them into their own place vs the rockets, which for me are still by far the main element of the game. What do you feel about these things? 1. Ejection seats - so many times I've wished there was a way to eject my pilot Kerbal before I crashed into the ground for the tenth time! 2. Stall warning - its impossible to fly properly at the moment due to flipping out, we really need a stall warning and more sensitive flight controls so we dont stall as much, its very difficult to stall a real plane and impossible when travelling at any decent speed - in this game the stalling at speed is highly unrealistic. 3. Aerodynamics - apart from the rubbish stall characteristics mentioned above, when you bank a real place the lift of the wings is translated into a turning vector so you dont actually need to pull up much in order to turn when banking. At the moment half of the stalling issue is due to having to pull too hard when in bank in order to turn at all. We really need to be able to bank and turn smoothly. 4. Nosewheel steering - tried to pick up a Kerbal the other day by landing near him but could I turn to collect him once I had landed? I had to disable a side engine eventually in order to turn my plane. We need to be able to taxi properly. 5. Drag/speed brakes - when landing its quite difficult to bleed off enough speed - better drag physics and especially speed brakes or reverse thrust in engines would help landing without excessive use of brakes. 6. VTOL jets/floats - if the jets could be rotated you could make some wicked VTOL jets for Kerbal rescues and if we had floats we could land on water for rescues. 7. Passenger/storage cabins - I really want to be able to carry more Kerbals/storage in my jets for when resources appear in the game and I need to (hopefully) shuttle crew and materials around. Is there anything else people want for their planes/spaceplanes/gliders that I havent mentioned?

Its probably the craters that have made the ground darker - a lot more shadows than before when it was pretty flat with only rolling hills. I am looking forward to trying out a rover on the Mun now.

The new Novacore mod now does several SAS modules, based on the new design, of all sizes and of varying strengths as they go up so the smallest one is the weakest - probably will suit probes well.

I should add here that also ships will not dock at all in my experience when both ships have their SAS activated. At least one of the ships needs to have it deactivated. The ships dont even seem to pull magnetically together if both have SAS on. I would reiterate the point that ships that need to rendezvous and dock with a target need good IRW units on them so you can turn over quickly, well either that or use the RCS. Docking is more difficult now with the new patch because of the slowness of the wheels in turning the ship and the lack of ability to stop the turn quickly. I will look forward to the wheel power being beefed up a bit by C7 as he has suggested he will be doing at some point.

Tried docking today and it was fine up tothe point where both ships should pull together. Nothing happened until I disabled the SAS on the docking target, then it seemed to work ok. So its not anywhere near impossible at all just needed SAS disabling temporarily during the final stage.

I think its just a matter of waiting a few weeks for the new system to get its slight teething issues resolved. Hopefully once the strength is boosted a bit the new system will work perfectly for everyone. For me the present system is working well for all the ships and planes I have tried so far and I like it far more than the old SAS system. But I havent yet tried docking with it - I will try that today to see if it is impossible as some others have said. But I certainly have no problem with having an optional ASAS part provided to help out our friends who cannot use the new system or want the frozen attitude aspect of the old ASAS. The game should be adaptable to suit all types of users. Certainly those with disabilities should not be left with a useless game due to development changes that suddenly require the users to utilise more dexterity to play the game than before. It's just a game after all.

I chose career, aerodynamics and atmosphere but I am happy with anything really. But its a pretty useless poll as most people will just choose everything. You should have limited it to one choice only that really would be telling.

You should add summary values under each planet/moon so that its obvious at first glance how much you will need for a full trip out - from Kerbin low orbit to the relative body - then all you need to do to work out a full return trip is double that figure and add the Kerbin escape value (4500). The issue I have with this chart is I am not that interested in most of these numbers - all i want to know is how much fuel is required to get into Kerbin orbit, transfer to target, get into that orbit, and then land/take off at each planet/moon - the rest is pretty irrelevant for me.