Tw1

Part 4 The next morning, I returned to the KSC. I resolved to tell Wernher what happened. Perhaps, if we were smart, we could clear his mind of thoughts of Cipher, and restore my mental link. And get myself back on Cipher's good side. As I approached the KSC, a new building loomed before me. I was greeted by one of the security staff. They told be Wernher was waiting in the Portal house. I soon found him, and he was a lot more cheerful than last time. Wernher: "Bill! Good it is to see you!" Bill: "Wernher, I need to tell you something. I've lost my connection to the muse." Wernher: "This is a concern. Is it temporary, or for good?" Bill: "I'm not sure. I've put all my knowledge into these books. We need to come with a way to-" Wernher: ""Ya, ya, Linus can scan them later. For now, we are about to have a test firing (*He tapped his protective suit*), of the portal generator!" Bill: "Now? This is not a good idea." Wernher: "Nonsense! Gene wants to have it ready for a public demonstration in a few weeks. The upcoming planetary alignment will be a most auspicious time to announce the next phase of kerbal exploration! You said you wrote everything down right?" Have some dramatic music to get you in the mood. There was no stopping him. We descended in an elevator, walked past rows of tanks and machinery. Everything was abuzz. Everyone was there. Valentina: "Look!" Jentrix Kerman: "I'm getting some strange readings on our gravioli detectors. It's like something's building in the gravioli feild." Jeb: "Woah, gravity's gone!" Bill: "This is how the portal works. It takes time-space points of peak distortion, like when tidal forces reach a maximum. Then it pulls at weak spots created by those natural peaks. The zero-G effect should be brief. And local. I think." Gravity soon returned for most of us, but, Jeb: "It's Pulling me in!" Bill: "Grab this rope! We'll pull you back" Jeb: "Nah, I wanna see where this goes." Val: "Go Jeb!" Bob: "Be careful!!" This chapter sure blew out the special effects budget. Jeb: "Awesome!" AH AHHHHAAAAAAAFHEEELLAAAHHHHAAAHHAHAAA ...AAAaHelAAAAAHpaaAAAAAAHaaAHAaaaaaahhhhEEHHAAAA Bill: "Pull! Get him back! Now!" Bob: "Jeb!" Bill: "Jeb! Speak to me! Jeb: "M0oD elGna1rT ,oT1r0D nekC@rK r3hphIC! hgruE!" Bob: " What happened in there? Jeb: "WHEN GrAVITY BREaKS, AND W0RLDS COLLIdE, YOU'LL FEAR THE BEAST WItH JUST ONE EYE!" Val: "He's delirious! We need a medic! Now!" Jeb: *cough* "This machine is dangerous. You'll bring about the end of the world with this!" *faints* Bill: "SHUT IT DOWN!" * * * Music? We took Jebediah to the hospital, and powered the machine down. I had to know the truth. I had to contact Cipher. I sat down and concentrated. It all came back to me. The buzzing, the energy, as strong in my mind as it had ever been before! Bill Kerman: "Cipher! What is this? Where is that portal going?" Bill Cipher: "Ah hahahahaha. Looks like Mr 0.8 Stupidity finally got smart." Bill Kerman: "What?" Bill Cipher: "Jeb just got a taste of my party! Let's just say I'll be bringing some friends over. We're gonna shake things up a little, right guys?" (*Creatures in the void snicker evilly*) Bill Kerman: "No! I'll stop you!" Bill Cipher: "Oh come on Kerb-Bill, don't be a buzzkill! Besides! You can't stop the bridge between worlds from coming, but it might be fun to see you try! Cute even!" What will Bill do? It's too dangerous to be left around! Destroy the portal machine! No! It could be useful! Try and aim it somewhere else! Apologies if this chapter felt a bit like railroading, to use the DMing term, by not focusing on the last decision. I do take other suggestions into account as I go, so feel free to keep making them! If you want to critique my technobabble, please do it via PM, as there are potentially spoilers there. Otherwise, discuss all you want!

There was that strange maneuver past the black hole. Somethings they can get away with in my book,-for example, they could have gone back into hibernation for those transfers, but that was odd. How did they get to that speed? So quickly? What's to gain by dropping of the pod for little acceleration gain, when force of gravity is proportional to mass, and the amount of mass on your ship won't change that acceleration? Though it might have just been a suicide attempt. That said, I loved interstellar. That black hole effect has me wishing other shows would at least imitate it. So much this. Kill the Moon, where were the tidal forces's impact? That shuttle landing was horrid, nevermind the fact that they chose to use the b*-+dy shuttle in the first place. Rings of Akhaten, what was the scale, how far away was that thing? Sleep No More was pretty rubbish anyway, but the nonsensical behaviour of the station antigrav pushed it over the end. They do tend to put in an effort when it comes to getting key history things right, so why not space? Most of these issues could have been resolved with non plot crucial edits, they need a space and science consultant. I wanted to pose a request to that they get one, disguised as a question when the Doctor who festival came to my town, but didn't get picked. Though to be fair, I was volunteering as ground crew, and hadn't paid the expensive ticket prices most of the people in that audience had. Members at the Doctor Who club I'm part of are probably used to my ranting on these subjects by now.

More like Neil DeGas Tyson.

With me, it's usually just one set of RCS thrusters. Opps, looks like my ship can't go that way. Though I usually test every ship pretty thoroughly.

I think it's possible to guestimate. I said yes, as a shield which covers a large area, but isn't in the way of things when you don't need it is bound to be more useful.

Is the view also locking to a certain angle? As in you can't turn the view? If it's that particular bug, it can be fixed by activating the debug menu, (press Alt and F12), clicking on the input locks button, and clearing what you find. Otherwise, it's something else, and I can't help you. But, if you go through these steps, you might be able to self troubleshoot, or at least collect enough info that someone else may be able to help.

Yeah, a lot can just be implied. For demonstrating the heat shield trick, you might as well start in while already on the descent trajectory. Maybe show of the height, and or speed, that would get the point across. If you want to show how you got there, you can use some short, quick shots to imply. Like here. It's not the best example (being my own, it's an easy example to find), but you can sort of see how it tries to show that a fairly conventional trip out to Eve happened, using the first 20 seconds. Cutting is hard. As the creator, a lot more of your footage seems cool for you because you worked for it, and it evokes fun memories. I find those who make Vine videos pretty amazing. They manage to communicate plenty in mere seconds.

Or maybe make it possible to upgrade the existing two to bring them closer to par.

True, despite the problems it presents, the tech tree does work ok as a beginner mode. When I first started KSP, Stuff was harder. We had a lot less informative mods, SAS could only lock your ship's orientation, (and needed to be turned off if you wanted to steer), and parts where so wobbly, building a successful launch vehicle required clever structural engineering. There are new challenges, with aerodynamics and heat management, but IDK. I recall feeling like I "earned it" when greater skill made it possible to lift bigger and bigger things into the sky. Maybe that's not the same for new guys nowdays? Even as you play past the tech tree, don't you find you keep coming up with better, and more useful spacecraft designs? That's technological evolution for real. Personally, I find tracking through screenshots a decent way to track the history. Yeah, and unless stuff's changed, it should be possible. Some features of career could be added and removed by clever save editing. If it was more of a pick and choose thing rather than discrete modes, that could be cool. Tricky because features interact, could make balancing tricky, but maybe self- tuning with difficulty setting is just the price you must pay for full customisation. But maybe if they pitched it as a whole new mode, aimed at the serious roleplayer, rather than a big backdown on what they've been doing so far... Maybe? Hope? Optimism? TBH, I think you're probably right, Squad making this mode is not something I consider very likely to happen. True, but it's not so much about picking and choosing, I want the onus to asses and plan be on me. I want reasons to do such things beyond being told, and being paid. Contracts are currently the only way that many activities a space program does are included in the game. With a contract, some external group has spotted an opportunity, or seen a need, and presumably will get some benefits from when the work is complete. You just get a payout for working towards some else's ends. It makes you a service provider like Space X, rather than an exploration leader like NASA.. Apart from remembering if you've collected the science points from some area, there's not really anything you can use to make informed plans of your own. Yeah, you can be smart, and maybe adapt a ship to do some task you want to do as well as fulfil a contract, but it should be the other way around. Your own plans should be what the game is assessing, not your ability to follow orders. Collaboration and helping out other organisations is a realistic thing for space programs to do. Universities and scientific organisations do request experiments and contribute instruments in real life space projects. But the player should get the chance to be involved in the exploration too, more than just being the implementation guy. It's getting better, with things like the coming need for communication networks, but we'll see. That, like the insta-scans for resources may end up feeling like just another means to an end, rather than goal of its own, and presumably won't be ongoing like contracts are.

Wow. How am I only seeing this now! Ok, ladderforce is my favourite glitch, but I've been busy and not on the forums for a while.. This and your aerial circumnavigation are impresive feats of endurance, and an awesome demonstration of this technology. This is one for the annals of Ladderforce history. @Andrew Hansen and myself have both gone interplanetary. (Link and video in my sig.) It's tricky, but there's really something about relying almost entirely on the power of a kerbal. But saying that here's preaching to the converted.

Nice! There's a good trick. With advice, with making anything for the internet, unless you're absolutely confident your audience will want to see the whole thing, edit it back to key information and interesting bits. 50 other things to look at are just a click away, you've got to really grab attention. You did well in the last bits, when it came to seeing what was offered in the title, but the first parts could've been pruned a lot more.

This is one reason the whole tech tree thing is a bit dumb. The engines can't be balanced evenly because someone need to be "earlier tech". It's a resonable argument for using post tech tree science gains to unlock some upgrades to the early parts, (and having the improved version available from the start in sandbox.) Yeah, they have a place, but it could be bigger. Once apon a time, they where the default choice for small rockets.

That's still going over there? Yeah, wasn't sure, but decided to make my comment anyway. 

(Never had a use for this, as the forum forbids reaction images.)

I like the way you had KSP open. Maybe you really did have some Kessler Syndrome (Or close as KSP can do) happening. Are you sure though? It was April fools day, plus the server was almost asking to be pranked, by being annoying with one of her own... So in this case, maybe such a joke is excusable? Plus, even though she didn't recognise, she immediately offered the assistance she thought was needed, as she should for someone with a real syndrome. Granted, I don't have MS, but when people talk rubbish about something I do have, I get pretty liquided, so it probably fair for you to feel this way.

My outdoor sensors are reading 23.4 degrees C, with 51% humidity. My app is telling me it'll be going up to a reasonably warmish 26 degrees later. The sky pretty clear, with small, faint patches of cloud. No wind. All in all, a nice day.

If it's not wasting a huge amount of space and ram, or aiding errors, I don't see why not implement it. Extra little bits are fun. I'd take Kerbals fishing. Sort of have in the past, but used antennae and camera angle tricks.

Small houses? Pseudo-brutalist? Agricultural-industrial? Deconstructivist? I like to count the mod contributed buildings from the old Kerbin City, and the more recent kerbinside packs as examples of a Kerbal architectural style too. That and the odd forms from the old space center. I don't think their big heads really facilitate tunnelling, though their big hands could be alright for digging. Maybe they evolved from cave dwellers?

It has been and gone where I am. It's nice, I'm justified starting earlier. No one expects the Spanish inquisition. I mean, the Aussie pranking on the internet.

That's a nicely polished video. I like your news studio set. Bill Cipher approves of your very scary triangles. Probably. He'll be routing for them to win.

I went to Duna. It was an epic tale, which I feel inspired to tell you about now.

I wanted to set the record straight, so I went there, and wow, you were right. It's just a manipulated photo of the Mun. Darn you, runway island.

This would be cool, as long as it's only done to an extent which doesn't impede gameplay too much. Wheels are already hard to use in low G, so only a little harder there, please. Having to make a lander a little wider to avoid sliding down a muddy or icy slope sounds fair. But I like the idea, it would add some extra detail and variation to the experience of being on a planet.