Killerdude8

A well aged CPU, a single core, And you run ships that even the mightiest computers cringe at the thought of, Tell us, What is your Secret?

We are the makers of Kerbal Space Program: Ask Us Anything by KSPDevTeamin IAmA Ted: Radiation would be a beneficial gameplay addition to more veteran players. But we try to avoid gameplay mechanics that will leave a player puzzled for too long or a mechanic that’s largely out of the player’s control. That doesn’t rule it out, just means that when it comes to it, it’ll take a bit of working out. Maxmaps: As far as the currently visible future goes, we are nowhere near done with the development of Kerbal Space Program. We'll keep updating the game as we add things to it like we have been so far. And thank you for playing KSP, without fans like you this game would still be just a mad dream in HarvesteR's head. Correct! Maxmaps: We love mods, we absolutely do. Every now and them some show us brilliant things we may have missed and we're happy to make our own versions of them (or hire the modders involved!). Other times they go to places where we're not interested in going but a part of the community is and we're very pleased to have their needs covered. We can't really say 'we're making X stock in the future', but we're constantly on the lookout for things popping up in the modding scene. Maxmaps: We wouldn't be able to do anything without your support, so thank you for playing KSP! From the whole team: We are stunned, humbled and wish you the absolute best. Ted: As I came from the Community myself, I make sure to keep in touch with it and read through the various Community's suggestions. If I see something that is a unique and fresh suggestion, I bring it up with the rest of the Team for sure. c7studios: We value the opinions and suggestions of the community. We've implemented that feedback into KSP to improve the experience and gameplay. At times it can be hard to keep up with though. But, our community team does a good job of finding the best feedback and suggestions to bring to our attention. HarvesteR: Very few things ever get discarded altogether. What usually happens is that they evolve and morph into other (better) ideas, so nothing is really a complete waste. That said, some features are of higher priority than others, of course, so we always have to make a choice about where to apply our time and effort. c7studios: I think it just depends on how you rate difficulty. Every update brings new challenges to overcome. Sometimes the hardest thing is truly understand a problem so you find a proper solution to it. Harvester: Let’s put it like this: Before KSP, I had never worked with C# for anything over 300 lines of code. It’s been a massive learning experience from day one, and we keep on learning every day. As for an eureka moment, I have two that always come to mind that marked moments where if we lived in an RPG game, a heavenly light would have beamed down over me with a “Lvl Up!†message. The first one was when I realized that the solution to have planets rotate without completely breaking physics was to use a rotating reference frame, and how rotating frames mean applying centrifugal and coriolis forces. A quick look through Wikipedia confirmed that this idea was in fact correct, and I think the levelling up special fx would have happened right about there. The second ‘level up’ moment was when I realized that the simplest way to implement docking was to merge vessels. Up until then, we were struggling on this feature, and having a really hard time attempting to wrap our heads around how to manage multiple vessels connected together, and the many, many edge cases that would arise from it. Merging vessels was dismissed as an option at first, because it would mean vessels would lose their identities. I realized though, that that was a simpler problem to work around than all other alternatives, and the level up fx came up a second time. There were many other such moments, and yes, looking back at old code can be a very shameful experience sometimes, but such is the way of programming. I’d hate to find code that I wrote a long time ago and think it was better than code I’m writing now. c7Studios: Before KSP I had only worked with C++. Moving to C# and the concept of scripting was a pretty major adjustment for me. It's been a great learning experience, and I work with an awesome team that is always very helpful and supportive of learning new skills. I have to agree with Harvester on old code. Every time I go back I have to wonder what I was thinking at the time. It's just like with artwork, when you go back and look at old work, you can very easily spot the flaws that you didn't see at the time. One: If money and resources were no barrier, what would your wildest dream for the direction of KSP be? Maxmaps: Full virtual reality simulation from the IVA viewpoint. I just want to feel like I’m going into space. May be a terrible idea if I mess up the staging, though. Two: Your game as a whole is almost unanimously liked or loved by its players. What kind of emotions do you feel given the amazing progress you've made, and that you've created a fun videogame that has changed lives and influenced careers, etc? Ted: I've only been at Squad since July, being a volunteer in a couple areas of KSP for a year prior to that so the effect it has on me is probably a bit less. But overall it's incredibly surreal and feels incredibly humbling that people love something that you put a lot of your time into and it makes it all the more worth it. Rowsdower: One - KSP: The Movie, starring Ed Norton as Jebidiah. Two - KSP is a unique, highly creative game that sort of parallels the creativity and drive of the staff behind the scenes. Consider the game to be our ship. How can we keep building it? How can we make things better? How far can we go? It’s the one place where the biggest ideas are the ones least scoffed at. It’s extremely inspiring to see that members of the community have taken those same lofty goals upon themselves and made such enormously positive life changes because they, like we, dreamt big and chased it. Three: If you ever have downtime to actually play KSP, what has to be your favorite part? What are you happiest with? Maxmaps: Powered landing. I am terrible at it but when I pull it off it is the most rewarding thing ever. Ted: Gameplay-wise, I find building space stations and interplanetary vessels the most satisfying and entertaining thing to do. Samssonart: Career mode, definitely, and currently we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Rowsdower: Fire. I’ve seen a lot of it, so I’m very happy with the way the game’s fire looks - and crashing. Yep, fire and crashing. It’s satisfying. HarvesteR: I have a lot of fun building ridiculously-shaped aircraft and tweaking them until they actually fly. That’s actually how the Albatross 3 came to be… You should see the other 2 before it. Four: Alot of the player base are space fanatics. I know I live my life under the glorious leadership of NDT and Cmdr. Hadfield, but do people on the team also have their heads above the clouds? Thanks guys! Ted: I definitely look up to a lot of significant or popular figures in the Aerospace Industry and tend to always follow the current residents of the ISS on Twitter. Maxmaps: A passion for space is pretty much a job requirement around here! HarvesteR: I assume this is about having time actually passing in the simulation while you’re building? I’m not sure I’d like to have that, since when you’re building a ship, you're focused on construction, and I wouldn't like it if the game kept interrupting me over things that are happening outside the construction facility. In KSP, you take on the role of many different ‘jobs’ on an actual space program. You get to be Mission Controller, Aerospace Engineer, victim intrepid Pilot, so the game helps you out in doing all those jobs yourself by leaving you free to not care about other areas while you’re focused on a single one. HarvesteR: The names for Bill, Bob and Jeb were the ones I could remember from the 'early days' of playing Kerbal Space Program with actual fireworks (please don't try that at home, I'm thankful to this day no one lost any limbs). When they were first added, they weren't meant to be any more special than other Kerbals, but because we didn't have a crew generator implemented, we hard-coded those three in as placeholders. When we saw how attached people were getting to those three, we knew we had to make them special in some way. This actually changed the plan for how crews were implemented in the end (originally you'd just get a random crew for each mission). Now, crewmembers are persistent and become available again after returning home (or respawning), so each crewmember has the potential to become as special as the original three. As for their personalities, those are defined by a fuzzy-logic AI that produces their facial expressions as you fly. All Kerbals have three personality parameters: Courage, Stupidity, and a third one that could best be thought of as a genetic trait that afflicts a certain percentage of the Kerbal Population. That 3rd parameter originally was meant to be applied to whichever Kerbal was piloting the ship, but we thought it was a lot funnier to have a few guys who are always having a great time when others are scared out of their minds. Harvester: So far we haven't had good results with the 64-bit builds, they've mostly been unstable and crashing randomly. We're always re-testing them on new Unity releases though, and lately, there's been a few good steps forward in that area, so a 64-bit build could be a reality in the not-too-distant future. HarvesteR: As for what's coming in the near future for Career Mode, We've got a couple of major features that we are already planning, which will be closely integrated with the existing gameplay, and I daresay if it all goes as planned, should make for a pretty awesome overall experience. More specifically, we've got Contracts coming soon, which will let you take on proper objectives, to earn funds and reputation (or lose them) should you succeed (or fail). Then there's the Funds and Reputation mechanic itself, which will require you to spend funds to launch ships or hire crews, and manage your space program's reputation to get better contract offers and generally keep Kerbalkind pleased with your progress towards conquering space. This is just a very brief explanation of those features. We'll get into more detail on them as we get there. Maxmaps: Our stats tallying system doesn't currently track that particular variable, but it may be something we look for in a future update! Samssonart: A lof of this is dependant on Unity, we usually go through the change log of a new Unity update the second it is announced and see what improvements can be made with new Unity features and bug fixes. C7: We're constantly working on polish and performance in between adding new content to the game. 0.23 is bringing an upgrade to the base engine, along with a large amount of performance optimization and overhauls. Ted: As QA Lead, I often find myself in awe over the content that the Team produces and saying something along those lines - right before completely breaking it. A specific feature is hard to pick, but the thing I like most about the game would definitely be the imersive aspect of it; just how long you can spend devoted to one mission and the little green payload that it carries. If I had to pick a feature, it would probably be EVAs as they brought a whole alternate dynamic to the game and really put things in perspective. danRosas: It's not precisely an in-game feature. But from what I do, to create a believable back story for the Space Kraken, so far. And leave the door open for future stories with that character. It's amazing to read all the positive comments, because you're the ones that make him a part of the Kerbal Universe. HarvesteR: That's a good question... It's hard to pick a favorite thing. I guess I have a couple: On the gameplay side, one of my favorite features is the random name generator that names the Kerbals. Even today it comes up with some combinations sometimes that we never saw before, and it never seems to get old. That wasn't so much of a technical challenge though, as for those, I would say my top 'wow, was that me?' moments are the Patched Conics and Maneuver Nodes, the whole docking system which actually merges vessels, the PQS terrain, and most recently the reentry fx shader, which was a pretty hare-brained scheme to begin with, so I'm still a bit impressed that it works at all. HarvesteR: We've certainly thought about it a lot, but right now, we feel it's more important to have more things to do in the current solar system, than to go on adding more places that in the end will just be more variations of the same terrain system. Take for instance when we first added docking, It gave a whole new importance to simply being in orbit around Kerbin. Or how with the addition of R&D, even landing on different spots on good old Kerbin now had all new purposes. This is what I mean with 'more to do on the current system'. I think in the long run, these sorts of things will increase the depth of the gameplay far more than just adding more places to visit, without having new things to do when you get there. c7studios: This means that an engine can switch propellants that it's using to an alternative. For example, if your engine is running on air from intakes, it could seamless switch to using oxidizer as a backup. It will be useful for creating hybrid engines. c7studios : We've been adding parts as they're needed to introduce new features. For example, we're adding the new lab module and part in 0.23. c7studios: We tend to decide by doing a lot of playtesting and iteration. An idea that sounds fun on paper can end up being quite tedious. Feedback from testers and fans is very useful to help make these decisions as we develop the game c7studios: The lab module that's coming in 0.23 should help to make bases more relevant. You won't be able to constantly reset and transmit data to get more science. Having a landed base on site will allow to process experiments and transmit them at a higher return. Samssonart: It definitely helped getting the game out there a lot, Steam ensures that your game will be visible to an average of 4 million gamers a day, and that is no small thing. N3X15/Rob: Spare time? Samssonart: A little bit of everything, RPG’s , Beat ’em ups, survival horrors. I also tend to try about any indie game that looks like it has a novel gameplay. Oh, and I’m not so much of a FPS fan. Ted: I've found that KSP has severely tilted my game tastes towards sandbox games, so I tend to play them. Currently though, I've been playing a bit of Chivalry and did play GTAV for a month and a bit. Maxmaps:Just about anything and everything, really. WoW Raiding takes a decent chunk but my steam list is downright shameful. HarvesteR: I’m usually very picky with games, because I tend to spend a lot of time playing the same title. Currently, that game is DayZ. I’ve spent countless hours surviving the zombie apocalypse, to the point where I’m feeling pretty confident I’d be able to hold my own if it really happened, as long as I can get hold of a hatchet. That should be easier to read for most.

I've never forgotten parachutes, but I have had a few Staging errors that caused some chutes to open prematurely...

Really? it only takes 4 of these things to not burn up in a firey death.

Burn around your Retrograde Marker (prograde if you flipped your pod during construction) until its at the top of the nav ball.

I must ask, What are the specs of your Divine machine to allow you to run such monstrosities? My CPU would cry white hot tears of firey molten death at the thought of these ships.

17, Functionality over Aesthetics.

I'd rather wait for Multicore, 64bit support before we get any of these nice CPU intensive features.

I've hit the ground at like 35 M/sec and that thing survives, not sure what your problem is.

I've dealt with the Kraken a few times now, Hell Kraken seems to be the most popular. I've had many rockets just explode randomly..

Your therapist has a lot to answer for..

Struts. Finally could go beyond the Kerbin system.

Life support and various other Hyper-realistic features, KSP as it is, stands in the perfect position between realistic and fun. I'd rather the formula not change.

By the time of full release, I'm 110% certain we'll have like 20x the amount of parts we currently have, So I'd imagine getting all the way to the end of the tree would take some time.

For the sake of Gameplay, I honestly hope not, Cause if you're anything like me, You'll be spending a few real time hours at any given moment building and perfecting the latest and greatest to soar towards the stars.

Explosions on or near the ship he's in, He doesn't like that too much.

IIRC, During a video Felipe(I must've mispelled) Said they fixed the bug that caused that to happen.

My generic Asparagus Heavy Lifter, Use it on all missions, Usually for lighter Payloads, I'm left with my final Radial Stage still half full with fuel. No pics, But you probably know what it looks like.

Someone wanna Incorporate "Brown Aerospace" Into a Canadian Flag? Maybe Merge the B and A into a single cool looking letter?

in 30 years from now? Nothing much we could do, We currently don't have the know-how to get Human beings beyond Earth's SOI, so, I'm not sure how We'd manage to get to another Star System and land on a potentially habitable world. We are close though, But, Still, we'd probably need a few more decades to develop the Tech to get a significant number of People off Earth and heading towards wherever need be.

Its been forever in a day since i've seen the Third Orbit line, I've yet to see the fourth..

I name my Craft based on the job they are intended for, IE, A Mun lander would be named "Munar Lander" Any improvements or upgrades to that type of craft gets an 'MK' designation, Currently, I am on my second iteration of my Munar Lander in Career mode, so, Munar Lander MK-II.

I don't understand the whole "Flimsy Legs" thing going on lately, But my landing legs have virtually no problems. Besides exploding on impact at 150 M/s...

Except its a Gigametre not a Megametre. 1000 kilo = giga

Eeloo. I love it so much.