Tell your story. How did you get to KSP 1.0

[Bloody_looser]

Well, I saw this GIF at some funny pics site.

Got interested, watched some vids and bought KSP around 0.21 or 0.20, I'm not quite sure. Been playing it ever since and see no reason to stop actually.

P.S. The GIF still gets me every time, it's just too hilarious.

[Panel]

Back in March, I had been browsing a book store and came across "What If?" by Randall Munroe, and loved it. From there, I started reading through xkcd and found the comic titled Orbital Mechanics. I had no idea what Kerbal Space Program was, so I looked it up, came across one of Scott Manley's videos, and ended up buying it a few days after 1.0 was released.

[DrMarlboro]

I stumbled across the game back in .24 and thought it looked interesting, but I wanted to wait as I was currently really busy raiding in wow, and working towards a random associates because I couldn't figure out what I actually wanted to do with my life (I promise, this ties in!) I knew I wanted to do some type of engineering and space has always really interested me but I wasn't putting two and two together.

I had kept up with the game until just before .90 hit and decided it was time to grab it. I quit playing wow and devoted all my time to KSP. After playing for so long I started to realise that this is what I wanted to do - and so started working towards a degree in aerospace engineering and I've been having the time of my life. I gotta say I owe alot to squad and their game and as such get quite defensive when people talk bad about it. It's also really nice to have found a community that is as interested in space travel as I am and friendly at the same time. Needless to say, I plan on sticking with ksp and squad as long as they are here and hope they know that this game is more than just a game, and can be a tool to get people inspired.

[Yellowburn10]

My story is a bit of a long one. For as long as I can remember, I've had an interesting interest (if that makes sence) in space related things. I read books and watched shows about space but didn't catch on to space games much. The first kind of space game I found that interested me was simple rockets. I watched videos about it, including a review by Scott Manley (didn't realize who he was at the time) and the game had me hooked. I did notice the ad for KSP on the game, but it looked a bit too advanced and the kerbal on the front looked a bit creepy to me, so I stuck with SR. Some time later, I noticed that after watching a Kurtjmac video a KSP video poped up in the suggestions. I finally thought "why not?" And took a peek. I watched every single one of his vids on the game, and had decided then and there I wanted it. I officially got it in version .23, a week or two before .23.5 came out. I came here to the forums a bit later after that.

It's now been over a year since I got the game, and I've loved every moment of it.

[Camaron]

I found out about KSP at 0.20. I did what I always do, and pirated it first to see if it was worthy of buying.

Got hooked so hard I forgot I was playing a stolen copy. Four (or five? or seven?) months (the entire 2013 summer and more) of 12 hours per day Krack addiction made possible by the fact that I work from home with extremely dense hours, my best friend came down on me like an intervention and brought it to my attention that I needed to get a grip and reign in my playtime to a reasonable amount. (Assuming 4 - 8 months before buying, 12 hours x 30.5 days, equals between 1,464 and 2928 hours that aren't counted on the steam clock.)

By the time I remembered to legitimately buy it, the price had gone up to $30, which I bought on steam. The steam copy now also clocks 1050 hours. And that steam clock doesn't count any modded copies I played for weeks, which get copied out from the steam folder, and steam doesn't see those, and doesn't count their hours. If these speculations are true, I may have staggeringly over 4,000 hours on this game.

But at least I play it like a sane person now, a few hours once every few days like some who isn't addicted to Kokaine.

I didn't realize there was a forum or mods during the initial binge. I forgot that game communities were a thing. But thanks to that, I can dock insanely effectively, and I have complete disregard for making kerbals circle Kerbol for 63 years to get an intercept with Jool while completely ignoring "launch windows".

I'm stalled at the moment because I just really want to see if multithreaded physics is going to be a real thing. I've got some insane PC power over here just itching for a fight!

Edited September 26, 2015 by Camaron

[Cairol]

I played Space Engineers before I knew about KSP.

Then I sometimes heared references to KSP in the Space Engineers forums, blaming SE to not have a realistic center of mass model "like Kerbal Space Program has".

So you would have to account for symmetric/balanced thuster placement.

There were also other corss-references to KSP in that forum every now and then. So eventually I got curious and watched some Youtube videos about KSP and fell in love with it.

And here I am.

[DocMoriarty]

I came in the 0.19 era (just missed the launch tower) and have very fond memories of it. I saw KSP quite high in game category on some torrent site (TPB? KAT? I'm not sure.) so I tried it and got hooked for about 3 months during which I hardly even slept. Bought the game soon after and till this day it's probably the best spent gaming money in my life.

^This. Saves me the work of making my own post. Thanks.

[Goddess Bhavani]

Built various aircraft replicas back when very basic C7 Aerospace parts were state of the art, and aircraft had to be launched vertically on a rocket as there was no runway launch option. KSP was at the time, free.

There was a rudimentary runway to land on but it was very dicey on landing skids that had no suspension to speak of so large, long Mk2 style aircraft pretty much snapped their backs on touchdown!

Wandered off to waste time with RL and MMOs for several years, lurked around since 0.23.5 and became active again in the latter stages of 0.90, building you guessed it - more aircraft replicas.

And I've not bothered to even get out of Kerbin SOI all these years...

Edited September 26, 2015 by pandoras kitten

[pandaman]

My kids told me I'd like it as they know I'm interested in space stuff. And some work colleagues played and talked about it too.

I knew I'd get hooked if I tried it so resisted for quite a while. Eventually I caved in and got the demo and bought the full version very soon after (that was v 0.18.3) and I was right - I got hooked and still am.

Best value purchas ever.

[Tweeker]

I can't really Rembert exactly what version I started with, somewhere between .19 and .21 I think.

I read a few comments about it somewhere, the watched a couple videos and I was hooked.

[mhoram]

Once upon a time there was a Comic about the Oberth Kuiper Maneuver.

I downloaded the V0.18 demo.

The feature that made me buy the game instantly was the capability of planning series of maneuver nodes with predicted paths in mapview. It was v0.21.1 at that time.

The rest is as you can say history.

Edited September 26, 2015 by mhoram

[KSACheese]

The reason I got into KSP is from Robbaz, KING OF SWEDEN. But, on a serious note, I started out around 0.18 to 0.19 and beyond. I've been hooked since.

[Torgo]

I was born 15 minutes before Apollo 11 left the pad. Since I was a little kid I was into space and anything that had to do with it.

I have used Orbiter since its earliest inceptions, and like Cairol a few posts back, was heavy into Space Engineers and saw the same references to KSP. I had seen glimpses of it for a while, but always thought it looked too cartoony and wouldn't hold my interest. I got the demo from Steam, and bought it after about 10 minutes of playing. This was about 6 weeks ago.

Now I see it's like Dr. Schweiger and Keen Software had a baby, with the physics challenges of Orbiter and the ease of making your own ships like Space Engineers. I'll end up logging my 400th hour some time this weekend.

As for the 'cartoony' feel, my 4 year old loves it and wants to help build rockets and see 'his' Kerbals. Very early on in my experience, we were playing when he waved and said 'Hi' to Jebediah's iso-cam view, and as if on cue, Jeb moved his arm and it looked like he was waving back.

I'm having as much fun with this game as I have ever had with a game.

[Red Shirt]

Misread the original poll. Didn't realize I should click more than one.

Been actively playing since 0.23. My wife saw my son playing KSP and said, "Your dad would love this." He bought it for me Christmas 2013. Best gift ever.

[LordFerret]

My cousin's son was playing it. Out of curiosity, I downloaded the demo. Played with that for a day. Next day, I bought the full version.

- - - Updated - - -

Misread the original poll. Didn't realize I should click more than one.

...

Bah... likewise.

[Clockwork13]

Saw someone make a small KSP video and got interested in it. Later bought the game during 0.23

[CoriW]

Around the beginning of 2013 I started to really get interested in Astronomy, and as a side effect any games related to space. So I ended up on a sort of quest to find every single modern space game available in an effort to find my "perfect" space game, this month long search had me find probably at least 50 different space games both old and new. Some of them were terrible, some of them were mediocre, and some of them were amazing. Out of that search there are 4 games that are on my computer (Space Engine, Elite: Dangerous, Star Citizen, and Kerbal Space Program) and 1 game that I eagerly await (Limit Theory). When I stumbled upon Kerbal Space Program it was sometime in mid-February 2013 (Version 0.18.3) and I proceeded to be completely addicted to it for several months afterwards. After those several months I started to get a little bit bored of it and continued to play it on and off until about mid-February 2014 (Version 0.23) when I stopped playing all together. Fast forward to early August 2015 (Version 1.0.4) and I was watching YouTube one day when I found a Kerbal Space Program video and discovered that 1.0 had been released, which re-kindled my passion for the game and well, I've been back ever since.

So all in all I was present from version 0.18.3 to 0.23, missed versions 0.24 through 1.0.3, and then re-discovered my interest in KSP for the most recent version 1.0.4. It's been a long trip, but I'm happy to be back.

[Demon_82]

A friend of me that's usually my multiplayer partner and shares a lot of my games tastes tried it and recomended it to me. So me, being the "anything space related is worth a try" freak that I am, tried it and bought it within a week or two, back in the 0.21 time.

[Zoidos]

Somebody posted a pic of the orion test launch on 9gag and one of the commenters thought it was a screenshot from ksp. That's how I first heard about it. 10 minutes later I was playing the demo. 20 minutes later I was downloading the full game. That was about a year ago (.25 IIRC) and I've been hooked ever since.

[Sovek]

I came to KSP in .18, I had seen a fellow streaming from a chat room I frequented and was interested in the game. This was way back in the early days of the game where you had the original parts. I had forgotten about the game until it showed up on steam. I purchased it shortly afterwords and is now my most played game. Best $23 I ever spent.