Origins of the Kraken

[NotAgain]

Hey guys,

I've been wondering why the glitches/features known as Kraken attacks that we have all come to know and have a love/hate relationship with obtained their name, and when it first started being used.

Did it first appear on the forums as some kind of casual reference?

Was it used by the devs when those bugs first arose?

Is there one forum user who should be duly praised for starting the tradition?

[Sereneti]

its called after the "kraken" from "pirates of the karebean"...
the kraken destroy the ship....

[icedown]

I'm not sure if this is the reason but in the early days when launches went bad (and this happened fairly often) the runaway boosters looked like one reaching out of the planet.  There used to be a really good ss of this but I can't seem to find it.

[MircoMars]

the "ships get eaten by the giant kraken" is a historical naval myth. in olden times there was no way to figure out why ships went lost on high seas and plenty of ways to scare young midshipmen. the kraken was one of them.

in ksp "being attacked by the kraken" referred to many bugs that messed up the physics of the flight scene and lead to confusing and hilarious results. mostly because of either going beyond the realms of what was programmed yet (e.g. trying to leave Kerbin's SOI before there was anything to go to) or overrunning floating point numbers by going too fast, too far, too anything.

if you want to find out more, look for really old youtube vids about crashing ksp (like 3 or 4 years old, anything below 0.18).

Edited June 13, 2016 by MircoMars

[Hary R]

31 minutes ago, MircoMars said:

in ksp "being attacked by the kraken" referred to many bugs that messed up the physics of the flight scene and lead to confusing and hilarious results. mostly because of either going beyond the realms of what was programmed yet (e.g. trying to leave Kerbin's SOI before there was anything to go to) or overrunning floating point numbers by going too fast, too far, too anything.

The real deep space kraken was a floating point bug which disintegrate a ship going fast enough for the poor single precision floating point to calculate with the required accuracy the position of each part at the required frame.

(With an old sailor accent): I've never seen it as I've join KSP after the devs killed it and place it's body on Bop. Still I've heard that it was a real beast that take many kerbal lives. it was so powerful that even today, years after it's death, it still can destroy unfortunate ship that plays with floating point accuracy.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

I think the original Kraken was a bug I had back in 0.19 or 0.23. 

If you were time-warping into areobraking a small dot of white and blue and black would appear below your ship, I think it was actually the inside of the sphere of air, that was somehow showing up through the planet. The game was no longer registering the surface of Kerbin at this point. and as you would "land" this blue dot would get bigger and bigger and bigger and then at sea level, it was as big a Kerbin and just ate your ship, you would into negative altitude and the game would crash.

eventually any bug (esp ones that break ships) are "the Kraken"

Edited June 13, 2016 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[CG_Kerbin]

It is lost to the annals of time, many scholars and writers have debated its origin and purpose, all we shall know is the kraken is here to stay...

[FungusForge]

If I remember correctly, the original Kraken, was the Deep Space Kraken. If you ventured too far from the Sun, phantom forces would begin to attack your craft, eventually tearing it asunder. This was of course, easily comparable to the Kraken of myth, roaming the deep seas attacking, and ultimately sinking, any unlucky seafaring vessels.

[cantab]

I believe the first one named as such was the "Deep Space Kraken", yes. Back when there weren't any other planets, going that far out didn't have much point, but if you did your ship got torn apart by an unseen force.

The "Intercontinental Kraken" was even older, in the first releases of KSP, where just going far enough from the space centre, for example to orbit the planet, would start your ship vibrating again due to floating point errors. I observed it when I played 0.7.3 myself. But I think it might have got the 'kraken' name after the fact. After all, making orbit in KSP 0.7.3 is Not Easy.

Now though the KSP community refers to any game bug that destroys the spacecraft or severely disrupts the game physics, without outright crashing the game, as a "kraken". It's rather diluted the term.

[Claw]

Kraken

 

 

Lore is that the kraken was a giant sea creature (whose form changed over time). Said giant beast was believed to attack and destroy sea fairing vessels which ventured out into the unknown.

In KSP, there was a period of time whereby craft that ventured into the unknown were attacked by a mysterious and unknown beast, resulting in quaking and destruction of the ship involved. It was the result of floating point errors growing excessively large when the ship would get far away from the origin of the kerbalverse. The kraken has long since been slain, by moving the center of the universe with the ship.* That fix is actually called "Krakensbane."

The term "kraken" is now used extensively by anyone and everyone to indicate bugs in KSP, though the moniker is usually best saved for those bugs which result in rapid and complete craft destruction.

Cheers,
~Claw

* Don't tell the pilots that they are now the center of the universe. They might get over inflated egos.

[razark]

47 minutes ago, Claw said:

Don't tell the pilots that they are now the center of the universe.

Being pilots, they already know.

 

"You can always tell a Gunner by his greasy hands and vacant stare - and
You can always tell a Bombardier by his manners debonair - and
You can always tell a Navigator by his pencils books and such - and
You can always tell a Pilot - but you can never tell him much."

[swjr-swis]

For the general promotion of Kerbal culture and science, I present you, the Kraken Encyclopaedia:

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Deep_Space_Kraken

Feast and sate thy hunger for the ancient and arcane knowledge.

[Kerbin vonKerbal]

9 hours ago, razark said:

You can always tell a Pilot - but you can never tell him much."

With my firsthand experience as a mechanic on their planes - this is nothing but accurate. They look at you like you're crazy when you explain to them how the system they think is flawed works.

[Kertech]

I got struck by the hell kraken in one save last year, every time I loaded a vessel it would accelerate to 666.666m/s and try and escape kerbol! Had to do a reinstall and wipe everything, not sure why it happens!

whenever someone mentions the kraken I always read their post in the sea captains voice from the Simpsons!

[RW-1]

Awwww.... How cute.

 

Kurb the Kraken, just take one of these out to it.

 

[JoeNapalm]

 

I think the conventional Kraken myths fail to see beyond the mists of time...

...for the true origins, we must look to the works of H.P. Lovekraft.

 

-Jn-

[Corona688]

On 6/13/2016 at 5:14 AM, icedown said:

I'm not sure if this is the reason but in the early days when launches went bad (and this happened fairly often) the runaway boosters looked like one reaching out of the planet.  There used to be a really good ss of this but I can't seem to find it.