Am I late?

[JP76]

Hi folks! Hope I'm not too late to this party!?

Why is it that I always discover epic games when they are a few year's old!?  

I'm John ex Army, from UK.......and I'm a KSP addict! 

Brought the game (PC) on steam the other day and not been off it since. I seriously think you need to add a disclaimer or warning about the lack of sleep and epicness that will follow when one installs it!! 

Started on career mode, followed a few of the training missions, and yesterday I managed my second orbit of Kerbin for a contract to test radial decouplers @ 500,000m! 

Ive found Scott Manley's, and others tutorials, and decided to try a few mods today too. I would be interested in a visual one, the chatter one, and a camera/views mod. (Think I saw one where you can watch launches from a static position or strap kerpro cameras  (TM) to SRBs etc. 

I'll have a good look at the mod section in a while. And im also looking forward to seeing what the community has to offer and getting involved. I'm sure this forum will be a great help and source of info! (Already bookmarked!) 

 

Cheers all, 

J

For Science!  o7 

 

[Pecan]

Welcome.  Being able to get to orbit reliably is the first major hurdle.  Well done.  With all the guides, tutorials and videos around make sure they are for version 1.1.3, or at least versions 1.x.x.  The aerodynamics were changed a lot just before release and earlier ... anything ... is unlikely to work.

Be warned - mods are as addictive as the game itself.  Do you have a 64-bit system?  If not then you might find you have out-of-memory problems with more than a few mods so try to keep the list down ^^.  On 64-bit you can go mad and install just about as many as you want.  Make sure you read the OP of each mod thread for details of its dependencies, as several of them depend on other mods being installed as well.  As above, make sure the mods you install are designed for 1.1.3.

Stock Visual Enhancements (and it's dependencies) is the 'standard' visual enhancement.  Chatterer is 'Totally useless', like you should see on its thread.  Second part of that is 'Totally fun', so get it!  MechJeb (MJ), Kerbal Engineer Redux (KER) and/or VOID for additional design and flight statistics.  MJ is also an autopilot, if you want it to be.  For instrumentation, including cameras you might like to try Raster Prop Monitor (and dependencies).  That brings all the cockpit-controls to life and allows up to 8 hull-cameras per vehicle.  External camera-control for launches, etc. are a bit rarer - I think Camera Controls is what you'll want.

Once you get to rendezvous and docking, the most difficult of manoeuvres, a mod like Docking Port Alignment Indicator (DPAI) is extremely useful and unless you want to restrict yourself to one flight at a time Kerbal Alarm Clock (KAC) is pretty much a must (it just sets alarms so, for instance, you can launch something to Minmus and do something else while it drifts through space.  KAC will tell you when it's time to pay attention to your Minmus flight again).

 

[JP76]

Hey thanks for the welcome Pecan.

I got my PC originally for flight sim (FSX) so yup 64 bit.

I7 4770 @ 4.2 g, 8 gb ram, 780ti. Windows 7 64 bit.

I installed CKAN and added the SVE stuff, Chatterer, KAC, and HullCam VDS. All checked and up to date.

I'll have a look at those others you mention too, thank you Sir.

Oddly though I had 2 CTD'S in a row on trying to load the game after adding them, however the game ran just fine when I launched it via CKAN and not through Steam. Looking and sounding real nice now! 

I didn't really have much time earlier to look into the causes of the CTD'S, but I'll have a look later on. 

Thanks again! 

Cheers, 

J

Edited September 2, 2016 by JP76
..

[Guest]

Never to late to enjoy a great game. I'd stay away from CKAN though. Just my opinion. It'll be the cause of many headaches later on down the road.

[SSgt Baloo]

22 minutes ago, Otis said:

Never to late to enjoy a great game. I'd stay away from CKAN though. Just my opinion. It'll be the cause of many headaches later on down the road.

My experience has been very different than yours, then. Most of the problems I had with mods came before I learned to use CKAN. YMMV.

 

[Pecan]

4 hours ago, JP76 said:

...Oddly though I had 2 CTD'S in a row on trying to load the game after adding them...

I got my game direct from Squad rather than on Steam so I'm not sure but it's possible that Steam runs the 32-bit version by default.  Both versions are in my folder anyway - KSP.exe (32-bit) and KSP_x64.exe (work it out yourself ^^).  There are probably answers on this forum or the Steam discussion site ...

I also have no experience with CKAN so can't add to the comments above about that.

... Oh, and I'm UK ex-Army too, long time ago.

[JP76]

More ex forces here eh, jolly good!  

I had a bit more time last night and had a proper read of the CKAN thread, made a copy of the game files in a separate folder as suggested.  The 64 bit version runs just fine through that, as well as starting it through CKAN. 

Not sure what's going on with Steam, but to be honest running it outside of it is probably a good thing, the game runs fine and that'll do for me. 

J

 

[Pecan]

6 hours ago, JP76 said:

More ex forces here eh, jolly good!  

I had a bit more time last night and had a proper read of the CKAN thread, made a copy of the game files in a separate folder as suggested.  The 64 bit version runs just fine through that, as well as starting it through CKAN. 

Not sure what's going on with Steam, but to be honest running it outside of it is probably a good thing, the game runs fine and that'll do for me. 

J

 

Yes, for modded versions and an ongoing career or other save it's good to have a separate install.  Steam is good, in that it will keep its copy updated automatically but that can break things that go out of date.  It is common - and explicitly allowed by Squad - for people to have several different installs with different versions and combinations of mods.  I have every version zipped-up from when I started; it can help if someone asks a question about something old.

You're addicted now anyway,  Lots to do!

[DunaManiac]

On 9/2/2016 at 3:13 AM, JP76 said:

Hi folks! Hope I'm not too late to this party!?

Why is it that I always discover epic games when they are a few year's old!?  

I'm John ex Army, from UK.......and I'm a KSP addict! 

Brought the game (PC) on steam the other day and not been off it since. I seriously think you need to add a disclaimer or warning about the lack of sleep and epicness that will follow when one installs it!! 

Started on career mode, followed a few of the training missions, and yesterday I managed my second orbit of Kerbin for a contract to test radial decouplers @ 500,000m! 

Ive found Scott Manley's, and others tutorials, and decided to try a few mods today too. I would be interested in a visual one, the chatter one, and a camera/views mod. (Think I saw one where you can watch launches from a static position or strap kerpro cameras  (TM) to SRBs etc. 

I'll have a good look at the mod section in a while. And im also looking forward to seeing what the community has to offer and getting involved. I'm sure this forum will be a great help and source of info! (Already bookmarked!) 

 

Cheers all, 

J

For Science!  o7 

 

Your never to late! I joined 2 days after you!

[Ty Tan Tu]

On 9/3/2016 at 7:42 AM, KerbalXcer said:

Hope I'm not too late

That is the exact thing I was thinking as I approached Duna today. My perigee (or is it peridunaion) was at almost 800 Km.

Yes you are too late. The cut off was July, 09 2016 at 2:48:23 P.M. PDT, one second after I installed the game. 

Have fun!

[SorryDave]

Welcome, you are not too late. I thought the same thing three years ago.

[Rath]

I thought the same "Am I too late?" in .23  Game was open to the public in .07

 

I know a guy who was a UK ex-paratrooper.  He was the only non-gurkah, so they got him adopted by a gurkah family and fixed him up with on of those awesome knives.

Edited September 10, 2016 by Rath