Do you remember your first exposure to KSP?

[ShadowZone]

I remember it well. I read a Kotaku article about somebody building a space cruiser and sending it to Jool. That somebody was a user called "Avaslash" and it looked something like this: https://imgur.com/a/moq3F

here's the article: https://kotaku.com/another-kerbal-space-cruiser-after-building-an-actual-1519751468

This inspired me to

1. get the game
2. make stuff like this:
   • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl_5dLrKkf4
   • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS21eGxXOZA
   • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkgx2zGGELM&list=PLLGqKphkhc2B3tsXchLORB1dAwQSv-Yf4
   • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCaLECwmxOA

Never looked back in regret.

 

 

[Atkara]

I remember a friend mentioning it, knowing my background in flight/space sims, among others. It was back in 2014 IIRC and I initially dismissed it, after taking a brief look at it. Then I watched the 1.0 trailer, when the game was released and I was like "hmm...".

Dansgaming was streaming it these days. He was landing... something to the surface of the Mun and the backseater inside me was like "you've got to be kidding me... is this the best he could come up with? And who's this Scott Manley he's talking about?"

So I got the game and checked out sandbox at first. I got flooded with parts I didn't really know much (if anything) about. So I switched to Career, to give myself time to become familiar with which part does what, when and how. I could've picked Science mode, but launching something that comes with a  pricetag, yet costs nothing, didn't feel right.

Anyway, once this was settled, I started playing. It must've taken a year for the effects of atmospheric drag to finally click in my head, along with a rudimentary understanding of gravity turns, navball usage and navigation.

I'm still learning.

[Human Person]

I randomly stumbled over a Scott Manley video on YouTube. I hadn‘t heard of him or KSP before, but I bought it on steam 10 minutes later. It was version 1.1.3, so it‘s actually not that long ago.

Edited February 11, 2018 by Human Person

[StrandedonEarth]

I really have no idea how I found the demo. But after building an ever more clustered series of MonkeyLaunchers, I bought it back in 0.22, missing the free DLC deadline by a few months. Oh well. Untold hours wasted invested. My wife tolerates it because then I leave her alone.

[NSEP]

I was looking for "rocket building games". Then i found this game...

[Tyko]

I downloaded the demo. It was really frustrating between how limited my part options were and the fact that I had no information about how the rocket I was building would perform. It's okay to provide limited parts, but there should be a combination of parts that makes sense for a beginner. The lack of info on TWR and DV was extremely frustrating. It felt like the devs had zero interest in providing tools for real launches and it was just a "blow things up" game. So I uninstalled and didn't touch it again for a while. Later a friend told me the demo wasn't really current and told me about getting information through Kerbal Engineer Redux.

Finding those changed my mind and I've been hooked ever since. If KER or other calculation mods weren't available I wouldn't be playing the game today.

[MaxwellsDemon]

Technically, my first exposure to KSP was reading some of Harvester's posts on an Orbiter web forum years ago (2006?  2007?).   But I didn't realize it at the time.

My real first exposure was while I was searching for materials related to Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager.   I kept getting hits for some Kerbal something or other and said, "What's that?"      (This was just after 1.0 had come out, so I entirely missed the 0.xx days.)

 

[drhay53]

Interesting to see a lot of orbiter references. I learned about KSP first, and then orbiter due to becoming obsessed with KSP. I also played alot of Elite: Dangerous. I found the learning curve for orbiter was a little steep after having a kid, so I have never fully gotten into it. 

[Greenfire32]

Kurt J Mac was where I heard of KSP from.

Maybe if he'd pack moar boosters, he'd get to the farlands already.

[Archgeek]

17 hours ago, drhay53 said:

Interesting to see a lot of orbiter references. I learned about KSP first, and then orbiter due to becoming obsessed with KSP. I also played alot of Elite: Dangerous. I found the learning curve for orbiter was a little steep after having a kid, so I have never fully gotten into it. 

HEH, yeah, a lot of the earlier days of the KSP forums were awash in Orbiter jokes and references.  To this day there are people disappointed we never got a :hailprobe: emote.

[Red Shirt]

My son bought it for me after my wife saw him playing it and thought I'd like it. This was back at version 0.23. I've told that part before. What I haven't touched on was that I had recently been retired on disability. Translation, I had all day to play. It kept me sane and depression free during my life transition. My son had the demo version as well so I had him copy it and I gave it to four friends who I considered space nerds who played games occasionally. Of the four, one never bothered to open it. One quickly gave up. Two stayed with it a short time. One stayed long enough to launch straight up into an orbit around the sun before quitting. The other I wrote instructions on how to get to orbit. He said it was too hard and 3 pages of instructions on his smart phone proved his point. Oh well, I tried. The learning curve was too steep for him.  

[Treveli]

YouTube led me to a Scott Manly video back in 2013/14. Watched several of them, got interested and downloaded the demo on Steam. I was between jobs at the time and didn't want to spend money on a game, but after a month or two of being stuck with the demo's and limits and watching Manly and others, I decided it was worth it. Been playing off and on since.

 

Maybe one of these days I'll actually make it further than Minmus. 

[MaxwellsDemon]

2 hours ago, Archgeek said:

HEH, yeah, a lot of the earlier days of the KSP forums were awash in Orbiter jokes and references.  To this day there are people disappointed we never got a :hailprobe: emote.

ooh... I don't think I've seen a Luna III for Making History, come to think of it.   That would be all set up for hailing.  

[TheSaint]

3 hours ago, Red Shirt said:

My son bought it for me after my wife saw him playing it and thought I'd like it. This was back at version 0.23. I've told that part before. What I haven't touched on was that I had recently been retired on disability. Translation, I had all day to play. It kept me sane and depression free during my life transition. My son had the demo version as well so I had him copy it and I gave it to four friends who I considered space nerds who played games occasionally. Of the four, one never bothered to open it. One quickly gave up. Two stayed with it a short time. One stayed long enough to launch straight up into an orbit around the sun before quitting. The other I wrote instructions on how to get to orbit. He said it was too hard and 3 pages of instructions on his smart phone proved his point. Oh well, I tried. The learning curve was too steep for him.  

I have a friend like that. He programs 3D engines for a living, and when I bring up KSP he's all, "That game is too hard!" LOL

[Red Shirt]

43 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

I have a friend like that. He programs 3D engines for a living, and when I bring up KSP he's all, "That game is too hard!" LOL

I'm that way with Halo type games. Truth is I'm not interested enough in the content to figure out the controllers. Original Wolfenstein 3D had a joystick and 4 buttons. Why do I need 42?

 

[Fearless Son]

Actually, no.  I had forgotten my first exposure to KSP.  The first time I was exposed to KSP was when Extra Credits did a "Games You Might Not Have Tried" episode that mentioned it.  The problem was, I had forgotten that was in the episode.  I only realized that was my first exposure after rewatching the episode years later and recognizing KSP in it.  

But the first exposure to KSP that I remembered clearly was when it came to Steam, along with it's little animatic of the Kerbal engineers shifting through boxes of spare parts before digging out Steam's cam-crank logo.  That caught my attention, and the rest was history.

[Archgeek]

17 hours ago, Red Shirt said:

I'm that way with Halo type games. Truth is I'm not interested enough in the content to figure out the controllers. Original Wolfenstein 3D had a joystick and 4 buttons. Why do I need 42?

 

42...?  There aren't... 4 shoulder buttons, 4 face buttons, start, select, the menu button, the stick-down-press buttons... that's only ...13?  14 if you count the wireless sync button?  That's not that many buttons.  What ever happened to the weird black and white buttons from the original x-box controller?

[Geonovast]

11 minutes ago, Archgeek said:

What ever happened to the weird black and white buttons from the original x-box controller?

They became the bumpers.  Original controllers didn't have those.  So if you play an original game on a 360, RB and LB are white and black.

You're also missing the D-pad in your count.

Edited February 14, 2018 by Geonovast

[Archgeek]

5 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

They became the bumpers.  Original controllers didn't have those.  So if you play an original game on a 360, RB and LB are white and black.

You're also missing the D-pad in your count.

Ah, but does the D-pad really count as buttons?  I guess some games use it like another 4 face buttons.  Okay, a range of 13-18 then.  A lot less than 42 still.

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, Archgeek said:

Ah, but does the D-pad really count as buttons?  I guess some games use it like another 4 face buttons.  Okay, a range of 13-18 then.  A lot less than 42 still.

They're not analog, so yeah, I would count them as buttons.

[SiriusRocketry]

My first exposure to KSP was back in the olden-days. I'd heard about it from a friend who knew I was into spaceflight and said there was a basic rocket building game that I'd like. He copied the folder from his laptop to mine and I loaded up the game that very night. I don't remember exactly what version it was... It had the orbital map, but no Mun and the Sun was just a red light source. Nevertheless, I played through until 0.13.3 then stopped when the game became non-freeware. I played the demos (in particular the 0.18 demo, in which I landed on Mun) and finally got off my ass, bought KSP 1.2 and registered a forum account.

[maculator]

I don't remember exactly when it was. Must be ~3 years ago. A friend bought it and played it the complete friday night until morning, he than gave me a copy and I played it the whole saturday night. Sunday morning I went to the gasstation, got myself some beers and a paysafe card and bought it.

The next weekend careermode was implemented. 

Thats the good thing about DRM free games you can actually test the full thing withou problems. I understand that many people wouldn't buy games if there was no protection but for honest people its an honest way of seeing if its worth the money.

[linuxgurugamer]

About 3 1/2 years ago I was watching someone  on Twitch playing World of Taznks.  Somehow I ended  up watching someone landing on Duna by spamming parachutes.  Got me hooked,  bought iut when 0.25 came out

[Mrcarrot]

Gets back after school

"Hey, Dad, what's that game?"

3 and a half years later, I'm still playing it.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Mrcarrot

[nascarlaser1]

The back of a Minecraft book had a "other games to play" section in the back and KSP was the #1 choice to play by the authors.