Oldtimer KSP Humor

[bewing]

Hi guys, I've been posed a challenge by one of the developers. And I intend to cheat by getting help. I've been playing since version 1.0.3, but there are people who have played a lot longer than that, and I need input from oldtimers.

The challenge is to make a list of all the funny/amusing things in the stock game that no longer happen or are not available or got "fixed" or whatever. So that some of them can either get put back in, or homages to them can be made, or replacement funny things can be added.

Wherever possible, I need screenshots or short videos, plus a quick description of the funny thing (plus a version number, if it disappeared in an early version).

I'll start with a quick list off the top of my head, and add a few screenshots in a few hours.

1. Mundust Castle. A couple versions ago, this started working again for some people. It has to do with whether a random number generator "seed" gets initialized before the screen displays. It doesn't happen on my machine -- I have never seen a Mundust castle as long as I've played the game.
2. Kerbals bouncing after falling long distances, if they are careful to land on their heads.
3. The gobbledygook contract introductions.
4. The cartoon on the side of the FL-T200 fuel tank.
5. "Kurvy!" graffiti on the MK3 to MK2 adapter tank.
6. Carl Sagan's face in a Tylo crater.

 

 

[Superfluous J]

I don't have pics or vids to show but here are a couple:

Hell Kraken. Touch the ground while still on a ladder, have the chance to accelerate from the planet at ludicrous speed and have the altimeter lock on 666666666

10km/s straight down through atmo to a peaceful, soft landing.

I'll reply with more if I think of them

Edited April 10, 2019 by 5thHorseman

[Zhetaan]

I don't have a screenshot, but there was the original Magic Boulder in orbit of Ike.  While not amusing per se, the things that happened to rockets that visited it were.

There was the Ladder-Drive Eve SSTO:  Climb your way to orbit, one rung at a time!

How @5thHorseman missed the ability to fly asteroids like aeroplanes, I don't know, but I don't think you can do that any more.

If you backed into a claw, it would destroy the planet.

In fact, I recommend that you watch @Danny2462's entire video library before you ask for additions to the list:  all of these are depicted in YouTube videos from him or others that showcase these 'features' far better than anything I have.

Edited April 11, 2019 by Zhetaan

[Dman979]

Have we forgotten the infinity glider?

[TheTripleAce3]

Comm 8888 has beepboop on the inside of the antenna.

[Laie]

All I can think of is old atmo stuff. Infinity Gliders have been mentioned; also intake spam. I had a VTOL "cargo plane" that more resembled a kite: a framework holding engines around a central hole. PM me if that's the kind of silly stuff you're after, I must have a screenshot squirreled away somewhere.

More immediately funny is how you could deploy parachutes in mid-descent: all fire and flames, but no problem.

[Dman979]

Asparagus rockets.

 

Pancake rockets.

[adsii1970]

My favorite was the ability to launch things into space with a big stack of simple decouplers. Ah, the fun times!

And to fulfill your request, @bewing, one could accomplish this feat beginning when .18 was the demo until .90 when it was "taken care of."

 

[bewing]

9 hours ago, Zhetaan said:

In fact, I recommend that you watch @Danny2462's entire video library before you ask for additions to the list:  all of these are depicted in YouTube videos from him or others that showcase these 'features' far better than anything I have.

I have, actually. But he was more into summoning Krakens, destroying the universe, and spaghettifying Kerbals in various ways. You can still spaghettify Kerbals, of course.

And yes, I was thinking about suggesting to add a button to summon a Kraken and destroy the universe on command -- as a reminiscence of old KSP.

I admit that I really enjoyed the "flapping plane" that he demoed -- which no longer works. I can't visualize a way to get that sort of thing back into the game, though (without completely destroying the physics model, obviously).

9 hours ago, Zhetaan said:

There was the Ladder-Drive

Ladder drive still works. Not sure it has enough power to SSTO, or SSTO from Eve anymore.

-----------------------

One thing I am thinking of is that we could have launch clamps be one of the things in orbit that you can recover for a contract. We all remember the teleporting launch clamps, yes?

 

Edited April 10, 2019 by bewing

[bewing]

9 hours ago, Zhetaan said:

the ability to fly asteroids like aeroplanes, I don't know, but you don't think you can do that any more.

I think you still can. I don't see any reason why not.

9 hours ago, Zhetaan said:

If you backed into a claw, it would destroy the planet.

I personally never found that to be the tiniest bit funny at all.

 

[Vanamonde]

Remember infiniglide? After a plane crashed, for example, a detached control surface might decide to go on a jaunt to Minmus, all by itself. 

[Dman979]

9 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

Remember infiniglide? After a plane crashed, for example, a detached control surface might decide to go on a jaunt to Minmus, all by itself. 

 

8 hours ago, Dman979 said:

Have we forgotten the infinity glider?

I 'member.

[Superfluous J]

On 4/10/2019 at 4:58 PM, Dman979 said:

Asparagus rockets.

We're talking about old stuff that doesn't apply anymore.

Half of my lifters are asparagus.

Quote

Pancake rockets.

Now you're talking. My first Eve lifter looked like a manhole cover.

On 4/10/2019 at 6:21 PM, bewing said:

I think you still can. I don't see any reason why not.

I have several hours of experience saying it's at least a lot harder now.

On 4/10/2019 at 5:59 PM, bewing said:

One thing I am thinking of is that we could have launch clamps be one of the things in orbit that you can recover for a contract. We all remember the teleporting launch clamps, yes?

I remember someone figuring out how to produce enough thrust to pull them from the ground. Though that may have been apocryphal.

Edited April 11, 2019 by 5thHorseman

[swjr-swis]

29 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

Remember infiniglide? After a plane crashed, for example, a detached control surface might decide to go on a jaunt to Minmus, all by itself

That still happens, constantly. When debris from craft crashing anywhere near KSC get a certain distance away from where the game things your craft 'died', it has a high probability of losing touch with gravity and floating off in random directions.

[Snark]

Abusing "physicsless" parts, back when they were genuinely massless.

So you could, for example, cluster ludicrous numbers of Place-Anywhere RCS thrusters under a big monoprop tank and get really insane acceleration.  Or spam OX-STAT panels attached to long arms of cubic octagonal struts, to build stock solar-powered helicopters and the like.

 

...Oh, another one.  The command-seat bug.  When a kerbal would exit a command seat, the kerbal's location would snap to the highest point on the craft directly above the seat, rather than on top of the seat itself.  So for example, if your ship kinda towers over the command seat and has some projection that overhangs it, you exit the seat and suddenly bingo, you're standing way up on top of the vessel, dozens of meters overhead.

[FleshJeb]

44 minutes ago, Snark said:

Abusing "physicsless" parts, back when they were genuinely massless.

So you could, for example, cluster ludicrous numbers of Place-Anywhere RCS thrusters under a big monoprop tank and get really insane acceleration.  Or spam OX-STAT panels attached to long arms of cubic octagonal struts, to build stock solar-powered helicopters and the like.

 

...Oh, another one.  The command-seat bug.  When a kerbal would exit a command seat, the kerbal's location would snap to the highest point on the craft directly above the seat, rather than on top of the seat itself.  So for example, if your ship kinda towers over the command seat and has some projection that overhangs it, you exit the seat and suddenly bingo, you're standing way up on top of the vessel, dozens of meters overhead.

This game has gotten progressively less silly, and we're all the worse off for it.

I remember someone doing what was nearly a grand tour (minus Eve and Tylo) in 2 or 3 tons, using airhogging and ions, and a lot of cubic octagonal struts.

[Snark]

Being able to collect crew reports from uninhabited command pods.

[ZooNamedGames]

6 minutes ago, Snark said:

Being able to collect crew reports from uninhabited command pods.

using command pod's SAS before there was career mode costs since you could build vastly larger and more complex rockets.

[swjr-swis]

Kerbal cloning by merely exiting a pod.

Kerbal launching by merely exiting a pod.

Synchronized space swimming: SAS of a nearby craft in space that would mirror/mimic your every attitude adjustment.

Camera that would suddenly start to zoom away from the craft in the middle of flight because the game was tracking a 'ghost' center of mass instead of the actual one. I think due to separating a shroud or fairing?

Floating dentures: used to be we could zoom in enough to see our EVA kerbal's teeth.

Asteroid teleportation: certain scene switches used to cause the flight view camera to focus on a random uncontrolled/unrendezvoused asteroid.

Valentina's miraculous space-resistance: she used to have no visible glass in her helmet, while floating in the game menu.

Darkness of the Deep: getting below a certain threshold depth in the seas would drop us into complete darkness.

 

I don't have the opportunity at the moment to match the above with footage or version numbers... work is beckoning in only 3.5 hours more and I need to fit in a bit of sleep in there somewhere. But maybe others can fill in for my lapse.

[Gargamel]

2 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

That still happens, constantly. When debris from craft crashing anywhere near KSC get a certain distance away from where the game things your craft 'died', it has a high probability of losing touch with gravity and floating off in random directions.

Ahhh. but this is when you could stack control surfaces on the back edge of wings, and then flap them quickly by making quick up and down movements.   They created lift and thrust, and you could somewhat reasonably make a plane out of almost nothing.  

 

There was also the great Noob mistake.   Thinking that water was easier to land on than land.   That stuff was hard. 

[pincushionman]

Not a real short video, but Scott Manley’s Tony Probe relied on: RCS thrust scaling by lever arm length, lack of shock heating, bad drag model, non-blocked thrust, true massless parts, and Stayputniks having reaction wheels. And it was glorious.

EDIT: Why is this in Gameplay Q’s?

Edited April 11, 2019 by pincushionman

[Superfluous J]

Landing on Jool.

SAS locking your ship to an exact heading through programmed-in magic, lessened a bit in its OPness by having to turn SAS off to turn. And the player revolution that was spawned when the whole thing was replaced with reaction wheels having to actually hold the heading.

1 hour ago, Gargamel said:

There was also the great Noob mistake.   Thinking that water was easier to land on than land.   That stuff was hard. 

Which was just a small improvement over when it was actually solid.

Edited April 11, 2019 by 5thHorseman
Swypeos

[bewing]

25 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Landing on Jool

You used to be able to actually land on Jool? News to me.

 

3 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

This game has gotten progressively less silly, and we're all the worse off for it.

Yes, that's the eventual point of this exercise.

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, bewing said:

You used to be able to actually land on Jool? News to me.

I never actually did it myself but there was tell of people hacking parts to survive the pressure and making it all the way to the surface. It was apparently really glitchy. Eventually the devs hard coded a limit where you'd explode no matter what.

[Laie]

Apparently there was a half-decent chance that you'd come down on a sliver of solid ground or... something... it was as if the soupmosphere became a so thick as to have chunks in it. Here's a Kerbal finding a footing for long enough to plant a flag: https://youtu.be/WriMi5R72Pc?t=279