TOTM jun 2023 Threads of the month: June 2023

[adsii1970]

The KSP forum moderator's team presents the
Threads of the Month

June 2023 Edition

Greetings - more than a few days late to my fellow forum members! It is hard to believe we are already six days into the new month. For me, many things were going on at the end of May and the first week of June that prevented me from posting this thread of the month on time. If you want to know these, I'll post them as a status update later tomorrow. I'll not bore you with the details here. But let's do what we do each month: highlight the threads the KSP community has felt deserve recognition!

Instructions on using the TOTM images: If your thread has been selected as a TOTM, you can copy the image's link above, go to the area of the forum you want to place it, then paste the link. Press the <CONTROL> button when the image appears and right-click on your mouse. A menu will drop down and allow you to edit the picture. You can resize it - the first number can be changed as large or small as you want. Eventually, I will add these images to the thread I've created as a repository.

For those out there who like the nerdy parts of the TOTM:

To continue what I started in May 2021, I have kept some forum statistics to respond to those claiming the forum was dying. In May, there were 336 new forum accounts (a decrease of 165, or down 32.93% from April). Out of the new forum members that joined last month, there were  25 who transitioned from new accounts to being active and participating in the forum. This conversion means 7.44% of the new users who registered their accounts last month are now contributing members of our community! (This is an increase from April; 4.79% of the new members became active and contributing members). If you’re interested in seeing the new members of our forum, you can click here!

Now, without further delay, I present to you the threads of the month for June:

Fan-fiction, Mission Reports, and Kerbal Space Program-inspired Creative Works:

This category features a thread (or threads) that, while not directly Kerbal Space Program related, it may be a creative work, fan-fiction, or other presentation related to the game.

There were no nominations for this category for this month.

Forum Member Created Challenges and Missions:

This category contains missions and challenges created by you, the members of our gaming community. Many excellent missions and challenges threads are created that expand our fun with the game and press our skills, creativity, and sometimes, luck beyond what we get accustomed to. Let’s face it, we all have our go-to design basics and our go-to vehicles we like to use. Sometimes, a good challenge can cause us to think of another way to achieve our goals.

This month's Threads of the Month features a challenge that can only be completed in Kerbal Space Program 2! In this challenge, "Fly through the KSC Parking Garage" by @Bingmao, if you really want to try your piloting skills and your favorite KSP2 atmospheric craft, this is the challenge for you! Bingmao describes this unique challenge as:

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Thanks to the 2nd Patch, the collision meshes of the Parking Garage are updated and we are now able to drive fly through it. 
Demonstrate your steady hand and honor the devs who made that possible, by flying through the garage unharmed, without touching anything.

Sounds easy enough, right? WRONG! I'd strongly warn against attempting this challenge if your allergies are in full sneeze mode, if you have cats in the room, or if there are children present. I've learned that any wrong move at 207 m/s always ends in disaster. Always. And with each explosion, there's been new frustration, new laughter, and even more determination to get it right!

And to keep you on your toes, there are three variations on this challenge, but you'll have to visit the OP to learn about them!

Game Support/Game Mod of the Month:

This category features either help with the game (stock or modded) or mods that add quality-of-life gameplay improvements to Kerbal Space Program.

Although Kerbal Space Program has been out for over twelve years, those who love this game will admit there are still some areas where the game still needs a little love. If we are honest with ourselves, there's never been a "perfect" game. However, thanks to the easiness of modding KSP and our wonderful modding community, much progress is still being made in perfecting this game. This is one of the reasons I always tell folks in other threads I believe the original KSP will have a very long shelf life. The nomination for this category for the original KSP is for the mod by @Gotmachine. The mod, "[1.8 - 1.12] KSPCommunityFixes - Bugfixes and QoL tweaks," is described as follows:

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This plugin is a collection of code patches for fixing bugs and performance issues in the KSP codebase, and adding small QoL improvements. Entirely new features (especially those already covered by other mods) are out of scope, as well as patches that might alter the stock behaviors to minimize potential mod compatibility issues.

I have over 100 mods in my 1.12 game, including Scatterrer, Kopernicus, TextureReplacer, and SVE (sorry, I do not use TweakScale), and I have had no compatibility issues with this mod.

If you are looking for help with the performance of the original KSP on your (older but not quite a potato) computer, try this mod!

KSP2 history is being made here, folks! Our first nomination and award for the thread of the month for a mod for Kerbal Space Program 2 comes from @Untoldwind and is called "Release Kontrol System2 (0.3.1). Its creator describes it as:

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This is supposed to be a scripting system (like kOS) to control kontrol everything.

Obviously this quiet the task, so right now I'm looking for some very brave Kerbonauts to give an initial spin (i.e. see if it works anywhere else but on my machine)

As mentioned in a previous TOTM, I usually download mods and try the challenge threads as they are nominated. However, I've decided not to download any mods for KSP2 until the game is more stable (or closer to 1.0) before I install mods. However, I know how much fun kOS is in the original Kerbal Space Program and can only imagine the possibilities it will bring to this latest franchise installment.

So, if you are feeling adventurous and want to try something new in KSP2, why not try this mod and give @Untoldwind some mod feedback?

General community threads of the month:

This category features a thread that adds to the community and doesn’t fit the game support/game mod categories.

Wow, there's not much better than this. It's Lego. It's Kerbal. It's the idea for a Lego Kerbal Space Program! As someone with the Apollo 11 Moon Lander, the Saturn V, three different Lego shuttle sets, and the older ISS Lego set (7467), I will gladly say, "Shut up and take my money" if I ever saw a KSP Lego set offered at the Lego Store! So, when this thread was nominated, maybe it was my personal love of Lego or the sheer awesomeness of the accompanying video presentation...

The thread, "Lego Kerbal Space Program - Lego Ideas Fan Trailer," is introduced by @Sam67c_3D as:

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     A trailer for my First Lego Ideas submission!

VOTE HERE: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/7f69cc4b-9fcf-40c6-93e8-aad1c9d3362e

Ever wanted to build the vehicles you design in KSP in real life? With over 40 modular parts designed so far, now you can!

Vote for this set now on the lego ideas site to make this set a reality!

If you want to see the cinematic or see what the response has been to the idea, take a moment and visit the thread!

Cinematic-based Fan-fiction, Mission Reports, and Kerbal Space Program-inspired Creative Works:

This category features a video or other form of cinematic of a Kerbal mission report using in-game video recorded gameplay. Note: This has changed. Instead of awarding this to a thread, this is a *post of the month* since most new cinematic works are posted in a single thread. We have a lot of great content creators, but because they've been posting their mission reports as videos in a single thread, most of their work goes unnoticed by the general forum audience. Hopefully, this change in the category to a Post of the Month (POTM) will highlight the great work done by these deserving content creators. Other threads containing cinematic posts will also be featured in this category.

Yes, folks, that's right. An overhauled image just for the cinematic posts! There are a lot of great content creators who are deserving of this recognition since we were made aware of the thread, Post Your Cinematics Here! (Cinematic Enthusiasts) by @HatBat. Although the thread did receive TOTM previously, it was felt that it wasn't enough for those who have shared your great creations featuring our favorite Kerbalnauts. Instead of being a TOTM, I've changed it into a CPOTM - a Cinematic Post of the Month.

For this month's CPOTM, we'd like to recognize the work of @Socraticat in their cinematic, "Duna Birb: Interplanetary Tutorial (KSP2)," found here:

Sometimes the forum software will get glitchy, and an exact post may be a little hard to find, especially when it is buried in a long thread. In case this happens, here's @Socraticat's cinematic presentation:

If you encounter other cinematics you feel are worthy of being recognized as this category’s post of the month; please nominate them! You can use the exact instructions to nominate a post containing a video as you would use to nominate a thread.

Honorable mentions:

Sometimes it’s challenging to choose which threads will be selected as the Thread of the Month for our five categories. We get many good nominations each month but limit it to one for each type. Threads nominated but not selected as a thread of the month become honorable mentions. The honorable mentions for this month are:

[1.9.x - 1.12.5] [5/31/2023] - Ahum² Planet Pack by @smushanoob

[1.12.5] IO Assorted Mods & Configs by @Iodyne

The honorable mentions for this month may not have made the Thread of The Month, but if you think they might be worthy of another opportunity, please renominate it!

Congratulations to all the winners of the Thread of the Month! We want to thank our forum members, @Camptaine, @idkgeek, @Jason Kerman, @KawaiiLucy, @Superfluous J,  and the members of the moderation team and staff who nominated this month’s contenders. Thank you so much for helping us identify noteworthy threads and bringing their awareness to our forum community. We’d appreciate your continued help in the future.

Odds and ends:

TO NOMINATE  A THREAD FOR CONSIDERATION: If you find a thread you feel should be considered for next month’s thread of the month, then use the “report comment” feature (the three dots on the upper right corner of the comment box) to report the comment. Please put in the text field of the report post “Nomination for the thread of the month,” and we will do the rest! You can always nominate more than one thread, too.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT GOES INTO THE DECISION WHEN CONSIDERING THE TOTM: Wonder no more! This helpful guide is to help you understand what we use to help determine what makes a thread a really good thread and one that becomes a thread of the month/cinematic post of the month winner. It’s everything you want or didn’t want to know and includes helpful tips.

And the last word for this post: I’d like to thank a few people who trust me enough to continue supporting and allowing me to contribute to the forum. I want to thank the Lead Moderator, @Vanamonde, for bringing me on as a moderator, a decision I’m sure has had moments where he often wonders why he did it. I’d also like to thank @Ghostii_Space and @PD_Dakota, our community managers, and @Nerdy_Mike, the KSP Franchise Community Lead, for tolerating me and allowing me to continue to serve our Kerbal Space Program forum community through the monthly Threads of the Month post.  

In case you missed last month’s threads of the month, you can click here.

[Socraticat]

I'm Honored! I had some nice footage in that video from playing around with the camera. I didn't really know where to put the video since it had tutorial elements, but I felt it also had a complete arc to it.

I've since uploaded a couple "focused" tutorials in the tutorial section:

And this seems as good a place as any to say thanks by giving back to the community with another tutorial/demonstration of how I do what I do in OBS and Blender:

 

Thank you all you great people!

[some_failure]

huh neat