KSP Nostalgia..

[sjwt]

So, with us moving towards Beta status, let us take time to reflect on some of the little things we remember from versions past..

I present to you this little tidbit of advice I found in an old post of my, circa 0.15.. Craft loading issue...

"Operations guide for ASHL Melissa, you don''t have to follow any of this, but be warned random bits may just fall of this ship or its payload at any point if you don''t"

Yup, guidelines on how to start and run the game so your ships don't explode.

Lest we forget

[Richy teh space man]

I remember in the earlier versions of the game when time warping ships would get thrown out of the orbit of the Mun and Minmus.

I also remember the first time planets arrived.. and a few of us went magic boulder hunting while Nova gave us some subtle hints.

[Boris_T_Roach]

My fav bit of nostalgia (apart from landing the Smeagle on the mun for the first time AND returning) is my first ever Jool mission just after the nuke engines were added.

The ship had 3 engines out on pylons, it suffered a Kraken attack and had 1 engine bitten off.

Somehow the ship made it to orbit Jool and started waiting for rescue...........

Sadly I think they are still there as Squad did a point release and I never went back to that save

[bsalis]

ASAS that was hard as a rock.

Rockomax decoupler made of tissue paper.

ORDA vs Erkle?

The *real* Kraken (actually I don't miss that at all)

MechJeb flame wars.

The Great April Forum Derp.

(not strictly game related, I know)

[dryer_lint]

I purchased KSP in 0.23.5... I'm such a noob... does the demo count, though?

Limited parts meant you had to construct massive booster stages

This might just be me, but EVA was deadly for some reason

Only one crew member per ship. I spent a ton of time trying to land off the launch pad and EVA another Kerbal into the same ship for fun

The old space center. You could walk under buildings.

No SPH, so the closest thing I had to a "plane" was a booster with winglets

Sucking at every part of the game- Oh wait, that was just me.

[Red Iron Crown]

No persistence, saves, or reverts. Every mission had to be done perfectly in one sitting from launch to recovery.

A moon to land on and no real landing gear as such.

Solid oceans on Kerbin.

[Floppster]

Smashing into the tower every once in a while.

Moon landings using winglets and radial decouplers.

[DeepSpaceDutch]

Aircraft getting Parkinson when turning SAS on..

[Excalibur]

I snapped an Achilles tendon right about the time KSP was first released and since I couldn't walk I was overjoyed when a friend of mine told me about 'this little rocket game you might like'. Not being able to walk for 9 months gives you lots of KSP time...

I think KSP definitely had a different feel to it back then, there wasn't much on Youtube etc and the community obviously smaller and tighter. In playing the older versions I actually felt like a pioneer, going places where Scott Manley had never been before; the small community and player base certainly attributed to that. That's where the nostalgia lies for me.

Now with so many people playing the game it reminds me of the images of Everest covered in oxygen bottles; I half expect to see every planetary body littered with debris from other players.

So here are some old albums of mine covering what I believe to be 0.12 to 0.17, there's not a whole lot but if I can find some good ones I may add those up too.

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Got the go ahead from Ted to post the below; check out where Moho used to be! Now getting in to orbit around that sucker was a challenge! Plus you couldn't land on it as you'd explode below 10km or so!

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Edited November 4, 2014 by Excalibur
Added album from the 0.17 experimental testing phase

[ThirdHorseman]

I also remember the lack of landing gear fondly...trying desperately and eventually succeeding with a Mun landing balanced on the tip of rocket fins.

Oh, and of course the versions before maneuver nodes were added. Those were the days when Kerbals were Kerbals....

Edited October 31, 2014 by ThirdHorseman

[Cirocco]

I hopped onto the KSP train in 0.22 I think. Back when I was just getting into things, I remember that rockts were SUPER wobbly, especially the ones you made by docking several parts together in orbit.

adding more than two fuel tanks on top of each other in a rocket? better get those struts out!

don't even start with me about how ugly my spaceplanes looked back then

[RocketscientistV]

I remember the time in KSP when you could count the amount of parts on your fingers.

I lost track of it after 0.10 but after a couple of school friends saw it and liked it they found it and I bought it in 0.19, so i had a 9 version gap. I went from no moon to having all the planets in the game at the moment.

[Tw1]

That funny old VAB and SPH...

The game was quite bare bones, but it had a certain purity that way.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

I'm certainly not an old flame by a long shot - as you can see in my profile, I joined only in September 2013 - but that doesn't mean I can't have nostalgia. Back when I didn't know anything about Physics, I just flew rockets for the sake of it and to explore new bodies. But now that I understand it, I go more for setting up bases and explorations, while occasionally trying to be realistic.

I'm not saying I want to forget how to play the game, but I certainly do miss the times when just landing in another body was a spetacular milestone instead of a trivial event.

That funny old VAB and SPH...

http://i.imgur.com/z8Ct9aH.png

The game was quite bare bones, but it had a certain purity that way.

I see you used the screenshot from your "Space Center Reborn" story.

[rkman]

Once upon a time there were no landing legs.

[Boris_T_Roach]

I also remember the lack of landing gear fondly...trying desperately and eventually succeeding with a Mun landing balanced on the tip of rocket fins.

Oh, and of course the versions before maneuver nodes were added. Those were the days when Kerbals were Kerbals....

Aye , you tell kids today you flew to the mun with no landing gear or manuver nodes, they dont believe you, ok back then we only had a capsule, some fuel tanks, an engine and some dustbins full of boom, but we were happy

[Tw1]

I see you used the screenshot from your "Space Center Reborn" story.

This is entirely for convenience, and not some sort of subtle cross promotion thing I seem to have an instinct for.

But, if people want to revisit themes of versions past....

Though that story is now just old enough the I've-improved-embarrassment-effect happens when I read it...

Remember how that Mun was so smooth?

(Another promo opportunity!)

The time before stock rover wheels when the cart mod was king, and mapsat was the mapping mod.

Also, this image was too cool to not share.

Edited October 31, 2014 by Tw1

[cantab]

.23 was my first paid version, and I've spent most of my time in .23.5. (Only fired up .25 for the first time today actually). So pretty modern really, though I do recall having to add a lot more struts, and launch clamps being essential for everything.

My old playing might be more amusing. A lifter that kept clobbering its middle engine so I just removed said engine and ran on the outers. And my hilarious first effort at a "heavy lifter".

[mushroomman]

I still don't really know what version I started playing at. I want to say it was 0.8 but I don't really know. Heck I was terrible back then and when they finally added the Mun I had almost no concept of orbits and transfers so I had no idea how to get there. Those were fun times.

[Crown]

https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/717x448q90/r/826/a712.png[...]

I remember having a lander atop a rocket stitched together from huge amount of fuel tanks and engines. Somehow it made it to orbit and I managed to land on the moon on the wings. It mun injections were difficult these days because there were no maneuver nodes. The rule of thumb was "if you see the moon rise at the horizon, throttle up until your AP matches the Mun's orbit.

And the tower. Any remember the tower? Sometimes the rockets grew so big you would smash them the the tower on lift-off. So you had to move the rocket a bit to the side in the VAB. And it came out of the VAB rotated by 90° (which they fixed lately with 0.25 or 0.25). Somewhen I attached decouplers, these very big decouplers (we had no other back then), to my first stage engine because they kept exploding due to the weight above them.

Oh, these times.

</oldManVoice>

Mun orbit was a beautiful view the first time you saw it. Seeing the Kerbin rise above the horizon like Apollo 8 did gave me chills. I lifted my thumb, closed one eye and erased Kerbin. I was alone. The planet it started from, so vast and big, was gone. The only sign of civilisation was a tiny capsule orbiting a rock in the blackness of space. That moment I felt very very small.

[xub313]

Man, I wish I kept my screenshots and stuff from 0.17. My biggest achievement was getting Jeb Bill and Bob to Eve without any tutorials (or maneuver nodes "gasp").

I had some really weird rockets that used radially attached drop tanks instead of dropping boosters. And aerospikes were super OP, I strapped them on everything.

[rodion]

this thread also makes me wish i kept my old screenshots - i deleted them twice, i believe; once migrating from the original non-steam version and deleting the spare game files left on my HDD (remember having to go to the site and log in every time an update was released because the patcher didn't work and having the servers overload so you couldn't get it? that's some nostalgia for you...) , and another time when i deleted my KSP dropbox archive when i thought it wasn't interesting any more - "when will i ever need this old junk again?" well, now i know the answer to that question.

Edited November 1, 2014 by rodion

[Shuttle]

Nostalgia? Nostalgia.

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

Joined in 0.13.1. Times were simpler, no runway, no Minmus, no patched conics, no... anything really.

Also:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/50186-The-kerbal-time-capsule-project

[EvilotionCR2]

I also remember the first time planets arrived.. and a few of us went magic boulder hunting while Nova gave us some subtle hints.

Oh dear. The memories. Remember turning your patched conics up so you could see where you would arrive on the planet or something like that in the map?