After the marketing company Squad, creators of Kerbal Space Program game, hyped the release of the Asteroid Redirect Mission patch in collaboration with NASA, they were bitten by the notorious Space Kraken. A game breaking bug was discovered that pushed the release into "sometime in April," displeasing a large number of their fans who were looking forward to the new content. Squad publicly admitted to the P.R. error and asked for understanding in the matter. Overall their transparency in the issue placated the majority of their user base.
The extremely fast fix (followed hours later by a hotfix for a gamesave bug that cropped up) puts them in the unusual spotlight of 'Company that made a P.R. gaffe and chose honesty instead of spin, and then apparently worked major overtime to correct the problem and subsequent problems.'
Considering how many AAA companies react under similar situations, this utter transparency at a time of high promotion for the indie developer is indeed a welcome sight. The game is still in Alpha development, and does have a long way to go, but is already rich with content and has a large modding community. If you have any interest in physics-based space games, this one is genuinely a step up from anything else, even Orbiter.
KSP's front page is here, and bring your best computer, you'll need it. The game is not optimized yet and tends to lag, especially on older systems due to Unity not yet supporting multithreaded physics or 64 bit (except on Linux). I suggest reading some of the forums if you're on the fence. Asteroids was never this much fun, or as difficult!
[Submitter's Note] Cross submitted to Pipedot
(Score: 1) by karmawhore on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:54PM
Popcorn time...
=kw= lurkin' to please
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pk on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:20PM
Probably not a game for those with a short attention span though.
(Score: 2) by bucc5062 on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:31PM
Funny thing, normally I have a good attention span (though as i think maybe only in reading). Anyway, I remember downloading either the demo or some early version and never getting past building a rocket. There was no connection in how to make it work and I soon tired of trying. The premise I love, the execution (at the time) was maybe not so good(?)
It may be worth trying again for it does look like fun. Not that I have any time to play computer games any more (sigh).
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snow on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:53PM
Ya, there is a bit of a learning curve for KSP, but if you watch Scott Manley videos, he does a great job of explaining everything. He's a big nerd too (albeit a cool one) and has TONS of interesting facts.
KSP is a game where you have to start small fist. Just getting into Low Kerban Orbit is pretty difficult.
The game can be pretty unforgiving though (which is one of the big reasons I like it). Forgot to deploy your solar panels? OOPS, now you are out of power to deploy them, and you have another piece of space junk. Went for an EVA, but don't know how to control your Astronaut? Well, he's stuck in orbit forever now (or until you launch a rescue mission).
I really like the planning required to make things work. You need to plan your mission objectives, and then build a rocket to meet them. There is a good variety of celestial bodies to travel to as well. Some are pretty easy (Duna) others, not so much (MOHO!).
There are so many mods for this game as well. Anything from a new rocketship to completely redoing aerodynamics, to autopilot. Want to have to worry about food/water/waste? There's a mod for that. Want to setup a deep space communictaion network, yup, there's a mod for that too!
This is a great game for a great price. If you are a nerd and like challange, definately try this game out!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Scruffy on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:10PM
1087 is a lucky prime.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Snow on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:38PM
Haha, I got all the way to Duna's surface before I realized that i placed a radial RCS tank over the capsule hatch, trapping all three crew inside!
(Score: 1) by linsane on Thursday April 03 2014, @11:31PM
Ladder slightly too short to be able to get back into pod after landing somewhere new. AAAgh! love it
L
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday April 04 2014, @04:11AM
Lander too tall and narrow, coming in at a bit of an angle, tipped over on Mun. I deployed the antenna to lift the nose just enough to take off again.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Informative) by rochrist on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:44PM
KSP is one of those games. You can lose yourself for hours trying one more design tweak to see if that mission will fly.
(Score: 2) by clone141166 on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:32PM
Yep. My advice is *always* fly a test mission to the Mun before attempting to fly/land on another planet/moon. It doesn't take too long to get to the Mun and its low gravity and lack of atmosphere is similar enough to most other planets/moons to give you a good indication of how well your craft will perform elsewhere.
Otherwise I guarantee you will spend hours building a craft and launching it to Jool only to discover that you placed the RCS thrusters in slightly the wrong spot, attached the landing gear slightly too high, forgot to add a ladder for your Kerbals to climb back up, placed the parachute(s) in the wrong spot and/or any one of a million other tiny details that you will inevitably forget.
(Score: 2) by pbnjoe on Thursday April 03 2014, @09:06PM
+1 to that. I bought it less than a day ago after looking at it for months, and I've already put 6 hours into it. A lot of fun if you like experimenting and taking time to get things just right; if you do so, the satisfaction you get when you reach the goal is great. I cheered out loud when I got a craft into sustainable orbit, heh.
For those on the fence about picking it up, I'd suggest it as it's on sale now and the normal price is likely to rise soon. (Also, as I seem to drift to when I talk about games, the Steam version has no DRM, so if you've an account already I'd suggest getting it there at the sale price)
(Score: 2) by tynin on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:27PM
I'm extremely happy to hear they've made significant improvements in joint stability and not needing to spam out struts and hope they'll hold it all together. We should start seeing some real mammoths getting launched into orbit that would have ripped apart on the launchpad in the past.
And with "The Claw" getting added, I should be able to go back and retrieve previously failed missions that stay in some nearby orbit. They were always a constant reminder that I had dozens of dead Kerbals out there that were never coming home. Hopefully this won't led me to losing even more of them on recovery missions.
(Score: 1) by karmawhore on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:52PM
This latest update has been great for craft stability. It's fun to go back and find some of your crazier "failed" creations actually fly now.
OTOH exploding was fun, too.
=kw= lurkin' to please
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Snow on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:57PM
Well, a big cause of launchpad explosions is the way that the game likes to basically throw the vehicle on the launch pad. I think that as the launchpad loads, the parts are weightless, but once the physics start up, it now has mass, so everything flexes at the same time breaking your spaceship. The new joins seems to hold up much better to this.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:10PM
I've also had designs that had to launch at partial thrust to avoid sqwooshing under acceleration g's.
If you haven't yet, get the Kethane mod. Is awesome.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by clone141166 on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:23PM
+1 Kethane mod is fantastic. I have built some pretty epic mobile kethane "harvester" designs - even managed to land one on Duna.
For anyone who buys the game and finds it too difficult/tedious to manually launch/land/adjust orbit/dock with other craft/transfer to other planets there is another fantastic mod called "MechJeb" that adds a whole additional UI that will do all of these things automatically for you (within the parameters that you provide to it).
I usually leave KSP set to "Do not auto-update" in steam as often the updates break the mods - it takes a little while for the mod makers to release a new version compatible with the current KSP release. (The incredibly terribly awful crapness that is steam and its auto-update system is beyond the scope of this comment.)
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday April 04 2014, @01:14AM
I wish I could claim the link was my doing, but it was the editor, Thanks!
"of the Asteroid Redirect Mission patch"
I am not a coder or tech, please explain to me how to put text overlaying a link like this.
Thank you.
Now get off of my lawn, but could you sweep the walk on the way out?
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