is awesome. Those crazy Mexican developers have made a great game.

You should go buy it.

Cliff Notes: Develop a space program by designing and building spacecraft, then launching and flying them and the little idiot alien astronauts into space.

It's in Alpha right now with a fully developed sandbox mode, but mission based gameplay is coming. Decent graphics, but well-developed physics, and a full solar system to explore. You can share your spaceship creations and the game is fully modable.

Grab the demo and try it out.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyTxsQhyqMA

[This message has been edited by wee_ag (edited 1/3/2013 4:47p).]

Been playing this game for a few months now. Just recently stepped up to the paid version and it was well worth it.

Working on assembling my space station and flying a mun mission now.

Found this jewel on the Kerbal forums.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tPRxyv3CED8#!

Thanks a lot. This little game kept me up to 2 am.

Welcome...

If it makes you feel any better, I was up until about 3am but finally got my first capsule in orbit. I was stupid excited!

Wow! What is the difference between free and paid version?

The paid version opens up the entire solar system (6 planets, 8 moons). Other than that, I think they are the same.

Edit - looks like the paid version lets you add mods, not sure if the free version lets you do that. (I'm currently using a couple that make the game a little more interesting)

[This message has been edited by wee_ag (edited 1/7/2013 3:34p).]

I played when the only place to go was orbit or the Mun. It is hard enough to be entertaining.

I have 3 or 4 little guys outside of their capsules floating off into space because I made them let go of the ladder on an EVA. Bad idea.

I cannot figure out the controls well enough to get into orbit or land correctly on the moon.

Have they made it easier recently?

Yeah - the recent updates made controls a bit easier from what I read. I mean, it IS rocket science so it's suppose to be a bit difficult.

There is an add-on called MechJeb that basically automates a lot of the controls (orbiting, landing, auto-pilot, traversing to other planets, etc) - it's basically cheating in my opinion, but with the steep learning curve it makes it a lot easier to accomplish your goals. I did use it to land my capsule at a specific point on the surface of Kerbin just to try it out. Don't know if you can load it in the demo, but it's worth a try.

MechJeb: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/12384-PLUGIN-PART-0-18-2-Anatid-Robotics-MuMech-MechJeb-Autopilot-v1-9-6

I don't particularly care for the way the space planes control in atmo.

It's hard enough to fly a plane on Kerbin, but I thought it'd be cool to strap a rocket plane to my interplanetary rocket and send it to Duna.

Getting a successful launch was kind of a mess, but once I establish Kerbin orbit, getting to Duna was easy. Unfortunately landing said rocket plane on Duna wasn't easy. I tried to bring her in four or five times, but all of them ended in crashes.

It seems Duna's atmo isn't thick enough to get the kind of lift I needed to overcome deorbital speeds. I tried retro burning to lower my deorbiting speed as much as possible before bringing it in, but all that did was increase my inclination to the surface, meaning my plane plummeted straight down.

I tried aerobraking and slowing moving into the atmo. That had the best result, but I still crashed after touching down at around 130 m/s. I just wasn't getting enough lift to bring it down slower. I was using RCS just to keep the nose up.

Apparently Eve has similar atmo to Kerbin, so I might try to put a space plane down on it.

I've seen a video of a guy using a small, single-stage plane with a single rocket and two air-breathing jet engines to get to Laythe (with two refueling stops along the way). He had a pretty good handle on KSP's aircraft controls and was able to land on one of Laythe's islands.

This sounds epic, just can't justify $23 with all of my firearms purchases as of late. I hope to get it someday though.

I'm thinking about jumping on this. Is it multiplayer at all?

No to multiplayer, although it'd be pretty sweet if there were servers were people could work together to colonize other planets.

hmmm... i would definitely be interested in taking part in (or hosting) such as server. I'm thinking a TexAgs server might be in order.

A multiplayer server would be epic... how would this work (esp. with timewarp)?

From what I can tell the only way to play is local, but I'm a low-level nerd.

[This message has been edited by wee_ag (edited 1/30/2013 2:03a).]

Didn't think about time warp. Planet position is a key factor in interplanetary travel. Would make for some weird arrivals if time warp was on an individual basis.

You'd either have to diable it, or set a specific point in time when it would be activated so people could get everything together if they wanted partake of it.

Of course, if the idea is to all work on the same project/goal (say a massive trip to Duna) then planning a specific timewarp timeframe might work.

Hmm... time warp would throw a kink in things... though I could see how if you tried to enable it, a screen would pop up on the other users screens like "Player 1 would like to warp to 10X's speed. Do you accept?".


On another note, what mods do you guys use? I'm having some trouble with the satellite scan one.

Downloaded the demo and played around a little bit. Very cool, and I could definitely see myself getting into this. However, I found very quickly that I am pretty inept at flying a spacecraft.. Don't have much of a grasp on the controls yet.

boy - if you buy the $23 retail version, it comes with 4 tutorial missions that cover everything from building a ship to launching it to orbiting a planet and even switching orbits between 2 planets.

I will probably be buying it this weekend. How can you go wrong for $23?

damn, this looks pretty cool

Yeah... it's pretty sweet. By no means 'easy', but a ton of fun.

If I can finally land on Mun, i'm thinking Mun Base in the near future.

[This message has been edited by wee_ag (edited 2/1/2013 3:56p).]

Is this an app or something you download on a desktop?

Yeah... it's PC/Mac app

Played this a little today. I made it to space and back alive, but I was only there for 11 minutes. I have no idea how to orbit.

So I found out that stabilizers do in fact.....wait for it, stabilize flight and without them, your rocket will rapidly lose control and crash into the ground. The demo is pretty fun

still cant get into space though

If you have enough power and steering is your problem, hold down F.

Also, add the advanced SAS (if it's in the demo) then hit 'T' once you launch. It's an auto-stabilizer that will try and keep you pointed at whatever direction you are pointed in when you hit 'T'. Of course, if your rocket doesn't have anyway to maneuver then you are probably sol (try adding wings...)

i hate all of you for showing me this

I've actually managed to avoid playing KSP for 72 hours or so. This is a great achievement... though I've started filling my time with Minecraft or BF3 instead...

Stabilizer thing helped a lot. Got into what I thought was space but fell back down once I ran out of fuel so I guess I just need a few more engines and fuel tanks now

Need to refrain...don't have time...must not download...

baby steps. got into space, now the question is how to navigate. i just tumble around and cant really steer.