Kerbal Space Program 1.0 Released After 4 Years of Development

hampton2600 writes: The beloved space simulator game Kerbal Space Program has just hit version 1.0 after four years in development. It has risen to prominence in public beta, but the full release brings a host of new features: "The flight model has had a complete overhaul, meaning the lift is now calculated correctly to all lift-generating parts, which includes lifting bodies. The drag simulation has also been completely revised, and uses automatically pre-calculated data based on the each part’s geometry, to be finally applied based on not just the orientation of parts in flight, but also taking other parts into consideration. ... A new heating simulation has been implemented together with the improved aerodynamics. Now, not only temperature but also energy flux is considered when making heat calculations, meaning radiative, conductive, and convective heating and cooling are all simulated and all parts have their individual thermal properties. Parts will emit a blackbody radiation glow if they get hot enough." To the mun!

Comments

Awesome!

[dotancohen]

Everything that I know about orbital dynamics, I learned from KSP. Thank you!

Re:Awesome!

[Rei]

I love how true that all is. You have Musk making Kerbal references in his tweets. I've seen engineers from SpaceX doing likewise. I was once chatting with a researcher working on a Titan probe concept and he responded at one point with something like, "Well, like what one experiences on Eve in Kerbal Space Program...."

The development team really should be proud.

I love KSP, but sometimes...

[DerekLyons]

"Now, not only temperature but also energy flux is considered when making heat calculations, meaning radiative, conductive, and convective heating and cooling are all simulated and all parts have their individual thermal properties."

But, in typical Squad fashion, they gave us the ability to overheat - but failed to give us the ability to cool off.

They also gave us a more advanced (and accurate) aerodynamics and engine performance model - but at the cost of the game's much vaunted simplicity and user friendliness.

Seriously, I love KSP - but the developers don't always think through the consequences of their design decisions. With the 1.0 update to the aerodynamics and engine performance, I'll no longer be recommending it to friends. The part of the game you spend the least amount of time doing (launching into Kerbin orbit) has now become a wearying slog with a steep learning curve and a roadblock to the fun parts of the game.

Re:I love KSP, but sometimes...

[Rei]

Yeah, the old aerodynamics was pretty horrible. Add a nosecone to your blunt-tipped rocket and it increases the drag? What kind of logic is that? It needed to be fixed.

There's a couple balance issues I'd like to see fixed, mind you. For example, it's possible to make small solar ion-powered aircraft in Kerbal. But only small ones, because all of the ion engines available are tiny, and all of the fixed solar panels are tiny, so while technically it's possible to make bigger craft, the necessary part spam makes the game unplayable. Fuel for ion engines is also absurdly and unrealistically expensive for no obvious reason. Yet solar panels and RTGs produce orders of magnitude more power than they should for a given size, if ion engine power to thrust ratios for a given ISP are used as the baseline.

Drop xenon costs, tweak power production / consumption for existing hardware, and add in nuclear reactor power sources (after all, they have nuclear rockets, we know kerbals understand nuclear physics), and and you could balance that out pretty well in terms of both gameplay and at least slightly more approaching realism.

(Note that one may be tempted to say that the ion thrusters are far too high power, but at least that's plausible if we assume that they're MPD thrusters with some type of advanced cooling system - you can get crazy power to weight ratios (by ion standards) out of MPD thrusters if you could somehow supply them many megawatts of power and dissipate all the waste heat - they manage it in pulsed mode, at least. But Kerbal's solar panel area-to-thrust ratios at the given ISP are not even close to being compliant with the laws of physics)

Re:I love KSP, but sometimes...

[Rei]

Everything else in KSP has had months of testing (perhaps even years) and they change fundamental things like the aerodynamics model without letting it be tested by the established community?

But isn't that so in the Kerbal spirit? ;) Hmm, what's the coding equivalent of forgetting a ladder? :)