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Kerbal Space Program 1.0 Released After 4 Years of Development

Posted by Soulskill on from the onward-and-upward dept.

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!

12 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Awesome! by dotancohen · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    --
    It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
    1. Re:Awesome! by BlackPignouf · · Score: 4, Funny

      Obligatory : https://xkcd.com/1356/

    2. Re:Awesome! by N!k0N · · Score: 4, Informative

      also, this -- https://xkcd.com/1244/

    3. Re:Awesome! by Rei · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      "...but Republicans plan to come back with a new plan, where they just slash the tires on all the ambulances."
  2. Stoners call it by larpon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Herbal Space Program

  3. Re:I See it made it to GoG.com DRM-free by hab136 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Steam version is also DRM free; Steam is just used as a downloader. Once downloaded you can move it to another directory or even another computer, and even uninstall Steam.

    You could always buy directly from Squad as well and just download a ZIP file.

    KSP has never had DRM.

  4. I love KSP, but sometimes... by DerekLyons · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "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.

    1. Re:I love KSP, but sometimes... by Rei · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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)

      --
      "...but Republicans plan to come back with a new plan, where they just slash the tires on all the ambulances."
    2. Re:I love KSP, but sometimes... by Smidge204 · · Score: 4, Informative

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

      Parts act as blackbody radiators and will cool off just like any object would.

      Solar panels also now act as passive radiators (source) so they now have dual functionality.

      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.

      I dare say the new model makes it *easier* to get a rocket or space plane flying. Too easy, actually... my rockets and planes from 0.90 are all way too fast and destroy themselves much faster than they used to. I haven't had time to really dig into the new mechanics but so far it's promising that my 2000+ ton rockets might actually fair better than before!
      =Smidge=

  5. Re:No autoplay complaint? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, me too. I wish the games industry would go back to the stagnant iterations of the same game with ever-shinier graphics that characterized it throughout the last decade. All this crowdsourcing indie stuff is bullshit. Like Minecraft. What the hell is that? I mean I know you can build pretty much anything you can imagine inside it, but 16x16 textures on meter cubes? What the actual fuck?

    And while I'm on the subject, what is up with this non-linear emergent gameplay wank? Who the hell has time for that? I just want to be led by the hand through a sequence of pretty levels. Is that really too much to ask? Sandboxes are for kids.

    Just give me my Call of Battlefield and stop confusing me with all this new shit.

  6. Re:I See it made it to GoG.com DRM-free by Megane · · Score: 4, Funny

    The moon comes crashing to earth, the sun explodes and the spark of life on earth is extinguished

    Then restore from the last save and add more struts.

    --
    #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  7. Come on! by FreeUser · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's not rocket science ... oh, wait ...

    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy