Kerbal Space Problems: It’s over!

By Shamus Posted Friday Sep 25, 2015

Filed under: Notices 47 comments

EDIT: Thanks for watching. We’ll hopefully upload the whole thing to YouTube later this week for those of you who missed it.

Original post:

Today at 6pm Eastern US time, we’re going to play Kerbal Space Program. Well, Josh is going to play KSP, and I’m going to watch. And so are you. Yes, because this will be his first time playing the game. If you’ve never played the game before, it will be an instructive experience to help you get started. If you have played the game, it will allow you to to experience the feeling of smug superiority you get from watching someone else fail at something you understand.

KSP was one of my top picks of 2013, and I still come back to it once in a while. I can’t wait until Josh uncovers all the problems that explain why the game is probably actually horrible and everyone should feel bad for liking it. Because that’s his job. The stream will be live here when the event starts:

http://www.twitch.tv/spoilerwarningshow

If you are irresponsible and have Flash enabled then this countdown timer should show when the event starts:

If not, you’ll have to do the math yourself. Good luck!

 


From The Archives:
 

47 thoughts on “Kerbal Space Problems: It’s over!

  1. MichaelGC says:

    It’s weird – the countdown timer isn’t Flash (I can see it on my iDoofer), but the location bit is. It seems like it would be more difficult to do it mixed than either one way or the other? (Not that I know anything about these things; hence questionmark.)

    1. Alexander The 1st says:

      Ultimately, it depends on which code you wrote for which part, and which part has a library that helps out.

      Getting two languages to work together is sometimes easier than trying to get one to do everything itself.

  2. RedSun says:

    According to the timer, my “city’s id is not valid”.

    Man, my city’s ego and superego are going to be pissed.

    1. mhoff12358 says:

      I got the same thing, but then reloading the page after looking at the comments fixed it. Weird.

  3. Ranneko says:

    Given the complaints the crew has previously had about twitch I am kind of surprised you aren’t giving YouTube Gaming a shot instead. But I guess you already know that Twitch works.

  4. tzeneth says:

    Seeing that they were streaming I decided to finish my attempt at landing on the Mun. I have somehow succeeded and have come back with lots of SCIENCE! Only took me half a dozen tries to finally successfully land after getting into orbit…Landing is hard and I need to design a better lander next time as my current one is way too top heavy.

    1. TMC_Sherpa says:

      Go to Minmus. You need more dV to get there but you need way less to get into an orbit, land and come home. Honestly the hardest part about landing on Minmus is…landing on Minmus. Its no Ike but the gravity is low enough that slowing down usually means you start lifting off if you aren’t careful. Also the flats are at sea level and, um, flat.

  5. Dt3r says:

    Looking forward to this! It’s the first time that I can actually make it to a hangout. Watching Josh fail at KSP is icing on the cake.

  6. Daemian Lucifer says:

    FIRST

    1. Charnel Mouse says:

      THRUST

      1. MichaelGC says:

        He thrust his first amongst the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.

        1. Charnel Mouse says:

          The ghosts from two hours past, it seems.

    2. Frost Poster says:

      Damn,I forgot you had that trap.Touché

    3. tzeneth says:

      Why is the time of posting of this listed as 4:10pm? That’s in the future? How are you posting from the future?

      1. Daemian Lucifer (from the future) says:

        I am from the future!I came here to warn you: Do not engage the thrusters when y-

      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        To explain properly:Shamus made a script that when someone posts “FIRST”,or some wariant thereof,the time stamp is advanced two hours,effectively sending that post somewhere to the middle,and preventing the first poster from using their name for that time.And I forgot about it,because for quite a while no one posted it.But I had to deliver on my vow.

  7. Steve C says:

    Next one of these you should designate someone to monitor chat.

    1. 4th Dimension says:

      Why? So Shamus can give even more opposite advice? ;)

      1. Volatar says:

        So I won’t have to type in all caps all the time so that Josh notices my advice xD

        1. 4th Dimension says:

          That was frustrating. Screaming TTT before every launch. And the worst thing is that we were on a delay. For what is worth Jarenth did keep an eye on the comments from time to time.

  8. Andy_Panthro says:

    I just want to congratulate Josh for making it to the Mun. Which he totally did, we all saw it, it was amazing.

    1. 4th Dimension says:

      Yes he went there not only once but twice. Shame we experienced network problems than but I trust him. He nor Shamus wouldn’t lie to us.

      1. Dt3r says:

        Indeed! Too bad about the feed disruption, but that means he did the Mun flight in record time!

    2. Yes, truly a glorious thing to behold.

    3. Alexander The 1st says:

      Shame he made such a huge impact in an existing crater on the Mun that there is no evidence to prove that he did or not.

  9. Trainzack says:

    That was fun. I’m surprised Josh got as far as he did. We all expected him to get to the Mun, but he went way above and beyond the standard. I think, in fact, he is owed an incredible round of applause:

    👏

  10. Felblood says:

    I missed the vast majority of the show, but the occasional parts I did catch mostly consisted of rockets that were flaming, flipping, crashing or, in one case, exploding in midair.

    I’m just going to assume that this is representative of the show as a whole, and nothing can persuade me otherwise.

    By this metric, 50% of the show contained a text message on the screen, regarding one of a variety of types of damage to a parachute.

  11. 4th Dimension says:

    Well that was the first hangout I was actually able to attend, and I spent most of the time not reading chat but furiously typing in it.

    That original space rocket was viable. Too much SRB made it slightly unbalanced while they are firing so it would force you to go up. Turning after the SRBs was a smart move. The problem was Josh didn’t have the time to understant some of the orbital tricks. Like it being more effective to burn at AP (apoapse) and PE, so what he had to do is burn only until he hits 100+km, and then schedule a burn that will bust him all the way into orbit on the AP mark.

    KSP Edu is a thing. I actually did use KSP in some of my classes, when we were free to try building rockets with pupils. They mostly worked in the end. I had to fly of course. In fact one of them using an ancient version of KSP went to the Moon.

    1. Trainzack says:

      Someone should definitely recreate that and post a video of it landing on mun to youtube.

      (There won’t be any point though, because that would be recreating what Josh has already done)

      1. 4th Dimension says:

        The one I’m talking about doesn’t have enough dV for that, but it can get into a nice and stable orbit. Albeit this was done using 1.01 and not 1.04 since I am not able to download it due to server maintenance.
        http://imgur.com/a/jlPzG

  12. 4th Dimension says:

    Oh and Kerbals surviving crashes is a well known bug. Apparently if your kerbal impacts the ground helmet first he will not die since the helmet is invulnerable. I think Danny or Scot did a video of a kerbal deorbiting using backpack and landing on his head and living.

    1. Alexander The 1st says:

      Clearly this was the proof Mass Effect 2 writers needed to indicate that it was possible that Shepard survived re-entry and could be brought back.

  13. squiddlefits says:

    That was really nasty. KSp doesn’t seem like a good hangout when you literally know nothing of the game.

    1. 4th Dimension says:

      Eh?

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Really?Josh did extremely well for someone who literally did not know the controls at first.Its fascinating.

      Also fascinating is how he got progressively worse the more he learned.Its like his skills are complete inverse of his knowledge of the game.

      1. 4th Dimension says:

        It’s not that he got worse but he got a bit cocky and pruposfully tried to build something stupid. And also as you learn more you need to learn more complex systems, and he didn’t have the time and the 75% of advice was from Shamus who was the devil in this cast.
        Also his “lucked” out on his first design, so he didn’t learn some of the lessons. Like how to do Science. Or to always build the rockets that taper towards the top and not top load it.

        1. silver Harloe says:

          Shamus giving him bad advice was part of the fun!
          I liked Josh’s comment that Shamus thought the name of the game was “Kerbal Space Pogrom”

  14. The Rocketeer says:

    pation!

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Here,I think you dropped this.

  15. 4th Dimension says:

    I think I know why Josh’s return capsules kept spinning out of control during descent. He was using SAS to maintain stability using internal gyros in the capsule. They use the power. Under all that stress power runs out quickly, so he looses the power midway through descent. This loss of power prevents the SAS from working which causes the craft to “right” itself into the most aerodynamically stable configuration, that of a nosedive. The turn exposes it to more drag, more heat BOOOOM

    1. Tse says:

      The Science Jr. is very light for it’s size and always screws with the balance of the small capsules. For a beginner, it’s best to just dump it before reentry.

      1. 4th Dimension says:

        Or put it on the top of the Capsule? Would the Capsule protect it then? IRL it shouldn’t but this is KSP.

        1. Tse says:

          it’s too big for the small capsules. Putting it on top of the big capsule works very well, though.

  16. AdmiralJonB says:

    Would’ve liked to see this, but I was sleeping so I could go to EGX and try out Good Robot!

  17. DGM says:

    Shamus,

    I saw the .gif you posted on Twitter and immediately thought “Yep, that’s Reginald Kerbalbert alright.” Looking forward to seeing this on Youtube.

    Also, you’re probably already aware of it but just in case: your old love, the original System Shock, now has an enhanced edition available on GOG. On sale.

  18. Cuthalion says:

    Watched the semi-archive on Twitch. That was pretty entertaining. Thanks, Josh and friends. :D

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