Oolite Bulletins

On the theme of different types of space games, I’ve just been trying Kerbal Space Program. It’s… really quite annoying. :-)

Ahruman wrote:

On the theme of different types of space games, I’ve just been trying Kerbal Space Program. It’s… really quite annoying.

I've seen a couple of videos of it on Youtube. Looked interesting. Also, from what I've seen, it seems to share one feature with Oolite: the planet is too small.

Ahruman wrote:

On the theme of different types of space games, I’ve just been trying Kerbal Space Program. It’s… really quite annoying.

Indeed. I've downloaded it (took ages) and played a little bit with it. The first objective was "how fast and far away can I go?", which leads easily to an orbit around the sun without the chance to get back to the planet.

Now I've set myself another objective: get into an orbit around the moon. Third step is probably going to be: and now get back to the planet.

Oh, and the other objective always is: create spectacular failures.

To my immense surprise, I got to the mun and back on my first attempt, with an untested rocket. Practicing orbital manoeuvres and and understanding the effect of accelerating/decelerating at each apsis helps.

Once you’re there, getting back requires very little energy; a quarter tank was more than enough for everything after establishing munar transfer orbit. Apparently it can be done using only RCS thrusters.

Ahruman wrote:

To my immense surprise, I got to the mun and back on my first attempt, with an untested rocket. Practicing orbital manoeuvres and and understanding the effect of accelerating/decelerating at each apsis helps.

Once you’re there, getting back requires very little energy; a quarter tank was more than enough for everything after establishing munar transfer orbit. Apparently it can be done using only RCS thrusters.

Actually landing on the Mun, however, is quite difficult. With even the slightest sideways drift your rocket is likely to break. The connection between tank and engine makes a little 'snip', and you're sitting there for the rest of your days.

I have lately resorted to trying to hit Kerbol, with surprising results. At some point the rocket around me exploded, but the pod stayed unharmed and was accelerated to ludicrous speed (it had a '42' in front and too many digits to remember behind that). I found myself in a distance more than 1000 times that of Kerbol-Kerbal in mere seconds (still with max TAF), and then the program kind of froze. It didn't react on any key commands, but I could shut it down regularly.

Also, the scripting system for modifying parts specs is a piece of cake compared to shipdata.plist. So I also find myself where many of our newer board members here started: in full cheat mode.

Just discovered this game myself. It's very fun indeed. Still haven't made it to Mun myself, but... I'm getting there, slowly but surely, one exploding rocket at a time.

Windows and Mac only..

NOT HAPPY, JAN!

Diziet Sma wrote:

Windows and Mac only..

NOT HAPPY, JAN!

Whud?!? No Linux? *thumb down* So not cool!

According to this guy, Linux support will be coming with the next patch.

Cool.. hope that includes a free demo, as per the other platforms.