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Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

kerbalspaceprogram.com

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Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#271

Post by douche »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #100
TeMPOraL wrote: post #52

KSP was possibly my best entertainment spending ever. It definitely is the best game for me in terms of costs / time played. If you haven't played it yet, do yourself a favour and buy it now. If you have a kid with even tangential interest in space, get a copy for them. Side effects of playing KSP include: - getting an intuitive feel for basic orbital mechanics - finding yourself reading up on actual math to better u…

The game also has a horrible habit of turning people into arrogant know-it-all armchair rocket scientists. > no longer being able to watch most space movies due to frustration caused by the filmmakers not grokking basic orbital physics Oh boy, this again. Are you not able to watch movies with guns because Rainbow Six taught you how guns work and now you're just too woke to suspend disbelief? Something about this game…

> Oh boy, this again. Are you not able to watch movies with guns because Rainbow Six taught you how guns work and now you're just too woke to suspend disbelief?

A fun game to play in most action movies is count how many shots are fired before the protagonist has to reload. I wish I had one of those magic magazines.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#272

Post by nategri »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #108
TeMPOraL wrote: post #52

KSP was possibly my best entertainment spending ever. It definitely is the best game for me in terms of costs / time played. If you haven't played it yet, do yourself a favour and buy it now. If you have a kid with even tangential interest in space, get a copy for them. Side effects of playing KSP include: - getting an intuitive feel for basic orbital mechanics - finding yourself reading up on actual math to better u…

> no longer being able to watch most space movies due to frustration caused by the filmmakers not grokking basic orbital physics Meh. I've a degree in Physics and I still enjoy Star Trek. I agree with the rest.

Same! And I have theories about it. It's either because

1.) In general Star Trek isn't really about physics, its about sociology or (in the better episodes) political science.

2.) Star Trek gets physics so wildly wrong that its not as grating as a show/movie that tries really hard for realism and still fails utterly. If there's an uncanny valley of scifi physics, Star Trek is definitely standing miles from the opposite side.

The only consistent exception to this is Voyager which does start to get on my nerves as a particle astrophysicist. I mean c'mon guys thats too many made up particles. Settle down.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#273

Post by douche »

cwyers wrote: post #141
jmcdiesel wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve seems to have a slow pace for a reason... With games, you seem to have two choices... Do you want a game now, or a genre defining masterpiece that maintains playability for a decade later?

I would be okay with Valve Time. This isn't them being slow, this is them not making games anymore. There hasn't been a Valve-developed game since 2011 (that's when Dota 2 was released as a beta).

It's becoming a race of the tortoises to see whether Valve or George RR Martin will release a much-rumored, eagerly-awaited new work first...

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#274

Post by prewett »

jimmaswell wrote: post #170
TylerE wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unity's great for small indie games. Complex simulations don't mix well with mandatory GC. Microstutters suck.

It's not that hard to work with the GC in Unity to make the game smooth, especially if you do so from the beginning. https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/performance-optim...

For a game engine, smooth performance is pretty much required. If you have to a) know that you have to worry about GC stutters (which beginners are unlikely to), and b) proactively do something about it, that seems like a major failing of a game engine. If I use a game engine, it's because I want to work on the game and avoid having to do things like manage the GC.

Besides, GC is one of those things that is classically unsuitable for real-time use cases, and games are exactly a real-time use case. So you could argue that Unity choosing a GC language was a predictably a bad decision. Again, I don't use a game engine because I want to put up with bad decisions.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#275

Post by flukus »

Karellen wrote: post #212
xanderstrike wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A real hacking movie would be deathly boring. My favorite hacking in movies is either when it's cheesed up to the max (visually interesting) or happens off screen (more realistic).

I love the 10 minute or so montage in wargames where David just goes to libraries to do basic honest research on falken, in order to figure out what his password is. Of course, he should have tried Joshua like a week before he actually did, but you can't have everything. And that's not counting knowing where the school password post-it note is kept, and getting yourself sent to the principal on a regular basis so you…

Wargames was brilliant. How does everyone feel about the remake: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0865957/? I've decided not to let it ruin my memories of the original so far.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#276

Post by jimmaswell »

bananaboy wrote: post #270
TylerE wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come no ones seem to do it then, or not do it well enough? Cities:Skylines has the same GC stutters.

It's easy to fall into the trap of doing things the simple way or the unity way. To avoid it you have to go out of your way a bit and apply the same rigour as if you were writing your own engine.

Not making heap allocations in loops/Update and favoring object reuse really isn't comparable to writing your own engine.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#277

Post by jimmaswell »

TylerE wrote: post #183
jimmaswell wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that hard to work with the GC in Unity to make the game smooth, especially if you do so from the beginning. https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/performance-optim...

How come no ones seem to do it then, or not do it well enough? Cities:Skylines has the same GC stutters.

I've never encountered a stuttering issue in any Unity game I've played.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#278

Post by jimmaswell »

prewett wrote: post #274
jimmaswell wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that hard to work with the GC in Unity to make the game smooth, especially if you do so from the beginning. https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/performance-optim...

For a game engine, smooth performance is pretty much required. If you have to a) know that you have to worry about GC stutters (which beginners are unlikely to), and b) proactively do something about it, that seems like a major failing of a game engine. If I use a game engine, it's because I want to work on the game and avoid having to do things like manage the GC. Besides, GC is one of those things that is classical…

All of the extra convenience and features afforded by using .NET are more than worth having to do a few simple things not to make the GC trigger at the wrong times. A game written by a beginner in any engine is going to have classes of errors that make it harder to keep using the same codebase over time. Compare the few simple suggestions (many of which like object reuse apply to C++ as well) in the article to the huge list of things not to do in C++.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#279

Post by nirav72 »

rplnt wrote: post #139
nirav72 wrote: post #54

I just logged into my account and grabbed the installers and portable zip files for the last 2 versions. Just in case, take-two's influence somehow breaks the KSP experience I've come to love and enjoy.

I mean, you should have done that when many (most?)of the core staff left. Or the lead dev before that.

Yeah I should have. But the staff shake up didn't really make the headlines enough to get my attention. I didn't know it occurred until weeks later.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#280

Post by ouid »

palunon wrote: post #250
sliken wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass has little do escape velocity, it's density. Consider that any planet/sun could be shrunk until it's a black hole, with effectively infinite escape velocity.

A black hole has the same escape velocity as a star of the same mass, as long as you are well outside the swarzchild radius. Inside or near it, the effect of general relativity makes things very weird. In case of mostly anything else, Newtonian physics apply correctly, and the relevant thing is mass (and distance from the center). The escape velocity from a body is sqrt(2GM/d) where d is the distance from the center…

escape velocity is calculated from the surface.
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