Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive • Hacker News Board

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#331

Post by Bartweiss » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 5:00 PM UTC

deciplex wrote: post #289

xanderstrike wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> features get deferred It's actually the opposite, bug fixes get deferred in favor of more features. Fixes make your player base happy, but they already paid and are therefore not worth any more money, new features drive sales.

Mojang is particularly aggravating about this. They spent like a year completely reworking The End and adding hang-gliders or whatever, and meanwhile furnace carts have been broken for like three years, and the fix is apparently like a dozen lines of code or something. In fact the entire mine cart and track system should be overhauled if they're really serious about improving the game - but instead they just keep add…

> Not to mention a lot of the good mods are still on like 1.6 or something because obviously no one is going to diligently update their mod over the course of ten years or however long Mojang wants to keep this up.

I've never seen most of Minecraft's newer stuff for this exact reason. I played enough to get pretty deep into FTB and the other large mod packs, and pretty quickly realized modders put out both content and bugfixes faster than Mojang itself. At that point, you might as well just consider the 'real' game a particularly shoddy branch of mods.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

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Post by J5892 » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 6:52 PM UTC

philsnow wrote: post #164

J5892 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I think all of us here love hacker movies. Sneakers, Hackers, Swordfish, etc. :)

In what way was swordfish like Sneakers/Hackers? The latter are cyberpunk-ish, a bit ideological. Swordfish is more of a "caper" movie with a cheap tacked-on hacking bit. Bad guy wants money, uses hacker and LOTS OF CRIME to get it.

Just in that they all have unrealistic depictions of hacking.

It's definitely the worst of the three.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

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Post by photojosh » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 4:36 AM UTC

rbag wrote: post #302

photojosh wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have a kid with even tangential interest in space, get a copy for them. Not having played KSP, but would do so with my kid, what age do you think would be suitable for them to start playing?

I introduced it to my nephew when he was 12 and he succeded to create pretty efficient flying bombs. A kid can grasp the concepts involved at 10, they can surely have fun before but probably more by exploding rockets and messing around with kerbals.

Thanks. Maybe I'll buy and play first then, looks like we have a few years to go.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

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Post by rrauenza » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 6:08 AM UTC

Tylerosaurus wrote: post #175

J5892 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I think all of us here love hacker movies. Sneakers, Hackers, Swordfish, etc. :)

My personal favorite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU

...Or https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=URVS4H7vrdU

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

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Post by King-Aaron » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 6:14 AM UTC

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…

> finding yourself reading up on actual math to better understand what's happening with your rockets

Never in my life have I ever found myself digging up my old graphics calculator to just play a video game. KSP is honestly my favourite time-waster ever!

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

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Post by eecc » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 8:28 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #275

Karellen wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

According to the reviews on IMDB you linked to, that was a good call. Stick to it.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

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Post by Fifer82 » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 10:45 AM UTC

adanto6840 wrote: post #225

Fifer82 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is with Unity because it equals bad performance. It isn't like other games which, if you throw a beefy rig at it, you get more performance for the most part. It has a "It is 2001 and my Flash Player Animation is running at 24fps and the fans are burning out" feel to it.

It is most definitely possible to achieve great results, including performance, with Unity. It requires creating the game from the ground up with code, though -- and that does not seem to be the audience that Unity markets towards the most. That said, it's not easy though it is certainly doable; it basically means you're using Unity largely as a "rendering pipeline" which may or may not be overkill, depending on the…

Finding any information on "Pure Code" setups for unity is impossible. As in, I think http://jacksondunstan.com/ has the only article on the internet.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

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Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 11:49 AM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #160

rxhernandez wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too have a degree in Physics but have trouble enjoying sci-fi entertainment that includes basic physics screw ups in its story. I about pull my hair out when I hear them insert quantum entanglement in random places to make up for a lack of creativity and/or ability to hire a decent science adviser.

Well, I was just watching yesterday an episode from TNG, where Geordie detects a "deuterium leak", and Riker immediately asks "toxic?" Dude, it's hydrogen, you need to have different concerns there. At least they did acknowledge that firing a weapon in a deuterium-rich atmosphere might not be wise, depending on concentration. Eh, just push the non-chewy bits to the edge of the plate and enjoy the rest of the culinary…

[deleted]

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

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Post by Hop_David » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

geekpowa wrote: post #214

bigdubs wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the martian was praised for generally being pretty on the money with the science content?

KSP taught me that orbital intercept to rescue Watney was nosense. (The book was slightly more believable here). also the whole swing by Earth and head back at the last minute was wrong. Orbital intercepts between planets requires very precise timing and alignment. A transfer from Mars to Earth is never going to line up with an instant return transfer window back to Mars. On KSP itself, huge weakness for me in the ga…

As others have mentioned, The Hermes didn't follow a Hohmann trajectory. It is an ion propelled craft capable of 2 mm/s^2 acceleration. A very weak thrust but powerful in that it can sustain this acceleration for looooong burns.

If just the sun is accounted for, Andy Weir's trajectories are okay (I believe). However putting planets in complicates things. Ion engines really suck at climbing in and out of deep planetary gravity wells.

Neil deGrasse Tyson's trailer for The Martian had Hermes leaving low earth orbit and arriving in Mars orbit 124 days later. Which is nonsense. With 2 mm/s^2 acceleration it would take 40 days to spiral out of earth's gravity well. Not only does this wreck the 124 day trajectory Weir so painstakingly calculated, but most the slow 40 day spiral would be in the Van Allen belts. This astronauts would be killed by radiation.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

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Post by Hop_David » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #252

geekpowa wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link. That was well awesome. I withdraw my criticism.

I had a similar issue with Seveneves recently. I had a strong science-based disagreement with the idea of Izzy always keeping its anchored asteroid facing into the oncoming atmosphere of LEO, which I was sure was impossible because it would be facing the rear as often as it would the front, because objects in space/thin atmospheres don't fly and don't maintain a constant relative orientation just because they're orbi…

Tidal influence can keep an object oriented along the local vertical and keep the same face towards the primary. See, for example, Phobos. Or most the moons in our solar system.

This is especially true if an orbiting object has attached to a tether. Gravity gradient stabilization can keep a tether aligned to the local vertical.