Adventures in KSP - Disaster and Despair on the Moon

In this series of posts I'll tell my progression (and my throwbacks) at the brilliant Kerbal Space Program. The current object of my exploration is the moon, or Mun as it is called in KSP. Let's get into it!

The plan was to send an unmanned rover to the Mun and pick up my two stray astronauts who were waiting on the surface. If the vehicle had fuel left after that it could also be used for expeditions around the area - there might be more anomalies around after all. The flight went well and pretty soon the rover was approaching the Munar surface. Disaster almost struck when I tried to slow down above the surface to then detach the rover from its nuclear thruster, which exploded below it. After the dust had settled I checked the rover and, much to my surprise, found it unharmed. Using its RCS-thrusters, I was able to flip it upright and extend the gear - the vehicle was on the Mun and ready, about ten kilometers from my astronaut who was stranded halfway between the MunArch and MunBase Alpha. I went for it.

Adventures in KSP - The MunArch

In this series of posts I'll tell my progression (and my throwbacks) at the brilliant Kerbal Space Program. The current object of my exploration is the moon, or Mun as it is called in KSP. Let's get into it!

Feeling the need to reach the mysterious anomaly as fast as possible, as I was running out of game-time due to some real-life scheduling coming up soon, I decided that the best course of action to reach it fast would be to sent another rocket to the Mun. Now, reaching a specific spot on the Mun is, with my amateurish abilities in orbital physics and piloting, a rather fuel-intensive exercise but I didn't need to get whomever I was sending up there back because now I had a MunBase where they could go after exploring the anomaly. So I fired up another Munshot I, the trusty ship that had sent my first manned Munar mission successfully there and back again, figuring I could use the fuel originally reserved for the return-trip in order to fly the thing to a landing-spot near the anomaly - and then walk the rest on foot.

Adventures in KSP - Anomaly at MunBase Alpha

In this series of posts I'll tell my progression (and my throwbacks) at the brilliant Kerbal Space Program. The current object of my exploration is the moon, or Mun as it is called in KSP. Let's get into it!

So, I didn't have a MunBase in this version yet and only one of my Kerbals had travelled to the Mun and back. The addition of electricity in this version asked for a new design in MunBase. I went and designed the base to be a two-pod affair, with a two-person lander-can on top, below it a habitat that would in theory offer room for four astronauts but go up empty for now, to be filled up later. Below was a fuel-tank and a thruster, eight sturdy landing-legs and, of course, a large asparagus-style four-stage rocket to get the thing to the Mun. On the top I added an RCS (mono propellant for maneuvering-thrusters) tank, a mast and some solar panels to be extended when the thing was landed. I was in good hope when the rocket proved to be enough to get the thing beyond a low Kerbin orbit and on course to the Mun.

Adventures in KSP - Introduction

I've recently re-started playing Kerbal Space Program and, after some fiddling about and learning the new mechanics, I have decided that the game is good for some write-ups to be published here. Today I'll start off with just some introduction on what KSP is and what makes it so fascinating for me (and, apparently, the community).

Kerbal Space Program, still in development and not yet a final product, pulls a rather elegant conceit that taps into aspects of me that I haven't enjoyed as much since having been a child. The concept is simple: KSP doesn't put pressure on you. It does away with superfluous stuff like opposition or competition. In sandbox mode, it just tells you "here is a solar system, with a realistic physics engine. Here is a space-port with realistic bits and pieces for you to put together rockets, planes, probes and rovers. Now have fun with it!". Not more, not less. And then you start to learn and every step feels like you have actually re-treated steps of real-life space-exploration. I was proud when I managed to get a rocket into orbit for the first time. Long practise and trial-and-erring led to me actually landing on Mun (the moon of the home planet in the system), before there were even landing-gears and such luxuries in the game. By now, trips to the moon are somewhat routine for me. Next target? I don't know - Eve (Venus)? Duna (Mars)? One of the moons of Jool, the outer gas giant, which are supposed to hold ancient alien artifacts?

Thoughts on Pixels: Canabalt

I have recently started to play Canabalt again, mostly because I needed something to kill time while on public transport, and it still is a strikingly simple yet elegant game to play. Let's analyze a bit.

I needed something to play on my Android-phone. Something that starts up and ends quickly, as I would sometimes only play in bursts of three or four minutes. Something that works on a small resolution, because my phone is rather small. Something with simple but reliable input, preferably being among the very few Apps that actually recognize my slide-out keyboard because I highly dislike gaming with a touchscreen where my thumb obscures a third of the screen and the input precision is less than good anyways. Temple Run, while still being touch-controlled, was alright for a while but whenever the bus or subway train I was on turned, the phones sensors would interpret that as a tilt and that would lead to in-game troubles. So I came back to Canabalt, downloaded myself the HD-Paid-Version. It is as glorious as I remember.

The appropriate thing for the game to do in any situation I want to play things on my cellphone in is in the minimalistic and simple input. There are only two variables to player-input in Canabalt, one being when you press jump and the other being how long you press it. That's all. The first four seconds of the game are always the same, putting three obstacles in your way, first two random office-objects, then the drop behind that window. Only if you miss all three jumps, you will fall to your death. Then the game is, of course, on.

One Page Dungeon Project 1 - a sneak peak

I have decided to participate in the next One Page Dungeon Contest, which is still a few months away but who knows how long I'll take to actually get this thing done? Might as well use that creative energy of mine now.

So here's what I intend to do: I've made this vertical dungeon (in a broad sense), a bunker situated in an abandoned missile silo from the cold war era. I made the graphics with Google SketchUp and then edited them with Gimp because I couldn't draw if my life depended on it. Now the idea is that, while my One Page Dungeon will have an urban fantasy theme with a satanic cult and vampires and all that, the graphics can be used to interpret them as pretty much any scenario that sensibly could take place in a private or governmental bunker. I mean, people can actually buy these things today...

So here I present a small glimpse at my current state of graphical representation, the dungeon-map so to speak, although the full version is, of course, much larger and more detailed:

As you can see here, there is a house topside and the missile silo itself has been fitted with floors, making it a vertical dungeon with quite a few floors to cover. I'll post more whenever this thing grows beyond the preliminary state - I'm currently writing descriptions on everything, giving the whole thing story, theme and antagonists.

Character Progress in Games - some thoughts

Whilst playing Kerbal Space Program recently, I've been thinking about the different types of progress characters in games, in both video- and pen & paper RPG, make towards overcoming challenges set by the game or a game master better. Here's what I've come up with regarding character growth in games.

Three types of character growth, actually, if you completely disregard story, lore, context and all these things that get in the way of talking about pure game-mechanics. Of these three types of growth, only one is immanent in the game itself, which is the first I'll talk about here: Character growth.