#KSP Loading...

[whirligig-girl]

At time of writing, Kerbal Space Program 1 is on sale for $10 on Steam.

If you have wanted to buy KSP and have never gotten around to it, now would be a good time.

Despite the failure and cancellation of KSP2, KSP1 is still a really great game. I bought it for 18 dollars in 2012, and it remains one of my favorite games of all time and perhaps the most cost effective game purchase I've ever made.

KSP1's development is completely finished, but the modding scene is still going strong.

The DLCs are also available for half price. Here's my thoughts on them:

Making History: adds historical-themed rocket parts in new size categories, and a mission editor that allows you to design mission plans and share them for other players to fly. I do not recommend this one, because the rocket parts have been done better by free mods, and because no one ever ended up using the mission editor since those missions are walled off in their own scenarios and can't be integrated into a normal game.

Breaking Ground: adds sparse rocks and other ground scatters to the surface of planets to be explored by rovers. Much more interestingly, adds robotic parts which can totally change the kinds of vehicles and crafts you can build. I do recommend this, because the addition of robotic parts adds so much to the game.

But the real goodies are in unofficial mods. Here's my absolute must-haves:

Restock: The rocket parts in the stock game are a mix of different styles by different amateur artists who have worked on the game over the years, lacking an overall cohesive style. Restock reskins (but otherwise does not modify) all of the stock parts using new models and textures that bring a cohesive visual identity to KSP that it has sorely missed. The models are higher fidelity in most cases, but they have been made efficiently so that the game will actually run and load faster and smoother with Restock than without it. (Github)

Restock Plus adds a few other parts in the same style to round out some missing parts, and if you do not have Making History, it will add its own versions of those parts for free (and with better game balance, in my opinion). (Github)

Scatterer: Replaces the archaic stock atmosphere rendering from 2011 with an accurate simulation of rayleigh scattering, vastly improving the look of planets both in space and on the surface. (Github)

KSP Community Fixes: Bug fixes and quality of life tweaks, especially useful in light of KSP's development being discontinued. (Github)

Some tips (below the cut)

KSP allows you to build rockets almost lego style out of modular parts. The game does include a few tutorials which I do recommend you try (imperfect though they are), but here's a few other helpful tips:

there are two ways to attach parts: node attach (connecting parts via those green and black spheres that appear when you're holding a part) and surface attach (connecting parts where your mouse is). If a part can be surface attached, it will always prioritize that over node attach. So if you're trying to put together a rocket tank and the tank keeps trying to attach to the other tank wrong, you have to change your camera angle so that the nodes can come together without your mouse going over the part. The alternative is to hold the ALT key, which will force the part to attach only to a node.

The C key and the X key control angle snap and symmetry mode. There's also buttons for these on the lower left of the u.i. Symmetry is a must for building rockets.

There's three main types of engines: Liquid Fuel rocket engines, which require separate fuel tank parts burning Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer, Solid Rocket Boosters, which contain their own fuel and can not use fuel tanks or be throttled, and Jet Engines, which burn liquid fuel and atmospheric oxygen from air intakes, at a high efficiency.

There's also the ion engine, which uses electricity for power and xenon gas as a propellant for extremely high efficiency and extremely low thrust, the nuclear thermal rocket, which uses an onboard nuclear reactor to heat up liquid fuel propellant for high efficiency and low thrust, and monopropellant RCS, which are steering thrusters that use monopropellant tanks shared between all stages. There's also a single 'normal' engine that burns monopropellant, the Puff.

At a first approximation the game uses real orbital mechanics. To get to space, you just have to go straight up above 70 kilometers. To stay in space, you must enter orbit, which means your sideways velocity has to be somewhere around 2500 meters per second so as you fall you curve around the planet. The M key brings up the map mode, showing you your trajectory. It'll also show you if your orbit intersects the planet, and you can mouse over Ap (your apoapsis, the farthest distance in your orbit) or Pe (your periapsis, the closest approach in your orbit) to see if they are above 70 kilometers.

At first approximation the game uses real rocket science. The more fuel you add, the more fuel you're wasting to carry that fuel. Staging (detaching tanks and engines when they're no longer needed) using decouplers is a must. Parachutes are also a must if you want to preserve the lives of your Kerbals, but remember. This game is realistic. Parachutes will not work on airless bodies like the Mun, and they may not be enough on their own on martian planets like Duna which have only thin atmospheres.

Career mode is kinda... not very well made? I would start with Science Mode. The tech tree will kind of ease you into building with limited parts. But you can always jump right into sandbox mode.

Rocket parts come in a few diameters sizes: 0.625m, 1.25m, 1.875m, 2.5m, 3.75m, and 5m. In addition, there are 1.25m (mk1), diamond-shaped 1.25x2.5 (mk2), and roughly 3.75m (mk3) spaceplane parts. The aerodynamics and structure works out best when same diameter parts are connected together. There are adapter parts to facilitate this, as well as fairings (procedurally shaped aerodynamic casings) and engine plates if you need to get around this.

Turn on Advanced Tweakables in the settings. This will allow you to right click on parts and select "rigid attachment", and to use "autostrut", both of which are necessary for making rockets behave. (you could try and use strut parts, but that can bloat your part count and often times it isnt clear how to even attach a strut in the direction you need) This is one of my least favorite parts of KSP, as this is pretty tedious for a large rocket, but it's necessary to keep it from flopping around. For some reason KSP's developers thought that floppy rockets (even when they should be perfectly rigid), would be more fun. The idea comes from the early days of the game, when the conventional wisdom was "if it moves and it shouldn't, add struts; if it doesn't move and it should, add more boosters." The game has gotten a lot more complicated now, and that design philosophy should have been left in 2012. There's also a mod, Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, that will provide this functionality without needing autostrut and rigid attachment per part.

On efficient launches, you're going to end up looking like you're burning up. This is a limitation of the 1/10th scale planets in KSP, and how that plays with the 7/8ths scale atmospheres. During a real launch as well as an efficient KSP launch, you'll end up travelling at 1500-2000 m/s in the upper atmosphere, but in the real world that's only a fraction of orbital velocity. In KSP, that is near orbital velocity, and so the game is balanced to assume you're in reentry conditions. If you have fairings to protect sensitive parts of your ship, you should be fine.

KSP's small scale makes Apollo's Lunar Orbit Rendezvous approach inefficient for the Mun and Minmus. It's actually cheaper to just directly land on the surface. This can be fixed by installing a rescale mod such as Sigma Dimensions, and setting it to 2.5 rescale and resize, and 1.6 rotation period scale. This makes delta-v 1.6 times larger than stock KSP, resulting in more realistic proportioned rockets. The game honestly isn't any harder in this state, it just needs somewhat bigger rockets. All that aside, the "Apollo style" orbital rendezvous approach works great for all other planets, since interplanetary transfer requires more fuel as do most planetary landings. This approach has two spacecrafts launch either together or separately that travel to the destination planet docked together. The lander then separates, lands, and eventually launches again, but only back into orbit, where the orbiter picks up the crew and they launch back home.

The KSP solar system is not a 1:1 copy of our system. Moho is a lot like Mercury, Eve is like Venus but purple and much more massive, Kerbin is like Earth, Mun is like the Moon but about three times closer, Minmus is a small moon orbiting far from Kerbin, Duna is like Mars, but instead of small asteroid moons, it has an almost planet sized moon which is almost a binary companion. Jool is a gas giant that orbits where Jupiter should, but it's undersized, and orbited by three huge planet sized moons, including the ocean world Laythe, the ice planet Vall, and the airless Kerbin-mass rocky planet Tylo. In addition, two small minor moons. There's also a big Ceres analogue called Dres and Eeloo, a cracked, icy world in a 2:3 resonance with Jool, just how Pluto is in a 2:3 resonance with Neptune. There are mods that add more planets to the stock system, as well as mods that replace the stock system entirely. There's even Real Solar System (which is designed to be played with Realism Overhaul, a modpack that's almost a different game entirely)

[apollo9235]

As promised, The Screwloose! Made in Kerbal Space Program with a whole lot of mods and some tasteful file editing. Theres also some screenshots of the version I'm editing in blender, that's the more canon one, but I'm still learning (and there's still more details to add) so KSP was used for initial construction and (way too many) beauty shots.

This ship was originally commissioned by the company that our OC's work for, Ribeiro Courier Services, as an experiment into the viability of aerobraking as a method of saving fuel while not increasing shipment times. It is converted from an medium-volume hauler and upon the completion of the modifications, it was officially recommissioned as the E.A.C. Fênix but that name failed to catch on with the crew who refer to it exclusively as the Screwloose. Depending on who you ask and when, this is either because it needs constant maintenance, or because R.C.S. had a screw-loose when coming up with the plan of it slowing down by slamming into the atmosphere of it's destination. Some key features of the ship are: - The heat-shield, this is what protects the ship and it's cargo during entry. It also has cutouts for the engines when they are active, and covers to protect them when they aren't - Slide mechanism, The spine (cargo rack, docking ports, habitation) of the ship and the drive section (heat-shield, engines, radiators, fuel tanks, solar panels, reaction control system) are attached through a slide plate, this makes it so that, if the cargo load on the rack is uneven, the spine can shift to maintain stability, it is crucial for safe aerobraking maneuvers. In the Blender screenshots you can see the huge actuators used to position the spine. - RCS rails, this allows the reaction control thrusters to move up and down the length of the ship, allowing it to better balance out torque with varying cargo loads. This was not originally part of the modifications R.C.S. had planed for the ship, but instead stipulated by a contract they took with an aerospace company to help fund the project.

[the-girl-from-dres]

trick or treat!

I give you interesting news! A bunch of people are trying to make a proper successor to KSP after take two buggered KSP2 over so badly -the team has some very experienced Devs, but is mostly comprised of veteran modders and/or former KSP devs like blackrack (E.V.E), JPLrepo (Tarsier Space Technologies, KSP dev) and HarvesteR himself!

They've also built a new engine from the ground up which is meant to allow for a completely seamless experience -no loading screens

And it's super moddable already -the game's core assets are already loaded in as a mod and apparently pretty much everything is designed to be editable.

It looks really good so far... FAQ here:

You also get.. a BIIIIGGG HUGG!!! LOVE YOU ROXXX!!!

[thatnoulguyorsomething]

I don't post about this often enough for anyone to remember this (probably), but I've been working on a Kerbal Space Program remake thing in the last couple years (more on that on my website). Got collisions working last month, and the last couple days, I spent figuring out how to export KSP models/textures to something workable.

I am proud to announce that I am now 1/323th of loading all KSP stock parts into SpaceCore, and showing off how much faster that game could load if it was decently made.

[c-53]

Using a computer that is way beefier than the software it’s running ever DREAMED of is so funny there’s an airfoil design software I use called XFLR5 and I was watching a tutorial video and the guy was like “hey this operation may take a couple minutes” and I thought I was doing something wrong because I was running a more robust version of the simulation and it was taking under a second but no. Literally just that much faster. And then I can still make KSP, a game released in 2011, run like shit with very little effort.

NO YEAHHHH ITS SO FUNNY!!!! I love the overkill of running old programs that USED to be intensive but just are nothing in the face of modern machines,

Like. Especially when they WARN you. god when i installed Rubicon there was this memo like ‘THIS GAME IS DESIGNED FOR HIGHER END PCS MAKE SURE YOUR COMPUTER CAN HANDLE IT AND BE READY FOR LOAD TIMES!!!!!’ And it doesnt have load times for me and runs at 120 fps and i can’t cap it

[whirligig-girl]

First of all, with robotic parts provided by the second DLC or by mods, the game you are looking for actually is Kerbal Space Program. :P

there needs to be more games in the KSP genre. We are graced with one other pretty solid space exploration sandbox (though one that i feel lacks most of the charm of KSP) in Juno: New Origins, and a few 2D versions like Simple Rockets and Spaceflight Simulator. And there's also KSP-lead-developer Felipe Falanghe's new game KitHack, a scale model vehicle constructor.

Felipe said recently in an interview that he'd pitched a Kerbal Avionics game, a prequel about building like, canvas-wing WWI planes and building up to supersonic planes and stuff at which point KSP would take over. And I love that idea!

But you know what I've always wanted in a physics based lego-like vehicle construction and operation game?

I really want a game that focuses on locomotive design with the same degree of detail and grannularity that KSP focuses on spacecraft design.

And because I'm autistic, I'm gonna lay out a rough design doc in this reblog! (Also because realistically the kerbal IP won't be available, assume it's like. i dunno. Gymnomi Slimegirls like Guz.

Also needless to say, a game of the complexity I am outlining is definitely overly ambitious, but i'm not a game dev and no one's just gonna make this game for me, so i think it's ok if i go way out there in terms of scope.

Kerbal Railroad Administration

About a decade ago, Kerbal engineer Richard Kerman invented a kind of steam engine that is powerful enough to be useful on the plateways in common use for dragging minecarts up and down hills. Since then, a number of companies have tried and failed to develop the technology into something that is safe and practical for freight and passengers, without resulting in so many boiler explosions and train collisions. The Kerbal Railroad Administration is a new nationalized railroad formed to attempt to solve this problem. That's where you come in.

New Game:

The game takes place on Kerbin, rendered as a spherical globe as in KSP. It might even be compressed by another factor of 5-10 or so. (At 1/10th scale, the circumference of Kerbin would be 377 kilometers) The visible curvature of the globe when viewing the map would be an intentional stylistic feature. The player is allowed to choose their headquarters from one of a few locations, including the harbor at what will one day be the KSC plateau, a mineral and oil rich desert, and a hilly mountainous region in the forests.

The player can choose the track gauge they wish to play with. The default is meter gauge (which is close to the KSP-scale version of 4'8.5" standard gauge), but you can slide all the way up to 5 ft broad gauge or all the way down to 10" minimum gauge (the rough Kerbal equivalent of 15" minimum gauge.) Narrow gauge track is much cheaper to lay, and a reduced loading gauge makes tunnels and bridges a lot easier as well, but it doesn't scale well. At any time the player will be able to rip up their existing track and regauge it, so if they start with a smaller, cheaper 2ft narrow gauge railroad and then decide they want to upgrade to 3ft gauge or more, they can, or they can run dual-gauge track.

Cities and Industries:

City or village buildings and industries are procedurally laid across all of Kerbin on a hexagonal block system, with pentagons at the corners of an icosahedron. The hexagonal meshes must be deformed procedurally to place them near the corners. The pentagons can only have certain types of tiles, like streets, for simplicity, or maybe the pentagons can be left blank. The hexagonal block system resembles the tiles of the space center in KSP. Some industries may be built into cities, requiring special care to access, such as factories, whereas others will take advantage of natural resources elsewhere, such as mines.

Facilities:

Surveyor Office. This building allows you to plan out new railroad routes to be built to connect the various industries on Kerbin and switching yards, as well as see the entire planet from above.

Roundhouse. This building stores your railway engines and allows crews to do maintenence on the various parts of the engine.

Crew office. This building allows you to hire train crews, including engineers, stokers, brakermen, and conductors.

Financial office. Here you manage the finances of the railroad, take out or pay loans, set up contracts with industries, etc.

Research and Development. Here you can pay or use experience points to unlock new technologies. New technologies can also be unlocked naturally as you use and gain experience with the existing technology as an engine driver.

Engine workshop. Here's where the magic happens, where locomotives are designed and built. Similar to the VAB in KSP, the workshop.

Freight house. This is a building with either a road connection or a boat connection, where goods can be shipped out or shipped in for delivery on the railroad.

Engine Workshop.

As KSP was set apart from other flight simulators by its ultimately quite advanced CAD software, so too will Kerbal Railroad Administration.

The player starts by placing down frames, which can be procedurally resized. Other parts will be able to snap onto the frames, such as running boards, boilers, and cabs. The boilers will be made out of set lego-like diameters, and comprised of boiler barrel, smokebox, and firebox sections. Increasing the boiler barrel stores more steam but may take longer to raise steam, larger fireboxes in either width or length allow for more thermal power to boil water.

Wheels can be attached to the frames, snapping to where they are needed depending upon the size, which is set procedurally. They can be connected with connecting rods.

Cylinders can be added at any point on the frames or boiler barrel, but will automatically point towards the driver they're linked to. Once the main rod is connected to an axle, a valve gear can be chosen, which again has to be procedural. You'd start with Stephenson Valve gear (or maybe one of the earlier non-variable-cutoff ones?) The cylinder diameter and stroke length is set procedurally, and the latter automatically affects the crank radius on the wheels.

Other elements, like couplers and footplates and domes and cabs and separately swiveling trucks and tenders can be added, but the important thing from the physics standpoint is the relationship between the boiler pressure, cylinder pressure, cylinder stroke length, and wheel size, since that determines tractive effort, as well as the relationship between boiler size and firebox size and usable steam.

That's the toy I want to build. A steam engine simulation that is not only reasonably accurate on its own (hard!) but which allows the player to change various key design elements just to see what they do, what the trade-offs are.

As you try to make the boiler longer, you'll need more wheels to support the weight. whoopsies, now the engine is binding on curves, so you'll either need to fix the curves or add trailing and pilot trucks or make it an articulated locomotive. The goal is that you would naturally run across many of the same problems the real railroads faced, and then come up with similar design solutions.

Try to make the cylinder stroke longer for more power? Well now the engine will be slower. Try to make it wider for more power? Now you're running out of steam. Fine if you only need that power in short bursts, but you'll need a larger boiler and firebox to realistically supply more power for a prolonged amount of time.

Running Trains

Trains can be driven manually or left to the devices of the Kerbal train crew, similar to Railroader's a.i. Controls include the regulator, cutoff, brakes (multiple braking systems may be in play), water injector, and firebox, as well as action groups for any of the other appliances on the train, like dynamos, lamps, etc. Play from either third person flying camera or first person Kerbal view is supported. Either the player or a kerbal may need to manually couple or uncouple train cars. Failure modes include derailment on curves at high speed, (dependent upon center of mass and track gauge, as well as wheelbase and presence or lack of pilot and trailing trucks), boiler explosions when run out of water or run too high on pressure (until the safety valve is unlocked), and collision with other trains you may have left on the line.

Delivering freight and passengers would be handled somewhat like Railroader. Loaded and unloaded cars will have a waybill set automatically or by the player, and it's the player's job to figure out how to bring cars where they need to go with the motive power they have available. At first you would likely have a small number of small cars, but as demand increases, you'll need more and/or larger cars to handle the loads, and you'll be serving more industries, necessitating both more and larger or more capable locomotives over time.

Passengers would be picked up at stations placed by the player near or inside of cities, and then let off at another station, with the fare being calculated based on the time, comfort, and distance travelled. Passenger cars can have specific destinations set or unset so that only passengers wanting to go that direction will go there. As passenger capacity increases, so does

Progression

Progression is measured by how well kerbin's industries are connected, and by the position on the tech tree. The tech tree is not unlocking whole engines and rolling stock so much as specific technologies, like larger and longer boiler barrels, belpaire instead of keyhole fireboxes, new valve gears, and eventually new power types entirely not yet outlined, like electric traction motors, steam turbines, and diesel engines. Players may even be able to select their "era" when starting a new game, with sandbox mode effectively starting with all technologies unlocked, but players with more of an interest in diesel and electric locomotives being able to start at a higher tier of research & development.

Kerbal Space Railroad

As a DLC, or stretch goal, perhaps alternate starting maps based upon the other planets in the Kerbol system can be provided.

Mun: No air, so only electric, fireless, and bipropellant-combustion-engine powertrains are allowed, and cabs and passenger cars must be pressurized. But more importantly, it would be an interesting study of how a much lower gravity would affect train design. With much lower gravity, the same mass of train would be much easier to move, but on the other hand, the engines would have one sixth of the adhesive weight, so they would wheelslip uselessly if they tried to put down their full power, unless they had huge, unwieldy ballast added. A rack and pinion rail system may be needed to deal with the lack of adhesion. Gravity is also low enough that there is risk of derailment when the grade changes as well as when the curves are too sharp.

Duna: Similar constraints as the Mun, except that it has been terraformed to allow for steam engines to work. The thinner atmosphere increases the efficiency of steam engines but decreases the efficiency of both fire and internal combustion.

Eve: Also terraformed to allow for steam engines. Gravity is much stronger, which means it's harder to pull a given payload, but it also means you're 1.7 times less likely to wheelslip. The thicker atmospheric pressure reduces the efficiency of steam engines and requires streamlining for even relatively low speeds.

Gilly: Tiny airless map with negligible gravity. Taking corners at any speed would risk derailment, so the entire railway must use rack & pinion gearing or (maglev or something).

Tylo: an airless world like the Mun, but with gravity similar to Kerbin, so adhesion is only slightly lower.

Vall: Low gravity and airless, but with tall mountain ridges that need to be scaled or dug through.

Titan: Munar gravity but a thick terraformed atmosphere.

Mez: Ultimate challenge, a whirligig world where the gravity changes drastically from nearly 5G at the poles to 0.5G at the equator. Running goods on north/south lines would put any engine designer to the test, or else require some strange logistics for interchanging goods between different latitudes as the gravity changes.

Space(?): Space stations are scattered across an empty map in 3D space. There's no gravity or air.

[keefiswhoiam]

May 02 - 2024 Thursday

10:35pm

2.5/10

I woke up tired and in a bad mood. I decided to go back to bed for however long, I only slept another hour. I got up and figured I should try to go through my usual schedule, I have an obligation to the people that pay me so that was my motivation. I had also decided to quiet Discord for a little to focus on my work and myself. My tummy hurt so I only ate a pack of soup for breakfast. I was able to stream on time.

On stream I warmed up with chinchilla sketches. Then I was trying to find the sketch I was commissioned to upgrade but I couldn't. I was also in a hurry because I had asked mom to take me to the store later so I couldn't waste too much time. I moved on to a different drawing for the time being. Then my stomach was upset again and I had to end the stream. I redid my schedule to give myself a little break and go to the store early. At the store I did my best to complete my therapy homework. I asked the girl if she had any super cool plans this evening and she said no, probably just gonna curl up under a blanket. That was about the extent of that interaction but it was better than usual. It also made me realize I can probably come in and ask any ol random question until I can probe deeper. Next I might ask what her current favorite show is or something. When I got home, I did an hour of commission work. I was in a poor mood and was trying to hang out with TK and friends in their server. They were playing a free hockey game I planned to join them in which I did. I hated it though so we only played a few rounds. Then TK and her boyfriend left to watch a movie in theater and I left to make lunch. I wasn't hungry but I ended up making tuna spaghetti. It was a little bit hard to eat it all but I did. I tuned into Tomato streaming hardcore Skyrim and that was my cozy content for the afternoon.

I had an afternoon schedule planned but it sort of fell apart. I knew all I really had to get done was commissions so I did that at least. I had planned to also work on idea requests and some of my next VR world but I skipped all of that. Given how I felt both physically and mentally, I gave myself the rest of the day off. A lot of it was spent curled up watching Skyrim. I felt very lonely but like I couldn't reach out to anyone. I thought about how hard it is to have fun anymore and how I'm not looking forward to anything. My day looked like being alone and unfulfilled, waiting to do it all again tomorrow. I asked DS for some company later. In the meantime I joined TK again and just chilled with them while I started installing mods for a KSP1 run.

When DS was ready, I kept preparing Kerbal and she put on a 90s EPCOT Barbie birthday video. Then we went down the rabbit hole of ASMR with Maya's channel. I felt very sick when we started watching and I almost wanted to ask for something else but I ended up really liking the Jimmy Neutron one we watched. It was hilarious and a great distraction from my body. Then we watched one as Buzz Lightyear.

In bed we did our puzzles, the crossword was stupid. We read a good chapter of Monster High and I progressed Twilight Town in KH2. After she fell asleep I booted up KSP to just barely start my campaign and the old UI is kinda grody but I found a mod to hopefully help that. Also not a fan of the loading times but it is a much more stable game.

[yokowan]

oh boy howdy does KSP function on some troll physics logic. no, like literally. docking ports have a slight magnetism to them to make alignment easier, but if you put two docking ports on the same vessel and point them at each other, it'll pull your vessel along with no external force.

it's fucking goofy

another fun bit is how KSP only loads structural physics (calculating joint strengths and stuff) within a radius of 2300m of the active vessel, measured from the root node, but it calculates collisions at much further distances. this means that you can build huge megastructures that should collapse under their own weight, but make them infinitely strong by just offsetting the root node away from the rest of the "vessel" by 2300m

my personal favorite category of exploits is drag occlusion - by using fairings, engine plates, and sneaky offsetting you can make craft that have literally zero air drag, and do goofy shit like orbit at an altitude of 500m with a craft that looks like a brick.

the only reason this works is because doing actual fluid dynamical simulations is pretty infeasible, so KSP cheats by calculating drag individually for each part, but considering some parts to be "occluded" so you don't get additional drag from stuff that's streamlined with the rest of the rocket or hidden inside cargo bays. this works reasonably well until you become aware of it and start optimizing for it.

tldr Kerbal is a clownshit game held together by popsicle sticks and chewing gum and you should absolutely play it

Kerbal Space Program was once afflicted by a bug the fans dubbed the "Deep Space Kraken", whereby if you travelled far enough from the origin of the game's coordinate system, floating point rounding errors would cause your spacecraft's components to become misaligned and/or clip into each other, resulting in the craft falling apart or exploding for no obvious reason.

The bug was later fixed by defining the active spacecraft itself as the origin of the game's coordinate system. In effect, the spacecraft no longer moves; instead, the spacecraft remains stationary and the entire universe moves around it. Owing to how relativity works, to the player this is indistinguishable from the spacecraft moving about within a fixed coordinate system, and it ensures that the body of the craft and its components will always be modelled with maximal precision.

While elegant, this solution introduced a new problem: it was now possible, by doing certain stupid tricks with relativistic velocities, to introduce floating point rounding errors to everything except the active spacecraft. In extreme cases, this could result in the destruction of the entire observable universe.

Some might call this one of those situations where the solution proves to be worse than the problem. I call it a perfect expression of what Kerbal Space Program is truly about.

[whirligig-girl]

New loading art for my KSP mod, Whirligig World.

Spelunkonauts from the Mesomesbin Survey Ranger Corps explore an active lava tube encountered by miners.

[trublog709]

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by Kayla Morrison • 2020-02-18 11:29:49 • Proven solutions

Have you ever seen some text script display on the bottom of a video as you watch a movie? The writing texts are known as subtitles, but you can also call them annotations or captions. They are printed translation of the dialogue of a film or video. The subtitles are displayed on the bottom of the video so that they do not interfere or obstruct what you are watching. The commonly used subtitle formats include ASS, SSA, and SRT. Various reasons necessitate the adding of subtitles to MKV. Some of the advantages include:

They are useful in translating foreign language in the movie or video.

It is multilingual thus you can add your native language.

Subtitles can be helpful in transcribing dialogues for easier understanding.

Subtitles can be added as story narrator, clip narrator and caption maker.

If you desire to add subtitles to a video, here we provide 2 tools for your selection-Wondershare UniConverter (originally Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate) and Apowersoft Video Converter Studio. To know the specific operations on how to add subtitles to MKV, read the information contained in this article.

Part 1. How to Add Subtitle to MKV on Mac/Windows Easily

Wondershare UniConverter (originally Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate)

Your Complete Video Toolbox

Edit, enhance & personalize your MKV files

Versatile toolbox combines fix video metadata, GIF maker, cast video to TV, VR converter and screen recorder

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Burn video to playable DVD with attractive free DVD template

Download or record videos from video sharing sites

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Supported OS: Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista, Mac OS 10.15 (Catalina), 10.14, 10.13, 10.12, 10.11, 10.10, 10.9, 10.8, 10.7, 10.6

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Wondershare UniConverter (Originally Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate) is available for both Windows and Mac users, which works perfectly with Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista and Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), 10.10, 10.9, 10.8, 10.7, 10.6. It's such an amazing tool to add subtitles to MKV that also permits video editing to your preferred adjustments and converts MKV to other 150+ output format for playback.

Step-by-Step Guide to Add Subtitles to MKV on Mac

The steps indicated below shows the procedure for using the Mac version to add subtitles to your MKV video.

Step 1 Import MKV Videos.

Run Wondershare UniConverter (originally Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate), and import your MKV files to the program. You can import files by dragging them and dropping them into the primary window. Alternatively, you can navigate to the top left side of the primary window and click the +Add Files. From there you can locate your MKV file from a browse window that will popup.

Step 2 Add Subtitle to MKV Video.

After you have successfully imported the MKV video that you want to insert the subtitles, click the icon as below to go to the editing window. Go to the top menu and then click the Subtitle tab. From there, you can load the subtitle you want to use such as the SRT, SSA, and ASS using the Triangle button.

Once the subtitle is loaded, you can see it on the MKV video. A preset style will be used by default. You can also customize the color, font, position, size, transparency and any other setting that you want to change in your subtitle. Once you finish making the changes, click the Save button to confirm the settings.

Step 3 Choose MKV output format.

You can stick the subtitle permanently to your MKV video. Just go to the Convert all tasks to and choose the MKV as your output format from the drop-down list. You can also select a device to save your MKV video and play in it directly. Such devices include iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Android smartphone.

Step 4 Start the MKV conversion.

When you have followed all the necessary steps, you can now click the Convert All button to begin the conversion. Once the process is complete, the subtitles will be exported permanently to the specified video format in the Converted section.

Part 2. Add Subtitle to MKV via Apowersoft Video Converter Studio

Apowersoft Video Converter Studio supports the addition of subtitles to MKV videos and allows for various subtitle formats such as SSA, STR, and ASS. The detailed steps are as follows.

Step 1: Install and run the Apowersoft Video Converter Studio on your PC.

Step 2: Add the MKV files by clicking the Add Files button.

Step 3: Edit your MKV video by clicking the Edit button, which will take you to an editing window.

Step 4: Hit the Subtitle icon to add your desired subtitles to MKV video.

Step 5: You can make some adjustments to the added subtitle. For instance, you can change the height, color, position and font.

Step 6: After you comfortable with the settings, you just need to click the OK button.

Step 7: Lastly you can click the ConvertKsp mod manager for mac. button to save the MKV videos with the subtitles.

After trying both tools to add subtitles to MKV video, we noticed that Wondershare UniConverter (originally Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate) works better as it ensures that the subtitles are added permanently without corrupting the quality of the video, whereas Apowersoft interferes with the quality of the final file.

Nothing will ruin a movie quicker than terrible subtitles. They could be totally out of sync or badly translated. Luckily, there is software out there to correct subtitles, such as Subtitle Workshop. If you are keen to edit subtitles, either as an act of personal heroism to share with fellow viewers, or perhaps as part of your job as a translator, editor or sound engineer, then you may already be familiar with this program. It is a nifty application that allows you to edit and create subtitles online. Given the increasing access to quality foreign language films and TV series, this could be a great tool.

Sterling subtitle software for beginners

The ultimate subtitle software for beginners and professionals

Subtitle Workshop is a cross-platform and open-source program for editing, creating and converting subtitles. When it comes to quick, easy and ultra-effective subtitle software, this program is pretty hard to beat. It runs on over 60 platforms, it is highly customizable and best of all, it has an exceptional Preview Mode. According to the developer it has an 'intuitive interface' and 'must have features'. They will say that though! Does it live up to the hype? We’ll take you through some of the highs and look for the lows of this software, to see if it is the best subtitle program for you.

First of all the technology itself. The latest version (SubtitleAPI version 1.05) supports around 56 formats for subtitling, and it can handle both time and frame-based text. You are behind the controls of the timing, thanks to the feature allowing you to upload plain text files. Formats including DVDSubtitle, SAMI, Sonic Scenarist, SubStation Alpha, SubViewer 1 & 2 and TMPlayer are supported. You can read and write various styles and fonts (Wingdings being a possible exception!) so you can have fun and personalize your subtitles.

Subtitle Workshop is known for its famously friendly and intuitive user interface. It was certainly a breeze to install and the in-built features are clear and easy to navigate. If you need to hone in on getting that accurate dialogue and correct spelling, then the Translator Mode gives you spell check with Microsoft Word’s engine (you will need to have Word installed) and you can toggle the 'Insert' and 'Delete' keys for speedy subtitle correcting.

Download Subtitles For Free

If you want to check your progress, simply fire up the Preview Mode, a great feature rare in these programs. In this mode, you can customize the subtitles down to the last 't' – choose the color, perfect the position and even the width of the shadow of the subtitles.

The stylistic corrections are made smooth by the powerful settings. Keep your edits a different color or font style to mark your changes. Browse the configurations and make your editing a walk in the park with the customizable automated checks. In a nutshell, this software will let you tailor make your subtitles down to the spacing, position, color font and more. It is simple, powerful and free. What is there not to like?

At the time of writing, Subtitle Workshop will not allow you to edit Chinese, Japanese or Korean subtitles (although Arabic has now been added).

Where can you run this program?

Subtitle Workshop is a cross-platform software. It is primarily used for Windows. With the trend towards mobile there is talk of developing a version for iOS and Android smartphones but this is still in the pipeline. As for the formats supported by Subtitle Workshop, it has to be handed to them that outside of the mega expensive programs used by companies this all-in-one package supports an impressive 60 plus subtitle formats.

Is there a better alternative?

While Subtitle Workshop is one of the best known and best-loved apps for efficient, highly configurable and (intuitive) editing, it is not the best. For lightning fast processing and feature-rich subtitle tools for your armory, then check out MovieCaptioner and FinalSub. They both have a commercial license, they run on Windows and MacOS and each one supports a variety of formats. Be prepared to pay the price however, these professional programs don’t come cheap. For budget alternatives, Oona Tools can be used for outsourcing your subtitles and translations for both professional and personal use. For a totally free option, check out fellow freeware N!kse.se Subtitle Edit. This is basically just like Subtitle Workshop but with more enhanced and complex features. Aegisub and Sublight also deserve honorable mentions.

Our take

With the giants of Netflix and others dominating our living rooms, unwinding in front of a movie or TV series is becoming a pretty cherished part of the evening. With access to cinema from around the world, bad subtitles are holding us back from some epic foreign language options. With Subtitle Workshop you can take ownership of the subtitles yourself. Creating subtitles is made easy, thanks to the automated timing corrections, in-built spell checker and the highly useful preview mode. Whether you are looking for software for personal or professional use, this is a great program for creating bespoke subtitles in a stream-lined and intuitive interface. Plus, you can share them with the world afterwards.

Should you download it?

Subtitle Workshop For Mac

Subtitle Workshop 6

Yes. If you are looking to create or edit subtitles for video, then Subtitle Workshop is a fantastic and comprehensive program. The controls are easy to use, and the user manual is a great guide for beginners. Professionals needing more complex features should look at alternatives like Subtitle Edit, but for the simple subtitle creation, this ticks all the boxes. Go ahead and download it and see for yourself.

6.0a

[tanadrin]

@ophis-uk

For some reason, devs seems to really, really, reeeally hate dragless Newtonian physics. I don't know why, it has so much potential, and it would be interesting to see what tactics might emerge for multiplayer combat in that kind of environment. But nope, we get Kerbal and that's it. Everything else has to work like Earthbound flying/swimming, just with a spacey-looking background.

yeah, that's something that's always bugged me. i think people assume that players only want ww2-dogfight-simulator games, but newtonian physics in space games can be shit loads of fun--i think the BSG mod for Freespace 2 back in the day let you do shit they did in the TV show like flip your Viper backwards and shoot at enemy fighters while maintaining forward momentum, and it ruled. though i don't think the physics was fully Netwonian. and you don't have to go nearly as far as KSP does--KSP gives fuel mass and strictly limited delta-v, so you have to carefully manage your transfer orbits and shit, because it is explicitly a simulation of 20th century rocketry, and more science fictional games don't have to do that.

Further--mostly minor--complaints about Factorio:

how much and whether items can be loaded onto rockets is based entirely on what appear to be balance considerations, and not the visual size (or what i would expect to be the weight) of those items. roboports. Electric furnaces and assembling machines 3 are the same size, but only half as many of the latter can fit on a rocket.

the model for how space platforms move is fucked. there's drag in space?? really given how abstracted space travel is it would be quite easy to just do a minimally realistic model where you can coast for a long time after a short burn, or do a high-speed full-acceleration burn halfway there, and then full-deceleration burn the rest of the way. and it would be more interesting from a balance perspective than the weird fuel-efficiency game (which is made harder by making it impossible to link thrusters to the logistics network for no reason).

[cowsrtasty]

Sketched this out recently but never got around to finishing it so I figured I might as well post it. Penny, Melody, and Bilge re-enacting one of the KSP loading screens.

Posted using PostyBirb

[andmaybegayer]

I have a terrible magpie-esque archiving habit, if I find anything vaguely interesting online and I have even the barest inkling that it might vanish, I will download it there and then.

AND TODAY I WAS VINDICATED

BROTORO'S KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM LETS PLAY HAS VANISHED

(Okay it hasn’t completely vanished. A single copy remains online in the KSP forums, but those are ancient, hard to read, and don’t show up in search results so they’re basically impossible to find unless you already know they’re there.)

Brotoro’s KSP letsplays are some of the most ridiculous long-term RP text-and-images-ye-olden-times-SomethingAwful-letsplay stuff you’ve ever seen. One continuous KSP save file running from before KSP even had wings right up until it entered beta, they changed the physics code and rendered his entire save unusable.

If you like KSP, read this. It's an EXTENSIVE letsplay all conducted within a single save over YEARS. There’s a link at the end of this post where you can read it.

Lots of really fun and interesting RP'ing and self-imposed challenge. He did a lot of clever flying and maneuvering and moving big chunks of hardware around in interesting ways, but more importantly, he did a lot of surface level exploration.

You don’t get a lot of KSP letsplays that are about, e.g. driving around the entirety of Duna! But this guy made one!

It's also just really fun RP stuff, if you want to see someone put a load of effort into doing an interesting RP Letsplay, this is for you. Every single kerbal in the crew gets a consistent character and personality and there's fun jokes and generally good storytelling connecting the things that happen to an overall narrative. It’s not ground-breaking emotional storytelling but it’s good!

I recursively wget'd this whole thing a couple years ago because I remember reading this story for AGES in high school. Waiting on updates. The internet archive doesn't have a good copy of this and the forum copy doesn't show up in search results. It has been tortuga'd

Maybe whoever is hosting that server just forgot to pay their fees and it'll be online again soon, but maybe not and that's why I do this. Because I knew that someday I would be right.

I archived that one youtube channel that's full of tapes of old filk music and I archived the ScienceMadness books and I archived A Softer World and I think I still have my 2013 scrape of Gunnerkrigg Court somewhere because I know that some day those too might vanish.

If the phrases "simultaneously manouvering six nuclear tugs into a series of aerobrakes" or "extensive lord of the rings jokes while exploring a moon" appeal to you, then you’re in luck, because I saved this and I am now rehosting it on my personal site. You can view it here.

If you want to get right to the Good Stuff, I recommend you start with Long Term Laythe, it’s really good. You can go back and read everything but it’s a LOT of lets play. There’s also a download link on the homepage if you want to download a copy of my archive.

[maeamian]

Was watching the log of KSP cause I’m troubleshooting an issue with a mod (turns out I forgot a dependency whoops!) and it turns out there’s a function called “DontDestroyOnLoad” which like, intuitively yeah that makes sense, loading stuff in is the point in the game where collisions happen that the game shouldn’t consider collisions especially with the ground, but it’s just like a fucking fantastic name for a function and I envy the programmer who got to write it “If goingtodestroyonload; dont()”

[keefiswhoiam]

January 04 - 2024 Thursday

11:07pm

6/10

This morning I showered immediately because mom was going to take me to Seeley. For breakfast I had a little leftover potato soup with a couple pieces of toast and a babybel cheese. We left 30 minutes later than I wanted to because breakfast took longer than I thought.

The first place we went was the grocery store. I grabbed 2 potatoes, a carrot, a celery stick, and really good looking egg noodles. Also picked up drinks for the weekend. The guy at the register didn't card me. After that we went to the high school so mom could drop something off. I've been wanting to see the inside of the school again and I finally got to 10 years later. It was a strange experience, I felt like I wasn't supposed to be there or like I loaded a 100% completed save file. I was flooded with memories of things that happened in the few halls we went down and the few rooms I saw into. Very nostalgic. Then we went to the post office so I could mail Daisy's Christmas presents. I crumbled a little and asked mom if she could go in with me but she said no which was a good thing. I went in on my own and it went okay. It was a little awkward because I was standing at the wrong card machine but other than that, it went fine. Our last stop was the weed store where mom picked up a new disposable vape pen for me. I can't enter the store myself because my ID is expired.

When I got home I started work and was warming up with space art. Daisy called me for something so I stopped streaming to spend time with her but started again when we were done. I finished 2 space art warmups and worked on 570's commission for a little over an hour. I ended early because of my busy morning but I did as much as I needed to. Right after that I hung up Daisy's friendiversary gift over my bed and relocated my Master Sword a little to the left. Both nails were being finicky and got bent but I made them work.

Lunch was a big turkey sandwich with some Doritos. Breakfast was small calorie-wise and I could feel it. I was also weighing less from yesterday so lunch was very big and hardy. While I ate I watched Bojack as usual. After lunch I did today's request which was a little hard and annoying but I did it. Then I spent an hour working on a Zelda pic while hanging out in David's server. I actually wanted to socialize so I wasn't so annoyed being there this time.

After work I did my yoga which has made my core sore. Not long after that Daisy was free so we called and were productive together. She worked on her fursuit and I worked on a couple worlds. When I was done I started playing Kerbal finally since thats all I wanted to do today. We watched another Chris Chan reading and some more of My Immortal. Daisy headed upstairs so I booted up Neopets. We talked a lot tonight about work stress, change, and the sexual atmosphere of the furry fandom. In Neopets I got bugged and had to reload and re-fight the entire coloseum. I was able to squeeze in one more rocket launch in KSP after she fell asleep. I also had to address some urges for the second time today even though it was too late for it.

Today went well. I didn't feel like going to Seeley and interacting with people but I got over it and had fun outside. I felt a little bad about not doing my full commission time but realistically I was okay not doing it all. I had some thoughts today about change and how scary it is whether it's good or bad. I'm looking forward to partying tomorrow. In general I feel good about some things and worried about others.

[eusebiapouncy06-blog]

FLAC To ALAC ToM4a = Yikes!

M4A stands for MPEG 4 Audio and is a filename extension used to represent audio recordsdata. Stellar can be one of the fastest packages we examined. It converted a 625 MB WAV file to a 26 MB MP3 in lower than two minutes. There are not any hidden home windows or menus to navigate and convert m4a to flac mac os x the software program walks you thru the conversion process step-by-step. Stellar additionally converts and edits video information. Use it to add a watermark or modify the brightness, distinction and saturation of a variety of video codecs, together with MP4, AVI and WMV. It does not have a quantity normalization software, but it could actually change a stereo track to mono and alter the bitrate and sample price. If you wish to compress videos , FonePaw Video Converter Final may also assist you. I'm not speaking about any explicit one. What it is advisable to do is to google 'm4a to mp3'. You'll see a substantial variety of hyperlinks with pretty much the same set of tools. Normally, you simply choose some recordsdata out of your computer, give it a couple of minutes and obtain converted MP3s. Simple as that. As is understood, M4A is a well-liked audio format, particularly on Apple units. But for those who transfer M4A file to PC or some other units, the file cannot be nicely playable. So the compatibility challenge drives the desire to transform M4A file to MP3 or other formats. The purpose of this article is to introduce you the best way to change the audio format from M4A to MP3 or several different extensions.

iSkysoft iMedia Converter Deluxe is a well-liked media converter identified for its ability to transform, edit, burn and backup media recordsdata. When it comes to media conversion, iSkysoft iMedia Converter Deluxe supports completely different audio codecs like, FLAC, M4A, AA, APE, WAV, ALAC, WMA, AAX, OGG, AC3, AAC simply to name just a few. It could additionally convert m4a to flac mac os x video formats whether or not standard formats or video formats. A number of the supported video codecs embody; HD MKV, TP, TRP, HD MOD, HD MOV, HD FLV, MKV, MOD, TOD, WMV, DV, ASF, AVI, MP4, MPG, MPEG, RM, RMVB and others. From this video formats, you possibly can extract audio recordsdata which are of top of the range. With iSkysoft iMedia Converter Deluxe program, you'll be able to be capable of convert your media files in a batch. This program boasts of high speed moreover its simple user interface. It is usually constructed with different functionalities which might be highlighted under.

So for a very long time, people believed AAC was an Apple owned and controlled format, and that the codec was solely compatible with Apple products - which is completely unfaithful. AAC is a global customary that was accredited in 1997! Although for some motive, loads of units might solely play MP3 files again within the late 90s and early 2000s - almost certainly the producers of those gadgets have been additionally beneath the impression that AAC was an Apple-controlled format.With regards to FLAC to M4A conversion, there are a mess of third-celebration FLAC converter instruments available on the multimedia market. Usually regarded as one of the crucial dependable and efficient utilities on Mac, Video Converter comes with a clear and stylish interface that helps you easily batch convert your music library from FLAC throughout to M4A on a Mac & PC.FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format much like MP3, however lossless, which means that audio is compressed in FLAC with none loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, besides with FLAC you're going to get a lot better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you may play again compressed FLAC information in your favorite player (or your car or house stereo) just like you'll an MP3 file.Click on on the down arrow button on the Goal tab, and choose MP3 or different audio codecs as you want beneath the Audio tab. The output audio high quality could be additionally chose right here. If you want to batch convert all FLAC information to the identical audio format, then you can click on on the Convert all duties to: possibility on the fitting-prime corner to choose your audio format and high quality.Why converting your FLAC information into M4A is a good suggestion? One of many doable reasons is that you simply might wish to save some disk space in your laborious drives, with out that a lot audio high quality loss. Or, perhaps, you need to play your favorite songs on your hand-held machine, as most of those units do not provide help for the FLAC format.Alongside these sound codecs, MPEG-four permits for lossy compaction, by means of FFC Codec. However, it is potential to offer a lossless compaction as a result of Apple Lossless format. The recordsdata may be carried out on Home windows PCs through iTunes, Residence home windows Media Participant 12, KSP Sound Participant, Winamp and another functions. With iTunes, the data may be converted into Dwelling home windows-supported audio codecs.