Kerbal Space Program update 1.1 “Turbo Charged” is now available!
Hello everyone!
Kerbal Space Program is “Turbo Charged” by the release of patch 1.1!
After almost a year of hard work our major update is finally here! In the package you’ll find a large boost in performance due to the upgrade to the Unity 5 game engine, 64 bit binaries for Windows and OSX that will help you mod the game to ridiculous lengths and the brand new KSPedia reference guide for all the information you need to play the game!
That’s not all though, here are some of the highlights for this patch:
All new user interface The user interface has been rewritten from the ground up to take full advantage of Unity 5’s new integrated systems. The ‘parallel’ UI systems have been removed and the game now uses only one system, adding to the performance bonus the update already brings. Almost all interface elements have been redesigned and tweaked but have retained the familiar feel for experienced players. The most notable tweaks can be found in the map view, staging, IVA portraits and the right-click part menus.
KSPedia KSPedia will be the primary source for information on just about anything in the game. New players will find the basics of building and flying explained here, and more experienced players can take in information about more advanced concepts such as docking, in-situ resource utilisation and all the information they need to plan a successful mission to the next planet or moon.
New tutorials and scenarios The tutorials have been extended and reworked from the ground up. The new tutorials will cover topics ranging from basic and advanced construction and flight, to docking and landing on Mun. Learn how to execute the perfect gravity turn, orbit Kerbin and land the Eagle. New scenarios unlock advanced mission concepts to any player: use a spaceplane to re-enter the atmosphere and land it back on the runway at the Kerbal Space Center, return a craft without heat shield from Duna, or beat SpaceX at their own game by flying back the first stage of a rocket to the launch pad.
You can find the complete changelog here. Kerbal Space Program 1.1 is now available on the KSP Store and on Steam, and will soon be available on other third party platforms.
SteamController Support for KSP!
Hi again,
We're happy to announce that we've just released a small update which enables support for the Steam Controller in KSP.
This isn't a new version of KSP. It's a steam-only plugin (like a mod) that is included with the Steam version of the game. It interfaces with the Steamworks API and talks to the Steam Controller to make it context-aware in KSP.
That means KSP now supports five control modes for Steam Controller bindings: Menu, Flight, Docking, Editor and Map controls. Those modes will change automatically as you play. (Look for an on-screen message on the lower-right to see when modes are changing)
Each mode is set up to make the most of the controller in each area of the game. For instance, in flight, the triggers control throttle (incrementally on a soft pull, max throttle/cutoff on a full pull). In other modes, they are used to select things.
All modes share a common set of bindings, which means you shouldn't have to learn 5 completely different control sets. On all modes, the right pad controls the mouse (and camera), and the left pad is a scrollwheel.
The pads also have extra functions on them that change depending on context. In flight, docking and map modes, LeftGrip (which is always bound as a shifter key in all modes) enables Touch Menus on each pad, exposing controls for action groups, quicksaving/loading, as well as changing between Docking and Flight controls in the flight UI.
In the Editors, you'll find other actions 'behind' the trackpads too. Here, you just need to click them to get to buttons to change editor tools (Place, Offset, Rotate and Root in the left pad) and tweak other advanced editor settings as well (Symmetry Mode and Reference Frame on the right pad)
In all modes (except menu ofc) you can double tap the right pad to lock the camera into mouselook mode (a feature just added in 1.0.5). This will lock the mouse to move the camera instead of the cursor, just as was possible before in internal view. To leave mouselook mode, just tap the right pad again, or double-tap the left or middle mouse buttons, or Esc if you want to be extra dramatic.
There are a lot more little features to find in the new official KSP Controller Bindings, and I invite you to dive in and explore the many options and sub-options there.
We've been testing this profile extensively, and so far, I haven't come across any situation in the game that wasn't doable through the controller. In fact, this is quickly growing into my favorite method of playing KSP. Honestly.
Lastly, if you ever forget which mode you are in, you can simply Pause and unpause the game. The current mode will pop up on screen.
That's all there is to it for now. Have fun playing KSP with your new Steam Controller!
Cheers
KSP 1.0.5 is Live
Greetings, Kerbonauts!
It has been a while, longer than we anticipated in any case, but we're now here with a new update for Kerbal Space Program: version 1.0.5!
This update features content, bugfixes and rebalances that were part of the upcoming monster update 1.1, which will feature such things as multithreaded physics calculations and 64 bit support for Windows and OSX. That update is taking longer than anticipated, and we came to a point where a lot of content was ready to go through testing and be released on its own merits. With these parts ready we wanted to get them to you as fast as possible, and I think we have succeeded in a speedy delivery of this patch.
Here are some of the highlights in this patch:
Contextual Contracts & Contract Changes The contracts system has had a major overhaul with the goal of providing you with more varied and relevant contracts. In short, we’ve added contextual contracts and passive milestone rewards. Contextual contracts monitor your progress in the game and hook into existing existing spacecraft, whereas passive milestone rewards will reward more adventurous players for setting a world first without accepting the corresponding contracts. A new strategy in the Administration Building will boost these rewards.
Thermodynamic improvements Update 1.0.5 features many improvements to the thermodynamic systems. The thermodynamics system has been reworked to correct the various issues encountered in 1.0.4, and supports differential skin-internal temperatures and non-instant changes. We've also corrected some issues with the atmospheres of other celestial bodies, and better tuned re-entry and aerobraking across the board. Core heat was introduced, which allows for simulating things such as warm-up time & overheating without it being directly coupled to the part temperature.
New buoyancy model The water buoyancy has been completely reworked. Water is now less soupy and it's very possible to build seaplanes. The density of oceans differs across celestials bodies, invoking new gameplay challenges. The impact tolerances take into account just the speed of the craft, but also the angle at which it hits the water.
New rocket and spaceplane parts A wide selection of new parts is made available in this patch: from high-vectoring space shuttle main engines and a reskinned toroidal aerospike all the way to tiny and humongous jet engines and a cargo ramp for Mk.3 planes. We’ve also added new stock vehicles to the game to go with these new parts.
Bugfixes & Tweaks KSP 1.0.5 has many bugfixes: over 100 issues were fixed, including launch clamps following you to orbit, . And good news for anyone with a fine eye for detail: the black stripes on the NASA tanks now line up perfectly! There were of course plenty more bugs on the 'fixed list', but we refer you to our forums or the readme file for the complete list.
Click here for the official release announcement. The update is now available on Steam.
We won the Golden Joystick for best indie game..
.. and we couldn't have done it without you guys! There was an extremely strong lineup, and we owe it to you guys to have come out on top. Thank you so very much, again this is a huge boost to the team!
Check out all the winners at the Golden Joystick website, all of those games are worth taking a good look at. Kerbal Space Program would never have gotten where it is today without the help of the community: you guys play the game, spread the word, create amazing fan-art and code fantastic mods.
We're dedicated to keep developing the game for the foreseeable future and are currently working on patch 1.0.5 - which is a content and bugfix update coming very soon™ - and update 1.1, which will feature the game's move to the Unity 5 engine, allowing for 64 bit versions, increased performance and much much more.
Thank you again, and don't be shy to check out our forums, both here on steam and over at kerbalspaceprogram.com, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.
Two Unity Awards! Thank you for voting
Good afternoon from Mexico!
Last night at Unite Boston - for those of you who don’t know - the Unity Awards ceremony took place, and Kerbal Space Program was awarded not one, but two awards: Best Gameplay and Community Choice! It's an amazing honor and we’re very glad the KSP community supported us in such a major way. We want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Being part of such a strong lineup of games, and walking away with two awards is something we never saw coming, but there are also many games that were nominated, or won awards, that you really should check out:
First and foremost: the winner of the Golden Cube, Cities Skylines. This game is a fantastic city builder with a great developer and publisher behind it. The first expansion pack, which is right around the corner, also looks very promising.
Endless Legend walked away with the award for best 3D experience, and this 4X turn based fantasy game should definitely be on your list if you’re into the genre.
Ori and the Blind Forest is a stunning looker. In this 2D platformer you explore a deeply emotional story about love and sacrifice. Did we say it’s a beautiful already? It took the award for best 2D experience!
Probably the only riot training program we’ve ever seen: Anarcute won best student project! In this game your goal is to escape the police, gather a group of friends and destroy literally everything. It’s only a matter of time until Danny2462 gets his hands on this, we’re sure.
Apart from making games, the Unity engine is often used to create a wide range of tools, art and virtual reality programs. In these categories the winners were Parachute Training Simulator (best visual simulation), UEFA Champions League Nissan Orchestra (best of non game), and Tilt Brush (best VR experience). Finally, Chronos - Time Control walked away with the best store asset award.
Unfortunately the list would grow a bit long if we mentioned all the nominees, but rest assured they’re all amazing in their own way. A full list is available at the Unity website.
Thank you to Unity and you all for the awards and a massive congratulations to all the winners on behalf of all of us here at Squad!
Kerbal Space Program nominated for two awards!
Our small team of developers has been working very hard for more than four years to develop Kerbal Space Program, and now our game has been nominated in various categories for two audience choice gaming awards, and we'd appreciate your vote if you've enjoyed launching rockets, crashing Kerbals and landing on asteroids as much as we've enjoyed developing the game over these past years!
First, the Unity Awards are a yearly award show for games made on the Unity engine. KSP has been nominated for the Golden Cube (the overall award), as well as for the Best Gameplay and Community Choice categories.
https://unity3d.com/awards/2015
In the Golden Joystick awards KSP has been nominated in the categories of Best Original Game, Best Indie Game, Best PC Game and Ultimate Game of the Year. You can vote at the link below.
Of course we also wish the other nominated games the best of luck!
First news on version 1.1
Hello everyone!
While the news has been slow on our side for the past few weeks we’ve been discussing update 1.1 and we have some exciting news to share. Now that the Unity 5 update is nearly complete we put it through internal testing and found that we had made enough major changes that we wanted to share these with you a bit more quickly than we originally intended, so we’ve moved the 1.1 update forward.
This means that the scope of the update will be reduced slightly in favor of speeding up the release schedule. The Unity 5 update in itself brings major changes to many game systems, and delivers a very solid performance boost, via the new version of PhysX being able to multithread across your processor cores. Perhaps more importantly the Unity 5 update has proven to make the game far more stable on 64 bit platforms, meaning a 64 bit client for Windows and possibly Mac OSX is something we’re looking into very seriously for this update. Also part of the engine update are the overhauls of the UI, wheels and various other systems that you’ve been reading about in the dev notes.
Helping us accomplish this is modder extraordinaire NathanKell, who is new on the team and will be working closely with the existing developers to polish existing systems and implement new ones:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/glc4uG4.png[/IMG]
Aside from a new developer, performance increases, reworked systems and new platform support we’ll be adding new content to the game as well. Porkjet, RoverDude, Arsonide and NathanKell have been working on a number of features.
Highlights include:
New Parts The Mk1 cockpit has been reworked, not redesigned from the ground up, keeping the original style that we all enjoy and incorporating in real-life counterpart cockpit designs. The Mk1 parts that received an overhaul a while back are also being slightly reworked to bring them closer in style to the rest of the beautiful spaceplane parts that Porkjet has modeled.
It doesn’t stop there with the spaceplane parts though, Porkjet has also been working on 0.625m jets and associated parts, as well as spicing up the Basic Jet Engine and Turbo Jet Engine. You’ll all be seeing more of that at a later date, as well as a few parts that are currently still being designed and developed.
Porkjet made an album with his work so far. [URL="http://imgur.com/a/NkzMp"]Click this link[/URL]!
Antenna Diversity and Probes A feature we’re sure you’re all familiar with by now, if not you should [URL="http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/350-Development-Relay"]read this article[/URL]. RoverDude is still hard at work further refining this feature and incorporating the feedback we received from you, the community. Onwards to QA from there!
Contextual Contracts Having Contracts that set full missions for you is great fun, but the real sense of achievement comes from watching something take shape and evolve over time. With Contextual Contracts, we’re hoping to provide the contracts KSP give you with a level of continuation from where you currently are in your space program. Therefore, instead of receiving endless contracts to build a base, you receive an initial contract and then additional ones to add a lab, for instance, or adjust a satellite to meet new requirements. We’re talking adding depth, not breadth to the contracts system, something we’re hoping improves the gameplay dynamic and furthers the potential that Career Mode allows players to have.
Localisation Lastly, we’re planning on adding the framework for localisation into the next update, paving the way for implementing localised versions of KSP. But more on that later!
Of course, a major engine update and these new features all require extensive QA testing. To bring this all together we will be focussing two or three weeks in QA purely on the engine update, after which the new features will also undergo testing and we’ll have a final part of testing focus on bugs in general to make sure we catch as many bugs as possible, both new and existing ones. All in all it will take us a while to finalize testing still, but we’re very happy to move forward and spend this time to provide a more stable and fluid experience for everyone.
Keep an eye on our usual development news channels (Devnote Tuesdays and Squadcasts) in the near future. We’ll be keeping you up to date on any developments we can share!
Valentina Kerman figurine now available on Shapeways!
We are happy to announce that Valentina Kerman is now available at our Shapeways Store!
We’ve been working to bring Valentina to Shapeways for a long time and it’s great to see her complement the current figurines at long last. If you wish to read more about how such a process works you can find an article on our forums by lead artist DanRosas.
Introducing "Asteroid Day" - KSP's second official mod!
Introducing Kerbal Space Program’s second official mod: Asteroid Day! We’ve partnered with the B612 Foundation to bring you this mod which will give you four new parts, a new experiment, and a unique contract.
The Sentinel Infrared Telescope mimics the real world Sentinel mission being planned by the B612 Foundation, which plans to map 90% of the larger asteroids threatening Earth's orbit sometime between 2018 and 2024. Due to sun glare it is difficult for telescopes on Earth to observe objects passing on the planet's day side. Deploying a telescope into a solar orbit near Venus and facing it away from the Sun, back towards Earth's orbit, would cover that blind spot.
Your mission will be to recreate this mission profile in Kerbal Space Program, deploying a telescope around Eve’s orbit. When deployed with an antenna and a power source between Eve and Kerbin, aligned to face away from the Sun, and activated, the telescope will begin to map the orbit of the outer planet in a 200° vision cone for passing asteroids.
Other than the telescope itself, you will have three new parts to make your unmanned missions more enjoyable:
The HECS-2 Probe Core comes with integrated batteries and SAS, to make building a compact Sentinel probe much easier.
The OX-STAT-XL Photovoltaic Panels are a much larger version of the stock solar panels, for larger probes.
The HG-55 High Gain Antenna can transmit larger amounts of data than any of the existing antennae in the game.
This pack also includes a long-term contract to map asteroids around Kerbin as well as other planets that match various specifications. It differs from other contracts in that it encourages the use of existing infrastructure. It does not require a new vessel for each contract, and each scan is faster with more telescopes deployed.
KSP version 1.0.3 is now live! This revision brings several much-needed bugfixes and improvements, as well as a few new parts.
Most importantly, this patch introduces a big revision to the thermal system for parts. The heat simulation has been greatly improved, heat from reentry is now handled in a totally new (and more accurate) way, and we've also added five new Radiator parts, so you can have much more control over how your ship deals with excess temperatures.
