"This is an early access game - buy it and take part in the development of the project!" - titles like this are increasingly common on the Steam store, and not only there. Every self-respecting indie developer does not refuse the opportunity to arrange beta testing of his creation by selling an early build to everyone.
Often this does not end well for the latter: the development hangs tightly in the "pre-alpha" stage - a small but stable trickle of financial investments relaxes the authors and does not at all motivate them to complete the work on time. Such a situation is not at all uncommon - now it can be safely taken as a rule. But, as usual, there are exceptions to this rule.
Almost three years ago, a simple toy with seemingly primitive gameplay appeared on the Internet. We had at our disposal an assembly shop of a certain design bureau of the planet Kerbin, where everyone could build a rocket out of several available modules, put three green men in the pilot's chair (kerbonauts were immediately called "cucumbers" because of their external resemblance) and try to launch the resulting apparatus into orbit ... Assembly is a simple matter: after a couple of minutes of experimenting with the arrangement of the modules, something remotely similar to a rocket was installed on the launch pad, the command “Get the key to start!” Sounded, and ... It was then that the most interesting thing began - the spacecraft assembled in a hurry fell apart, fell into sea, exploded right at the start or did not take off at all. Laughter, laughter, and only a few succeeded in putting the satellite into orbit.
And if the authors remained faithful to the sad tendency to forget about the development of their creation, content with the received "buns", hardly anyone could appreciate these prospects, and the game would have remained unremarkable entertainment for a couple of evenings. But the creators from Friv5Online are not that kind, so the Kerbal Space Program is a completely different matter.
It should be understood that KSP is not a simulator of an astronaut or a rocket and satellite assembly engineer. More precisely, there will be a place for these roles in the gameplay of the game, but in general we have a simulator of the entire "space program" - from flight planning to direct control of all systems of the spacecraft while traveling outside the Kerbin atmosphere.
It all starts from scratch - the first goal of the novice Korolevs and Werners von Brauns is to put the satellite into a stable orbit. It is not difficult to cope with the assembly and launch of the simplest missiles - to create your own flying (or not quite - as you are lucky) apparatus, you do not need to have a design engineer diploma. We install the command module, we hook the fuel tanks and engines to it, observing the correct placement (otherwise, at the most crucial moment of the flight, the engine of the third stage can be turned on, while the previous ones have not yet worked), we start the resulting unit, watch it fall, thinking along the way about the causes of the accident, we are assembling the rocket again ... We repeat until we reach the desired result - the first artificial satellite of Kerbin.
In-flight control involves only a few buttons - roll / pitch, course stabilization, thrust and an order to turn on the next element, be it a stage disconnector or engine ignition. But understanding how and when to change course is much more important than pressing the keys. Even one careless movement, the slightest change in engine operation at the wrong time can jeopardize the entire mission. Practice, practice and again practice, you should not be afraid of unsuccessful launches - until the economy is introduced into KSP (there is such a thing in the plans of the developers), you will not lose anything but time.
It is best to start space exploration with a career mode, where new modules will open in turn - this will allow you to gradually familiarize yourself with all the possibilities of the game, in contrast to the "sandbox", where everything is available at once, and from the abundance of possible options for assembling a rocket, a beginner is simply confused.
Much faster than it seems during the first unsuccessful launches, it will be discovered that our spaceships are already plowing the vastness of the Universe (okay, let's be honest - while they are just hanging out in chaotically scattered orbits around Kerbin), and a couple of kerbonauts even managed to save fuel to return to their homeland and brought along valuable data that allows them to study new modules. What's next?
And then it all depends on the fantasy of the player. There are a lot of opportunities - we have before us a whole solar system with various planets, asteroid clusters, you can explore all this wealth for a very long time.
Kerbin has two natural satellites - Mun and Minmus. Having "pumped" on orbital flights, you can swing at your Apollo mission. And here you open the game in a new way. The point is that KSPdespite the external frivolity, it is a simulator worked out to the smallest detail, where the laws of physics and mechanics operate, and without knowledge of the basics of real space navigation (fortunately, if you wish, you can find good popular science literature on this topic) and there is nothing to try to make an attempt to land on something else astronomical body. No, it is not necessary to shovel tons of abstruse books, but it is necessary to distinguish the periapsis from the apocenter and know what delta-V is. However, in the game, not everything is 100% reliable - the effect of gravity of several astronomical bodies is not calculated simultaneously, and the aerodynamics here are very specific and far from real, which should be borne in mind when assembling the next rocket.
For long-distance flights, it is no longer possible to do "by eye", here you have to use the orbit planner, thanks to which you can calculate the necessary maneuver without outputting multilevel formulas. You will have to suffer no less than during the first launches. The ships will run out of fuel at the most inopportune moment, and if you still manage to reach one of Kerbin's satellites, it turns out that a soft landing the first time is something of a fantasy. Yes, and do not forget about the landing racks for the descent vehicle - it will be a shame to remember this just before the "priming".
A dozen or so unsuccessful missions are usually enough to finally make that "small step for a person Kerbal ”to the surface of Mühn and transfer the data valuable for Kerbin science to their homeland.
However, it is not at all necessary to immediately start exploring other worlds - for a start, you can assemble your space station in the orbit of the planet. True, here you will also have to sweat a lot. Bringing together and docking two modules in open space, when each moves in its own orbit, is not an easy task, especially for an inexperienced rocket scientist. But the experience gained will help design a descent vehicle for an expedition to other planets, which will allow kerbonauts to return home, and not stay at the landing site until the player deigns to remember his charges. And it's not just a moral aspect (you don't want to leave the brave conquerors of space to fend for themselves?) - a kerbal who has safely returned to his homeland will bring noticeably more science points than his report on radio communications.
You can explore the solar system for a very, very long time, your imagination would allow yourself to come up with interesting tasks. As in the case with any sandbox, those who have a developed imagination cannot break away from the KSP - you can try to fly around all the planets with a return to Kerbin, collect space debris that accumulated in orbit during the first steps into space, look for Easter eggs (and their enough, including on the home planet), towing asteroids...
Replayability significantly increases the huge number of mods that began to appear from the very first days of the release of that very alpha version. Modifications for every taste - from adding new modules to changing the interface or introducing completely new devices into the game like a planetary surface scanner for mapping.
And alsoKerbal Space Program is beautiful in its own way. This beauty is not in high-resolution textures or bright special effects - everything is quite simple here. But the infinity of space, where we are all just a grain of sand among trillions of stars, the loneliness of the astronaut left without hope of returning among this infinity, KSP conveys almost better than another indie on the theme of stars - Space Engine (the gameplay into which, unfortunately, has not yet been delivered).
Do not forget - this is far from the final version. In the immediate plans of the developers, who, by the way, closely cooperate with NASA, the introduction of the economy, which will force a more responsible attitude to the creation of their space program, and multiplayer. Not far off are the meeting of spaceships of different players in orbit, the "Mezhkerbinsk space station", a colony-settlement on an alien planet ... But the developers do not promise "star wars" - this is a purely peaceful simulator. However, with the help of modifications or your own ingenuity when assembling a rocket, you can get some kind of weapon right now.
Before us is almost a unique popular science simulator, completely unobtrusively, but very successfully promoting interest in space exploration (NASA is not in vain maintaining contacts with its authors). WhereinKSP remains a game, not an interactive textbook, and its prospects are still the most joyful - development is far from complete. And it all began with that small hand-made article, in which somehow assembled rockets exploded so funny...
Loading…