Re: PRIME GAMING 4 October 2024

On 10/5/2024 8:13 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 19:24:14 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
<dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
 

On 10/4/2024 8:42 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

>
* Kerbal Space Program (via GOG)
      I think we're all at least _familiar_ with this game,
      even if we've never played it. Take your kerbals to the
      moon (and beyond!) with this surprisingly accurate
      orbital-physics simulator. Its learning curve is not
      the easiest, and it's more 'software toy' than game, but
      if you put the effort into it, it's surprisingly fun.
>

I bought this some time back and really, REALLY wanted to like it but
the d*mn interface and controls were just so BAD that I gave up and
removed it from my computer.

 Yeah, the game can be real fiddly. It's been years since I tried, but
I remember menus-upon-menus (with a lot of scrolling), and agonizing
over getting the pieces to click together where I WANTED them too and
not where the game thought it made sense.
 "I just wanna stick big rockets on things, push the button, watch them
soar into space and probably explode" (and maybe learn from my
mistakes next time) was the dream of the game, but getting there... it
was rough. Even flying the vehicles wasn't fun; the things (perhaps
realistically) fought you at every turn.
 If you stuck with it, you might start to appreciate its depth and
details... but it was as if the developers wanted to put every
obstacle in your way to getting to that point. I still maintain it's a
good game... but there's a lot of cruft that hides that fact from you
at the start.
  

There is another game like it with what looked like a better UI that I
wanted to try but I've forgotten what it is called.  :(

 Spaceflight Simulator, ?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1718870/Spaceflight_Simulator/
 It's basically a simplified Kerbal; easier to get into, better
interface, but a lot more narrow in scope.
 

I don't remember this other game being EA and despite the reviews it being in EA for at least two years raises a red flag for me.
The biggest issue for me with Kerbal was having to fiddle around figuring out precise burns on the fly by eye at 10 times real speed without any tables or slide rules or ground support which by the time I had couldn't be done instead of having _pre-determined_ burns like the real space programs do!  That was pretty clearly a design decision to force errors.
--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky dirty old man.