Squad's Felipe Falanghe is the creator and lead developer of Kerbal Space Program, and his work space feels a lot like a command module in a rocket soaring to Mun. When he's not busy developing one of PC gaming's most delightful simulators, he's using a gigantic array of peripherals to play games. Felipe was kind enough to take a few moments away from firing Kerbals into space to tell us about his setup.

What's in your PC?
On the inside, my current PC specs consist of an Intel Core i7 3820 CPU, 32 GB DDR3 RAM, a GeForce GTX 690 GPU, a Samsung 840Pro 512GB SSD, a 2TB 7200 rpm HD, a 1kW PSU, all aboard a CM Storm Trooper Case.

What's the most interesting part of your setup?
I have to say, I love my peripherals. I have a thing for human interface devices, and I ve been collecting them since I had my first PC. As for a favorite, I really had to think about that for a while but if I had to pick one thing, that would have to be my Matrox TripleHead2Go and the 3 screens.



What's on your desk?
On the "main deck," we have a Logitech X550 5.1 Surround System, Another 1TB Toshiba external drive, a G19s Keyboard, 3DConnexion s SpaceMouse and SpaceNavigator, RAT 7 Mouse, F350 Gamepad, the Saitek X52 Pro, a 4-port USB Hub, TrackIR 5, MS VX1000 webcam, and the monitors, 2 LG 1920h LCDs (left and right), and an LH E1910 at the center. The three used to be the same model, but one of them sadly burned out a while back. On the "lower deck," I have a Logitech G13 and a Razer Nostromo, plus my trusty Wacom Intuos 3 Tablet. Under the desk, sit the ProFlight Rudder Pedals and the pedal set for the Driving Force GT Wheel. The wheel itself takes the desktop front and center when it s time to drive, and the right rudder pedal doubles as a clutch pedal. For flying, the Saitek X52 Pro takes center stage.

What are you playing right now?
I really haven t had much time to play much at all in these last few months I did manage to get a few hours in on Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag these last couple of days, and before that, I was playing Just Cause 2, Skyrim some indies as well, like Papers, Please and The Stanley Parable. And DayZ, lots of DayZ.



What's your favorite game and why?
Now that is a properly hard question I m very picky about games, because I usually dedicate a lot of time on a single title, so I definitely have a few favorites of recent times, DayZ being one, but I ve always been a big fan of all of Bohemia s Arma series all the way back to the original Operation Flashpoint.

An all time favorite though, that s very hard to pick I do have a few which have stuck with me since I was little, some of which I still get around to playing every now and then, on emulators or VMs. I think Fragile Allegiance, from 1995, has to be my favorite strategy game. I was playing it again just a few weeks ago on my laptop, running DOSBox. For RTS, I would say Total Annihilation. For flight sims, Microsoft s Flight Simulator series, definitely. I ve had all of them since MSFS 4.1, which came on a single 3.5 floppy, all the way through FSX. I couldn t leave out Orbiter either. I ve been an Orbiter fan ever since I first played it back in the early 2000 s.

I have a few console favorites too, although you can probably tell from those pictures I m not a console gamer most of the time. My favorites are from the N64 era. Of all those, I would put GoldenEye 007 at the very top. I actually never owned it, I used to rent it at Blockbuster pretty much every weekend, and I got so many hours into it, I have some of the levels forever burned into my brain, to the point I could map it out by memory. And of course, I couldn t not mention SimCity 2000, 3000 and 4, and The Sims as well.

I know this is hardly a definitive answer, but these games were the worlds I would live in when I was a kid, then through my teenage years and college days, so they ve all influenced me as a game designer now, and I still refer to them as my role models for fun and immersive games.

Confession: I m playing imaginary NASA every time I play Kerbal Space Program. The brilliant space exploration sim can be customized with any flag, so I could be playing as the Federation of Planets, the Empire or Rebel Alliance, or as an independent Browncoat. But no. I fly my toy rockets under the NASA flag, and I don t care who knows it.

So it was with immense pleasure that I checked out the upcoming update for KSP, which has grown from goofy experiment to one of Steam's most popular Early Access games. Produced in collaboration with NASA, the Asteroid Redirect Mission adds asteroids to the Kerbal universe. The rocket part inventory has swelled to over 180, including several new super-heavy lifters and enormous fuel tanks. The NASA logo is now officially included in the default flag roster, and the new rockets have NASA emblems painted on. It makes a nerd heart flutter.

The main event for this update, though, is the opportunity to capture an asteroid. To find these new objects in the deep black, I bring up the satellite tracking station and zoom way, way out. Asteroids of various sizes classed A (tiny) through E (huge) pop up as unconfirmed sightings across the local area. Clicking an asteroid gives me the option to track it, which assign it a unique name and adds it to my map as an orbiting body. I m on the look-out for an easy target, as Squad s PR manager, Miguel Pi a, warned me that Catching an asteroid is probably one of the hardest things to do in KSP now... I would strongly recommend you go for a class B or lower, as larger ones are truly hard to move around.

A slow arc near the orbit of the Mun makes FNW-501 relatively easy to reach.

I dismiss a few potential targets hurtling through the local system too fast. Most of the asteroids I see are too big, and a few are on a collision course for Kerbin. I skip those as well; Jebediah Kerman is a good pilot, but he s no Bruce Willis. Finally, I spot Ast. FNW-501, a class A asteroid on a slow, lazy arc through the Kerbin neighborhood. Perfect.

The business end of the asteroid capture mission is the new mechanical grappling claw. The claw is an ungainly nose attachment that, when deployed, treats the surface of an asteroid as a docking port and latches on.

Let s pause and reflect here. I m building a colossal rocket to fly to a lonely piece of space rock and, once there, my plan is to... headbutt it. It s ridiculous. And actually based on a real-life, future NASA mission.
My space rock
Jeb takes a break from piloting to pose with his new ship and on-board NASA logos.

When I spoke to lead designer Felipe Falanghe in December, he mentioned that the team was close to solving the wiggle problem, where larger rockets and space stations tend to flex at the joints, sometimes catastrophically. They ve done it in the newest build. With the help of the new NASA rocket parts and the super-solid rocket connections, I built the largest rocket I ve ever made in KSP and flew it to orbit without reinforcing every joint with struts. The added stability makes flying much more fun.

Arranging an accurate flight plan for a small target was beyond tricky.

Flying out to meet FNW-501, the somewhat fiddly maneuver node controls become a problem. The slightest adjustment means missing the asteroid by hundreds of kilometers, even while using my mouse s scroll wheel to fine-tune the trajectory. I spent too long trying to make tiny changes to the flight plan; in the end, I just got a plan that was kind of close, then made a series of short burns to correct my flight path.

The orbital control plan is already a little tricky when you re aiming at a planet; trying to hit a rock five meters wide was a bit frustrating. I d love a new control scheme here or possibly a mod from the prolific fan community.

The mechanical grappling claw extended, Jeb closes in for contact.

When all was said and done, meeting FNW-501 for my billion-dollar headbutt was a lot like docking with a space station in low Kerbin orbit. Once the claw engaged, I slowly turned the huge rock around, then lit my engines until our orbit brought us home. It flew like a brick, and I m once again thankful that I tried my hand at a relatively small asteroid. FNW-501 is now in orbit, ready to be tested, mined, or deorbited and flung at Buenos Aires.

Players who have been in Kerbal Space Program for a while will find new things to do, new rocket parts, and a new rigid-body rocket system that will make it easier to build truly monstrous spaceships. Personally, capturing FNW-501 was the most white-knuckle piece of KSP piloting I ve had to do since I landed on the moon the first time and I got the same rush of accomplishment afterward.

The Asteroid Redirect Mission is currently going through bug fixing, so Squad isn t willing to give a firm release date just yet. Expect to hear a date announced sometime in the next few weeks.

Unity 5, the latest version of the popular game development engine, was unveiled at the Game Development Conference in San Francisco today. The new update will include big updates to Unity s audio and lighting tools and 64-bit engine support, according to Unity Technologies. Unity 5 will be available for pre-order starting today, and is accompanied by a trailer featuring lots of flashy light rendering and a wub-wub distortion soundtrack.



Every time we ship a new version of Unity, we re looking to empower developers with technology that's more powerful and easier to apply than ever before, David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies, wrote in a press release. With the huge additions of physically-based shading, lighting workflows, a new platform, and a new built-in method for user acquisition, we re improving Unity dramatically from both a creative and business perspective.

Unity has also partnered with Mozilla to bring the game engine to WebGL, meaning that Unity games could run inside Firefox without any additional plug-ins. Mozilla has written up a full post about the collaboration here, and the Unity booth will be showing off this ability with in-browser builds of Dead Trigger 2.

Users who pre-order will also get access to the current build of Unity 4 and all planned updates. Unity 4 launched two years ago, and has provided the base for games like Rust, Kerbal Space Program, Gone Home, and Surgeon Simulator.

Thanks to Aaron San Filippo, developer of Unity game Race the Sun, for the tip.

NASA may not have as much government funding as it used to, but our dreams of space exploration live on in the Kerbal Space Program. We know it, and so does NASA, apparently, which is going to partner with the game on a special downloadable mission pack.

KSP maker Squad told Polygon that the mission will be one of the most difficult in the game, asking players to land Kerbals on an asteroid. Players will have to launch a ship that can fly next to the asteroid, land on it, then guide it into an orbit around the Kerbal planet without crashing it to the surface and ending all of Kerbalkind.

"I look up to NASA as one of the pinnacles of human achievement," Squad's lead developer Felipe Falanghe told Polygon. "It's not just an American space program. It's an inspiration for all mankind. We have people saying that KSP inspired them to change their majors to aerospace or some other related field... I think that for us we're just experiencing a very small version of what NASA does on a much larger scale for humanity as a whole."

This isn't the first time NASA has turned to video games to raise interest in space exploration. In March of last year, it started the Dark Side of the Jam, a three-day challenge to "help capture the public's interest in the real science and technology advancements being made in aerospace exploration."

Squad is also no stranger to educational initiatives. In October 2013, it launched KerbalEdu, a partnership with TeacherGaming which aims to make KSP available and affordable to schools everywhere.

Kerbal Space Program has been in development for three years, but at Kerbal Kon last week a vision for what the final game will look like finally began to emerge. Developing the game s confirmed multiplayer modes will start next year after the single-player game has reached what Squad is calling scope-complete : not finished, but with no more major features left to add.

PC Gamer attended Kerbal Kon in Mexico City and got a chance to sit in on Squad Con, the team s in-house planning session the day before the global livestream event. The big news is that the game is very close to having all its moving parts installed.

The two most critical things for career mode are contracts and budgets, lead developer Felipe Falange said. We re going to see how much we can squeeze into the first one, then if it doesn t fit, it will go to the next one. It s the very near future, because it s something that needs to happen for scope completion.

Though each part in KSP s craft-building modes theoretically has a cost, that cost has never been a hindrance in the current build of the game. Eventually, though, players will have to keep their rockets within budget in order to move over to the launchpad. If players find themselves short on money, they ll be able to take on contracts.

The thing with contracts is that they re not missions, per se, Falanghe said. They re more like objectives that you subscribe to you can take as many as you want. You take on a risk when you accept a contract because that contract may reward you when you complete them, but failing will harm your reputation Reputation will also serve as a currency, and keeping your promises and bringing Kerbals safely home will open doors for new contracts.

The game s three currencies reputation, cash, and science will each be exchangeable for the others. If you re short on cash, you can sell some science in the form of patents. If an unplanned, spontaneous disassembly has tarnished your reputation, some money in the right hands will help ease your woes. If your agency is well-regarded but cash poor, your reputation can bring in some emergency funding for that one big mission.

Once these remaining systems are in place, Kerbal Space Program will finally be scope-complete, but the developers still have a laundry list of things they hope to add to the game, like air-friction for ships entering the atmosphere, new spaceplane parts and revamped visual effects. After three years of work and an influx of global attention, it seems that the end is finally on the horizon, if not actually coming up soon.