Fun with .craft Editing

[JellyCubes]

Just a couple of things I have discovered while manually editing .craft files.

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Instantaneous Geosynchronous Orbit

Whenever a craft is launched, the game finds the part with the lowest height position and moves it to the level of the launchpad. Every other part is moved up accordingly. This is why a craft will still launch even if there are parts below the ground level in the VAB.

A ship can be put in a geosychronous orbit immediately by exploiting this behaviour. Add a decoupler to the bottom of the ship and change its \'y\' \'pos\' value to -2868400. The game will automatically move the decoupler to the level of the launchpad and the rest of the ship will be moved 2,868,000 m in the air. The ship will inherit the angular velocity of Kerbin to give a geosychronous orbit.

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Manually Adding Ailerons

Currently, ailerons only work if added to a ship in symmetry mode. This behaviour limits wings to having zero dihedral angle and limits ailerons to being the same part type.

To manually add ailerons, find the parts in the .craft file to be linked and add \'sym =\' and then the name of the part it is being linked with.

An unauthorised edit of sarkun\'s Hope shuttle that shows working ailerons despite the wings being different parts.

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Unlike parts, the game does not need to restarted if craft changes are made.

[Guest TonyZ]

very cool discoveries. thanks for sharing.

[Guest Flixxbeatz]

// Do not edit this file by hand. There are no cheating opportunities here. Go away.

I think this calls for a challenge: Make a small spacecraft, by manually typing it in a notepad

[Tosh]

I think this calls for a challenge: Make a small spacecraft, by manually typing it in a notepad

A simple stack with no side attachments can be typed with no problems at all

[sarkun]

Just a couple of things I have discovered while manually editing .craft files.

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Instantaneous Geosynchronous Orbit

[---snip---]

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Manually Adding Ailerons

Currently, ailerons only work if added to a ship in symmetry mode. This behaviour limits wings to having zero dihedral angle and limits ailerons to being the same part type.

To manually add ailerons, find the parts in the .craft file to be linked and add \'sym =\' and then the name of the part it is being linked with.

An unauthorised edit of sarkun\'s Hope shuttle that shows working ailerons despite the wings being different parts.

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You may change that to AUTHORIZED This is awesome! I\'ll be modifying my craft files with this immediately. Great find!

Also - may I hijack this and post it in my mod thread? I\'ll give proper credit of course.

EDIT:

Hmm, I can\'t get this to work. I\'m fairly certain that adding just the \'sym = part\' is not enough - it makes the airlons work in unison on rotation keys (eg. - both go up or both go down instead of one going opposite than the other). This is probably due to the fact that KSP decides which way the control surfaces should act based on part rotation - and it\'s the same in the case of my winglets - eg - no rotation. Messing with the rot parameters could help - but they rotate the part itself...

[foamyesque]

Just a couple of things I have discovered while manually editing .craft files.

---

Instantaneous Geosynchronous Orbit

Whenever a craft is launched, the game finds the part with the lowest height position and moves it to the level of the launchpad. Every other part is moved up accordingly. This is why a craft will still launch even if there are parts below the ground level in the VAB.

A ship can be put in a geosychronous orbit immediately by exploiting this behaviour. Add a decoupler to the bottom of the ship and change its \'y\' \'pos\' value to -2868400. The game will automatically move the decoupler to the level of the launchpad and the rest of the ship will be moved 2,868,000 m in the air. The ship will inherit the angular velocity of Kerbin to give a geosychronous orbit.

I wonder if .cfg editing can create a part that will do that.

*test*

Yes. There are weird effects, though.

[Guest Flixxbeatz]

A simple stack with no side attachments can be typed with no problems at all

The real challenge will be: Most complex typed Spacecraft wins

[JellyCubes]

Symmetry tags for different parts types are much harder to implement.

When using the symmetry in the game, the wings rotate so the \'top\' faces in the opposite direction. The \'top\' of the wings of the Hope shuttle face in the same direction.

One of the wings need to be rotated 180 degrees in Blender and the \'rot\' value needs to be manually edited.

[RichieD76]

Although I think this is a brilliant discovery....I think harvester\'s got to stop it somehow. Otherwise there\'s no point even launching a rocket into space. I mean you may as well tell him to forget about docking. If you can build the biggest station possible on the ground and 'beam' it to orbit without the challenge of using a launch vehicle, of having to build in in orbit. Rendezvous would be a pointless act to. Just type in the height and wait for the station to pass overhead.

Love your find on the ailerons though jelly. Nice work

[Hikaru]

Although I think this is a brilliant discovery....I think harvester\'s got to stop it somehow. Otherwise there\'s no point even launching a rocket into space. I mean you may as well tell him to forget about docking. If you can build the biggest station possible on the ground and 'beam' it to orbit without the challenge of using a launch vehicle, of having to build in in orbit. Rendezvous would be a pointless act to. Just type in the height and wait for the station to pass overhead.

Love your find on the ailerons though jelly. Nice work

Oh please. People will find ways to cheat in the game regardless of the author\'s stance - or most gamers - on it. As far as I\'m concerned \'cheating\' should be allowed - and by that, I mean very simply - let the player playing the game decide for themselves what that means. Don\'t think a cfg edit that shoves you instantly into orbit is fair? Don\'t do it. Don\'t think using mods that allow for hilarious mixes of impossibly powerful and economical parts is fair? Don\'t do it. Personally I\'m seeing plenty of useful ideas for this cfg edit - for one, it\'d make testing the landing stage of a lander a *lot* simpler. I won\'t be using it under normal circumstances - but, for me that\'s the point of being able to do something like this. Under extraordinary circumstances, I like to cheat a little to make the game easier.

[semininja]

In my experience, the KSO edit causes the craft to rapidly dismantle itself without assistance from player input, as seen in the attached images.

[RichieD76]

Oh please. People will find ways to cheat in the game regardless of the author\'s stance - or most gamers - on it. As far as I\'m concerned \'cheating\' should be allowed - and by that, I mean very simply - let the player playing the game decide for themselves what that means. Don\'t think a cfg edit that shoves you instantly into orbit is fair? Don\'t do it. Don\'t think using mods that allow for hilarious mixes of impossibly powerful and economical parts is fair? Don\'t do it. Personally I\'m seeing plenty of useful ideas for this cfg edit - for one, it\'d make testing the landing stage of a lander a *lot* simpler. I won\'t be using it under normal circumstances - but, for me that\'s the point of being able to do something like this. Under extraordinary circumstances, I like to cheat a little to make the game easier.

the point i was getting at was that KSP by design is like ever other games in existance..A challange. Make easy..yes ...Remove the entire mechanic\'s of the game and there is no challange. It would be like starting a Final Fantasy game at a stupidly high level....you just button bash, grind and eventually get bored. See if thi principal of this discovery were put into a senerio so that you could instantly beam a glider into orbit to test it and refine it while developing a part....Or a langer into Mun orbit...yes, go for it...abuse the game all you like. BUT then all the work the production team are putting into the design of a test function (talk of it at least) will be pointless.

[Misterspork]

You know eventualy the game will have orbital construction and it will almost be like this. Are you going to call people who use an orbital VAB cheaters?

[imdying]

the point i was getting at was that KSP by design is like ever other games in existance..A challange. Make easy..yes ...Remove the entire mechanic\'s of the game and there is no challange. It would be like starting a Final Fantasy game at a stupidly high level....you just button bash, grind and eventually get bored. See if thi principal of this discovery were put into a senerio so that you could instantly beam a glider into orbit to test it and refine it while developing a part....Or a langer into Mun orbit...yes, go for it...abuse the game all you like. BUT then all the work the production team are putting into the design of a test function (talk of it at least) will be pointless.

Remember, not everybody is a 10 year old with hours and hours and hours to burn playing the game. I play GT5 maybe once every 3 months. When I do, I want to drive the fast cars, not the bullshit cars, I don\'t want to have to spend months getting those cars. That I have to \'earn\' something in \'game\' that I paid money for, that\'s just bullshit. Not everybody is a 10 year old with untold amounts of spare time.

The value of the dev effort will be judged on what the users do with it once they get it.

You have the idea that playing the game any way other that how you think it should be played is abuse. It\'s not, it\'s just different. Some people think playing KSP vanilla is just a waste of time. Those people aren\'t wrong, they just have different goals to you.

[notmeagain]

I think the whole 'Editing is cheating, don\'t do it' crowd are just a bunch of elitist cry babies

It\'s a game, my editing a file is not going to drop a 2.5 megaton nuclear device on your house, posting a picture of me on the mun in a 35 story megaship is not going to kill all the whales on earth, and me travelling at close to the speed of light because i\'ve tweaked an engine part is not going to irreversibly disrupt the space-time-continuum.

As someone else said: If you don\'t want to do it, then don\'t. It\'s up to everyone else how they want to play the damned game. So stop whining and let it be.

Awesome find Jelly, and the FAKOOM parts have made me wee a little in excitement.

[Guest Flixxbeatz]

the point i was getting at was that KSP by design is like ever other games in existance..A challange. Make easy..yes ...Remove the entire mechanic\'s of the game and there is no challange. It would be like starting a Final Fantasy game at a stupidly high level....you just button bash, grind and eventually get bored. See if thi principal of this discovery were put into a senerio so that you could instantly beam a glider into orbit to test it and refine it while developing a part....Or a langer into Mun orbit...yes, go for it...abuse the game all you like. BUT then all the work the production team are putting into the design of a test function (talk of it at least) will be pointless.

Sometimes we need to do things the other, exotic, never before, and unexpectedly hilarious ways buddy, even if that means going over the norms.

[Mogadishu]

Well, I think I broke the game.

This is one of several test runs I took, as you can see, pretty much all the indicators are broken. The map view in this trial was nothing but a black screen.

Here\'s the .craft file:

ship = InstantInterstellarTransport
version = 0.13.2
{
	part = mk1pod_4294889298
	pos = 0,0,0
	rot = 0,0,0,1
	stg = 0
	istg = 0
	dstg = 0
	sidx = 0
	sqor = -1
	attm = 0
	link = stackDecoupler_4294887438
	attN = bottom, stackDecoupler_4294887438
}
{
	part = stackDecoupler_4294887438
	pos = 0,-1000000000000,0
	rot = 0,0,0,1
	stg = 0
	istg = 1
	dstg = 1
	sidx = 0
	sqor = -1
	attm = 0
	attN = top, mk1pod_4294889298
}