Whirligig Girl

Oh?

hey he didn't ask for y'alls opinions.

u are bae, gameslinx 

All Rights Reserved.

No.

Not really hard at all, the main thing is just that any work I've done on Little Green Men from Mars needs to be redone if you wanted to play on Mars as a homeworld.

You'll need a few things to get started:

• Genuine artistic talent
• Scientific knowledge and research.
  • Here's a helpful formula: GeeASL = Mass / (Radius^2) = Radius * Density
    • GeeASL is in Gees, Mass is in 1/100 Earth Masses, Radius is in 1/10 Earth masses, and Density is in 10 Earth densities. (Or 1 Earth units for all of them if you're building to real scale)
• An advanced texture editing software such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or Gimp
• The smudge tool in said program
• Reference heightmap material (NOT Space Engine exports. I mean real world heightmaps to see what different structures look like converted to brightness = height)
  • Here's the Moon, Earth, Venus, and Mars heightmaps from RSS: Dropbox Direct DL.
  • These are maps that are based off of real height data from orbiters, not artists conceptions.
• Reference configs
• Unique ideas
• Kopernicus
• KittopiaTech: Allows you to edit the pqsmods and other characteristics of planets in-game (must be manually rewritten into configs) and more importantly allows you to export accurate textures. The textures applied to scaledspace should ALWAYS be color and normal exports from Kittopia, and unless you know what you're doing you shouldn't use kittopia-tech exported heightmaps for your planet. Make sure the map max height is above the terrain.

Some advice:

• Higher resolution heightmaps look very blocky when applied to terrain. For most worlds you should use 2048x1024 maps.
• Don't use Space Engine exports for anything except perhaps asteroids.
• Draw on a piece of paper what you think the planet or its map should look like first
• Polar distortion means you need to flatten objects near the poles. Look for a polar co-ordinate converter tool in your photo manipulation program.
• Use HeightColorMap or LandControl land classes for coloration. Look at Kerbin, Duna, or Eve for some decent examples.
• Strange colors are over-rated. If you can't make a planet look interesting with dull colors, you're doing it wrong. Not that you can't use them, but I see people using them as a crutch.
• Speaking of crutches, so are scatterer and cloud mods.
• Crossing the line from player to modder is not all it's cracked up to be. I barely enjoy playing the game anymore at all and it's precisely because of the modding.

Luckily no coding is required, only config-writing, which is a bit simpler. Take a look at the Kopernicus Examples, but aside from that I can not really help you without any specific questions. 

Hmm, I might have to take a look at this.

Level changing is tricky, to be sure. First of all, it decreases the definition of all terrain on the planet, including procedural. Second of all, under certain conditions having too high or too low a Level can result in the planet being partially intangible.

With regards to transporting Space Engine stuff into KSP.

The main problem that importing Space Engine stuff into KSP is generally the simple fact that unless you add noise on top of them, you end up with mushy or blocky (or both!) height. This is also a problem for color maps (Especially with ocean worlds. Look at @Galileo Planet Pack, for instance, and you'll see bits of blue on the shore. If that's been fiixed since I last looked at it I do apologize) but it's less of a big deal because they can be at a lower resolution without losing important details, sometimes. The problem is if you add noise on top of a fully finished heightmap, you get too much noise and the whole thing becomes a mess.

So I would recommend that to put a SE world into KSP, try to remove all small scale procedural detail from the SE world, and do your best to replicate a similar look with PQSMods. Alternatively, export the map and then manually iron out the small scale noise from the map and add some with PQSMods.

Note that this doesn't just apply to Space Engine worlds. It also applies to Real Solar System worlds, and worlds that use real world detail. (SSRSS, RSS, Galileo, to name a few)

Now there are some super-ninja tricks to get less blockiness out of heightmaps, but it works best for hand-painted ones instead of things like SE or RSS maps. The trick is to have lower resolution maps for higher scale things, and work your way up and down respectively to add details.

For instance, imagine you have a large lobed asteroid that you want to add, but you also want really fine detail. If you tried to implement it without using any noise, you would end up with a pixelated effect on the terrain. If you use a lower resolution heightmap, the pixelation goes down because KSP blurs it out better. But then you lose small details like craters and cliffs and such.

The solution is to use a low resolution (512x256) map for the lobes of the asteroid, and then put the mountains and cliffs and craters on a higher resolution map. (depending on the scale, 1024x or 2048x) The technique can also be applied to large bodies. Use a 1024x map for large scale topology, and put small scale details on a higher resolution map. Now the smaller details will still be mushy and/or blocky to some extent (Not obviously so, but still noticeable), but the terrain in general won't.

Now, @The White Guardian, that volcanic crater looking thing in the picture would be a shame to leave mushy, but it would also be a shame to have the whole terrain look blocky. Try using a low definition heightmap for much of the planet, erasing some of the important high detail land formations, and then copying them onto a high definition map.

This method is a lot of work, but it gets good results, especially in conjunction with procedural PQSMods.

It's in the TR thread. Would it kill you to search for something?

There are unofficial versions for 1.2.

None of my planet packs can be updated until Kopernicus is.

I'll figure that out in a while. It's gonna be at least 8 hours before I can do it, so it will be some wait.

Thought about it? Yeah. I might add something like it for Planet Pack X.

Yep.

And if it helps, you can totally go and look at the config files for the already made Alien Space Programs.

I think you can salvage that config file if you make the proper changes.

Looks like you're editing Kerbin to create Bin, then making a new planet called Kerbin that is renamed to Minmus. What you need to do is make a new planet called Bin with the Kerbin template (and of course remember to do IsHomeWorld = False in the properties node) and then edit Kerbin. If you ever get a situation where your mod just doesn't load, and all you get is the stock system, then simply look in the KerbalSpaceProgram/Logs/Kopernicus/[planetname].body.log and look for where it says "an exception was recorded." This should give you an idea of where to look for bugs in the config.

If you need more help, stop by the #Kopernicus IRC channel tomorrow and ask for some help from the pros. (The pros are Thomas, KillAshley, Sigma88, and arguably me, GregroxMun)

Well, thank you I guess.  A bit harsh to Arkas.

Minmus does not use a heightmap, its shape is only based upon procedural PQSmods (specifically PQSmod_VertexPlanet). Many of the other planets (Moho, Eve, Kerbin, Mun, Duna, Laythe, Tylo, and Eeloo) need heightmaps, which are equirectangular/cylindrical-projection maps of the planet which show not the color of the planet, but the elevation. In order to get a pure heightmap you must remove all of the PQS height mods from a planet before exporting the heightmap, and then use KittopiaTech to export the heightmap through the Scaledspace Exporter.

I highly recommend learning the beginner level skills of Kopernicus before trying an Alien Space Program type mod. Alien Space Program is very much an Intermediate-skill-level pack. You can find several different guides to planet making throughout the forums, or you can disect and examine what makes planet packs like Uncharted Lands, Alternis Kerbol, and Revamped Stock System work. And learn ModuleManager, because it's the language that Kopernicus configs are written in.

I will not release your work as part of this mod, though if I like it enough I might link to it in the OP. I also ask that if you do release an Alien Space Program type mod, that you do not use the Alien Space Program name, but rather choose something else. And of course, that you credit me for the method.

I can't explain everything, because to be honest I don't want you outright stealing my work . But I will tell you the basics. First, it is important to know that Kopernicus configs are all Module Manager configs, so you have to use Module Manager syntax.

First, I clone Kerbin.

@Kopernicus:FOR[MinmusSpaceProgram]
{
	Body
	{
		name = Bin
		//name can be anything you want, but I use Bin for my mods.
		Template
		{
			name = Kerbin
		}
		Properties
		{
			isHomeWorld = False
			//Very important, otherwise the game breaks because it thinks there's two operational KSCs.
			description = A planet with blue oceans and land and blah blah blah
			//description can be anything you want.
		}
	}
}

Then I put Mun and Minmus in orbit around Bin instead of Kerbin.

@Kopernicus:FOR[AlienSpacePrograms]
{
	@Body[Mun]
	{
		@Orbit
		{
			@referenceBody = Bin
		}
	}
	@Body[Minmus]
	{
		@Orbit
		{
			@referenceBody = Bin
		}
	}
}

For a Minmus Space Program, we'll be deleting Minmus anyway, so you don't actually have to move Minmus.

Next, we make the config which turns Kerbin into Minmus.

To get almost usable Kopernicus configs, go here: https://github.com/Sigma88/Sigma-Dimensions/tree/master/GameData/Sigma/Dimensions/Configs/Bodies/KittopiaExports
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Those configs are both out of date and require modification to actually work in-game.

@Kopernicus:FOR[MinmusSpaceProgram]
{
	!Body[Minmus]
	//Deletes the stock Minmus, we don't need it anymore.
	!Body[Kerbin]
	//Now we don't have to worry about proper editing syntax for Kerbin/Minmus, we can pretend we're making it from scratch.
	//This is optional, you could just use the @ and % functions in Module Manager to edit/replace from the System.cfg template.
	Body
	{
		name = Kerbin
		//Yes, it *has* to be Kerbin. Otherwise the game doesn't know what to do with the KSC.
		cbNameLater = Minmus
		//This is where we give it the in-game name. This will make the planet's in-game name Minmus, but not it's in-code name.
		Template
		{
			name = Kerbin
			//Even though we're making Kerbin look like Minmus, we still need less unless we were editing the Kerbin planet.
			removePQSMods = //add all of the names of the PQSMods that Kerbin has which controls height and color of the planet, separated by commas.
			//Example:
			//removePQSMods = VertexHeightMap,LandControl
			removeOcean = True
			removeAtmosphere = True
			//Removes Kerbin's ocean and atmosphere.
			isHomeWorld = True
			//Just in case.
		}
		Properties
		{
			//Add all the properties of Minmus here. Radius, GeeASL, Mass, etc.
			//Note that if you're using the Kittopia Exports from the GitHub link, you need to replace the commas in timewarpAltitudeLimits with spaces.
		}
		!Atmosphere{*}
		//Deletes the Atmosphere properly.
		!Ocean{*}
		//Deletes the Ocean properly.
		PQS
		{
			minLevel = 2
			maxLevel = 6
			//This is a level of detail thing.
			Mods
			{
				//Add Minmus' PQSMods.
				//If you were doing this for a planet with a heightmap, then you'd have to export the heightmap using KittopiaTech
				//And set that as the Heightmap using the PQSMod "VertexHeightMap"
				//Luckily for Minmus, Minmus has relatively few PQSMods.
			}
		}
	}
}

So that should be a nice guide to making your own Alien Space Program mod.

I'm working on the Mun and Minmus update ever since releasing 0.2. If you go to the RevSS thread you will see some of the WIP pics.