damny

Didn't it have those rocket skin IAPs? "Support the dev" type IAPs, not actually freemium.

I mostly think of ISRU as a mechanic that provides additional goals. It makes bases and stations more useful and gives me reasons to use them after I launch them. Yeah it's also free fuel, but I got everywhere I wanted to without mining, so the free fuel is just a side effect. (It's certainly not as powerful as Kethane used to be in the old days when I ran that.) In this sense, it's not really "important" - you can run a space program without it and still do everything. But it gives you more options, which is what sandbox games run on.

If you're new to git and github I'd recommend the GUI client (https://desktop.github.com). It's pretty easy to use: 1. Click the "+" button to create a repository 2. enter a name and click the button 3. right click the name of your new repository in the sidebar and choose "open in explorer" (...in Finder on Mac) 4. put your files in this location 5. now click on the "uncommitted changes" tab at the top of the window 6. you should see all the files you just put in the repository directory 7. enter a summary (like "hello") and click "commit" 8. click the "publish" button in the top right corner to publish your repository to github 9. whenever you want to add or update something, go back to step 3

You can only cheat yourself in a single player sandbox, so the question is what are you cheating yourself out of with the various features of these mods. Then you have to answer for yourself which of those things you actually enjoy. With KER and KAC specifically... I basically consider these two community bug fixes, not feature add-ons. KER displays a bunch of info that you can otherwise obtain by switching between screens, mousing over stuff, and so on (orbit parameters etc.). It also displays some info that is easy to calculate, but tedious: Calculating 9.8 * isp * ln(wet mass/dry mass) for every stage of your rocket after every change or between manoeuvres isn't exactly difficult, but it also doesn't enhance the gameplay in any way. And then it shows some info that's obtainable via gameplay but that just seems like an odd thing to do, e.g. you can totally map an action group to a biome sensitive experiment to easily see the current biome, but if the game will already freely give you this information, what's the point of not having a readout somewhere on screen in the first place. KAC stops time warps safely. The game tries to do that too, it just fails sometimes. It prevents you from messing up your orbit by time warping through SOI changes, which shouldn't mess up the orbit in the first place since it's not actually something that happens in the game world. It lets you calculate transfers (and KER lets you do something similar), but if you don't use anything other than stock game tools (no web apps, no wikis, no protractor held up to the screen), the actual stock game way to do this is to move a manoeuvre node around and tug at its attached gizmos until the game gives you positive feedback. But sometimes the manoeuvre nodes disappear, and sometimes you mess up your node by grabbing the wrong gizmo or accidentally scrolling near it. Often, "feedback" (i.e. encounters and such) just flickers in and out of existence even when you're not touching anything. The gizmos also aren't very precise in the first place. So yeah, most of this isn't actual gameplay either. The alarms that KAC provides are pretty much the only feature of these two mods that aren't an obvious bug fix... but even then I wonder why a game that lets me do things that literally take years doesn't have any built-in way to prevent me from babysitting it while it's time warping instead of spending my time on actually playing the game. There are mods that do more than show information, and personally I don't like mods that make things easier by removing gameplay. But if we're talking about KER and KAC or similar mods, IMHO those don't remove gameplay in the first place. I don't need skill nor knowledge to get most of these things right without a mod, just a lot of patience.

I can make SCANsat trigger more animations. I just don't have anything I can test it with. If you release your part then I will have something

Oh man, I think I really need to put some text on that static that explains it

Putting this on my list, but I'm not actually sure, since I'm just using a default style here. Hmm, it's actually not supposed to drain power at high time warp factors precisely because of this... It's not the amount of power they require btw., it's simply that e.g. at 100x time warp, they need 100x the power per calculation step, while your panels also generate 100x. But unfortunately you only get the amount of charge that your vessel can actually store in its batteries, so you lose a lot of power generation because of that. I don't know if it's the IVA display, but I also don't know where SCANsat would directly cause FileNotFound exceptions, as it doesn't really access any files directly (only when you export an image).

It's effectively already capped, I mean you still need to put them in a proper orbit for scanning and wait it out. I don't really see how making it take longer would add more fun; if I were to make it harder to map a planet I'd much rather do that by making it more important to get the right orbit. Yeah, there's a bit of wonkiness there. Some amount of state is associated with the vessel ID the part is on and when you detach a part, it becomes its own vessel with a new ID. Correct, the game doesn't have terrain data or biomes or anything you could scan on Jool. As far as I know we don't know for sure what the cores of real life counterparts look like, and the Kerbals are in a similar position right now, they can't make instruments that can measure the core of a gas giant. (For all we know it could be a boring smooth sphere anyway, so altimetry would still return nonsense...)

Thanks to Phoenix84 and rickyhewitt for making hotfix builds for 0.23 before I got around to it. I've uploaded build 5. This build is compatible with KSP 0.23, but not with older builds, due to changes in the science system. I don't think I understand the science system and the new changes yet. In particular, it's still necessary to analyze multiple times to get the full amount of science. Apart from the compatibility fixes, I've also replaced models and textures for the altimetry and biome scanners with models created by Milkshakefiend, and originally published over here. Many thanks to Milkshakefiend for making these models and giving me permission to distribute them with SCANsat! This build is not 100% savegame compatible with older builds: I finally removed the slope scanner that has been non-functional for the last few builds. Savegames where this part is still present won't load correctly. You can either make it explode via the right-click menu before updating, or you can simply copy the slope scanner part back after the update (it's the "Scanner 4" directory). The new models look different and this may lead to parts being attached badly to existing vessels. They will still function correctly, though. As above, old part files will still work if you prefer those. Full changelog: Build 5 - 2013-12-18 -------------------- - Update for KSP version 0.23. This version of SCANsat now requires KSP 0.23. - Fixes for minor incompatibilities with Unity 4.2.2. - Fixes for science changes in 0.23. Unfortunately, it's still necessary to analyze multiple times to get the full amount of science. - Removed the deprecated slope scanner part from the distribution. This breaks savefile compatibility for savefiles that still use this part. If this is an issue, simply keep the "Scanner 4" directory from the existing SCANsat installation. - Replaced models for altimetry and biome sensors with much better ones made by Milkshakefiend. Original forum thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/49233-WIP-Parts-from-my-garden-shed-SCANsat-Antennae Note: This breaks savegame compatibility in the sense that affected parts look different and may be attached badly. If this is an issue, simply don't overwrite the existing parts when updating, or copy them back after the update. - Parts with animations can be extended and retracted in the editor. This doesn't affect their state at launch. - The big map should not open outside the screen anymore. (SirJodelstein) - Added a button to reset window positions to settings panel. (Lalwcat) - Fixed a bug that could sometimes prevent power consumption from being turned off during high time warp. - Biome maps now use the proper API function to determine the biome at a given location, which has been fixed in 0.23 to not spam debug output anymore. - Action names are configurable in the part config file. Included parts have been updated. (OrtwinS) - The instruments window got its own close button. (DMagic)

This may not be enough, e.g. the output of a solar panel depends on where it is in space. Ideally, it would be possible to (optionally) specify a class that can handle the calculations.

Correct, it's based on percentage, more specifically coverage of the sensor you do the experiment with. But there is a threshold; no science below 30% coverage. There was no inspiration. I haven't seen mapsat's source code and I never really used it because I didn't like the way it worked. It's related to how these objects are organized internally by the game. SCANsat finds structures if there are multiple named objects that you crash into. The KSC is very detailed in that regard but most other sites are not. SCANsat displays longitude according to the definition that is commonly used on Earth, where it ranges from -180 W to + 180 E. As far as I can tell, KSP can't be trusted to give it in any specific range, so SCANsat normalizes geographical coordinates like this for everything it does.

Soon. You can see them in the part config files.

No, I removed that at one point. The item that still exists is only there for savegame compatibility. The release version will not include it by default.

The texture is exposed as MapView.OrbitIconsMap. I don't know if there is a function to draw them individually or get the texture coordinates for an icon, but it's pretty easy to make yourself. It's a grid of 5 x 5 icons (not all spots filled) so texture coordinates are some multiple of 0.2 in either direction and width/height are also 0.2.

That snowy thing happens when you run out of power. This can be a bit unstable at high warp, which is why it doesn't use power at all at >1000x. The game crashing is not a feature, but I'm not sure why it would crash because your satellite is out of power. Data is stored in your persistent.sfs file, look for a SCENARIO section that has "name = SCANcontroller" in it. Somewhere below that line will be blocks that have the name of a planet in them as well as lines that start with "Map = ", followed by line noise. It should be okay to remove individual Body { ... } blocks there to reset progress for specific planets. (I saw that you already resolved this but maybe this comes up again... of course naturally, the reset option in settings is preferable...) It should actually do that on its own if you get to 100%. Those little markers on the equator are where your satellite will cross them during the next few orbits. Resonant orbits are those where they're all clumped up in a small number of spots. I think it wouldn't be very hard. But I've also put it on my todo list.