seanth

The exe should be fairly straight forward to use: It first asks you to name your galaxy. This has no impact of the generation of the galaxy, but will result in a meaningful file that will be generated at the end. Next it will ask whether you want a automatic or custom galaxy. A automatic galaxy will choose the settings without your input. A custom galaxy will generate a galaxy using your input as guidance. More on custom galaxies below. The seed is any series of numbers you want. This exists so it will be possible for other people to generate exactly the same galaxy as you if they use the same seed. AUTOMATIC: If you chose "automatic" the application will display the numbers of stars, planets, moons, and astroids generated If you are happy with the results, type "y" and the galaxy.cfg, "Galaxy Gen" txt file, and "wikiEntry.html" files are generated. More on these at the end. CUSTOM: There are additional options if you chose "Custom" You can choose the galaxy age, 0 to 5. 0 is very young and 5 is very old. The age of the galaxy determines the numbers of the different star types: Blue Giants (O), Blue-while Giants (B), White (A), Yellow-white (F), Yellow (G), Orange (K), Red dwarfs (M), and Brown dwarfs (L-Y) You can choose whether you want planets generated or not. This is useful if you are just testing what sort of star types you want. If planets are generated, moons will also be generated. You can choose whether you want astroids generated of not. Astroids, in this case, are not the astroids that appear in the normal KSP game. These are just chunks of rock that orbit stars like planets. Next you can choose what sort of galaxy type you want to have: An ellipse, a disk, or clusters An elliptical galaxy is more spherical in the distribution of stars A disk galaxy has the stars distributed in more of a flattened disc The cluster option creates groups of stars that clump together to sort of make mini galaxies. I admit I always make disk galaxies, so there may be bugs in making the other types. If you find one, be a hero and report it on github. "Advanced settings" will essentially override the "galaxy age" setting. You get to explicitly define how many of each star type you want. If you are happy with the results, type "y" and the galaxy.cfg, "Galaxy Gen" txt file, and "wikiEntry.html" files are generated. OUTPUT FILES: "galaxy.cfg" -- This is the actual galaxy file that the Kopernicus mod will use to place the stars, planets, etc. "Galaxygen_Info-<your galaxy name>.txt" -- This file will record the generation options you used when making the galaxy, including your seed. This file is very useful to help me recreate problems people might encounter. "wikiEntry.html" -- This is a wiki file that lists the star characteristics of all the stars generated. It's modeled after the wiki entry for Kerbol, but upcoming releases will include additional information such as the star's absolute magnitude, apparent magnitude from Kerbol, location of teh frost line, and where the habitable zone is (min/max). "TBG-ResearchBodies.cfg" -- A file that will be generated that will allow players to use the ResearchBodies mod to discover and research distant stars, planets, and moons. This will appear in the next release (which is currently being tested)

Good catch. Not sure how that error crept in. As a side note, you could report code bugs right on github. Issues tab-->New issue Last night I just started getting brightnessCurves working in a way that I think I can use in a procedural way. Thx to the people on the Kopernicus discord server for weighing in on the mystery of brightnessCurves. Once the code base is not in qb64 it will be much easier to generate de novo heightmaps. In python I could do it using PIL or any number of pre-existing tools. But in QB64 I have not even considered it. I'm sure there are similar tools for Java

Another update: I have all the calculations related to the apparent magnitude of stars in TBG working, and a custom cfg is being made for ResearchBodies. What I initially found was that most stars were simply too far away to be seen (having an apparent magnitude of 7 or less). As a consequence I've started experimenting with making the galaxy smaller. Right now the galaxy is 4x smaller than I have had it previously and that is yielding good results. Star brightness in the night sky as seen from Kerbin is (predictably) much higher now, so I am working to adjust that. Once I'm done with that, I'll work on having module manager files automatically generated to adjust how telescopes work. At this point I think I'll actually have things to take pictures of.

Small update: I'm working toward integrating TBG with some cool ResearchBodies stuff. To that end I have been including some code that calculates a star's absolute magnitude, distance from Kerbol, and from that I can calculate the apparent magnitude of any of the generated stars as seen from Kerbin. The average human has a hard time seeing anything with an apparent magnitude of 6.5 or higher (without using a telescope). What this means is that, with ResearchBodies, stars with a apparent magnitude above a certain level won't be seen in map view unless discovered with a telescope first. But, I turn to you: what should that cutoff be? Are Kerbal eyes better able to see stars than ours? Worse? The same? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude#Table_of_notable_celestial_objects for some info that might help.

Yeah, seems fine. It's GNU General Public License v2.0, so just saying where it came from initially is enough I think. Just a heads up though: Master is many, many updates behind the Janet branch. If you're building off of Master, it's pretty out of date.

Sheesh. Why am I not getting notifications when people post. Make sure you have (at least) KSP 1.4.3 Install the Kopernicus mod Install TBG At that point, you have the option to just use the galaxy file provided. If you want to make your own custom galaxy and are on windows, launch GalaxyGen.exe in the To Boldly Go folder and enter the info you want to make a custom galaxy. If you are on a Mac, I have found that using a Wineskin works fine (on Mac OS 10.13.4).

Absolutely. All the code is up at https://github.com/kjoenth/To-Boldly-Go I'm currently working on the "Janet" branch and am focusing on planet-related stuff (like tidal locking, planets in habitable zones getting atmosphere's with oxygen, etc). The current code is in QBasic, but I have dreams of moving things to python.

"Pick A Feature Thursday" Poll #1 is up

An update, and a tutorial on adding planet packs: https://github.com/kjoenth/To-Boldly-Go/releases/tag/0.3.0.6 https://github.com/kjoenth/To-Boldly-Go/wiki/Tutorial:-Planet-packs-as-templates

A question about line feeds in body descriptions: I looked at the kittopia dumps for examples, and the Dres example shows \n\n, which is what I assumed it would be. The problem is that when I try it with descriptions for bodies I make, the \n are stripped out by KSP, but a new line is not made. I also tested \r and \r\n. Any advice? EDIT WITH EXAMPLES The input I have looks like: description = The Kraken's Lair\n\nthis should be a new paragraph And looking at the resulting file in Logs/Kopernicus/: bodyDescription = The Kraken's Lairthis should be a new paragraph

Well the results are the survey are clear: everyone that follows this thread wants to know how to do the thing. I'll put some instructions together, and then post them here, on the github wiki, and maybe make a narrated youtube instructional

Hmmm. Well, there could be an editable txt file that would define min/max values for some planet generation. Some of the things you listed above are determined procedurally, though. For example, you can't have an atmosphere if the mass(radius) of the body is too low, and whether there is atmospheric O2 is at least partly determined by the distance the body is from its primary. Maybe what you want is a separate tool where you feed in some parameters and it outputs one or more planets based on a range of your values.

TBG has had an undocumented feature for about a year now, but I'm still hesitant about documenting it. Right now, TBG will procedurally generate stars and then place planets and moons around those stars using the stock game planets and moons as templates. Well...you can use planets/moons from (in theory) any Kopernicus planet pack as templates for extra-solar bodies. The reason I have been hesitant in documenting this feature is that I _know_ that not every planet pack will Just Work™, and I don't want to spend all my time trying to offer support. So what do people think: should I let ya'll know how to use other Kopernicus planets as templates to populate your universes (and gleefully ignore requests for help getting planet pack <insert name> working), or just leave it as a feature that is never described I'm guess "yes: tell us how!" Also, seriously: how do I set up survey questions?Edit: got it. Examples:

Are you proposing a way to make specific planets, or just providing vague parameters from which a series of random planets are made? There's a tool out there called Kittopiatech that will let you make custom worlds.

Does including the ability to add in custom planets from planet packs count? Details soon. It's all working, there are just no instructions yet.

Holy crap. I actually started a brand new thread (so now I can edit the OP when new releases appear)

About: To Boldly Go (TBG) is a stand-alone application that allows users to create a procedural galaxy. It leaves the stock game's planets untouched, but adds new stars, planets, and moons--all using real-world calculations (adjusted for the oddities of the in-game physics). The original author, @daniel l., has asked me to take the lead on development, and after a long time of inaction I have finally made a new thread. Current release: For KSP 1.9 (requires Kopernicus Continued 1.9.1): https://github.com/kjoenth/To-Boldly-Go/releases/latest Instructions: Install Kopernicus (comes with a version of ModuleManager). Copy the contents of the GameData/ folder to KSP's GameData/ folder. An example galaxy is included with TBG, but if you want to make your own custom galaxy, launch the GalaxyGen.exe application and follow the instructions. Maximum recommended galaxy size: 200 stars. (KSP 64-Bit) Launch KSP. Depending on your computer and the number of stars+planets+moons in your galaxy, it might take a while for KSP to start up. If you think KSP might have frozen, look in the Logs/Kopernicus/Cache folder to see if files are being generated. Recommended install: Psi Cartographer -- A fork of Sigma88's SigmaCartographer which provides a way to generate scaledSpace images for procedural world. If you think KSP might have frozen, look in the GameData/Psi-Cartographer/PluginData/ folder to see if folders are being generated. Eeek! A bug!: By all means mention things here, but another good place to report things is at https://github.com/kjoenth/To-Boldly-Go/issues Current features: Automatic of customizable galaxy generation. Use of a seed so you can share more easily share your galaxies with friends. An output txt file detailing the details of your galaxy. Star types (O, B, A, F, G, K, M) with procedurally determined colours based on their mass. A wikiEntry html file that is generated for each galaxy that provides details for stars in the generated universe. Different galaxy types: ellipse, disc, or cluster. Galaxy age (impacts the numbers of star types automatically generated). Ability to have no planets, or no moons. Ability to determine exact numbers of each star type. Procedurally generated water worlds (0.3.8). Procedurally generated Eve-like worlds (0.3.9). Procedurally generated kethane world (0.4.0). Procedurally generated views of planets in map view (0.4.1) Add in planets/moons from any start pack. Instructions here. Whether stars are visible from Kerbin depends on their luminosity and distance. Optional integration with ResearchBodies. Optional integration with Environmental Visual Enhancements (EVE) & Stock Visual Enhancements (SVE). Pictures or it didn't happen: @daniel l.'s imgur album: KottabosGames review of an earlier version: Short video showing the "milky way" as seen from Kerbin:

Update is out https://github.com/kjoenth/To-Boldly-Go/releases/tag/0.3.0.5h Still unhappy with star brightness. I am not a Kopernicus guy, so anyone that has ideas, take a look at https://github.com/kjoenth/To-Boldly-Go/blob/Janet/Data_Folder/templates/lightTmp.txt and see what I can do to the curves to improve them. New thread will be made later today.

I have been swamped with IRL work, but I am free-er now. There is an uncompiled version that works with KSP 1.4.x and Kopernicus 1.4.3-2. Today's life goals: Build the exe on my Mac. Never much fun. Make sure everything is update on github Start a new thread Part of the delay was me trying to integrate the Research Bodies mod, but a simple equation taking luminosity and distance and outputting apparent magnitude was tricky.

While this comes off as dismissive, I suggest not using it with older versions of KSP. OR, if you do, use older versions of TBG with older versions of KSP. Along that line, Kopernicus has been updated for 1.4.2 and I'l be testing TBG to make sure things are ok. If things pass basic tests, I'll probably be making a band new thread since @daniel l. asked me to take over for him.

I haven't seen the Landing Gear part. Where should I be looking?

@blspblackdeathhave you considered putting things up on github? I'd be happy to contribute fixes to the older parts to make them work ok with 1.4.1

I have been unable to delete nodes placed in the mission maker. Every tutorial I have seen says you clink on a placed node and hit the delete key. Doing that does nothing on my Mac. Can anyone else confirm this? MacBook Pro Retina 15in Mid 2015 macOS 10.13.3

This is so frustrating. After so much flailing around I literally cut and pasted values from the Galileo Planet Pack AND it matches what was recommended by @Thomas P. here. Take ScaledIntensityCurve values and multiply them by 6000. In my testing things seemed to look good when I was in orbits and landed on exoplanets. Could it be that you are visiting dimmer brown dwarf/red dwarf stars and that's influencing what you are seeing? I made a new galaxy that is pretty much just made of yellow Kerbol-like stars. Maybe this will seem better? https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ks0gfjunq9lz6k/galaxy.cfg?dl=0 For those playing at home, maybe you can see what I'm doing wrong:

How about https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ks0gfjunq9lz6k/galaxy.cfg?dl=0