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[1.0.4] Orbital Decay V0.0.1 (Full Release Version Coming This Week! 05/08/2015)


Whitecat106

What would you like to see introduced after the main features of this mod have been added?  

118 members have voted

  1. 1. What would you like to see introduced after the main features of this mod have been added?

    • Lagrange Points
      47
    • Solar Flares
      33
    • Pressurised Compartments
      11
    • Devoted Remote Tech Position Fixing
      25
    • Persistent Particle Space Debris
      18


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I wonder if it would be possible to implement a small amount of N-body physics by using orbital decay on the opposite side of the moon/planet in relation to the parent body and reversing it on the near-side. Wouldn't be that hard to do

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There is this background processing mod which should help you dealing with resource consumption in the background.

Also, please don't take this the wrong way, since I really like what you have done, but I think you should limit the scope of your mod if it is overwhelming you. Orbital decay and station keeping seems good enough. Simulating Solar flares and N body seems like daunting tasks to take on. Not stopping you though, and good luck!

Man, i certainly agree with this. YOu have a great unique mod going here. Don't let yourself get bogged down with trying to byte off too much in one go. This mod is really needed and even in the simplest form of "on tracks" is a great addition that will become a "must have" mod.

Good luck and keep plugging along.

Cheers.

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Hello everyone,

Sorry Ive been gone for a while! Took a break from modding for a few days, should be back on track now. Ahh no fear everyone, I wont be incorporating anything else into this specific mod release apart from the planned features on the main page, my poll is just to see what I should move onto next since this is going to be a pretty low maintenance mod (the actually orbit altering system works all the way down to KSP 0.18 so I doubt it will change soon) once the UI and stationkeeping is complete :sticktongue:

I have decided that I will instead of using background processing (a bit of a memory hog), to simply use a catch up system for removing vessel resources (removing monoprop on the first frame of the vessel being switched to whilst in the background calculating when and if the monopropellant has been depleted from logging the known start quantity, the time interval and the decay rate (which is already run for every vessel simultaneously)). I have not yet started this new system but by this time next week I hope to have a working test version! :)

I hope there aren't any major bugs popping up (I have not seen any anyway).

Enjoy!

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While this mod is cool, i found something... annoying: when you go on EVA... the craft moves away from you in a jittery way...:

one moment you're floating towards it, it then 'cloaks' a few meters further away from you...

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Hello again everyone, I am currently working on the next version (Should be out soon!) This will include a fix for the Eva issue MK3424 was having and include resource handling based on a catchup on every scene transition approach (still not sure how taxing this will be for the system).

I really appreciate all the help everyone has given! (I am sorry for not catching up with my messages but I will get round to it soon!) Hopefully the next update (0.1.0) will be out within a few days... code is still kinda messy and the UI is still ugly but that will be reserved for version 0.2.0) once this is complete I will make sure its all polished off ready for a release! Enjoy :)

As for future ideas, I regret putting Lagrange points on my poll now! Well it seems I may be able to do some fancy orbit trickery for these but they will never simulate real N-Body physics (its just too complex!) But another in development mod was hoping to implement this (but I don't know what happened to it). Sun synchronous orbits should be relatively simple, at the end of the day I can alter any orbit in the background so any idea that causes movement/shifting of orbits as a result of hard set parameters (such as a waypoint (60 degrees from Kerbin for Lagrange 3 lets say)) can be implemented, its just the wider more complex physicy changes that cause issues. - That being said, perturbations in orbits from other bodies is now possible so stay tuned for more! - Once I get to version 0.2.0 that is...

My biggest concerns at the moment are A: A lack of motivation... eh... and B: The upcoming upgrade to Unity5... nothing bad should happen but it could.. Since its taken 3 and a half years to get orbital decay working.. it may break within the next 3 months... (I'm 99% sure it won't.. but what if?...)

Anyway! Hope everyone is enjoying the mod! :)

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Hi everyone I'm sorry for the lack of content or updates (same goes for my Historic Missions contract pack), however its been beautiful outside here in the UK as of late and I think its a shame to be coding away indoors! But come the next rainy day I will endeavour to do some more work, the EVA bug should be fixed however resource processing is still lacking! If anyone wants to make their own changes to the code and send them to me to speed this process up I would welcome any help and I'll make sure you have a mention in my contract pack! :D I have not forgotten about this mod just waiting for the right day and the right frame of mind to crack on with the next few updates!

Whitecat :)

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Hi everyone I'm sorry for the lack of content or updates (same goes for my Historic Missions contract pack), however its been beautiful outside here in the UK as of late and I think its a shame to be coding away indoors! But come the next rainy day I will endeavour to do some more work, the EVA bug should be fixed however resource processing is still lacking! If anyone wants to make their own changes to the code and send them to me to speed this process up I would welcome any help and I'll make sure you have a mention in my contract pack! :D I have not forgotten about this mod just waiting for the right day and the right frame of mind to crack on with the next few updates!

Whitecat :)

Then i suggest to follow Maeyanie proposition of putting the code on github and let other coders contribute to this great mod.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi everyone! I'm back, real life has been crazy lately but its a rainy day and I have a few hours to spare so now its time to work!

First things first:

My plans; So since the draining resource thing is still a thing.. I will be spending most of my time today trying to make that work, if so there may be a new release today! However, if this still eludes me I shall release the RSS version as it stands (without the UI) since in reality there are no station keeping burns carried out automatically without review by a human, so the RSS version will be a small plugin (saving RSS memory (I feel for you Windows!)) without the cluttered UI just simulating real decay (Information is limited on the Web, only really decay rates of Earth up to 500km are known.. so it will be an experiment!).

Einkleinermensch, Sadly Eggrobins mod is a little too advanced for this mod I think, I have awaited the Principia mod for ages but it changes the 'physics' of KSP to a big extend that I do not want to step on anybodies toes, whereas his mod is genius, mine only exploits a few orbit manipulation commands. As I understand the Prinicipia mod on release will incorporate Orbital decay, and if this arises to be low in memory demand I will recommend that everyone using this mod move to Prinicipia since Eggrobins has put a great deal of work into it. I consider my mod to be a sort of fast track to Orbital Decay.

But for now! To work! :)

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May I make a suggestion:

Ships also escape from bodies, if above a certain altitude. Could you add that in?

And otherwise, this IS going on my must-have modpacks.

Thanks! That's a brilliant idea! I had thought about some more interesting perturbations and this one should be pretty easy to implement! I may add in a random chance of an increase in orbital velocity when a vessel is within 90% of the orbiting body's SOI with this increasing as the vessel nears escape. This will definitely be included in the next or following update!

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Thanks! That's a brilliant idea! I had thought about some more interesting perturbations and this one should be pretty easy to implement! I may add in a random chance of an increase in orbital velocity when a vessel is within 90% of the orbiting body's SOI with this increasing as the vessel nears escape. This will definitely be included in the next or following update!

Too complicated. At least for a lite release :-)

Just make it so if Alt < (formula) of planet's radius/SOI, then it decays, else it expands.

I've thought about this a lot :-) I was going to make it my own mod after some IRL stuff, but then you stepped in so I'd be glad to help.

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Whitecat; you said that the EVA bug should be fixed by now, then can you release it then as a new version?

I would but the build I have at the moment is a tad unstable (Almost there with this resource thing, I have made it so that an active vessel will drain monoprop at the same rate as the orbital decay but I am still working on the catch up resource change for each background vessel (Currently every 10 seconds but I will change it to every scene change), but this is producing some bugs) The EVA bug has been fixed in the release of the Orbital Decay Lite version on the Release forum, and since that is a more condensed and smooth version I would recommend switching to that for the time being, at least until the next release of this Dev version (Soon I promise! I have got some more momentum to work on KSP at the moment!).

However if you are really determined you could build the version on GitHub by replacing every instance of If(vessel = Flightglobals.activeVessel) to If(vessel = !Packed), but like I said the Lite Version is generally nicer than this mess of code at the moment!

So yes everyone, progress is coming along, hopefully the Station Keeping feature will be released soon I am just playing with code waiting for some more inspiration for the background vessels.

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I would but the build I have at the moment is a tad unstable (Almost there with this resource thing, I have made it so that an active vessel will drain monoprop at the same rate as the orbital decay but I am still working on the catch up resource change for each background vessel (Currently every 10 seconds but I will change it to every scene change), but this is producing some bugs) The EVA bug has been fixed in the release of the Orbital Decay Lite version on the Release forum, and since that is a more condensed and smooth version I would recommend switching to that for the time being, at least until the next release of this Dev version (Soon I promise! I have got some more momentum to work on KSP at the moment!).

However if you are really determined you could build the version on GitHub by replacing every instance of If(vessel = Flightglobals.activeVessel) to If(vessel = !Packed), but like I said the Lite Version is generally nicer than this mess of code at the moment!

So yes everyone, progress is coming along, hopefully the Station Keeping feature will be released soon I am just playing with code waiting for some more inspiration for the background vessels.

Is the resource hard coded? Asking for Real Fuels compatibility. Thanks! Can't wait for the full release :D

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Is the resource hard coded? Asking for Real Fuels compatibility. Thanks! Can't wait for the full release :D

At the moment yes, the Station Keeping currently uses (or should in theory hypothetically maybe possibly if I have some inspiration!) MonoPropellant from Stock but I will add in a check for the Real Fuels plugin and change this to an appropriate resource.. Hydrazine I think? Unless Real Fuels uses Hydrazine and Nitrogen? Ill have to look it up, been so long since I have actually played KSP with mods that aren't my own experiments!

Not to worry I will include this in the full release too! :)

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