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[1.3.0] Kerbalism v1.2.9


ShotgunNinja

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I was just setting up a mod list for 1.1 and being disappointed that TAC life support isn't updated yet, but this looks fascinating and I would like to try it out!

My current mod list includes

  1. Kerbal Engineer Redux
  2. Better Burn Time
  3. Contract Configurator
    1. KerbinSpaceStation contract pack
    2. KFiles contract pack
    3. Remotetech contract pack
    4. Tourism contract pack
  4. Environmental Visual Enhancements
  5. NRAP test weights
  6. RemoteTech
  7. Waypoint Manager
  8. ...and of course ModuleManager and KSP-AVC.

Am I correct in understanding that the only incompatible mods on my list are RemoteTech and the associated contract pack?

Also: I'm not familiar with the Unlicense; could you provide a link to where I could read it?

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I started playing with this and noticed something you may want to tweak, if possible. I have Universal Storage installed with this & saw that the US Science Jr. was still available with Stability, whereas you'd moved the stock one to Space Exploration. Also, the US Mystery Goo Container was with Basic Rocketry, whereas the stock one is in Basic Science. Lastly the US PresMat/2Hot (combo thermometer & barometer) was Space Exploration, although the stock parts are available much earlier.

 

Didn't know if this was something you could move or that the maker of Universal Storage would have to do by detecting your mod.

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NEW HOTFIX RELEASE v0.9.9.2
  - reverted to stock monoprop behavior temporarely
  - added tags to parts

 

Download and info in the OP. I want to add that 1.1.1230 is ridden with a lot of these:
first_computer_bug.jpg

 

 

@Bombaatu Thanks for the feedback. This can be solved pretty easily with a MM patch, will look into it.

Edited by ShotgunNinja
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@ShotgunNinja Hi pal. Great mod you have here. I have one small request, and one large that you will most likely disagree with, but I will ask anyway:

1. Is there any way you can disable the warning for low Oxygen or food from showing at launch of vehicle if I it starts with less then the threshold amount? I know that my 1 orbit rocket has less then 20% oxygen. That is all it needs.
It's really nitpicking, but does annoy me slightly :)

2. I asked previously in the thread, but I don't think you saw it. Do you have any plans on adding signal delay as an optional setting? This is really the only feature I miss compared to RemoteTech or any other of the mods this replace, but for me personally, it's a big one. I understand if it's out of your scope, but I will still cross my fingers for it :)

 

Lastly, had a quick look at your code for fun, and dear god it's beautiful! It's a hobby project, but *everything* is commented properly! It's like art! Almost brought a tear to my eye!

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@nosscire Well, thanks buddy. I do that to maintain mental sanity :confused:

I already ignore warnings on the launchpad for Food, I through for Oxygen was too extreme as if the user forget its gonna die fast.
I wonder why you choose to take only 20%, given how light it is. Its almost free to carry around. Man take some more oxygen with you :)
But I think I'm gonna disable that warning on the launchpad in next version and see if somebody complain.

I must have missed your previous post. No signal delay will be implemented, ever. Sorry about that...

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4 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

@cy4n Thanks! Very appreciated :)

@Charlie_Zulu

Have a look here. These are the settings I currently got, and some others are generated on-the-fly. I can't possibly expose the user to that complexity. Sooner or later I'm going to make a settings.cfg however (probably later), with some less complex options.

I didn't think of that. Sure you can kind of disable the signal mechanics that way (there still be occlusion from bodies), but I'm replacing the stock data transmitter with my own module. The same thing does other mods that implement a similar thing (eg RT, AntennaRange), so one of the two mod will not find a stock data transmitter to replace. I have to go through multiple total refactors before being able to disable a mechanic. Long, boring stuff. Maybe I'll do it one day, maybe not. Can't promise anything in that regard.

I'm gonna do a ninja evasion on this one :)

Forgive the ignorance, but can't excess CO2 just be tossed out of board? That is the way I'm doing it right now. Everything with a scrubber in it has a small capacity of CO2 (you don't see it but its there). When they consume Oxygen, they produce CO2. If there is CO2 available, the scrubber convert a part of it back into Oxygen. I avoided the 'buildup' and other exploits by giving a very small capacity.

That is brilliant, and simpler than the contiguous space I had in mind. It will resolve a bunch of stuff all at once i think.

I kept reliability dead simple. Especially engines, when they malfunction they only overheat faster. The reason is that I remember experiences from DangIt when the Engine just fail and you are screwed. And its not really possible to have redundant engines in every missions. THAT is playing with dice. This way instead, you get at least a chance of solving whatever new limit the malfunction imposed to you.

Right now radiation doesn't accelerate malfunction rate, but it is in the todo and not hard to implement.

Test flight I really like the idea, I saw another mod that did the same. It shouldn't be even that hard to do, you just have to build a DB of part types and accumulate time in it, per-part. And then a GUI to show the thing. Things like this is what I want to add to this mod. I want to add things that are easy to do, easy to maintain, easy to balance, fun to play and hard to master.

 

Honestly, there's no reason you couldn't throw all of those settings into a settings.cfg file aside from coding limitations; they're all pretty simple.  If someone messes around with them and breaks the balance (or the game), so be it, but that's their fault.  Just throw a warning out in front.  Compare that to KSP's stock settings in physics.cfg.  It also makes it easier for people to tweak things for balance. 

If someone's playing with RT, then the occlusion will be the same (or, in the event of blackouts, add to it).  Overlapping the two properly would allow for players to essentially have the best features of both - directional antennas and delay from RT, and your better connectivity settings.  I'd actually be half-tempted to roll a combined .cfg that tries to incorporate both in a balanced manner so that it makes sense, although navigating both mods at once might be a headache.

No, not the ninja evasion!

Dealing with excess carbon dioxide can be tricky.  In old or short-duration missions (up to and including STS), CO2's dealt with chemical scrubbers that run out over time.  On long-duration missions, a regenerative molecular sieve is used, but this is heavy, expensive, and uses a lot of electricity.  Having a proper carbon dioxide requirement would also allow for re-enactments of this scene (albeit where the Kerbals die).

Thanks!  The same system could probably be used for entertainment as well if needed.  

I wasn't referring to the effects of failures, but instead the causes.  Things like throttling or restarting engines repeatedly incur a greater toll than continuous operation, as would operating under high loads.  Having player actions & bad piloting take a higher toll on the parts would provide a way for players to make their vehicles perform better/more reliably without just requiring more tech upgrades.  If I know my engine might begin malfunction on its third re-light, I might be tempted to take a flight path where I'm performing my plane change and TMI burns without shutting it off in between.  

However, your point brings up a good point - parts fail in multiple ways for different reasons.  It might be interesting to implement this in the mod as well.  

The mod's literally called TestFlight.  

 If you're open to ideas for improvements, I've got a few more.  Likewise, I saw elsewhere that you're open to people rolling custom .cfgs for parts packs; if you want, when I get my next 1.1 playthrough ready I can send you whatever .cfgs I make that aren't already covered by your mod.  

  

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@Charlie_Zulu Settings are going to happen in one of the next versions. I want to try if i manage to streamline them a bit if I can.

RT I had report somebody was running both the mods. But combining both RT and the signal component of this mod is madness imo.
Maybe as you say somebody could do some MM patches that put both modules in all antennas.
But then there are subtle problems, like the fact that both modules inherit ModuleDataTransmitter. You could try to do that and see what happen.

You mean making CO Scrubber use a resource? I know that is realistic, but is it fun?
At what level of complexity (intended as number of components and their interactions) somehow stop being fun?
I would prefer to keep the Scrubber mechanic simple like it is now.

On entertainment right now I use a 'multiplication' between the entertainment rates, clamped to some value.
That way you don't need many parts, just a few are enough (eg: 3 entertainment parts of rates 2.0 or 3.0 are supposed to be the non-plus-ultra of entertainment).
And it scale fast. This was necessary because of parts count, extreme low variety of entertainment parts (hell i only enabled it on the cupola and the hitchhiker!)
and also just to avoid players creating vessels with a lot of entertainment parts (not realistic, break immersion).
Keep in mind entertainment is not the whole quality of life mechanics. There is more.

That kind of failure simulation will be too complex. I want to add support for more types of components over time,
but my current malfunction architecture is limited to 1 type of failure per module (but it's blazing fast!).

That TestFlight is neat. I'm reading their documentation right now. I can't gasp if it actually make part fail or only record reliability in a db.
Its not apparent from the readme or the wiki. Maybe you know? What kind of failures it dose implement?

I'm always open for ideas, and of course i'm also open for MM patches of all sorts. Just send them my way and I'll include in the mod. :)

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This mod is a great idea I will definitely be using it once 1.1 (and also this mod) has stabilized a bit. I've always thought that one of the things that would make the game more interesting would be to introduce unique challenges to exploration. i.e. exploring Moho shouldn't feel like exploring Eeloo. Landing on Eve for any period of time should require extra cooling and/or anti-corrosion measures, etc.

The Quality of Life idea is also great, and something I felt was missing from the game as well (Jeb shouldn't be totally OK with a 10 year journey all by himself!). Does the maximum mission duration take into account distance from Kerbin? I'm thinking that a Kerbal in LKO or on the Mun would expect to go home after a year or two, but 4 Kerbals on a mission to Eeloo or on a base on Duna expect to be in it for the long haul, and have prepared themselves to be away for a long time.

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@ShotgunNinja

I really like your mod so far, especially the whole quality of life concept. I always designed my space ships with extra room, but it feels so much better when the game actually gives you feedback and it really matters. I also like the solid but not too complex life support part and the cosmic radiation system, but...

...I'm not a fan of the solar storms. It's too unpredictable, it happens too often and does involve too much micro management. I know you said you don't intend to make parts of the mod optional, but could you add a variable in the settings so players can adjust the frequency of the solar storms? (And also being able to set it to zero if they choose to.)

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1 hour ago, Charlie_Zulu said:

If someone's playing with RT, then the occlusion will be the same (or, in the event of blackouts, add to it).  Overlapping the two properly would allow for players to essentially have the best features of both - directional antennas and delay from RT, and your better connectivity settings.  I'd actually be half-tempted to roll a combined .cfg that tries to incorporate both in a balanced manner so that it makes sense, although navigating both mods at once might be a headache.

That would be pretty Awesome Sir! :) I wish i know how to do it.

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@Guest83 As soon as I implement the settings, I'll add a storm frequency variable that will work like you describe. That is relatively easy to disable.

@Empiro You'll have to provide them more of these factors in the long missions. I don't consider distance but I i would that would be probably the opposite: the farther they are the faster they go crazy. But I think the QualityOfLife has pretty much enough stuff in it already. I'll focus on adding more Breakdown events, and possibly some dedicated Entertainment part.

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This mod looks amazing! ShotgunNinja, it seems you have an impeccable vision for game mechanics that introduce fun, interesting new elements without becoming overly complicated or burdensome.

I read the wiki, but I'd like to know more on the specific mechanics of quality of life. How do you calculate living space? Is it just based on the number of seats? Are living space, entertainment, and social needs tracked as three separate needs, or do they combine into a single quality of life value? Any chance we could see a zero-G deconditioning mechanic in the future, encouraging the use of centrifuges (cf. Porkjet's hab mod)?

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Finally got to try it out a bit.

My first comment is about the VAB/SPH editor. The stats are useful, but the window and its position, not so much. Firstly, it's not exactly intuitive that you have to click on the names/headers to change the 'scenario' being simulated by the data. It's unclear, and I only figured it out because of the '1/2' it was showing me, so I figured there was more and did what seemed like the common sense thing to do (click the thing that would change). Still, it needs to be more visible. Also, its corner position is not only unconventional (I get that it's kind of a highly important tab; it's basically a second resource panel), but the window in the editor itself is locked to the tab- and it overlaps the staging editor. Which is bad, because the orbit planner for the Kerbalism window is over the staging editor. And you can click through windows. So one can accidentally screw with something in their staging.

Basically, the editor window needs to be more user-friendly.

Next, might it be possible to provide backwards compatibility with antennae on already-launched vehicles? My save has quite a number of satellites, and all of them at least have a Communicatron-16. Is there a way for you to add in something that searches through the save file for stock antennae and adds the required Kerbalism modules? Because this basically makes playing with the mod mid-save impossible.

(Fortunately, all my manned missions were either around Kerbin or the Mun, so I sent them back home before activating the mod.)

That's all I have for now. The Kerbalism UI in general needs more user-friendliness and better meshing with the game. It's just pinned in position, but it's a mod, so I'd like to be able to move it around like windows of other mods. It also takes up the position where the regular Resources tab is, which is a bit annoying since I can't have both of them showing at the same time.

I haven't gotten into actual deep gameplay yet because I'm seeing what I can do about modifying my save to have compatible antennae on my satellites...

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@ShotgunNinja Liked the post you made with the image. Pictures can speak volumes. In contrast to seemingly everyone else, I'm glad I'm not alone in my opinions.

2 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

possibly some dedicated Entertainment part

I was wondering why a small part wasn't include with the mod in the first place. But don't worry....

Famous dude. You'll get famous regardless.

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16 minutes ago, Box of Stardust said:

The Kerbalism UI in general needs more user-friendliness and better meshing with the game

@ShotgunNinja That's a bit of a NO-NO right now. Keep the GUI unique, simple, and straightforward. Just the facts man.

Besides, is the normal KSP resources tab user friendly? Last I checked you can't slide that around at all.

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46 minutes ago, DarkonZ said:

@ShotgunNinja That's a bit of a NO-NO right now. Keep the GUI unique, simple, and straightforward. Just the facts man.

Besides, is the normal KSP resources tab user friendly? Last I checked you can't slide that around at all.

That sounds like a negative towards what I wrote.

Maybe I should've been more clear: the Kerbalism UI needs to mesh better like and with other mods. Other mods are draggable and have clear visualizations on how the menu works. Which is a certain feature those of us with tons of mods use- we rearrange our screen to show what is vital to us, and each player has a varying amount of windows they like to be able to see.

As for the normal KSP resources tab, it does what it needs to: show the resources. It's a UI of the core game. I think it's fine that it doesn't move around. It already has its own spot: that very corner.

Therefore, the Kerbalism UI should be able to be moved around, because it's additional functionality that is, in my opinion, also a good thing to be able to see near-continuously.

Plus, as-is, the UI is not exactly as 'accessible' as other mods. Yes, the UI is very sleek and streamlined... but too simple. Not in an aesthetic sense- it looks great, honestly- but in a usability sense. It needs some sort of... 'notations' that certain things are meant to be interacted with/clicked on. The Flight UI of Kerbalism has more functionality by clicking on one of the info portions for each craft (body it's orbiting around, I believe; has a drop-down menu for enabling/disabling notifications)- but you'd never know unless you clicked on it, because as of right now, it just looks like an info panel. They don't look like interactable pieces of the UI.

Edited by Box of Stardust
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@Box of Stardust In the rush to update to 1.1 somehow didn't notice that the planner overlap with the staging (derp). I'm gonna give a small offset to fix that in the next version.

The UI was designed to blend in with the stock icons, to feel like its something that was already in the game.

Supporting things like that mid-save is really hard work, lots of corner-cases to cover. I did take special care however that this is completely savegame compatible with previous versions, for every future version. So you may take consolation that if you restart now, I'm not going to force you to restart again. Ever.

A few pages back I replied to someone with some instruction how to edit the savegame to replace the ModuleDataTransmitter with the Antenna module.

@DarkonZ Because I'm unable to model anything more complex than a box that's why :)

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2 minutes ago, ShotgunNinja said:

@Box of Stardust In the rush to update to 1.1 somehow didn't notice that the planner overlap with the staging (derp). I'm gonna give a small offset to fix that in the next version.

The UI was designed to blend in with the stock icons, to feel like its something that was already in the game.

Supporting things like that mid-save is really hard work, lots of corner-cases to cover. I did take special care however that this is completely savegame compatible with previous versions, for every future version. So you may take consolation that if you restart now, I'm not going to force you to restart again. Ever.

A few pages back I replied to someone with some instruction how to edit the savegame to replace the ModuleDataTransmitter with the Antenna module.

@DarkonZ Because I'm unable to model anything more complex than a box that's why :)

I do think the UI looks nice, but I expanded on my criticisms in the previous post, so yeah. Also, an alternate UI graphics setting would be cool in the future, but I think KSP style fits it better than Unity style (maybe).

Edited by Box of Stardust
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