GregroxMun's Miscellaneous Development Thread

[Whirligig Girl]

This thread is for whatever I'm working on that does not yet deserve its own thread, either because it's possible it might be abandoned, or because there's not a lot of it yet.

The Vernians of the planet Sudric

(full album)

Previously, my Kerbal Space Program planet mods have been made with the intention of adding or modifying the Kerbal universe, and the one constant is that Kerbals are the explorers. For this pack however, I'm trying to separate it somewhat from the Kerbal multiverse, and make a planet pack for Kerbal Space Program which introduces a totally new system, as well as a totally new species of aliens, the Vernians. I intend to use TextureReplacer to retexture Kerbals to make them into a "new species", and change as much reference to Kerbalkind to Verniankind as possible. New skybox too, probably.

The Vernians are highly ambitious, religious and early-industrial people who are mandated by their religion to explore space. They worship the almighty space probe, a vessel from interstellar space which descended upon the planet Sudric around a century ago. Ever since they've been trying to get closer to the almighty space probe's home in the heavens. Their religion, unlike most in the universe, is actually real and the result of a highly advanced civilization from millions of years ago. Other cultures in the galaxy envy the Vernians on account of the actual evidence that supports the existence of their god. :hailprobe:

Incidentally, the continent of Sudror is directly based upon the Island of Sodor from The Railway Series by Reverend W. Awdry. Without the talking trains, of course.

The vernians are "steampunk" and very low technology. They are able to go to space in the first place because their planet is so small compared to Kerbin/Earth. (466210 meters instead of 600000 meters) Their planet also has a giant binary companion called Barnes, which is currently just a placeholder in the form of a Kerbin clone.

The sun will probably be a lower-end orange dwarf star. I might integrate Planet Pack X and Planet Six: The End into this pack, because why not?

The planet itself is a Kerbin clone with a modified land control for the base colors, and a VertexColorMapBlend to add some subtle changes in colors across the surface.

 

Our Solar System - A Stockalike RSS mod

There are a few 1/10 scale RSS mods available. How about one which is rendered in the stockalike kerbal style?

(Full Album)

So far all I've got are textures for Jool, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; a fully made Pluto, and part of a Mars. Note that the following album is from KSP v1.0.4, and I lost the config, but this is more or less what you can expect from my Mars

 

Edited August 1, 2016 by GregroxMun
Dang broken Imgur albums.

[Nightside]

Great ideas!

I love those Martian valleys.

[Whirligig Girl]

Update on the Vernian project.

Sudric is now in its own system. Although, all of the planet orbits are scaled to fit a stock sized sun instead of a smaller sun that is planned, and not all of the planets are finished. There is currently only one gas giant, but there will be five when the system is finished.

So far, I have:

• Sun: Placeholder (Stock Sun)
• Voke: Placeholder (Yekcha from Planet Pack X)
• Gert: Terrain finished, atmosphere WIP
• Nartes: Placeholder or finished (Odo from Planet Pack X, I might end up just using Odo as is, because it's pretty good honestly.
• Sudric: Finished.
• Barnes: Finished.
• Delsip: Recolored Placeholder (End from Planet Six Probe Challenge)
• Orderg: Placeholder (Derg from Planet Six Probe Challenge)
• Alriz: Placeholder (Friz from Planet Six Probe Challenge)
• Erkers: Placeholder (Erkers from Planet Six Probe Challenge) Might be kept, see the Odo/Nartes problem above.
• Menger: Placeholder (Kev/ES-1 from Revamped Stock System / Planet Six Probe Challenge)

[Whirligig Girl]

Another update on the Vernian project:

 

[Whirligig Girl]

Ooh look! A gas giant texture.

http://imgur.com/a/0IgI3

and a Skybox!

http://imgur.com/a/Ss1PF

 

The skybox is meant to be in a star cluster like a globular cluster or something. The idea is that many of these stars are much closer to each other than in other parts of the galaxy.

 

 

I'll be going on vacation soon, so it's unlikely I'll be able to work on this for a while. I said on reddit that I would probably have a test version out by Wednesday. I was wrong. Still, at least I will have this test version out today.

Planets: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qrf1na8y5qkyfgb/VernianHolySystem.zip?dl=0 v0.0.0.1
Planets: See below, there's a new test version. (Requires Kopernicus, ModularFlightIntegrator, and ModuleManager)

Skybox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tydxecmu17qjre4/VernianSkyboxv0.2.zip?dl=0 v0.2 (Requires TextureReplacer. Textures go in GameData/TextureReplacer/Default)

If you do decide to try it, don't hesitate to give me some feedback. That's precisely what test versions are for: feedback so that I can fix any glaring issues before they're too big.

Test Version 1 features:

• Sudric as homeworld.
  • Binary companion moon Barnes.
• The volcanic planet Voke.
• The barren planet Gert (with mildly broken atmosphere rims)
• Nartes (currently just Odo from Planet Pack X)
• Delsip (Finished texture, unfinished characteristics and orbits and moons)
  • Alriz (WIP texture and terrain.)
  • Orderg (WIP Texture, unfinished terrain)
  • Erkers (currently just Erkers from Planet Six Probe Challenge. If you want to do that challenge, this will spoil what Erkers looks like)
    • Mengers (currently just ES-1 from Planet Six Probe Challenge and Kev from Revamped Stock System)

Edited August 23, 2016 by GregroxMun

[_Augustus_]

Since they're in a star cluster, maybe make the star system a binary?

[Whirligig Girl]

1 hour ago, _Augustus_ said:

Since they're in a star cluster, maybe make the star system a binary?

That is far easier said than done. The eventual plan is to make several star systems and have them be nearby, but not binaries.

[_Augustus_]

4 hours ago, GregroxMun said:

That is far easier said than done. The eventual plan is to make several star systems and have them be nearby, but not binaries.

Not a true binary without Principia, but instead a red dwarf off in the distance. With Principia the effects would be more realistic.

[Whirligig Girl]

The above picture was taken with the sun's light intensity of about 5, as opposed to the stock 0.9, for visual effect. Unless you modify the brightness yourself using KittopaTech or a Kopernicus config, you will not see the terrain or ships this bright.

The new sun is finished. It's an orange dwarf sun with about 0.7 solar masses (but scaled down to fit the 1/10 scale).

Orbits have been scaled down to match the decreased luminosity. This makes transfer times lower, and the low mass sun makes transfer delta-v lower.

New Test Download

Planets: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cf8s440dw6afju7/HolySystemOfTheVerniansAV2.zip?dl=0 see below for the next version.  (Requires Kopernicus, ModularFlightIntegrator, and ModuleManager)

Skybox (same as before): https://www.dropbox.com/s/tydxecmu17qjre4/VernianSkyboxv0.2.zip?dl=0 v0.2 (Requires TextureReplacer. Textures go in GameData/TextureReplacer/Default)

Test Version 2 features:

• 0.7 Solar Mass scaled down orange sun, called "The Heavenly Fire."
• Star surface changed to match orange sun characteristics.
• Orbits scaled down to match.
• Sudric as homeworld.
  • Binary companion moon Barnes.
• The volcanic planet Voke.
• The barren planet Gert (with mildly broken atmosphere rims)
• Nartes (currently just Odo from Planet Pack X)
• Delsip (Finished texture, unfinished characteristics and orbits and moons)
  • Alriz (WIP texture and terrain.)
  • Orderg (WIP Texture, unfinished terrain)
  • Erkers (currently just Erkers from Planet Six Probe Challenge. If you want to do that challenge, this will spoil what Erkers looks like)
    • Mengers (currently just ES-1 from Planet Six Probe Challenge and Kev from Revamped Stock System)

Edited August 23, 2016 by GregroxMun

[AlexTheNotSoGreat]

On 7/22/2016 at 10:23 AM, GregroxMun said:

The skybox is meant to be in a star cluster like a globular cluster or something. The idea is that many of these stars are much closer to each other than in other parts of the galaxy.

I do think that, even for that scenario, there are too many stars everywhere, being hard on the eye. Perhaps reduce the amount of stars everywhere and make a few voids in the skybox.

These projects look very cool, well done on your other planet packs too!

[Daeridanii]

I have to say I really like the Sudric Universe - it has that nice, pastel, stock-alike feel. While it definitely needs some more stuff IMO, it's a great little mod. I've landed on Barnes (rather liberal definition of landed is required) - I would post pictures but wouldn't want to spoil what I found there.  

I'd be happy to help with science defs or descriptions if you like.

I look forward to the (hopefully) continual development of this mod.

[Whirligig Girl]

On 7/27/2016 at 8:00 PM, Daeridanii said:

I have to say I really like the Sudric Universe - it has that nice, pastel, stock-alike feel. While it definitely needs some more stuff IMO, it's a great little mod. I've landed on Barnes (rather liberal definition of landed is required) - I would post pictures but wouldn't want to spoil what I found there.  

I'd be happy to help with science defs or descriptions if you like.

I look forward to the (hopefully) continual development of this mod.

Thanks for your kind words. I'll let you know if I need any help with the science definitions.  And since this is an alpha version, you feel free to post the album (in spoiler tags if you want).

On 7/26/2016 at 6:19 PM, AlexTheNotSoGreat said:

I do think that, even for that scenario, there are too many stars everywhere, being hard on the eye. Perhaps reduce the amount of stars everywhere and make a few voids in the skybox.

These projects look very cool, well done on your other planet packs too!

This is what the sky in a globular cluster would look like: (full size here)

So I think in comparison, my night sky is reasonably sparse. And of course, if you don't like it, you can use another skybox pack.

So, here's a progress report:

Meet the new planet Drury.

(Full Album)

Drury is the latest giant planet. It's the innermost of the giant planets in the Holy System, and is more like our solar system's Saturn. I've also made the storm on Delsip's south equatorial band white, to make it not so obviously Jovian. The "eyes" are still red though.

Also, meet the new ice giant of the system: Kepel. It has more in common with Neptune than Uranus, and its texture is not finished yet (I'm not sure I like how big and swirly the upper cloud layers are). (Full Album)

And finally, the end of this progress update: Meet Urkers. Formerly the Planet Six Probe Challenge moon Erkers, now changed to be significantly different from Erkers. Urkers boasts a darker color scheme, and the highlands are a sooty black color. It has been moved from Delsip to orbit the planet Kepel as (for now) its sole moon.

(Full Album)

As you can see, Urkers still has the subsatellite Mengers. And Mengers is still just another name and orbit for the Revamped Stock System Joolian moon Kev. This is eventually going to be changed, don't worry.

No new downloads yet, because I have some more stuff I'd like to finish first. Not too far away from being ready for a proper standalone thread in add-on development.

Edited August 1, 2016 by GregroxMun

[_Augustus_]

How do you make these textures?

Also, why do you have to have Thomas the Tank Engine references?

[AlexTheNotSoGreat]

11 hours ago, GregroxMun said:

This is what the sky in a globular cluster would look like: (full size here)

So I think in comparison, my night sky is reasonably sparse. And of course, if you don't like it, you can use another skybox pack.

Ok, that makes sense now! And I didn't realize the skybox was optional, so that works too.

[Whirligig Girl]

12 hours ago, _Augustus_ said:

How do you make these textures?

I'll do a proper tutorial at some point, but the basic idea for terrestrial planets is that I use procedural colors (either purely height based or height/lon/lat based) and then export that map, then use that map to make a color map blend to add some more subtle coloration. For the gas giants, I just used my personal spacecraft to visit various real world gas giants in the universe, map them over several orbits, and then put them on my planets. (/s) Proper gas giant tutorial will come soon as well.

12 hours ago, _Augustus_ said:

Also, why do you have to have Thomas the Tank Engine references?

Do you have some kind of problem with that?

Edited August 2, 2016 by GregroxMun

[drtedastro]

looking good.

always like what you come up with.

 

cheers.

[Whirligig Girl]

(Thanks to @Sigma88 for converting to .dds and adding my Alpha Maps to the texture)

I've given an alpha map to Drury and Urkers, meaning that different parts of their textures are different levels of shininess.

Full Album Here

I was inspired when I was making Drury's texture, by something I had come across when exploring the cosmos in Space Engine. It was a gas giant that had a dip in its clouds which showed more of the rayleigh scattering effect than were visible the parts that were covered in the clouds. The result of this was that the region of the planet where this showed appeared to be shiny. I thought it looked cool, and I wondered if I could make something that looks sort of like that in KSP. Here's the result, and I think it turned out pretty cool. Now, these are pictures, but the effect is considerably more apparent when the planet or the camera is moving.

Next up is Urkers. I've done a similar trick here to make the white lowlands of the satellite matte and non-shiny. The brown and black highlands are still quite shiny though. It's a subtle effect, but it's there.

 

I've also made some improvements to the moons of Delsip. First, there's a new moon, kind of to replace Erkers which used to be there. This new moon is called Mersel.

Full Album

 

It is a small volcanic moon, but it is so cold  that some parts are frozen over and are merely cryovolcanic. It is active enough that it can hold onto a relatively warm (10 celsius, IIRC) and a thin atmosphere. This atmosphere makes for some interesting changes on what we expect. You get lower-than-Mun gravity, but the thick atmosphere makes things weird. For instance, I felt like descending on parachute power was taking too long, so I got my Vernian out of his capsule and jetpacked him down. Ironically, when the ship finally did land, it was too fast and it ended up crashing and bouncing into the air and falling down again, with the parachute dragging behind. It was pretty cool, I have to say.

I've also tweaked Orderg and Alriz to make their colors a little more reasonable.

 

[Sigma88]

[Redacted]

[Whirligig Girl]

Ooooh look! A spin-off!

Story behind this:

I wanted to have a quick way of making asteroids for a planet pack. The idea was you just take your heightmap, slap it into a planet, define the orbit and some other stuff, and you're done. As much of the asteroid would be pre-defined as possible for things to still look unique. And then I said "hey, wouldn't it be cool to use Module Manager Magic to have a configurator that would configure a bunch of things for you?" And so I made a thing that lets you change the planet's radius, and it would change the deformity on the PQSmods to match. And then I said "OK, how about changing the seed of all PQSmods too?" And so I did that. And eventually I said "well these look too samey. I should figure out a way of changing their lumpiness." And then, for no reason, I said "But what if I want lumpiness to be randomized?"

And so, using only ModuleManager as the language, I made a polynomial that might approximate randomness.

PolynomialFunction1
{
	//y=1.8+(0.06(x^6 - 21.29x^5 + 180.145x^4 - 770.323x^3 + 1739.539x^2 - 1937.123x + 808.053))
	//Useful Domain: 1 < x < 6
           
	X = 2
	//input
           
 	Xt1 = #$X$
	@Xt1 != 6
			
	//Xt1 = X term one.
			
	Xt2 = #$X$
	@Xt2 != 5
	@Xt2 *= 21.29
			
	Xt3 = #$X$
	@Xt3 != 4
	@Xt3 *= 180.145
			
	Xt4 = #$X$
	@Xt4 != 3
	@Xt4 *= 770.323
			
	Xt5 = #$X$
	@Xt5 != 2
	@Xt5 *= 1739.539
			
	Xt6 = #$X$
	@Xt6 != 1
	@Xt6 *= 1937.123
			
	Xt7 = #$X$
	@Xt7 != 0
	@Xt7 *= 808.053
			
	Yans = #$Xt1$
	@Yans -= #$Xt2$
	@Yans += #$Xt3$
	@Yans -= #$Xt4$
	@Yans += #$Xt5$
	@Yans -= #$Xt6$
	@Yans += #$Xt7$
	@Yans *= 0.06
	@Yans += 1.8
}

As it turns out, it's really crappy for approximating randomness. The manual setting for LumpHeightMultiplier and LumpinessMultiplier works better, because it's actually the kind of thing you would want control over. But on the other hand, I created a method for creating any polynomial of Standard Form as a module manager config. And I'm pretty proud of it.

So the asteroid generator isn't quite fit for making totally unique asteroids and moons, but I think it's good enough if you already have a more unique heightmap to supplement the noise. It does save quite a lot of time when actually making asteroids.

Links to v0.2 of the Random Asteroid Generator:

ManualLumpiness

PolynomialLumpiness

Put these in .cfg files in GameData.

Released under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

 

We will soon be seeing this as it relates to the Vernian/Sudric project.

Edited August 3, 2016 by GregroxMun

[wasml]

Wow! really like the way the gas giant and ice giant came out - very nice.

[Whirligig Girl]

http://pastebin.com/06QdGJTs

Asteroid Generator Config 1.0.

• Asteroids can now have their crater sizes changed
• Easy access to add heightmaps.

EDIT: UPDATE:

(Full Album)

There's also a Dres Placeholder as Kelt and a Laythe Placeholder as Eckel.

On Eckel:

Eckel is also just a Laythe placeholder. The plan is to give it liquid Dihydrogen Monosulfide lakes, and dark green photosynthetic plants. The idea being that life has evolved on Eckel, but using H2S instead of H2O as its solvent. I might decide to change it to some other solvent later, I'm still in the early design phase for this particular moon. I want it to be a point of considerable interest. Barnes, the home planet Sudric's own moon, already has normal life forms on it. A look at how life could have formed in differing biochemistries is no doubt of particular intrigue to Vernian scientists. The idea with having so much life in the system is that the Kerbal universe does seem to be relatively teeming with life. The green color of Jool is (according to NovaSilisko, and how I've based my Revamped Stock System Mod) from algae in the clouds, and there are at least two planemos that probably have underground oceans. (Vall, Eeloo) Laythe of course has a liquid water ocean AND an oxygenated atmosphere. It seems obvious to me that life in the Kerbal Universe is more common. And thus, so it shall be in the Holy System.

Edited August 6, 2016 by GregroxMun

[Whirligig Girl]

https://www.dropbox.com/home?preview=HolySystemOfTheVerniansAV3.zip

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rsunetmihiosfmm/HolySystemOfTheVerniansAV3.zip?dl=0

Alpha version 3 of The Holy System of the Vernians.

Changes:

• Gas giant Drury, a saturnian planet closer to the Sun than Delsip.
  • Four moons.
  • The rocky (placeholder: Dres) moon Kelt.
  • The asteroid moon Irn.
  • The ammonia(or maybe H₂S, not sure yet)-ocean moon Eckel. (placeholder: Laythe)
  • The asteroid moon Pegh.
• Delsip moved out.
  • new moon of Delsip: Mersel. A small volcanic moon.
  • Made the red spot on the south equatorial band into a white spot, to make it less Jupitery.
  • New colormaps for Alriz and Orderg.
• New ice giant: Kepel.
  • Erkers moved here and renamed Urkers.
  • Urkers has a new map and colors scheme.

Edited August 8, 2016 by GregroxMun

[AlexTheNotSoGreat]

The Dropbox link isn't working for me, it just brings me to my homepage with no evidence of the download. Any ideas?

[Whirligig Girl]

 

3 hours ago, AlexTheNotSoGreat said:

The Dropbox link isn't working for me, it just brings me to my homepage with no evidence of the download. Any ideas?

Here you go.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rsunetmihiosfmm/HolySystemOfTheVerniansAV3.zip?dl=0

I am such an idiot. I forgot to get the actual DL link, just my own home page link! 

 

(Full Album)

At long last, I finally have a stockalike Jupiter texture that I'm happy with!

[drtedastro]

kool, just plain kool.....

cheers.