[WIP][1.3.0] Kapoin – A career game mission (idea).

[Rodhern]

KAPOIN

A mod to track the progress of your career game.

Kapoin is an unusual mod in the sense that the mod does very little in itself. Kapoin uses other mods to check which milestones you have reached in your career game.

The milestones can be a certain number of ribbons awarded in Final Frontier; a number of Kerbal Construction Time points accumulated; to survey given celestial targets by performing SCANsat scans; to bring a Planetary Dome to a surveyed location for further analysis; to ship a particularly important sample from A to B in a Module Manager modified command pod; and stuff like that.

So far I imagine maybe six milestones. Once the milestones are reached you know you conquered early KSP career game. The intention is that after the last milestone is reached the career game is so far advanced you are able to play scenarios like the DERP challenge (which was one of the challenges that made me think Kapoin thoughts).

The mod does not really do anything you could not have done yourself by role playing through a mission challenge. On the other hand, maybe a mod can improve the immersion and mission challenge fun.

 

MOD STATE (pre-alpha)

Kapoin is work in progress. In its current state it is not much more than an idea.

The license conditions for Kapoin are all rights reserved with some exceptions.

Downloads of Kapoin pre-experimental versions will possibly, at some point, become available on Spacedock and/or Github.

The Kapoin source code repository is hosted on Github. I plan to use the Github ticket system as well.

Contributions are welcome. If you want to contribute, post a message below or send a PM. The Kapoin project needs milestone definitions, icons, custom flags, mission design, mod code, play testing, documents and much more.

 

Happy new year
Rodhern

Edited July 2, 2017 by Rodhern
Edited title to ver. 1.3.0.

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

There is no such version as 1.23

[Rodhern]

Hello.

I have compiled some experimental work-in-progress code for KSP 1.3.0. It is listed as Kapoin ver. 0.1.0.3 at GitHub [was ver. 0.1.0.1].

There is no fun in playing this version (don't say I didn't warn you). But even so, I have noticed several players in other threads downloading and 'using' mods simply to help test and develop them. So, if you are one of those helpful souls, and you feel like installing yet another mod just for the sake of it, please go ahead!

The code will occasionally/regularly (depending on your point of view) offer two simple contracts (titled "Take a Swim" and "North of Sixty"). One says fly to the east and land in the water, the other says fly to the north and land on dry land. As you can tell, not much enhancement of your gameplay there.

To test Kapoin you need:

• Module Manager.
• The stock Kerbal solar system (i.e. Kerbin must be Kerbin).
• Preferably KCT, EditorTime and/or other means of making time go by.

 

What to look for / be concerned about:

• Is Kapoin throwing exceptions or causing other serious errors?
• Are your log files getting spammed with an unreasonable amount of warnings and Kapoin log data?
• Kapoin should only show up in new campaign games, and only when the option is turned on in difficulty settings. So for sandbox games, science games, already started career games and new career games with the Kapoin option in difficulty settings turned off, it is a bug if Kapoin shows up in-game. The game objects are still in the game though and will still produce log messages, even when 'turned off'.

Also, I would like to hear if for instance you play a lot and are never offered a Kapoin contract (in a new career game with Kapoin 'turned on'), or if for instance you keep rejecting the contracts and they just show up in droves anyway.

Let us get started with a known issues list:

1. By design the contracts don't care if you already are in position (east of and north of KSC respectively) when the contract is offered. You can use this 'feature' to farm contracts if you want. It is silly, but (IMO) it is not really a bug as such. It is much like e.g. the 'gather science from orbit of Kerbin' contracts (once you are in position you can keep completing these contracts easily).
2. I can see in my KSP.log that this error, "[Rodhern/Kapoin] Contract system instance not availble.", shows up right after a scene change. There is even an error ('availble') in the error message.
3. Somehow Kapoin progress information (stored in the persistence file) is lost when simulating with the KRASH mod. So far I think it may have to do with the order of scene change, scene load, persistence load and persistence save events, but I will have to investigate.

 

- Rodhern

Edited July 27, 2017 by Rodhern
added known issue no 3

[Rodhern]

Hi, here are some assorted progress comments and a question or two. Please feel free to comment.

 

FAR (Ferram Aerospace Research)
I have copied my update of the in-editor stability derivatives panel to (a fork of) the development build code. If you use the development build of FAR for KSP 1.3, you may get my update from Github. You 'install' the update by extracting the files (the dll and the localization files) on top of the existing ones.

Edit: The update has been (merged and) reuploaded as an update for FAR version 0.15.9 "Liebe" (untested).

A word of warning: There are some issues in the development build installed in my game. E.g. if I launch a rocket, then revert and fly the same launch again, the second time the fins are ripped off due to stress. It may be a bug in the development build of FAR, or Tweak Scale, or my update to FAR, or one of my other installed mods, or, well, may be caused by just about a thousand other possible issues. Also, you may notice from the release date that the update does not include the changes to the development build made by Ferram4 today (2017-08-21).

If you are curious please try out the update, and see which stability derivative interpretation you like best. If you manage to create a (reasonably simple) craft where the 'classic' interpretation makes more sense than my 'alternative' one, let me know — maybe a good example is all that is needed, so that I may figure out where my intuition is falling short.

 

Keep Fit
It is more or less the premise that if you play Kapoin you are using KCT. KCT makes sure that there is some meaning to "time passing". The more or less obvious counterpart for crew time passing is life support mods. To me, the life support mods are a bit too serious, and take away some of the Kerbal cartoonish feel of the game. An excellent compromise is KeepFit. I have compiled a version for KSP 1.3. The mod is starting to show some signs of wear, but IMO it is still a cool and fun plugin for KSP. The compiled version is available on Github.

 

Kapoin, persisted data
There is no new (or proper) version of Kapoin yet. At the moment the problem is that some of the Kapoin career data is reset when Unity signals that (a new) game state is created. Apparently that is not the time to clear the data variables. The problems are further compounded when KRASH (the recommended simulation mod for KCT) is introduced to the mod mix.

 

Kapoin, tech tree (Module Manager)
The default layout of the KSP tech tree has lead many players to tweak the tech tree. I too have tweaked the tech tree, and I have committed a Module Manager patch with the tweaks to the Kapoin repository. The idea of these tweaks is to not move the parts around too much, but group them a little more aggressively, so that for instance all of the early control surfaces are in the same node. It probably makes the game a little more difficult, but I think it makes the tech tree unlock choices a little more meaningful, now that you do not get 'a little of each' in a single tech node. The config patch is here — just rename it to .cfg if you want to use it.

 

Kapoin, rewards
I have a game play balance question for you guys. One of the early milestones is to build up the Kerbal Space Center. Something along the lines of say requiring at least one upgrade to the tracking station, mission control, the runway, the administration building and the astronaut complex, and expand the crew roster to at least a dozen of Kadets. A fairly natural reward for such a milestone is a number KCT upgrade points. What would be an appropriate number (for a moderate difficulty career game)? It must be enough that it feels like the reward for a milestone, but yet not silly overpowered.

 

Edited August 29, 2017 by Rodhern
Refreshed FAR update; updated config patch link.

[Rodhern]

Hello.

I have uploaded Kapoin ver. 0.1.0.4 to Github.

This release is all about playing nice with the KRASH simulation mod. To test if Kapoin and KRASH play nice a new contract is included. It is a silly little contract named 'Supersonic Simulation' that you are offered if you have KRASH installed. To complete the contract you launch a KRASH simulation session and fly a crewed plane (or rocket) at the specified speed and altitude until the green tick mark appears, then when the simulation is ended and you are back at the space center you wait for the data to download.

[Rodhern]

Recompiled for KSP 1.3.1. Uploaded to Github as Kapoin ver. 0.1.1.1.