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[1.8.1 - 1.9.x] KerbalKomets - Add komets to your game!


Angelo Kerman

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Latest Release (GitHub)

Latest Release (Spacedock)

Source Code

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Edmond’s Komet Discovered

“It’s truly exciting news,” says Walt Kerman, head of Public Relations at the Kerbal Space Center. “The Sentinel telescope,” Walt said, referring to the SENTINEL Infrared Telescope, a special instrument designed to hunt for asteroids that might harm Kerbin, “discovered something new. We found a komet! We’re calling it Edmond’s Komet, after Edmond Kerman, who accurately predicted its orbit.”

Astronomer, physicist, and mathematician Edmond Kerman was attempting to use Newton Kerman’s laws of motion to predict where an asteroid would appear so that it could be targeted and identified by the Sentinel telescope. But what he found was no asteroid. “The readings were all wrong,” Edmond said. “It had a weird orbit. It wasn't as rocky as it should be. It had a long particle trail flowing off of it. No other asteroid had a particle trail. We finally determined that the trail consisted of water vapor.

“I wanted to call it Edmon’s Giant Space Snowball,” he continued, “because that’s what it is. A giant snowball in space, with water vapor sublimating into the vacuum and forming a giant tail as it orbits near Kerbol. But when I wrote my comment on the printout, somebody misinterpreted what I wrote, then a spellchecker failed, and before you know it, my ‘Comment: Giant Space Snowball’ became known as a komet.”

“Never before have we seen such a phenomenon,” says renowned theoretical physicist Albert Kerman. “The very notion of a komet is so new, our instruments still treat them like asteroids. We track them like asteroids, our older sensors still see them as asteroids, and it's only after careful analysis that we are able to determine their true nature. We'll probably have to put out a press release when we discover a new one to avoid confusion...”

Ever wanted to have komets orbiting your solar system? With KerbalKomets, now you can! This modlet adds the ability to transform asteroids into komets! Features include:

  • Komet tails!
  • Newly created asteroids have a random chance to become komets.
  • Optional support for Community Resource Pack (CRP).
  • With CRP installed, komets are mostly water.
  • Unique komet names.
  • komet-specific surface sample results.

How It Works

KerbalKomets works by converting asteroids into komets. As such, they are tracked like asteroids from the Tracking Center. Komet orbits are highly eccentric, so when you track an asteroid, you'll know that it's a komet by the shape of its orbit and its long orbital period. You can also tell by the name of the object; komets begin with the "Kmt." prefix while asteroids begin with the "Ast." prefix.

Each time an asteroid is created, there is a slight chance that it will be converted into a komet. You can increase or decrease the chance of converting into a komet by changing the Komet Discovery Chance field on the Settings->Difficulty->Kerbal Komets tab (see image below).

Important Note

If you are in Career mode, you won't be able to discover komets until your Tracking Station can detect asteroids..

Right now you can manually convert an asteroid to become a komet. When alpha is done, that ability will be turned off. There are bound to be issues.

Screenshots

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Acknowledgements

Module Manager by Sarbian

License

Spoiler

Art Assets, including .mu, .mbm, and .dds files are copyright 2017 by Michael Billard, All Rights Reserved.

Wild Blue Industries is trademarked by Michael Billard. All rights reserved.
Note that Wild Blue Industries is a ficticious entity
created for entertainment purposes. It is in no way meant to represent a real entity.
Any similarity to a real entity is purely coincidental.

Source code copyright 2017 by Michael Billard (Angel-125)

    This source code is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

 

Edited by Angel-125
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10 hours ago, Nansuchao said:

Brilliant! Congratulations for the release.

 

9 hours ago, drtedastro said:

looks fun

cheers.

 

6 hours ago, Walker said:

Wow!!! I've always dreamed about comet mod. Is this compatibile with Custom Asteroids?

Thanks! :) I was disappointed when the secret  project that SQUAD was working on turned out to be a creative writing contest instead of what appeared to be adding a comet into the game, so I decided to make one. I've never used Custom Asteroids, so I don't know how that mod works. But it might work, see below.

 

5 hours ago, stk2008 said:

this looks fun :)

 

I am tracking a load of ASTROIDS in the tracking centre and cant see any change to a Komet.

How does this work exactly? :)

 

Thanks

How It Works

KerbalKomets works by converting asteroids into komets. As such, they are tracked like asteroids from the Tracking Center. Komet orbits are highly eccentric, so when you track an asteroid, you'll know that it's a komet by the shape of its orbit and long orbital period. You can also tell by the name of the object; komets begin with the "Kmt.:" prefix while asteroids begin with the "Ast.:" prefix.

Each time an asteroid is created, there is a 5% chance that it will be converted into a komet. You can increase or decrease the chance of converting into a komet by changing the presenceChance field in the Settings.cfg file. By default it's set to 95; on a roll of 1-100, you need a 95 or greater for an asteroid to flip to a komet.

Right now, KerbalKomets is in alpha state, meaning that there's more work to do. One of the tricky ones is changing the asteroid texture to resemble a komet; it's not that simple to do. The other thing I'm still working on is the resource conversion; when you have Community Resource Pack installed, you get more resources than just Ore. Unfortunately, KSP's poor API documentation makes it difficult to determine how to correctly modify the resources that the komet has so that there's more Water than Ore. I think I have it working, but it needs testing.

I think one additional feature would be to send an in-game mail to the player when a new komet has been discovered. If possible, maybe have the Tracking Center automatically begin tracking the komet would be helpful as well. Finally, having the ability in-game, through the Settings->Difficulties screen, to change the presenceChance of finding komets would be helpful as well.

Because KerbalKomets is in alpha, you can right-click on any asteroid you visit and press the "Turn Into Komet" button. At that point, the asteroid will be renamed using a naming scheme derived from the International Astronomical Union's naming convention, its resources will contain a high percentage of Water (if you have Community Resource Pack installed), its orbit will shift, and it will begin generating a particle trail.

Edited by Angel-125
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Wow amazeing thanks.

 

you say I need to visit the Komet needs to be visited does this mean in a ship or in the tracking station?.

As I have tryed VIA tracking station.

 

thanks again this is awesome.

One more sorry is this ok with Kopernicas and OPM? :)

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2 minutes ago, stk2008 said:

Wow amazeing thanks.

 

you say I need to visit the Komet needs to be visited does this mean in a ship or in the tracking station?.

As I have tryed VIA tracking station.

 

thanks again this is awesome.

One more sorry is this ok with Kopernicas and OPM? :)

No problem, I figured that if SQUAD wasn't going to create comets in the game, then I would. :) In the Tracking Station, you can tell if an object is an asteroid or a komet by two things: its name, which begins with the prefix "Kmt.:" and the shape of its orbit, which is highly eccentric (non-circular). As you do with asteroids, track the object in the Tracking Station. Again, if I can make it happen, then a newly discovered komet will be tracked automatically for you since they're pretty rare.

You don't need to visit the komet in order for it to become a komet; all the work is done for you so that by the time you rendezvous a ship with the komet, it will have a proper komet name, have its resources switched to be more komet-like, have its sample experiment changed from what you get with asteroids to what you get with komets, and so on.

It will definitely work with OPM and Kopernicus. Again, I don't know about Custom Asteroids; it may have its own way of making comets.

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@Angel-125 This is quite a game-changer, yo. Allow me to lead the komet adoption army for planet packs. :cool: I know what to do with this and how. But I have one question for you.

I have already created multiple asteroid belts/fields for a single solar system. Is there a means by which I can apply the komet transform per field? Suppose I want to have one belt be normal asteroids and have another belt contain komets.

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16 minutes ago, DStaal said:

Nice.  Since this is alpha, what are the chances something will blow up entirely if I install this into my career save?

Little to none. You can retrofit existing asteroids into komets. The only danger comes when you uninstall KerbalKomets; the komet will once again become an asteroid, and its size and shape, which are procedurally generated, will change. I'll update the OP with that info.

11 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@Angel-125 This is quite a game-changer, yo. Allow me to lead the komet adoption army for planet packs. :cool: I know what to do with this and how. But I have one question for you.

I have already created multiple asteroid belts/fields for a single solar system. Is there a means by which I can apply the komet transform per field? Suppose I want to have one belt be normal asteroids and have another belt contain komets.

Yup! During alpha, you have the ability to right-click on an asteroid in physics-range, and press the "Turn Into Komet" button. Once we're out of alpha, that feature will be turned off, but you can easily go to the MM_PotatoRoid.cfg file, find the ModuleKomet entry, and set "debugMode = true" to turn on the ability. For the sake of convenience, maybe I can add a debug screen at the Space Center that tracks all existing asteroids and lets you flip them to komets. You'd have to sort through each asteroid (and that would be a pain, given the belt of asteroids you have), but it's better than nothing.

Ok, added this to the OP:

Important Note

Asteroids are procedurally generated. Should you decide to uninstall KerbalKomets, all existing asteroids that you've visited with a spacecraft will be rebuilt into a new size and shape. Be sure to plan accordingly! The only way to circumvent this is to edit your persistence.sfs file and replace all instances of ModuleKomet with ModuleAsteroid. There's no other way around this that I know of..

Edited by Angel-125
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@Angel-125 I'll keep the right-click thing in mind and I understand. You just released this so I gotta make do so I'll leave the subject of Kuiper Belt emulation for if/when ever you're up to it. :wink: I have another question or two but I'll raise them here after seeing komets in action and if seeing doesn't answer them.

6 minutes ago, stk2008 said:

Hmmm well I changed the chance to 50 in the CFG and still after all these none is a Komet?

Did you create a new save for your test? It might help to do so.

Edited by JadeOfMaar
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4 minutes ago, stk2008 said:

Hmmm well I changed the chance to 50 in the CFG and still after all these none is a Komet?

 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=878292825

Did they exist before? Try changing the chance to 1 and see what you get. I'll also add more debugging info into the next release.

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Roger that I shall list all me mods incase its a conflict some how BRB :)

And nope not even got one to spawn yet :( hence why i dropped it to 50 to try to get one to show but still no luck LOL

 

Spoiler

KSP: 1.2.2 (Win64) - Unity: 5.4.0p4 - OS: Windows 10  (10.0.0) 64bit
000_AT_Utils - 1.4.2
Filter Extensions - 2.8.1.2
Toolbar - 1.7.13
USI Tools - 0.8.16
AoA Tech - 1.3.8
B9 Part Switch - 1.7.1
B9 Aerospace Procedural Parts - 0.40.11
BDArmory - 0.11.1.6
BetterTimeWarpContinued - 2.3.6.1
Bon Voyage - 0.11.1
CactEye Telescopes - 1.2.2.11
Community Category Kit - 1.2.2
Community Resource Pack - 0.6.6
CommunityTechTree - 3.0.3
ConfigurableContainers - 2.4.0.5
Connected Living Space - 1.2.4.2
DMagic Orbital Science - 1.3.0.8
EditorExtensionsRedux - 3.3.11.1
EVA Struts - 1.0.3
EVA Transfer - 1.0.6
Extraplanetary Launchpads - 5.7.1
Ferram Aerospace Research - 0.16
Firespitter - 7.5.1
GroundConstruction - 1.1.2.1
Hangar - 3.3.1
Haystack Continued - 0.5.2.1
HeatControl - 0.3.4
Interstellar Fuel Switch - 2.4.3
RasterPropMonitor - 0.28
Kerbal Attachment System - 0.6.2
Kerbal Engineer Redux - 1.1.2.8
Kerbal Foundries - 2.0.1.4
Feline Utility Rover - 0.4.1
InlineBallutes - 1.2.7
Kerbal Inventory System - 1.4.3
KSP-AVC Plugin - 1.1.6.2
KSPWheel - 0.9.4.14
Infernal Robots - 2.0.10
Infernal Robotics Sequencer - 1.0
ModularFlightIntegrator - 1.2.3
Docking Port Alignment Indicator - 6.5.2
NearFutureConstruction - 0.7.5
NSS-OctoSat - 0.1.6
DockingCameraKURS - 1.2.1.1
Outer Planets Mod - 2.0
PartCommanderContinued - 0.1.1.1
PartWizardContinued - 1.3.2
Kerbal Planetary Base Systems - 1.4.2
Precise Maneuver - 2.2.5
RealChute - 1.4.1.2
RemoteTech - 1.8.6
AmpYear - 1.4.6
RetractableLiftingSurface - 0.1.1
SCANsat - 1.1.7.3
SmartParts - 1.9.4
Surface Mounted Stock-Alike Lights for Self-Illumination - 1.3.1
SXTContinued - 0.3.8
TacSelfDestructContinued - 1.6.2
TarsierSpaceTechnology - 6.6.1
ThrottleControlledAvionics - 3.4.1
TAC Life Support - 0.12.9
ToadicusToolsContinued - 0.22
Trajectories - 1.6.6
Kerbal Alarm Clock - 3.8.4
Alternate Resource Panel - 2.9.1
Transfer Window Planner - 1.6.1
TweakableEverything - 0.1.18
TweakScale - 2.3.4.4
USI Core - 0.3.9
Asteroid Recycling Tech - 0.9.8
USI Exploration Pack - 0.7.3
Freight Transport Tech - 0.6.7
Karbonite - 0.8.7
Konstruction - 0.1.11
Malemute Rover - 0.2.7
MKS - 0.50.17
NuclearRockets - 0.3.8
Sounding Rockets - 0.5.8
USI Alcubierre Drive - 0.5.4
Universal Storage - 1.2.2
EVAParachutesAndEjectionSeats - 0.1.12
KSP Interstellar Extended - 1.12.9
Waypoint Manager - 2.6.2
WernersCheckerContinued - 0.5.3
WildBlueTools - 1.12
Buffalo - 1.2.1
Kerbal Komets - 0.1
MCM - 2.1.2
Pathfinder - 1.6.2
OSE Workshop - 1.0.8

 

Edited by stk2008
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6 minutes ago, stk2008 said:

Roger that I shall list all me mods incase its a conflict some how BRB :)

And nope not even got one to spawn yet :( hence why i dropped it to 50 to try to get one to show but still no luck LOL

Flipping an asteroid to a komet only applies to newly created asteroids. Maybe the first time you install the mod, it can randomly turn some existing asteroids into komets, but I'd need help to figure out where asteroids that haven't been visited and/or tracked are stored in the save file. It doesn't appear to be as simple as looking up a VESSEL entry... Hm, maybe it is that simple, I appear to have a few asteroids in my persistence file.

Edited by Angel-125
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Sorry I meant I have started a new game year one day one and nothing.

 

So I quit and set it to 50 in CFG started KSP and started a new game year one day one warped to get ? objects clicked them hit track and still none after 80 of them was a Komet :(

Edited by stk2008
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I have set it to 1 now in CFG shall let ya know what happens when KSP starts it takes a while even on a SSD with these 90 mods :P LOL

 

OK new game 1 set in CFG and after clicking 25 ? and hit track still none was a Komet

Edited by stk2008
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Just now, stk2008 said:

Sorry I meant I have started a new game year one day one and nothing.

 

So I quit and set it to 50 in CFG started KSP and started a new game year one day one warped to get ? objects clicked them hit track and still none after 80 of them was a Komet :)

Ok, next release will have some more debug information that will appear in the console. Once again, converting an asteroid to a komet only happens when the game spawns new asteroids.

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Just as a note this was in sandbox mode to not that I can see why that would matter?.

I shall start another game with 1 set in CFG and let it run for a long time in warp then start clikcing more ? to see if one is a Komet :)

 

On a kind of unrelated question I see that some of the Astroids have a flight path to Kerbin and actually hit Kerbin.

But do they? I mean if I was to track one and fly to the impact zone would it hit Kerbin or does it despawn when it gets near etc?.

Edited by stk2008
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7 minutes ago, stk2008 said:

Just as a note this was in sandbox mode to not that I can see why that would matter?.

I shall start another game with 1 set in CFG and let it run for a long time in warp then start clikcing more ? to see if one is a Komet :)

It won't matter what game mode you're in, as long as an asteroid gets created by the game, there's a chance that it will become a komet. I'm also setting up the mod so that when you first run it on an existing save, or start a new save, there's a chance that all existing asteroids will become komets. The default is 30%. You're guaranteed to have at least one komet; the rest of the existing asteroids might or might not become komets.

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