[1.12.x] Whirligig World Planetary System: An Absurd Homeworld In An Alien Solar System. 0.13.0: Dermun! Ice worlds! Better Scatterer!

[Whirligig Girl]

Not quite ready for a proper release but for the brave among you: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qnelyn6i1id5yj5/WhirligigWorld0.5_Prerelease_5.zip?dl=0

Edited October 7, 2018 by GregroxMun

[Ultimate Steve]

Mesbin personified:

2 hours ago, GregroxMun said:

Not quite ready for a proper release but for the brave among you: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qnelyn6i1id5yj5/WhirligigWorld0.5_Prerelease_5.zip?dl=0

Alright, I'll check it out! Do you think it will break anything if I have active craft in the current release?

Also, if you didn't see my last post, I tested a jet plane on Kerbmun and it did not work, is this intended behavior?

[Whirligig Girl]

Whirligig World v0.5 Released.

• Moved Gememma down from 155 kAU to about 25 kAU. Lighting between the stars is much brighter. Gememma's planets appear to have two suns, while Gememma is still brighter than the full moon seen from Kaywell's planets, and Gememma is bright in the sky.
• Reander's texture has been recolored--Saturn's yellow because of haze which Reander's a bit too warm for.
• Added new moons to Reander, we now have, in a resonance chain of 1:12, 2:3, 1:2, 1:2, 1:1, and 8:4:
• Lito
• Yalthe
• Yokane (Smaller volcanic place)
• Dakkonme (Icy cracked moon)
• Totooa (Atmospheric Pluto)
• Mally (Red now)
• Yawer
• Redesigned Statmun
• Added SE-generated craters to Vizea, Mally, and Etrograd.
• Gememma's second planet, Lowel, is no longer hidden--subject to change?
• Tweaked orbits of some planets and moons--also subject to change.
• Added biomes to Mesbin.
• New heightmap for Adjar, new atmosphere color.
• Renamed Adjar to Egad.
• Lito has a new, somewhat chaotic heightmap and design, and a thin atmosphere.
• Mesbin's physical characteristics have been changed. It now rotates once every 28 minutes and is 64% the size.
• Mandrake and Rutherford have been rescaled and orbit Gememma, roughly coplanar with Lowel.
• A LOT of new tech tree changes.
• New cloud map for Derbin.
• Gememma and Kaywell have new sunspot maps.
• Added Yeerbor, an eccentric moon of Egad.
• Gave Rik a more interesting shape.
• New atmospheres for Tyepolbynar, Shol, and Egad.
• Basic biome maps for almost all bodies.
• Re-added timewarp altitude patch.
• Added science values to all new bodies.
• Doubled Statmun's size.
• Renamed Kerbin World Firsts Record Keeping Company to Mesbin World Firsts.

 

Edited October 7, 2018 by GregroxMun

[Ultimate Steve]

Interesting update! The delta-v to LMO has decreased but the Delta-V to get out of LMO has increased... I think overall it's a net decrease in the Delta-V needed, but not by much... Return vehicles may be practical now with the reduced requirements.

Also, I did a mission to Statmun. Most of the surface appears to be rotating faster than orbital velocity, which makes landing very trippy.

[Whirligig Girl]

5 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Interesting update! The delta-v to LMO has decreased but the Delta-V to get out of LMO has increased... I think overall it's a net decrease in the Delta-V needed, but not by much... Return vehicles may be practical now with the reduced requirements.

Also, I did a mission to Statmun. Most of the surface appears to be rotating faster than orbital velocity, which makes landing very trippy.

this generally necessitates either retro-thrusters or a polar landing! It's a fun side effect.

[Whirligig Girl]

 

Oops I accidentally remade Mesbin from scratch and now it has an 8K texture.

I was supposed to be working on atmospheres for the other planets, but while designing Mesbin's new polar atmosphere I got sidetracked because I wanted to make sure the atmosphere was confined to some kind of polar basin and honestly I don't actually remember why I had to remake the whole thing from scratch but I did.

It now has a slightly more complicated PQS terrain setup, and I spent a really long time getting the height and color maps where I wanted them. The heightmap is based upon a Tectonics.js map with a lot of work done to make it look less super duper blurry, and some bits of terrain from Earth, Mercury, and the Moon. The planet has more impact craters now, it's so large that it gets hit very often compared to Earth, and there's no hydrological erosion to smooth them out--but the planet's tectonics DO recycle land, so there are no truly old regions of the planet. The rest of the height comes from noise. A small scale noise evenly coats the planet while a larger scale noise taken from Tylo fleshes out the continents, using a Kopernicus Expansions Regional multiplier-map to ensure the noise does not affect the maria too much. An ellipsoid map also controls the height of both the continents and the noise to make things shorter and flatter towards the poles. There's also some volcanoes on the heightmap stolen out of Space Engine.

The color map was based on a height export and the entirety of the planet's color comes from a single texture. (For now?) The dark grey regions are what would be considered oceanic crust on Earth. Denser, harder, and darker. The pale brown regions are what would be considered continental crust on Earth. Lighter, both in color and mass. This is mostly a simple height based relationship. The tips of some mountains are colored reddish simply because I'm reworking the lore of Statmun to be more like "Mount Sky" or something--a floating mountain before being known as a static moon, and having red mountains makes that more believable. The ejecta on some of the craters is stolen from a Space Engine export, and the layer of "noise" (non-height related darkening) on top is also modified from a Space Engine selena.

The planet looks a bit flatter from space, but that's just a side effect of using an 8K normal map with a reasonable normal map power. (Consider that you don't really see much relief on Mars or Earth from reasonably far away)

So now of course I have to redo the biome map AGAIN.

But then I'll be finished with this tangent and I can give every body the atmospheres they deserve.

 

Also I made Statmun small again. (I doubled it in 0.5, and now I'm halfing it back to the original size) And it has a good normal map too.

[Kerbalstar]

Ah, I often get sidetracked while coding... Looks like fun @GregroxMun!

[Whirligig Girl]

Bill can not handle polar gravity.

 

Semi-relatedly, I never posted this drawing here:

 

[Ultimate Steve]

I am having a weird issue where if I exit the Mesderbin SOI I'm teleported to the far outer reaches of the solar system, super far away... Do you know what might be causing it? I'm going to try uninstalling Sigma Binary and see if it's fixed.

EDIT: Removing Sigma fixed it.

Edited October 13, 2018 by Ultimate Steve

[Ultimate Steve]

On 10/10/2018 at 9:59 PM, GregroxMun said:

 

Also I made Statmun small again. (I doubled it in 0.5, and now I'm halfing it back to the original size) And it has a good normal map too.

So now we won't go flying off trying to land?

[Ultimate Steve]

TFW you rendezvous with Didd:

I think I might almost have ships bigger than Didd...

[Ultimate Steve]

I would like to submit a bug report. When playing without Sigma Binary, Vizea appears to orbit outside Wers' SOI making it troublesome to encounter.

EDIT: Checked, SOI is around 1000km, orbit is around 1700km. Picture of my encounter path:

Edited October 14, 2018 by Ultimate Steve

[Whirligig Girl]

18 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I would like to submit a bug report. When playing without Sigma Binary, Vizea appears to orbit outside Wers' SOI making it troublesome to encounter.

EDIT: Checked, SOI is around 1000km, orbit is around 1700km. Picture of my encounter path:

Will check when power is back. I've been without power since thursday afternoon. Thanks, Hurricane Michael.

Also you'll fly off of Statmun no matter the size of statmun (within reason) since I'm keeping density constant.

Also Didd has a moon that will only show up in save files created after installing the latest version.

[BRAAAP_STUTUTU]

Any chance that you based mesbin off of Novasilisko’s post that mentioned “Mez”which not only sounds similar but is pretty much the same idea?

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/123271-if-you-could-redesignimprove-the-kerbol-system-what-would-you-do/&do=findComment&comment=2235122

like he literally had the same idea in 2015, but you are probably the first to actually go ahead with it, he even complained about the same spherical atmosphere restriction!

 

[Whirligig Girl]

51 minutes ago, BRAAAP_STUTUTU said:

Any chance that you based mesbin off of Novasilisko’s post that mentioned “Mez”which not only sounds similar but is pretty much the same idea?

We were both referring to the same thing, Mesklin from Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity.

The name of my planet mod is also an homage to Hal Clement's essay where he writes about how he designed Mesklin, hence "Whirligig World" in the above image.

 

 

NovaSilisko and I are both very interested in finding ways to accurately simulate Mesklin, and I've tried it a few times in the past. Though I will say, my first exposure to this sort of rapidly rotating planet comes from the rapidly spinning dwarf planet Inaccessible from the original Planet Factory mod. Statmun and Yawer are both, in different ways, my homage to Inaccessible.

Mez or Mesklin is a planet I would very much like to make some day, if we're ever able to do non-spherical atmospheres. Though I think Nova and I are both in agreement that perhaps the stock system isn't really the best place for a Mez, I would probably put it in its own system which replicates the 61 Cygni system that Mesklin supposedly orbited.

[BRAAAP_STUTUTU]

3 minutes ago, GregroxMun said:

We were both referring to the same thing, Mesklin from Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity.

The name of my planet mod is also an homage to Hal Clement's essay where he writes about how he designed Mesklin, hence "Whirligig World" in the above image.

 

 

NovaSilisko and I are both very interested in finding ways to accurately simulate Mesklin, and I've tried it a few times in the past. Though I will say, my first exposure to this sort of rapidly rotating planet comes from the rapidly spinning dwarf planet Inaccessible from the original Planet Factory mod. Statmun and Yawer are both, in different ways, my homage to Inaccessible.

Mez or Mesklin is a planet I would very much like to make some day, if we're ever able to do non-spherical atmospheres. Though I think Nova and I are both in agreement that perhaps the stock system isn't really the best place for a Mez, I would probably put it in its own system which replicates the 61 Cygni system that Mesklin supposedly orbited.

I do love the idea of a large spinny rugby ball planet with obscene size,gravity and axial rotation

 

i guess i’ll play your pack, well...

...one day,after i finally finished all the other ones i’ve queued up, there’s just sooo many good planet packs  i still gotta finish

[Whirligig Girl]

 

[Whirligig Girl]

 

[NovaSilisko]

Messing around in WW a little bit... gravity turns are so cliche.

 

 

Edited October 28, 2018 by NovaSilisko

[Whirligig Girl]

Whirligig 0.6 changelog

• Added Gannovar, an icy water world in an eccentric orbit around Gememma.
• Shrunk Statmun by half, returning it to its size in 0.4.
• Mesbin's terrain has been revamped once more, and it now has an 8K normal map to look better from low orbit.
• Mesbin Space Center has been moved and its terrain recolored.
• Mesbin's north pole has a deep basin with a thin atmosphere at the bottom. 1 atmosphere of hydrogen.
• Reander now has a new texture and cloud banding pattern.
• Statmun has a normal map that makes sense now.
• Wers' SOI has been reverted to default, it no longer cuts off before you reach Vizea.
• Revamped Etrograd's terrain, it looks fantastic now, especially from the surface.
• Minor tweaks to the miscellaneous orbital elements of some moons--they were not uniquely defined yet.
• Moved Rik to be an asteroid orbiting between Egad and Reander--the closest thing this system has to a "main belt."
• Moved Fophie to be a long period comet orbiting Gememma well above the plane of the solar system.
• Added a new model (created by NovaSilisko) for the Kaputnik probe core, gave it weak gyros.
• Replaced the modular girder segment with the long and short I-beams in the start node of the tech tree.
• Added a new biome map for Etrograd's new terrain.
• Make Shol's Distant Object Enhancement sprite white, so it no longer forms a dark spot on Kaywell.
• Redone biome maps for Kerbmun, Yokane, Yalthe, and Valyr.
• Remade Tyepolbynar's texture.
• Remade Shol's texture, make Shol glow.
• Remove Fasteroid.
• Reshaped Wolda, gave it craters.
• New biome map for Lowel by Niako.
• Tweaked Mandrake and Rutherford's textures.
• New planet, a sub-Mars companion to Lowel called Ollym.
• Finished all planetary atmospheres.
• Removed atmosphere on Etrograd. (For now?)
• Fix the science definitions for the bodies which have been changed, add more science definitions.
• Update ResearchBodies compatibility.
• Tweaked A.R.M. Asteroids: added asteroids to Gememma, comets to Kaywell and Gememma.
• Ensure tech tree is compatible with community tech tree.
• Change science multipliers for Kerbmun homeworld mode.
• Redesigned Yawer, using a map based upon the old Mesbin map. It rotates fairly quickly, not as quickly as Mesbin, and its highest peaks are under negative gravity.
• Swap LV-T30 and LV-T45 to their RIGHTFUL PLACE on the tech tree.
• Finish descriptions for all planets.
• Move the 1.25m relay antenna (the small static dish) to basic science alongside the smaller deploy-able antennae--the system is huge, we need better antennas!
• Move the classic tri-coupler to engineering 101, because come on, this part used to be THE BEST back in the old days.

[darwinpatrick]

Amazing work! I'm playing GPP right now but when I decide that's not cool enough I am for sure going for this. Is there a reasonable timeline for when a solid, 1.0 version may be released? I'm anxious to start but I don't want to play an unfinished planet pack! I would love to see this in Kerbal Star Systems as well. Maybe I can re-create the Mesbin colonization!

[Whirligig Girl]

55 minutes ago, darwinpatrick said:

Amazing work! I'm playing GPP right now but when I decide that's not cool enough I am for sure going for this. Is there a reasonable timeline for when a solid, 1.0 version may be released? I'm anxious to start but I don't want to play an unfinished planet pack! I would love to see this in Kerbal Star Systems as well. Maybe I can re-create the Mesbin colonization!

There is a To-Do list. Depending upon how fast I go, 1.0 will probably be out somewhere between 2 months and 1 year from now. It's not going to be in Kerbal Star Systems, that's an unrelated piece of meh. However, it will eventually be built into the Interstellar Consortium and there may also be a standalone interstellar patch (though the point of I.C. is that you don't need that).

The solar system in the pack is essentially finished. The only changes to come are some changes to the minor planets and minor moons, and the only major change to large planets will occur to Derbin. I don't expect any new major planets to be added.

If you're curious, I wrote this document back in september discussion ways I might expand WhirligigWorld if I have an idea for a planet that MUST GO IN WW.

Quote

Ways to expand Whirligig World [comments from 10/28]

WW is currently nearing a sort of maximum size of reasonable gameplay locations, this document will explore possible positions to locate new celestial bodies should I come up with a brand new idea that HAS TO GO IN WHIRLIGIG WORLD.

Low Kaywell Orbit: Shol currently dominates the space below Tyepolbynar, as a massive hot jupiter. However, it can support an asteroid belt, with hot dwarf planets and or trojan asteroids analogous to the kuiper belt. [I have toyed around with the idea of a hot trojan planet of Shol. Something tidally locked with borderline habitable temperatures on the far side.]

Shol-Tyepolbynar: There should be a few stable orbits for planets between Shol and Tyepolbynar, but such objects will be hot hell worlds indeed! Wolda currently occupies this space, and it seems like a prime location to put an asteroid belt. [This is the most likely location for expansion]

Tyepolbynar System: This system is limited in size by Tyepolbynar's hill sphere and layout, so it is unlikely that I could fit more than a few more minor moons in here. [Aerious' orbit is chaotic and unpredictable over long time scales, and since I want that to be fairly unique if Principia is installed, there won't be any outer irregular satellites]

Tyepolbynar Orbit: Tyepolbynar has two open lagrangian points for worlds that would receive more insolation than Venus but less than Mercury. Tyepolbynar trojans are another likelihood. [For a while in the development version I had placed here a planet called Deazil, which I later scrapped. ]

Mesbin: I could probably fit another moon between Graymun and Kerbmun, or shortly after Kerbmun, and all three inner moons could support trojans--fairly large ones in Kerbmun's case. Graymun is close enough to the rocky roche limit that any moons below it would pretty much have to be hyperdense statmun clones--which I don't want--or very tiny. [I have been thinking about adding a few more minor satellites for Mesbin and/or another rounded satellite]

Derbin: Derbin could possibly support more small moons, but nothing should be large enough to tidally lock it--it should remain locked to Mesbin. [When I wrote this, Derbin still had two moons--Dermun and Derminmus. More minor moons are possible, probably nothing bigger than Derminmus]

Mesderbin Orbit: Currently one trojan is occupied by a dwarf planet, but it could share that location with other asteroids, while the other location is open either to small dwarf planets + asteroids, an asteroid camp, or a planet. Potentially Mesderbin could be turned INTO a trojan of a new gas giant, if Wers/vizea is moved to the other lagrange point of that giant.

Valyr: The number and rough description of Valyr's moons is based upon Lyr from Planetocopia, so no moons should be added, though the asteroid moons may be altered as neccesary.

Valyr Orbit: Two trojan camps are open.

Adjar: Adjar has no moons yet, and thus that position is open--though a moon IS planned for it which may change this rule. [Egad, not Adjar]

Adjar Orbit: Adjar could have trojans, but it is very small for it, it's plausible top have gravitationally unrelated near-adjar objects assuming they don't get too close to Valyr.

Adjar-Reander: Another prime position for an asteroid belt, this being a fairly direct analogue of our solar system. In fact the larger mass of Adjar compared to Mars implies that the asteroid belt ought to be beefier, with several dwarf-planet-sized bodies and many more asteroids--this could be the location of the GREAT BELT! [This is the next most likely candidate for a major asteroid belt]

Reander: Reander has a large enough SOI to add outer moons, but they should not be more than icy minor moons unless there is a good reason. Some of the existing moons can support small trojans. Lito can support fairly chunky trojans, but it would kind of detract from the simplicity I think.

Reander Orbit: We should expect some pretty darn beefy trojans camps! A planet, dwarf planet, or asteroid system could exist at either point.

Mandrake/Rutherford: This system is strongly based upon the Pluto/Charon system, so no new major bodies. However, minor bodies individually orbiting Mandrake, Rutherford, or both at a vast distance, may be acceptable.

Mandrake/Rutherford Orbit: More trojan points. [This is still true, but now applies to Mesbin Orbit.]

Beyond M/R: There is a fairly huge amount of space available for use for additional outer system giant planets or for icy dwarf planets/kuiper belt-like objects. In fact there really ought to be at least a few KBOs beyond M/R! This is an idea ripe for expansion, but it does mean the task of creating more unique icy bodies! [There's not much space between Reander and Gememma anymore, but dwarf or minor sized "KBO"s are a possiblity depending upon how stable those orbits turn out to be.]

Gememma: Gememma's inner system is fairly well planned at the moment, but until I have re-implemented the planets [Which I did already] I won't be able to say specifically where things can go. Beyond the inner system there may be room for plenty more bodies, from gas giants to icy objects to possibly even absuridities like brown dwarf companions. Also relevantly, I have been considering figuring out if I could lower the orbit of Gememma significantly to bring it more in-line with interplanetary travel. I doubt I could go as low as a Neptuneish orbit... but maybe? [I did end up lowering Gememma--into a Neptunish orbit! Mandrake and Rutherford were moved to Gememma, but there is still room for another few cold planets between Gannovar and Mandrake/Rutherford.]

 

[Whirligig Girl]

Oh wow I've become depressed since releasing 0.6 so it's gonna take a while to get going again.

 

The depression may be related to having finished 0.6.

 

Why am I like this

 

[Ultimate Steve]

1 hour ago, GregroxMun said:

Oh wow I've become depressed since releasing 0.6 so it's gonna take a while to get going again.

 

The depression may be related to having finished 0.6.

 

Why am I like this

 

I hope you feel better soon!

Unrelated I think I'm going to add a Greg Kerman to my Whirligig save.

[Whirligig Girl]

Found here: http://www.josleys.com/show_gallery.php?galid=313

This, alongside Jacobi triaxial ellipsoids and Maclaurin oblate spheroids, is an example of a possible equilibrium shape for "whirligig" planets. It's called the Poincare Pear. It's my new favorite shape and, even though I couldn't possible do it realistically in a way that would let the surface gravity be pointing parallel to the surface everywhere, I *really* want to put one in Whirligig World. The mod's supposed to be pretty much system-complete I know but come on. It's a golly danged to hecking kraken "pear."