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[1.3.0+] Ringworld 0.1.0


HebaruSan

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A Ringworld for Kerbal Space Program    CKAN-Indexed-green.svg

200 light years from Earth, a huge ring revolves around its lonely star. The inner surface hosts a biosphere millions of times the area of Earth's, but otherwise similar in its distance to its sun, the magnitude of its spin gravity, and even its day-night cycle, thanks to enormous orbiting 'shadow squares' that periodically block the sun.

Now you can observe this incredible artifact from your favorite Kerbal vessel!

Dependencies

This mod will not work without:

These mods are not included in the download and must be installed separately. Try CKAN for easy handling of dependencies.

Side effects

The Ringworld's sun is normal-sized, and this mod enlarges Kerbin's sun to make exploring the system more accurate, which speeds up Kerbin's rotation to preserve its 6-hour solar day. Comment out the %Properties block of Ringworld.cfg to disable this.

Limitations

This mod is for visualization only.

You cannot:

  • Re-enter or fly in the Ringworld's atmosphere
  • Land on the Ringworld
  • Crash into the Ringworld
  • Crash into the shadow squares
  • Attack invaders with the solar flare cannon
  • Indulge in rishathra

I would love to support these things, but if they're possible for the interior of a non-spherical surface, I don't know how.

Since the surface is just a tiled randomized texture, notable unique features are not represented:

  • Fist of God Mountain
  • Great Oceans and the Maps
  • Spill Mountains
  • Spaceport ledges
  • Eye storms
  • Attitude jets
  • Shadow square wires
  • Floating cities

Links

Download: https://github.com/HebaruSan/Ringworld/releases/latest
Bug tracker: https://github.com/HebaruSan/Ringworld/issues
Source: https://github.com/HebaruSan/Ringworld
Localization: https://github.com/HebaruSan/Ringworld/tree/master/GameData/Ringworld/lang
License: Public domain (Unlicense)

Edited by HebaruSan
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53 minutes ago, Madman_Andre said:

It's a shame that this is visual only - although I suspect that something akin to a true ringworld is well and truly beyond what Kerbal Space Program and hell, the Unity Engine itself is capable of.

I'm secretly hoping that someone will see this and tell me how to do it. There are Kopernicus experts out there that can work magic with PQSMods.

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Perhaps something similar to theKerbal Konstructs addon that is an O'Neill cylinder?

You can scale up KK statics fairly well, and I think adjust height they are visible at. 

Perhaps a question could be can you mod a KK Ring world above the star.  Can you place statics on the star at all? 

Peace.

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8 hours ago, theJesuit said:

Perhaps something similar to theKerbal Konstructs addon that is an O'Neill cylinder?

You can scale up KK statics fairly well, and I think adjust height they are visible at. 

Perhaps a question could be can you mod a KK Ring world above the star.  Can you place statics on the star at all? 

Peace.

Thanks for the reference! I did look at Kerbal Konstructs and wasn't able to get it to work, but there's a new version now, so I may try again. Though the O'Neill Cylinder mod says it's locked to the rotation of the parent body, which wouldn't work for my purposes.

6 minutes ago, Akira_R said:

Love Niven! Would be so cool to see a ring world you could actually launch from etc. although I suspect you are correct that this is well outside what KSP is capable of doing

The ring rotates at about 1200 km/s, far in excess of solar escape velocity, so the delta V for in-system trips is enormous. The most practical thing is to roll your ship off the edge at the right moment and fall out into interstellar space (assuming your destination is coplanar with the ring).

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I am wondering if it is possible at least to decide where to place such a ring (best a new spawn on each start?). As example in GPP around Grannus... find it there through telescopes and try to reach it then... and if it would be interactable... all tumbs i posses UP! Beautiful idea, you only need some programming mages now...

U formed to hold atmosphere?

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There are also Bishop Rings, aka "Orbitals" from the Iain Banks Culture novels.

Right now, the realistic limit would be based on the breaking length of carbon chains (nano tubes, graphine, etc). That's ~6600km, which would be a circumference of a ring. The radius would then be ~1000km. For 1g, that rotates about once every 33 minutes. The tangential velocity of such a ring is ~3 km/s.

 

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On 11/15/2017 at 12:36 PM, HebaruSan said:

Thanks for the reference! I did look at Kerbal Konstructs and wasn't able to get it to work, but there's a new version now, so I may try again.

Good news, the latest Kerbal Konstructs version fixes the issues I was having. I couldn't even remember what those issues were until I ran the new version: the UI dialogs partially failed to load and didn't work, so I wasn't able to spawn anything (it looked like a version compatibility problem). Now I've installed all the mods in CKAN that depend on KK, and driving a rover around on their models was really impressive! However, there are still many challenges to overcome to use it for the Ringworld, not least of which is that @Eskandare hasn't shared any of his O'Neill Cylinder work, so I'm starting from scratch in understanding how to make a landable surface in KK. (I also have zero modeling talent, so any method that involves me manually creating terrain in Blender is going to turn out poorly.)

8GdXk24.png

On 11/15/2017 at 1:59 PM, Urses said:

I am wondering if it is possible at least to decide where to place such a ring (best a new spawn on each start?). As example in GPP around Grannus... find it there through telescopes and try to reach it then... and if it would be interactable... all tumbs i posses UP!

Kopernicus 1.3.0-8 and later support this style of ring around any celestial body, though there are some limitations (must be centered on the parent, shadows can only be cast directly outwards from the parent).

This specific mod will remain focused on the structure from the Larry Niven series. But you can move it around to other places by editing the cfg.

Quote

Beautiful idea, you only need some programming mages now...

Full disclosure: I did the programming to make Kopernicus support this, specifically in order to make a Ringworld. It's less a question of programming than knowledge of how planetary surfaces are implemented in KSP and Unity. I doubt it would be possible to hand-craft 1.6 * 10^21 square meters of terrain, so some kind of procedural generation would be necessary, as well as on-demand loading of only the nearest regions.

Quote

U formed to hold atmosphere?

I'm not sure what you mean. The Ringworld from the books is O-shaped and holds an atmosphere, but the one in the mod has no atmosphere at this time.

On 11/15/2017 at 2:32 PM, tater said:

There are also Bishop Rings, aka "Orbitals" from the Iain Banks Culture novels.

Right now, the realistic limit would be based on the breaking length of carbon chains (nano tubes, graphine, etc). That's ~6600km, which would be a circumference of a ring. The radius would then be ~1000km. For 1g, that rotates about once every 33 minutes. The tangential velocity of such a ring is ~3 km/s.

Yup, just like the original, this mod goes far beyond the realm of known physical plausibility, mainly because I enjoy the "how big is big" thought experiment aspect of it.

Edited by HebaruSan
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2 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

 I'm not sure what you mean. The Ringworld from the books is O-shaped and holds an atmosphere, but the one in the mod has no atmosphere at this time.

I mean the cross-section the mid of the ring had higher radius as outsides if you walk from mid to the outside it is like you walk upside a mountain. Sorry i did npt clarified as i mean the cross-section. Some of the ring ideas present a inverted TT to hold the atmosphere and provide stability for the walls, but your pictures look way more U. And this made me courious. :blush:

But as U it will be stable without mass emchancement, but shrink the habitable zone more in the midband?

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19 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

Good news, the latest Kerbal Konstructs version fixes the issues I was having. I couldn't even remember what those issues were until I ran the new version: the UI dialogs partially failed to load and didn't work, so I wasn't able to spawn anything (it looked like a version compatibility problem). Now I've installed all the mods in CKAN that depend on KK, and driving a rover around on their models was really impressive! However, there are still many challenges to overcome to use it for the Ringworld, not least of which is that @Eskandare hasn't shared any of his O'Neill Cylinder work, so I'm starting from scratch in understanding how to make a landable surface in KK. (I also have zero modeling talent, so anything method that involves me manually creating terrain in Blender is going to turn out poorly.)

Hello! The reason I hadn't posted it yet was because it had a few minor issues. One you can't see it until it is too late and can accidentally crash into it, and there was a stutter from the extremely large full size model of the O'Neill Cylinder. I may just post it once I recover it off my other drive. I had plans to include a full city and a ring-runway for space planes. Overall I've been happy with my O'Neill Cylinder because it may be the first practical simulation of a 'Space Cylinder' and found many reasons why it wouldn't work or it would take quite a lot to adjust to it's quirks. The space cylinder model was originally a proof of concept.

I am very interested in the Kopericus changes for Ringworld, perhaps it could come in handy with my O'Neill Cylinder.

Edited by Eskandare
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On ‎11‎/‎15‎/‎2017 at 1:07 AM, HebaruSan said:

I'm secretly hoping that someone will see this and tell me how to do it. There are Kopernicus experts out there that can work magic with PQSMods.

I know nothing about planet modding, but if it requires something like a normal collider to land on, it can be done with a whole lot of normal cube colliders tilted to match the terrain angle.

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17 hours ago, Urses said:

I mean the cross-section the mid of the ring had higher radius as outsides if you walk from mid to the outside it is like you walk upside a mountain. Sorry i did npt clarified as i mean the cross-section. Some of the ring ideas present a inverted TT to hold the atmosphere and provide stability for the walls, but your pictures look way more U. And this made me courious. :blush:

But as U it will be stable without mass emchancement, but shrink the habitable zone more in the midband?

Ahh, I see now. No, it's flat. The books have thousand-mile high walls at the rims to hold in the air, but they're too small to see at the scale shown in the screenshots.

1 hour ago, Eskandare said:

Hello! The reason I hadn't posted it yet was because it had a few minor issues. One you can't see it until it is too late and can accidentally crash into it, and there was a stutter from the extremely large full size model of the O'Neill Cylinder. I may just post it once I recover it off my other drive. I had plans to include a full city and a ring-runway for space planes. Overall I've been happy with my O'Neill Cylinder because it may be the first practical simulation of a 'Space Cylinder' and found many reasons why it wouldn't work or it would take quite a lot to adjust to it's quirks. The space cylinder model was originally a proof of concept.

I am very interested in the Kopericus changes for Ringworld, perhaps it could come in handy with my O'Neill Cylinder.

Cool! I'd definitely be interested in trying your mod. If I'm going to use KK for the Ringworld, it'll need to be patched to allow non-surface-synchronous positioning and possibly on-demand loading of sections of large structures, both of which ought to be useful for an O'Neill Cylinder as well. I'm not sure how useful the Kopernicus stuff would be to you, though, as it's heavily based on the existing support for planetary rings, which have to be centered on a celestial body.

41 minutes ago, SpaceMouse said:

I know nothing about planet modding, but if it requires something like a normal collider to land on, it can be done with a whole lot of normal cube colliders tilted to match the terrain angle.

Do you know off-hand of a mod that does that? I think I understand the abstract concept well enough, but I would not know where to start with implementing it.

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2 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

Do you know off-hand of a mod that does that? I think I understand the abstract concept well enough, but I would not know where to start with implementing it.

I actually did my own experiments with a centrifuge a while back at a WAAAAAAAAY smaller scale. your welcome to check it out but, displaying the concept is simpler in a picture.

M3DVzKo.jpg

I have no idea if it will work at that scale though.

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I've made a few more experiments and observations with Kerbal Konstructs:

https://imgur.com/a/9D2ri

  • The visibility distance, max 100km, is very limiting so far. You can make an object that's larger, but it blinks in and out of existence when you pass the invisible max distance line from its origin (which is at one end of the road I was using, not the center). That'll have to be patched in the KK source, possibly to "unlimited," or at least a few hundred billion meters.
  • KK objects don't seem to be visible in the map view, but Kopernicus rings are, so that might be OK.
  • KK objects of sufficient scale are visible from orbit.

Credit to the Scott Manley video that originally made me consider Kerbal Konstructs:

Now I'm curious whether I can make an invisible planet orbiting the Sun at distance almost 0, and put the KK objects and the Kopernicus ring around that body. That way I could set the rotation speed without affecting the Sun itself, rendering the surface-synchronous requirement moot.

Edited by HebaruSan
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No rishathra? What's even the point then?

I'm kidding, this alone is amazing, and if you manage to get collisions and such to work... That will open so many possibilities. 

Like creating such a structure as a surface of the planet, placing it around a planet, and by using particularily modelled "real" surface and the "bottom" or inner surface of the structure, creating cave systems! Or a planet inside a planet.

Not the scope of this mod, of course. But if we had a precedent, we'd know it's possible.

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  • 2 weeks later...
6 minutes ago, i like pizza said:

I hope this develops further.

Pretty cool idea!

Oh right, I never posted an update; I started working on a "megastructures" patch for Kerbal Konstructs:

https://imgur.com/a/9D2ri

Mainly consists of converting KK's floats to doubles where appropriate (and Vector3 to Vector3d), plus a few tweaks to the UI and scaling behaviors. Then I got distracted by trying to drive a rover to the end of a 3000x scale road segment.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I just found out about this mod, and I realized you are working on MegaStructures. I was hoping if you were working on actual parts, like creating your own Stanford toruses and mega stations. A mod like this was already made before, the parts were around 1km ~ 3km. But before it was discounted there were plans for 5km parts. 

 

 

 

d38BpJE.png

I was hoping if you were planning on making such parts or were focusing on just gigantic planet size structures.

 

 

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1 hour ago, ThatOne said:

I just found out about this mod, and I realized you are working on MegaStructures. I was hoping if you were working on actual parts, like creating your own Stanford toruses and mega stations.

1 hour ago, ThatOne said:

I was hoping if you were planning on making such parts or were focusing on just gigantic planet size structures.

I have no plans to work on parts, if by parts you mean things that you could assemble in the VAB/SPH. Any pieces used to assemble a Ringworld would be far, far too large for that (imagine scrolling your mouse wheel continuously for 3 months to get to the right attachment point!). I think the greatest extent of my ambition is create landable terrain so you could land your own vessels on it, but even that is little more than a dream at this point.

1 hour ago, ThatOne said:

A mod like this was already made before, the parts were around 1km ~ 3km. But before it was discounted there were plans for 5km parts. 

Thanks for the links! I wasn't aware of the Standford Torus mod, but if you scroll up you'll see there was also an O'Neill Cylinder mod. It's really cool to see how various people have approached the canonical types of megastructures.

But forgive me for some pedantry: a mod with 3-5 km parts is not overwhelmingly similar to a mod with 306,000,000 km parts. :)

3 minutes ago, Galacticvoyager said:

Just wondering if its possible to relocate the ringworld to another star system?

Assuming that someone else has already created the other star system, yes, it should be. Take a look at the Ringworld.cfg file; the @Body[Sun] line specifies the parent body, so you could change Sun to the name of the other star.

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Just now, HebaruSan said:

Assuming that someone else has already created the other star system, yes, it should be. Take a look at the Ringworld.cfg file; the @Body[Sun] line specifies the parent body, so you could change Sun to the name of the other star.

Perfect! Ill assume that I can remove the config that changes said star's size. This way I can have a plain ringworld system to gawk at!

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