Kopernicus made stock

[Mircea The Young]

The Kopernicus mod is perhaps the single most relevant mod that KSP has ever seen. It is quite literally a game-changer, but is has one major issue, maintenance. Kopernicus is an incredibly complex mod that requires constant updates, but precisely because of its complexity, said updates require a massive amount of work, work that is done pro bono by volunteer devs. As such, I would like to suggest a petition for the game devs to take over. Updating Kopernicus first requires that one understand how it all works and how each update affects the code. The volunteer devs have to figure that on their own for the most part, but the game devs would know everything they need to implement such features by default. That would make it infinitely easier to maintain the mod, and given how vital this mod is (I mean it quite literally is a dependency for an entire genre of mods), and how promoted mod-usage is to begin with (since there's an option for it on right the game's main menu), I should think that integrating such a mod into the stock build would be a no-brainer.

In short, Kopernicus is a game-changing mod that would be best served if integrated into the stock build, as that would benefit everyone, the mod devs (for easing their trouble), the game devs (for making a better game), and the end-users, who'd no longer have to rely on how the mod devs spend their free time. And seriously now, how is this mod not yet stock to begin with?

[Kraken that doesn't exist]

yes

[DirtyFace83]

I don't want to give anybody any ideas, but if it's done right and also has some kind of  'planet making made really really easy - like, for 5 year olds easy' type of editor, then I might even pay 10 or 15 bucks for it as a DLC. But again, not if it's half-a**ed 

[Bej Kerman]

Squad should integrate mods into stock instead of making the mods themselves but 10x worse. Decals? You get a flat and 1.25m curved variant instead of decals that procedurally match their surface! Comets? Reskinned asteroids that fart particle effects instead of a new planet after all these years! Where was I? Oh, point is, if Squad implements Kopernicus, expect it to be 10x more difficult to work with than the original one.

[Mircea The Young]

8 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Squad should integrate mods into stock instead of making the mods themselves but 10x worse. Decals? You get a flat and 1.25m curved variant instead of decals that procedurally match their surface! Comets? Reskinned asteroids that fart particle effects instead of a new planet after all these years! Where was I? Oh, point is, if Squad implements Kopernicus, expect it to be 10x more difficult to work with than the original one.

Textures are one thing, game mechanics are another.

[Gargamel]

2 hours ago, Mircea The Young said:

Textures are one thing, game mechanics are another.

Which is the point of Kopernicus.   Most of how KSP runs is config based.   Just alter a config file, and boom, your part is different.  Planetary bodies are not config based.  They are hard coded.  This is what Kopernicus and it's predecessors set out to fix.  They tapped into those hard coded files and made it able to use a config based system for planets.   That is no easy task.  

And that's the rub with getting this into stock.  It's hardcoded into the base game, and to change that would require a major overhaul of the game, which would mean basically doing it from scratch, and while they were in there, the might as well fix all those other legacy whoopsies that turned out to be bad ideas in hindsight.  That means basically starting all over with a new game..... oh... they are doing that, in KSP2.   So while we most likely will never see natively moddable planets in KSP, KSP2 should have them in place if I'm not mistaken. 

 

portions redacted due to idiocy. 

[OHara]

23 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

[Configuration of planets is] hardcoded into the base game, and to change that would require a major overhaul of the game, which would mean basically doing it from scratch,

Maybe so, but Kopernicus' success indicates that not too much had to be re-written in order to use configuration files for planets.

Kopernicus' seems to do its main work at startup, replacing KSP's default solar system with whatever the configuration files specify, and then Kopernicus mostly stays out of the way. (Kopernicus now has many features, and some of them are active during gameplay, like its UI and maybe collisions for scattered rocks, but it lets KSP run planetary physics on the customized planets.)

This gives some reason to think that Squad might find it feasible to incorporate some features of Kopernicus.

[Gargamel]

Well, I have been advised with those more familiar with Kopernicus and modding in general, That my second paragraph is completely off base.   Carry on.   Nothing to see here. 

[Mircea The Young]

As I understand it, Kopernicus simply tricks the game into thinking whatever changes you make to the solar system are stock and the game itself then picks up from there.

[Kraken that doesn't exist]

for some reason i think a tiny bit that @linuxgurugamer will fork the mod because i've seen a few mods he's forked like Kerbalised SpaceX idk why i think that and im thinking i might be an idiot for saying this

[linuxgurugamer]

3 hours ago, Kraken that doesn't exist said:

for some reason i think a tiny bit that @linuxgurugamer will fork the mod because i've seen a few mods he's forked like Kerbalised SpaceX idk why i think that and im thinking i might be an idiot for saying this

You aren't an idiot, but I'm not going to fork it. For two reasons.  First, someone else already did.  Second, and more importantly, Kopernicus is a mod that requires a huge amount of dedicated time.  I don't have that much time.  It needs it because it goes extremely deep into the guts of the game, which changes every release.  I have a huge amount of respect for @Thomas P. for the work and dedication he put into it.  I don't know @prestja, so far all he has done is change the version number and rebuild, so I don't have any feel for how good he is.  However, I am concerned because it seemed that he merely rebuilt it and released the beta without any test, relying on players to do the testing.  Time will tell if he has the ability and dedication to devote to the mod.  The comments in his thread here indicate that not everything is roses, there are some significant issues being reported.  Nothing gamebreaking, time will tell. 

[prestja]

35 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

so I don't have any feel for how good he is.

Neither do I, to be entirely honest. However I understand the importance of Kopernicus within the KSP community and will do my best to keep it updated, even if its simple recompiles and bug fixes. Just because I was the first to volunteer to continue Kopernicus doesn't mean I'll be the last. Mod authors, especially those more experienced than me, are more than welcome to contribute to Kopernicus.

39 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

However, I am concerned because it seemed that he merely rebuilt it and released the beta without any test, relying on players to do the testing.

That's a fair criticism, although I've made it clear in my forum release post that this 1.9.1 version of Kopernicus is not for general usage at this time and has thus been labeled pre-release. As I get more accustomed to the code and begin squashing bugs I'll consider a general release version made available through CKAN.

41 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Time will tell if he has the ability and dedication to devote to the mod.

Quarantine does wonders for KSP modding  

[linuxgurugamer]

15 minutes ago, prestja said:

Neither do I, to be entirely honest. However I understand the importance of Kopernicus within the KSP community and will do my best to keep it updated, even if its simple recompiles and bug fixes. Just because I was the first to volunteer to continue Kopernicus doesn't mean I'll be the last. Mod authors, especially those more experienced than me, are more than welcome to contribute to Kopernicus.

I wasn't criticizing, and do wish you good luck with it. 

15 minutes ago, prestja said:

Neither do I, to be entirely honest. However I understand the importance of Kopernicus within the KSP community and will do my best to keep it updated, even if its simple recompiles and bug fixes. Just because I was the first to volunteer to continue Kopernicus doesn't mean I'll be the last. Mod authors, especially those more experienced than me, are more than welcome to contribute to Kopernicus.

Good point, but I think you should look for a small team to help you with the testing.  That way you and they can learn what to do and how to do it.

16 minutes ago, prestja said:

Quarantine does wonders for KSP modding

Tell me about it  although I am still working, albeit from home 

[Jognt]

I agree 100% with OP. Kopernicus' features are so important to the game that it should be a verified stock API (at the very least) or a full-fledged built-in scaler.

There are a number of mods that add 'things' to KSP that I feel should be stock. Sometimes I kinda feel like Squad is taking some modders' time for granted when the game wouldn't be what it is without those mods.

So Squad, pretty please, make a stock implementation that allows modifying the kerbol system, or make it a "Just add system config" type deal and do all the crazy math in the background.

[fozba]

Exactly.

I think even if not Kopernicus, devs should add a mod that makes players able to "Create a planet or install a planet from .planet file" or something like that. This way, all the planet packs could be installed much easier. But IDK if that is possible with my limited programming knowledge.

[kerbiloid]

18 hours ago, Jognt said:

Sometimes I kinda feel like Squad is taking some modders' time for granted when the game wouldn't be what it is without those mods.

KSP is the form of self-organization of a living matter.

[Jognt]

14 hours ago, fozba said:

Exactly.

I think even if not Kopernicus, devs should add a mod that makes players able to "Create a planet or install a planet from .planet file" or something like that. This way, all the planet packs could be installed much easier. But IDK if that is possible with my limited programming knowledge.

Nearly everything is possible in programming, it just costs time and by extension; money.

Except real-world catgirls, can't program those. (yet)

[StoneWolfPC]

I loved KSP so much in the first week I didn't wait for it to come on sale.  Had this been part of the game originally, as well as with new/more planets I would have been happy to pay more for the extra DLC.  I feel this company that is developing KSP, as well as it's coders etc. really care more about us as a community than any other game I've ever played.  I hope they see this thread and I hope they take it into serious consideration for an update at some point (or separate DLC that I can buy).

[munlander1]

While I don't know if making Kopernicus stock is something I support, I do think that the Solar System should be competed with Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune analogs. Maybe even adding in some TNOs as modified asteroids.

By expanded the solar system, it will expand the uses of RTGs as solar panels would be almost useless past Jool.

[kspnerd122]

I will just say this, but, MAKE A MOD WHERE YOU CAN CREATE AND EDIT PLANETS, THEN TAKE THE FOLDERS FOR SHARING, MAKE IT USABLE WITH SLIDERS, SO ANY IDIOT COULD THROW TOGETHER A PASSABLE PLANET.

[Strych74]

As many have pointed out Kopernicus is a HUGE mod in term of what it changes in the game.  But does ALL of it have to move to stock in one go?  I think one of the features that would be great to have in stock would be the ability to re-scale the game.  Being able to start a game and having the 'out of the box' option to pick from standard, 2x, 2.5x, 3.2x, 5x, 10x.....  you get the point.  By implementing processes "under the hood" where solar systems and planetary bodies can be rescaled, this would (hopefully) provide the hooks that modders can tap into in order to specify their own custom rescales.  The devs wouldn't even have to worry about part balancing really; we already know the stock parts are a bit OP and are perfectly adequate for the smaller rescales, and there's a ton of mods already out there that either modify the power configs of stock parts to make them workable at larger scales, or even introduce new components which are better suited to upscaled sizes anyway <looks knowingly at BDB>.

Once you've tackled the challenge of rescaling, then the other components start to fall into more manageable pieces:

• Adding in additional planetary bodies
• Editing existing planetary bodies
• Deleting and/or substituting either individual planetary bodies, or entire solar systems.

As some have already pointed out, it appears that the Kerbal system is 'hard-coded' entities rather than treating planets/moons as configurable entities.  My guess is that that the effort to transition to a config-based system would be "not inconsiderable".  As a software development studio, it then begs the question "why invest the effort to create a feature for people who have already paid for the game".  In all fairness, I think the folks at Squad are fairly respectful of the user community and do listen to feedback.  They have already shown that they are willing to make functionality / quality of life improvements outside of the payable DLC content.  So why make these changes?  I think there's a couple of valid reasons Squad should take a look at this:

1. There is a clear and unequivocal demand from the user group that this is a functionality change that they want to see included at the base level of the game.
2. There is the capability of being able to 'hide' this functionality behind the paywall of a DLC pack, making the decision to incorporate these changes an economic one rather "all work and no payoff"; or
3. They use this as an opportunity to develop a system as a "proof of concept" that can be used in future releases (KSP2 anyone?).

Perhaps the most enticing of these is reason three.  For example, it opens the door for Squad to make new DLC packs (income generation) which focus on new star systems / planets.  Done Kerbol in 2.5x?  Well have a try of our new "Alpha Centauri' DLC pack, or the Sirius DLC which features "hot" gas giants circling in close orbit around a binary star system.

In the end, we all love Kopernicus and what it enables us to do in a game we all enjoy playing (shut up kraken, I'm not talking to you).  If there were only a handful of people that played using JNSQ or OPM or ReScale then I doubt we'd be having this discussion.  In reality there is a significant number of us who are committed to playing with these mods, and the effect is that many of us are not keeping up with content patches / bug fixes with the latest releases because Kopernicus update isn't available.

< TO THE DEVS >

Devs, if you're listening (well, reading actually, but whatever): is this something you have written on a card wall somewhere?  Is there an item in your improvement suggestions list that says "Kopernicus" or "stock rescaling".  My hope is that there is, and if you don't, then I suggest that there be a genuine sit-down discussion between the guys who pay the bills and the guys who do the work about putting this on the radar.  And let us know... if the decision is "we're not doing it" then that's ok, the community will keep doing what it has always done.  But on behalf of all the other players of this awesome game as much as I do, I really hope you give this one some serious consideration.

[DerekL1963]

3 hours ago, Strych74 said:

There is a clear and unequivocal demand from the user group that this is a functionality change that they want to see included at the base level of the game.

There's a lot of clear and unequivocal demands for a large number of different user groups within the playerbase.  Some of them are possible.  Many of them are mutually exclusive.

The problem every dev team faces is sorting out which ones will actually provide the best "bang for the buck" - which ones will please the most and liquid off the fewest.  The real problem is actually determining the views of "the most"...