[1.9.1+ / Kopernicus] The Vulture System - A new star system.

[Livaco]

This project has been discontinued for reasons I am keeping private.
All downloads have been removed and no support will be given.

The Vulture System

The Vulture Star is a main sequence star similar but more massive to Kerbol. It holds 6 planets, all with individual backstories. The Vulture System is my first ever full Kerbal Space Program project, taking about a month to complete.
Github Repo
Donate

Bodies
The Vulture System has 6 planets and 13 moons, making for a total of 19 celestial bodies in total. 

Spoiler

• Abyss
  • Chasm
• Cyclone
  • Elder
  • Icaro
• Palleo
  • Overwatch
• Lucid
  • Trivector
  • Plaxon
  • Ruby
  • Acon
• Saber
  • Rega
  • Opon
  • Exo
  • Bain
• Desolation
  • Friend

Features

• 19 detailed bodies with their own individual stories and high amounts of care put into creation.
• Two gas giants with detailed moons.
• Hints toward life and the previous existence of it in the system.
• Scatterer / EVE support.
• DistantObject support.
• PlanetShine support.

Installation
Requirements:

• Kopernicus (Should also work with the Bleeding Edge however unrecommended).
• The Mod Itself  (Download Latest Release Here)
• Scatterer - Not technically requied, but due to an unfixable bug with Kopernicus is extremely recommended to prevent this from appearing.

You simply need to install Kopernicus (and it's dependencies) + the Vulture System into your KSP's GameData folder. Vulture should work with 1.9.1+

Recommended Mods:

• EVE - Adds clouds to both Palleo and Desolation. Make sure to get the stock configs (BoulderCo Folder) for this too! 
• Planet Shine - Makes your vessels reflect the colors of the planet.
• DistantObject - Makes the planets visible from a distance.
• Interstellar Extended - Interstellar travel parts.

These mods follow a similar installation process.

Credits

• Kopernicus Discord Server - Main place I went to for help and feedback. Great community.
• @Caps Lock - Made Vulture's sunflare and gave a lot of feedback.

Support
The best way to get support regarding Vulture is to make a reply on the forum thread (where you are now), or to make an issue on the github repo.

Cool Screenshots

Spoiler

These screenshots were all taken with all required and recommended mods installed.

Abyss and it's moon Chasm.

Cyclone.

Palleo.

Lucid with Trivector doing a photobomb.

Plaxon, a moon of Lucid.

Acon, another moon of Lucid.


Saber.

Bain, a moon of Saber.

Desolation.

Licence
Squad requires all addons be released with a licence. Vulture is licenced under Apache License 2.0. For a basic rundown you can go here.

Edited February 26, 2023 by Livaco
Discontinuation

[Maple Kerman]

Congrats on the release!

[Spaceman.Spiff]

Wow! Palleo is Gorgeous!

[kylelander]

Amazing! also, third.

[Souptime]

Just downloaded, lookin good so far! gonna boot up KSP to give my review but judging off already released pics i give a 5/5

[Livaco]

Thanks for all the amazing responses so far, wasn't expecting this to be as well received as it has so it's really nice to see

I've been made aware of a bug about timewarp not working around either Lucid or Saber (the gas giants). I did some digging and this is unfortunately an issue with Kopernicus itself and not Vulture, so there's not much I can do about it. Kopernicus Devs are aware so once I have an update I'll let you guys know!
For now the best solution seems to just be to go into the tracking station to timewarp, as that seems to still work fine. Sorry about this!

[Souptime]

Oh yeah, im keeping this

6/5

[ss8913]

does this pack *replace* the stock system or add a new solar system that you can fly to (ie with KSPIE and such) ?

[R-T-B]

37 minutes ago, ss8913 said:

does this pack *replace* the stock system or add a new solar system that you can fly to (ie with KSPIE and such) ?

adds.

10 hours ago, Livaco said:

Thanks for all the amazing responses so far, wasn't expecting this to be as well received as it has so it's really nice to see

I've been made aware of a bug about timewarp not working around either Lucid or Saber (the gas giants). I did some digging and this is unfortunately an issue with Kopernicus itself and not Vulture, so there's not much I can do about it. Kopernicus Devs are aware so once I have an update I'll let you guys know!
For now the best solution seems to just be to go into the tracking station to timewarp, as that seems to still work fine. Sorry about this!

With the latest release, changing template to Jool should fix.

[Livaco]

13 hours ago, ss8913 said:

does this pack *replace* the stock system or add a new solar system that you can fly to (ie with KSPIE and such) ?

It adds a new star system, doesn't replace it. It's ~40 irl au away from the sun.

12 hours ago, R-T-B said:

adds.

With the latest release, changing template to Jool should fix.

This fixed the timewarp bug but broke a few other things lol. I've messaged you on the Kopernicus discord about it
EDIT: Please for now stay on the previous release of Kopernicus. A lighting bug will appear if you use the latest.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Livaco

[Mike Mars]

This is beautiful.

What a work of art.

Thank you so much for this. I can't wait to try it.

MM

[R-T-B]

11 hours ago, Livaco said:

It adds a new star system, doesn't replace it. It's ~40 irl au away from the sun.

This fixed the timewarp bug but broke a few other things lol. I've messaged you on the Kopernicus discord about it
EDIT: Please for now stay on the previous release of Kopernicus. A lighting bug will appear if you use the latest.

The lighting bug is being worked on now, missed that, thanks for reporting.  I'll update this when it is fixed.

[R-T-B]

Unfortunately this is not a fixable bug.  Your system is far enough away it falls victim to stock lighting system limitations (stock lighting fails somewhere around ~25 AU's unfortunately).  If you ever had it working, contact me because I'm curious how.  In short, it'd be a major breakthrough in whatever is broken in stock lighting if you ever had this working.

The only work around I know of is to use scatterer for lighting.  Latest releases (as well as past ones) work fine then.  Regards.

Edited January 31, 2021 by R-T-B

[Livaco]

Alright, I've marked Scatterer as a dependency. Anyone who has played the mod should also install it now after updating their Kopernicus. Sorry about this.

[airbrushmatt]

Hi can anyone help ? ive installed this with Kopernicus and i dont see them, not sure what im doing wrong.

[R-T-B]

6 hours ago, airbrushmatt said:

Hi can anyone help ? ive installed this with Kopernicus and i dont see them, not sure what im doing wrong.

It's about 40AU's away.  Did you zoom way out on the map?

[Livaco]

v1.0.2 is out now with some more atmorim fixes. Thanks to @R-T-B for continuing to work to help fix this stuff along with @Caps Lock for writing a patch used inside the release.
You can get it from here.

[OrbitalManeuvers]

Do you have any plans to release a version of this that does replace the home system? 

[Livaco]

35 minutes ago, OrbitalManeuvers said:

Do you have any plans to release a version of this that does replace the home system? 

I don't plan to but if it becomes requested enough I will once I know what I'm doing to do it (replacing Kerbin is a lot harder than you think - lots of arguing with PQS configs). I've actually already started work on a new planet pack that will replace the stock system that I'm using to learn this process.

Edited February 1, 2021 by Livaco

[Livaco]

Vulture v1.0.3 just got released. This release adds brand new cloudmaps to Palleo and Desolation, making them look better + removing the dependency on BoulderCo. If you don't play with EVE you can ignore this.

Spoiler

Palleo Before/After

 

Desolation Before/After

Enjoy!

[ss8913]

I have a few questions:

1. Why is the system roughly 2/3 of a light year from Kerbin?  why not an even 1LY (or close enough, gauging from Kerbol to Vulture)?  it's about 6 TM as-is, whereas 9 TM ~= 1 LY.  Just curious.
2. I'm using scatterer.  Lighting still seems oddly flat in orbit, and near/on Palleo, the light is *super intense* from the star... known issue?  that just the way it is?
3.  Why is the sky always black on Palleo, even on the surface?  Is that a thing that can happen given the atmospheric composition?  Wasn't expecting that, tbh.
4. Why can I not focus view on any of the planets, or Vulture itself?  since I can't zoom into the system when I'm at Kerbin, I just point the FTL drive at the star first, until I'm close enough, and then do a secondary jump to my destination, which is fine, but I can't click on vulture and 'focus view' like I can with bodies in the Kerbol system.. is this a bug or intentional?

 

Thanks for making this btw; unlike many other planet packs, I see you took the time to build biome maps and such, so that the geography from orbit and on the ground agrees with each other, and there are proper resource maps and SCANSat data/etc... that helps

[Livaco]

15 hours ago, ss8913 said:

I have a few questions:

1. Why is the system roughly 2/3 of a light year from Kerbin?  why not an even 1LY (or close enough, gauging from Kerbol to Vulture)?  it's about 6 TM as-is, whereas 9 TM ~= 1 LY.  Just curious.
2. I'm using scatterer.  Lighting still seems oddly flat in orbit, and near/on Palleo, the light is *super intense* from the star... known issue?  that just the way it is?
3.  Why is the sky always black on Palleo, even on the surface?  Is that a thing that can happen given the atmospheric composition?  Wasn't expecting that, tbh.
4. Why can I not focus view on any of the planets, or Vulture itself?  since I can't zoom into the system when I'm at Kerbin, I just point the FTL drive at the star first, until I'm close enough, and then do a secondary jump to my destination, which is fine, but I can't click on vulture and 'focus view' like I can with bodies in the Kerbol system.. is this a bug or intentional?

 

Thanks for making this btw; unlike many other planet packs, I see you took the time to build biome maps and such, so that the geography from orbit and on the ground agrees with each other, and there are proper resource maps and SCANSat data/etc... that helps

1) The system was intended to be a beginner system that most/all people could reach. If people want me to extend it out I could easily however.
2) Checked this out, while the surface is WAY to reflective (which I can fix with alongside an gas giant revamp I'm planning, wink wink), it doesn't seem to be "flat" - there's definitely shadows and highlights.

3) Yeeted a plane to Palleo and I agree it looks kinda black, especially for the pressure it has. I'll fix this like above.

4) I'm able to focus just fine, if you can't this sounds like a bug with Kopernicus more than Vulture.

 

Thank you for the kind words  
If you have any other questions just shoot them my way.

[modus]

On 1/31/2021 at 10:04 AM, Livaco said:

Alright, I've marked Scatterer as a dependency. Anyone who has played the mod should also install it now after updating their Kopernicus. Sorry about this.

Is the lighting bug still present with the latest version of kopernicus or should I ask over there?

Edited March 30, 2021 by modus
Spelling

[ss8913]

10 hours ago, Livaco said:

1) The system was intended to be a beginner system that most/all people could reach. If people want me to extend it out I could easily however.
2) Checked this out, while the surface is WAY to reflective (which I can fix with alongside an gas giant revamp I'm planning, wink wink), it doesn't seem to be "flat" - there's definitely shadows and highlights.

3) Yeeted a plane to Palleo and I agree it looks kinda black, especially for the pressure it has. I'll fix this like above.

4) I'm able to focus just fine, if you can't this sounds like a bug with Kopernicus more than Vulture.

 

Thank you for the kind words  
If you have any other questions just shoot them my way.

I should have been more specific - the light is flat on my vessel, moreso than the planet itself;  AVP/EVE may have something to do with things?  not sure.  On the dark side of palleo, my craft is lit up like Kerbin daytime, and Palleo daytime the sunlight is so intense I have trouble discerning some parts from each other... I'll see if I can get some screenshots of this.
The focus thing, yeah, could be Kopernicus; I'm using the 'bleeding edge' version so ... perhaps I should just chalk it up to that   thanks!

[Livaco]

17 hours ago, modus said:

Is the lighting bug still present with the latest version of kopernicus or should I ask over there?

Yes, this bug is still present with the latest version by the looks of things. Scatterer is still a dependency.

7 hours ago, ss8913 said:

I should have been more specific - the light is flat on my vessel, moreso than the planet itself;  AVP/EVE may have something to do with things?  not sure.  On the dark side of palleo, my craft is lit up like Kerbin daytime, and Palleo daytime the sunlight is so intense I have trouble discerning some parts from each other... I'll see if I can get some screenshots of this.
The focus thing, yeah, could be Kopernicus; I'm using the 'bleeding edge' version so ... perhaps I should just chalk it up to that   thanks!

Tried it out with Scatterer and EVE and I'm still not seeing this.

Same during the daytime. (just pretend those cloud seams don't exist for now)

 

Unsure what's causing that issue honestly. You mentioned AVP, maybe that could be the cause of it.