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[1.12.*] Deadly Reentry v7.9.0 The Barbie Edition, Aug 5th, 2021


Starwaster

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Quite a bit of content has been removed, due to:

  • unsupported accusations
  • insulting/disrespectful personal remarks
  • going blatantly off-topic

Folks, please play nice.  There is nothing wrong with raising valid concerns, but there are right ways and wrong ways to go about doing this.

 

What's going on

In the current case, a concern has been raised about the potential presence of a computer virus in a forked version of the mod.  This was reported by just one user, whose antivirus software triggered on the downloaded DLL.  Other users have suggested that it may be a false alarm, and indicated that their own scans found nothing wrong.

Clearly, if a virus were present, that would be a big deal, so if someone has a concern about that, of course it's a good idea to raise the issue so that it can be addressed ASAP.  However, "my antivirus flagged something" is only the start of the story (and might be a false alarm), and it's important to understand what to do next in a situation like that.

Here the major do's and don'ts.

 

What you should do

If you have concerns about a potential virus in a KSP mod download, here is what you should do:

  1. Report the post, along with a note detailing your concerns.  This will get the moderator team to have a look as soon as possible.
  2. Do a reasonable amount of due diligence on your part to collect evidence to support your assertion.  "My antivirus flagged it" is one useful data point, of course, but that by itself is not enough evidence to leap to conclusions.  There are additional steps you can take, which I'll get into below.
  3. Do not make public accusations.  If action needs to be taken, that's what moderators are for.

 

Due diligence when reporting:  Help us help you

If you have concerns about the potential presence of a virus-- for example, "my antivirus software just flagged it"-- then here's what you can do to help, when reporting the issue to us.  Technical details in spoiler.

Spoiler

This is stuff that you can add to your report when you contact the moderators about it.  (If you don't add this, then we'll likely be PMing you anyway to ask you for this information, so you might as well get it out of the way-- the faster you can move on this, the faster we can take action if it's needed.)

  1. Provide all relevant information.
    • Don't just tell us "my antivirus flagged it".   Specifically, what did it flag?
    • What was the actual warning message?  (Quoted verbatim, please-- if we can google that message to understand it better, we can work faster.)
    • If it detected a specific virus... what virus did it detect?
    • What anti-virus software are you using, and what version?
    • Anything else you think may be helpful for us to know?
  2. Build it yourself and see what happens.
    • Every mod is required to provide its full source code.
    • You can build the DLL yourself, with just a few mouse clicks.  1. Install Visual Studio (it's free). 2. Download the mod's source code. 3. Build it.
    • After you build the DLL, try scanning the DLL that you built and see whether your antivirus triggers on it.
    • Which of the following two cases applies?  This is an extremely valuable data point, please let us know.
      • Possibility #1:  "The antivirus triggers on both the DLL I downloaded, and the DLL I built."
      • Possibility #2:  "The antivirus triggers on the DLL I downloaded, but not on the DLL I built."
    • If it's the former... then this means either that you're getting a false positive in your antivirus, or that whatever's triggering it is present in the source code (which we can easily examine for problems).
    • If it's the latter... then that means more investigation is indicated and we'll likely have follow-up questions.
  3. Verify that what you're testing is actually what you downloaded.
    • This is to eliminate the possibility that you might have downloaded a clean file and then it got infected on your machine.
    • Check whether the DLL that gave you the virus warning is byte-for-byte identical with the version that's available for download.
    • A handy way to do this, on a Windows machine, is to use certutil.  Example: from a Windows command prompt, type the following (substituting the name of the DLL in question, of course):  certutil -hashfile SomeMod.DLL SHA512
    • This is also helpful because it lets other people verify your results-- for example, if they can't spot any virus, they need a way to check whether the thing they're looking at is the same thing that you're looking at.

If you can do the above and provide that information when you're reporting the problem, you will greatly help us in rapidly evaluating the situation and determining whether we need to take action.  Thanks!

 

What not to do

It is incredibly inappropriate to level accusations against people, for a variety of reasons:

  • There might not actually be a virus in the DLL.  It is not uncommon for anti-virus programs to give false alarms.
  • Even if there's a virus in the DLL on your system, it's not guaranteed that it came from the download.  Maybe you downloaded a clean DLL and then it got infected on your system.
  • Even if there were a virus in the download, you don't know it's deliberate on the part of the poster.  They could have been an innocent victim.  So it's not appropriate to level accusations.

So don't do that, please.

 

We now return you to your mod thread in progress

Thread is now unlocked.  Play nice, folks. ;)

Please, no further "is there a virus?" discussion here.  We're actively following up on the matter privately, and will post a status update here when we have a resolution one way or the other.  If anyone has relevant evidence of a problem, please contact the moderator team directly.

(For the nonce, the status remains "one single user has reported a hit on their antivirus software, other users find it clean, no further confirmation available."  If anyone has any concerns about downloading it, remember that the source code is publicly posted so you can always just grab the source and build it yourself.  Speaking as a KSP modder myself, I've looked at the code changes, and @vader111's updates look innocuous to me.)

Thank you for your understanding.

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On 3/28/2021 at 11:17 AM, vader111 said:

While i have no idea when Starwaster will return, i have taken the option to recomplie and release the newest version of Deadly Reentry myself since Starwaster seems to be Busy IRL.

https://github.com/vader111/DeadlyReentry/releases/tag/7.8.1


Made for KSP 1.8 to 1.11, I have tested it for 1.8 and 1.9 but not for 1.10 & 1.11

License is included in the Deadly Reentry Folder.

Much thanks for the recompilation!

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
2 hours ago, NathanKell said:

I've updated the head repo (from which this was forked) for KSP 1.10+ and sent a Netkan PR.

https://github.com/KSP-RO/DeadlyReentry/releases/tag/v8.0.0

So who is going to be the current maintainer?  

also, is there a set of patches which can be used in the event that someone would want to remove DRE from their game, but not lose any craft because of missing parts?

Edited by linuxgurugamer
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20 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

So who is going to be the current maintainer?  

also, is there a set of patches which can be used in the event that someone would want to remove DRE from their game, but not lose any craft because of missing parts?

1. Presumably the KSP-RO team, since it's a KSP-RO repo now.

2. Uh, you can't really run MM patches _backwards_. Who is to say what a part's original maxTemp was? If you just want to keep the parts, nuke everything in the DRE folder other than Parts, and rename the DRE folder to something else so it doesn't trip MM's NEEDS clause.

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Hello boys,

I installed on the fresh 1.12 ksp my preferred mods, such as FAR, kerbalism... but deadly reentry does not seem to work.

After installation with ckan, it says during the launching of the game that " one mod is not compatible with the version of the game : deadeadly reentry "... whereas I installed with ckan the last version of the mod.

An idea ? May I install something else with it ? 

Should I install it manually?

Far and kerbalism work like a charm, but I miss deadly reentry... 

Thanks !

Edited by gr33nkerbal
Precision - thanks
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On 6/29/2021 at 12:57 AM, gr33nkerbal said:

Hello boys,

I installed on the fresh 1.12 ksp my preferred mods, such as FAR, kerbalism... but deadly reentry does not seem to work.

After installation with ckan, it says during the launching of the game that " one mod is not compatible with the version of the game : deadeadly reentry "... whereas I installed with ckan the last version of the mod.

An idea ? May I install something else with it ? 

Should I install it manually?

Far and kerbalism work like a charm, but I miss deadly reentry... 

Thanks !

Ignore it.  It's just detecting that it was compiled for a different version of KSP and is warning you that there *might* be compatibility issues.

To all,  I am not gone and will be putting out an updated version on DR's official repository.

Edited by Starwaster
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This is my first playthrough with DR installed, and has been working fine up until I've run into this scenario. I have a capsule returning from munar orbit with a 2.5m heat shield, with enough ablator to make it through the worst of reentry but runs out before landing (400/800). The very moment the Ablator resource hits zero the game crashes. I reloaded and tried again with the same result. Hadn't run my ablator dry in this save before now so hadn't been an issue. Can't find any example of this happening to anyone else. Link to player.log

Edited by Tybot
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@Tybot - can confirm. Just had exactly the same problem, although I used 2.5 shield tweak-scaled to 1.875 (but this should not make any difference).  I play KSP 1.11.2 atm.

BTW @Starwaster @NathanKell or anyone interested - any suggestions on how to tweak values one can find in DeadlyReentry_AlternateStarSystems.cfg for a 4x system (namely JSNQ)? Or should stock values be considered realistic? The problem I have is that 400-500 of Ablator I have on 1.875 heat shield is simply not enough for Mun return trajectory in such a system. Or it is but for the price of steep dive with 20+ g, which I'd like to avoid for sake of realism.  I can see a patch for 10x Kerbol - can I use this or will it be too generous for a change?

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@Tybot I’ll check that log out tonight

 

@JebIsDeadBaby try using the DR menu to decrease heating. Try 50% to 75%
 

or go ahead and use the x10 values but increase heating. By default the max limit is 200% but that can be bumped up in the config files. (If the max limits are increased beyond stock then you must ONLY use the DR menu to override heating and never touch the stock menu setting whose max limit I can’t override)

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@Starwaster- on second thought, it probably makes more sense to tweak Ablator values to match realistic thermodynamics rather than to tweak realistic thermodynamics to match abstract Ablator values. Unless thermodynamics in KSP with or without DRE are not realistic to begin with, because maybe they would not work on a smaller scale. So my question is - do default DRE settings reflect some real world material properties and physics? I think I saw some comments regarding real life materials used on Apollo and STS somewhere in the files, so my guess is that DRE is indeed tweaked for realistic behavior.  

Edited by JebIsDeadBaby
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@JebIsDeadBaby 

a little of both actually.  Multiple things get adjusted both in thermodynamics and the heat shield configs. 
 

  • first because lower reentry speed
  • second because much shorter reentry period. 
  • third because KSP players who aren’t playing RO expect  to actually see their heat shield depleted to dangerous levels or else it’s not a deadly reentry.   Realistic levels of shield depletion would be something like 10% depleted for a lunar mission reentry.  Seriously.  So DR by default has shields that suffer serious degradation. 
Edited by Starwaster
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@Tybot Nothing in the log really explicitly singling out DR or stock code that I can see. I.e. no exceptions are being thrown. There is a Unity error mentioned which is unfamiliar to me. And there is another file referenced which it says has more information about the crash. You should find it at %LocalAppData%\Temp\Squad\Kerbal Space Program\Crashes 

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@Starwaster Last question - you suggested lowering reentry heating slider to 75%. Will this affect shields only or heating of all parts? Assuming I properly understand lossExp, lossConst and pyrolysisLossFactor, would tweaking these settings make more sense than just lowering heating or would it be more or less the same thing? Is heating at 100% somewhat realistic (in regard to reentry speed, air density and whatever else matters) or is it pumped up for Kerbol system?

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@JebIsDeadBaby  the slider affects ONLY heating resulting from  supersonic (and above) heating such as you get from reentry. And no, I do not recommend changing the shield config. It's not the same at all; those configs control how the shield responds to heating (temperature threshold and ablation rates) but only the slider will affect all parts such as space plane parts. Maybe after I look into the issue with JNSQ and see what kinds of changes (if any) they've made to physics, I might change my mind about the shields.. For instance, if it's just using the stock thermal settings then physics needs to be addressed. If JNSQ's developers actually paid attention to physics in their x4 system then I'll make changes to the shield myself to let DR shields work properly with JNSQ.

But those fields you're chomping at the bit over should only be changed if you have access to the equation that they are used in and understand what effect they have. ;)

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@Tybot btw I tried reproducing your issue and I can't. I investigated the Unity error from the log (just before your crash) and I just don't see how  Deadly Reentry could be linked. It's an error associated with UnityWebRequest and Deadly Reentry doesn't touch that at all. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

The issue was real and was apparently due, of all things, to a min and max value being flipped on a remap-range call, leading to negative damage being applied. No idea why that crashes KSP, but it seems to (but, annoyingly, only for some people--and clearly not for me or Starwaster). But thankfully (a) @Al2Me6got the crash, and (b) they were kind enough to be a guinea pig and test a bunch of different changes until we figured out what the issue was. In the process I fixed some other issues regardinig casting potentially-null Unity objects to base object and then either accessing them or trying to free them.

Edited by NathanKell
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  • 2 weeks later...
5 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Thank you for updating this for 1.12

however, something is still saying (ModuleManager, maybe) that it isn't compatible.  It's annoying, I wonder if you or @NathanKell can take a look?

Sure! Let me update to the latest MM and rerelease when I get home.

A CKAN install should not result in any compatibility warning however? Did you manually install or install via CKAN?

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@linuxgurugamera CKAN install showed no issues, but I repackaged the archive on github so it ships the latest (4.2.1) ModuleManager, and therefore should be out-of-the-box compatible with KSP 1.12 even on manual installs. You are grabbing from the repo pointed at in CKAN  - https://github.com/KSP-RO/DeadlyReentry/releases/latest - yes?

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