Hacki

May 15, 2018

I have a feature request, kinda:

I'd like to have a display that shows the distance between the target and the vessel at the given time.

This display would be useful for setting up an intercept. With it, you can tweak a maneuver node to make the distance smaller until you have an intercept.

I actually wrote some code that does this: https://github.com/alismatales/KerbalSlingshotter/commit/f14685d6616121e36a1b5de6ac0ebbf539d03109

Looks like this:

Distance 46 million km:

Down to 9 million:

826.000 km:

And 171 km:

The last one at a flyby distance of 171km should show and intercept or closest approach marker, but KSP doesnt for some reason. Actually, i think that will crash into the surface of eeloo since its got a 210km radius.. Cant get much closer than that.

It might be useful for other kinds of missions as well, since KSPs closest approach and intercept markers are flaky sometimes.

Another advantage is that it allows to you set when the flyby will be precisely by playing around with the desired time.

May 12, 2018

13 hours ago, Mark Kerbin said:

It's not bad design to require a crew cabin

Yeah, thats not what i said.

May 11, 2018

Quote

There would always some kind of limitation to create "perfect" contract configuration.

But if you intentionally left it like it is, that would be bad game design. The contract demands a crew cabin. Theres a crew cabin on your plane. It does not fulfill the requirement. Somebody with no coding / mod development experience will have no idea why and be frustrated.

If there is no way to recognize all crew cabins, you could change the contract to "have a stock crew cabin" or "have crew cabin from manufacturer x".

I for one solved it by tweakscaling a mk1 crew cabin down to 10% so it doesnt take up much space or weight and stuck it somewhere to the fuselage.

May 10, 2018

Bug? Report:

The contracts "KSC Airlines: Flight 102" and 103 have a requirement "have a crew cabin", and they check that looking for the stock mk1, mk2 or mk3 crew cabin on the plane.

That means crew cabin parts from mods such as airplane plus dont work for those contracts.

I dont have a solution other than ditching the crew cabin requirement, since checking for all possible crew cabins of all possible mods might be too much, and theres nothing unique about crew cabins, that wont be met by a command pod / cockpit.

May 3, 2018

I'm saying there is no upper size limit. I can manually enter 9999999999 as a deployment diameter for all parachutes, resulting in a part weighing 17,000,000,000,000,000 tons

I think thats more likely a bug in RealChute itself, but that mod seems to be out of a maintainer as well.

May 3, 2018

With FAR and RealChutes installed, all the parts have identical masses and stats.

I think the fault lies in \KermangeddonIndustries\InlineBallutes\Patches\RealChute.cfg

I get 5 module manager errors on starting the game from that file too:

[LOG 19:55:02.208] [ModuleManager] Applying update KermangeddonIndustries/InlineBallutes/Patches/RealChute/@PART[InlineBallute*] to KermangeddonIndustries/InlineBallutes/Ballute062/PART
[ERR 19:55:02.208] [ModuleManager] Error - Cannot parse variable search when inserting new key caseMass = #$/../mass$

[LOG 19:55:02.208] [ModuleManager] Applying update KermangeddonIndustries/InlineBallutes/Patches/RealChute/@PART[InlineBallute*] to KermangeddonIndustries/InlineBallutes/Ballute125/PART
[ERR 19:55:02.208] [ModuleManager] Error - Cannot parse variable search when inserting new key caseMass = #$/../mass$

[LOG 19:55:02.208] [ModuleManager] Applying update KermangeddonIndustries/InlineBallutes/Patches/RealChute/@PART[InlineBallute*] to KermangeddonIndustries/InlineBallutes/Ballute250/PART
[ERR 19:55:02.208] [ModuleManager] Error - Cannot parse variable search when inserting new key caseMass = #$/../mass$

[LOG 19:55:02.208] [ModuleManager] Applying update KermangeddonIndustries/InlineBallutes/Patches/RealChute/@PART[InlineBallute*] to KermangeddonIndustries/InlineBallutes/Ballute375/PART
[ERR 19:55:02.208] [ModuleManager] Error - Cannot parse variable search when inserting new key caseMass = #$/../mass$

[LOG 19:55:02.208] [ModuleManager] Applying update KermangeddonIndustries/InlineBallutes/Patches/RealChute/@PART[InlineBallute*] to KermangeddonIndustries/InlineBallutes/Ballute500/PART
[ERR 19:55:02.208] [ModuleManager] Error - Cannot parse variable search when inserting new key caseMass = #$/../mass$

Furthermore; and this is not a bug in Inline ballutes, but while i'm at it i might as well mention it..

The upper size limit for the chutes is the highest number you can enter in the dialog:

I edited the cfg to this which seems to work as originally intended:

MATERIAL
{
	name = ZylonBallute
	description = Much stronger and resistant to heat than Kevlar however prone to sunlight radiation thus is only one time use.
	areaDensity = 0.0002278
	dragCoefficient = 0.20
	areaCost = 0.24
	maxTemp = 1100
	specificHeat = 25600
	emissivity = 600
}

@PART[InlineBallute*]:NEEDS[RealChute]:BEFORE[FerramAerospaceResearch]
{
	MODULE
	{
		name = RealChuteModule
		timer = 0
		mustGoDown = false
		cutSpeed = 1
		spareChutes = 3
		@category = none

		PARACHUTE
		{
			ParachuteType = Drag
			material = ZylonBallute
		
			// If preDeployedDiameter & deployedDiameter are present in base configs, then uncomment the following and delete the specific configs on the bottom.
			//preDeployedDiameter = #$/../../MODULE[ModuleParachute]/preDeployedDiameter$
			//deployedDiameter = #$/../../MODULE[ModuleParachute]/deployedDiameter$
			//@preDeployedDiameter *= 3.030524468
			//@deployedDiameter *= 3.030524468 //conversion between uncommented and commented value in example config
			preDeployedDiameter = 29.32
			deployedDiameter = 29.32
			minIsPressure = true
			minPressure = 0.0000001
			deploymentAlt = 120000
			minDeployment = 120000
			cutAlt = -1
			preDeploymentSpeed = 1
			deploymentSpeed = 4
			preDeploymentAnimation = semiDeploy
			deploymentAnimation = fullDeploy
			parachuteName = canopy
			capName = cap
		}
	}

	MODULE
	{
		name = ProceduralChute
	}
	
	!MODULE[ModuleParachute]{}
	!MODULE[ModuleDragModifier]{}
	!MODULE[ModuleDragModifier]{}
}

@PART[InlineBallute062]:NEEDS[RealChute]:BEFORE[FerramAerospaceResearch]
{
	caseMass = #$/../mass$
	@caseMass *= .82 //caseMass of 1 in example is one half mass of 2.5 meter part. assuming this is desired relative mass of casemass.

	@MODULE[RealChuteModule]
	{
		@PARACHUTE
		{

			@preDeployedDiameter = 14.66
			@deployedDiameter = 14.66
		}
	}
}


@PART[InlineBallute125]:NEEDS[RealChute]:BEFORE[FerramAerospaceResearch]
{
	caseMass = #$/../mass$
	@caseMass *= .82 //caseMass of 1 in example is one half mass of 2.5 meter part. assuming this is desired relative mass of casemass.

	@MODULE[RealChuteModule]
	{
		@PARACHUTE
		{
			@preDeployedDiameter = 29.32
			@deployedDiameter = 29.32
		}
	}
}

@PART[InlineBallute250]:NEEDS[RealChute]:BEFORE[FerramAerospaceResearch]
{
	caseMass = #$/../mass$
	@caseMass *= .82 //caseMass of 1 in example is one half mass of 2.5 meter part. assuming this is desired relative mass of casemass.

	@MODULE[RealChuteModule]
	{
		@PARACHUTE
		{
			@preDeployedDiameter = 58.66
			@deployedDiameter = 58.66
		}
	}
}


@PART[InlineBallute375]:NEEDS[RealChute]:BEFORE[FerramAerospaceResearch]
{
caseMass = #$/../mass$
	@caseMass *= .82 //caseMass of 1 in example is one half mass of 2.5 meter part. assuming this is desired relative mass of casemass.

	@MODULE[RealChuteModule]
	{
		@PARACHUTE
		{
			@preDeployedDiameter = 111
			@deployedDiameter = 111
		}
	}
}



@PART[InlineBallute500]:NEEDS[RealChute]:BEFORE[FerramAerospaceResearch]
{
	caseMass = #$/../mass$
	@caseMass *= .82 //caseMass of 1 in example is one half mass of 2.5 meter part. assuming this is desired relative mass of casemass.

	@MODULE[RealChuteModule]
	{
		@PARACHUTE
		{
			@preDeployedDiameter = 147
			@deployedDiameter = 147
		}
	}
}

September 14, 2017

Okay, today i have a question..

How is the Magnetohydrodynamic Electric Generator supposed to work?

Is it supposed to be a brayton cycle thermal generator, charged particle generator, or do both?

As it is its apparently using the charged particle power as an input, but then runs the thermal generator code on that - the output power is dependent on the wasteheat builtup and the efficiency goes down quickly.
I tried to use it with the stellerator fusion reactor, stuck 90GW worth of radiators on it and the efficiency barely scratches 30%

Doesnt appear to be useful in its current state - but perhaps i'm doing something wrong again..

September 13, 2017

1 hour ago, Gnillits said:

How can I produce Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer using an "All in One IRSU Refinery"?

You cant.

The all-in-one refinery only processes interstellar specific resources.

You can add the ability by rewriting the config file for the ISRU though. Or you use engines that use interstellar fuels.

September 5, 2017

2 hours ago, Khalkion said:

Is there any way of showing thess purple things without FAR?

Dont think so, but this does indeed appear to be a problem with FAR. I dont think its something FAR needs to fix though, as it only affects this particular part. So it has to be something about that part thats odd?

September 5, 2017

Tweakscaling the direct cycle nuclear turbojet engine causes some funny stuff... The hitbox? dragbox? is larger than the actual engine, which causes problems when you try to attach RCS blocks to or near the engines - they'll act like they are inside an object and wont fire.

What the larger engine looks like:

What KSP and FAR think the object looks like:

September 1, 2017

Quote

For me the odd numbers on the PGT are a smaller evil than new resource definitions.

Oh sure, its not really an issue. You just look at it and instinctively go "what.. ?"

Perhaps a few words on it in the part description... Not the first time kerbal engineers have invented physics-bending hardware.

September 1, 2017

Quote

True, but 100 liter baloon filled with xenon gas at very low pressure might weigh less than a 100 liter baloon filled with hydrogen at very high pressure.

Right - wouldnt the maximum pressure possible be limited by the vessel holding the resource, and therefore make the whole distinction between different resources moot? If you can store your gas at 100 bar, you'll store it at 100 bar, no matter the gas. I know that technically when using up a gaseous resource the volume should stay the same but the pressure should drop, but you cant really represent that in KSP either.

Thinking about it, i wonder if it is even necessary to have the distinction between liquid and gaseous resources. Just call it "hydrogen" or "ammonia" and be done with it.
That'd make everyones lives a lot easier i think. The users AND yours.

September 1, 2017

6 minutes ago, Eleusis La Arwall said:

Yes, it is true for liquid resources that have a constant density. It is a bit harder for pressurized gases because the density increases a lot. Also it needs to be balanced with the other tanks and this is where the odd numbers come from. We assume each resource is stored at 75% density of the liquid counter-part. Why 75% ? Well it's a start and may change in the future. Suggestions are welcome!

That doesnt make an awful lot of sense to me. A liter is a liter, regardless of what resource. If you fill a 100 liter baloon with xenon gas its gonna be heavier than 100 liters of hydrogen, thats true, but the volume is going to be the same. Density is determined in the resources config file. So what gives?

Dont get me wrong, i like interstellar, i appreciate all your work - but if you ask me, you are unnecessarily overcomplicating things here.
I regularly scratch my head at interstellar and ask myself whether something is a bug or a feature...

September 1, 2017

Whats up with those numbers?

The fuel "units" in KSP are volumetric, so it should be the same for all resources on the same part?

August 30, 2017

The power rating of the tri-alpha fusion reactor needs to be revised.

It can never reach the max. power it is rated with. The maximum power thats displayed in the editor description would only be achievable with a fuel mode that has a NormalisedReactionRate of 1, and none of the aneutronic fusion modes available on the tri alpha have that.

August 25, 2017

Did you mean to disable silicates processing in the ISRUs?

I'll take the liberty to answer that.. Yes.
It was replaced by spodumene processing. Spodumene is a lithium rich ore and is the correct process to extract lithium, while silicates dont usually contain lithium. At least not in large enough quantities to justify making it the main source of lithium.

If that somehow messed up some ongoing savegame of yours, you can re-enable it by opening the file <KSP_INSTALL_DIR>\GameData\WarpPlugin\Parts\Utility\ISRU\ISRU.cfg and un-commenting the lines 346 to 418 (just remove the leading // )

August 25, 2017

May i ask what the point of

deltaTime = (deltaTime >= 1.0 ? deltaTime : 1.0);

in UniversalCrustExtractor, line 757, is?

I know what it does, but i found it irritating enough that the resource extraction rate wouldnt change at low timewarp levels that i started digging around in the code again.

August 24, 2017

I'm a bit baffled again..

I'm working on the fuel swapping in InterstellarFissionMSRGC again.

I found a way to force update the GUI and added handling of symmetry counterparts, but for some reason, any resource i delete gets added back when the vessel is launched.

Even when i remove all the code and just do a part.Resources.clear(); the resources get removed in the editor, but are back at vessel launch.

I tried this with a couple of different interstellar parts that hold resources, and all of them regain their original resource configs on vessel launch.

Any ideas?

August 24, 2017

Ah yes, that helped.

I began implementing it by checking for the debug flag in the OnStart() functions.

August 23, 2017

I had a look at implementing a debug config option to hide the context menu fields, but short of putting the KSPFields inside a bunch of #if clauses, i have no idea how to do it.

And i dont think that would be the proper way.

August 23, 2017

It looks to me like theres some incompatibility between interstellar and simple construction.

When i use the ore tanks that have been set to "rocketparts" with IFS, the rocketparts in the tank arent touched.

The UI loads up the amount of rocketparts in my tanks when construction is started, "consumes" that number, but does not actually remove any parts from the tanks.

I did some digging around in the sourcecode and was quite baffled by this - everything seems to work fine - so just for the heck of it i grabbed the hexcan from full extraplanetary launchpads thats not touched by IFS, and sure enough, that's working as expected.

A bit more testing confirmed: This error occurs only with the three stock ore tanks.

Furthermore, the SC ore tank patch conflicts with interstellar, which uses the ore tanks for some interstellar specific resources.

Any ideas how to resolve this?

August 22, 2017

@FreeThinker

Not sure if you're aware of it so i'll just report it....

1.15.0.7 broke the drills.
In the VAB the drills start out deployed, both retract and deploy buttons are active, and both just cause a short playback of the "drilling" loop.
Same after launch, deploy / retract plays the drilling animation.
Hitting "activate drill" starts the deploy animation over and over, so its more like a hammer than a drill.

So deploy and active animations are mixed up, i already looked into it, but cant figure out why.

The molten salt reactor control window is empty and throws a bunch of nulref exceptions when you open it. Perhaps that is because the fuel definitions are missing?

[ERR 01:57:55.574] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'Tritium' for ReactorFuel Tritium
[ERR 01:57:55.575] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'Tritium' for ReactorFuel Tritium
[ERR 01:57:55.577] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'LithiumDeuteride' for ReactorFuel Deuterium
[ERR 01:57:55.578] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'Tritium' for ReactorFuel Tritium
[ERR 01:57:55.579] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'LithiumDeuteride' for ReactorFuel Deuterium
[ERR 01:57:55.580] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'FusionPellets' for ReactorFuel Helium3
[ERR 01:57:55.581] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'FusionPellets' for ReactorFuel Deuterium
[ERR 01:57:55.583] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'FusionPellets' for ReactorFuel Helium3
[ERR 01:57:55.584] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'FusionPellets' for ReactorFuel Deuterium
[ERR 01:57:55.586] [KSPI] - No definition found for ReactorProduct 'Tritium'
[ERR 01:57:55.586] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'LithiumDeuteride' for ReactorFuel Deuterium
[ERR 01:57:55.588] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'Tritium' for ReactorFuel Tritium
[ERR 01:57:55.589] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'LithiumDeuteride' for ReactorFuel Deuterium
[ERR 01:57:55.590] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'LithiumDeuteride' for ReactorFuel Lithium6
[ERR 01:57:55.591] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'LithiumHydride' for ReactorFuel Hydrogen
[ERR 01:57:55.592] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'LithiumHydride' for ReactorFuel Lithium
[ERR 01:57:55.593] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'Hexaborane' for ReactorFuel Hydrogen
[ERR 01:57:55.594] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'Hexaborane' for ReactorFuel Boron
[ERR 01:57:55.596] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'FusionPellets' for ReactorFuel Deuterium
[ERR 01:57:55.597] [KSPI] - No definition found for resource 'FusionPellets' for ReactorFuel Helium3

It also throws an exception on start:

Module InterstellarFissionNTR threw during OnStart: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at FNPlugin.InterstellarReactor.OnStart (StartState state) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at FNPlugin.InterstellarFissionMSRGC.OnStart (StartState state) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Part.ModulesOnStart () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

Tested with a fresh KSP install and your latestet beta release zip.

August 21, 2017

Concerning Spodumene, perhaps you can check my calculations:

1 Unit of spodumene should turn into (approximately.. rounded down a bit):

0,16 Units of Aluminium
0,015 Units of Li-6
0,19 Units of Li-7
0,4 Units of Silicon
1,36 Units of Liquid Oxygen (Or around 1100 units of gaseous oxygen, since liquid oxygen is ~809 times denser)

I calculated that with the molar masses of the individual components and their resulting volumes per mass.

August 21, 2017

4 hours ago, Hacki said:

It would already be a huge help if the ISRU processes from the the refinery window (haber process, regolith process etc) told you what resources are missing in order to start them.... I might just add that.

Well that was something withing the scope of my abilities, so i did that first.

The ISRU tells you what resources are missing now:

Code can be found on my github.

August 21, 2017

4 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Yes. Please check out how resource switching is accomplished in the Interstellar Fuel Switch. I had the same problems there

Ok!

3 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Indeed many fields were used for debugging purposes, many of them can be made hidden. you can hide them if you want.

How about a "debug" field for the WarpPluginSettings.cfg? That way we can easily turn those fields back on when they are needed.

3 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

I just haven't got around to adding them yet

Thats okay then. I just wanted to know if those were some leftovers from other maintainers / mods, or if they are on a "to be implemented" list.

3 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

It's not really a problem as they can be simply be ignored

Easy for you to say, as you are familiar with interstellar. When you're totally new to it, it is really confusing to be confronted with a lot of resources / materials that have absolutely no use.

It would already be a huge help if the ISRU processes from the the refinery window (haber process, regolith process etc) told you what resources are missing in order to start them.... I might just add that.

3 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Yes it should, could you add it to the ISRU processor?

I can try.

But if i look at it, i'd almost say we could replace silicates with spodumene? The silicates process already creates silicon, oxygen, lithium-6 and -7.

After looking into it a bit, it looks like lithium silicates arent naturally occuring anyways, but a step in the processing of lithium ores?

Profiles

Forums

Developer Articles

KSP2 Release Notes

Bug Reports

Posts posted by Hacki