Angelo Kerman

Ugh, I'm out of likes today! Poor Dongun...

It won't matter what game mode you're in, as long as an asteroid gets created by the game, there's a chance that it will become a komet. I'm also setting up the mod so that when you first run it on an existing save, or start a new save, there's a chance that all existing asteroids will become komets. The default is 30%. You're guaranteed to have at least one komet; the rest of the existing asteroids might or might not become komets.

Ok, next release will have some more debug information that will appear in the console. Once again, converting an asteroid to a komet only happens when the game spawns new asteroids.

Yup, ok, I can look through all the asteroids when you first install the mod and/or start of a new save, and randomly flip a few...

Flipping an asteroid to a komet only applies to newly created asteroids. Maybe the first time you install the mod, it can randomly turn some existing asteroids into komets, but I'd need help to figure out where asteroids that haven't been visited and/or tracked are stored in the save file. It doesn't appear to be as simple as looking up a VESSEL entry... Hm, maybe it is that simple, I appear to have a few asteroids in my persistence file.

Did they exist before? Try changing the chance to 1 and see what you get. I'll also add more debugging info into the next release.

Little to none. You can retrofit existing asteroids into komets. The only danger comes when you uninstall KerbalKomets; the komet will once again become an asteroid, and its size and shape, which are procedurally generated, will change. I'll update the OP with that info. Yup! During alpha, you have the ability to right-click on an asteroid in physics-range, and press the "Turn Into Komet" button. Once we're out of alpha, that feature will be turned off, but you can easily go to the MM_PotatoRoid.cfg file, find the ModuleKomet entry, and set "debugMode = true" to turn on the ability. For the sake of convenience, maybe I can add a debug screen at the Space Center that tracks all existing asteroids and lets you flip them to komets. You'd have to sort through each asteroid (and that would be a pain, given the belt of asteroids you have), but it's better than nothing. Ok, added this to the OP: Important Note Asteroids are procedurally generated. Should you decide to uninstall KerbalKomets, all existing asteroids that you've visited with a spacecraft will be rebuilt into a new size and shape. Be sure to plan accordingly! The only way to circumvent this is to edit your persistence.sfs file and replace all instances of ModuleKomet with ModuleAsteroid. There's no other way around this that I know of..

No problem, I figured that if SQUAD wasn't going to create comets in the game, then I would. In the Tracking Station, you can tell if an object is an asteroid or a komet by two things: its name, which begins with the prefix "Kmt.:" and the shape of its orbit, which is highly eccentric (non-circular). As you do with asteroids, track the object in the Tracking Station. Again, if I can make it happen, then a newly discovered komet will be tracked automatically for you since they're pretty rare. You don't need to visit the komet in order for it to become a komet; all the work is done for you so that by the time you rendezvous a ship with the komet, it will have a proper komet name, have its resources switched to be more komet-like, have its sample experiment changed from what you get with asteroids to what you get with komets, and so on. It will definitely work with OPM and Kopernicus. Again, I don't know about Custom Asteroids; it may have its own way of making comets.

Thanks! I was disappointed when the secret project that SQUAD was working on turned out to be a creative writing contest instead of what appeared to be adding a comet into the game, so I decided to make one. I've never used Custom Asteroids, so I don't know how that mod works. But it might work, see below. How It Works KerbalKomets works by converting asteroids into komets. As such, they are tracked like asteroids from the Tracking Center. Komet orbits are highly eccentric, so when you track an asteroid, you'll know that it's a komet by the shape of its orbit and long orbital period. You can also tell by the name of the object; komets begin with the "Kmt.:" prefix while asteroids begin with the "Ast.:" prefix. Each time an asteroid is created, there is a 5% chance that it will be converted into a komet. You can increase or decrease the chance of converting into a komet by changing the presenceChance field in the Settings.cfg file. By default it's set to 95; on a roll of 1-100, you need a 95 or greater for an asteroid to flip to a komet. Right now, KerbalKomets is in alpha state, meaning that there's more work to do. One of the tricky ones is changing the asteroid texture to resemble a komet; it's not that simple to do. The other thing I'm still working on is the resource conversion; when you have Community Resource Pack installed, you get more resources than just Ore. Unfortunately, KSP's poor API documentation makes it difficult to determine how to correctly modify the resources that the komet has so that there's more Water than Ore. I think I have it working, but it needs testing. I think one additional feature would be to send an in-game mail to the player when a new komet has been discovered. If possible, maybe have the Tracking Center automatically begin tracking the komet would be helpful as well. Finally, having the ability in-game, through the Settings->Difficulties screen, to change the presenceChance of finding komets would be helpful as well. Because KerbalKomets is in alpha, you can right-click on any asteroid you visit and press the "Turn Into Komet" button. At that point, the asteroid will be renamed using a naming scheme derived from the International Astronomical Union's naming convention, its resources will contain a high percentage of Water (if you have Community Resource Pack installed), its orbit will shift, and it will begin generating a particle trail.

Edmond’s Komet Discovered “It’s truly exciting news,” says Walt Kerman, head of Public Relations at the Kerbal Space Center. “The Sentinel telescope,” Walt said, referring to the SENTINEL Infrared Telescope, a special instrument designed to hunt for asteroids that might harm Kerbin, “discovered something new. We found a komet! We’re calling it Edmond’s Komet, after Edmond Kerman, who accurately predicted its orbit.” Astronomer, physicist, and mathematician Edmond Kerman was attempting to use Newton Kerman’s laws of motion to predict where an asteroid would appear so that it could be targeted and identified by the Sentinel telescope. But what he found was no asteroid. “The readings were all wrong,” Edmond said, “it had a long particle trail flowing off of it. No other asteroid had ever done that before. But we finally determined that the particle trail consists of water vapor. “I wanted to call it Edmon’s Giant Space Snowball,” he continued, “because that’s what it is. A giant snowball in space, with water vapor out-gassing into the vacuum and forming a giant tail as it orbits near Kerbol. But when I wrote my comment on the printout, somebody misinterpreted what I wrote, then a spellchecker failed, and before you know it, my ‘Comment: Giant Space Snowball’ became known as a komet.” “Never before have we seen such a phenomenon,” says renowned theoretical physicist Albert Kerman. “The very notion of a komet is so new, our instruments still label them as asteroids. It’s as if someone thought a secret project was going to be a komet, got disappointed that it wasn’t, and decided to make one. But in reality, we just weren’t looking in the right spots to discover one.”

Latest Release (GitHub) Latest Release (Spacedock) Source Code Edmond’s Komet Discovered “It’s truly exciting news,” says Walt Kerman, head of Public Relations at the Kerbal Space Center. “The Sentinel telescope,” Walt said, referring to the SENTINEL Infrared Telescope, a special instrument designed to hunt for asteroids that might harm Kerbin, “discovered something new. We found a komet! We’re calling it Edmond’s Komet, after Edmond Kerman, who accurately predicted its orbit.” Astronomer, physicist, and mathematician Edmond Kerman was attempting to use Newton Kerman’s laws of motion to predict where an asteroid would appear so that it could be targeted and identified by the Sentinel telescope. But what he found was no asteroid. “The readings were all wrong,” Edmond said. “It had a weird orbit. It wasn't as rocky as it should be. It had a long particle trail flowing off of it. No other asteroid had a particle trail. We finally determined that the trail consisted of water vapor. “I wanted to call it Edmon’s Giant Space Snowball,” he continued, “because that’s what it is. A giant snowball in space, with water vapor sublimating into the vacuum and forming a giant tail as it orbits near Kerbol. But when I wrote my comment on the printout, somebody misinterpreted what I wrote, then a spellchecker failed, and before you know it, my ‘Comment: Giant Space Snowball’ became known as a komet.” “Never before have we seen such a phenomenon,” says renowned theoretical physicist Albert Kerman. “The very notion of a komet is so new, our instruments still treat them like asteroids. We track them like asteroids, our older sensors still see them as asteroids, and it's only after careful analysis that we are able to determine their true nature. We'll probably have to put out a press release when we discover a new one to avoid confusion...” Ever wanted to have komets orbiting your solar system? With KerbalKomets, now you can! This modlet adds the ability to transform asteroids into komets! Features include: Komet tails! Newly created asteroids have a random chance to become komets. Optional support for Community Resource Pack (CRP). With CRP installed, komets are mostly water. Unique komet names. komet-specific surface sample results. How It Works KerbalKomets works by converting asteroids into komets. As such, they are tracked like asteroids from the Tracking Center. Komet orbits are highly eccentric, so when you track an asteroid, you'll know that it's a komet by the shape of its orbit and its long orbital period. You can also tell by the name of the object; komets begin with the "Kmt." prefix while asteroids begin with the "Ast." prefix. Each time an asteroid is created, there is a slight chance that it will be converted into a komet. You can increase or decrease the chance of converting into a komet by changing the Komet Discovery Chance field on the Settings->Difficulty->Kerbal Komets tab (see image below). Important Note If you are in Career mode, you won't be able to discover komets until your Tracking Station can detect asteroids.. Right now you can manually convert an asteroid to become a komet. When alpha is done, that ability will be turned off. There are bound to be issues. Screenshots Acknowledgements Module Manager by Sarbian License

As a 3.75m crew capsule, it seats 6.

Thanks I've got that mod, definitely helped during my investigation. Trying to grab the "Cube" transform doesn't work, unfortunately. DebugStuff shows the transform as Squad/Parts/Misc/PotatoRoid/Cube(Clone). I've written some code to get to that "Cube(Clone)" transform, but I'm still not seeing the texture replacement. Here's the code I have: Transform potatoRoid = this.part.gameObject.transform.Find("model"); Transform childTransform; if (potatoRoid == null) { Debug.Log("[ModuleKerbalKomet] - potatoRoid is null."); return; } Texture kometTexture = GameDatabase.Instance.GetTexture(kometTextureURL, false); if (kometTexture == null) { Debug.Log("[ModuleKerbalKomet] - kometTexture is null."); return; } Renderer renderer = potatoRoid.GetComponent<Renderer>(); for (int index = 0; index < potatoRoid.childCount; index++) { childTransform = potatoRoid.GetChild(index); if (childTransform.name.Contains("Cube")) { renderer = childTransform.GetComponent<Renderer>(); if (renderer != null) { Debug.Log("[ModuleKerbalKomet] - Found renderer, changing texture for " + childTransform.name); renderer.material.SetTexture("_MainTex", kometTexture); } else { Debug.Log("[ModuleKerbalKomet] - Can't find Renderer"); } } } I'm hoping someone from SQUAD can help me figure out how to change the asteroid texture, as the above code compiles and runs and changes the Renderer texture, but the asteroid texture doesn't change. I've verified that kometTexture is a valid texture that's loaded into the game.

MOLE uses PartUpgrades heavily:

Loving the airship adventures! Interesting to read about the real world Norge as well.

I'm pretty sure I can change the texture on an asteroid, and I know how to dynamically change textures in KSP, but does anybody know the name of the transform for the asteroid model itself? Basically I need the name of the mesh so I can call SetTexture on the Renderer. Also, what is the name of the texture file for the rocky asteroid texture (and for that matter, magic boulder)? Anybody know? @JPLRepo, can you shed some light on this? Thanks for your help.

The TERRAIN is equivalent to the stock M-700 planetary scanner. Unlock the planet's resources by sending your TERRAIN into polar orbit and running the scan. The Pathfinder Geology Lab is equivalent to the stock surface scanner. Use it to unlock the local biome's resources. To find a good spot, SCANSat can help you out.

Very cool, congrats on the release! Love the artwork and design.

How Do Astronauts Wear Their Helmets? The second most asked question to all astronauts beyond how do they go to the bathroom in space, is how do they wear their helmets? The helmet is a vital component of an astronaut’s spacesuit. It keeps the air we breathe in, and the vacuum of space out. Its visor offers unparalleled visibility while blocking the harmful rays of Kerbol. But as any kerbal can tell you, our arms are too short to reach the tops of our heads, so just how do the astronauts wear their helmets? Do they use mechanical arms? Are the helmets equipped with Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters? Do they get help? This investigative journalist attempted to find out. To test the mechanical arm theory, while touring Kerbal Space Center, I examined the insides of the crew capsules used by the astronauts as well as the Hitchhiker habitat and MP-LG-2 Mobile Processing Lab. There were no indications of mechanical arms mounted to the insides or tucked away in some storage drawer. Instead, storage containers held items like trash, garbage, and rubbish. Next I looked at one of the spacesuits used by the astronauts, and sure enough, the helmet had no RCS thrusters that let the astronaut pilot it and dock it to the suit collar. The only possible conclusion is that they get help. That would make sense for the three-kerbal Mk1-2, but what about the Mk1? Or the Mk3 cockpit, when only one astronaut is aboard? “It’s classified,” is all Bill Kerman, one of the "Original Four" astronauts, would say on the subject. Why, do they use alien technology from some crashed flying saucer to wear their helmets? Unfortunately, for now, the answer remains a mystery. - Mike Kerman, KBC News

Try the KSPedia.

Just like with the stock experiments, you can look in, I think it's the science buildings. It's been awhile since I've perused that screen though.

That's great information, thank you

Unfortunately, I didn't bring the right files with me this evening, so I did some concept work on my Mars Excursion Module- inspired "Estonian" Duna Excursion Module: What's nice is that the command pod can be Orion-like.

Although I don't have plans for a hab like in The Martian, I am doing some planning for Project Sandcastle. Basically, I want to 3D print bases using local materials, like NASA wants to do. It's something I've had on the books since I first started Pathfinder...

Very cool to have bits of RL history sewn into your story. Looking forward to reading more- and planning some conformal solar arrays for the Heisenberg.