Boodals

Found a minor bug: If you accept a contract to test a part which you haven't unlocked, everything works as intended, you can use the part, its labeled as experimental, etc. But then if you start researching the node to unlock that part, you can't access it at all. It did let me load a save with the part in, run simulations and build (although I didn't actually test either). Tested with 32 bit. Some suggestions: Make simulations run on real time. If I pay for an hour, id like an hour of testing, whether the simulation is sped up or not shouldn't matter. Obviously dial back the times you can use a bit. Perhaps a config for it. Make reverting to launch in simulations not revert the time you have left. You shouldn't be able to just keep restarting the simulation to get more time. Add a way to pay for more time during the simulations, probably at the prompt when you've ran out of time. Make it slightly more expensive to do this though, to discourage people from always selecting the smallest time amount possible. Plus the owners of the simulator wouldn't like you staying longer than you said you would (i'm imagining the simulator isn't owned by the KSC). Perhaps even make the cost increase each time you extend the session. As for upgrade points: Make the cost start of fairly low, but increase with each purchase for both science and funds. That way it'll balance itself, and let people get more upgrades earlier on. Make each GUI remember where you last put them. Its annoying having to move each gui into place each time I start up KSP. Save it to a config file or something. For the launch button, create a new gui piece that totally covers up the old launch button, which looks and works identically to the old one, or change it slightly to be a Build or Simulate button. When you press Build, kick the user out of the VAB/SPH into the main overview. Perhaps another config. For the future, perhaps some integration into Extraplanetary Launchpads, even just to configure the build times/cost to be balanced between both mods (or even better, make new, polished replacement for EL). Loving the mod so far. I'm getting the occasional crash, but much less than I expected with the amount of mods i'm running.

Unfortunately I've already deleted that code, and I cant undo it because I've rebooted my PC. Ill take a look into github for bug tracking. I've never really used it, only to download stuff. Oh, and another request/suggestion (these don't go on github do they?), a position for parts. Id like to be able to adjust the throttle for individual engines via thrust limit based on their position relative to the center of mass to get more control.

So, I've been playing around with kOS for a day now, and I have a few suggestions to improve it. I've been using the pre-release after finding that edit was totally broken/removed in the release version. My first problem was when I was trying to get into a simple orbit, for some reason I couldn't make the ship turn when it was in the air. Long story short, I had SAS on, which was counteracting the ships controls. This seems rather dumb, it makes sense that the SAS should work with the steering, not against it. After I worked that out, I managed to get a small pod with infinite fuel into orbit. Now I'm working on a follower AI autopilot script, which simply controls the vessel to mimic the target ship. This is where I really started to get annoyed. I hear all over the place how kOS is supposed to be a very easy programming language, and in some respects I agree. However, after trying to debug some code where the only error message I get is "Cannot cast from source type to destination type." (or similar), it becomes very tough. I am an experienced programmer, in a variety of languages, and I've never coded in a language that's as unhelpful at debugging than this. At the very least I expected a line number, or what source type cant be cast, but nope. Nothing. Literally the only way I could find to debug what line had the error on was to spam print's in between each line. Okay that's most the ranty stuff over. In my autopilot script, I've been trying to search over all the targets and find the one that the player is controlling. I thought I could just find the ship that doesn't have SAS on, but it seems that SAS (and all other action groups I'm assuming) are global, but changed when the player swaps ships. Could you change that so I could do something along the lines of target:SAS. Failing that, I looked through the documentation (which is very helpful, but kinda hard to navigate), and found the control object type, thinking I could just check the neutral bool to see if the autopilot is active on that ship. But for some reason I simply cant access anything from it on another ship. Okay, so I'll have to do something a bit hacky.. I'll loop through all the engines and check for one that has a thrust limit less than 100, then just remember what ship that is so I can turn it back up afterwards. Now, I haven't done much with lists in kOS, so it might just be my coding, but I keep getting syntax errors for "list engines from aShip in engs", which according to the docs is totally valid. So, to solve all this, could you add a bool for whether the player is controlling a ship, and allow usage of the control object on other ships, I'd like to be able to get the throttle too. Another problem I keep running into is checking if an object exists. I'd like to do something along the lines of "until target { blah. }." or perhaps make a function to check if the parameter is a real object. A minor bug I found is the vecDraw lines are always starting at the players active ship instead of the ship of the kOS unit (and without a way of detecting what ship the player is controlling, I can't make a workaround). Although it hasn't been an issue for me yet, how about a new part that is simply a storage drive, with a much larger capacity? It seems dumb to limit the potential of the mod simply to simulate an assumption (that their technology is limited). Just put it higher in the tech tree, and nobody can complain. Humans don't send ships to other planets, build mining stations to produce rocket fuel that then goes on to fuel giant space stations, so the assumption that kerbals are behind in technology is a bit dumb.. The main reason I initially decided to get this mod was so I could control Infernal Robotics parts. I'd love to see real ways to do so, instead of just action groups (which are very limiting). I know the dev was looking into it, but he hit a snag and couldn't continue (or something). A function to check what type of object something is would be very useful. When searching for potential targets, I have no real way to see if the target object is a planet or a ship. I found having multiple vessels running scripts at once to have kinda strange behavior. The monitor stays open when changing ships, but any input into it goes onto the active vessel, not the one the monitor was opened for. I'd either like to be able to open multiple monitors from different ships at once, or just have the monitor close when you change ships to prevent confusion. Also, I think you should start aiming towards expandability. I'd love to be able to find parts that are designed to interact with kOS, like range finders and various robotics (similar to gmod's wiremod). I'd love to be able to create my own functions too, although I understand that might be a bit of a leap. Afaik there's no way to get a value out of just running another program. Edit 1: Oh, and a special startup file that automatically gets ran when the kOS unit is loaded would be awesome, so I don't have to type "run blah." every time I reload or whatever. Also, not sure if you could make the current program's progress and variables save between save games. I had more suggestions, but after writing this wall of text, I've forgotten most of them.. Ill edit or post again if I remember them.. And 4 am probably isn't the best time to be trying to remember things..