artwhaley

I like to go the other direction and ask them why something isn't compatible with my 0.23 install. Those were the days.

Technically... KSP links and calls the Mod... not the other way around. So it's actually KSP that ends up violating a license by calling functions inside the plugin... not the modding community. That aside, I'd say that the Assembly C# and Unity DLL's that we are using actually DO come under the System Libraries exception. And my precedent to back that up would be - the number of GPL projects that use an engine such as Unity. In this case, the game becomes the Major Component and Operating System on which the executable plugin is running. The “System Libraries” of an executable work include anything, other than the work as a whole, that (a) is included in the normal form of packaging a Major Component, but which is not part of that Major Component, and (b) serves only to enable use of the work with that Major Component, or to implement a Standard Interface for which an implementation is available to the public in source code form. A “Major Component”, in this context, means a major essential component (kernel, window system, and so on) of the specific operating system (if any) on which the executable work runs, or a compiler used to produce the work, or an object code interpreter used to run it

I don't know if anyone has read the last few pages of the mini-AVC thread but... this is a sore subject. lol. The basic consensus is... if your want to play with an unsupported mod... the least you can do is click the button every time it loads... so that you're reminded NOT to complain and ask for support! It IS annoying as a user who understands how mods work and knows better... but experience has proven that a LOT of people don't get it. There's even someone who's compiled a 'mod' that just attacks AVC. Grumble. As a compromise... I wish it would aggregate everything into a single report at startup! One box that pops up and says "Hey, these 3 come up as incompatible, this one's compatible but has an update, etc." And, or, if there was a network connection available - there could be a way to phone home... so an author could just mark it as compatible if no updates were required? Nyah. Updates are infrequent enough now that I think we can all just click the 'ignore' buttons for a few days after each update. If a mod you want to play ISN'T being updated... keep the thread active and figure out if the license allows someone else to make maintenance updates! Also, Hey Kerbart! Long time no talk!

Hopefully someone smarter will answer in an hour or two... but... To disable the autopilot on an axis, setting the kP, KI, and KD values to zero should do it, I'd think? The AP would still be calculating and would tell you errors, but it wouldn't have any steering authority? To make it respond slower to new commands, you'd decrease the kP and then tune the kI... P responds to immediate errors and I responds to errors over time... so the longer it's wrong the stronger the I correction would be. It sounds to me like you've got a unique use case? What are you trying to do? It might make more sense to roll your own autopilot if you have specific needs? It's not hard to do in KRPC!

But, is that official release backwards compatible with 1.03? Sorry... I couldn't resist. I'd hate for you to think we weren't thinking about you @sarbian. Edit: And now I'm wondering.... how hard it would be for him to make sure that all future versions of Mechjeb automatically lawn dart all of my rockets... but only mine.

I sure think this is the intended behavior. Interesting! I'll try to remember to look into this on the next career save!

My worry was - if the plane slowed down to the speed you set on the autopilot... would it be able to hold altitude? It's possible the autopilot has to increase speed to keep the vertical speed at 0 if there's not enough wing area to make sufficient lift at a lower speed?

I don't know what's up! I tested it out and it worked perfectly. My PID tuning is the same as yours... and with a stock Aeris 3A heading, alt and speed hold all worked as expected. First question - can your craft keep the altitude and speed you commanded? Is it possible the autopilot is having to increase speed to hold altitude?

Yes, I think it's perfectly appropriate to ask in that thread. The people who follow it are most likely the ones who can get you a useful answer!

The old part tools should still be working fine.

I'm thrilled about this! I was just thinking the other day about asking you if this had ever gotten off the ground. Great work! I'll put 'build some arms' on my todo list eventually!

When you bump into questions, don't hesitate to shout!

Shuttles are hard. You're either launching a lopsided payload - like the space shuttle did... or you're launching a system with wings at the TOP of the stack, like Dreamchaser will supposedly do. Neither is easy. But there are videos out there that demonstrate examples of doing both.

I think there definitely ARE players who use KSP like they'd use Orbiter - flying realistic craft in realistic ways. But I think MOST players... myself included - want to play legos and put things together in unexpected ways! So if you want more people to play your mod... make it a toolbox for them to create with. If you just want to create something awesome and won't mind if you only get a few hundred downloads... then do it! Though... really either way... you should mod what YOU want to play with and if others want to use it, great. As general advice - from what I remember- making it as a single game model is going to be tough. You'll want to at least separate the body, wings, nose cone, crew cabin, and engines. This gives you some leeway to adjust how COM and COL lift. For the Dreamer, a hack I used is making the nose piece an aerodynamic control surface... sort of an invisible canard. It's a hacky way around KSP's simplified physics, but it does a whole lot to let you maintain pitch authority as the COM shifts in flight. Split the body so that the fuel tank stays right around where you want the COM to live... so you don't have to try to get it aerodynamically stable in a lot of different weight configurations. You can concentrate some of the weight of the ship forward by making the crew cabin a little heavier than it might need to be... thus helping with stability.

As the guy who spend 3 months putting Dream Chaser into KSP... I've since come to the conclusion that these sorts of 'only fits together one way' builds just don't quite catch the spirit of KSP. I had a blast modeling and solving all the problems to get it into KSP... then tuning it to actually fly in space and atmosphere... and then... I.... couldn't figure out what to do with it. And I think most players who downloaded it had the same reaction - "Oh cool! I'm going to launch this and land it and then... well... um... I dunno what." That's not telling you not to do it, I'm glad I did the Dreamer - but most players in KSP are here for the fun of engineering a new solution to every problem... having a single crew service or cargo launcher isn't in their play plans. What I'm saying is... if you do this... do it for YOU not for others. And maybe... try downloading the 2.5m space plane parts mod, or something similar... and build your own Buran out of modular parts!

@Tunefix , That's looking awesome! You can make Maneuver nodes via kRPC... so you could look at a hybrid solution for now - MOCR to display visually, and issuing typed commands to make nodes and such.

For all reasonably sized rockets... autostrutting the bottom stage engine to root and external boosters to heaviest is usually all I have to do.

I'm afraid you'll still have to do it yourself... because the position of those control nodes is important. But making a unity file with a handful of empty game objects isn't the most difficult thing in the world. I don't have it all set up right now or I'd volunteer... I bet someone else will be happy to at some point soon. I haven't looked at the license on PJ's plugin for handling it to see if you can distribute it yourself?

Made it through the first pile of parts only mods. Better Science Labs Continued - all good. Tokamak Industries - I saw the comment that there was a problem with the legs. These require firespitter. I tested with the most recent (compiled for 1.3) version of FS on Github and no problems. I did NOT fully test Firespitter against 1.4, but the animation module at least worked. 2.5m Shuttle - Hey, some of those parts look familiar. I think this is the most playable shuttles mod I've ever found. It could use a texture pass some day though, now that I look at it in more detail. KW Rocketry - All good. Man, those are gorgeous engines, aren't they? To some extent Stock is overtaking this mod... as larger tanks and more nosecones and engine variety becomes part of the game... but it's still a great set of stock replacements for people who ust want their rockets to look better! Munar Industries MFT - This one's staying installed permanently. There are some really useful tank sizes here that aren't available in stock or other mods! And it looks great too! TripleZ Space Telescope - All good, apparently. EVA Handrails Continued - Seems to work. Why aren't these stock too? Bargain Rocket Parts Recycled - Yup... th duck tape is still holding. Bolt-On Mission Probes - Checks out! Vapor Vent - And most importantly... don't worry... vapor vent still works flawlessly. I'll try to keep chugging at these later tonight if I can!

I found someone with a working solution to your problem! Porkjet's Habitats - which are now part of Tokomak Industries Refurbished Parts has multiple docking ports on a single part and he has written a plugin that lets them actually fully work. I haven't combed the plugin's code yet, but wanted to keep you updated. He ALSO did something really cool that I'd never thought of. If you look at the cfg file for the hab with multiple docking ports (Habitat Pack Flat) you'll see that he used two .mu model files - one with the part... and another with JUST the control nodes. You'd still need to make a unity file that places your control nodes, but you could load it with the other parts you're playing with to set all of your named transforms!

Absolutely. I'll start wandering through and PM you updates!

If it were me, I'd prioritize the easy ones! Things that should be a simple 'click to compile'. I'm a person who likes to see a to-do list get shorter... so if an afternoon or compiling the little easy ones got me from 130 to 40... that would be worth it to me. Do you see any reason to bother testing the parts only mods before certifying that they're 1.4.1 compliant? If so, if you send me a list I'll download and test those for you? I've got 1.4.1 downloaded and visual studio set up at the moment... so if you want to ask for help chasing cc errors or strange behavior on a plugin or two, feel free to request it... but honestly I do so little coding any more that it would take me a while to find my way around a mod I've never looked at before... so... maybe start me off on the ones with pretty simple structure and good comments! lol.

It's time to stop feeding the trolls. If they were legit worried, they'd have uninstalled or called their lawyers by now. They're just stirring excrements up. Ignore them. I bet they get bored and go back to playing KSP. You know. The thing they claim is the worst thing for personal liberty since the Patriot Act.

I'm going to wager they didn't want to wake up to a massive pile of support requests if something is wonky. I'd guess it will drop before noon so they have time to... if not get a fix out... at least know what trouble they're in before close of business. lol. That's what I'd do if I was releasing my first DLC at least.

So, I asked my lawyer. She required me to point out that this is general discussion, not legal advice and doesn't create an attorney client relationship and varies wildly by jurisdiction, especially since KSP has an international audience. She also required me to take out the trash. ((I'm dating a lawyer.)) She did a quick google and this is what she said. EULA's are considered contracts of adhesion - which doesn't outright invalidate them, but the courts generally recognize that they aren't entered into from an equal power relationship and there's no opportunity for fair negotiation, so when an issue comes up, the court WILL examine whether the provision in question was fair to start with (unconscionability) before trying to enforce it. And where ambiguity exists, they will err on the USER'S part based on the principle of Contra Proferentem - preference against the draftsmen. That's part of why they're worded so unfairly... the court starts out scowling at the big company... so to get back to a point of fairness they try to make sure every definition is spelled out in THEIR favor. US courts are split by circuit on EULA's in general, so where you live matters if you have to sue Take Two. All of the cases where they've come up are generally decided with very narrow scope - the court says that this particular clause in this particular contract is enforceable or not... intentionally not ruling broadly about whether types of clauses work in general. No contract releases you from liability for negligence. If Take Two doesn't take reasonable precautions with your data and it gets hacked- you can sue them and will probably win. Same as all of the other companies that know a scary amount about you. And likewise - if they take reasonable precautions and still get hacked - you probably weren't going to succeed at suing them whether you'd signed an EULA or not. It's the same as those 'liability waivers' you sign when you do anything athletic or dangerous. The principle function of those waivers is to make you THINK you can't sue them. A business's due diligence cannot be waived or disclaimed. That said - losing your name and address and the fact that you played KSP for 5000 hours isn't going to rise to the level of any sort of damages. You're not that important. Your identifying info is already in lots of public databases. Pay 4 dollars to any of those 'find out who owns this phone number' websites for proof of that. So giving it to another company or to Russian hackers isn't damages in and of itself. Now if that company or those hackers find a way to actually hurt you... then you have damages. EULA's 'set the tone' for a discussion, but they do not finish the discussion. Of particular interest might be Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp., where the court found that the EULA was unenforceable because you could download and install the software BEFORE agreeing to it. I asked about the legality of changing an EULA long after purchase. She said that her group of friends had discussed the topic a while back when Rockstar made EULA changes. The general consensus in her office was it wasn't automatically void, and companies weren't obligated to offer a refund if you wanted out, but that if a term that had changed after purchase (and outside a reasonable return/refund period) was challenged in court, they were confident that it would be fairly easy to prove unconscionability of the new provision. Before you invest a few hundred hours in a game, a take it or leave it clause is one thing. Once you're way into a game, you're in even less of a fair position. So... the overall answer is - clicking yes on an EULA does NOT automatically transfer ownership of your soul just because they said so. Your legal position if you have to sue is a LITTLE worse than if no agreement was in writing, but that any term you have issue with will be examined to figure out if it was legally valid in the first place at that time.