monamipierrot

Hello, I just want to have you put an eye on a old thread of mine in which I suggested some overhauls for a new major release (KSP2?). A few of them are outdated and already implemented, but please check under "EXPLORE OVERHAUL", "ASTRONOMY / PLANETARY SCIENCE OVERHAUL" and "PROCEDURAL GENERATED PLANETS OVERHAUL" Thanks! https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/125979-on-exploration-astronomy-random-bodies-and-other-overhauls/

GREAT! This explains a lot of things and I think it comes perfectly handy for my purpose, which is both resize the atmosphere AND make it a little bit thickier in the toplayer to help crafts slow down on reentry before using chutes. (My goal is to have a atmosphere around 30% higher than original in a tiny 10% resized general environment as explained before) Question is: can I use BOTH atmospheric settings like this?: - setting atmoTopLayer to the desired atmosphere height (so value should be 3 cause when multiplied with the resized factor it gives 0.3) - setting atmosphere setting to a higher level e.g. the double i.e. "6" so in the top layer the atmosphere will be not that thin. (Around the double the pressure?) Thanks!

thanks! Didn't get there was a link! ;D I was fiddling around with the mod and I have found a satisfying solution (at least for Kerbin) to mimic Toy Solar System: // Base Settings Resize = 0.1 Rescale = 0.1 Atmosphere = 0.3 dayLengthMultiplier = 1 // Advanced Settings landscape = 3 geeASLmultiplier = 1 resizeScatter = 1 resizeBuildings = 1 groundTiling = 1 CustomSoISize = 0 CustomRingSize = 0 atmoASL = 1 tempASL = 1 atmoTopLayer = 1 atmoVisualEffect = 3 scanAltitude = 1 This solution: resizes the Kerbol system to 1/10 Gives a atmosphere of 21,000m which is also in scale with terrain height (works perfectly with EVE) AND is still manageable for reentry. (need to be checked better) keep all buildings the natural size (but due to scaled down heights, island is not connected with KSC althou still VERY close). So the runway is still huge (important for kids or casual players) some easter eggs may be unreachable or "flying" didn't check most bodies, and didn't check asteroids didn't check the DAYLENGTH thing. Still I don't understand the difference between "atmoTopLayer" and "atmosphere" settings.

I love Chatterer from the very inner of my soul, and I think it should keep being fun, and should keep being completely useless. HOWEVER, I would really love a mod or a chatterer extension that simply turns to audio the "events" we can read in the mission summary log as it is in current game version. "Lift off!" "Separation confirmed." etc. Nothing more, nothing less.

I came to know this mod trhrou Toy Solar System, the Kopernicus-base mod which rescales everything to 1/10, which I wanted to use in order to have my kids play with KSP. However TSS is somehow broken cause: - the atmosphere layer is so thin (7,000m) that it is even impossible to use parachutes. - the unscaled buildings have a horrible look on the planet: the KSC is literally touching the insland runway - mun and other surfaces look horrible cause the mod exaggerates some features. However, installing Sigma I could mimic TSS with better results: my settings were - Resize = 0.1 (as TSS?) - Rescale = 0.1 (as TSS?) - Atmosphere = 0.3 (21,000m, so parachutes will work) - resizeBuildings = 0.3 (runway is still tiny but this way everything looks great) Landscape is still wild as in TSS but not that wild. Craters looks good. Any more suggestions? I can't find a usage explanation of all options. Thanks for the great mod!

OOOOPS. I checked the wrong log: this is the correct one: Initialize engine version: 5.2.4f1 (98095704e6fe) GfxDevice: creating device client; threaded=1 Direct3D: Version: Direct3D 9.0c [nvumdshimx.dll 8.17.12.6874] Renderer: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family Vendor: Intel VRAM: 880 MB (via DXGI) Caps: Shader=30 DepthRT=1 NativeDepth=1 NativeShadow=1 DF16=1 INTZ=1 NULL=1 RESZ=1 SlowINTZ=0 So yes, the problem seems the same of @Racescort666

Same problem here. Both old lightly modded 1.0.0 install or current unmodded 1.1 install work fine if launched with x86 executable, even with almost best graphic options: I just experiment time lag and few FPS when manouvering in atmosphere BIG +50 parts rockets. Of course I would love to build huge rockets and stations so I tried the x64 executable of new 1.1 install (installed and patched with GOG) hoping for the FPS miracle everybody is talking about. Well, this same new UNMODDED 1.1 when run with x64 executable (and even lowering graphic quality to average-to-low rates) is SUPERLAGGY and runs with FEW FPS EVEN IN MENU. In spaceplane reentry scenario, FPS is around 2-3 per second, while the "time" is slowed down some 3x or 4x. It looks like even controls are lagging so if you just press "q" for a fraction of second, the plane could roll a lot, or not roll at all. However. Map view seems to work much smoother. In the log file I can read dozens of errors, but I can't understand what are they referring to. I may post the whole log file but it is huge, maybe there's a way to cut it or produce a "cleaner" one. Please help us!!!! [BELOW IS A MISTAKE, I LET IT HERE FOR COMPARISON. THIS LOOKS TO BE THE x86 LOG. CHECK BELOW FOR CORRECT LOG] Not my case, it clearly reads: Initialize engine version: 5.2.4f1 (98095704e6fe) GfxDevice: creating device client; threaded=1 Direct3D: Version: Direct3D 9.0c [nvumdshim.dll 8.17.12.6874] Renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M Vendor: NVIDIA VRAM: 2014 MB (via DXGI) Caps: Shader=30 DepthRT=1 NativeDepth=1 NativeShadow=1 DF16=0 INTZ=1 NULL=1 RESZ=0 SlowINTZ=0

kOS in stock KSP could convince me. Especially with RemoteTech ON and unswitchable

Yep, that's my opinion: it is a silly thing. For this reason I both love it and doubt it would ever come to life, and even less in 1.2 If you think I am mad at you on the "silly incident", well, you may want to revise the "silly incident" in the other thread. Here I was just facing you with hard reality. If it sounds ironic or sarcastic, well, it's because life is ironic and sarcastic, and I want to laugh at it, not at you. Peace.

No, it's too silly.

Mechjeb yes. You just described it above. You basically want players to... write Mechjeb. Wait, as you put it "write the CODE" of Mechjeb. Do you ever thought that the best pilot/engineer out there could have NO IDEA of writing a few codes of a basic program? And, most important, NO INTEREST? I mean, Mechjeb is a complex piece of software, althou there's no AI involved. And in the code, rocket science and engineering would be 0,01%, while 99,99% would be just - you know - programming, coding, debug, etc. What I was thinking is something much more simple for everyone. To put it rough: once you prove you can do some standard manouever (e.g. rendez-vouz, docking, suicide land, hofman transfer....) the corresponding MechJeb manouever becomes available (throu a new hardware part, or some automatic "software" update on all existing vessels) and you can use at will. To make sure you don't just STOP making a specific manouever ever more, there may be layers, e.g. layer 1 is quite inefficient, buggy and inexact but you can improve this tech by manually performing better and better manouevers. Or, the current MechJeb CPU/software may be not compatible with some selected hardware config or body/biome situation, forcing the player to perform once again the manouever. Or there could specific "science" points for each kind of manouever "Docking science points", "landing science points" which you need to earn if you want to "purchase" the tech layer corresponding to the specific MechJeb software module for THAT manouever. I proved zillions of times I can do a proper hofman transfer, a decent rendez vouz, a efficient take off from Mun etc. etc.; it starts to be VERY ANNOYING to repeat dozens of times the same manouver. Of course, I also don't even want to start CODING it, for the same reason I don't want to design the details of a new engine (for a honest comparison to your proposal, I should have said "to phisically build a new engine in my backyard"). For these reason, some MEchjeb equivalent should exist. On the other hand, your idea of MULTIPLE vessels automation may prove to be vital. But still, please stick to some MechJeb thing, scaled down to the point it doesn't steal us the challenge and the pleasure of doing once in a while some manual manouver.

... Can't get the irony. Will keep this as a joke anyway.

Believe me, we don't differ a lot. I perfectly understand and almost completely agree on what you say, and couldn't say it better. The thread you are referring to is full of great ideas. I just believe that these kind of ideas are perfect for a marriage with my OP proposals. The spirit is the same, and I would say one would be incomplete without the other one. But again: we need Squad to be aware that a radical rethinking of this not-much-more-than-a-sandbox game is needed. Now. Hey, check this out: I think you'll love it (or at least your schoolmate will do!):

It doesn't at all. Let me only stretch and insist that we don't need a "war of the poor" and that many proposals I found in this and other threads may sound very different and apparently in competition, but instead they should gang or lobby (if they can't merge) because all of them has this in common: they feel KSP is incomplete and that it is a pity given the inmense potential of this great game. If Squad grasps this concept ("we only have a incomplete masterpiece, a raw diamond, a embryo of a beautiful creature") I'm sure they will revise the development stream to add more work in a critical rethinking of the core game, and not only think about the last details, which I'm afraid is their next goal.

In my OP I addressed the problem of AI (or should we say automation), to help the Player managing his growing fleet of vessels, but multiple spacecraft was not what I meant. I only thought that repetitive tasks should be automated. But for this some stock built in MechJeb-like utility should be enough. However, you're clearly referring to @AdmiralTigerclaw's vision of a entire ecosystem of fleets/colonies/bases/stations which are going to be the bonestructure of our exploration of the Solar system. If I'm not wrong, he didn't have in mind automated (real) operations, such as "having that rover mine, having the other taking the ore to a base, having a hopper store the fuel in a orbital station...", but something such a "virtual" ecosystem, in which you don't really physically SEE what's happening, but since you builded the right infrastructures, and provided the right conditions, things work themselves, invisibly, exactly as happen in a common 4X or RTS game: you builded a base, a vab, some mining unit, provided energy, an orbital communication system, and voilá, you can just build your first 100% munar rocket. That would be a lot easier to implement, althou yes, much less sexy. fog-of-war makes sense if you don't konw what's out there. I also would love to have a slave-army of programmers and designers which design beautiful worlds with same quality of stock ones, just for me, but unfortunately slavery is illegal. So we have 4 options: 1. Struggle to have quality procedural random generated universes 2. Find a workaround by randomly tweaking existing bodies/solar system within some few "safe" parameters, such as Kopernicus and related mods already more or less do 3. Have a prewritten online library of Universes, say half a dozen to start, hoping that developers can add more in the future. 4. "Stick to stock" and stare at a Men In Black torchlight each time we start a new career (might harm your mind if abused)

Well, original post was exactly about that. You may want to reread it along with early comments. And.... Why not Kerbin itself? Why even SEE planets and bodies, including Mun and Kerbol? Somebody here and in other threads thought it was too silly e.g. to have your 1st kerbal "discovering" Kerbol by just testing or practicing the "crew report" UI button. Curious. They are playing a videogame with little green aliens committing suicide with a big smile on their face using rockets "found on the side of the road". I urgently need a definition of "silly".

Hi K, welcome on board in this discussion. Let a guy which is almost the TRIPLE of your age say that he is glad that KSP didn't exist when he was 14, cause otherwise he would not have finished High School and not gone to the College, not to mention his PhD! I have to somehow disagree with you on the hardship level of KSP. Yes you are young and I hail to you for fiddling with KSP since you was 10 (guess), however you have to understand that AT LEAST 95% of adults of my age out there just COULDN'T play KSP. And we are talking about almost all computer literate, most of them with college studies, and so on... Yep, "Complex" is fun, you're completely right. "Complicated" is always less fun. "Brutally hard" is sometimes no fun. Now, believe me or not, the three things are almost completely indipendent from each other. Something complex may be or not be complicated, and may be or not be hard. Complexity gives an idea of how DEEP is something. And KSP is deep, indeed. You like the surface, but if you scratch it, you find something else, and so on. Now things are complicated when you need time and tedious actions to grasp them and having them work. Some things in KSP are complicated. Unnecessarily complicated. A hard thing is when it is difficoult to do. To lift 100kg is not complex, nor complicated. It is just hard. For someone it is impossible. Now, for everyday standards, KSP is - how can I say - BRUTALLY HARD? Now, as you do, I like brutally hard things (btw, I got the "brutal" word from the hardest game mode in which I play the Android game "Plague", which happens to appears in a recent TOP10 list of most challenging games ever - althou behind KSP). The problem is that I strongly feel a very dangerous bias in KSP, its community, and its development history. I can't prove it, by I feel that development has been biased by KSP community in direction of making the game even harder than it was. Of course that's better than make the dame duller. But I think there's a better way to do it: - let the game be as complex as it already is, if not more - reduce the "complicated" part, if possible - let it be hard, but add a ladder for kids, casual players, and noobs. I already discussed the option of implementing the ladder in the fog-of-war career philosophy: to disclose some of the map and of knowledge, you are being guided through very simple "scientific" tasks which teach you how the GUI and basic game features work. Good ideas here. Once you open the Pandora Procedural Planet System box, we are going to read even more. You already know.

I already addressed this idea before in some other thread. I understand this, but I still find it silly. If it had some consistency when the game needed to grow some supporting social environment (and nobody could prove the above worked), I doubt that NOW it still needs it. Now the game has a HUGE supporting environment, hundreds of tutorials and countless challenges. And even if this strategy worked AND the game still needed it, do anybody really think you can't just add a "play in a random universe" button? If they implemented it, there could be different outcomes: 1. Vast majority of players would just play the stock SS. No hurt for the social connections. 2. Half of players would play stock SS. Half of them would play random. Social cohesion would still be granted by the Stock players core. 3. Vast majority of players would play random game. Go throw in the toilet the social thing, I was right! Seriously, we already know that most players would play both. And I bet many of you think that playing Stock or playing in another SS would not result in a different Social cohesion. What I'm trying to say is that this may be not out of debate NOW, and time has come to insist with Squad for this little revolution. If YOU agree, of course. Here I am, commander. As a maximimum I have sent tiny probes to closest planets, full stop. Want to know why I stopped? Because there's nothing to DISCOVER. The planets and moons are already there, there are even full maps on the web. I really lacked A LOT that kind of thrill that some eXploration videogames give me. And not only videogames (I really like to hike and discover some uncharted features in the mountains). I mean in KSP there was everything else: the challenge, the effort, the epic, etc. etc. Everything except real eXploration. The only reason rockets do exist!!!! Still, when I plant a flag, I constantly feel like Scott. Hundreds of Amundsen players have already been there, and they even told me (thanks to your beloved social media ). I don't want to be always Scott. I want to be Kermundsen, sometimes. I really wonder how this does not affect many of you. Really, I'm not trolling, I am just puzzled . Also, again, some of you thinks that procedural planets means MORE planets, BIGGER dimensions, BIGGER challenges. Same for the fog-of-war, by reading your lines, #Pthigrivi. I do not agree. We can make the game as big, as hard and as challenging as we want, and even make it easier, just by tweaking a very few parameters of the procedural generation. So your last point, squeezing from it the maximum juice, reduces to "Come on, you have already plenty of planets. When you finish them, only then you may come back and complain". That's exactly the opposite of the real point. I don't want plenty of planets. I want MY OWN planet in MY OWN Solar System, with MY OWN challenges, maybe scaled down (or up) to my skills and general preferences. That's curious. In a fog-of-war game you would DEFINITELY want to build more planes to map unknown regions of Kerbin; but you may also strongly need rovers or small hoppers to fine map some small portion of Mun in search of new biomes/science/ore or just better landing/base sites for the guys orbitin up there. Fog-of-war would BOOST creativity and give you a reason to take your a*s to some distant body. I think it is even obvious.

Ooooooooh! Almighty KillAshley, forgive me not to have recognized you! Being the developer of Kopernicus makes you a semi-God; so it does being the developer of UnchartedLands; if I'm not bad with Maths that makes you a full GOD. Hail to you! [Ok, now understand that I never installed any of your mods, but this is a issue of mine, not of yours, anyway by reading and seeing some images, I really love your effort to the point I would like to donate a not much more than symbolical amount, if possible. Really UnchartedLands images are AWESOME. I saw them last week for the 1st time and I had my mouth open all the time. I really long to try them but I'll wait for 1.1 to go out and the corresponding update for your mods] Your words explain many things. Anyway I'm going to (morally) support you in any attempt to build some working full-random system for planets and solar system. (I give for granted that uncharted lands uses old heigth maps of the exising planets, doesn't it?) Now, the question. What do you think about the fog-of-war (really I don't like this word, but I don't know if there's a better one) in KSP? I mean, from the technical point of view. I understand that this is a different expertise area from the generation/tweak of planets, but you may still be familiar with how game handles images, maps etc. E.G. In map mode, would it be easy to arbitrarily reduce texture resolution in selected parts of a planet map, ranging from Pitch Black (or grey) of "undiscovered" areas through better and better layers, say 10-15 layers, each maybe 4x4 times better resolution than before till a full ground resolution? it would be enough to map a gas giant from 1 pixel image to the actual full resolution. (Still the game would miss a proper way to store info about level of discovery of each chunk of map without drying RAM, and even more difficoult, I guess, a proper method to calculate "what the player has discovered"). And what about entirely hiding bodies from map, or just their orbits? Would it be prohibitively hard to try to mod this? (If possible at all?) Thanks, again.

Maybe you think that Procedural Random Solar System = Bigger universe on a bigger game with longer careers, etc. Why? The default result should be a game of roughly same size and difficoult than current one. Of course this can and will be tweaked: for longer or shorter games Uh, let's see So then... no logical order? Now seriously, I got your point, and I understand it. But I still think that if Squad had to save money and time on something, that would be cosmetics, parts addition and - believe me or not - more "stock" bodies, and concentrate on expanding the game core, in the direction of eXploit (colonies, career, actual science, tech) and eXploration (fog-of-war, random solar system, dynamic wiki).

It has been said dozens of times. The c/s/t system is barely a scratch. Every time a user suggests something, one can have a glimpse of an entire new universe of fun. Still, the current scratch is enough for hundreds of hours of delights, with just a few repetition and grind. Again, to this eXploit aspect of the game you must also remember adding the colonization and the mining things, and yes as I said before we strongly need the STMCC (Science tech mining colonization career) overhaul.

Fine for me. And then, let's implement procedurally generated bodies, astronomy overhaul and the rest ok? I thought it was clear enough that ideas of mine are definitely not the kind of elements you put on a "what's new" list for next 1.1.x version. This is definitely a general overhaul, and a vital one. While your idea is great, but I still see it as a new (major) feature in a upcoming 1.x version. If you read my OP, you may have noticed I also said that introducing the eXploit side in KSP (career, mining...) has been a good move, althou I think it is largely insufficient. Your idea links to the classic scheme for XXXX games, or for RTS games (which is often very similar). Thumb up. We definitely need this. Please just don't have a "war of the poor" between supporters of different area of improvement for KSP. If we agree that KSP is a uncompleted game and that it still has to find its own personality (and again, I repeat that this is great news for everybody!), we can convince Squad to put more effort to move on and don't stop at this crucial point of the development. The only kind of "suggestion" of this sub-forum which I don't like and I don't support are those about cosmetical overhaul, plain parts addition or even plain bodies addition itself.... I mean, I see all of these tasks legitimate, but they are that kind of work you do AT THE END of a proper development process. IMHO, those suggestions right now are not only a waste of time, but even dangerous because they may contribute to reinforce the idea that this game has come to a final stage of process, an idea which I strongly deny. I love this game in a similar way as a father loves his child, let's say. It is natural that I want it to grow, learn more and mature. I'm giving strong advices because I know real improvements are not easy, but not because of that we should abandon them. "We chose to do that because it is hard". Again, hail to Squad for this great piece of software. Please make it more than just a piece.

Yep. I am. If you don't prove me wrong I'll continue to think that the task to tell the same generator they already used for planets and moons, in order to have some random results within a tolerance, may be a joke comparing to - say - tweak the physical models of craft to introduce distortion and stress of parts. If you do prove me wrong, and reverse the above guess of mine, still we can just grab ourselves to Tater's idea of manually generated bodies, which may be just slightly random changed to ensure you'll never find a Solar system similar to the previous one. So if the problem is just TECHNICAL, as you put it, then I just smile: Squad didn't implement dozens of vital aspects because it was TECHNICALLY hard for them. Videogame industry has proved that if you put enough money, many tecnical problems fade away. Just wait till Squad will be big enough to handle this.

Yep. At least they don't add little aliens with big heads and silly green skin. Ooops.

I'm not sure what you means here. If you mean I would like to have unrealistic solar system, well, that's not what I want, but I would love that if a player wants, he could tweak this realism and have Kerbin orbit around Mun. Instead, I would love a random generator that could invent new worlds with some weird features, and still respecting the game physics. Something that a designer could have imagined. Or not. Why we need this? Very simple. When Columbus looked for China beyond the Ocean, he found a entire separate continent. LAter somebody found there were TWO oceans. Separated by a tiny isthmus (and one lower than the other). And that in this continent there were new food. Even good food indeed (discovery of potatoes are said to be the real reason of European domination of most World in the next 4-5 centuries). Not even Columbus imagined a new continent. Literaly nobody thought there could be 2 oceans. And I'm very very sure about this: not even the wildest insane guy of year 1491 could have ever dreamed, in some horrible fever due to prolonged hunger, about a simple potato. So IMHO the real goal of a random generator would be to make you say "wow" and feel you discovered something really new, and not "just another frozen moon". Or at least sometimes. And yes: novelty would bring newer technical challenges: "how the hell can I reach that biome which is 15,000m under average level and come back through its thick atmosphere?" "is it possible to surf-brake on the surface of this atmosphereless oceanic planet?" "This small moon's insane rotation speed puts it hard to land halfway between equator and poles. How can I do it?" "Now, the atmosphere is breathable for jets and kerbals, science is abundant, and the sightseen is unbeatable: perfect for building a base. Absence of a proper planetary surface will give me some headache, thou." "wow, those 2 moons are very close each other, and their density and size is similar, so I can use the same exact probe cutting down costs. Too bad that one has frozen nitrogen lakes, and the other is mostly covered with magma. Gotta use one of those *cold'n'hot* air conditioning unit". Tater is right in worrying about the skills of a generator when we are used to - mostly - human designed worlds such as Mun. But I have seen some great work done with generators in other games. The most known, Minecraft. If you know Freeciv, try fiddling with the "pseudo-fractal" planet generator, too (and this piece has been written by community, not some actual developer). I have come to the conclusion that properly trimmed generators can't be beaten by the finest unaided human handdrawing. Or better said, humans may be superior only by fiddling with generators, tweak them, maybe manual modify some of their output, or just manually SELECT these output to collect the best and most interesting results. This is how I bet KSP developers designed Mun and Kerbin. But I believe generators with current technology CAN create both Mun, Kerbin, and the wildest potato-moon out there. Wow!!! I didn't know it. Too bad I can see those bodies at the very beginning of the game!