soundnfury

Yeah, this sounds similar to but different from my Boosteriferous mod, which rather than having a linear slope between two values, has a step change. Though I do plan to add more curve types, probably with tech unlocks.

Boosteriferous 0.2.0 released - near-total rewrite for KSP 1.1. The profiles have been greatly simplified, they now start at full thrust and the user chooses when they throttle down and by how much. This is for two reasons: that's a much easier thing to turn into a FloatCurve the old way made people think I didn't know how SRBs work, partly because of the unfortunate choice of word 'segments'. Only lightly tested; I await the inevitable flood of bug reports with, uh, eager anticipation. Or possibly the other thing.

\o/ Take all the time you need

There is actually one thing a player can do: Learn to mod. Develop the mods they want to have, rather than expecting others to do it for them. Understand the mods they use well enough that if one of them gets pulled, they can at least contribute to creating a replacement, even if they can't do it by themselves. And remember: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

I think the point is that they already have all the options they need. I want to ensure my mods can outlive my interest in them, so I GPL them. stupid_chris finds other considerations more important, so he doesn't. None of this is a problem.

Hmm, I think you misunderstood me here. I'm not saying that "this is how I see the world, I will apply it to you". I am just saying "this is the social custom that exists in another community (one that I identify more strongly with than this community)". The point being that there will be people who are used to that social custom and don't know it doesn't apply here. More misunderstandings, but this one isn't your fault. Thanks to a bunch of lazy journalists, most people think "hacker" means "breaker of computer security". It doesn't. It means "creative programmer". Linus Torvalds is a hacker. So are the inventors of C, Perl and Python. Being a hacker, in this sense, is something to take pride in — so much so that I feel like I'm being a bit arrogant and boastful by claiming to be one, even though I work on the Linux kernel.

And yet people who fork someone else's mod to remove x64 guards are apparently out of line, even when the license allows it. There are always social customs beyond the bare license text. Because no license can anticipate everything, and if it did it would be so long no-one would have time to read it. When communities with different social customs overlap, there will be friction. So you figure out what the differences are, and put up big flashing signs to warn people from the other community about them. Or you just put up with the whining, or you stop releasing mods. Whining back won't achieve anything Great! Then we're in violent agreement. (It can be hard to keep track of what positions different people are arguing, when there are about half a dozen sides to the argument.)

Yeah, it might be because we hackers have realised we're basically holding up the sky at this point. I mean, if Linux, or BIND, or GCC disappeared, it wouldn't just be a nuisance. Half the Internet would grind to a halt. Hell, look at what happened with leftpad recently. Somehow, while we were merrily playing with code, we became responsible for things. Some of us are still struggling to come to terms with that (*cough* jwz). And, like I keep saying, that's fine. But if you don't make that clear, then there are going to be people who don't see it that way, and they're going to keep on pestering you. Illusion of transparency; just because it's obvious to you doesn't mean it's obvious to them. And we have to deal with the world as we find it, not as we feel it ought to be. So I'm not saying you have to have an obligation. I'm not saying the people who expect it of you are right. I'm just saying that they will expect it of you, and no amount of arguing on threads like these about what whiners they are will stop them doing it. Because you'll be lucky if one in a hundred of them reads this thread. The rest of them will just download your mod, and whine, and whine, and whine. And there is nothing Squad or anyone else can do to change that.

Ok, I guess it's time for me to be Wrong™. There may be differences in social customs between game modders and open source hackers, but in my world, if you release a piece of code, you are implicitly promising to support it as long as people are using it. And, if you want to stop, your final duty is to find someone else to pass it on to. These duties can be negated if you say so up front, but otherwise, it's part of the covenant you enter into by being part of the hacker community. (The "no warranty" clause in the licenses doesn't count as a negation of those duties; this is about social custom, not law.) If Linus did something that killed off the kernel, you can bet the pitchforks would come out. (He's actually been very careful to set things up so that nothing he does can kill off the kernel.) And there's a whole bunch of people out there raised in that community, and they're going to have that expectation of anything with a GPL or BSD or MIT license on it. And if you aren't willing to take on that burden, that's fine, but you should say so when you release. If you don't, then however unreasonable you may think they're being, however right you may be, you still shouldn't act surprised when it happens.

On the other hand, I'm glad they said so up front, so that you know to avoid them. As long as they make that policy clear (and I hope they do), then there's nothing "evil" about acting on it. Part of why I have a little bit of sympathy with the "but your license said I can do this" position is that it's best to be clear about what's OK and what's not; that way no-one gets surprised and feels betrayed. And one good way to be clear about what's OK is to define it in your license — though of course it's not the only way. If the only signal you've given* about forking is to choose a permissive license, don't be surprised if people think they have the right to fork at-will — and get touchy if you "take that away". * Not saying that's true of any examples that have been mentioned in this thread, btw.

Fair enough. I may not agree with the choice you made, but I'd fight for your right to make it.

Wow. Just wow. Let me guess: the guard clause was for 64 bit? Some people in this community are really forking entitled. If I were running the community (I know, that would end terribly, but bear with me) anyone who pestered a modder about issues in a fork like that would get banhammered, hard. And I'd hold the fork-maker responsible for their behaviour, too. I'd still keep the license open, though; can't let the forkers grind me down

I just want to make absolutely clear that I'm not disputing that, and I think that the people who are claiming the right to ignore that are behaving like spoiled little brats. That said... Care to elaborate on what happened? I don't know the history here. (And I'll just note that it's possible to have a permissive license while restricting use of the mod's name, or your name, to approved versions.)

This is all totally true. But at the same time, I think any modder who doesn't release under a copyleft or permissive license is doing a disservice, not only to the community, but also to himself. Let me explain that: Because all my mods are open-source, I know I can leave them on hiatus, or just drop them and walk away, at any time, and if anyone cares and wants them maintained, they can take them over. That takes a lot of pressure off me, and makes me less likely to feel the need to walk away. Ultimately, open source is the safety net — for me as well, not just for my users*. I don't think we should try to force modders into anything. But I strongly recommend to modders that they should choose to go open source. * Saying 'users', plural, might be optimistic in my case... my point still stands.

If I might take the opportunity to plug one of my projects: konrad is very effective for targeted landings on airless bodies. Like KER, it gives you useful data rather than flying the landing for you; unlike KER, that data is derived from extrapolating your motion based on your current attitude and throttle setting. It does need a bit more setup (you have to tell it things like your dry mass, Isp and thrust, and give it a terrain map from SCANsat, because it's an external program running off telemetry rather than a mod inside KSP), but with its help it's possible to make a landing with pin-point precision, while using less delta-V than a reverse gravity turn (you perform the majority of the burn at a constant attitude, rather than gradually pivoting upright).

Latest addition: Retro console now has 'Touchdown point' lat/long, for precision targeted landings (an advanced topic which the landing tutorial does not cover). Using this, I managed to land a Surveyor-type probe on the Moon at latitude 20.000°S (approached from a polar orbit; I didn't bother trying to target a specific longitude as well, as that was essentially selected by my orbital LAN).

It should do, assuming you mean OS X, which is basically a Unix. Python is a programming language, which is interpreted (not compiled), so the interpreter must be installed on the target machine. curses is a library for terminal control, used for building text-based character-cell user interfaces; Python has a curses wrapper library as part of the standard distribution. A terminal emulator is a program running under a graphical environment which emulates a text-based video display terminal; popular examples include xterm and rxvt under Linux, or "Terminal" under OS X. [EDIT] A dependency I forgot to mention before is the Python websocket-client package, which can be obtained via `pip install websocket-client`. On Debian, `apt-get install python-websocket`.

KONRAD has now gained a new console, Retrograde Guidance. This incorporates a highly sophisticated* simulation engine to provide all the information you need to guide a lander in to a soft touchdown on an airless world. See the readme for an explanation of how to interpret its dizzying array of numbers. *Actual sophistication not guaranteed; may include forward-step integrator and trapezium rule. Requires an accurate ground elevation map; consult SCANsat to obtain this. Warranty void if used to land on Tylo. The Retrograde Guidance console during a lunar landing in RSS.

KONRAD is Yet Another Telemachus Frontend. It's a curses program, so each console is a character-cell display in an 80x24 terminal. (It's aimed at Linux, but ought to work on other OSes - no guarantees though.) It can be found here, on GitHub. It's designed to be useful for co-operative "mission control" streams like Real Space Program or Go For Launch. Here are screenshots of the current consoles, taken during an Atlas-Agena launch (in Realism Overhaul): Obviously you will need Telemachus in order to use this. You will also need Python and curses, and a terminal emulator. An adjunct to KONRAD is the JSON Booster file format, used for describing a space vehicle in sufficient detail for the Booster Dynamics console to give up-to-date delta-V readings. It's fairly simple (some examples are included in the repository), but does currently have to be created by hand. It's not too hard to do: just take your vehicle apart into stages, count up the propellants in each, empty them out, and read the dry weight and engine (vacuum) Isp. For parallel-staged designs a little more cleverness is required; the included MercuryAtlas example shows how to do it. Basically, you have to guess (or measure in simulations!) how much of your fuel will be left when you stage your boosters away, and that's how much you record as being in the core stage. If you try and use asparagus staging it'll just completely fail to work; it can currently only reliably cope with at most one 'horizontal' staging event per 'vertical' staging event. (I have some ideas for dealing with this, but won't bother unless it turns out people actually want to do that kind of thing.)

Personally I'd go with "Booster to f4". But then, I would never have gone for the Val's Pod opening to begin with; I much prefer e4, the Jeb's Pod.

You do want the recommended mods. Just not the suggested mods.

This looks really awesome, and your approach is way better than my Kappa Ray mod. Feel free to comb the kapparay source for ideas though — and also, when you get to modelling non-local sources, for a bunch of models of radiation environments at various places in space. Looking forward to this mod!

I'm interested in being part of this, but my schedule is crowded enough that I probably can't be live 'on loop' during launches. I can however contribute in other ways: Mission patches. While working on Ijkslander Space Program I've developed a good workflow and set of techniques for making these. (The secret is: layers, more layers, and some more layers after that.) Documentation. I imagine we'll want a nice cross-referenced wiki or something to showcase our missions, rather than linking people to the middle of a giant forum thread I'd be happy to organise something like that. Telemetry UI. I'm currently working on a text-mode frontend for displaying Telemachus telemetry, to give mission control a properly retro feel. Because in the 50s and 60s, they didn't have 3D graphics; real 'steely-eyed missile men' work from a screenful of numbers. Also it means you can have someone whose job is just to call out "Downrange distance XYZ kilometres" every thirty seconds

Actually, you can get full three-axis control (only two-axis translation, but that should be enough with a little skill) using 8 linear thrusters. I discovered this when building Mariner-alike probes in Realism Overhaul, which have a convenient hexagonal frame. Label the corners of the hexagon ABCDEF, then you put thrusters prograde at A & D, retrograde at B & E, and pairs of roll thrusters at C & F. (If you're _really_ patient, you can use single thrusters at C & F, rolling in opposite directions, but then rolling causes translation. That can get tricky.) Now, as long as your CoM is at the centre of the hexagon, you can rotate around any axis with a suitable pair of thrusters. For the axis through CF, use A & E or B & D; for the other horizontal axis, use A & B or D & E. In Realism Overhaul, this works out as a net win, but in stock, 8 linears is still heavier than the 4 4-blocks for full 3-axis control. Also, in stock you have overpowered reaction wheels, so you often only care about translation; that is not generally the case in RO. So none of the above is of any use to you here, but I thought I'd share anyway!

Updated again; Pioneer X bows out with a Europa flyby, Mars '61 landings on Phobos and Deimos, and the Bifrost Program gets underway. (Thanks to @stratochief66 for explaining how to mount the LM inside the SLA.)