R-T-B

Kopernicus release-67 R-T-B released this New in this latest version release-67: 1.) First attempt to fix scatter subsystem. This represents a major rewrite. It has gone through extensive testing but I am still curious a.) how it performs on lower end hardware and b.) if it really eliminated the vertical elevation bug. 2.) The old Kopernicus_Config.cfg options relating to scatters are now deprecated and no longer function. With any luck, the new system won't need any of those complex parameters anyways, as it should perform and function better "out of the box." 3.) I upped the shadow map size to attempt to fix the glitchy stock shadows. Untested, but may help. Known Bugs: 1.) The ingame shadows without an external mod like scatterer can be glitchy. It is advisable to use an external mod for best experience at the moment. 2.) Land scatters can appear at incorrect elevations if you don't use Kopernicus option "UsePureStockSCatters," which sadly, only works on pure stock systems. 2.) At interstellar ranges, heat can sometimes behave strangely, sometimes related to map zoom (be careful zooming out). It is best to turn off part heating when traveling far far away. 3.) When zooming out all the way out in map view at interstellar ranges, the navbal furthermore sometimes behaves oddly. We are working on this and nmonitoring all the interstellar bugs actively. 4.) 1.) Very Old craft files may complain about a missing module. This is a cosmetic error and can be ignored. Reload and re-save the craft to remove the error. Known Caveats: 1.) The 1.12.x release series works on 1.12.x,1.11.x,1.10.x, and 1.9.x. The 1.8 release is for 1.8.x. 2.) Mutlistar Solar panel support requires an additonal config file, attatched to release. 3.) If you use the "AddWatchdog.cfg" file, A fake celestial body isthen used to fix the distant landing-gear sinking bug. This body is called "KopernicusWatchdog" and will a.) intentionally keep it's distance from you at all times and is b.) invisible. The body is usually hidden from in game processes, but this is new territory having to use another moving celestial to correct a bug, so there may be side effects. Also, Principia does not benefit from this fix at this time, unfortunately. Those users may try "MakingLessHistory" mod, the old workaround. 4.) When using the ultra/atlas shader, ocean effect customization (color etc) is unreliable. Please use only high shader level (shader level 2) or lower if working with stock ocean effects. This does not effect scatterer or other ocean rendering mods.

yeah. Probably not the stock sun you are orbiting. We have not forgotten you guys, we are working on a more comprehensive fix but it will probably take until beyond Christmas, sadly.

The fix we deployed for this seemingly only works for bodies orbiting the stock sun, sadly. We are working on another fix that covers more scenarios but it is a very complex issue that involves stock code bugs, unity bugs, PhysX bugs, and all sorts of fun. That's why. So many systems are interacting that it makes it very confusing. You can try enabling the experimental fix we do have by downloading this cfg and plopping it somewhere in your Kopernicus folder: https://github.com/Kopernicus/Kopernicus/releases/download/release-66/AddWatchdog.cfg Bear in mind it may break some mods, and it doesn't always work outside bodies not orbiting the star that is the system root. This is next on the fix list. Scatter elevation fix is first priority followed by a hopefully big performance-improving rewrite. I hope to have it all done by Decembers end, maybe in time for Christmas/holidays. . The sinking gear on distant body issue is on the backburner to prioritize this (not forgotten though, will probably look at it again in January), as per the guidance poll I held. I also hope to fix stock shadows, just because I can (most likely).

As per the poll the scatterer subsystem is the next thing I'll be working on. Unfortunately the bugfix for sinking terrain I thought was the "mirracle cure" has too many side effects, so good news (for you at least) is I'll be working on this more or less immediately and dropping that for now. Next update should improve things somewhat in the performance/buggy scatter department.

Unforunately, I just discovered that the fix we have discovered is much more complicated than just a "implement and fix" type situation. It had side effects, and doesn't entirely work for all scenarios either. Frustrating, but we are still working on this, just may be a bit longer. I don't want to push out a half-working fix again.

I appreciate that. That is nearly exactly when some new experimental changes I made that are now rolled back were pushed out. Try the latest, you may find it works. Otherwise I'll need a screenshot of gamedata to diagnose further. And on that note.... I am happy to announce that with the help of @Gotmachine, we have cracked the reason why this whole "distant bodies tend to have landing gear sink" bug happens and it is indeed a bug in the stock code. KSPCommunityFixes is applying a third party patch, and I advise all who need this to download that. It's all good stuff, anyways. The "fake celestial" work around we were using is being removed next release and will no longer function even with the cfg, so please delete that from your config folder if you have it (if you didn't explicitly turn it on by downloading the cfg you don't). This means that yes, we all get the fix with no broken mods... You don't even need to update Kopernicus. Just grab the latest KSPCommunityFixes when it comes out, which should be very soon. While the fake celestial worked, it was janky, broke a lot of mods, and only fixed bodies that did not orbit another star over the stock sun. In short it had a lot of drawbacks, and this fix has none of them. The range we have to work with now is measurably around 1/10th of a yottameter in my testing, and that is INSANELY big. Huzzah!

Honestly, no, other than the fact it can spawn and manage/mask the additonal-fake-celestial fix thingy if asked to do so via a cfg, it is identical to release-60. I do hope to fix some other bugs soon though.

The latest release should patch this, I also sent you a dev build that is "inbetween" fix wise. The only thing different about the release is you'll need to add the "AddWatchdog.cfg" to your mod manually to get the fix (not on by default anymore because broken mods). Here is the release notes: Kopernicus release-66 New in this latest version release-66: 1.) Turned off the "sinking landing gear on distant bodies" -fix by default because of mod incompatabilites. You can still get this fix (see change #2) it just isn't on by default because of how much it broke certain types of mods. 2.) If you need the fix for landing gear sinking on distant bodies and are ok with the side-effects of it, Simply download attatched "AddWatchdog.cfg" and drop in the Gamedata/Kopernicus/Config folder. Known Bugs: 1.) The ingame shadows without an external mod like scatterer can be glitchy. It is advisable to use an external mod for best experience at the moment. 2.) Land scatters can appear at incorrect elevations if you don't use Kopernicus option "UsePureStockSCatters," which sadly, only works on pure stock systems. 2.) At interstellar ranges, heat can sometimes behave strangely, sometimes related to map zoom (be careful zooming out). It is best to turn off part heating when traveling far far away. 3.) When zooming out all the way out in map view at interstellar ranges, the navbal furthermore sometimes behaves oddly. We are working on this and nmonitoring all the interstellar bugs actively. 4.) 1.) Very Old craft files may complain about a missing module. This is a cosmetic error and can be ignored. Reload and re-save the craft to remove the error. Known Caveats: 1.) The 1.12.x release series works on 1.12.x,1.11.x,1.10.x, and 1.9.x. The 1.8 release is for 1.8.x. 2.) Mutlistar Solar panel support requires an additonal config file, attatched to release. 3.) If you use the "AddWatchdog.cfg" file, A fake celestial body isthen used to fix the distant landing-gear sinking bug. This body is called "KopernicusWatchdog" and will a.) intentionally keep it's distance from you at all times and is b.) invisible. The body is usually hidden from in game processes, but this is new territory having to use another moving celestial to correct a bug, so there may be side effects. Also, Principia does not benefit from this fix at this time, unfortunately. Those users may try "MakingLessHistory" mod, the old workaround. 4.) When using the ultra/atlas shader, ocean effect customization (color etc) is unreliable. Please use only high shader level (shader level 2) or lower if working with stock ocean effects. This does not effect scatterer or other ocean rendering mods.

This is more a "priority guidance" vote than a "strict set of rules" vote. If I have spare time, Kittopia may still get looked at. I know it's holding planet authors back. Honestly anything that appears in this list isn't far off from getting attention, they are the top tier bugs. This is strictly for December.

My list if I were to sort them for my preference, from highest to lowest priority: Option 1: Scatters Option 3.:Shadows Option 4: KittopiaTech/Wiki work Option 2: Comets So yeah, unlike KSP, I prefer bug-fix first, features later.

I may after-the-fact fix that one in December even if something else wins, given it's probably the easiest and might be able to be squeezed in, but vote for what you feel is most important obviously. I agree its super annoying.

Yes. Note there is a special build for 1.8.1 but it should work/load.

There isn't really a proper "high score" beyond how far you move the asteroid visually. Mathmatically making a "one number" score is kind of hard. Congrats to the winners who were picked subjectively by Nasa.

Heads up that I am taking votes on the next project after the watchdog fixes are complete (est. by December).

Kopernicus is a project with a million different things I can work on (no shortage of oddities/bugs) and only time for a few, so I thought it might be useful to make a thread to poll users on what needs working on the most. I will also update this thread with what I am working on now, usually. There is also a list of options for what I should work on next, and you can also provide your own custom input, naturally. What I am working on now: I am working on the new KopernicusWatchdog subsystem, ensuring it actually totally fixes the sinking-landing-gear-on-distant-bodies-Terrain bug, and reconsidering my life choices regarding it. Making it opt-in rather than opt-out is being considered, as is providing small patches for a large number of possibly "abandoned but working" mods that break with it. What we can work on next: Option 1.) Fix Terrain Scatter elevation bug regression (currently this was my plan). Also take a hard look at the systems performance in general, hopefully for the last time. Option 2.) Better builtin comet control (we have like, only stock system and external mod options now) . Note that I hate this option, and last time I tried it, it nearly killed me, but I'll try again if community wants it. Option 3.) Fix stock shadows (right now, they are horribly glitchy and scatterer is nearly a must-have to make them right). This is probably the easiest option, unless of course, it isn't. Option 4.) Fix KittopiaTech up to work better (pretty janky right now), maybe update the wiki some. Don't be constrained by those choices, I will add your custom choice if it sounds good, that's just off the top of my head. Other minor bugs that may be more important than I think can probably be found on the github issues page. Bugs that are ineligible for this / should be punted over to KSPCommunityFixes (because I don't do the things they do with lowlevel bug fixing): 1.) The interstellar-range distance part overheating bug (seems to be in stock code). 2.) Anything else that is a stock bug. Disclaimer on the poll: This is not a poll I am mandated to follow, but I will try to at least consider the community when choosing what to do. Just don't be shocked if I go for the 2nd place option or something if I like it a lot more.

Most appreciated. I wonder if the masking can't be used at all? Maybe the "fake- planet" needs to be visible to the game. Odd. If that's the case a lot of mods will need to update. That would be painful. Can you do me a favor and test Release-62 and see if it helps you? It has less of the masking and will interfere with mods worse, but may confirm my theory. Strategia will need to be manually updated, but for now there is no need to revert. Just download "RemoveWatchdog.cfg" in the release notes to your config folder and it will turn that change off until some mods update. Linky. Oh don't worry, I never work when I shouldn't (as evidenced by my sometimes long work-related abscenes). You should never feel guilty for reporting a bug. Better you experience it than me in my playthrough, is how I look at it... lol. That is an odd one. It claims it can't load the sun, hmmm.... what was the last version you used that worked (if any?) Screenshot of GameData folder, maybe?

I appreciate the feedback. I'll list it as a bug and look into it. Darn, I thought we had that one more or less under control. Oh well. It's possible this is a regression as well (as in, an old bug that was fixed and somehow came back). Either way I'll try to fix it next release. I hope that will be within the week. Edit: The issue for it is created, here.

Try setting it to 1 (maybe the code does not like 0). Either way, that config option should have no connection to draw distance. The variable is ScatterCleanupDelta, btw, not ScatterCullDistance.

The naming is indeed confusing, because I kept trying to keep from having to run code in individual solar panels (the version without the "s"). In the end, I had to revert to that. But since it has a slight performance impact, multistar by default is not enabled, it will only be enabled by downloading the additional cfg, which will then remove all the old "s" fixers (that did not work properly) and apply the older, more reliable (but performance hurting) multistar code that runs on a per-panel basis. I hope that clarifies? The code lineage is indeed confusing (due to me attempting a dead end method of performance enhancement, and reverting to the old way in the end), but all users need to know is if they want multistar, they should simply download the cfg and it will handle any instance. If they don't, leave it alone cfg wise, and ditto. By the way, I'm not entirely sure the repos SolarPanels.cfg is up to date... this is what we are using at the moment for single star scenarios (stock shipping cfg): // If any modder adds useKopernicusSolarPanels = false to a module instead of a part, add it to the part: @PART:HAS[@MODULE:HAS[#useKopernicusSolarPanels[?alse]]]:FINAL { %useKopernicusSolarPanels = false } // Uses regular expressions to convert any case variants like FalSe to false @PART:HAS[#useKopernicusSolarPanels[*]]:FINAL { // This cfg will enable KopernicusSolarPanels // to allow support for multiple lightsources // // If you want to avoid this, add "useKopernicusSolarPanels = false" to the PART node // That will stop Kopernicus from changing the behaviour of SolarPanel @useKopernicusSolarPanels,* ^= :F:f: @useKopernicusSolarPanels,* ^= :A:a: @useKopernicusSolarPanels,* ^= :L:l: @useKopernicusSolarPanels,* ^= :S:s: @useKopernicusSolarPanels,* ^= :E:e: } //First delete all old "KopernicusSolarPanels" fixers @PART:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleDeployableSolarPanel]]:FINAL { !MODULE[KopernicusSolarPanels] } You know they say hindsight is 20/20... I probably should've awoken that for this. Unfortunately, we're already through the worst. I certainly will for future experiments though.

release-65 New in this latest version release-65: 1.) Some slightly too agressive masking was rolled back to fix the fact that the KopernicusWatchdog fake-celestial ceased to function. Some mods may break because of this, I will be patching mods and making PRs actively as I can over the next few weeks. Until then, see change #2 if you want an immediate fix for a broken mod. 2.) An optional cfg was added to release to disable the KopernicusWatchdog fake celestial body (at the cost of losing the distant body terrain sinking issue fix). This may help with mod compatibility for out-of-date mods. Simply drop in the Gamedata/Kopernicus/Config folder. Known Bugs: 1.) The ingame shadows without an external mod like scatterer can be glitchy. It is advisable to use an external mod for best experience at the moment. 2.) At interstellar ranges, heat can sometimes behave strangely, sometimes related to map zoom (be careful zooming out). It is best to turn off part heating when traveling far far away. 3.) When zooming out all the way out in map view at interstellar ranges, the navbal furthermore sometimes behaves oddly. We are working on this and all the interstellar bugs actively. 4.) 1.) Very Old craft files may complain about a missing module. This is a cosmetic error and can be ignored. Reload and re-save the craft to remove the error. Known Caveats: 1.) The 1.12.x release series works on 1.12.x,1.11.x,1.10.x, and 1.9.x. The 1.8 release is for 1.8.x. 2.) Mutlistar Solar panel support requires an additonal config file, attatched to release. 3.) A fake celestial body is now used to fix the distant sinking bug. This body is called "KopernicusWatchdog" and will a.) intentionally keep it's distance from you at all times and is b.) invisible. The body is usually hidden from in game processes, but this is new territory having to use another moving celestial to correct a bug, so there may be side effects. Also, Principia does not benefit from this fix at this time, unfortunately. Those users may try "MakingLessHistory" mod, the old workaround. Other legacy mods that are broken from this change may use the optional RemoveWatchdog.cfg to bypass this and work again. 4.) When using the ultra/atlas shader, ocean effect customization (color etc) is unreliable. Please use only high shader level (shader level 2) or lower if working with stock ocean effects. This does not effect scatterer or other ocean rendering mods. Take note of the bolded points. I will be updating some mods and helping other present and available authors to update over the next few weeks, but if you have a mod that is not up to date and broken, the cfg mentioned in the bold points above may be just what you need... especially if you do not need the distant body fixes. Thanks for reading.

Heads up that the last releases fake celestial is not doing it's job... it does not even fix the bug it is intended to fix. Reason identified, but rather than just fixing it immediately, I am taking some time to make a proper release that properly a.) masks it better and b.) works as intended. Expect it either this evening or tomorrow. I want it to be quality so taking my time.

That is bizzare as there is not even a moon on the fake celestial, lol. I am playing with a patched contractConfigurator to work around this. It works, but is less than ideal to make source changes in other mods. If I cannot mask the body better somehow soon though that may be the route we have to go.

Should be able to fix this exception as well, on it. Not a bad idea, though just FYI next release will attempt to fix the bug with ContractConfigurator you are experiencing.

@fragtzackI am curious if this fixes the Stategia bugs you had. R-T-B released this now release-64 New in this latest version release-64: 1.) Yet more fixes/workarounds for various mod crashes by applying better KopernicusWatchdog celestial masking. This will be an uphill battle, if you have a mod that does not work with this please report it and use Release-60 in the meantime. 2.) Experimental fix for sinking landing gear at extreme ranges. See caveat note #3 for details on how this is done. Known Bugs: 1.) The ingame shadows without an external mod like scatterer can be glitchy. It is advisable to use an external mod for best experience at the moment. 2.) At interstellar ranges, heat can sometimes behave strangely, sometimes related to map zoom (be careful zooming out). It is best to turn off part heating when traveling far far away. 3.) When zooming out all the way out in map view at interstellar ranges, the navbal furthermore sometimes behaves oddly. We are working on this and all the interstellar bugs actively. 4.) 1.) Very Old craft files may complain about a missing module. This is a cosmetic error and can be ignored. Reload and re-save the craft to remove the error. Known Caveats: 1.) The 1.12.x release series works on 1.12.x,1.11.x,1.10.x, and 1.9.x. The 1.8 release is for 1.8.x. 2.) Mutlistar Solar panel support requires an additonal config file, attatched to release. 3.) A fake celestial body is now used to fix the distant sinking bug. This body is called "KopernicusWatchdog" and will a.) intentionally keep it's distance from you at all times and is b.) invisible. The body is usually hidden from in game processes, but this is new territory having to use another moving celestial to correct a bug, so there may be side effects. Also, Principia does not benefit from this fix at this time, unfortunately. Those users may try "MakingLessHistory" mod, the old workaround. Other legacy mods that are broken may work with the last release before this change happened, Release-60. 4.) When using the ultra/atlas shader, ocean effect customization (color etc) is unreliable. Please use only high shader level (shader level 2) or lower if working with stock ocean effects. This does not effect scatterer or other ocean rendering mods.

oh my, thanks for catching that. I meant release-60. Editing.