dahud

What's that sonny?

I'm slightly surprised that worked. Yeah, when they kept calling 0.23.5 "The ARM Update", I knew what I had to do.

I named my 0.23.5 career mode save "Amalgamated Regional Militia". Fifty internet points to whoever gets it.

Get one of those cubical probe cores. Stick long I-beams on all six sides of the probe. Stick I-beams on the end of those I-beams. Launch. Watch the probe do a spider dance, and sometimes take flight. If you're lucky, it'll never come down.

4/10, I'm sure I've seen you somewhere...

Twitch recently changed the way they handle the archives, but I think we'll be recording by other means.

By "directly and dynamically", I meant that I want a kOS-like console in the game that I can type C# code into. Essentially this would be a tool for fiddling with the API, not so much an autopiloting thing.

At the end of the day, what I'm imagining is a way to access the KSP API directly and dynamically from in-game. C# is my "native tongue", I'm much more familiar with it than any other language and often do these kinds of dirty tricks at my day job. Additionally, using C# gets us a much more robust language and compiler, one that has a hundred MS engineers with unlimited freedom behind it, as opposed to anything one person could shoehorn into a mod API. I mean no slight to the author of kOS, I just see a possible different path.

Is there any meaningful difference between an interface to the compiler and getting the actual compiler? Right now I've got some test code that takes in a string representing source code and spits out a functioning .NET assembly. Admittedly, the only code I've tried so far is trivial, but it seems to work OK.

Last night, I had an idea for a scripting framework that would allow for in-game coding and execution of true C# code, like kOS but with all the power of C# behind it. The .NET framework contains its own compiler. This could be used to generate an assembly with certain pre-defined method names, such as "Init" or "Loop". The mod could then execute those methods at the correct time. The main difficulty that I see in this is unloading the assembly when we want to recompile. There are ways to use Application Domains to forcibly unload an assembly, but I do not know them yet. Aside from that, does anyone know any reasons why this might not work?

Idea! I should start taking challenges. Oh, and here's episode 3:

Just published episode 2! Check it out in the top post.

This first episode was made with an experimental version from about a week before release. That recovery button was added pretty late. That said, I'll certainly be using it from now on, if I can remember that it's there!

Yeah, there was a bit of confusion about who was allowed to what and where, but no one was mad and it wasn't gone long .

One year ago, I made a series of Youtube videos where I ran a space program on a budget, adding up the costs of rockets and setting contracts for myself. Now, I can do it for real! NOTE: The first episode was made in an experimental version - I just couldn't wait. All future episodes will be in the latest release build. EPISODE 1: EPISODE 2:

I've figured out the problem. Apparently the keyword "steering" is case sensitive, it needs to be all lowercase. This is not the case for other keywords, such as LoCk or Prograde. The line terminator put me in a COBOL frame of mind, I guess, because I was typing my commands in all-caps. I think inconsistent case-sensitivity is a considerable usability issue, might even be a bug.

What I'd like to see is a full listing for a medium-length program. That always helps me understand the structure of a language.

Better still, play a little animation of the terminal catching fire.

I haven't tried that. All my experimentation has been in orbit. Idea: is there any architectural reason you can't pipe unhandled exceptions onto the console? It makes sense in-universe, it is a computer after all. For bug tracking purposes: I'm using the latest Steam version of KSP, on Windows 8 64-bit. The only mod running alongside this was Kerbal Engineer Redux, dunno what version. Also, you know what would be really nice? Functions. Or at least the ability for programs to return values to the program that called it.

The rotation axis dials don't move, it's not even trying to turn. I don't remember whether the cursor was blinking or not at that particular time, but I do remember the console falling into a bad state a few times. For example, sometimes the console would stop displaying text in realtime, and would only display the command after I press Enter. Do unhandled exceptions bubble up to the ALT-F2 window? If not, do you dump them anywhere? EDIT: BBCode really doesn't like line breaks today.

That is accurate. Also, SAS was off. My exact steps: Be in space. Right click on kOS part to activate and bring up the command prompt. Type "LOCK STEERING TO PROGRADE." Press Enter. At the end of all this, nothing has happened.

Hmm, that makes sense.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I can't persuade kOS to control my heading. I've tried simple tests, like "LOCK STEERING TO PROGRADE." both in direct commands and executed scripts. The craft can be rotated manually, but kOS just won't do anything. Am I missing something silly?

A couple of things come to mind: One, you might have inadvertently set the trim on your ship. Trim is a sort of a preset for rotating used mainly for airplanes. If you turn on RCS with no throttle and it tries to spin you, then that's the problem. Reset the trim with Alt+X. Second, you might have exhaust from some of your engines hitting parts of your ship. When this happens, some or all of the engine's thrust is negated in accordance with Newton's first law. To test for this, turn off all the engines except the ones in the back. Finally, there might be some imbalance that's not immediately visible. Pay close attention to how the modules are lined up.

Yes, I imitate today's space programs by maintaining a money-sink space station while waiting around for some private company to do the interesting stuff.