Cydonian Monk

It seems to calculate the initial position of the "Decoration Board" window based on the initial position of the main window, even after the main window has moved. It does remember the position of both however, which is exactly what it needs to do. The positions also persist properly across game restarts. Thanks!

Generally I listen to audiobooks. Last time I did a similar long drive (across 1/8th of Duna and back, mostly downhill both ways....), I watched something like half of the first season of Farscape. It helps to have a TV or some other mind-distracting form of noise generation in the same room.

Excellent. Thanks!

The new update looks good to me, and Alt+F works too. Custom ribbons seem to stick. (And I've never had a save game butchered by FF anyway.) I do have one request - I'm on a small screen (1280x800) and have to move the FF main window to the left every time it opens. Thus far after each stable release I've been updating your code to spawn the window further to the left, but I was wondering if you'd be up for adding some code to remember the last window position?

You guys keep saying "The Claw"... and all I can think of is Toy Story... little green aliens, claws grabbing things.......

This is the best bit of news I've seen this month. Excuse me while I do my Happy Unix Dance. Assuming it works, of course. Whatever version of Unity the launcher uses crashes for me, so.... Perhaps I'll put the Happy Unix Dance on hold.

Ah, right, /that's/ why I was supposed to go to Austin today. Bah. Wait long enough and the asteroid will come to you instead, I guess.

Building Kelgee Memorial Station I'm taking a step back today to look at the construction of Kelgee Station, my first large space station in KSP since at least version 0.21. Kelgee Station has been a several month long project, during which I've encountered bugs, glitches, and even the mighty Kraken. Construction began on January 1st, 2014, and is ongoing. The station is named in honor of one of the first Kerbonauts from this cycle, Kelgee Kerman, who died during the launch of the Minmus Visitor 1. Kelgee is an orbital science and research station at its core, and serves as a "home away form home" for my crews form time to time. It started simply enough, as the first segment included only the Laboratory, a HitchHiker can, and a pair of docking ports. The launch was part of a system test for the Mun and Minmus Visitor launch vehicles, and was used only because it was roughly the same mass as the CS/M and LEM pair. It remained in orbit as a piece of debris for quite some time until I decided to turn it into a proper station. (I should note that my screenshots of building this station are less than comprehensive. In many cases I only have photos of the launch.) Phase 1 construction began in earnest after the Minmus missions were complete. The goal was to produce a livable space laboratory with sufficient power and attitude control to accommodate my larger plans. Photovoltaic arrays were to be on a separate plane from the living and docking areas to prevent damage from RCS blasts, and were designed to be modular to allow for unlimited expansion. One of the very early launches included the best construction tug our tech could buy. This hard-working robot has been the longest serving member of the station crew, and is rather affectionately known as "Gerty." (Shortened from "General-Use Robotic Tug," or GUR-T.) Gerty is little more than two monoprop tanks, thrusters, a small reaction wheel, some solar panels and two different sizes of docking ports. My process for building the station was to launch a component, get it within a couple kilometers, deorbit the launch vehicle, then send Gerty out to retrieve it. None of the components I launch have a probe core (that's part of the launch vehicle), so to this day Gerty has been the only real "brains" of the station. The early component launches took some odd shapes and required some equally odd fairings. I tried to keep them believable, but sometimes that just wasn't possible, as evidenced by the long and skinny first batch of solar arrays. From left to right: Station Power Core (batteries) with the General-Use Robotic Tug, Station Control Module (reaction wheels), and the first set of Solar Arrays. Five launches into construction and Phase 1 was nearly complete. I sent the first crew up in the Explorer 3 on January 18th (Day 66) to conduct a gravity experiment and to connect things inside the living areas of the station. Lars and Jonrigh remained behind to help Gerty with the construction while Calbin returned to Kerbin with the gravity data they collected. Before Calbin could leave I had to send a lifeboat up for Lars and Jonrigh, just in case something went horribly wrong. Naturally the lifeboat itself was the thing that went wrong. Without any power generation capability, the lifeboat's batteries died awaiting the rendezvous. Calbin was sent out to retrieve and recharge it. He took Gerty with him, and let the tug take the lifeboat back to the station so he could head straight back to Kerbin. Lars and Jonrigh spent most of their time relaxing in the small Hab module, playing countless hours of "Settlers of Katan" and "52 Card Ricochet." -- Phase 2 started just before the first Mun Visitor mission (in which Lars discovered Hudwin's landing), and was intended to bring TAC Life Support up to a working state. The first Phase 2 launch occurred on January 19th (Day 76), and coincided with the arrival of the second station crew aboard the Dispatch 001: Kerster, Hudrey and Kening. They were followed shortly afterwards by four more solar array segments (over two launches). Lars and Jonrigh returned to Kerbin shortly afterwards to prepare for the Mun landing. A small supply ship, the Canary SAV-0001, arrived at this time. Phase 2 began in earnest following the successful completion of the first Mun mission. A second crew was sent up to assist with relocating the larger modules: Lars, Shellan and Jenvis in the Dispatch 002. (Never a moment's rest for Lars.) The "Command Module" was sent up next. This large module serves as the central spine of the station, and includes a cupola at one end for scenic observations of Kerbin. The first launch of the command module failed to achieve orbit, requiring a second launch after a small construction delay. Delays.... The Port and Starboard habitation modules went up next, and the science lab was moved to the starboard rear mooring of the habitat module. For some reason no photos are available of those launches or of the modules being attached. It was around this time I realized I'd need to collect Munlin from his hermitage on the Mun should I want to activate TAC Life Support without killing him, so the Mun Visitor 4 was launched and Munlin recovered. But only after the Mun Visitor 2 and 3 exploded during ascent in impressive fashion. (The crews were recovered safely.) More delays. That brings us to where we left off last time. One new member of the station crew: Munlin. Munlin returned to Kerbin seven days later in the lifeboat, at which time I quicksaved. Thankfully. At this point all that remained before I could activate TAC was to bring the Life Support Module and the supply vehicles up to the station. (That's when things started to go weird....) The life support module launched on January 25th (Day 88). It was an uneventful launch. Gerty was sent out to retrieve the module, and dutifully installed it on the port aft mooring opposite the science lab. And all hell broke loose. The first sign of trouble was from Kerbal Engineer Redux. It disappeared. Completely. For whatever reason, docking the life support module caused it to remove itself from the universe, and right clicking on either of the Engineer7500s on the two Dispatch ships moored to the station produced funky, cursor-jumping, wild results. I managed to undock the two Dispatch craft, turn off their Engineer7500s, redock, then continue with no further issues. I chalked it up as just another weird occurrence and went on. Lars took a snapshot from the command module while the station's computer was freaking out. No obvious signs of external interference. (And no fireflies.) I then made the mistake of exiting the game and (probably) going to bed. -- The next time I sat down to KSP, Kelgee Station was gone. The Kraken had come in the night and eaten half of the station. "OK," I said, "I'll just fallback to the last good version in DropBox." Well, Kraken got that, too. And the one before it. And the one before that. As it turns out, adding the life support module (and another ship of supplies) pushed me over 255 parts. Somewhere, buried deep in the code of one of the mods I was using, there's an 8-bit buffer. At 256+ that caused the buffer to overflow, and all parts after part 255 failed to load. After experimentation I narrowed it down to a few possible culprits: Module Manager, Deadly Reentry, and TAC Life Support. (I had already removed Engineer's DLL before I started "testing.") That seriously bummed me out, and I stopped playing KSP for a couple weeks (though that had more to do with lack of time than this bug). When I came back later I decided to abandon the save, not use mods that require ModuleManager, and to set limits on what mod parts go on what ships and land on what planets. (Basically: none, unless they're detachable. Cameras and SCANsat parts have since come equipped with built-in decouplers....) In the end, though, I'm really attached to this save. At the same time I also enjoyed the 'Squad of BadS="Y" Test Pilots' I was playing with in the Thirteenth Cycle and I wanted to merge the two. Thus enters the quicksave from when I sent Munlin back to the Kerbin.... Time hiccuped. The life support module was never docked. A small reorganization occurred, and Kanawha SpaceWorks merged into the Kerbin Space Launch Alliance. And Munlin went back to Kerbin. Again. -- So we're back on track, right? Well, I can be a bit stubborn at times. After further experimentation I found that TAC and ModuleManager were not to blame for the weird 255+ part issue. (I'm not convinced Deadly Reentry was either, but nothing else changed.) So I started Phase 2.5 on February 26th (Day 116) when I sent up a new Life Support module. (Somewhere in between the "accident" and Phase 2.5 I also sent up a communications array and two new sets of crews.) Gerty flew out to grab the new module, and dutifully installed it in exactly the same place it was before. Life Support includes three water purifiers and two air purifiers, as well as some storage tanks and a bit of fluff for looks. And this time the universe didn't implode. Next up: supplies. The ATV vehicles are fully automated, much to Gerty's displeasure, and as such can dock to the station on their own. Here, the Kanawha SpaceWorks Adena ATV.0004 approaches Kelgee Station with a fresh load of food, water, oxygen and monoprop for Gerty. I also (finally) sent a full-featured science package up for use with the lab module. This should make the scientists happy, as previously they've either had no experiments, or have needed to EVA to one of the docked ships. Here's a very recent shot of Kerster pulling a spent Goo from the experiment pod to investigate and send back to Kerbin. -- Phase 3 construction began on February 27th (Day 116), and involved the addition of a "South" Habitat (downward from the solar arrays), docking armatures for spaceplanes, and a special docking arm for use with the KSO Space Shuttle. I also added another set of solar arrays, more for looks than actual power generation need. Adding this new wing required some module shuffling. The solar array and power system was pulled away from the existing structure (with station power temporarily supplied by umbilical from the two docked Dispatch ships). The new South Hab and its node were installed directly onto the Command Module, and the Power and Control Modules were reinstalled behind the reaction wheels. The spaceplane docking armatures came up next. These are sealed tunnels, but as most of my spaceplanes use Jr-size docking ports crew egress is not a consideration. Still, there are a couple full size docking ports on these for normal craft to use. Most docking operations will move down to the South level to minimize risk to the solar arrays. These docking arms are the longest single parts I've yet launched for Kelgee, and did look more than a bit awkward. The latest set of solar arrays was sent up, as I said, more for looks than function. I may retract the four innermost panels to keep them as protected spares. Here is the last set of panels being installed by Gerty. Around this time I managed to get the"Kerbal-Sized Orbiter" tweaked to the point I was happy with it. This mainly included retooling the boosters to use solid fuel and to add stock exhaust effects on top of Nazari's Hot Rockets effect (for exhaust, and because Nazari's booster flame is almost completely un-animated on my system). Here is the launch of STS-1 with the last station module for Kelgee phase 3. Helpfully, the KSO brought its own docking kit. This was shipped to orbit strapped to the back of the cargo bay, and required some minor gymnastics to get it properly acquired: The Mission Operations Directorate has yet to find a use for the KSO, though they do admit it is rather pretty. STS-1 represents the Shakedown/Breakdown flight of the first ship in the KSO fleet, the as-of-yet unnamed KSO-100. Here it is on final approach to and docked with Kelgee station: That's all for now, and this Phase 3 discussion is getting well ahead of the story anyway. Next up: the small diversion I made to the new and short-lived Thirteenth Cycle. -- Construction Launches by Phase: 1: 6 2: 8 2.5: 1 3: 9 Supply Launches: 7 Crew Launches: 6 Current Mass: 132t Current Part Count: 335 Current Frame Rate: Acceptable.

Well, at least your estimate of how many of us will be able to run KSP with your mod installed after this update is realistic. I say it looks great to me. If you don't want to use the velcro excuse, then just say everything is magnetic. I'm more interested in the laptop than the gravity-obsessed props anyway.

Mundust Relics .... until one morning when he heard a strange tapping on the hatch of the MunDust. He had been in a deep trance, and it took some time for the noise to draw his attention. Outside of the hatch he could see two lights and a glowing face. He checked his helmet and reached for the hatch release. The strange new kerbal waved at him and tapped at the side of his helmet. He was talking and yet Munlin heard nothing. He turned on his radio. "... I said, are you okay?" Munlin nodded. "I'm Calbin, and you must be Munlin. Can you walk?" "Yes." Munlin started to unstrap from his chair, then asked "What about the dust?" "What about it?" "It has to stay here. It belongs here." Calbin held up his hand and pulled a small tool from a hidden pocket. "Watch." He tapped the end of the tool to his suit, and all of the dust shot away and fell towards the ground. "Static electricity. Knocks the dust right out of you. C'mon, we'll talk back in my ship. It's a bit more comfortable." Munlin followed this strange apparition back to his ship. He paused to take one last look back at the MunDust, and vowed to one day return to show more of his brothers around. It was such a nice corner of the Mun. -- "We weren't really sure you'd be here, ya know?" Calbin hooked his suit up to the in-cabin air supply and started to spool up the lander's ascent engines. "Are you not from the warmlands? The ones who built the towers that carried me here?" "Uhm, no. Yes. Maybe?" "How did you know to look for me?" "Well, see, that's where it gets strange...." Calbin hit the launch button and Munlin was thrust down into his seat. Not the smoothest of rides. -- Several munths earlier.... The investigation into the failure of the Minmus Visitor 1 launch started the moment Gene gave the order to "lock the doors." No one was exactly sure what had caused the instability that lead to the abort, but everyone knew a craft without parachutes would never land safely. Calbin had the worst of the jobs that day; as CapCom it was his duty to maintain communication with the crew during their final descent. Nothing the investigation board could do would match that horrid task. The review lasted sixty days. The cause of failure was discovered to be an early jettisoning of the fairings, resulting in a fatal reduction of structural integrity. Abort to Orbit was not an option, and without chutes... the outcome could not have been altered. No one was sure exactly who forgot to pack the parachutes, and firing everyone wouldn't bring Kelgee and Jeddon back from the grave. The first Minmus Explorer mission had carried with it a small probe. The idea was simple: two kerbonauts would orbit above in their HGR Raddish capsule, mapping the surface from a high orbit. The probe would be send down to discover what flavour of ice cream the surface was composed of. This probe sparked a great deal of excitement and debate when it exploded shortly after touchdown, an event that accelerated the crewed landing beyond its safe timetable. Many questioned the logic behind "exploding probe leads to crewed lander," but none bothered to question if they had packed parachutes on the craft. Seventy-six days later the Minmus Visitor 2 had both parachutes and lander, and was ready to answer the question as to why the probe exploded. It turned out to be a rather uneventful trip. Perhaps not for Lars, who became the first to land on Minmus, but nothing more happened. The world got its fill of pictures of Lars bouncing around in low gravity, and the all important flag planting ceremony. And as it turned out nothing exploded, and the metal lander legs didn't react to the strange ice salts of Minmus. Lars visited a few different sites, collected a few scoops of not ice cream, and went back up to Kening in the orbiter. Antics over, the pair flew back to Kerbin. It was the third mission that proved strange. In the interest of saving money, the lander from MV2 was left in orbit, and refueled by the crew of the Minmus Visitor 3. To do this they carried with them an extra fuel tank. Topped off and ready to go, Calbin slid over to the lander. His first landing zone was on one of the many flats, at a point where he could walk to two different nearby peaks. What he found there confused everyone. Off in the distance, not far from his lander, there stood a flag. Not just any flag, but one of their own flags. Just very, very old. And a plaque. Also very old. No one knew who this Bill character was, or what he had to do with Jeb the Junkkerb. (Assuming it was even the same Jebediah.) Calbin was ordered to take as many samples as possible from this spot and to head back to Kerbin at once. He decided to leave his own flag first. Things got really weird from there. The exploration of Minmus was placed on hold and the Mun missions were accelerated. All mention of Calbin's flag was silenced. Calbin was ordered not to speak of it, and to move on to Mun planning. It was decided the first landing site on the Mun should be along the prograde face. There were a number of unique features there that intrigued the science department, and a lander was developed that could visit multiple sites and be left behind as a science station. Lars was again chosen as the first to land, with Mitford and Oblas left in orbit. The heavier equipment required an even heavier launch vehicle, and ever more rigorous tests. Eighty days later Mun Visitor 1 blasted off from Cape Kerbal. The entire mission had gone exactly as planned right up until landing. Lars noticed something in the crater below his landing site, lost focus, and rolled the lander. It required some tricks with the legs to right it again. Following his "landing" he moved the craft back to the top of the ridge so he could take a closer look at what had distracted him. The ground controllers advised him to take care of the "housekeeping" before he went to investigate, so he did the usual ladder descent, flag plant, golf ball, feather dropping stunts for the public first. What he found was even more baffling than the flag on Minmus. As it turns out, Lars was the third kerbal to land at this spot. (Fifth, actually, but he has no way of knowing that.) He climbed into the lander to inspect, walked around and read the plaques, and even tried to take to strange rover for a spin. The ground crews were completely baffled. Another order was given to lock the doors - not to conduct an accident investigation, but to prevent a leak. Everyone started pouring through old mission notes, old newspapers, recordings of television broadcasts. All looking for some clue. Lars was ordered to proceed to his next landing location, activate the descent module's science station, and return to Kerbin ASAP. He did at least take time to plant another flag and take some soil samples before leaving. -- "And that was when we found you." Calbin took a break from the story to set up the rendezvous with the orbiter. "An intern found some old notes about your mission, and started asking if anyone knew about the Monk on the Mun. We all figured he was crazy. Gene, though, Gene knew the whole story. They found some old telemetry data that showed your landing site, and we retasked this mission to swing by and pick you up, or to recover... artifacts, had you expired." "Oh." "Which was the plan to begin with, as nobody expected you to still be alive after forty years. Ah, here we are." Calbin spun the lander cabin around to face the orbiter that had crawled out of the dark just a few moments before. "That's our ride." -- A few hours later they were back in Kerbin orbit. The flight surgeon decided it was best to evaluate Munlin in orbit before subjecting him to reentry stress. Nobody was sure exactly how long he had been on the Mun, or what that much time would do to a kerbal. So they decided to defer his reentry until later. "This, my friend, is where we part ways. At least for now." Calbin pointed Munlin towards the window. "There are some fine folks over there that'll take good care of you until you're ready to go back to Kerbin." Munlin squinted, but couldn't see anything while looking into the Sun. Calbin flicked a switch and turned on the docking lights, bathing the station in their harsh glow. "Kelgee Station, named in honour of a fallen friend. You'll like it there." He brought the Mun Visitor 4's command module around to dock with the station. Munlin was in awe. "How can such a thing be built in the sky?" Calbin laughed. "You've got lots of catching up to do my friend."

(I played through most of this back before Christmas, and I'm just now getting to it. Yes, I'm behind on a few things. Also: I updated the first post with some explanation, a list of all kerbals lost since I started playing, and a list of administrative positions in the space program up through this cycle. Expect a few rapid fire updates as I tweak what I've written and get the images processed. Enjoy.) -- MunDust Legends - Returning the Vial The door to Mission Control swung open, briefly exposing everyone inside to the chattering and roar of the news teams. Flight Director Chris Kerman had just finished the pre-launch press briefing and was glad to be free of the endless questions. This was a big day for everyone involved with the space program, launching a Monk to orbit the Mun, though not all were happy about it. "Chris, I'd like to repeat the objection of the astronaut corps." Kirny Kerman, first kerbal in orbit, and de facto leader of the gang of astronauts. He was also serving as CAPCOM for this mission. "That should be one of us up there, not some unknown Monk." Chris raised his hands as though to deflect to question and pointed back towards the press room. "I thought I left the vultures outside. Look, we all know this is a PR stunt. And it certainly wasn't my decision. So let's finish this monkeying around, move on, and get back to the plan. Ok?" Everyone nodded and went back to their desks. "Start the clock." -- Munlin had spent the last two hours in quiet meditation as the MunRunner was rolled from the VAB to the launchpad with him aboard. He didn't understand why the crews here at Cape Kerbal didn't have an access tower like back at the abandoned rocket village, but assumed they knew what they were doing. He barely heard the go/no-go checks being rattled off on the radio, and only drifted out of his trance a few moments before liftoff. He could hear the faint yet familiar rumble outside the craft. Smoke billowed over the capsule, the craft started shaking violently, then... away! Munlin watched the sky through the hatch as he sped upwards. The craft banked and rolled just enough for him to see the oceans to the south. The boost stage cut out. A few seconds of free floating, then he was thrust back into his chair by the second stage. A few short minutes and Munlin was back in the weightless euphoria he first discovered those many weeks ago. The second stage broke away and the transfer stage boosted the MunRunner the rest of the way to orbit. A short while later the transfer stage reignited and sent Munlin towards the Mun. The program called for insertion into a Munar Free Return trajectory, with an optional Munar Orbit capture if everything checked out. So far everything was checking out. Munlin had offered to fly manually, but ground preferred computer control over that of a monk. A few hours in and Munlin decided it was time to test the new EVA suit. "It's so very peaceful and quiet here. Much quieter than the monastery." "Copy that, MunRunner. We gave your signal on Mun Relay and show you at T-1 hour until Munar Orbit." "Kerbin looks so tiny now. So very peaceful and small." -- With Munar orbit capture completed, Munlin set out to do his only real scientific task on the mission: mapping the surface. This task proved to be a bit more difficult for the scientists back on Kerbin to understand, as Munlin would routinely describe features as small animals or various plants. That crater looks like a duck, this one resembles the leaves of the flowering obloa plant, and so on. His sketches were more useful, though no one could figure out why they hadn't sent along a camera. "CapCom, MunRunner. Could you describe the far side of the Mun for us?" "It's very grey down there, Kirny. Nothing green or cheeselike. Exactly like the old books describe it. Cratered. Lots of little holes and big holes, a whole family of holes. Very dark." "Right. We've got your Munar Escape Burn scheduled for T-45 minutes. Please be inside the ship when that happens." "So very peaceful. I wouldn't mind floating here forever." Munlin dutifully climbed back into the MunRunner a few minutes before the burn, and returned safely back to Kerbin. The relatively uneventful trip ended with a nice, safe splashdown. And thus began hours upon hours of interviews and debriefings. I decided to start playing with mods starting with 0.23. Up to this point I had only used various visual improvement and data plugins, such as the Docking Alignment mod and City Lights and Clouds. Still, there are a few aspects of KSP that are completely missing and filled in well by mods. Fairings are one of those gaps, and I filled that with Procedural Fairings. RemoteTech is the type of mod I had considered writing for myself before I discovered it existed. There are some aspects of it I don't care for (Flight Computer should really be it's own mod, the communications limitations of RemoteTech are a bit less like reality, etc), but it looked like fun so I decided to give it a go. After I tweaked it to include KSC2 as a ground station, of course. I'm still hesitant to use mod parts as I'd like to keep this save "clean," so in building my communications network for Kerbin I only used the stock antennas. My network design was straight forward: Six satellites in geosynchronous orbit to use as the network backbone, a cluster of nine to twelve smaller satellites in LKO to serve as ground and low-orbit relays, and three satellites in orbit around both the Mun and Minmus. I started with the KSO satellites. These are simple craft, with a couple small omnidirectional antennas and four directional dishes. Two of the dishes are trained on the neighboring satellites in the KSO grid for network crosstalk, one dish targets Kerbin, and the other targets one of three options: Mun, Minmus, or Active Vessel. These were launched with the heaviest of my early-game launch vehicles, the Hawk. Relatively straight forward design, featuring the small always-on omni antenna from RT on the second stage so as to not lose connection. Here's the KSO array prior to launching the LKO cloud or the Mun/Minmus relays. The LKO Relay satellites were much smaller, and as such could be launched atop a single motor Kestrel. These consisted of little more than an array of omni antennas, and were placed into a 720km orbit such that they were always in range of the KSO network, yet at varying altitudes and orbital periods to provide a relatively random distribution. I only launched nine satellites, as that provided enough coverage despite the occasional gap. The Kerbin comms network, following LKO build-out. Building the Mun Network was a bit trickier, and required one slightly inefficient capture burn to avoid LOS (Loss of Signal). With the first relay in orbit, though, the remainder of the network was easy to build. Here's the first satellite on approach, still connected to the entire KSO network: The Mun satellites were slightly larger versions of the LKO relays, with two directional dishes for talking to the KSO network. Minmus build-out didn't occur until later, and would be out of place to discuss here. By then I had also discovered the source of RT's more egregious bugs (including the vessel duplication bug), and was working with a heavily-modified version of it (with antennas tweaked so I could use only the stock ones). I've since stopped using it and all mods that require ModuleManager for reasons I'll get into later. I'm still looking forward to Cilph's next release as I rather enjoyed RT2 despite its flaws. For now let's get back to Munlin.... The MunDust lander was a good bit heavier than previous craft and required a larger launch vehicle. Wernher decided that increasing the fuel of the second and third stages of the Hawk should be enough, and didn't bother to give it a new name. "Why bother to rename it," he asked "when the craft vill be only used this one time? After the monk returns vith the samples, we vill have enough of an understanding of rocketry to build a new rocket craft, no?" Matwin, serving as today's CapCom, spoke up: "But Doc, Munlin's mission is to return samples /to/ the Mun, not to bring any back." "There vill be dust and things. In the capsule. There vill be samples whether the monk wants there to be or not." Wernher paused to let the obviousness of his statement sink in. "This discussion is useless. The raumfahrmönch is already on the pad." Liftoff was getting to be routine for Munlin, and he felt a bit guilty for not letting one of the others take a turn. No, this task was his and his alone. Besides, the fairing outside was blocking the view. The craft banked at about the same time as the MunRunner, but the main engine cut off much sooner. Strange. A few seconds later the second stage kicked him back into his seat. Fairing separation occurred far above the clouds. Munlin watched the islands slide away from him, 40km below. The second stage also cut out earlier than before, and the transfer stage had a bit more work to do to get the craft into orbit. Wernher was getting nervous and suggested to Chris it might be a problem later in the flight. This information was relayed to Munlin, and they presented the option to abort and try again with a larger craft. Munlin would have none of it. Returning the Mun Dust was more important than returning in the MunDust. He set up for the Munar transfer and punched the throttle as soon as the window opened. -- Munlin floated silently around the ship, watching Kerbin shrink away behind him. He was in the void between the LKO and Mun networks, and had shut off the radio. He really enjoyed the absolute silence and the breathtaking view of Kerbin far below. -- A few hours later Munlin turned the radio back on. He had just completed his Munar capture burn, and didn't want everyone back on Kerbin to worry about him. "I've completed the transfer burns, and am preparing to land at the agreed upon location." CapCom was much calmer than previously. Matwin had gone off duty leaving the more level-headed Rodorf on the line. "We're all watching anxiously down here on Kerbin, Munlin. How do you feel?" "Normal. The quiet of space reminds me of the monastery. Just like last time." A short pause while Munlin double checked his numbers. "I've set up my landing approach and am broadcasting it back to you now. Can you verify the timings?" "Roger, MunDust. Your math checks out. When you make it back here you might have a thing or two to teach the engineering department." "We'll see. Coming up on burn." Silence for a few seconds. "First burn complete, setting up second burn. Wow, what a sight!" "What was that, MunDust?" "The Kerbinrise. Wish brother Orsby was here to see this." "Beginning my final landing approach. Landing legs out. Looks like a nice and flat plain, though there are lots of larger Mun rabbits hopping around!" "MunDust could you repeat that? Did you say Mun /rabbits/?" Munlin ignored him and went into a tirade of "Wows." "I can see my shadow now! Wow! Just a few more trees down!" Rodorf was too busy communing with the flight surgeon about Munlin's apparent lack of sanity to notice the comment about the trees. Mission control was once again working itself into a bit of a panic. "I can see lights on the surface! Just a bit further!" Munlin could hear the dust being kicked up by the engines as it pelted the underside of the craft. The loudest sound he'd heard since stage 2 separation. "And I'm down! Time to go!!" Munlin didn't wait for a response before he opened the hatch and climbed out. The crowds back on Kerbin watched as he descended down the ladder and jumped off onto the surface. The first thing he did was kneel and take a moment to reflect. On the television it appeared he fell off of the bottom of the ladder. He pulled his Mun Dust out from a hidden pocket, the vial he had carried with him for so many years. He opened the vial, causing the air inside burst forth, creating a small dust cloud in the vacuum. He turned the vial upside down and watched as the dust slowly fell back to the Munar surface. After countless centuries the mission of his order had been fulfilled. They had preserved the knowledge of the previous cycles, returned kerbals to space, and returned the Dust which Bob and Kirk of the Fios 3 had stolen from the Mun. Munlin had been chosen well. He stood up and brushed the dust from his suit. The flag of his order was placed a few steps from the ship, marking this landing spot as a sacred place. He watched the sliver of Kerbin slip over the horizon for a few minutes until he realized Kerbin wasn't moving, then climbed back into the spaceship. Or rather he started to, but stopped once he realized the dust was clinging to his suit. "No," he said as he tried to brush it off. "You belong here!" He struggled for a few minutes until he realized the futility. Mun dust, uneroded and pure, sticks to everything it touches. Once inside he tried to knock the dust off his suit using the compressed air from his air tanks. All that accomplished was to create a cloud of foul smelling dust in the cabin. Munlin was divided. Clearly he couldn't return in good conscious if he took to Kerbin more dust than he brought with him. He decided to meditate on the quandary and entered into the trance now so familiar to him. At first for minutes. Then hours. Then days. His supplies were running low and no solution had presented itself. The kerbals back on Kerbin were getting nervous and irritating, so he shut off the radio, turned off all critical systems, and returned to his meditations. Surely the universe would present a solution. He needed only to wait....

Haven't had much free time in the last few weeks, and what I've had free I didn't really have any energy for it.

Reaction wheels? No. I also disable them on aircraft cockpits while in the atmosphere. If I don't have enough control authority without them I consider the aircraft design to be fundamentally flawed. SAS? Yes, I use SAS while flying aircraft, but without the overly strong (and borderline cheatingly so) reaction wheels it can only use thrust vectoring and the control surfaces to maintain a heading.

I'm furious about this question!! Fuming!!! Ok, so not really. Is there any particular problem you're having with this mod? I've had no issues using it (also playing on OS-X most of the time here, too), and did nothing more than merge the BoulderCo folder into the GameData folder of KSP. It does take quite a while to load the first time, but that's to be expected. Saves about 1GB over what KSP normally runs at for my normal mod set.

I should note the altitude is wrong as/of 0.23. I've found most craft need to be 2 meters lower than before, so add 355 instead, but even that isn't very precise. Something has changed and I just haven't had the time to figure out exactly what.

Magic. My normal process is to "launch" at KSC so the craft is on the pad, exit back to the main menu, edit the persistence file to change the craft's location and orientation to KSC2, then go back to the game, open the Tracking Station and load the craft. It's becoming increasingly difficult to launch from there, and I'm not really sure why. More often than not the craft is violently shaken apart at vessel unpack, so I have to quicksave/quickload a few times to get it to stick. I've looked into writing a simple plugin to do this (or using one of the already available plugins such as KerbTown or HyperEdit), but I'm not sure they'd fix the "violent disassembly" issue.... It's almost like the craft is clipping into something, possibly the old launchtower (which used to be an issue anyway), but no collision is reported in the log.

Yep! Mpg123 is fairly well maintained, and their pre-build .configure script took care of everything. Make ran without issues, though the compiled library was hidden under a . folder in the src folder. (Had I bothered to run 'make install' it probably would've copied it somewhere friendlier like /usr/lib....)

As I understand it, excess dots are not an issue, but they do prevent DllImport from appending a ".dll" to the end of the filename in Windows. Which means you would then need to specify the full filename. Regardless, I tried both the normal versioning and the Windows underscore/dash with no luck. The stack trace indicates "missing file" at DllImport (specifically at mpg123_init), so I think it's just down to finding and/or specifying the right path. The MOSX patch is pretty useless to us, as it only makes changes to the mpg123 binary, not the libmpg123 library. It does build, however, but it uses an older version of mpg123 to do so. Also, the issue it claimed to patch worked (for me) without the patch.... GitCraft doesn't seem to be doing anything obviously different. Sure, the library structure is different (they use a 3rd-party stub assembly as a dependency, and that stub dynamically loads the git libraries depending on platform), but procedurally it appears to be the same. (I only gave the C#/git library a cursory reading, though, so there may have been some P/Invoke things I overlooked.) I'm about 99% sure this would be easier in Linux.... and it would probably work right off. Might test that tomorrow night if I find the time.

Sadly you're right. I did manage to build mpg123 and libmpg123.0.dylib for OS-X using the mpg123 source (and also mpg123 using that patch, but both worked when used outside of KSP). I tweaked the STED source to specify the new dylib library, but DllImport failed to load the library. The API seems to be the same across all versions, but I really only had a couple minutes to look at it and I'm not overly familiar with exactly what C# and/or Unity are looking for....

This is so obvious that it gives me a headache that it didn't occur to me. To prevent making changes to the SoundtrackEditor plugin, this could be tested by taking the built library from that other OS-X version of mpg123 and renaming it to match the Windows version.... Otherwise the DllImport statements in mpgimport.cs will need to be updated to reference the OS-X lib. I'm pretty much at the point where I know I no longer know what I'm talking about, so take that with a grain of salt. I'd offer to compile the OS-X mp3 lib, but I've failed so far to get a simple serial port library to build in X-Code/gcc/llvm, so... see previous sentence. I'll just go hide in that corner over there for a while.

To answer your questions regarding lost custom ribbons: It depends on the ribbon. I only award custom ribbons from the SpaceCenter scene. The Inter Sidera and SSTO ribbons seem to "stick" (and never get deleted), whereas the TestPilot and all of the true custom ribbons don't. They only disappear after exiting and reloading the game, and seem to hang around for the entire session after being awarded.

I've basically settled on the following: On Joystick: RCS Translation left/right/up/down on the hat, RCS On/Off on the top left button (5), SAS On/Off on the top right button (6), SAS Forward/Back on the bottom left/right buttons (3/4), Fine mode on the thumb button (2), SAS Hold on the trigger (which is more of a holdover to the old SAS logic than anything, and may not be useful anymore). Off Joystick: That's what the keyboard is for, though I've used the 7-12 keys for a multitude of things such as Map View toggle, lights, landing gear.... But since I play on a laptop those keys are always right in front of me and I rarely (never) used them on the joystick.

Quite true. Good to know RootPath still works like I thought it did. Thanks.

Out of pure curiosity (and because I have no ability to test things in Windows), why do you need to do the following in GetRootpath()? while(path.EndsWith("/..")) { path = path.Substring(0, path.Length - 3); // remove "/.." // remove last folder in path int p = path.LastIndexOf("/"); path = path.Substring(0, p); } Removing the above code fixes OS-X, of course, but I'm assuming you did that for a good reason. Just curious why, so I can stop recommending that as a solution if it's broken or only works for Linux/OS-X. What does KSPUtil.ApplicationRootPath return by default in Windows?

Hmm... As/of 0.21 my Galaxy Textures stopped working and only show a black background. The files themselves haven't changed, and worked as recently as 0.20.1. Did anything change internally regarding them? (Though I just noticed that one is half the size of the other five... weird.) Nothing in the logs about them failing to load (quite the opposite, as they seemed to load ok), and it happens both with and without texture compression: [LOG 23:10:35.014] Load(Texture): TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_NegativeX [LOG 23:10:35.112] [TextureReplacer] Generated mipmaps for TextureReplacer/Default/EVAtexture [1024x1024 DXT5 -> RGB24] [LOG 23:10:35.719] [TextureReplacer] Generated mipmaps for TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_NegativeX [2048x2048 DXT1 -> RGB24] [LOG 23:10:35.727] Load(Texture): TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_NegativeY [LOG 23:10:36.362] [TextureReplacer] Generated mipmaps for TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_NegativeY [2048x2048 DXT1 -> RGB24] [LOG 23:10:36.377] Load(Texture): TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_NegativeZ [LOG 23:10:36.977] [TextureReplacer] Generated mipmaps for TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_NegativeZ [2048x2048 DXT1 -> RGB24] [LOG 23:10:36.993] Load(Texture): TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_PositiveX [LOG 23:10:37.633] [TextureReplacer] Generated mipmaps for TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_PositiveX [2048x2048 DXT1 -> RGB24] [LOG 23:10:37.644] Load(Texture): TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_PositiveY [LOG 23:10:38.277] [TextureReplacer] Generated mipmaps for TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_PositiveY [2048x2048 DXT1 -> RGB24] [LOG 23:10:38.294] Load(Texture): TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_PositiveZ [LOG 23:10:38.890] [TextureReplacer] Generated mipmaps for TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_PositiveZ [2048x2048 DXT1 -> RGB24] And later: [LOG 23:10:45.915] [TextureReplacer] Mapped GalaxyTex_NegativeX -> TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_NegativeX [LOG 23:10:45.915] [TextureReplacer] Mapped GalaxyTex_NegativeY -> TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_NegativeY [LOG 23:10:45.915] [TextureReplacer] Mapped GalaxyTex_NegativeZ -> TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_NegativeZ [LOG 23:10:45.915] [TextureReplacer] Mapped GalaxyTex_PositiveX -> TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_PositiveX [LOG 23:10:45.915] [TextureReplacer] Mapped GalaxyTex_PositiveY -> TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_PositiveY [LOG 23:10:45.915] [TextureReplacer] Mapped GalaxyTex_PositiveZ -> TextureReplacer/Default/GalaxyTex_PositiveZ Any ideas? Edit: FWIW, these are jpeg files apparently from the "Reality" pack distributed back when UniverseReplacer was a thing. They were renamed to match the naming rules as required by TR. Also, converting those to PNGs seemed to work, so it might just be a jpeg issue.