Cydonian Monk

(2014-01-19 - We're having some issues with my web host, so if these images are broken please be patient. I have a ticket open on the issue, which involves nearly everything from FTP to email and HTTP delivery.) -- The world has now entered The Age of Legends, a time when the powers of the world were fading. The chaos and great empires of the past were forgotten, ushering in a time of progress and continuity. -- MunDust Legends - The Monk's Tale Munlin was a simple monk who lived a simple life in a quiet monastery. It was a good existence, with his days spent copying the old books and records recovered from the old empires. Munlin had illuminated the stories of many great kerbals, their deeds lost to myth and time beyond the walls of his small monastery. Yet Munlin was no simple monk. He had been chosen by his peers as keeper of the MunDust, and elected as the second highest of their order. It was his duty to protect a sacred relic, a vial of grey stone said to be from the Mun itself, until such as time as either he or the dust would return home. Only if he attained the high rank of Abbot could he pass the MunDust to another in this life. One day, while on one of his long walks from the monastery, Munlin came across a peculiar old village. At one end there was a giant building, at the other a giant bowl. He recognized the bowl from the stories as one of those used to talk to the Kerbals beyond the Sky. A road led out from the giant box and reached out to a series of skeletal towers. Surely this must be the place where the Sky Kerbals of old left Kerbin! There was a stack of old rockets nearby, rather miraculously preserved over the ages. A plan was taking form inside Munlin's head. He could ride one of these “Sky Spears†and return the MunDust to its home! -- Several months later and many in the monastery had moved to the old rocket village. They found the formula for the fuel needed by the rockets in the old books they had been tasked with preserving. Many of the tools they needed were found inside the large old building at the rocket village. After some work, hey had one of the five rockets they recovered ready for launch. Munlin named it the Sounder, and naturally was awarded the first trip beyond the sky by his brothers. They moved the Sounder to the launchpad, then waiting for the Mun to be overhead. Munlin was waiting in patient meditation. He emerged from his trance just as the Mun was directly above him, then spoke to his brother monks over the radio and asked them to move away from the rocket. Once everyone was clear he hit the ignition. “Wow! I can see the Monastery from here!†he exclaimed as his view cleared the tops of the mountains. “Now I'm beyond the sky!†“Can you reach the Mun yet?†“No, that's much higher than we thought. It looks so far away. The rocket has run out of food. But I can see the desert and the ocean beyond!†Munlin had become the first Kerbal to enter space in many centuries, but his simple rocket could do only that, nothing more. The Mun was far from his reach, but the first step had been taken. The rocket fell back to Kerbin and landed not far to the west of the old rocket village. Munlin climbed out of the capsule in his patchwork space suit to inspect the remains. Not enough of the craft left to reuse, but there were still four more motors they could use. Brother Archibald was next to fly. His craft, the Sounder 2, included a few samples of a mysterious Goo they discovered hiding in the corner of the large building. The monks were split on sending the Goo into space, but were reassured when they found stories in the old books about Goo surviving much worse than the emptiness of space. Archibald flew higher than Munlin, but was still far out of reach of the Mun. Using the patchwork suit (the only space worthy suit they could assemble from what they had available), Archibald EVA'd and recovered the Goo. It seemed quite happy in the capsule until reentry, after which it appeared to become rather agitated. Archibald also landed just a few kilometers west of their launch site, an easy walk back. He examined the Goo containers on the way back, and was happy to see he need not have worried about the Goo. Better safe than not, though. -- Meanwhile, unknown to the monks, a new space program was taking shape on the other side of the planet. Led by the forgotten remnants of the Free States of Kerbin, the Kerbin Space Launch Initiative had just launched their first Kerbal into orbit. Kirny Kerman looked down at the world below him and at the endless space above him, absolutely certain he was the first Kerbal to ever enter space.... -- The monks decided their next launch should not be one of them, but a satellite instead. There were a number of simple thinking machines left amongst the ruins, so they fixed one up, strapped a radio to it, and set it to beep endlessly. They strapped it atop a rocket, named it Moving Star, and let it fly. They would only know if their launch had worked if they could hear the beeping 34 minutes later, a number they had calculated using the strange runes and formulas in the old books. (Only Munlin was starting to get a feel for orbital mechanics.) Indeed, as expected, 34 minutes later they heard the telltale beeping. As did the crews at the KSLI facility at Cape Kerbal.... -- Brother Orsby's Miracle Next up, Brother Orsby was to launch and follow the Moving Star across the sky to see if he could hear it beeping on the other side of Kerbin. With no need for further science they sent him up in a simple craft, named it the Flying Goat, and waited until the Moving Star was overhead. They hit the ignition with the best of intentions, but the flying goat had other ideas. Hundreds of Kerbin years of rust and neglect caused the motor of the Flying Goat to explode at ignition. Orsby's survival was heralded among the monks as a miracle, and they declared him more worthy of a second attempt than any other of their order. (This miracle would later see Orsby elected as head Abbot and appointed Keeper of the Duna Dirt.) A short time later and the monks had assembled the Leaping Goat and had strapped Orsby safely inside. They waited again for the tell tale beeping of the Moving Star, said a little prayer, and hit the ignition. Orsby was lofted high over the mountains and into the Eastern Sky, the furthest from home any of their order had been in quite some time. Orsby patched the beeping from the Moving Star into the radio back to the rocket village. “Can you hear the beeping?†he cheerfully asked, with the monks on the ground responding happily “Yes.†He kept repeating the question every few minutes, until he could no longer reach the monks on the ground. “Hello? Can you hear the beeping?†he continued to ask, awaiting anxiously for a reply. Then another voice came across the radio. “Cape Kerbal Radar Station to Unidentified Orbiter. Could you please identify yourself?†“Can you hear the beeping too?†“Yes, we hear the beeping. Who are you?†The conversation from there took a weird turn, as Orsby tried to explain who he was and where he was from. The operator at Cape Kerbal was not entirely unconvinced a prank was being played on him, but recorded the conversation nonetheless. After his first orbit Orsby reported to his brothers on the ground his conversation with “The Others,†whom they took to be apparitions in Orsby's mind. (He had acted somewhat funny after the explosion of the Flying Goat.) A few orbit later and the beeping stopped as the Moving Star moved beyond the edge of Kerbin. Orsby, tired of the weird conversations, decided to spend an orbit on EVA, admiring the stars. Surely this was where Kerbals belonged. Not down on the planet, stuck in the mud, but up amongst the stars, taking communion with the Universe itself. With his oxygen supplies running low Orsby set up a deorbiting burn. He had hoped to land near the monastery or the rocket village, but he was never very good at math, and overshot into the desert. After landing he packed all the food and water he could carry in his suit, planted the ceremonial flag the monks had been carrying in the capsule, and set off into the desert. The time of the monks amongst the stars had come to an end. ... Yet the flight of the Leaping Goat had caused quite a ruckus among the KLSI, and the achievements of these simple monks would not go unnoticed. But that is another tale, meant for another time....

Neither location worked for me. There is however another line in the log that I didn't notice the first time: "STED error: Directory '/Applications/KSP_osx_23.0/GameData/SoundtrackEditor\Music\' not found." (Perhaps the first time it crashed before the message was logged?) On a whim I updated SoundtrackEditor.cs line 299: string path = modDir.FullName + @"\Music\"; ...to use "/" for the separator character instead of "\", and that issue resolved. Without looking deeper into your coding style I'm not sure what the best cross-platform solution is for you, so I'll just leave that there. With that change made I returned back to libmpg: Without the dll or with the dll in the two suggested locations, I get: "STED error: libmpg123-0" as the last line of the KSP log for the Main Menu scene, no other errors reported. After the first two locations failed, I attempted to copy the dll to every directory within the KSP application bundle, with no success. I also attempted to place it in the KSP root directory, and in a directory named KSP_Data/Mono/, and /usr/lib/ (and some other system-level lib paths), also with no success. I can confirm I had sufficient permissions to use the dll. Provided no mp3s are included in the /Music/ directory or referenced in the settings.cfg file, the plugin does successfully load once changes are made to account for the above directory separator issue. I might take a deeper look at this tomorrow morning when I've got a bit of time (though I'm doubtful there is an easy resolution... and copying files into App Bundles is a bit ugly and prone to breaking anyway). Thanks for the suggestions at least.

To the planes!

Do you have a suggestion for where to install libmpg for those of us that don't have a KSP_Data folder (OS-X?)? Or is this mod now Windows-only? Thanks. (Edit: If there's on good idea as to where libmpg123 should go, would you be willing to add a "Disable MP3/MPG" option to settings.cfg? The plugin only has issues when it tries to enter the MP3Import() code in LoadMp3s()s. After that it just disappears... no segfault, no other log messages, just unloads or disappears or gets eaten by Unity.)

I could echo all the above, and I watch most of those that've been mentioned (when I have time). Yet a name I haven't seen mentioned is ThrashingMadPL. I understand maybe 30 word of Polish, but I really enjoy his KSP stuff. (This game is rather transcendent anyway.) I do wish Macey Dean was still around....

@ElJugador - Thanks! The flags are my own design, just thrown together in Gimp. I have a large file that has many layers, allowing me to quickly assemble a new flag from whatever logos and mix of stripes I want. The main logo (that I use most everywhere) was just a simple marker sketch from some years back. As for how I launch from KSC2 - I've tried a few of the mods such as HyperEdit and whatnot, but as I only really want to move to the other space centers I haven't seen the need to keep them around. Instead I just "launch" the craft from the VAB, exit, then edit the persistence file. I've considered building a simple mod to do it for me, and even poked at KerbTown's code to see how it did it, but decided it was just easier to copy/paste into the persistence file than it was to build the mod and keep it polished. Intercepting where KSP wanted to spawn craft seemed a tad bit buggy.

Awesome. Thanks again!

Thanks for the per-Kerbal head textures. I've not had a chance to look at your code for that yet, but how difficult do you think it would be to extend the face functionality to include Suits/Helmets as well? Would it be just a couple lines added in the same place where you determine the face texture, or some entierly new block of code? Thanks.

MrZurkon is mostly correct, though his post is worded perhaps slightly confusingly. It has been proposed that SABREs capture and store some of their "rocket mode" oxidizer from the atmosphere during ascent. Therefore the Skylon could launch with less oxidizer on board than was needed for "rocket mode" above the atmosphere. This is referring to the SABRE system as a whole, intakes and all, whereas the RAPIER in KSP represents only the combustion chamber of the SABRE. I'm not sure this design is the current working model though, and the literature I've seen on SABRE/Skylon indicates it will launch with preloaded LOX. RE's own materials don't discuss oxidizer capture for post-atmospheric use: http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/sabre_howworks.html

Random unexplained phenomena? Wormholes? Professor Arturo? Time Lords? No real idea. I restart all of my games at a new release, occasionally copying over everything from the previous or "main" save that is landed. In the case of 0.22 I just imported the entire save, orbiting craft and all. Since that included 7 the Kerbals at/around Duna and 1 around Kerbin, I had two of each of the "veterans." I /did/ hack the save to make it a career mode game, and decided to kept the new Jeb and the B's that it spawned.... I later went back and edited in [almost*] every Kerbal that had ever lived in one of my save games, so as of now the "main" save has something like 90-100 Kerbals (all marked as dead just so they don't appear in the capsule randomly at launch). At this point (0.23) there have been 12 Jebs. [*Almost - I lost two save games thanks to a misunderstanding of how OS-X no longer "merges" directories by default. Oops.]

Planetary Pinball - The ION Missions I decided to revisit some old ION probes while I was waiting for 0.23 to be released. First up were two probes I'd launched back in 0.20 - the Nomad 1 and the Phantom 1. Both were in a solar orbit that roughly intercepted Kerbin's orbit. Long burn times had caused me to abandon them shortly after launch, so I set out to conduct their long burns while I was asleep. After a 4 hour overnight burn at Solar periapsis, Nomad 1 ended up in a large and eccentric orbit with an apoapsis roughly in the neighborhood of Dres. Nothing really that interesting. Here's a shot (of what was only my second ION probe) for posterity's sake. Remember - when I built this there were no such things as reaction wheels - all maneuvering had to be done by RCS. Phantom 1, on the other hand, had an upcoming encounter with Kerbin. Perfect opportunity for a gravity assist! After playing around with the maneuver nodes, I discovered I could burn three tanks worth of Xenon overnight (with three ION engines) and have a Jool encounter in... a couple years. I was up long enough to get a shot of the Kerbin flyby, because why would I miss that? Reminiscent of Juno's recent Earth flyby. I decided to play around a bit more and built a "new" ION probe, named the Wayward 1. I didn't record exactly what day I launched it on, so all of the following updates are based on Launch Day = 0. It was a nice early morning launch with perfectly clear skies. First stop for Wayward 1 was Moho, an intercept which was achieved using the conventional and NERVA rockets it was launched on. I expected to get /something/ of a gravity assist from Moho, but no such luck. Still, it helped set up the next encounter... ... which was Eve. Wayward 1 had two Eve encounters over its lifetime, both providing a significant boost thanks to gravity. The first encounter with Eve pouched me form a Moho-Kerbin orbit out to a Moho-Duna orbit without a burn. Isn't gravity fun? Days later and we almost hit Duna! Just skimmed the atmosphere to push us part of the way out to Dres. The small burn performed here was to set up the second Eve encounter, which provided the majority of the velocity we needed to slingshot out to Dres. Back at Eve and we're doing another small course correction burn. This flyby of Eve was considerably slower than our initial flyby, but helped fling us out past Dres. Starting with Dres I needed to use Ions for most of my orbital mechanics. Up to this point I had barely used one tank's worth of Xenon, with seven tanks left. The burn at Dres was done to lower my Solar periapsis, with the ultimate goal of hitting Eeloo, followed by Jool. Timing the Eeloo encounter proved to be a bit difficult.... While awaiting Wayward's Eeloo maneuvers, the Phantom /finally/ completed its trip through the Jool system. Phantom took some excellent reading and images of Jool and Laythe, and gained enough of a boost form Jool (and the remainder of its Xenon) to escape the Kerbin system. Back to Wayward. I discovered at Solar periapsis that I could more easily set up a Jool encounter than Eeloo, and still remain in the Kerbin system. After some more maneuver node tweaking I discovered the best way to hit Eeloo was to reduce my orbit by passing in front of Jool (thus reducing Wayward's overall period), then another burn at Solar periapsis to head out to Eeloo again. One free Laythe encounter is included in your Joolian travel package! Back down to Solar Periapsis one more time.... ... a short burn later and I was set up for my Eeloo encounter. Only a 700 days after our first Jool encounter! I used the Eeloo encounter and one fin at Solar periapsis to set up the last encounter with Jool. At Jool, Wayward 1 would burn the remaining 2 tanks of Xenon to achieve escape velocity. (Though in actuality, the burn was only needed to make the escape take less time. We gained enough for escape with the last Jool encounter anyway.) So 400 days after Eeloo was make our last flyby of a planetary object in the Kerbol system. Wayward 1 is now on its way out of the Kerbol system. In all it took a little over 5 and a half years after launch to visit every planet in the system, though that could be reduced with changes to path and launch date. I let the clock run for another 10 years after this, just to see how far it got and may come back to it someday. Once all of its 8 canisters of Xenon gas were expended, Wayward 1 had a total mass of 1.3t (and probably a shade less). That xenon was traded for a total of 22,784m/s of ∆v, half of which was expended on the final escape burns at Solar Periapsis (day 2300 or so) and the final Jool flyby. As one respondent in our Google+ community said, "and as this chapter closes *weep**weep**weep*." So ended my 0.22 gameplay. On to 0.23!

Same results here with the 3D Pro - minimal setup and it just worked. When it comes to gamepads, though, OS-X does not have native support for things like the XBox360 controller, but finding help is just a Google (or a Bing) away.

One of Charlie Stross' stories had something like that, grabbing suborbital ships on ascent and flinging them into orbit. I've been half tempted to try it, but I'm not sure KSP has the precision to pull it off.

This part of it I find to be a fascinating concept. Public outreach by achievement is automatic, but doing something awesome for "free" (taxpayer money) grants even more support /and/ is a choice made directly by the player. (Versus some "Kerbal Space Program Online eXchange" market with fluctuating KerbKoin values.)

They're just trying to get offworld to Sanctuary before the SandMan catches them.... As much as I'd like to see a thriving Kerbal civilization with every farmhouse modeled, it'd be about as useful as cities are in games like Flight Sim - not much. Sure, it'd be cool to be able to zip around buildings and whatnot (as you can do with Kerbin City), but the game is up there, on the other side of the atmosphere. I wouldn't mind the occasional large city though, even if it's just a couple textures and some lights. Provided it doesn't murder frame rates and RAM usage of course. And I think the idea of governments and Kerbals operating in addition or opposition to your actions would be fascinating. AI factions, launching space debris into your orbits.... Landing on the Mun before you, taunting you from the sky about that contract you just failed.....

Return of the Duna Seven (Apologies for any grammatical or even logical errors in this post... I'm busier than I expected at the moment, and really don't want to hold this back to give it another pass, what with 0.23 out for a couple weeks now. Time to move on, mistakes be --self-censored--!) 60 days later and the Axiom of Choice was approaching Duna space. Bob spent most of the transit listening to static on the radio. It was easy to focus the high-gain on various points of the sky with a ship as maneuverable as the Axiom. Occasionally he would pick up the telltale sounds of pulsars, but mostly he heard only the steady static of the stars. Never did he hear an obviously Kerbal transmission. The arrival at Duna was lucky and avoided Ike entirely. Bob continued listening for the Dunan-X while approaching the planet, without luck. As he was setting up the capture burn he wondered if he should bother, or just continue back into interplanetary space. No, no reason to come all this way just to bail at the last minute. The burn placed him into a highly inclined and elliptical orbit. The radio crackled not long after capture, and the Dunan-X Orbiter came into view over the horizon. Matlock and Melke sounded ecstatic on the other end of the call, and Bob set about arranging the rendezvous burn. (Which required a rather significant plane change maneuver.) The Dunan-X lander came into range while Bob was setting up the adjustment burn. Bob really wasn't sure what to say to friends that had been gone for so many years. “Interplanetary Parcel Service calling. I've got a delivery here for one Jebediah Kerman.†“Bob? What took you so long? I order that at least five years ago.†“Well, you know how it goes. So, are you able to fly up and sign for this, or should I schedule a second delivery? Perhaps leave it with a neighbor?†“We've got some confused dudes down here, but I think we can get them back aboard. Say, have you rendezvoused with the orbiter yet?†“Couple hours out. Can't wait to hear about your adventures in person Jeb. It's been... interesting back on Kerbin, to say the least.†After the orbiter rendezvous and taking some time to send over fresh supplies, Bob set about reconfiguring the two ships into a single craft. With the main computer still down on the Dunan-X (it has only a hitchhiker module anyway) this would be the best way to control the burn back to Kerbin. The first couple of attempts discovered new parts collisions and configuraitons that just didn't work (such as placing the two drive units directly in series). Eventually a solution was found. Now to get the lander back into orbit. – Convincing Dosby and Luton to get back to the ship took a bit of work, and eventually Jeb had to call up Bob to convince them that “Mr Bob†really was waiting for them in orbit. Didn't break them out of their continuing delusion, though, and getting them to ride on Lucky's “back†took most of an hour. And for some reason they kept acting as though Jeb was blind.... After some discussion, Bill and Shepson agreed with Jeb that Luton and Dosby were best locked up in the lander compartment. As long as the controls were isolated there was little damage they could do there. It would be more than half a day before the orbiter was back in range, so they all climbed aboard and took a nice long nap. Jeb took one last look to the south, wondering how long the flags he and Bill planted on their trek would survive in the occasional Dunan dust storms. They blasted off at first light. After more than four Kerbin years the Dunan-X had finally left the surface of the red planet. -- “Ok Jeb, we've got you on approach. The plan is to dock your lander to the front of the Axiom.†“Wait, will that hold? Seems unstable.†“We'll be fine. We'll have to split the burn over two passes anyway, so as not to overheat the nukes. The lower G-forces from the split burn shouldn't cause any problems.†“Ok, we're getting lined up for docking now. See you and your fresh snacks in a bit.†Some shuffling and a quick crew exchange later and the “Axiom of Duna†was ready to head back to Kerbin, jut as soon as a transfer window openned up. In total the craft was 338 parts and a mass of 235 tonnes. The first burn extended their orbit to well past Ike. Ike, which was going to have a say in their leaving whterh they liked it or not, as after the next orbit if they didn't complete the second burn, their encounter with Ike would slow them enough to plummet to the surface of Duna. Not today, Ike. Final burn completed and they were free from Duna. Forever. Jeb jumped out when they were passing Ike to take a closer look. -- Munths later Kerbin started to appear in the windows. First a small speck, then the Mun and Minmus came into view. Then they were right on top of the planet. (I still think watching the Mun/Kerbin system from a high orbit is one of the coolest things in KSP. Reminds me of watching the Galilean moons in the Jovian system through a telescope over several nights.) They avoided an aerocapture with the large ship, and opted for a normal, long, single burn. This placed them into a slightly inclined orbit that would pass over KSC on their next orbit. Discussion during the descent from Duna to Kerbin focused on how to inform the “new†space program of their existence. Bob's short conversation with the “powers that be†left him with the impression that no one should know about their existence. Landing both ships at KSC in broad daylight was therefore the only logical option. (Jeb wanted to land in downtown Kerbin City, but was vetoed by everyone on board. Including the two lunatics.) Both landers broke away from the transfer ship and began their descent on the next orbit. Jeb, Bill and Bob were in the Axiom of Choice, with Shepson, Dosby, Luton, Melke and Matlock in the Dunan-X lander. Jeb Bill and Bob went in first, followed by the others an orbit later. The Axiom's lander cabin was shaking violently during the descent, never intended for a reentry on Kerbin. Bill and Bob were both gripping the handrests on their seats with as much force as they could muster. (It was all they could do, having never been told that the secret to surviving space travel was walking around barefoot and making fists with your toes.) Jeb, too, was fighting the controls, trying to keep the lander aligned properly. Bits of tat were burning off as they sped into the thicker parts of the stratosphere. And then the roughness subsided. Jeb flared the engines and set up his approach. He had brought them in ahead of KSC in case they needed to bail into booster bay, but with full control restored he went back to his first plan: Landing atop the VAB. “Jeb, look!†Bill was pointing excitedly towards KSC. “There's a ship on the launchpad!†“We'll worry about that once we're down.†Many years and two space programs after they had left, Bill and Jeb had returned home. The three of them practically jumped out of the lander, Bill and Jeb both walked uncomfortably in the heavy gravity. They gathered at the front of the VAB and looked up, just as the three occupants of the craft on the launchpad looked back. For one short moment there were two Jebs, two Bobs, and two Bills looking at one another. Meanwhile there was panic in the control room. Security vehicles were streaming in from the facility gates to “secure†the VAB. No one was quite sure what was going on, just that the craft on the roof of the VAB wasn't supposed to be there. And then when things were just starting to calm down the Dunan-X came in for a landing. The return of the crews of the Dunan-X and the Axiom of Choice had an oddly chilling effect on the space program, as Albro had warned. There were inquiries and inquests, reviews, interviews, interrogations, endless questions. Who were these new Kerbals? Why were there two Jebs? Two Bills? Two of that other guy that everyone always forgets? The fuss over the return of the Duna 7 lasted long enough for 0.23 to be released. -- In time the adventure to Duna was surpassed by greater trips and forgotten to the cycles of KSP. Only the lonely flags left by the crews still remain, standing vigil atop red mountains, fading away under a red skies.

The issue with libpng that requires the binary hack would be a "magical LINUX limitation", and does not affect OS-X in the least. I've already followed the few steps I need for Ubuntu and still see the reported issue. I'm increasingly of the opinion this is a hardware limitation or an issue with Intel's HD4000 drivers of some sort, or an issue that Unity has with said hardware that VE/large pngs expose, and am tempted to install Win7 just to test that hypothesis. (I may need to do that for work soon anyway, so....) Regardless, the lower-res version works fine for me. Thanks. I have also seen the dark circle on Kerbin (usually at high altitudes such as 2868km), though that went away some versions of VE ago for me and never as-of 0.23. May have also been a UR issue, as I use both. Always seemed to occur at some draw-distance transition, as it looked fine on one side and fine on the other, but had that darker transition area that spread across the globe. (Very similar to the stock "Kraken shadow" that occurs when you "Revert Flight to VAB/SPH" one too many times.)

That works for me. You can also try downscaling the png file. 4096x2048 was small enough to solve whatever magical "UNIX limitation" I encountered.

Would your 3 year old MBP happen to have a discrete graphics card? This could possibly be an issue with a buffer size in the integrated Intel HD4000 then. Wouldn't be the first weird bug I've seen. (Though for the most part it runs better than the 1GB Radeon HD 4890 in my old desktop.)

As of 6.7 I only get about 1/10th of a planet worth of clouds: This is on a "fresh" install of the mod. Worked fine in the most previous version I was using (6.4). This occurs with no other mods (beyond a handful of my flags), and I have plenty of memory left (the system has 16GBs, so Unity /should/ able to use whatever its addressing space allows). This was also a problem when I attempted to use Papics' 8k clouds prior to your inclusion of that texture into the mod. I had written that off as possibly a download error on the part of the texture, but I suppose not. If I copy over the smaller kerbin1 cloud from 6.4 the issue goes away (but has the obvious texture repetition). Edit: Incidentally, resizing the new kerbin1 texture to 4k also makes it "small enough" to work. 8.7MB vs 30MB.... Sure, it's not the full 8k, but it's a possible work around if anybody else hits this. So far I have only tested 6.7 on OS-X, though the previous 8k issue also occurred on Linux.

Yeah, it'd need to be in conjunction with something else... such as the clock, but that brings you back to the same issue as before. Not really a clean way to do it (if you can't get UTC=0), short of writing your own "I've initialized this!" node to the persistence file or keeping an external registry.

That could work if you could pull the UTC before the SpaceCenter scene has loaded (and thus before the clock has started). Barring that you could always check if it's within the first tenth of a second or something equally short and unlikely to have had any user interaction, but that's not very clean. Could probably also check to see if any ProgressTracking or ResearchAndDevelopment Scenario nodes or any Vessel entries exist in the persistence file, but that's getting ugly quick.

Are the original EVASuit textures stored in the KSP/Unity asset files using some weird name? I've checked every version of the game I have back to 19.1 and can't find them anywhere. (I've found every other part of a Kerbal, just none of the suit bits.) If anyone knows exactly which asset pack they're stored in on a specific version, I'd love some help finding them. Thanks.

Budget cuts forced our nascent space program to scrounge for EVA suit parts.... At least we managed to find matching gloves and boots!

I'm having issues clicking on everything in all scenes - VAB, FLIGHT, etc. Seems to be hit and miss... most times it works, sometimes I have to click two or three times. Haven't really got it nailed down to a predictable pattern.