Majiir

I should point out that "the first multiplayer project ever" is incorrect; others have started projects and even built sort-of-working prototypes. You might consider seeking those out and consulting the creators. (Khyperia worked on his Kestrel project, for example.) There's information out there about challenges and possible solutions, so assuming you're the first to try is a mistake; try to learn from those who came before.

Regarding smaller detectors and extractors: I'd like to do it, but the scanning and extraction mechanics both need some love before it really makes sense. Plus, Keptin is MIA at the moment, so the only new part I foresee is the electrical generator (which I'm hoping to have out in the 0.6 release). This is the entire purpose of the 0.6 update, and let me tell you, it's not a simple or minor change! I allowed Extraplanetary Launchpads to release an alpha version with a modified Kethane DLL knowing that I'd be working on multiple resources as a feature in mainline Kethane. It's been surprisingly straightforward to implement, but it's still a substantial reworking of the internals of the mod. I fully realize the potential of Kethane as a bootstrapping plugin for other mods to use custom resources, which is exactly why I'm doing this. That's not where the plans end, either, so as long as I can keep the code flowing, there's a lot to look forward to.

That would be doable. I'd still need to do some module work since the scanner will crash if it doesn't find the transforms, but that would be fairly easy. But... but why don't you love that compact Kethane detector? :-(

That depends on how heavily I modify the detector module. Currently the detector reference frames are locked, so the base must rotate on the Y axis and the second piece must rotate on the X axis. If the ISA part isn't arranged in precisely the right way, it won't work. That said, it's not toooo hard to generalize the detector. I just didn't do it last time I was playing with the animation code because the new detector design happened to be compatible, so Keptin built it to spec. ISA and Kethane are unlikely to have integrated maps any time soon. To put that "soon" into perspective, I think it's much more likely Kethane will get the geodesic map overlay before ISA and Kethane end up integrating.

I've been working on multiple-resources support, and most of the hard stuff is done. All that's left now is scanning and a bit of cleanup, so to those ends, I've been playing with the UI. The arrows are for selecting which resource to view. With the current scanning system, it would be difficult to support multiple resources overlayed, so a selector will have to do. Once multiple-resources is in a stable state, I'll see about getting other mod developers to test it to work out all the kinks, since initially, Kethane won't itself support multiple resources. During that time I'll work on the new generator part and other miscellaneous improvements.

I was trying to implement fancy module config nodes the way stock modules have them, like the PROPELLANT blocks in ModuleEngines. I have no idea why, but it seems near impossible to get OnLoad to cooperate with us on our own modules. It works fine in the VAB, but as soon as you enter a flight scene, the ConfigNode you get is the one from the Vessel, not the part configuration. For many things, this is completely useless. So, after much toiling and consumption of all my remaining alcohol, here's a one-liner: if (part.partInfo != null) { node = GameDatabase.Instance.GetConfigs("PART").Where(c => part.partInfo.name == c.name.Replace('_', '.')).Single().config.GetNodes("MODULE").Where(n => n.GetValue("name") == moduleName).Single(); } This grabs the part config directly, locates your module (note: only works if there is exactly one of your module on the part, sucky limitation) and replaces the parameter config node with what it finds. It could use improvement and you might tweak it to your own purposes, but I figured I'd share anyway.

It's worth noting that Kethane tanks are slightly smaller (shorter) and have a slightly better mass ratio. The wet mass is basically equivalent; the largest Kethane tank holds fuel that weighs the same as the large orange rocket fuel tank's fuel. The Kethane tank ends up being slightly lighter because of its dry mass. Trivia: Kethane tanks have a mass ratio that improves as tanks get larger. Also, I coded up a wet mass indicator for the Kethane tanks, and that'll be in the next release.

Thanks for posting this. Just to clarify, it is not always necessary to use fuel lines; most designs will work fine without them. In particular, any setup where the fuel tanks are connected on the same stack as the converter will work fine, because fuel can transfer between parts in a stack (as long as they're crossfeed-enabled). You might need fuel lines if you have tanks attached radially, but most often you'll need fuel lines in that case anyway because you're feeding fuel into a center engine. In other words, don't worry about it too much! Try building a ship without lines, and you can test the converter on the pad by blending up a Kerbal.

Because MonoPropellant doesn't route with fuel lines. Would anyone like to spin off a "how to route fuel" thread? I'm all for helping people out with building Kethane crafts, but at this point 90% of the questions posted to this thread stem from misunderstandings of the KSP stock fuel routing.

I'm going to say PEBKAC on this one. "Really efficient" is not how I'd describe that lander! You have what looks like 20+ drills and a bunch of other extraneous parts, and I don't see solar panels which means you're using some other power source which is probably heavier. You're not alone on this; a lot of people build ships that extract a lot of Kethane but end up being very wasteful (and then, like you, they complain about deposit quantity). [EDIT] Just want to elaborate on this since it may come across as harsh. Even with a good launch ratio, you're talking moving 850 tons of fuel into orbit. That's a lot, and if you're extracting that much fuel from a small moon on a regular basis, I'm happy with a balance that says you need to put a little more effort into it than someone who wants to refill a 10-ton fuel tank for a lander. A Kethane deposit will only get you as far as your other ships are efficient, and that includes whatever vessels you're fueling. The hard-coded range is between 10k and 500k. This has already been implemented for the next version.

Maps are stored in the KSP/GameData/Kethane/Plugins/PluginData/MMI_Kethane/ folder. They have a filename format like map_12345678_Kerbin.png. You can delete some/all of those maps to clear them. Be careful to not delete the non-map texture files!

Don't be so quick to dismiss high-altitude scanning. Higher altitude means higher allowable time warp, and that can be important when scanning bodies like Moho which rotate very slowly. Additionally, the medium detector has a faster scan rate than the compact one. I'd like to get the detectors into balance, and the 0.4.4 patch made steps in that direction. This is a planned feature but it's a formidable technical and design challenge.

This looks like a KSP/Unity issue with lower graphics settings. It's probably just never come up before because very little actually clips into the ground the way Kethane drills do.

Kethane 0.5.1 has been released. The download link on the first post has been updated. This update makes minor fixes and improvements. Current deposit locations and levels will be preserved. Scan maps will be preserved, but shading has changed (see below). Changes in this version: Deposit shading was implemented incorrectly in the 0.5 release and has been corrected. Bright green indicates a large (by Kethane volume) deposit, and dark green indicates a small deposit. Existing scan maps will keep the old colors, and new scan dots will use the new colors. Fixed an issue with deposit seeds for celestial bodies. Depending on the seed, this issue could cause many bodies to have the same deposit locations. This has been corrected for newly generated maps, and old maps will maintain their deposit locations. Detector scan period now has a small (±1%) variation per frame. This has no effect on overall scan time but improves the use of multiple detectors by automatically staggering them. Fixed an issue where gas clouds were incorrectly emitted when not over a Kethane deposit. Extractor deploy/retract context menu buttons will reappear when the current action is finished.

I had forgotten to add this to the main build and it's been fixed. That'll be included with the next update. I haven't encountered this. Can you post a screenshot? What graphics settings are you running?

Thanks for the update! Keptin made the animations for the heavy converter and heavy drill, and I made the particle effects for the heavy drill. I'm glad you enjoy them! Yes, but you only need to locate one deposit at a time. With a proper craft in a proper orbit, it usually takes less than a minute to find a deposit (on an oceanless body). If you really want to strip an entire body, you can do your scan all at once, but that's many hours of landing and launching craft to mine. If you're obsessive about getting a full and detailed map, maybe you should build a more substantial scanning craft or accept that it won't happen instantly. Even if you are strip mining, you can scan for new deposits as you need them. "But I have to identify a good landing site!" The first deposit you find might be on the side of a mountain, but it doesn't take long to find a second. You can get a full map and compare it with a topographic map to find the most perfectly flat mining site, but that's going to cost you a bit more than simply landing on the first thing you find. I loaded up a simple Mun probe with a small scanner, two RTGs and a small battery. It took me ten seconds to find two deposits. After a minute, I'd found five more deposits. All of these have multiple data points so you can see that if you land in the middle, you'll certainly be over the bulk of the deposit. I'm running at 100x warp because it makes the first few deposits look better, but I can comfortably run at 1000x warp if I want a full map. With its large oceans, Laythe will be a lot harder, and I'm okay with that. I'm no stranger to these kinds of balancing issues. When Kethane first came out, you could only 10x warp the detector, and you couldn't use time warp at all on converters, extractors or pumps. Refueling a small Kethane lander meant minimizing the game for thirty minutes. The whole reason I run Kethane now is because I said "this is ridiculous" and released a patch. I am looking at improving scanning, but the biggest problem (and what gets in the way of adding new mechanics) is its interface. If you really just can't stand it, go ahead and edit your local part config files. When it comes to balancing the release, I want to make sure there's both easy and challenging gameplay available.

Firstly, if you want to convey a sentiment to me, try to avoid starting posts with "sigh" and getting all uppity at people in the thread. The scan width is fine if you're building your craft with enough power generation and battery storage. It takes very little time to find a deposit, and most people only need to find one. Even with one scanner, a properly equipped craft can get a decent map (revealing every deposit) within a few minutes. Things like orbital parameters can be important, too. Regarding fuel flow, I thought this was well-established by now but I'll be clear: Kethane does nothing with regard to fuel flow. Kethane parts merely generate resources by calling RequestResource with a negative quantity. Any other issues are KSP bugs and should be reported to Squad. If you want advice on how to set up a Kethane craft to work around those issues, you may post that here, although I think a separate thread would be best. Yes, I could implement a fuel routing fix, but so could a dedicated mod. I'm focusing on Kethane as a resource exploration and harvesting mod.

There is no synchronization between detectors. (It's a requested feature.) However, multiple detectors on the same vessel can (but don't always) increase your scan resolution. The key here is that detectors don't talk to each other, so they won't take turns; they'll just all work individually, and if two detectors happen to scan the same space, oh well. So, if you want to increase scan resolution, you should stagger your detectors rather than starting them all with an action group. Alternatively, you could run both detector types; since they have different scan rates, most of the time they'll miss each other. In the next minor revision, I'll add some small variance to the detector timer. This should automatically push detectors out of phase, on average. It's also worth mentioning that battery capacity is important for scanning at time warp. The small detector uses 0.9 energy per second, or 0.03 per frame (assuming 30 physics FPS). As long as you have 0.03 energy available to draw, the detector will run at full speed. However, if you run at 1000x time warp, the detector now requires 30 energy per frame, and a small probe may not have that capacity. If you use RTGs, it's even worse, because they erroneously use the Update routine (graphics frame) instead of FixedUpdate, so its electrical generation isn't synchronized with consumption. (This is why RTG generation seems bursty.) So, if you have 45 capacity and there are six physics frames between each graphics frame, the small detector will run at full speed for one frame, half speed for the next, and then not at all for the next four frames. This is true no matter how many RTGs you stick on the ship. Regarding the scan colors: I made an error in that change, and I forgot to test it to boot. I've revised the coloring on my end and I'll include that with the next release.

Congratulations on your release! I might mod a few parts so I can launch freighters full of ore to remote launchpads instead of building them for free. (Kethane's cool and all, but I see it a lot, if you know what I mean!) P.S. Is there a license for this?

This is a planned feature and has been for some time. I'll revisit it and see if it's doable in the next update, but my guess is not. The focus of the next major revision (0.6) is multiple resources support. I don't have any firm plans for Kethane itself to ship with more resources, but I do plan to allow other mods to define a config file which tells Kethane which resources to add.

Kethane 0.5 has been released. The download link on the first post has been updated. This update adds new parts, revamps deposit saving and makes some fixes and improvements. Warning: This will erase your existing deposits. This should happen much less frequently in the future (see release notes below). Changes in this version: Added the KE-WAITNONOSTOP-01, a radially mounted extractor currently under investigation by several Kerbal rights organizations. Restructured extractor module code to separate extraction logic from animation handling. Added an extractor animator using Unity animations. Added the KE-X270 Heavy Drilling Unit, a large stack-mounted extractor. Added gas and spark effects to the KE-X270. Sparks will fly when the drill head enters the ground, and gas clouds will appear when the drill finishes deploying if it's over a Kethane deposit. The effects are influenced by gravity and air pressure, so different bodies will give these effects different characteristics. Restructured and simplified deposit code to support a new save format and slightly modified the generation algorithm along the way. The only impact this should have is that deposits may now be found closer together, and as a result, some bodies will have more deposits. Overhauled deposit saving. Deposit locations and initial quantities are now generated from a seed which is stored alongside the persistence file of the current save. Current deposit levels are stored along with the seed. This means that deposit arrangements and levels can easily be shared and modified. Additionally, the new format will maintain deposit information in future updates. (Note: This update will still erase data from prior versions.) Scan maps are now stored separately per seed. Note that if you have two save files with the same seed, those saves will share scan maps. Kethane deposit scans are now shaded by the deposit's initial capacity. More saturated green indicates a higher capacity. Added a status indicator to the extractor context menu. Halved converter speed for both converters. This corrects an oversight in the 0.4.4 update, which caused the effective conversion speed to double. The detector window will now close if all detectors on a vessel are destroyed or detached. Deposit data is now only saved when an extractor part saves, and maps are only saved when a detector part saves. Removed the unused deposit depth mechanic. Removed unused sound loading code from extractors.

I'm getting better at particle effects:

Just confirming that skykooler has my permission to release a modified Kethane version. I'll do my best to support his modification until I get multiple-resources support added to the main build. (I'm aiming to have that done by the 0.6 release of Kethane.) If you have issues with the modified Kethane build, please post them here (or wherever skykooler accepts reports for his mod) so those reports don't get confused with the main build. And, of course, I am also looking forward to this release!

KSPUtil.ApplicationRootPath + "saves/" + HighLogic.SaveFolder + "/file.ext" That's a path to file.ext inside your current save folder. For obvious reasons, you should only save here when you have a save loaded, not at the main menu.

You're thinking of a different author. I do not plan to use Spaceport.