seanth

That's too bad. A dll that just stored a state and updated the resources on refocus would be a great stand alone.

Not every time. I have found that 50x acceleration is ok. The exact outputs are not correct, but there are serious rounding errors when you are accelerating. However, we have new mechanisms in place where you can "reseed" greenhouses if you run out of biomass. We'll hopefully have a new release ready very soon, including some short video showcases/tutorials.

A question about TACLS' ability to keep track of resources for unfocused craft: does it apply only to TACLS-related resources, or does it keep track of all resources and modules on a craft? For example, if you are running TACLS and Kethane, and have a command module with a kethane drill, if you start drilling, select a different ship, and the return focus later, would the amount of kethane have increased?

I _think_ the bug is Squad level. In general, I find the various modules do not work so great at high time acceleration. For example, in my experience, solar panels and batteries act very oddly at high acceleration.

A thought about the Waste resource For a different plugin, I was working out the chemistry of breakdown products with the assumption that anaerobic breakdown results in methane(kethane) and O2. In the end I get CH2(OH)2 (Methanedoil) as what "Waste" would be. CH2(OH)2 --> CO2 + 2H2 <---> CH4 + O2 This fits in really well with Kethane's "Kerbal Unreconstitutionator" part, in that the Kerbals can be rendered to Kethane(methane). I humbly suggest that the solid Waste produced by Kerbals is methanedoil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanediol)

What I am interested in is the former. Given what I have read, I am going to assume that the answer to my initial question is that no one is working on such a thing. Or at least no one has chimed in to say they are working on such a thing.

An example.... Hmmm. Well, let's imagine a new sort of Air intake. Let's further assume the % of oxygen on Laythe is different than on Kerbin. I think it would be neat to do something like: MODULE{ name = magicalCodeAndLogicThingy INPUT{ name = IntakeAir rate = 1.0 } OUTPUT{ if(planet==Kerbin){ name = Oxygen rate = 0.21 } if(planet==Laythe){ name = Oxygen rate = 0.15 } } } Just as an example. Or maybe a way to nest Modules. So, for example, you could use different powercurves for ModuleDeployableSolarPanel on a per planet basis to reflect how cloudy the atmosphere is. These are just examples off the top of my head, mind you.

An update: I'm feeling really good about the progress with BioMass over the past few days. For example, the part I showed in the video has been extended to recover other gasses from the atmosphere, such as methane(i.e. kethane), hydrogen, helium(i.e. xenon), etc. Most of these gasses are fractions of a percent of Earth's atmosphere, and since I assume Kerbin is the same, it take many hours to recover the rarer gasses. If you are patient, or if you make a gas recovery farm with lots of these devices, you can recover things fairly rapidly. It even recovers moisture, now. So now you, too, can be a moisture farmer. In space. Another part people have not seen yet is a composter part, which takes in various biological materials, including waste material from life support mods such as TAC, and breaks them down, ultimately into CO2 and H2 or Kethane and O2. The tricky bit is that, in the presence of O2, the Kethane will revert back to CO2 and H2. This means that if you want to recover Kethane, you need to run an O2 compressor to constantly remove the O2 and turn it into oxidizer. Are people interested in more teaser videos, or would people rather we wait and make tutorial videos?

A friend and I were looking at the ResGen module (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/28895-0-20-2-Resource-Generation-Module-(0-28)), and it's so very close to something I would love: mainly a way to do real if/then evaluations in a module. Is anyone working something similar, or maybe working toward allowing lua or javascript in a part's cfg (via a special module). It would much easier to write necessary code in a part's cfg than to roll custom dlls

Yes. What is in the video (maybe videos to come) are teasers about what will be in the next update.

hahaha. We should remake the trailer using ksp, biomass parts, and the trailer's original audio

I'm going to assume you want the O2 for life support. Depending on the life support mod and how many Kerbals you have, I would use just the greenhouses, water tanks, O2 tanks, Compressed CO2 tanks, and a CO2 compressor. You might not need the O2 tanks, since the greenhouse will store O2 gas. The CO2 tanks and compressor are just in case you need extra CO2 to keep the plants growing. There will be two limits on your O2 production, one hard and one with wiggle room: the amount of space in the greenhouses for biomass, and the amount of water available. In my testing, 1 greenhouse comfortably maintains 3 kerbals using Ioncross or TAC. I have not tested with the ECLSS mod. An upcoming update will have some parts to convert waste water from other life support mods into increased biomass growth or clean water for kerbals. But for now water might be a limiting factor for you. You could set up two greenhouses and, once they reach a safe level of biomass, you can keep one growing and put the other in the dark. In the absence of light, the plants will respire, turning biomass into CO2 and clean water.

EDIT: THE VIDEO IS A TEASER ABOUT PARTS AND FUNCTIONS THAT WILL BE IN THE NEXT UPDATE I thought it might be nice to demonstrate some of the parts in biomass. In the coming days I might be making some videos to do so. To start things off, here's a short demo of the compressors and how you might use them in an oxygen atmosphere to make oxidizer.

See also http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53009-0-21-BioMass-Renewable-Bio-Fuel-Modules and

"Silent Running" style biodomes.

Remove any previous version of BioMass you have installed. Put the "BioMass-Master" folder into "GameData" and start up KSP.

What is specifically needed is the MMI_Kethane.dll. Biomass+ currently uses a module that comes with Kethane that is much more realistic as far as biological reactions than Squad's built in generator module.

I can field this one. I have mixed feeling about where the parts should go in the tech tree. Making biofuels and growing things in greenhouses are relatively low tech, but these parts are definitely meant for space. In general: -Tanks holding gasses can enter the tree immediately after the first capsule, if using IonCross or TAC Life Support -Compressors need electricity, so after or same time as batteries -The Greenhouse has a built-in light, so after lights -Everything else needs the greenhouse, so they can appear just after the greenhouse It's too bad there are not existing biology-themed nodes in the tech tree. Roboto and I are discussing what I think are some cool new parts that will explicitly put the science+ branch into the tech tree in a meaningful way, so stay tuned for that. Hint: meaningful in-game science that gives you science-monies AND helps teach you how to use all the biomass parts together.

Is there a built in way, or a mod .dll that allows one to define an amount of a resource on a part, but have that total amount be taken up by more than one resource. For example, let's say you have MineralA and MineralB, and have a Storage Bin part. What would be nice would be to say something like: RESOURCE{ name=MineralA and name=MineralB amount=0 maxAmount=10 } That way the part would hold MineralA and MineralB, but together they can only reach a max amount of 10, be it 1%:99% or 50%:50%. I suspect this does not currently exit, but thought I'd check first.

I can see why there could be some confusion. Let me try and provide clarity from the perspective of the person that is working on the github version: The version of Spaceport is more of a direct successor to the initial Biomass plugin release. It has some new parts relative to the original release, but much of the way things work remains the same The version of Github (Science+) might have fewer parts, but it is more complex. We're using real-world biological reactions to better simulate how plants would grow in space, and how you would go about making biofuel. The goal is to incorporate more and more of the existing parts into the Science+ version as testing and play balancing continues. Right now Science+ is rather complex. For example, you grow Biomass in a Greenhouse which is chopped up and pressed by a Polytron/Centrifuge. Out of the Polytron/Centrifuge comes oil and BioCake. The BioCake is fermented in a fermenter part to make ethanol. The ethanol and oil can then be combined in a refinery to make liquid fuel. Each of these steps is as realistic as KSP allows. The refinery part is essentially doing what is done to make biofuels (transesterification. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel_production). Some of the gasses produced during these steps can be compressed into fuel. O2-->oxidizer, H2-->Monopropellant. What I like about it is that the player needs to make choices about how much biomass they harvest for food (and thus reduce their biological CO2-->O2 conversion), and they need to decide whether to compress O2-->oxidizer, or save the O2 for life support. Decisions, decisions. Yeah, it's complicated, but so is rocket science. In KSP, you _could_ sit down and do the necessary calculations needed to build a rocket to get to orbit, or you could just slap things together and launch. Even if you just do it the Kerbal way and launch, you're still learning a bit about design and rocketry. My hope for BioMass is somewhat the same. You could sit down and do the calculations on Kerbal respiration and how many greenhouses you'd need to keep them alive AND make fuel, or you could just slap some greenhouses onto a deep space craft and see if everything will be ok. In the end, it needs to be fun and challenging, though. Not a science class, and right now the Science+ version might be too complex. Roboto almost certainly has a different perspective on this than I do. Ultimately BioMass is his baby. I'm just glad he's letting me play with his toys.

Thank you so much.

When bug reporting, could you please specify whether you are using the Science+ off github, or BioMass off spaceport? It will make it slightly easier to figure out what's wrong.

Well. I feel dumb. Is there a wiki or how to that describes what one can do and how to do it?

I visited the github fork but didn't see a way to suggest a change, so I'm here It'd be nice to also be able to edit RESOURCE_DEFINITIONs. There are some biology/life support mods that have the same resource (oxygen, for example), but use different densities. Being able to use module manager to bring order to chaos in resources would be nice.

I'm in the process of trying to make BioMass work closer with both TAC Life Support and IonCross. And by "in the process" I mean I have files open in front of me, now. Stay tuned, I guess.