Commander Gizmo

I justed wanted to say that I have written games in c# before and have run into this very issue. It is certainly quite an acrobatic act to do updates per every game frame without creating any garbage! It takes a great deal of planning and a very good understanding of the JIT code generated by a wide range of language constructs in order to pull it off. I don't envy the rewrites that have to be done on what are likely large parts of the game engine to fix this issue. For the games that I wrote, I eventually designed a resource pool system where objects could be requested and recycled by storing all immutable values separate from mutable ones, and then recycling the mutable containers without ever releasing the reference. This eliminated a massive amount of GC, and allowed the values where a GC event simply couldn't be avoided to be as small as possible, while shrinking the foot print of the game considerably. It worked very well, but was an enormous effort to build and debug. It also required that many advanced language constructs be avoided or eliminated entirely since they would create disposable lists, which are a massive GC issue if done every frame. I will say that I am really hoping to see it fixed, as it is a very frustrating issue for me when playing the game.

Thanks for the updates! I really want to check out the changes you made, but I haven't had much time to play with the kids sick. I'll hopefully have some time later tonight. Thanks for being so quick with the updates!

Majiir, I'm curious your thoughts on this direction. Is it worth considering you think?

Sorry for the delay, but yes, that's much better! For the color indicating what is in it you could just put a ring at any height or in the center of the outer band. I think it would look pretty cool if you did have very soft glowing rounded rectangle lights spaced every quarter or eighth around the outer band. Sorta like the reactors in the KSP Intersteller mod. I think they call it a 'new year' glow.

Seriously??!! Finally an in game welding tool? I'm so gonna test this one out! Explosions, here I come!

What I was going to say, only 10x better. I'm very happy for the MODEL nodes. That's what makes it possible to run 48 mods at once!

I would like to see something like this. The EL ore scanner is interesting because it is huge (over 2.5m), forces the end of stack (if placed there), and heavy (4 tons). I had quite a time building something that could scan at 1000x and not miss a hex. But it was fun trying. I'd love to see something that big for Kethane that could scan maybe four times better (and maybe even wider) than the current large scanner, as long as it was a real challenge to deploy any number of them. Make us work for the privilege.

Agreed. In fact, I've held off on updating this mod solely because I like the old textures better. If someone would texture them well, I'd upgrade right away. I'd love to see the old yellow and black caution tape still on them.

You need Actions On The Fly. You could then set up the action groups in real time so you can fire them both at once. The interface is a bit wonky, but it gets the job done.

I was in such a hurry to get back to it when KAS updated, I forgot to say: Thanks for updating this so incredibly fast! This really is a very handy plugin! Also, a minor request: I would love to have a very small horizontal bar with four stats: EC in, EC out, Bat %, Bat Time. The current window takes up way too much space for the readout. Would it be possible to offer a smaller view, possibly with just a square button to expand it in the corner? That'd be perfect!

I actually really like the many menus of PartCatalog. It's just what it says: a detailed catalog. If it had a text search (something I very often need), it'd be nearly perfect. I hope the compatibility issues in this plugin are resolved, because it would be the perfect companion to PC.

In my tests, it always seems as though placing reaction wheels in each stage caused a higher variance between the top and bottom of the rocket's angular adjustments. The net effect that the top would start trying to shift left while the bottom was still pushing right and the rocket bends in half. Perhaps I just didn't have enough control authority. What is the formula for that anyway? I guess I'll have to go do some research. Did you have more than two reaction wheels in the lower stages?

I have also had this issue. I eventually abandoned my variable stance mobility truck due to these issues.

That thing doesn't just shake itself to bits? I've taken to building out instead of up, which looks horrible but flies true. How'd you pull that off?

Hey RatZap: You don't appear to have any fuel tanks attached to your kethane converters. How do you get the converted fuel deposited elsewhere? Do pipes now act as fuel transfer lines?

Wow! Thanks for the update! I was just about to look at config editing to get this done myself. Thanks for the hard work even while you are so busy. I second this completely!

I agree. This is awesomely handy! However, I too would like a larger version. Any chance we could get one on a black background? I like to toss these things onto my second 1080p screen and the white is blinding against the black of space.

Hmm... That test was conducted on the runway, and there was a pylon in front of the winch. I could see the connector on the ground in front of the pylon. When I activated the instant stretch, the cable got a few meters longer. Clicking it repeatedly had my 300m winch extended to 318m. Maybe a rounding error? As to issue 7: The magnet was not activated or connected to anything. I just dropped it on the ground, grabbed the connector, plugged the connector into the magnet, and then switched vessels and retracted it. The kerbal never even had to move in the process. It just hung down swinging slightly below the winch (which was a radial pointing 90 degrees from the ground). The GUI said it was fully retracted, but it just hung there. I know this is repeatable, so I'll try and get some screenshots for you.

Ok, after some more testing with 0.4.1, I have a report to make: First, THANKS! for making such an awesome update to such and essential mod! I used the same test setup as for 0.4.0 (see my previous post), and now my ship no longer explodes instantly! It really seems very much improved in stability. 1) However, if I change focus to a ship about 1k away and then back I notice that most KAS items seem to float up for a second and then suddenly drop as physics are applied. They then return to their original positions. This even applies to containers attached to the ship via the container housing thing. When I connected a pipe port to the ground (why can you even do that?) and linked it to the rest of the ship, it did explode when the physics were applied after a switch away and back. A few more switches later and I did indeed have a total ship explosion. It would seem that this rather large variance when physics are first applied to a scene is the main culprit of the exploding. It'd be nice if there were a way to minimize the amount of variance before the physics return to normal. 2) There is no longer a way to plug in the connector of a winch to the hook on your back without first putting the hook down. This would seem to be very inconvenient when in space or otherwise have no where to put said hook. 3) What is the magnet on off when a kerbal is holding it for? Without a power source, you can't turn it on and off. However, when it is hooked to the winch and powered, the kerbal cannot turn it on and off anymore. Thus, he can only attach it to a surface, not magnetize it there. This is an issue because of the next problem listed. 4) Once an electromagnet is attached to something, you cannot remove it again without a kerbal. Therefore, the magnet feature is no longer useful once it is attached via EVA. Is the method of attachment not magnetism? If not, what? Perhaps we need an option to fire a large solenoid from the center of the magnet and release the kerbal's chewing gum that's holding it in place? 5) When getting lots of pipe ends (and I imagine other items) out of the containers, it is useful to simply keep clicking the button to get them out. They all fall on the ground, but it's much easier to get them than opening the box each time. However, this often causes the fourth or fifth item to go flying through to air at tremendous speed. While this may be a new way to reach orbit quickly, it does pose a problem if you wanted to use said part. 6) After ejecting a winch, the instant stretch option appears to make it longer rather than shorter. Perhaps I misunderstand the purpose of this option, but in previous versions it appeared to very quickly shorten the extended cable to only what was needed for whatever was attached. If I miss an attempted grapple, do I have to wait for the winch to wind back in each time? My winches are modified to 300m of cable, which can take some time to get in even at full throttle. 7) A fully retracted winch with an electromagnet plugged in does not pull the connector and hook up and lock in place. Instead, they just hang from the end as if it is slightly extended. Is this intended behavior?

This has really been perfect for me. With texture resizing (some of which I've done myself), I am now running B9, EL, IR, KW, NP, JARFR, KAS, Kethane, KOSMOS, Sperhical Tanks, HexCans, all procedurals, Wayland, and 30 others in their entirety (sans non procedural fairings) -- all with memory usage at 2.83GB! That's actually less memory than before I added all of B9 and KOSMOS. Now if only my rockets would fly before exploding...

Thanks for the update! I'm really glad to see the engines reworked! I had just tried to get my 386 ton mining ship off the ground and couldn't find a nice looking KW engine for the job. I ended up having to put on a pile of 1.25 engines for a massive jump in part count. Now I should be able to drop the count by at least 20! (I like to go prepared for anything...)

I think that pretty well sums it up. Couldn't have put it better myself! Thanks for adding some clarity.

HAHA! I just started a new save, and guess what: There's both kethane and ore at KSP's launch pad! Only a tiny overlap on the Mun though. Guess I'll have more fun than usual getting all of it to the EL launch site.

When I try and drag things off the launchpad2 just gets tossed around like one of grandma's pancakes. Which one is the hooligan labs pad? is that the large white one?

I'm no expert, but I think those are RGB stored as floats. That is, a percentage between 0 and 1. So, that's 0.0 = 0; 0.5 = 128; 1.0 = 255; Does that make sense? [EDIT] Oops, I guess I didn't see the other answers...