Molybdene

Some news to come soon. And I'm aware you are surely tired of hearing me saying "later" or "soon". I did not give up

Ok, got the job, will start on October, sooo, I need to finish that first, hehe.

Sorry, busy doing some interviews to find a new job. Still, will upload a beta soonish

No sweat here, concurence is good. Plugin is going nicely. I not sleeping much those days (again a big month at work ) I don't want to delay the first version of this plugin much more. An Alpha version will be release before the end of august, I guarantee it. EDIT: hey, holidays. alpha release postpone to august.

I realized I mention a low tech and high tech mass relay, without explaining. Here is what I come up with: I'll make two mass relays: - One low tech with a [5-20]% error (and 5-20° for the inclinaison) when warping. It means that if you try to get to a 100km orbit around mun, at a 0° inclinaison, you can be somewhere between [80;95km]U[105;120km] orbit, and [-20;-5°]U[5;20°] inclinaison. Plus, you'll get 1% chance of having your ship "lost in space" (orbit around the sun, close to the body of reference's one to not be too mean). - The Hight tech one, that you'll get later in the game is more precise (5%/5°) and won't loose your ship. Keep in mind that I maintain the fact that you can't Warp a Vessel with a mass relay on it (both the vessel you try to warp and the mass relay that was supposed to send you will explode!), and you can't use a mass relay that is landed on Kerbin as a way to easily teleport vessels. If you want to do that, use Hyper Edit ^^. The principle of this Warping plugin is not to give you an overpowered tool to get anywhere, but to allow you to fast travel somewhere you already went to with an heavy load. Now, I have another idea to render the first low tech relay more experimental. Those are ideas that I will NOT put on the first release, without first consulting some testers. - No Kerbals allowed: only drones. If you try to Warp, the kerbals will die - Overheating (1% chance?) Mass Relay part will explose due to overheating while warping the vessel. 20% chance of loosing the vessel to a random orbit too during the process. - Jamming. Sometimes (5% of chance?) the mass relay will jam. No warping, and require a Kerbal to right clic on the part to fix it (like wheels) - Recoil. Chance for the mass relay vessel to get a recoil that will de-orbit him. Need to fire the engine to fix the orbit after a warp. Again, I will NOT add those ideas right now, just writing it down. Tell me what you think. I know that having to fix the orbit after a warp or loosing the parts will be a pain, but keep in mind that the warping feature is very very powerfull, so I'm trying to balance it a little. For example, the power cost for warping will me very high, Frizzank & I already put some bigger batteries as parts for powering the relay.

Ok, so the plugin is working with the new architecture and warp engine. (Yay) I still have to - Put back up the power consumption (already done in the old plugin) - Add weight cost for warping - Duplicate the current mass relay part so that I add a "low tech" un-precise and faulty one, and a high tech good tech one, work on the look of the low tech one. - Do some tests & energy cost balance - Prettying the code

Ok, here it was I come up with for now. I've redesign the way it'll work in order to try to avoid the teleportation glitch from KSP. In short: keep it simple, keep it vague. - Mass Relay will not be precise to the meter, but will have a +-20% random "error" variation from the target orbit. Meaning that if the target relay is at a stable 150km 0° orbit, you can get to a non circular 140km - 155km, 10° inclination orbit. "Close enough", would say the Kerbal engineers. ==> That way I'll make sure I'm not too close to the target and won't (hopefully) interfer with it after the warp. - No more heavy computing to make sure I'm at less than 100m of the relay and that my speed with the relay is less than 0.5m/s to allow a warp. The window with the list of warp available will be loaded with a right click on the relay from the vessel to warp (kinda like you right click a meteor to make science from EVA). ==> If you are able to click on the relay from the target vessel, it means that you are close enough (in fact I set this distance at 25m by default in the config) and slow enough. I had some crash with the findWorldCenterOfMass() function from Unity, and couldn't exit the game after that without ALT+F4, so it'll be better that way. - Energy cost for warping will be proportional to distance between planets of origin and planets of destination (regardeless of the current orbits), and mass of the target vessel. - I'll add a 1/100th chance of having you ship "lost" after a warp (high orbit around the sun) because I found that funny. But don't worry, this "feature" will be disabled by default on the config. Maybe some more things, I have to see with Frizzank before saying anything more

I'm having some other issues than the teleportation bug with my current plugin, and I really don't like how I've made it. So I've started anew (don't worry, it does not mean that it will take me 1 year to get to the same state, I've just created a blank project and I'm pasting piece of code here and there). I changed the way the parts are getting the info/the way the GUI is displayed, etc. It will be less laggy (not that the plugin was laggy, but it will have less "check every x milliseconds if the situation have changed"), and more stable. I had a "bad" month at work (deadline to meet), but now I'm working every evenning/night on this!

ok, here's my update of my progress so far. I've checked the hyperedit code and what I'm doing to teleport vessels is very (almost identical) close to the "rendez-vous" functionnality of the mod. But the hyperedit mod have the same issue as I have right now when teleporting vessels: it just mess with the physics of other close vessels. SO, here is what I'll do to release a first version (at last) of the mod: I'll change the way the teleportation works. Instead of targeting the mass relay vessel on the other planet/moon, I'll just change the reference body, keeping the orbital values. Meaning that if you are at a 80km orbit from Kerbin when you warp, you'll get to a 80km orbit around the target body. if it's the moon, you'll be fine, if it's jool.... boy you are in trouble By changing only the reference body of the vessel, I'll not have to load the target vessel to get all target values (orbit height, epoch, etc...) and that way I may avoid the issue hyperedit & I have. It will make the warping a little more difficult as you'll have to be carefull on FROM where you warp, so it may mean several wapring station around Kerbin to get to the others planets, and several warp needed to get to a big body from a small one as you can't have a 80km stable orbit around the smallest body. I like this idea stay tuned!

I'm re-writing some part of my software for an easy "teleportation module" change later. No big news, but definitely some changes!

That's the idea

The trouble is indeed on the transporoutine. I'm able to set the new orbit for the given ship, but the other one (the "target" one) is starting to behaving strangly, having a random acceleration from nowhere. I haven't asked the hyperedit guy(s) yet, because last time I tried testing my mod, I used hyperedit to put the relays on orbit around some planets, and I have this random acceleration. From hyperedit. But Yeah, I'll ask for help, I'm not ashamed saying that I don't understand why it's so complicated to "just" change the orbit.

I used Hyper edit sources available on the mod to create the change of orbit, and it was not using high speed. I'll take a look at more updated source I guess, thanks Frizz.

hmm. It's hard to admit it but I can't figure it out what I'm doing wrong. Setting new orbit values to the craft, got TP at the correct location, other vessel go crazy.

Still haven't gave up.

Hmmph. And now the plugin is totaly broken with 0.23 update. Hang on there, Will do my best.*take some duct tape and start fixing* And sorry for the lack of answer, I had some crazy weeks at work lately.

Yeah, I will increase the warping distance. it's as easy as setting a value in the settings

I'm just putting the simulation on rails for loaded vessels, and setting the orbit of the target vessel, I don't know about the "ORDA teleport code". I'm just starting on this "plugin development" thingy ^^

you are supposed to get at around 1.5 km. it's moving out of control, accelerating with no reason. I'll probably ask for 3km at destination, it's easy enough, it's configurable. just to try.

I thought about that but it is really not pretty ^^

It's a strange behavior in fact. The Mass Relay of origin (the one that is sending the vessel) is doing great and is consuming power (a lot of) for the warp... The Vessel is warped and with the correct orbit. But the destination mass relay, that I did not touch... see its orbit changing, I'm not sure what, aaand... It's still the same as before if you quit the game and restart it. I'm just getting the orbit values of the destination, clone it and put the values on the Target Vessel to be warped (with a small time/epoch delay to avoid collision between the two vessels). Not touching the values at all, just getting it and cloning it. I consider this a "plugin not working" because I don't want people to close & start the game each time they warp.

hmm... I gave my plugin to someone that tested it for me, and we encounter some troubles that are not really nice. I'm taking a look at it and try to fix it, but I don't want to rush it and hand over a broken plugin.

more like an evolution of the concept plugin will be available on sunday. (\o/)

I promise I will take a look at the real simulation drag force so that I can tell the "real" terminal velocity, using the FAR or the KSP model. For now I will just give an approximation just to see where it gets me.

Yes sir I won't forget sir