[1.0.4] Chute Safety Indicator [v1.0.2 - August 6, 2015]

[logan2611]

Very useful for my spaceplane, thanks for this mod.

[Fyrem]

I need this on my NAR rockets......

[seanmcdougall]

Version 1.0.1 is now up. It adds an additional check so the staging icon colours will only be changed when the vessel is actually in an atmosphere.

[jlcarneiro]

Great idea! And I'm pretty sure you came with it first, congrats!

I have a question, though: what are the differences between this mod and Claw's ModuleParachuteFix?

I mean, aside from changing colors only when in atmospheres...

[seanmcdougall]

Great idea! And I'm pretty sure you came with it first, congrats!

I have a question, though: what are the differences between this mod and Claw's ModuleParachuteFix?

I mean, aside from changing colors only when in atmospheres...

Weird, looks like we came up with the same idea within days of each other. Oh well, they say great minds think alike

As for differences... well my mod just modifies the staging icons, and doesn't have any other dependencies (ie ModuleManager). The Stock Bug Fix Modules include a lot of extra changes/fixes, so if you're interested in those then you're probably better off installing that mod and removing mine so you don't have the two of them fighting over the staging icons.

[Vorg]

Being partly color blind, I find the colors chosen a bit hard to tell. Better to use more pure colors.

Go maybe 60-75% green only for safe because full bright green sometimes is a bit hard to tell from yellow.

Go 100% on Red & Green gives a nice pure yellow.

Go ~90% Red only for Red.

In all 3 of the above, blue should be 0% because it is not a component of yellow and red/green are primary colors.

With color blindness, depending on which color a person has problems with bright pure colors are easiest to recognize at a glance.

[jlcarneiro]

Weird, looks like we came up with the same idea within days of each other. Oh well, they say great minds think alike

As for differences... well my mod just modifies the staging icons, and doesn't have any other dependencies (ie ModuleManager). The Stock Bug Fix Modules include a lot of extra changes/fixes, so if you're interested in those then you're probably better off installing that mod and removing mine so you don't have the two of them fighting over the staging icons.

Thanks! I've downloaded and am liking EVA Enhancements!

[Superfluous J]

Being partly color blind, I find the colors chosen a bit hard to tell. Better to use more pure colors.

Great suggestions about colors. Another possibility would be to put the classic "no" symbol around them when in danger, and a yellow triangle around them when risky.

(/) = no way!

/\ = only if you're worried you'll die anyway.

(normal) = go ahead.

[Vorg]

Great suggestions about colors. Another possibility would be to put the classic "no" symbol around them when in danger, and a yellow triangle around them when risky.

(/) = no way!

/\ = only if you're worried you'll die anyway.

(normal) = go ahead.

That would be a good idea too.

[seanmcdougall]

Being partly color blind, I find the colors chosen a bit hard to tell. Better to use more pure colors.

Go maybe 60-75% green only for safe because full bright green sometimes is a bit hard to tell from yellow.

Go 100% on Red & Green gives a nice pure yellow.

Go ~90% Red only for Red.

In all 3 of the above, blue should be 0% because it is not a component of yellow and red/green are primary colors.

With color blindness, depending on which color a person has problems with bright pure colors are easiest to recognize at a glance.

Hi Vorg. I had a feeling that not everyone would like the default colours, so I made them configurable. After running Chute Safety Indicator for the first time, it will create a config file in your KSP installation directory under GameData/ChuteSafetyIndicator/ChuteSafetyIndicator.cfg that you can open with any text editor.

The default looks like this:

Settings
{
    safeColor = 0,1,0,1
    riskyColor = 1,0.9215686,0.01568628,1
    unSafeColor = 1,0,0,1
}

Based on your post, I think you want something like this:

Settings
{
    safeColor = 0,0.7,0,1
    riskyColor = 1,1,0,1
    unSafeColor = 0.9,0,0,1
}

Give that a shot and let me know if it looks better for you. If so, I can change the defaults in the next release.

- - - Updated - - -

Great suggestions about colors. Another possibility would be to put the classic "no" symbol around them when in danger, and a yellow triangle around them when risky.

(/) = no way!

/\ = only if you're worried you'll die anyway.

(normal) = go ahead.

Interesting idea, but I'm not quite sure how I'd pull it off. Changing background colours is easy, but actually modifying the icons or drawing other things around them would be tricky...

[Vorg]

After playing with the colors a bit, it looks like you might be applying the color over the stock icon and the grayish background is throwing it off. Even setting red to 1, it looked less red then the chute part after landing and the green stays a bit dark as well. For me the problem is red/green, so the smaller the sample and/or less pure the color, the harder it is to tell apart. I might end up going to blue for safe until something better can be worked out.

Adding a white or black circle with a line through it (I think white is the standard) and a black triangle overlay for the unsafe/risky might be a general good idea regardless of what colors are worked out.

What is the 4th field with a 1 for?

[seanmcdougall]

After playing with the colors a bit, it looks like you might be applying the color over the stock icon and the grayish background is throwing it off.

Yeah, there is some sort of layering going on between the icon, the greyish background texture, and the solid background color that I'm setting. If there was some way to remove the texture that would likely help, but I haven't figured out how yet. I'll keep digging.

Adding a white or black circle with a line through it (I think white is the standard) and a black triangle overlay for the unsafe/risky might be a general good idea regardless of what colors are worked out.

Not sure if I can do that, but I'll take a look.

What is the 4th field with a 1 for?

The colors are stored in Unity's color format which has four components - Red, Green, Blue, and Alpha (transparency). Each component is represented by a floating point number between 0 (none) and 1 (full). The alpha component controls the transparency... so 1 is solid, and 0 is transparent. Maybe if you try adjusting the Alpha you'll get the colors you're looking for?

[Vorg]

There is texture replacer which might be able to change to an icon you have more control over, but that makes it depend on another more complex mod.

I'll try playing with the transparency latter tonight sometime.

Changing the transparency to .1 simply reverted it back to the grey background. So what is needed is a way to change that color, not just tint it which is what is happening now and why you can't get the bright colors.

Just a thought, but what you are changing may in fact be the mask and the game is changing the background to change the chute color. If this is true, then see if you can change that instead to green for safe (try~.7-.8), yellow for risky and red for unsafe (1), and instead of the yellowish it has now for deployed, use blue, and instead of red for cut, use black.

Edited August 5, 2015 by Vorg

[seanmcdougall]

Ok, I've figured out how to access the icon textures and remove the grey background completely so the colors will now appear solid. You can download the pre-release version here to check it out. As before, you can tinker with the color values in the config file. Hopefully this will make finding some workable colors a bit easier...

[Olympic1]

Nice addon, Too bad I discovered your mod after crashing some ships on Duna.

[Vorg]

That fixes the colors nicely. I played with the colors a bit. The .9 you used is fine for red. It looks red now. I bumped it to 1, but anywhere .9-1 is fine. Green was better, though I still get that yellowish look, but that is just the way I see the colors on the monitors. Don't know why the tend to yellow out as they get brighter. I dropped it back to .6 and may try .5, but at this point just the lower brightness is enough to make it easy to spot as green. And when yellow does show (for the .5 secs it was risky), it was a nice clear bright yellow. Might want to put a note in the op if not already there about the editing option because no 2 people see color exactly the same even if they are within (normal) specs on color vision.

[seanmcdougall]

That fixes the colors nicely. I played with the colors a bit. The .9 you used is fine for red. It looks red now. I bumped it to 1, but anywhere .9-1 is fine. Green was better, though I still get that yellowish look, but that is just the way I see the colors on the monitors. Don't know why the tend to yellow out as they get brighter. I dropped it back to .6 and may try .5, but at this point just the lower brightness is enough to make it easy to spot as green. And when yellow does show (for the .5 secs it was risky), it was a nice clear bright yellow. Might want to put a note in the op if not already there about the editing option because no 2 people see color exactly the same even if they are within (normal) specs on color vision.

Great, I'm glad to hear you found some settings that work for you. I'll push out an official update soon (maybe tonight) and probably add an extra config setting to turn on/off the grey background (since some people might actually like the current behaviour). I'll update the documentation accordingly. Thanks for the feedback!

[seanmcdougall]

Version 1.0.2 is now up, which includes the ability to clear the background icon texture by setting "clearBackground = True" in the config file. I've updated the OP to include instructions on editing the config file. Enjoy!

[whaleberg]

This is one of those really simple really excellent mods that fixes a big whole in the stock game.

I would love to see this mod expanded with an option to only deploy parachutes when safe (or when risky depending on some toggle). So you stage the parachutes and then they don't deploy until they are in atmosphere and won't shred themselves. This would make landings with RemoteTech probes a lot less painful.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Marked for later use!

[seanmcdougall]

I would love to see this mod expanded with an option to only deploy parachutes when safe (or when risky depending on some toggle). So you stage the parachutes and then they don't deploy until they are in atmosphere and won't shred themselves. This would make landings with RemoteTech probes a lot less painful.

Interesting idea... I'll poke around and see what I can come up with.

[Vorg]

Yea, the min pressure option on chutes is really a bit useless. Needs to be speed(safety) based option. In reality, the pressure reading with be altered by the speed and is what makes higher speeds unsafe to open as the effective pressure is what would rip the chute. But kerbal doesn't account for that in that option.

[MK3424]

Cool that this great small mod has been made stock for 1.0.5.

[Fwiffo]

Sorry to ask the oft-repeated question, but any plans for a 1.1 compatible version?

[mudkest]

On 11-4-2016 at 0:19 AM, Fwiffo said:

Sorry to ask the oft-repeated question, but any plans for a 1.1 compatible version?

well it's in stock now(though the safe deployment color is grey instead of green)