[1.7.3 & 1.11.0] Alternis Kerbol Rekerjiggered v2.5.0 & pre-2.6.0.0 (2021-January-19)

[Whirligig Girl]

 

Alternis--the God of Change and Difference--decided to smite the heck out of the Kerbal's home solar system. This is what happened.
 

PRERELEASE OF AKR v2.6.0 FOUND HERE ON GITHUB
For use with RTB's Bleeding Edge Kopernicus for KSP 1.11.0

Download 2.5.0 (KSP 1.7.3) or 2.6.0.0 (KSP 1.11.0) at GitHub

or 2.5.0 (KSP 1.7.3) on SpaceDock.

If you want to help support my work, see my Patreon.

If you want to discuss my work, check out my Discord server.

BEFORE YOU DOWNLOAD, MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT HAVE INCOMPATIBLE VISUAL MODS
(see below section on Visual Mods)

  
 

Alternis Kerbol Rekerjiggered is the re-release of the classic v0.23 mod for KSP: Alternis Kerbol. It grabs and re-arranges the solar system bodies to create something new. Almost all bodies have been changed somehow, be it in a large way or a small way. Alternis Kerbol was one of the first planet packs, using its own plugin to change the planets, before even Planet Factory Creator Edition was released and while RSS couldn't do much more than resize Kerbin. Under those conditions, it did a damn fine job.

Here's the list of changes, as true as possible to the original Alternis Kerbol mod with plenty of extra improvements to the previously stock bodies:

Changes

• Jool: Moved to Kerbin's original orbital position, blu-ified.
• Bop: Turned into a tiny little subsatellite of Kerbin.
• Pol: Inclination lowered, made into a lumpy rubble pile.
• Kerbin: Now orbits Jool at the same place Tylo used to. New terrain.
• Eve: Yellow, ringed, and shrunk to 670km radius, 1.12 G.
• Laythe: Redone entirely, now a jungle moon with varied terrain, more land, and trees. (Panspermia's a heckuva thing.)
• Minmus: Orbits Jool beneath Laythe, now 29km in radius (from 60), and deep reddish orange.
• Tylo: Orbits the sun a bit past Duna's original orbit, radius increased to 1103 km and surface gravity is 4g, plus an atmosphere no more than 80% the density of Kerbin's.
• Duna: Orbits Tylo, completely new terrain.
• Moho: Orbit moved inward and made more eccentric, turned red and given a hot atmosphere and the, well, original Mohole. (New)
• Gilly: Small comet, shrunk to 8.5km radius. Renamed to Gillian's Comet. (Comet tails with Kopernicus Expansion)
• Ike: Fat comet, shrunk to 17.5km radius. Renamed to Isaac's Comet. (Comet tails with Kopernicus Expansion)
• Mun: Relocated to Jool orbit, replacing Vall, enlarged to 257km radius. New terrain.
• Vall: Now orbits Eeloo, shrunk to 99.8 km radius. Totally new terrain.
• Eeloo: Moved outward, increased to ~500 km radius, less eccentric and inclined orbit. Totally new terrain.
• Dres: First moon of Tylo. New, heavily cratered terrain.
• Lighting: Ambient light now nonexistent in space Sun is slightly reddish-yellow and casts a harsh, warmer light.
• Sun: Shrunk to 75000km, gravity increased to keep planetary speeds the same. 
• General: Most orbits have at least some inclination and eccentricity now, as opposed to being perfect circles like the Kerbin system. All atmospheres are defined realistically using OhioBob's calculator.
• Science: Science configs have been made for all modified bodies, and many bodies have modified science multipliers.
• Mods: Compatibility for PlanetShine, Kopernicus Expansion Rekerjiggered, Distant Object Enhancement, Outer Planets Mod, Kronometer, and Principia, and Environmental Visual Enhancements. All supported in the main download (you no longer need to download a separate config pack for clouds or scatterer, as previous versions required.)

Pictures

Known Problems

• When timewarping outside of the Jool System, Kerbin will wander away from its orbit in the Tracking Station and Map View. This is visual only and does not happen in flight or when orbiting Jool. This is the best case scenario, the alternative is Kerbin just not orbiting Jool at all. Note that as far as gravity is concerned, Kerbin is always in the right place. Trajectories will always work as if Kerbin were properly anchored into its real orbit. It's only a visual thing.
• The space center is never accurate. There is no fix for this, but it's not game-breaking and should not appear outside the tracking station.
• On Linux only: Making History breaks PostSpawnOrbit, which allows Kerbin to be reparented. The main menu buttons will be broken if you use Linux with Making History and any mod that uses PostSpawnOrbit. To play, you will have to uninstall Making History or play on PC (Not sure about Mac). If there is sufficient interest in a patch that totally misses the point of the mod by re-adding Kerbin into Solar orbit while preserving the other planets, I may consider it.
• You may have noticed that all of these problems are related to re-parenting Kerbin. This is a fundamental problem that only Squad can fix.

Recommended or Compatible Mods

• PlanetShine (All planets and moons have appropriate planetshine colors)
• DistantObjectEnhancement (makes the sky seem more authentic. All planets have proper dot color, and with the removal of the skybox when looking at planets, makes space feel even more empty!)
• Kronometer (Makes the clock sensible for the weird system. Click here to see the definitions for the times)
• Transfer Window Planner (Or use this online tool. Note that the online tool is inaccurate for Eve and Pol due to their physical characteristics and Bop due to its permanent moonlet position.)
• Texture Replacer (Use a dark skybox like Deep Star Map)
• Kerbal Engineer Redux (Especially if you plan to go to Tylo)
• Environmental Visual Enhancements  (Clouds for all bodies with atmospheres)
• Galactic Neighborhood (Adds this planet pack as a separate star system "Alternis" with a star based upon 54 Piscium A, along with other planet packs and stars.)
• Principia (Stable N-body implementation of the system, axial tilt for some bodies.)
• Interstellar Consortium Plugin (Allows you to play from any IC-compatible system, treating AKR as an alien solar system.)

The Alternis Super Tylo Super Challenge

Back when Alternis Kerbol 0.1 was out, Tylo was an extremely difficult destination. Harder than Eve to land and return from. I'd only ever seen one person do the mission, and that was without the Deadly Reentry mod that added re-entry heating. Now re-entry heating is on by default. Tylo is right now the single most difficult planet to land on, in this mod or in stock.

If you want to attempt this challenge but don't want the rest of the system, first of all: how dare you, and second of all: here's a standalone Super-Tylo on Spacedock. To clarify, you only need that download if you are NOT playing with Alternis Kerbol Rekerjiggered.

• Easy Mode: Land a space probe on the surface of Super Tylo. You get one gold star.
• Normal Mode: Land a kerballed spacecraft on the surface of Super Tylo, plant a flag, and get back to Kerbin's surface. You will be rewarded with two gold stars. 
• Hard Mode: Impress me. If you've impressed me enough you will get three gold stars. (Impressing me need not rely on Tylo, there are other difficult things to do in the Alternis system. Hard Mode is also impossible if you're not playing the full Alternis Kerbol mod, so you can't use the standalone version.)

Attempts: 

Spoiler

@Xurkitree is the first to complete the Super Tylo challenge! Congratulations, you've won three gold stars! They're being built at Magrathea planetyards now. A truly historic achievement.

Visual Mods

IMPORTANT: Alternis Kerbol Rekerjiggered is not compatible with any other visual enhancement config packs like SVE or Astronomer's, or anything else for that matter. AKR has its own configs to support Scatterer and Environmental Visual Enhancements. You do not need the BoulderCo folder of default E.V.E. configs, just the plugin folder.

The "canonical" skybox is Poodmund's Deep Star Map. You should also decrease the map and flight ambient light in your settings menu--Alternis Kerbol was notoriously dark! 

https://imgur.com/a/Qq5Oi

In this album is a set of screenshots depicting Alternis Kerbol with E.V.E., pre-0.052 Scatterer, and Distant Object Enhancement.

If Jool has any green in it, you're doing it wrong.

Installation

1. Install Kopernicus (Requires ModuleManager and ModularFlightIntegrator, both of which come in the download)
2. Optionally, install Environmental Visual Enhancements and/or any of the other compatible mods.
3. Make sure you have uninstalled any previous versions of Alternis Kerbol.
4. Download Alternis Kerbol Rekerjiggered and merge the contents of GameData.
5. Enjoy.

Credits

• @NovaSilisko for the original Alternis Kerbol plugin.
• @Winston for the original Jool texture from Alternis Kerbol.
• @Thomas P. and others, for maintaining and developing the Kopernicus plugin which makes planet modding possible.
• @Thomas P., @KillAshley, @NathanKell, and @Sigma88 for helping me early on. This was my first real mod and there's no way I could have gotten to where I am now without these people. Round of applause for them, please.
• @Poodmund for the city lights on Kerbin with the E.V.E. compatibility patch.
• @Pkmniako for awesome The Alternis Kerbol Star System infographic.

License

All of my own art assets are All Rights Reserved, unless you get explicit permission from me to use them.
The planet PQS Material shader configs are from KillAshley's KASE, and are licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
The original mod's art assets are CC BY-NC 4.0

Edited January 20, 2021 by GregroxMun
prerelease 1.11

[Geschosskopf]

Egad, lad. I remember the original. Never thought to see it again. Thanks

[tygoo7]

Congrats on Beta release! Very glad to see that Alternis is back! I loved using that mod back in 0.23.

[MrHappyFace]

Yay, a stable release!

I like the flags too.

Edited September 6, 2015 by MrHappyFace

[Gojira]

I've installed it and the system hasn't changed at all. Help!

EDIT: I might not have had Kopernicus installed. Ignore this.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Gojira

[skykooler]

• Tylo's atmosphere is invisible. This is a Kopernicus problem, one that I can not solve unless I were to replace Tylo with a completely different planet. The problem may be fixed in future.
  

I remember when I was working on my terraforming mod I got an atmosphere working on the Mun and Minmus, so it's definitely possible. I wasn't using Kopernicus though.

[Whirligig Girl]

I remember when I was working on my terraforming mod I got an atmosphere working on the Mun and Minmus, so it's definitely possible. I wasn't using Kopernicus though.

There's the problem. You see, NovaSilisko used his own planetary alteration plugin to do all the changing, I'm using Kopernicus. I've discussed this with Thomas P., and he said that Nova did it by cloning Kerbin's atmosphere. He said something along the lines of "I really should get around to doing that for Kopernicus."

Until then, Tylo keeps its invisible atmosphere.

[_Augustus_]

I think that you can give Tylo a visible atmosphere, just look at OPM's gas giant configs.

[Thomassino]

Glad to see this wonderful mod being redone for 1.0.4 I'll definitely try it out.

[Whirligig Girl]

I think that you can give Tylo a visible atmosphere, just look at OPM's gas giant configs.

I've checked with Thomas. You can't do it.

[Tellion]

I've checked with Thomas. You can't do it.

What about using a different template and copying whatever PQSMods you need from Tylo?

[Whirligig Girl]

What about using a different template and copying whatever PQSMods you need from Tylo?

You can't change the template of a stock planet.

Just wait, I'm sure Kopernicus will eventually be able to clone atmospheres. Maybe.

[Tellion]

You can't change the template of a stock planet.

Just wait, I'm sure Kopernicus will eventually be able to clone atmospheres. Maybe.

Yeah, probably not.

@Kopernicus:AFTER[Kopernicus]
{
!Body[Tylo] {}
Body
{
       name = Tylo
       Template
       {
             name  = Duna
       }
}
}

Would be the procedure I imagine.

[Olympic1]

@GregroxMun, about the dds conversion.

Are the name_dif.png's part off the color map?

Do the png's in the Kopernicus/Cache folder also need to be converted to dds?

Edited September 6, 2015 by Olympic1

[Whirligig Girl]

@GregroxMun, about the dds conversion.

Are the name_dif.png's part off the color map?

Do the png's in the Kopernicus/Cache folder also need to be converted to dds?

I believe they do have to be converted in order to save memory, but I could be mistaken. I would ask someone on the Kopernicus IRC.

In other news, AKRJ vB0.1.1 is released, and I didn't have time to tell you about it because I was very suddenly pulled away from keyboard.

There's a minor change to Laythe's PQS, there's Planetshine and DistantObject support, and there's new science defs (that must overwrite the original stock ones, so be sure to backup your original ones. The download has them separate just in case you forget to install them, so be sure to remember to install them.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, probably not.

@Kopernicus:AFTER[Kopernicus]
{
!Body[Tylo] {}
Body
{
       name = Tylo
       Template
       {
             name  = Duna
       }
}
}

Would be the procedure I imagine.

I tried that. Kopernicus decided that it was going to go on strike until I fixed it, because it reverted all changes to the Kerbol System while that little hack was active. Reverted the change, and Kopernicus worked again.

[Tralfagar]

Found an issue with Minmus. When landing on the flats (which are below sea level), the screen goes black as soon as the camera goes below sea level. Here's a quick album:

http://imgur.com/a/LxRFx

And here's a quick album of how nice Minmus looks from above!

http://imgur.com/a/MLIPt

[RyanRising]

Oh! Yay! There will try be alien trees on laythe, so long as you can figure out panspermia, that heckuva thing. (My, I remember that comment from the original thread too.)

Oh god tylo is gonna be awful. Is it even theoretically possible to launch from that planet?

[Tellion]

I tried that. Kopernicus decided that it was going to go on strike until I fixed it, because it reverted all changes to the Kerbol System while that little hack was active. Reverted the change, and Kopernicus worked again.

RSS does !Body,* {} before creating everything from templates and maps, so I think you had some error in the config. Using Tylo's maps by pointing the config to BUILTIN/whateverthename should also be possible without issue.

[antgeth]

huzzah! i really missed SuperTylo

[Whirligig Girl]

I have fixed the Minmus problem, the fix will be part of the next update which will include DDS conversions. If you absolutely must right now have a working Minmus right now, go into AlternisKerbol/Minmus/Minmus.cfg and remove the following:

                                VertexHeightOffset
				{
					offset = -107
					enabled = true
					order = 101
				}

(Or just set true to false.)

[tygoo7]

For minmus' craters couldn't you just add the VoronoiCraters mod or what ever it's called?

[Cetera]

Thanks, Greg, for your work on this. I really am looking forward to each release. Hopefully this doesn't have to all be redone after the 1.1 release. It sounds like there are going to need to be a lot of mod overhauls once it hits.

[nismobg]

added

[Tralfagar]

Has anyone else had their ships thrown out of orbits during time warp (1000x and higher) when not the active vessel? So far, it's happened with three of my ships in stable orbits around each of Mun, Laythe, and Minmus (I have Minmus modified to the stock radius/mass roughly where the Mun is with a SoI increased to about 250km instead of AK's 19km...the other two moons are unchanged from AK's settings). I haven't had an issue with ships being thrown from Kerbin, though I also don't have a lot in stable orbit around Kerbin.

My guess is that during time warp, the planet's orbits are sampled with some amount of rounding error. When the errors put the craft at an altitude outside the SoI, the craft gets moved if it happens too often, as if it was on a hyperbolic trajectory. I will change some of the parameters tonight and see if I can recreate it and/or solve it. But in the mean time, has anyone else run into a similar issue?

[Whirligig Girl]

Has anyone else had their ships thrown out of orbits during time warp (1000x and higher) when not the active vessel? So far, it's happened with three of my ships in stable orbits around each of Mun, Laythe, and Minmus (I have Minmus modified to the stock radius/mass roughly where the Mun is with a SoI increased to about 250km instead of AK's 19km...the other two moons are unchanged from AK's settings). I haven't had an issue with ships being thrown from Kerbin, though I also don't have a lot in stable orbit around Kerbin.

My guess is that during time warp, the planet's orbits are sampled with some amount of rounding error. When the errors put the craft at an altitude outside the SoI, the craft gets moved if it happens too often, as if it was on a hyperbolic trajectory. I will change some of the parameters tonight and see if I can recreate it and/or solve it. But in the mean time, has anyone else run into a similar issue?

That shouldn't happen. I have to assume it's either a stock bug or a Kopernicus problem. I can't see how it could be the fault of this mod. But I'll check.