A question about planet making

[Crispy Top Hat]

Hello everyone, I am sure by now this question has been asked numerous times over and over and I have even scoured the forums to try to find my answer here but I have a few questions. So I recently started making mods for KSP nothing special I am trying to learn how to do it. After a lengthy time getting my first part I ever made into KSP and finally with some help to get it to work I have been able to make parts. Now I want to try to do a planet. I am very confused. There seems to be no good documentation on it and what I have found even confuses me more. I see there are a bunch of planet makers out there and I am unsure which one to use between Kopernicus, Kopernicustech I am unsure which of these 2 to use neither of them have any documentation on them and any tutorial I find sets me back like 50 steps. If I am to use Kopernicus is there a Kopernicus overlay in KSP cause if so I can not find it. I found that if I press CTRL+P in Kopernicustech it brings up a menu but nothing happens when I try to play with it. If anyone can point me to the right direction of some kind of documentation for either or explain the difference of these two mods I would greatly appreciate it.

[MrHappyFace]

You should only ever use Kopernicus, seeing as it's the one that basically every planet pack uses, including OPM, New Horizons, Arkas, Asclepius, etc.

There are also the example configs, which are probably the most helpful source for Kopernicus (besides other people): https://www.github.com/Kopernicus/KopernicusExamples/

Some basic steps to get started:

1. copy over one of the examples (cfg, textures, everything) from the Creating New Bodies folder, and make sure all of the files have the same folder path relative to your gamedata as it is in the github repository.

2. tweak a few settings in the config.

3. run KSP

That should get you started, but there are many different ways to go about making your planets, including generating them procedurally, using height and color maps, etc.

There are a million and one settings you can tweak, and coupled with all of the nuances of Kopernicus, and the very minimal documentation, It's sure to be a bit of a headache to start. If you have questions, you can ask the people over in the kopernicus forum thread, they'd be happy to help you.

Edited October 15, 2015 by MrHappyFace

[Crispy Top Hat]

Thank you for the reply. One last question is there an GUI in KSP with Kopernicus or is it all done outside of KSP.

[MrHappyFace]

It's all done outside KSP right now. There is an updated, albeit buggy, version of Kopernicus-specific version of Kittopia, but it doesn't have a config exporter yet.