Splash screen loading hints?

[Snark]

Where does the game specify the loading hints?  (e.g. "Pointing Correct End Towards Space", "Treating Kessler Syndrome", etc.?)

I've been rummaging everywhere, but haven't been able to find either a config file or an API class that specifies these.

Anyone have any idea?

[sarbian]

Those are most likely serialized in the game data files (KSP_Data). If the game does not expose them in a public List you ll have a hard time finding them...

[Snark]

Yah, I see that there's a LoadingScreen singleton, and it defines a LoadingScreenState class with an array of tips... but there doesn't seem to be any public way to get at those tips.

It's maddening.  I coulda sworn that at some point in the last three months or so, I was looking at a list of all the tips somewhere.  Unfortunately, I can't for the life of me remember where I saw that-- e.g. was it in a config file, or an object display in Visual Studio, or what.  If I could remember where I saw it, maybe I'd have an answer.

It's not vital.  Just a nice-to-have.  Kind of annoying if there's no way for a mod to get at that list, and really annoying if there is a way but I just can't find it.

[Andem]

Related to this (I think...) would KSP_Data be where I locate the vessel Icons? I've been looking for them for ages...

[Snark]

19 hours ago, Andem said:

Related to this (I think...) would KSP_Data be where I locate the vessel Icons? I've been looking for them for ages...

Out of curiosity, why do you want to get at the vessel icons?  Is it that you want to change their appearance (e.g. make "rover" look different, or whatever)?

Or is it that you're interested in modding it to add more vessel types (like "airplane" or whatever)?

If it's the latter, I think you're basically out of luck, in terms of programmability-- the game has modeled "vessel type" as an enum in C#, meaning that there's a fixed set of vessel types and there's nothing you can do to extend that list. 

So the only way to get more vessel types would be either for Squad to add them to the stock game, or for Squad to change the programming model so that it's more dynamic and not an enum.  Until and unless that happens, we're pretty much stuck with the stock list.

[Andem]

3 hours ago, Snark said:

Out of curiosity, why do you want to get at the vessel icons?  Is it that you want to change their appearance (e.g. make "rover" look different, or whatever)?

Or is it that you're interested in modding it to add more vessel types (like "airplane" or whatever)?

If it's the latter, I think you're basically out of luck, in terms of programmability-- the game has modeled "vessel type" as an enum in C#, meaning that there's a fixed set of vessel types and there's nothing you can do to extend that list. 

So the only way to get more vessel types would be either for Squad to add them to the stock game, or for Squad to change the programming model so that it's more dynamic and not an enum.  Until and unless that happens, we're pretty much stuck with the stock list.

Dang. I was really hoping to add some. That's a shame... Please SQAUD!!!

[Padishar]

While I would also like the vessel types to be more dynamic and moddable (and the resource flow modes too, but that's another story), they are pretty hardcoded into quite a few areas of the game at the moment (as are the resource flow modes) and even making simple changes to the system (such as adding a new type to the existing enum) would be quite likely to cause some unintended consequences, so I expect a total redesign of the vessel type mechanism to make it moddable would be considered too dangerous to make it a high priority...

[Snark]

On 3/21/2016 at 4:19 AM, Padishar said:

While I would also like the vessel types to be more dynamic and moddable (and the resource flow modes too, but that's another story), they are pretty hardcoded into quite a few areas of the game at the moment (as are the resource flow modes) and even making simple changes to the system (such as adding a new type to the existing enum) would be quite likely to cause some unintended consequences, so I expect a total redesign of the vessel type mechanism to make it moddable would be considered too dangerous to make it a high priority...

Yup.  Once you make something an enum, then the assumptions around that tend to get baked into the system, and it's a difficult can of worms to get back into the container.

We'd be much more likely to see Squad add a few more possible values onto the enum than to change it to be not-an-enum.

Other areas that are similarly inflexible because of being enums (this isn't an exhaustive list, jut some examples):

• Action groups
• Science situations (e.g. "landed", "flying high", "space nearby", etc.)

[Andem]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

Yup.  Once you make something an enum, then the assumptions around that tend to get baked into the system, and it's a difficult can of worms to get back into the container.

We'd be much more likely to see Squad add a few more possible values onto the enum than to change it to be not-an-enum.

Other areas that are similarly inflexible because of being enums (this isn't an exhaustive list, jut some examples):

• Action groups
• Science situations (e.g. "landed", "flying high", "space nearby", etc.)

Well, at least it's possible (by a certain definition), eg. Action Groups Extended

[Snark]

43 minutes ago, Andem said:

Well, at least it's possible (by a certain definition), eg. Action Groups Extended

Yes, it's possible to wrestle the UI around into acting like there are more action groups.  My hat is off to Diazo for being able to make that happen, it's a real accomplishment.  (Especially since he's been a real sport about giving me helpful advice that un-wedged me when I was working on DefaultActionGroups.)

However, it requires major brain-surgery to do so, and since it's not using the actual action groups that KSP uses for doing all its internal stuff, it means that it's not a "real" action group internally, and (for example) other mods that work with action groups won't know about it unless they have specific compatibility code, and so forth.

For example, I would love to add new science situations.  I want to have a reason to dive into Jool, and would love to have a "Deep Atmosphere" situation, something lower than "Flying".  But I can't do that because "situation" is an enum.  Maybe if I poured a huge amount of effort into building a mod that "fakes" the situation, I could kinda-sorta get the game to act like there's a new situation for that... but not only would it be a huge amount of work for me, it also wouldn't play nicely for any other mods that work with science reports (and there are lots of them).  So it's simply not worth it for me to try.