Jump to content

[1.3.0] Kerbalism v1.2.9


ShotgunNinja

Recommended Posts

Hi, I was wondering if you could implement a slight change to the probe signal/remote control portion of it. Can you implement an idea from a recent re-pack of RT that allows you to always be able to control the antenna on a probe. This is not far off from real-life behavior of probes that will autonomously attempt to re-gain signal by re-positioning and re-purposing antennas. Full control of the probe is not necessary, but that one small change makes playing with signals much more fun.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@PringleManConditions external to the probe determine if it has a link: distance, occlusion, other vessels relay state and the signal processing from the tech tree. So I guess there is nothing you can possibly do on the probe itself to regain control, as the antennas doesn't need to be extended to work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, ShotgunNinja said:

@PringleManConditions external to the probe determine if it has a link: distance, occlusion, other vessels relay state and the signal processing from the tech tree. So I guess there is nothing you can possibly do on the probe itself to regain control, as the antennas doesn't need to be extended to work.

Ah well in that case everything is good to go.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

 

At this point I think its appropriate to explain the series of events that lead to me developing this mod.

  Reveal hidden contents

I saw 1.0.5 was released and jumped on it. This time I really wanted to have life support in my game, including the consumption of ElectricCharge the background.

So I proceded to download and try all existing life support mods, one after the other. Some of them, to some degree, claim to require EC and consume it in background. Well, that isn't really the case, and the reason why it is this way is simple: they can't possibly consume EC in background without producing it too (or the player's Kerbals will just die...).

So I started to develop my own life support mod, out of desperation. I also come to discover BackgroundProcessing, that looked like the perfect solution until I actually tried it: occlusion from celestial bodies was broken, and there were many more problems. I attempted some kind of collaboration with the author to improve on that, but he probably is busy with other matters. It wasn't his fault either for the broken things, hell there are families and genera of things you have to get around in KSP to make stuff work in background coherently. So I ended up rewriting the background processing from scratch.

Then the ISRU. I never really played with it, but I wanted to see how it behaves with my background simulation as I've read somewhere it was somehow already simulated in background by squad. Well, it was utterly broken. The squad simulation just isn't mean to deal with complex setups, and for complex i mean a drill, an ore container and a converter. So I just went ahead, drink all the caffeine my body could take, and rewrote that thing from scratch. Yes, now IRSU work in background for arbitrary setups. Alleluyah!

All well. I dediced it was enough modding and I went to playing. I remembered from my 1.0.4 days that DangIt added a lot of spice to the game. Well, I could't manage to get to orbit without the engine or the fuel tank near to the engine failing. WTF? Why was that happening, what has changed? I tell you, the temperature model has changed from 1.0.4 to 1.0.5 and probably the carefully balanced DangIt juts had its balance thrown out of the window. I tried to tweak that in DangIt source for my own perusal but then I said to me 'Buddy its just faster to rewrite this thing from scratch'. At that point I looked in the forums for ideas about a malfunction mod and I found a lot of people complaining about random failures. I could sympatize with them. The fact is planning for failure is fun, but no plan survive contact with reality so it all result in unusable vessels in a way or another. I wanted to provide an alternative to that, and specs getting reduced logarithmically just looked perfect. And also now I can get failures on unloaded vessels.

Now (this is the last point i promise), I had AntennaRange installed. I did some kind of Sputnik replica mission in the early game, then the batteries run out in a few hours and it was just there orbiting for eternity, monument to my space program. And I forgot about it... until, during a tense moon mission the damn thing start relaying data! Yes, dead vessels can relay data in AntennaRange. That was not really acceptable to me, gameplay-wise, and at that point I knew very well what to do: I put down 10 espresso in rapid succession and start writing the whole signal shebang from scratch. Like with malfunctions, I just explored the forums to see if somebody had some good idea and I found out about SQUAD wanting to add antenna ranges and relaying to the stock game, that was delayed. So I through it would be good to implement something similar to it.

Then I through it was done. 500 man-hours later this was good enough to release to the public.

And so this is the story of how I came to make this mod.

 

 

Hm.. that's a pretty dedicated development... makes me lean towards your mod more... makes my choice that much harder. :P

I'd test your mod right now, but my 1.05 game is in the middle of a fairly regular Career mode, so I'm not really up for doing that. But once 1.1 comes, I'm definitely considering this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow,  this is awesome complex mod! Like the idea to have everything covered in one mode,  however all people like to have options...  or config files,  you know what I mean :wink:

2 more ideas for you:

1) EVA fuel is taken from monoprop reserves. 

2) Oxygen loss on EVA based on volume of crew module you have jumped of -  to encourage usage of dedicated airlocks like Ven's single kerbal can. Right now you just open hitchhikers door and step out. Not realistic, or kerbalistic if you wish. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@evileye.x EVA fuel is already taken from the monoprop in the vessel, and given back on return. I forgot to add it to the readme. There is also a warning message if you EVA out of a vessel without monoprop. I'm also 'gifting' monoprop (among the other resources) to resque missions Kerbals on first contact.

The Oxygen loss idea is very interesting and relatively simple to implement, I'll think about it.

Edited by ShotgunNinja
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your sense of gameplay balance is pretty close to the same things I like. Add elements of realistic problems to solve, but stay away from overly finicky micromanagement. Life support condensed down to the essentials, without a hundred parts and/or silly jokey LOL-so-Kerbal names for things. Communications like AntennaRange, but better. Acknowledge that machines sometimes break and need repairs, but avoid having a rocket blow up due to a bad dice roll. This is all very cool.

I'm not actively playing right now while waiting for 1.1, but will definitely give Kerbalism a try. So far it looks like the mod adds a whole lot of things I'll like.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Apurva Kawthalkar In the editors, click on the Planner applauncher icon on the bottom right. On the top of it you can see labels that you can click to change target body and situation, as well as switch between page 1 and 2. Look for the 'radiation' section and hover on the radiation belt entry to see the average rad/h inside it. Always in the radiation section, there are the estimate lifetimes in 3 radiation environments (cosmic, storm, belt). Look how the values change in relation to the target body to get an idea of it.

When a CME is generated toward a planetary system, if you have at least a vessel inside the SOI of the planet (or the moons) you'll get a warning message with the time left until impact. Also the monitor will flash the 'storm icon' yellow. When the CME hit you'll get another message and the storm icon will become red.

 

Speaking of the monitor, I added the ability to assign vessels to a group and then filter them, for the next version :).

filter.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@hatterson Here is a screenshot I posted earlier with all the parts included. There is a short antenna, 2 food containers, an oxygen tank and the greenhouse.

I've not reorganized the tech tree by any means. I just switched tech required between the thermometer/goo and the barometer/matlab. Then I use the existing technologies to unlock some bonuses progressively. I made some artwork to explain it better:

techtree.png

I will add an album to the OP when I get enough screenshots put together.

@RoverDude Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@ShotgunNinja

Is there anyway to increase the size & font of the info window(s)? If not would you consider adding an option to do so? The text is extremely tiny and hard to read when viewed on a 1440p monitor (I shudder what it looks like on a 4k monitor).

That really is my only complaint, this is a well thought out mod and I look forward to it's future, good job !

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ShotgunNinja,

Hah, I thought I recognized that name regarding some of the discussions on backgroundprocessing.dll. Clearly, you must have gotten most of that straightened out. Careful, that shotgun has a kick, and your ideas do as well. I like them! All of them. Your mod proposes to do something that could change how life support and realism mods behave in the future. Seems you have a plan in place, and I'd say go for it dude! Which makes me wonder, are YOU supposed to support Other mods, or are Other mods supposed to support YOU? <- Dumb question I suppose [shrug]

Currently, I have a directory set up for just kerbalism[1.05] and any and all mods I can "gradually" install. Unfortunately, testing everything fully does take time, but so far so good. Note, I've avoided any mods that pose a potential conflict. Will get to those soon enough.

Anyway, keep it up!

Ack!, just before posting this I noticed a NOTES section in the GUI. Nice touch!!!

Best of Luck,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Jim Meillente The text size is comparable with the stock ui, I used their GUI style whenever I could. The vessel config text is smaller, I concede, but you don't end up using it a lot. The planner text is as big as I could to it, there are a lot of info in it and any bigger it would not fit. Also I want to minimize changes to the UI until I can port it to 1.1. Sorry about that.

 

@DarkonZ Thanks alot! I really need someone testing the interactions with other mods, so if you find someone is incompatible by all means report it :)

Currently I have in-code support for SCANsat, and a MM patch for VenStockRevamp. Other part packs could be supported with as little as a MM patch (mostly adding antennas and rebalancing solar panels) and I plan to add them over time. Contributions are welcome. The first target is probably the Near Future suite (that thing is a behemoth!). I will also look into supporting more complex mods in-code, case by case, similar to how I'm doing it with SCANsat. Right now I'm investigating if I can interact with ConnectedLivingSpace, that may help me solve some inconsistency with the shielding mechanics.

On the other side I provide documentation for the modules and some code hooks (little for now, but more can be added on request), so that other mods and part packs can interface with this one. Cheers!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While I'm also a diehard TAC/RT user, the radiation and magnetosphere features have convinced me to try this mod out for a change (once it's updated for 1.1!). I just have one question, which is when a solar storm happens is occlusion simulated for the vessel, so I could just alter the orbit of the vessel to hide behind the planet, like NASA and ESA did with comet Siding Spring?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ShotgunN,

Is this the place you consider for development of the mod? If so, here is a list of mods that work and clearly don't overlap on what your mod does. Sure, you know this, but I thought I'd throw it out anyway. So far:

000_Toolbar
AsteroidDay
Chatterer
CommunityResourcePack
CommunityTechTree (Not totally sure here)
DMagicUtilities (Contracts Window+)
DPSoundFX
DraggableMenu
EVAEnhancements
FuelTanksPlus
InterstellarFuelSwitch
KerbalEngineer
Kerbalism
KerbalJointReinforcement
MechJeb2
MechJeb2 Embedded by Dennis6492
ModRocketSys
Multiports
PersistentRotation
QuickScroll (Scrolls stuff in VAB with mouse)
RCSBuildAid
RcsSounds
ScienceAlert
Squad
TriggerTech (Alternate resource panel)
WheelSounds
ModuleManager.ConfigCache
ModuleManager.ConfigSHA
ModuleManager.Physics
ModuleManager.TechTree
ModuleManager.2.6.20.dll
toolbar-settings.dat

Rather bleak list I know, but more is coming. Funny you mention connected living space. Never used it, and never thought I would, even though I might have a mod that actually uses/requires that. For pure testing, is this file the one you want?

Connected_Living_Space-1.2.0.2.zip

Not a problem to drop it into the game and see what happens. Wait, that's after I actually understand what that mod is actually supposed to do.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm intrested in integrating Kerbalsim into KSPI-E. I'm specificly intrested in the enering maintenance part of it. In order to do that effectively I need to ineract with your mod, could you please extend your Kerbalism_Hooks  class to include methods I can use to return the state generators, engines and reactors? Also I would like to have some methods of influence the  Radiation of any Kerbal on EVA  depending on the activity of the nuclear, fusion or antimatter reactors

Edited by FreeThinker
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Kaleaze said:

Very cool mod, but on Space Dock it says that it's from the 1.0.5 version of the game, will it work on the 1.1 patch?

No not yet he hasn't updated it.  He hasn't had 1.1 until now so give a little while

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...