[1.12.x] IndicatorLights v1.8.3: Small, convenient, informative.

[RocketScientist]

2 hours ago, Snark said:

Just those?  Other lights are working fine, it's just the batteries and command pods that are a problem?

My guess is that it's probably some interaction with another mod.  For example, in the early days of IndicatorLights, it wasn't playing nice with TextureReplacer and people were seeing all their lights black-- eventually some helpful users tracked down what the root cause was (and also what the needed config fix was), and I could make a config update to fix that problem.

So, my guess is that it's probably some other mod that's somehow stepping on IL's toes, or vice versa.  My suggestion would be to use process of elimination.  Try running with only IndicatorLights installed, and see whether the problem persists.  If it doesn't-- i.e. if everything works fine when you have IndicatorLights and nothing else installed-- then it's definitely some other mod causing an issue.  In which case all you need to do is to install half of your other mods at a time until you narrow down to exactly which mod is causing the problem.

It was texture replacer, weird how only my battery and capsules had black lights. 

[katateochi]

On 5/26/2018 at 3:59 AM, Snark said:

So, my guess is that it's probably some other mod that's somehow stepping on IL's toes, or vice versa.  My suggestion would be to use process of elimination

On 5/26/2018 at 6:08 AM, RocketScientist said:

It was texture replacer, weird how only my battery and capsules had black lights. 

I can also confirm this. Just installed Texture Replacer (on a happy stable mod install which has had indicator lights working normally for ages) and I have black lights. Only difference is I'm seeing it on all parts; batteries, command pods, science parts, antenna, SAS modules, and ISRU  converters. But (strangely enough) the two fuel cells are still working as normal.
Guess that means Texture Replacer has to go, 'cos indicator lights is now totally a "must have, KSP feels broken without it" mod! 

 

[Snark]

1 hour ago, katateochi said:

I can also confirm this. Just installed Texture Replacer (on a happy stable mod install which has had indicator lights working normally for ages) and I have black lights. Only difference is I'm seeing it on all parts; batteries, command pods, science parts, antenna, SAS modules, and ISRU  converters. But (strangely enough) the two fuel cells are still working as normal.
Guess that means Texture Replacer has to go, 'cos indicator lights is now totally a "must have, KSP feels broken without it" mod!

Alas, TextureReplacer and IndicatorLights have a bit of...history.  Back in the early days of IndicatorLights, it was also causing some problems with TextureReplacer (i.e. stuff showing up black).  Turned out there were a couple of issues-- one was that there's a special bit of config one can add to tell TR "please leave this thing alone", and the other was that TR was brittle when a texture is 1 pixel (increasing it to 2x2 fixed the problem).

So now it's acting up again, huh?  My guess would be that something changed in TextureReplacer once again, and that therefore some other workaround would need to be added to fix IndicatorLights compatibility again.

I'd love to fix it-- TextureReplacer is a popular mod and I'd hate to force people to have to choose between it and IndicatorLights.  Unfortunately, since I'm not in the habit of running TextureReplacer myself, I simply don't have the bandwidth to investigate what's going on and how to fix it.  If anyone else can figure this out, though, I'd love to hear it-- would happily add a fix for the problem, if I knew what it was.  My guess is that it'll be something simple (it certainly was, the last two times this came up).  It's tracking down the root cause that's the issue.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help. 

 

[katateochi]

10 hours ago, Snark said:

Sorry I couldn't be of more help. 

Dude, don't be sorry! I totally get how hard it is tracking down the cause of something like this. I am not familiar with TR (only tried it out for about 5 mins today) so I can't be much help in issue hunting....but I wonder if it might be possible for this issue to be solved on the TR side of things rather than in IL? Do you think it would be worth me posting this issue on the TR thread?

[Gordon Dry]

6 hours ago, katateochi said:

Do you think it would be worth me posting this issue on the TR thread?

Already done yesterday:
https://github.com/ducakar/TextureReplacer/issues/12

[Snark]

7 hours ago, katateochi said:

Do you think it would be worth me posting this issue on the TR thread?

1 hour ago, Gordon Dry said:

Already done yesterday

Thanks, guys.  Please do bear in mind that this isn't necessarily a "bug" in TextureReplacer, per se-- any more than it's necessarily a "bug" in IndicatorLights.  It simply means that the two of them aren't working together for some reason.  That's because the TR author and I are separate modders working on separate things and not coordinating in any way-- for example, I don't run (or test) TR at all, and I wouldn't be surprised if the TR author doesn't run (or test) IndicatorLights at all.

Here's my guess as to what's going on:

Based on past experience, getting IndicatorLights and TextureReplacer to play nice together requires putting in a very specific patch into IndicatorLights that specifically talks to TR in a specific way.  This was a problem in the past, when I originally produced IndicatorLights.  Here's the history of TextureReplacer and IndicatorLights.  Thanks to some diligent detective work by @Drew Kerman, I was able to add a patch to IndicatorLights that solved the "stuff looks black!" problem at the time.  Here's the git commit where I added the patch.  The relevant patch file is IndicatorLights_TextureReplacer.cfg.  As you can see, the patch is very simple:

@TextureReplacer:AFTER[TextureReplacer]
{
    keepLoaded = ^IndicatorLights/
}

...basically, just a directive saying "hi TextureReplacer, please ignore everything that's located under IndicatorLights".

So:

That used to work.  My guess is that either TextureReplacer recently changed something that stopped it from working, or, potentially, KSP changed in a way that TR's "keepLoaded" functionality stopped working for some reason.  It may be that the problem is actually on the IndicatorLights side, e.g. maybe I need to update the patch to something different, or something along those lines.

Aside from the need for a TR compatibility patch as discussed above-- which affected all IndicatorLights parts-- there was also one other problem that specifically affected only the BL-01 light, as @Beetlecat discovered.  That turned out to be a different problem, which the TR compatibility patch didn't address.  Eventually, thanks to some excellent detective work by @Fwiffo, it turned out that TR had a bug that was causing it not to handle 2x2 textures appropriately, so I simply changed the BL-01's texture on its indicator mesh to be 1x1 instead, and that solved that problem.

...So.  That was that, and everything seemed to be working fine for a long time, until at some point (presumably recently, but I don't actually know), something happened either to TR or to KSP or both that cause the problem to pop up again.  Unknown at this point what the solution might be.  Either TR may have a bug in it that needs fixing, or it may simply be that it's changed in some non-backwardly-compatible way and I need to go update the IndicatorLights patch to make it work with TR again, or something similar.

Anyway, hopefully the above information may be useful to anyone who might be looking into this.

[Beetlecat]

There's a newer-ish bit of development on the original Texture Replacer, which may have bumped back some of the issues with Indicator Lights. I've switched to using Texture Replacer Replaced, and have zero issues with it and IL (even the BL-01s). It's hard to say where the TR "versions" will land vis-à-vis one another, but I just wanted the multi-suit packs

[Snark]

7 hours ago, Beetlecat said:

There's a newer-ish bit of development on the original Texture Replacer, which may have bumped back some of the issues with Indicator Lights. I've switched to using Texture Replacer Replaced, and have zero issues with it and IL (even the BL-01s). It's hard to say where the TR "versions" will land vis-à-vis one another, but I just wanted the multi-suit packs

...Hmm.  Are you saying that there are currently two different forks of TextureReplacer that are both "live" and being actively maintained?

Or is the old one "dead" and the new one ("Texture Replacer Replaced") works fine and doesn't have a bug?

If it's the latter case, then the answer to people is simple:  "don't use the old one, use the new one." 

[Beetlecat]

1 minute ago, Snark said:

...Hmm.  Are you saying that there are currently two different forks of TextureReplacer that are both "live" and being actively maintained?

Appears that way. The original author came back, and basically picked up where *they* left off, rather than joining the "new" TR. 

[Snark]

35 minutes ago, Beetlecat said:

Appears that way. The original author came back, and basically picked up where *they* left off, rather than joining the "new" TR. 

Huh.

Well, I expect that'll be a bit of a thorny issue for the TextureReplacer-using community to get sorted out, but in the meantime, it does kinda indicate that whatever is going on here, it's not an IndicatorLights issue.  Basically, anyone who wants to use IndicatorLights together with TextureReplacer has two options:

• Use TextureReplacer Replaced, and everything works fine.
• Use the "original" TextureReplacer, and if it breaks something, either switch to the "Replaced" flavor or else lobby to get it fixed.

In any case, looks like IL is off the hook. 

 

[katateochi]

10 hours ago, Snark said:

Are you saying that there are currently two different forks of TextureReplacer that are both "live" and being actively maintained?

10 hours ago, Beetlecat said:

Appears that way

I did not know that.....how confusing! And it seems that TR is 1.4.x ready, but TRR says it's only good for 1.3.x (although I've not dug around in the thread yet to see if it's ok in 1.4.x). All I want anyway is nice reflective helmet visors (so I can see all the lovely indicator lights reflected in it  ) and a non-stock sky box.  

 

[Eskell]

37 minutes ago, katateochi said:

I did not know that.....how confusing! And it seems that TR is 1.4.x ready, but TRR says it's only good for 1.3.x (although I've not dug around in the thread yet to see if it's ok in 1.4.x). All I want anyway is nice reflective helmet visors (so I can see all the lovely indicator lights reflected in it  ) and a non-stock sky box.  

I'm using TRR in 1.4.3 without any problems. You just need to install fixed shader for reflections, that is linked in OP in TRR thread.

[JoeNapalm]

 

Should Indicator Lights show up in AVC?

-Jn-

[Snark]

5 hours ago, JoeNapalm said:

Should Indicator Lights show up in AVC?

Well, depends what you mean by "should". 

I've never done anything with any of my mods with AVC; they're not AVC-enabled.  It's simply nothing I've ever bothered with.  My mods tend to be fairly "standalone" (i.e. have minimal dependencies on other mods)-- the only thing I've ever depended on is ModuleManager, which I bundle with the mod.  Also, my experience is that my mods tend to not be very KSP-version-sensitive (i.e. when KSP updates, my mods generally just keep working and don't care much), which is one reason why I've never taken that up.

So if you mean "should" in the sense of "is it enabled now?" then the answer is "no".

On the other hand, if you mean "should" in the sense of "is it dumb that it doesn't, and should Snark get off his duff and add this?" then that's another question.    (To which the answer is "probably", but it's unclear to me yet whether and when I would do this, since it would be another chunk of my time and I'm kinda busy.  Will mention it here if-and-when I add such a thing.)

[SchwinnTropius]

So I got back into playing KSP after a forced hiatus, and started using Texture Replacer with this. I got the black indicators like others have, with the exception of the BL-01 working fine. I tinkered with the Texture Replacer patch included with this with no change (worth a shot at least). I looked at the textures for the indicators and noticed they are 2x2 pixels, so I cropped them to 1x1 and had success. So whatever happened with the TR branches, they no longer like the 2x2 textures.

[Snark]

23 hours ago, SchwinnTropius said:

So I got back into playing KSP after a forced hiatus, and started using Texture Replacer with this. I got the black indicators like others have, with the exception of the BL-01 working fine. I tinkered with the Texture Replacer patch included with this with no change (worth a shot at least). I looked at the textures for the indicators and noticed they are 2x2 pixels, so I cropped them to 1x1 and had success. So whatever happened with the TR branches, they no longer like the 2x2 textures.

Sigh.  So... I originally produced 1x1 textures, but it turned out TR didn't like that for some obscure reason.  So I changed it to 2x2 textures and everything was fine.... except now 2x2 textures are broken but 1x1 is okay again.  Really?  

Anyway, thank you very much for catching this, and for diagnosing where the problem is!

I have no problem with tinkering with the textures, but trying to stay on top of a fluctuating target is kinda tricky.  Is this a known bug on the TR side of things?  Has anyone reported it there?  From my perspective, the ideal solution would be if they fixed their stuff so that 2x2 would work again the way it has worked for the last few years, and then there's no work for me to do on my end. 

Seems to make more sense to fix the bug at the source, rather than having other mods (such as IndicatorLights) trying to scramble to create workarounds...

[SchwinnTropius]

32 minutes ago, Snark said:

Sigh.  So... I originally produced 1x1 textures, but it turned out TR didn't like that for some obscure reason.  So I changed it to 2x2 textures and everything was fine.... except now 2x2 textures are broken but 1x1 is okay again.  Really?  

Anyway, thank you very much for catching this, and for diagnosing where the problem is!

I have no problem with tinkering with the textures, but trying to stay on top of a fluctuating target is kinda tricky.  Is this a known bug on the TR side of things?  Has anyone reported it there?  From my perspective, the ideal solution would be if they fixed their stuff so that 2x2 would work again the way it has worked for the last few years, and then there's no work for me to do on my end. 

Seems to make more sense to fix the bug at the source, rather than having other mods (such as IndicatorLights) trying to scramble to create workarounds...

I know it still feeds into "staying on top of a fluctuating target" but it might be worth maintaining two sets of textures. If you would like I can provide my edited textures for you to include in a future release.

[JH4C]

I'm sure it doesn't help that there's (at least?) two forks of Texture Replacer as well... Does this issue happen with both, or just one? Is there a way to tell?

Considering how stock textures have to maintain multiples of 2 in each dimension, I'd be more inclined to consider this a fault with TR.

[SchwinnTropius]

3 minutes ago, JH4C said:

I'm sure it doesn't help that there's (at least?) two forks of Texture Replacer as well... Does this issue happen with both, or just one? Is there a way to tell?

Considering how stock textures have to maintain multiples of 2 in each dimension, I'd be more inclined to consider this a fault with TR.

So far, this issue is with Texture Replacer here. It seems people have used Texture Replacer Replaced with success, but installation is a little more involved.

[Snark]

Hi everyone,

I'm pleased to announce the release of IndicatorLights v1.4, updated for KSP 1.5 compatibility.

Nothing huge, just adding a crew indicator into the new-and-improved Mk1 command pod. 

Enjoy!

[JH4C]

@Snark just FYI, you've bundled the previous version of ModuleManager (3.0.7) instead of the 1.5 updated version (3.1.0)

[Snark]

Just now, JH4C said:

@Snark just FYI, you've bundled the previous version of ModuleManager (3.0.7) instead of the 1.5 updated version (3.1.0)

Ah, he just updated it?  Well, heck.  Looks like I just missed that particular boat.  Oh well.

From looking at the MM thread, I don't get the impression that 3.1.0 is particularly tied to KSP 1.5, per se, so I think this is a forgivable smudge.  As far as I can tell, MM 3.0.7 continues to work just fine in KSP 1.5.  I've got multiple mods that ship with it, and am currently running on 1.5, and (as far as I can tell) seem to be working just fine.

So thanks for the heads-up, and I'll bear it in mind, and the next time I update my mods, I'll be sure to include the updated ModuleManager with them.  But for now, I think it's probably not necessary to release a new version of IndicatorLights just for that one thing.

(Unless someone runs into a problem with it, of course, in which case please let me know!)

[Beetlecat]

On 10/10/2018 at 3:12 PM, Snark said:

Sigh.  So... I originally produced 1x1 textures, but it turned out TR didn't like that for some obscure reason.  So I changed it to 2x2 textures and everything was fine.... except now 2x2 textures are broken but 1x1 is okay again.  Really?  

Oh, good lord. :I I don't envy you this frustration

[Snark]

16 minutes ago, Beetlecat said:

Oh, good lord. :I I don't envy you this frustration

Well, fortunately for me, I don't actually run TR myself and probably never will (it's simply not necessary for me), so this issue is not actually my personal frustration. 

I feel sorry for my users who run into this, but at this point it's whiplashed back and forth enough times that I'm pretty much inclined to just wash my hands of the whole thing and say that it's TR's problem to fix TR's bug.

(The fact that there are actually multiple, "live" forks of TR out there in current use is the straw that broke the camel's back, for me.  Not gonna stick a finger in that stew.  Nope.  Nuh-uh.  Not my job.  Do not want.)

[Beetlecat]

6 minutes ago, Snark said:

(The fact that there are actually multiple, "live" forks of TR out there in current use is the straw that broke the camel's back, for me.  Not gonna stick a finger in that stew.  Nope.  Nuh-uh.  Not my job.  Do not want.)

Yeah, it's pulling me away from TR/TRR in favor just simpler skybox or suit replacements. I *do* like being able to take the helmet off my Kerbals from time to time, though.

_{(I know this is off-topic, but I have to share in the utter bafflement at that particular situation. Not to mention Sigma replacements, etc.  )}