[1.2.2] Centauri Dreams - Explore Alpha Centauri

[hikoriyami]

Planets:

Gameplay:

 

 

The planets and stars of Alpha Centauri are all sized to their real life counterparts. Only three of the bodies (Kelvin, Von Braun, and Armstrong) are known to exist in reality, a great deal of artistic license has been used with the others. The entire system is stable in N-body simulations upwards of 1500 Earth years. In the interest of my sanity in writing the configs I did not call the planets Ab, Ac. I have named them after popular explorers, scientists and physicists that led to the exploration of the stars.

As the Pale Red Dot and ESA have released their preliminary findings I have modeled Von Braun and Armstrong to conform to the findings.

New in version 0.8: CLOUDS! Extract the boulderCo folder into your Gamedata folder and download Environmental Visual Enhancements from here to use the clouds.

To read about the planets and their creation check out this discussion thread

 

FAQS:

 

Where's Kerbin?

Gone. This mod is much like RSS in that it replaces the stock system with one a lot closer to reality.

 

Do I need Realism Overhaul?
Short Answer: Yes.
Long Answer: This mod will function without it, but for the sake of your sanity you will want a mod to adjust fuels and engines to a realistic scale as stock engines are severely under powered in real scale. See the suggested mods section for more info on those.

 

Will updating this mod break my saves?

More than likely, yes. It is always best to stick with one version of a mod instead of updating it in between game sessions.

 

Download:

 

SpaceDock

Required Mods:

Kopernicus

Suggested Mods:

Realism Overhaul or SMURFF
SCANsat
Distant Object Enhancement
Mechjeb
Kerbal Engineer
Realistic Progression - Can be used, but Contract Configurator must be removed
Environmental Visual Enhancements -Only download plugin- no config files

Incompatible Mods:

Kopernicus Planet packs - Any other planet mods will not work with this, it will probably disable both mods
Contract Configurator - Contracts look for "Sun" by default, causing Nullrefexeption errors if installed. 
Scatterer - Uses the body named "Sun" to create shadows and atmospheres, I'm attempting a work around 

Known Issues:

None

Change Log:

0.8
-Fix for atmospheres
-4k textures for major bodies
-PQS optimized
-EVE Clouds
0.5.5
-Minor fix for Hawkings Normal Map
-Solar Power fixed
-Alternate Start on the Hawking Asteroid added
0.5.0 First Alpha Release
-Reviewed and updated planets meshes and textures
-added "fake" body to help simulate Proxima Centauri better
-complete change of Proxima Centauri's planets due to findings from Pale Red Dot
-reduced brightness of Alpha B and Proxima to reflect reality
-added coronas to Alpha B and Proxima
-PQS levels reduced and polished
-updated to current KSP and Kopernicus version
0.3.2
-Changed SOI boundaries for the stars 
-Fixed filenames
0.3.1
-Removed Alvarez (coming soon)
0.3 - Final Pre-Alpha
-Updated filenames to allow easier install
-Created proper barycenter
-corrected a serious flaw in calculated mass
-Ground scatter added to several bodies
-Better biomes for Elcano and Hawking
-Added AVC
0.2 - Second Pre-Alpha Release
-Major PQS Material editing, planets have nice ground textures now
-Fixed issue with spheres of influence being less than 0
-Made Hawking's texture more realistic (brown)
-Atmospheres are now the correct color
-Added atmospheres to Newton and Copernicus
-Asteroids will now spawn throughout the system
-Stars textures are now correct(ish)
-Optimized On Demand loading (keeps memory usage WAY down)
-ALL STARS NOW VISIBLE AT ONCE THANKS TO KOPERNICUS UPDATE :) 
0.1
-Public Pre-Alpha

License:

This License Dated 27 of July, 2016

All folders, subfolders, images and codes contained in this folder are the intellectual property of Matt Epperson/HikoriYami/Mepperson. All rights reserved.

Kopernicus is used with permission from its creator (Thomas P.) It is used under permission from his license.

This mod includes version checking using [URL=http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79745]MiniAVC[/URL]. If you opt-in, it will use the internet to check whether there is a new version available. Data is only read from the internet and no personal information is sent. For a more comprehensive version checking experience, please download the [URL=http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79745]KSP-AVC Plugin[/URL].

 

Edited March 1, 2017 by hikoriyami

[Deimos Rast]

Congrats and have fun tomorrow!

[Spaceception]

@hikoriyami

 

[Sphazer]

We need a ΔV Map for these planets 

[bengee777]

Here's a cool idea for a name, Centaurian space program.

Edited June 30, 2016 by bengee777

[johnnyhandsome]

What a brilliant idea for a mod, really changes the situation up, you have to totally rethink how do things!

[Fireheart318]

I can't get it to work. I have the right mods, nothing more, nothing less

 

Edit I: Not sure if I wanted reverse psychology or not, but that's what I got. It works now, but the planet on the title screen is a bumble bee

Edit II: It was probably one of my own mods conflicting. It added in a planet with no gravity and lots of oxygen. At least, it did before it broke D:

Edited July 4, 2016 by Fireheart318

[Drakoflame]

you know what would be really cool? If @Sigma88 could get this to work with his(? a couple people work on it, i'm not exactly sure) mod "Galactic Neighbors" because it would be super awesome if there was a trynary system orbiting near by!

Hmm... now I wonder if it would be possible to get these planets to work with his other mod Sigma Binary... it might be hard because the way you have this set up, is with A and B orbiting a Barry Center with Proximus orbiting around that. It'd be really cool (If you havent tried already either) to get A and B orbiting a Barry, with A-B Barry orbiting yet another Barry, with Proximus orbiting that!

ANYWAY! I'm off to go explore the... *counts planets* uhh... 27 or so new planets that I have thanks to OPM (By @CaptRobau), Kerbol Plus (by @amarius1), and New Horizons (by @KillAshley)

and yes... I'm still looking for more stuff to add... I think the hardest part will be using Antenna Range to still be able to still send probes to them all without setting up a bunch of interstellar satellites XD

[hikoriyami]

21 hours ago, Fireheart318 said:

I can't get it to work. I have the right mods, nothing more, nothing less

 

Edit I: Not sure if I wanted reverse psychology or not, but that's what I got. It works now, but the loading screen is a bumble bee

Edit II: It was probably one of my own mods conflicting. It added in a planet with no gravity and lots of oxygen. At least, it did before it broke D:

Yep, Forgot to add that any other Kopernicus mods will cause THIS mod not to work. I'll add a note to the OP.

20 hours ago, Drakoflame said:

you know what would be really cool? If @Sigma88 could get this to work with his(? a couple people work on it, i'm not exactly sure) mod "Galactic Neighbors" because it would be super awesome if there was a trynary system orbiting near by!

Hmm... now I wonder if it would be possible to get these planets to work with his other mod Sigma Binary... it might be hard because the way you have this set up, is with A and B orbiting a Barry Center with Proximus orbiting around that. It'd be really cool (If you havent tried already either) to get A and B orbiting a Barry, with A-B Barry orbiting yet another Barry, with Proximus orbiting that!

I may at one point work with Galactic Neighbors, but the defining difference between their work and Centauri Dreams is that my work is at least 40% fiction. Their planets have all been confirmed by various methods. At some point I may adjust some planets to conform with discoveries, but until then, only Kelvin/Bc is maybe, probably there. Look here for some more info on that.

Now Sigma Binary was something I worked hard on for awhile. But it does not allow a barrycenter for the main body (the sun normally). That is the reason I made my own barrycenter outside of SIgma's mod. Many nights of code went into that until I googled why it didn't work. 

 

Thank you all for the kind words. My [now] wife actually convinced me to release this mod instead of just playing by myself. 

[Drakoflame]

22 minutes ago, hikoriyami said:

Now Sigma Binary was something I worked hard on for awhile. But it does not allow a barrycenter for the main body (the sun normally). That is the reason I made my own barrycenter outside of SIgma's mod. Many nights of code went into that until I googled why it didn't work. 

 

Thank you all for the kind words. My [now] wife actually convinced me to release this mod instead of just playing by myself. 

That sucks that you couldn't get it to work.. it would have been really cool to see it work like that. Maybe if/when you do make it compatible with Galactic Neighbors (I don't think they'd mind, seeing as like... 4 of all the listed mods are actually updated and work...) you could get it to work properly like the Trinary it is, with a Barrycenter orbiting a Barrycenter and another star XD

and cool! its always fun to see mods that people created for their own fun released for others to play with too

[Sigma88]

@hikoriyami hi there,

just a couple of clarifications on GN, SigmaBinary and barycenters in general.

PS: had to put everything into spoilers because it came out a big wall of text

1- GalacticNeighborhood

Spoiler

the aim of the mod itself is to give an alternative way to use planet packs.

Usually, a planet pack either changes the stock system or just adds more stuff to it. What GN does, is take the bodies added from a mod and move them to another solar system.

so when you install (for example) OPM and NH, instead of having all the planets in the same system, you will have the stock system + a star with NH planets and a star with OPM planets.

when I decide to add compatibility for a planet pack into GN, firstly I contact the developer of said pack, and ask if he/she is ok with me adding compatibility for the mod. I also leave to the mods developer the choice of star name and star type if their mod doesn't already have a custom star.

it's important to note that I never redistribute files from other mods, I just write mm patches that move the planets of a pack if that pack is installed.

In your case I could do something similar to what I do with RSS: basically I could make your star system load scaled down to kerbal size (0.1x) somewhere in the galactic neighborhood.

Since your system is an analogue of the alpha centauri system I could make it load in the vicinity of the RSS system

I have yet to look at how you set up your pack, it might not be possible for me to make it compatible with GN, but when I check it out, if it turn out I can make it work, I will pm you asking if you are ok with me adding a compatibility patch for your mod into GN. If you will not be ok with that I won't do anything.

 

2- SigmaBinary

Spoiler

SigmaBinary cannot be used to move the sun, this is because putting the sun on a binary system requires a lot of changes that I don't want to implement in SigmaBinary. So you made the correct choice in not using SB for the central star of your system.

Plus, the whole point of SB is to give the player the option "do you want the binary setup or the standard setup?" if you want your system to be always binary you are better off in designing the system yourself rather than require SB as an hard dependancy.

 

3- Barycenters

Spoiler

as you probably have discovered by now, making barycenters is not as easy as it sounds, SOIs need to be arranged in a certain way, the mass of the barycenter needs to be calculated precisely, and the order in which bodies orbit each other needs to be chosen carefully as well.

if in addition to that, if you plan to make the central body of the universe a barycenter, then there are a lot more variables to take into account.

KSP can be very restrictive in things you can and cannot do, so all those choices need to be taken carefully

(as I said before) I haven't looked at your cfgs yet, but if you are having weird issues with your setup feel free to pm me, I'm sure I can give you some pointers in what could be causing eventual issues, mostly because I've been working with barycenters for a long while now, and I have probably seen all kinds of crappy errors during this time

 

hope this helped

cheers

[Connor Gorski]

Hey I would like to know if you could add remote tech ground stations all around Elcano instead of just the KSC being the only ground station (If theres a mod other then Kerbol Origins that does that let me know) because I think that would be better and more realistic (In a race that has conquered rockets basically) then just one ground station.

[AlexTheNotSoGreat]

Perhaps you could work with RSS to allow travel from one star system to another in the real world planets/star systems!

[hikoriyami]

 

On 7/4/2016 at 8:15 AM, Sigma88 said:

hi there,

just a couple of clarifications on GN, SigmaBinary and barycenters in general.

PS: had to put everything into spoilers because it came out a big wall of text

-SNIP-

hope this helped

cheers

Hello!

I got galactic neighborhood confused with another mod that aims for hyper realism. But I do have plans to one day scale everything down to Kerbin sized.

That's what I thought about SigmaBinary, I'll admit that initially I saw your mod and thought; "I can do Centauri Dreams now". Yeah, didn't work out that way  but the job still got done  

I'd love to have an expert look over my work! I probably didn't calculate my barycenter correctly. I'm almost certain that its gravity is WAY to high. 50 Gs at sea level IIRC? 

 

On 7/6/2016 at 3:53 PM, Connor1234567821 said:

Hey I would like to know if you could add remote tech ground stations all around Elcano instead of just the KSC being the only ground station (If theres a mod other then Kerbol Origins that does that let me know) because I think that would be better and more realistic (In a race that has conquered rockets basically) then just one ground station.

Yeah, I can do that. How many do you think are realistic for a landing site? I was thinking of doing something similar to NASA's deep space network. I think three locations across the globe would be the best compromise. 

P.S. How do you remember all of the numbers in your name?

4 hours ago, AlexTheNotSoGreat said:

Perhaps you could work with RSS to allow travel from one star system to another in the real world planets/star systems!

Eventually^TM I will write a config file to allow this mod to be installed after RSS and allow travel to it. However, I want to "finish" the mod first so I don't have to rewrite the code three times >.>

[Connor Gorski]

35 minutes ago, hikoriyami said:

Yeah, I can do that. How many do you think are realistic for a landing site? I was thinking of doing something similar to NASA's deep space network. I think three locations across the globe would be the best compromise. 

P.S. How do you remember all of the numbers in your name?

Yeah like 3 main ones but just like 2 or 3 random ones probably would be good and because I use this for everything

Edit: I also believe that Copernicus has the same description as Newton

Edited July 7, 2016 by Connor1234567821

[Sigma88]

2 minutes ago, hikoriyami said:

I'd love to have an expert look over my work! I probably didn't calculate my barycenter correctly. I'm almost certain that its gravity is WAY to high. 50 Gs at sea level IIRC?

so, this is how I approach making barycenters usually. I don't know how much of these rules you want to follow, they are not all strictly necessary, I'll try to explain why I made some decisions so you can decide what you want to follow and what you rather ignore.

this will be a long read, it contains math and technical stuff, so I'm going to put everything into a spoiler to not annoy people

Spoiler

hey, I warned you! boring stuff ahead....

 

Spoiler

before we start, some definitions of terms I will use:

- Primary = the most massive object in a binary system (e.g. Pluto)
- Secondary = the least massive object in a binary system (e.g. Charon)
- Reference = the reference body of the binary system (e.g. Sun)
- SOI = Sphere of Influence
 

 

so, where do we start?

1- the distance

the first thing you want to know about a barycenter is how distant it is from the Primary, and this is the formula

so, for Alpha Centauri, we need the masses of the 2 stars plus the distance between them, wiki has some numbers, I will use them in this example

so, the distance of the barycenter from Alpha Centauri A is 1.582e12 meters while the distance from Alpha Centauri B is 1.919e12 meters

 

this is where stuff gets weird. if you put the two stars in orbit around the barycenter they will have a different orbital period, which is bad because they need to have the exact same orbital period. the solution is:

put the primary in orbit around the barycenter, and the secondary in orbit around the primary

so Alpha Centauri B orbits Alpha Centauri A  at a total distance of  3.501e12 meters

2- the mass

the mass of the barycenter will influence the orbital period of Alpha Centauri A. Since we want the two stars to have the same orbital period, we need to give the barycenter the mass required to match the orbital period of Alpha Centauri B.

KSP uses a simplified formula to calculate orbital period which is:    Period = 2*pi * sqrt ( [a^3] / [G*M])

where a is the semiMajorAxis of the orbit, M is the mass of the orbited body and G is 6.674e-11

so, the orbital period of Alpha Centauri B is 3.407e9 seconds

and the mass of the barycenter needed to give Alpha Centauri A the same orbital period is 2.028e29 kg

3- the orbit of the primary

the primary will have the exact same orbital parameters of the secondary body, except

    a- it will orbit around the barycenter instead of around the Primary
    b- it will have a different semiMajorAxis (as calculated before)
    c- you'll need to add 180 to the longitude of the ascending node

4- Sphere of Influence

this is where stuff stops being weird and it becomes just plain broken. you don't want to orbit the barycenter with a ship, ever.

your orbital speed would be completely broken, and also you could risk getting huge kicks on your orbit by passing close to the barycenter (which should not happen)

This is why I always extend the SOI of the primary beyond the SOI of the barycenter.

This also means you should put Proxima in orbit around AlphaCentauriA instead of the barycenter.

 

5- Significant figures

when you define stuff like mass and semimajor axis, make sure you use a lot of significant figures. approximating to 3 decimal figures like I did in the example is definitely bad, I suggest you use excel to make all the calculations and then copy the result, "paste as number" the result in excel, then copy the content of the cell and use that one in your cfgs.

example: pi = 3.14159265358979

this will assure your binary system will not de-synch in the long run

 

these are the basics, if you have doubts feel free to ask me. there are probably things I forgot to mention, but I think this should be enough to process for now

 

[Connor Gorski]

@hikoriyami Hello it appears that when I loaded up my KSP my first communication satellite started orbiting Alpha Centauri A then The Bary Center then orbiting Elcano causing its apoapsis to become 332k and periapsis 6k. This has been happening with other mods and it appears to be the same bug with other Planet packs that reparent Kerbin So it might just be Kopernicus. But just want to fill you in about this

 

[hikoriyami]

4 hours ago, Connor1234567821 said:

@hikoriyami Hello it appears that when I loaded up my KSP my first communication satellite started orbiting Alpha Centauri A then The Bary Center then orbiting Elcano causing its apoapsis to become 332k and periapsis 6k. This has been happening with other mods and it appears to be the same bug with other Planet packs that reparent Kerbin So it might just be Kopernicus. But just want to fill you in about this

 

Yep, did some reading and apparently that's a know issue with kopernicus  we will have to wait for a new version to fix that.

However, with sigma's help, orbits will be drastically changing! For the better too.

[Elowiny]

Could it be possible to have a separate download containing smaller versions of the planets ? Kinda like the Kerbol system, where everything is 10x smaller than it would be in real life.

[linuxgurugamer]

Can you PLEASE do NOT have spaces in the directory names?  It causes problems in CKAN and on Linux/Unix systems

I would also suggest you put it inside a GameData directory in the zip, such as:

     GameData/Centauri_Dreams

I would also suggest you look at ksp-avc with an eye towards including a .version file in it

 

Thank you

Edited July 18, 2016 by linuxgurugamer

[hikoriyami]

On 7/18/2016 at 2:43 PM, linuxgurugamer said:

Can you PLEASE do NOT have spaces in the directory names?  It causes problems in CKAN and on Linux/Unix systems

I would also suggest you put it inside a GameData directory in the zip, such as:

     GameData/Centauri_Dreams

I would also suggest you look at ksp-avc with an eye towards including a .version file in it

 

Thank you

*facepalm* I can't believe I forgot the no-spaces-in-names rule. Will be fixed in the next update which is coming soon^TM

Thanks for those suggestions, I will use them.

[linuxgurugamer]

Just now, hikoriyami said:

*facepalm* I can't believe I forgot the no-spaces-in-names rule. Will be fixed in the next update which is coming soon^TM

Thanks for those suggestions, I will use them.

Great!

Let me know when you have the next update, so I can get CKAN updated properly.

[EnriqueB]

There's seem no overheating....... Thanks!, i will use that method of CD in my mod. Or, there's overheating when i scale down to kerbal scale a giant star with the RSS solar power curve? (My Abbadon problem)

Edited July 20, 2016 by EnriqueB

[DMSP]

@hikoriyami, let me just get this straight, this is in RSS size.

If so, would there be a way to get it to a stock size, like SSRSS?

[hikoriyami]

On 7/19/2016 at 9:39 PM, EnriqueB said:

There's seem no overheating....... Thanks!, i will use that method of CD in my mod. Or, there's overheating when i scale down to kerbal scale a giant star with the RSS solar power curve? (My Abbadon problem)

I'm not sure what your trying to say.

If your asking what I think your asking, you want to know why a scaled down star doesn't overheat? This mod is RSS scaled, that is why I use that power curve. Please PM me if you have a question I can answer for you.
 

10 hours ago, DMSP said:

@hikoriyami, let me just get this straight, this is in RSS size.

If so, would there be a way to get it to a stock size, like SSRSS?

 Yes this is RSS sized. Eventually, But currently I am aiming for realism. I will add this to an FAQ I'm working on for next release. There are too many PQS mods and variables that change with planet diameter, its not as simple as dividing by ten (or 6.4 or whatever the conversion is) to convert it to Kerbal scale. 
 

On 7/7/2016 at 5:57 PM, Sigma88 said:

so, this is how I approach making barycenters usually. I don't know how much of these rules you want to follow, they are not all strictly necessary, I'll try to explain why I made some decisions so you can decide what you want to follow and what you rather ignore.

this will be a long read, it contains math and technical stuff, so I'm going to put everything into a spoiler to not annoy people

Alright Sigma, I'll bite. I have done the math several times and while I get close to achieving a perfect binary orbit, at about the 85th year they become noticeably wrong.  They should look like this if my math is correct, which its not.

But I get to this on earth year 99:

Alpha A orbiting around the barycenter is moving too slow. I checked the math and I get the same periods if I plug the number into the equation you gave me. I'm guessing there is an inaccuracy with either KSP or hyperedit (I use it to set the time) that is causing this problem, but I want to run it by you first. 

Important numbers:

Alpha B SMA: 3500999999999 (weird I know, but I checked it)
Alpha B Period: 3406593317
Alpha A SMA: 1582165919282.51
Barycenter Mass: 201875597261891427260025536512 Kg

Am I missing something here? We can move this into a PM if it gets too heavy but I thought the answer may help someone else in the future.

 

Edited July 21, 2016 by hikoriyami