[1.11.+] ESLD Jump Beacons Revived (1.4.0)

[Friznit]

7 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

I'm wondering if anyone has had a chance to test my beta?  I'm going to be setting up a new thread for this, but until then, am watching this one

Almost home! I'll setup a test this afternoon.

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

8 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

I'm wondering if anyone has had a chance to test my beta?  I'm going to be setting up a new thread for this, but until then, am watching this one

Warping is fine, but something's not right with your BeaconCommNet implementation.  To test it, I cheated a beacon with an RA-100 dish out to Bop and one to Minmus, and activated both relays.  The RA-100 has a 55% signal quality to Kerbin on its own from Bop; if the beacon comm network is functioning, it will connect through the Minmus beacon for 100% signal quality, but that wasn't happening.  When I replaced your BeaconCommNet.dll with the BeaconCommNet.dll and CommNetManagerAPI.dll from DBooots's 1.8 release, the network functionality started working properly.

[linuxgurugamer]

That's rather odd, I wonder if it is related to the CommNetManager versions.

Could you try it again using this:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nqgu226nmzis7lt/CommNetManager-1.1.0.zip?dl=0

 

Put the dlls back the same and put this in place of Booot's version and let me know

Thx

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

That fixed it -- CommNetManager 1.1.0 and your ESLD 1.3 (freshly installed, none of Booot's stuff carried over) works properly.

[Friznit]

I tested without CommNetManager installed and all seems to be working fine.  The only minor issue I've found was there in the old release too.  If you reload a vessel with an activated addon module (HCU etc), the PAW resets the button to "Activate" even though the module is already active, and you can no longer deactivate it.

[linuxgurugamer]

42 minutes ago, Friznit said:

I tested without CommNetManager installed and all seems to be working fine.  The only minor issue I've found was there in the old release too.  If you reload a vessel with an activated addon module (HCU etc), the PAW resets the button to "Activate" even though the module is already active, and you can no longer deactivate it.

Here you go:

New beta, 1.3.0.1

• Fixed reloading a vessel with an activated addon module having PAW set to "activate"

https://github.com/linuxgurugamer/ESLDBeacons/releases/tag/1.3.0.1

Given the feedback, I feel comfortable moving ahead with the full adoption.  Only problem I have is that @Booots is again AFK and not responding, so until he gets me access to the Spacedock entry for the Commnet Manager, I'll have to create a new one.  Not a big deal, I'll update the netkan to point to the new entry.

This will probably happen sometime before tomorrow night.

As always, feedback is critical to everyone's success

Thank you all

[linuxgurugamer]

2 hours ago, Kerbas_ad_astra said:

That fixed it -- CommNetManager 1.1.0 and your ESLD 1.3 (freshly installed, none of Booot's stuff carried over) works properly.

And I just realized what happened. I added a dependency check to ESLDBeacons to make sure the right version of CommNetManager was installed.  @Booots's version, while good, didn't match the version it was looking for.

[Booots]

 

On 3/13/2020 at 11:35 AM, Kerbas_ad_astra said:

It allows ships with active beacons to act as if there is zero range between them, for communications purposes.  Sort of like the hyperpulse generators from BattleTech.  No idea if/how this interacts with RemoteTech (zero lag?), but I suppose that's what CommNet Manager is supposed to help with.

On 3/13/2020 at 11:43 AM, linuxgurugamer said:

I think that RT and this are on different Comm networks (not positive).  But it seems from reading that the CommNetManager allows each mod that uses the API to have it's own network.

I really have no idea if any other mod uses it or not

Once upon a time, the RT team was looking at making a new release of RT that built on the CommNet system, so going this route was supposed to make that work out well with this little feature. I don't know for sure, but I think Commnet Constellation might also use CommNetManager. At least, I was working with the author of that mod so that this little feature and that mod were compatible. I can't recall if that ever went through or not.

Sorry I wasn't around the latter half of the week - my parents came to visit me from out of town for my birthday, and hosting people is always time-consuming. Anyways, with the whole Covid-19 thing, I might end up with lots of free time for programming! I look forward to working with @linuxgurugamer on some new features for this mod.

[linuxgurugamer]

All, 

After some discussion, @Booots will continue with both this mod and the CommNetManager.

I'll be pushing my changes to him as soon as he gets his repo updated., so will leave my files until he gets my changes and updates.

[pp3d]

What changes can I make in the config file to allow use from 0km altitude... as on a surface? 

[pp3d]

1 hour ago, pp3d said:

What changes can I make in the config file to allow use from 0km altitude... as on a surface? 

nvm --- it looks like that this hardcoded in the source to altitude being at the minimum 1/4 the radius

[pp3d]

The "Not enough power" message at initialization should probably read "Not enough charge". Two different things. I would have preferred to have a charging mechanism and a requirement on the rate rather how many batteries i can attach to the ship. Also I don't understand why the energy requirements are different at initialization vs. shutdown and restart. The latter requires orders of magnitude more charge for the same location in space (ship is not moved/lowered in orbit). 

[Booots]

On 6/7/2020 at 3:31 PM, pp3d said:

What changes can I make in the config file to allow use from 0km altitude... as on a surface? 

On 6/7/2020 at 5:08 PM, pp3d said:

nvm --- it looks like that this hardcoded in the source to altitude being at the minimum 1/4 the radius

It is, unfortunately. This mod works by changing the orbit of your craft and the way landed vessels are tracked in KSP is very different from orbiting vessels. That's not to say it would be impossible to change this, but it would break some of the balance of this mod to be able to warp from the surface. Just use the F12 orbit modification screen to place yourself in the desired orbit.

On 6/9/2020 at 1:39 PM, pp3d said:

The "Not enough power" message at initialization should probably read "Not enough charge". Two different things. I would have preferred to have a charging mechanism and a requirement on the rate rather how many batteries i can attach to the ship. Also I don't understand why the energy requirements are different at initialization vs. shutdown and restart. The latter requires orders of magnitude more charge for the same location in space (ship is not moved/lowered in orbit). 

Thanks for the feedback. I'll make a note to re-examine the messages to make sure they're clear. As for the electric charge requirements, I've always thought they were well balanced, but I'm open to feedback.

[pp3d]

23 hours ago, Booots said:

It is, unfortunately. This mod works by changing the orbit of your craft and the way landed vessels are tracked in KSP is very different from orbiting vessels. That's not to say it would be impossible to change this, but it would break some of the balance of this mod to be able to warp from the surface. Just use the F12 orbit modification screen to place yourself in the desired orbit.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll make a note to re-examine the messages to make sure they're clear. As for the electric charge requirements, I've always thought they were well balanced, but I'm open to feedback.

For the record, i think this is one of the best game enhancing mods out there. I am just trying to figure out a comfortable gameplay. I am playying the 1.7.3 version though so some of my experiences may not reflect fixes you put in in later versions. In regards to a surface placement it's the closest I can come up to an actual stargate system. Sure the energy requirements can be daunting -- but if you switch to a charging rate vs a charge, reactors from KSPIE (interstellar) can do the job as long as one has a clear line of sight to another beacon. Also a portable KIS-based hailer for kebronaut to go through without a ship will also be useful. 

Edited June 15, 2020 by pp3d
additional details

[cyberKerb]

Hi @Booots, just wondering what (if any) negative effects would be seen with having both Commnet Constellation and the CommNetManager add-in for a career playthrough?

[Booots]

On 11/20/2020 at 8:37 AM, cyberKerb said:

Hi @Booots, just wondering what (if any) negative effects would be seen with having both Commnet Constellation and the CommNetManager add-in for a career playthrough?

Hey! Good question! I don't think @TaxiService has incorporated CommNetManager yet, so I don't think it will play nicely. I suspect KSP will pick either one or the other and the other CommNet won't initialize. My modding time is limited, but once I get the next release of Wind Tunnel sorted, I'll try putting together a pull request for Commnet Constellation that implements CommNetManager and see what TaxiService thinks about adding the compatibility at the expense of a new dependency.

Edited November 30, 2020 by Booots

[cyberKerb]

1 minute ago, Booots said:

I suspect KSP will pick either one or the other and the other CommNet won't initialize. 

I'm not sure what not initialising means in context of game play - does that mean the beacons won't be able to see each other? Or is this just a coding thing that there will be error, but no effect on game play?

[Booots]

27 minutes ago, cyberKerb said:

I'm not sure what not initialising means in context of game play - does that mean the beacons won't be able to see each other? Or is this just a coding thing that there will be error, but no effect on game play?

You'll get either the network feature of Commnet Constellation or the essentially-standard functionality of this+Commnet Manager.

[TaxiService]

@Booots @cyberKerb Hey, thanks for reminding me on CommNet Manager. There was the unsuccessful attempt on onboarding CNC to CommNet Manager 2 years ago. I am going to give it another go.

[Booots]

5 hours ago, TaxiService said:

@Booots @cyberKerb Hey, thanks for reminding me on CommNet Manager. There was the unsuccessful attempt on onboarding CNC to CommNet Manager 2 years ago. I am going to give it another go.

Awesome, thanks! That was about when I had to partially give up modding for a while so it's no wonder it got dropped. I haven't looked at the CNM code in a while - it will probably need updating. Do you want me to try to get it up to date or do you want me to make you an editor on that so you can do whatever you need to do?

[cyberKerb]

Hi @TaxiService, with CNC 1.5.6  out, was there anything added to help with CNM for @Booots, or is that still WIP at the moment?

[TaxiService]

On 12/22/2020 at 8:07 AM, cyberKerb said:

Hi @TaxiService, with CNC 1.5.6  out, was there anything added to help with CNM for @Booots, or is that still WIP at the moment?

Hi, the old CNM-port changes were re-applied to latest CNC codebase, with small changes submitted to CNM in a pull request.

At this moment, KSP 1.11 and/or ModuleManager is rejecting both CNC and CNM for yet-to-determine reason.

On 12/2/2020 at 5:22 AM, Booots said:

Awesome, thanks! That was about when I had to partially give up modding for a while so it's no wonder it got dropped. I haven't looked at the CNM code in a while - it will probably need updating. Do you want me to try to get it up to date or do you want me to make you an editor on that so you can do whatever you need to do?

Yes, please update CNM first and I will see what the current CNC-CNM issues are.

Edit: I got few good news for you.

1. CNM dlls have to be in the same directory as CNC dlls to work. Otherwise, the errors in the screenshot above would happen.
2. Having 2 or more copies of CNM in KSP installation don't seem to cause any problem.
3. CNC-CNM is working so far and a player won't even notice it. Additional further tests and performance measurements are required to assess. You can try out the build.

 

Edited December 26, 2020 by TaxiService

[Booots]

On 12/25/2020 at 9:30 AM, TaxiService said:

Hi, the old CNM-port changes were re-applied to latest CNC codebase, with small changes submitted to CNM in a pull request.

At this moment, KSP 1.11 and/or ModuleManager is rejecting both CNC and CNM for yet-to-determine reason.

Yes, please update CNM first and I will see what the current CNC-CNM issues are.

Edit: I got few good news for you.

1. CNM dlls have to be in the same directory as CNC dlls to work. Otherwise, the errors in the screenshot above would happen.
2. Having 2 or more copies of CNM in KSP installation don't seem to cause any problem.
3. CNC-CNM is working so far and a player won't even notice it. Additional further tests and performance measurements are required to assess. You can try out the build.

 

Thanks! I've accepted the pull request. Everything compiles well against KSP 1.11 so I'll do a bit more testing later today and put out an updated release. Is there anything else you'd like added, or is the CNMHome setter all?

[TaxiService]

20 hours ago, Booots said:

Thanks! I've accepted the pull request. Everything compiles well against KSP 1.11 so I'll do a bit more testing later today and put out an updated release. Is there anything else you'd like added, or is the CNMHome setter all?

No, it is all. I will let you know on anything to add to CNM should it be arisen.

Thanks.

[MatkesHulk]

hi there, I am currently using linx's beta of this mod as I cant seem to find a more up to date version...not sure if you have got around to it yet. it is the version 1.3.0.1 btw and everything seems to work fine in terms of parts and resources and things but the little button does not show in the UI. I was hoping somebody could point me in the right direction towards fixing this as if there is no UI button then I cannot use the jump beacons. Thanks.

Edited January 24, 2021 by MatkesHulk