[INDEV]-[1.4.3] - To Boldly Go | An external application designed to procedurally generate an entire galaxy for KSP.

[daniel l.]

Just now, Mycroft said:

Guys I found an incompatibility. This may be obvious to KSP veterans, but not to noobs. TBG and GPP argue over the stock solar system. Only Kerbin's replacement remains in the stock system! @JadeOfMaar @daniel l. You will probably want to mention that in the mod page, especially daniel l. 

Thanks guys! 

Oh, JadeOfMaar, we wanted to show you this at Snappy's 

Pardon... GPP?

Spoiler

What the hell is that?

 

[JadeOfMaar]

@daniel l. It's Galileo's Planet Pack (in my sig). It deletes the entire stock system and renames/replaces the Sun, and is also as large as Stock + OPM, which is the root of any conflict with other planet mods. TBG will need reference changes wherever appropriate. The same happened with Planet Cyran which kidnaps and transforms Dres, a stock body.

Edited January 3, 2017 by JadeOfMaar

[daniel l.]

9 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@daniel l. It's Galileo's Planet Pack (in my sig). It deletes the entire stock system and renames/replaces the Sun, which is the root of any conflict with other planet mods. TBG will need reference changes wherever appropriate. The same happened with Planet Cyran which kidnaps and transforms Dres, a stock body.

Ah. I get it. I'll have to add that. Though i might be able to find a solution so they can coexist. But it wont be easy i don't think.

[seanth]

So...this is slightly embarrassing but I spent a fair amount of the night playing with To Boldly Go. At first I was trying to see if I could detect exoplanets transiting their primary using mods that add telescopes, but the game just isn't set up to allow for picking something like that up. Then I remembered Research Bodies and started messing around. Using Research Bodies, Tarsier Space Technology, and Hullcam VDS Continued I was able to use the discovery mechanics in Research Bodies to "discover" exoplanets without actually zooming in on them in the map view.

I wish the way you discover things in Research Bodies was more automated and less clicky, but it was pretty fun to point a telescope at a distant star and find exoplanets orbiting it.

[seanth]

On 12/18/2016 at 0:05 AM, daniel l. said:

You can try compiling the source code yourself using the mac version of QB64.

I've been looking at the QB64 code today. I'd not heard of QB64 before, but I cut my teeth on Basic way back on my C64 so I was able read and understand it for the most part.

Is the plan to have the cluster galaxy centers and "interstellar space" be center points that the other stars orbit?

[JadeOfMaar]

@seanth what version of ReseachBodies and KSP are you using? A lot of folks have had problems with the WIP 1.9.0 ans KSP 1.2.2 respectively.

[daniel l.]

11 minutes ago, seanth said:

I've been looking at the QB64 code today. I'd not heard of QB64 before, but I cut my teeth on Basic way back on my C64 so I was able read and understand it for the most part.

Is the plan to have the cluster galaxy centers and "interstellar space" be center points that the other stars orbit?

Yes  

[seanth]

25 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@seanth what version of ReseachBodies and KSP are you using? A lot of folks have had problems with the WIP 1.9.0 ans KSP 1.2.2 respectively.

@JadeOfMaar: KSP version 1.2.2, ResearchBodies version listed in the miniAVC claims 1.9.0.0 off the github release. What problems are people having (I'll do a search after posting this)? I initially had problems with telescopes "not being powerful enough" or whatever the message was, but I increased their range and they worked without any problem.

I was also using PersistentRotation to help maintain pointing at a target.

I can put my edits to the cfgs up if it will help. 

Here's the contents of a module manager file I made. I like using the Hull Camera VDS telescopes, but my change to maxTrackDistance should be broadly applicable:

 

@PART[Pictozoom_2000]:FOR[ResearchBodies]
{
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleTrackBodies
		difficulty = 4
		minAltitude = 200000
		maxTrackDistance = 40000000000
		electricChargeRequest = 10
		landed = false
		viewAngle = 18
		scienceReward = 10
	}
}

@PART[Pictozoom_2000]:FOR[ResearchBodies]:NEEDS[Kopernicus]
{
	@MODULE[ModuleTrackBodies]
	{
		@maxTrackDistance = 324000000000000000
	}
}

I haven't tried to edit the "ignore" entries in ResearchBodies with the names of the stars. It'd be pretty sweet if the script was able to add the star names as keys when a galaxy was made. I'll poke at that later.

Edited January 4, 2017 by seanth

[theonegalen]

I am amazed at all the things that have come out since I stopped playing KSP / following KSP modding. When I get bored with Cities: Skylines, I'm going to have a lot of great KSP things to do, including this mod!

[seanth]

Ok. I got a patch for ResearchBodies working so the stars have names in the tracking station. I had to manually enter a few names in the example galaxy.cfg (Sparit, Suin, and Muurn), but the script should be able to write the data out so star names are visible, but planets around those stars are not.

Format is:

RESEARCHBODIES
{
	name = ToBoldlyGo
	loadAs = mod


    IGNORELEVELS
    {
        Sparit = true true true true
        Suin = true true true true
        Muurn = true true true true
    }
}

Could even get fancy and have dimmer/further away stars not have names on harder difficulty levels.

[JadeOfMaar]

@seanth I and a number of other players have gotten problems with ResearchBodies and Galileo's Planet Pack. Since it's working just fine for you I'm nothing but curious. Based on feedback I've seen in ResearchBodies' thread it seems the telescope's FOV is just incredibly narrow but for some it has glitched and thrown errors. Some players' player.log file gets filled with this and similar lines:

Quote

12/6/2016 9:14:04 AM,ResearchBodies,View Obstructed by Geminus , Origin: (2.1, -0.1, 0.6) , Target (34683080000.0, -1001792000.0, 10379740000.0) , Direction (1.0, 0.0, 0.3) , Hit: (5780514.0, -166965.3, 1729957.0), Layer: 10

I wonder if the other telescope-related mods somehow cover for this.

Edited January 4, 2017 by JadeOfMaar

[daniel l.]

1 hour ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@seanth I and a number of other players have gotten problems with ResearchBodies and Galileo's Planet Pack. Since it's working just fine for you I'm nothing but curious. Based on feedback I've seen in ResearchBodies' thread it seems the telescope's FOV is just incredibly narrow but for some it has glitched and thrown errors. Some players' player.log file gets filled with this and similar lines:

I wonder if the other telescope-related mods somehow cover for this.

I could ship a special wide angle telescope with the next TBG release. Also. The next release v0.3 will add a GUI with a pushbutton interface.

[seanth]

5 hours ago, daniel l. said:

I could ship a special wide angle telescope with the next TBG release. Also. The next release v0.3 will add a GUI with a pushbutton interface.

For what it's worth, it seems like there are enough telescope mods out there; I don't think you need to add a part. One of the things I like about TBG is that is does one thing. There's no feature creep.

[JadeOfMaar]

@daniel l. Yes. Please don't try to add parts to this mod. Maybe you can make patches for parts, enhancing them if installed along with TBG, as I'm doing for GPP.

[seanth]

I'm slightly confused by some of the code I'm reading:

        IF PENABLE$ = "y" THEN
            SPN = INT(RND * 4)
        ELSE
            SPN = 1
        END IF
...
        IF SPN = 0 THEN
            GAS = INT(RND * 5)
            GASNUMBER = 1
            IF GAS > 0 THEN
				<make a planet>
...
                    GAS = GAS - 1
                    GASNUMBER = GASNUMBER + 1
                    IF GAS = 0 THEN
                        <exit the planet making loop>
                    END IF

if pseudocode, to me it reads like:

If planets wanted:
	SPN = between 0 and 4
if planets not wanted:
	SPN = 1 #why would we set this to 1 if we want 0 planets?

If SPN = 0: #why are we making planets only when SPN = 0?
	GAS = between 0 and 5 #GAS? Just gas giants?
	GASNUMBER =1 #a counter for roman numerals
	Loop to make GAS number of planets:
		make a planet
		name it after the star it orbits and add a suffix (I, II, III, IV, V) based on it's creation order
		set the planet type to be like one of the basic planets in KSP #so we're not just making gas giants here?
		maybe give it a ring
		maybe give it a moon
	

Maybe I am just getting stuck on the GAS variable name. It's clearly not just making gas giants.

[daniel l.]

2 hours ago, seanth said:

I'm slightly confused by some of the code I'm reading:

        IF PENABLE$ = "y" THEN
            SPN = INT(RND * 4)
        ELSE
            SPN = 1
        END IF
...
        IF SPN = 0 THEN
            GAS = INT(RND * 5)
            GASNUMBER = 1
            IF GAS > 0 THEN
				<make a planet>
...
                    GAS = GAS - 1
                    GASNUMBER = GASNUMBER + 1
                    IF GAS = 0 THEN
                        <exit the planet making loop>
                    END IF

if pseudocode, to me it reads like:

If planets wanted:
	SPN = between 0 and 4
if planets not wanted:
	SPN = 1 #why would we set this to 1 if we want 0 planets?

If SPN = 0: #why are we making planets only when SPN = 0?
	GAS = between 0 and 5 #GAS? Just gas giants?
	GASNUMBER =1 #a counter for roman numerals
	Loop to make GAS number of planets:
		make a planet
		name it after the star it orbits and add a suffix (I, II, III, IV, V) based on it's creation order
		set the planet type to be like one of the basic planets in KSP #so we're not just making gas giants here?
		maybe give it a ring
		maybe give it a moon
	

Maybe I am just getting stuck on the GAS variable name. It's clearly not just making gas giants.

It is my secret formula  honestly I'm a very sloppy worker. I don't really care about orderliness as long as it works

[seanth]

5 hours ago, daniel l. said:

It is my secret formula  honestly I'm a very sloppy worker. I don't really care about orderliness as long as it works

Oh, I hear that. I have things I use every day that are written in dirt and spit, but they work, so I use them.

Do you have any plans of putting your work up on github or something? I ask because I have nearly finished doing a port of your QB64 script to python. I've tried really hard to stay faithful to your code in terms of how it works (and even variable names).

[daniel l.]

1 minute ago, seanth said:

Oh, I hear that. I have things I use every day that are written in dirt and spit, but they work, so I use them.

Do you have any plans of putting your work up on github or something? I ask because I have nearly finished doing a port of your QB64 script to python. I've tried really hard to stay faithful to your code in terms of how it works (and even variable names).

I tried Github once. It was... Confusing.

[seanth]

7 minutes ago, daniel l. said:

I tried Github once. It was... Confusing.

Did you try the desktop app for github or just from the command line? Command line alone can be intimidating. I find that the desktop app does nearly everything I need

[daniel l.]

3 minutes ago, seanth said:

Did you try the desktop app for github or just from the command line? Command line alone can be intimidating. I find that the desktop app does nearly everything I need

Didnt know there was one! MINE!

[JadeOfMaar]

if you've only ever used the command-line for GitHub you'll have a blast with its shiny desktop client.

[RA3236]

2 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

if you've only ever used the command-line for GitHub you'll have a blast with its shiny desktop client.

What about online?

[seanth]

8 minutes ago, daniel l. said:

Didnt know there was one! MINE!

Gimme a poke if you set up a repository for TBG. I'll fork it and hopefully be able to meaningfully contribute

[JadeOfMaar]

Your repo is primarily stored online...but I wouldn't bother with the browser's interface much. In-browser, the dev team can comment and chat on individual commits and share notes, and even co-develop a wiki for documentation.

[Planetace]

Hey, can I make a psuedo-code for generating rings?