[1.8.x, 1.9.x] NEBULA space engineering - Decals Continued

[Aelfhe1m]

5 minutes ago, Capt.gelo said:

Any link for 1.2.2??

Past versions are available at either download link.

On Spacedock click the "Changelog" link or on GitHub click on "releases".

Edited June 5, 2017 by Aelfhe1m

[FasterThanFlourite]

On 6/4/2017 at 4:38 PM, linuxgurugamer said:

Not sure I understand you.  This uses Firespitter to control the decals, if you right-click on the decal, it should have a way to scale it.

I prefer having set sizes for all the other parts of KSP and would rather not use TweakScale on them in my career game. So I wanted to know if it is possible to use TweakScale to only scale your decals and nothing else :).

[linuxgurugamer]

Fitespitter does the resizing of the decal

[GehringGame]

Ok this feels like a n00b question, but what are the recommended texture sizes for the different decals? I'm making my own and I'm not sure how to lay them out.

Sounds like 256x256 or 512x512 would be good sizes for the square decals, but what about the oblong ones? 128x512 for example for the 1x4 decal?

P.S. I lOVE the mod!

[beta546]

Oh lovely. So glad I found this :-) Just one question, mainly curiosity really. If these are classed as parts, do they have physics enabled on them? Can't wait to cover my ships in awesome decals haha.... thanks :-)

[linuxgurugamer]

17 hours ago, beta546 said:

Oh lovely. So glad I found this :-) Just one question, mainly curiosity really. If these are classed as parts, do they have physics enabled on them? Can't wait to cover my ships in awesome decals haha.... thanks :-)

No, they are physicless

[beta546]

8 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

No, they are physicless

Cool, thank you :-)

[nobodyhasthis2]

@linuxgurugamer Should the parts have spaces in the name?

I was messing around with the config files. Very easy to put in new decals. However l wondered if is was possible to do with this a MM patch. Trouble is the part names have spaces in them. I think this can cause problems for MM. The wiki on cfg files also says :

Quote

Spaces are not allowed. Underscores and other special characters are either not allowed or not recommended.

If the spaces are removed from the part name a MM patch like this can add a texture link from outside the mod :

//---adding decals to nebula

@PART[Decalcurved]:NEEDS[NEBULA]:AFTER[zzzzNEBULA]
{
	@MODULE[FStextureSwitch2]
	{
	@textureRootFolder = NEBULA/decals/textures/
    @textureNames = dcl;nebula;esa1;esa2;eustars;squad;iss;nasa1;nasa2;roskosmos1;roskosmos2;energia1;euflag;usflag;ruflag;ruflag2;rusroundel
	}
}

The benefit of this is another mod could expand on available in game textures using this one as a dependency. A new addon mod would only need the MM patches and one folder of textures. Written to it's own choice of textureRootFolder. If the new added textures folder still has the old textures it works as before.

I know.... there is an easier way to do custom decals... It is a lot easier to just tweak the existing configs but my inner Kerbal had to tinker with adding stuff through a patch. This way custom config files don't get overwitten in a mod update since are stored in the the addon patch. It also gives a easy way for other mod authors to add their own without forking the whole mod.

So should there be spaces in the part names or am I doing something wrong with the MM patch above?

Edited July 21, 2017 by nobodyhasthis2

[Aelfhe1m]

2 hours ago, nobodyhasthis2 said:

So should there be spaces in the part names or am I doing something wrong with the MM patch above?

MM allows you to reference parts with spaces in their names provided you replace the spaces with ? wildcards. e.g.

@PART[Decal?curved]

 

[nobodyhasthis2]

6 hours ago, Aelfhe1m said:

MM allows you to reference parts with spaces in their names provided you replace the spaces with ? wildcards. e.g.

@PART[Decal?curved]

 

@Aelfhe1m Thanks for that! That saves time as now the original names don't have to be changed for new decals to be added via MM. Awesome!

Edited July 21, 2017 by nobodyhasthis2

[Alpha_Gametauri]

Wish there were letter with this so i could name my fleet of Space Shuttles.

[DrLicor]

@Alpha_Gametauri you can easily make them yourself mate. 

On 28-12-2016 at 5:52 PM, linuxgurugamer said:

Making Your own decals:

1. Make your desired texture with size by power of two - 128x128, 256x256, 512x512 etc.. pixels and save it as YourTexture.png in " \GameData\NEBULA\decals\textures\ " directory.
2. Open the config.cfg and configc.cfg. Find the line " textureNames = " and add your texture name at the end of line with a semicolon before it.

Example:

If your texture is named "Yourtexture.png", the line should look like:

textureNames = dcl2;nebula;esa1;esa2;nasa1;nasa2;roskosmos1;roskosmos2;energia1;euflag;usflag;ruflag;Yourtexture

Restart the game and enjoy your new decal 

[ErevanGaming]

Hi everybody,

Am planning on adding the alphabet and numbers with Nebula =D was wondering what font style and color is appropriate?

 

Regards and thanks in advance =)

[ErevanGaming]

hi @linuxgurugamer

Was wondering if it's possible to have two instances of Nebula? Like one set would have letters and numbers while another has only symbols and stuff?

 

Regards and thanks in advance =)

[linuxgurugamer]

1 minute ago, ErevanGaming said:

hi @linuxgurugamer

Was wondering if it's possible to have two instances of Nebula? Like one set would have letters and numbers while another has only symbols and stuff?

 

Regards and thanks in advance =)

Nope

[nobodyhasthis2]

On 11/10/2017 at 3:52 AM, ErevanGaming said:

Hi everybody,

Am planning on adding the alphabet and numbers with Nebula =D was wondering what font style and color is appropriate?

 

Regards and thanks in advance =)

A word of caution here. Sharing from my own experince this is more trouble that it is worth. Simply becuase it is so easy to add in custom graphics. For example putting the letters N A S A into the folder separately. Then onto a ship in game. Takes longer that to just creating the whole NASA acronym as a single resizable flag . It is up to you of course on game preferences. All I am saying is for me personally once I had a good work flow going. I could write decals faster doing them as singe parts. As always your mileage may vary here.

2 hours ago, ErevanGaming said:

hi @linuxgurugamer

Was wondering if it's possible to have two instances of Nebula? Like one set would have letters and numbers while another has only symbols and stuff?

 

Regards and thanks in advance =)

Depends on why you are asking....

If you need two copies of Nebula doing two different things. The answer is no way. In fact it is hard to come up with a use case for that setup.

or

If you are asking if it is possible to add in colored letters an numbers. In multiple fonts. On demand. The answer is "possible with effort". Using the MM patch shown above I was able to introduce new content at will. Without having to change anything in the original mod. If the mod is updated it does not affect my custom decals. So maintence changes are super easy to cope with. The reverse of this is also true. I can dynamically change decals by simple drag and drop. The changes are in my own custom folder and are nothing to do with the original mod. Each variation folder just has the relevant MM patch that tells Nebula where to look for the new content.

Again possibly not the answer you where looking for. I was hoping to give you some ideas on some different approaches to adding content here. Nebula Decals can be a powerful little mod once you get used to feeding it data in the right format. It is totally worth it what ever angle you take.

 

 

Edited October 26, 2017 by nobodyhasthis2

[ErevanGaming]

hi @nobodyhasthis2

2 hours ago, nobodyhasthis2 said:

A word of caution here. Sharing from my own experince this is more trouble that it is worth. Simply becuase it is so easy to add in custom graphics. For example putting the letters N A S A into the folder separately. Then onto a ship in game. Takes longer that to just creating the whole NASA acronym as a single resizable flag . It is up to you of course on game preferences. All I am saying is for me personally once I had a good work flow going. I could write decals faster doing them as singe parts. As always your mileage may vary here.

Depends on why you are asking....

If you need two copies of Nebula doing two different things. The answer is no way. In fact it is hard to come up with a use case for that setup.

or

If you are asking if it is possible to add in colored letters an numbers. In multiple fonts. On demand. The answer is "possible with effort". Using the MM patch shown above I was able to introduce new content at will. Without having to change anything in the original mod. If the mod is updated it does not affect my custom decals. So maintence changes are super easy to cope with. The reverse of this is also true. I can dynamically change decals by simple drag and drop. The changes are in my own custom folder and are nothing to do with the original mod. Each variation folder just has the relevant MM patch that tells Nebula where to look for the new content.

Again possibly not the answer you where looking for. I was hoping to give you some ideas on some different approaches to adding content here. Nebula Decals can be a powerful little mod once you get used to feeding it data in the right format. It is totally worth it what ever angle you take.

Thanks for sharing your experience =) I've come up with a simple way of placing custom decals using Nebula since I have ship designations and numbering I'd place those instead of the actual ship name =D and to keep them all perfectly lined-up I'll put them all on a truss segment, off-set the decals at the same height and hide the truss. =">

As for asking the possibility of having two instances of Nebula, I was thinking of have sets in different colors =D and other set of symbols and such. =D ="> And also to shorten the selection when moving between decals =">

 

Regards and thanks =)

[nobodyhasthis2]

8 hours ago, ErevanGaming said:

As for asking the possibility of having two instances of Nebula, I was thinking of have sets in different colors =D and other set of symbols and such. =D ="> And also to shorten the selection when moving between decals =">

 

We can't have two instances of Nebula. However there is a way two still have two completely different behaviours depending on the data present. This is one instance that changes decals as required. In theory....

Warning "Here be dragons". Test this in a development game first. I may be mistaken. it has been a while since I did mid game changes......

OPTION ONE

One possible solution is to pick generic names for both sets of data. Say you have a red text and a blue text option. If both options share the same name, like "NASA". Have each choice in their own sub folders. Remember that they share names with each other so cannot occupy the same folder.

Without changing any coding. It is possible to change text color by dropping in the right file from the sub folders. It gets copied into real working folder that Nebular has been told to use . What will happen is the existing color flag will be overwritten and the new color one appears in game.

Nebula here is still using the same config and still pulling out the decal called "NASA". From the same place. What it does not know. And does not really care about.  Is sometimes "NASA" is a red flag. Sometimes is is a blue flag. Depending on which option was dropped into the working folder.

RISK: You can't do both options at the same time. Is that a limitation. Needs to verified in game too.

OPTION TWO

Actually have diffrent names for all graphic files. Put them all in the same folder. Modify the MM patch as required to only include names you want.

@textureNames = dcl2;nebula;esa1;esa2;nasa1

nasa1 option appears in list.

@textureNames = dcl2;nebula;esa1;esa2;nasa2

nasa2 option appears in list.

RISK: This type of MM patch only works on game load. So will need a game reboot to make the change. A perk is the change only affects new builds. Old ships with attached parts don't change and it is possibe to have diffrent colored ships. Again test things. Please don't take my word for it.

Try things out and see what works for you. Have fun

 

[DarkOwl57]

Is there any way to make your own textures? I'm thinking about making a racing series and I'd like to know how to make numbers and put them on the cars

 

[Drakenex]

50 minutes ago, DarkOwl57 said:

Is there any way to make your own textures? I'm thinking about making a racing series and I'd like to know how to make numbers and put them on the cars

 

yes, they are very easy to do, simple transparent PNGs using the desired size.

[ErevanGaming]

hi @nobodyhasthis2

5 hours ago, nobodyhasthis2 said:

We can't have two instances of Nebula. However there is a way two still have two completely different behaviours depending on the data present. This is one instance that changes decals as required. In theory....

Warning "Here be dragons". Test this in a development game first. I may be mistaken. it has been a while since I did mid game changes......

OPTION ONE

One possible solution is to pick generic names for both sets of data. Say you have a red text and a blue text option. If both options share the same name, like "NASA". Have each choice in their own sub folders. Remember that they share names with each other so cannot occupy the same folder.

Without changing any coding. It is possible to change text color by dropping in the right file from the sub folders. It gets copied into real working folder that Nebular has been told to use . What will happen is the existing color flag will be overwritten and the new color one appears in game.

Nebula here is still using the same config and still pulling out the decal called "NASA". From the same place. What it does not know. And does not really care about.  Is sometimes "NASA" is a red flag. Sometimes is is a blue flag. Depending on which option was dropped into the working folder.

RISK: You can't do both options at the same time. Is that a limitation. Needs to verified in game too.

OPTION TWO

Actually have diffrent names for all graphic files. Put them all in the same folder. Modify the MM patch as required to only include names you want.

@textureNames = dcl2;nebula;esa1;esa2;nasa1

nasa1 option appears in list.

@textureNames = dcl2;nebula;esa1;esa2;nasa2

nasa2 option appears in list.

RISK: This type of MM patch only works on game load. So will need a game reboot to make the change. A perk is the change only affects new builds. Old ships with attached parts don't change and it is possibe to have diffrent colored ships. Again test things. Please don't take my word for it.

Try things out and see what works for you. Have fun

 

Thanks for your input! Sure appreciate it and will try it out later after work =D

 

Regards =)

[h0yer]

@linuxgurugamer

Heya!

Just discovered this mod, and even without trying, I know I already like it a lot

I'm a little wonderous because I've never seen it before^^

 

Does the mod cope with rectangular shaped png files, like the usual flag and agency format?

I would like to write some MM configs, to make your NEBULA stickers integrate with CRAP (or the other way around), the same thing I made for the DecalStickers mod.

 

Peace and have fun

[linuxgurugamer]

56 minutes ago, h0yer said:

@linuxgurugamer

Heya!

Just discovered this mod, and even without trying, I know I already like it a lot

I'm a little wonderous because I've never seen it before^^

 

Does the mod cope with rectangular shaped png files, like the usual flag and agency format?

I would like to write some MM configs, to make your NEBULA stickers integrate with CRAP (or the other way around), the same thing I made for the DecalStickers mod.

 

Peace and have fun

From the OP:

Theres 5 parts - 1 flat, 1 curved decal, 1x2, 1x4 and 1x8 decals. You can switch the textures of the decal and rescale it.

[h0yer]

20 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

From the OP:

Theres 5 parts - 1 flat, 1 curved decal, 1x2, 1x4 and 1x8 decals. You can switch the textures of the decal and rescale it.

 

Huh, I should pay more attention to OPs, thx for pointing out^^

Another question:

Can the folder NEBULA draws its logos from be altered, so one can add logos from other mod folders, without copying them into NEBULA?

I had encountered the same issue with blackheart's DecalSticker mod, I mitigated it by removing the firespitter root folder and simply adding a layer of folder structure to each original logo entry^^

 

Well, work end is near, so I guess I'll just download and test the fun in an hour and ask more questions later, should I get stuck or overly baffled

Thanks for the hints

[h0yer]

Well, I just downloaded it and immediately after opening the archive, I realized it uses the same firespitter plugin, so basically all my questions have been answered.

OK, I'll treat the MM-patch for your mod the same way, I'll just remove the firespitter textureRootFolder and add the missing credentials to all paths on the original logos, as well as adding all logos from CRAP

 

I now I ask for a lot, but could you probably remove the root folder, so adding logos from outside the NEBULA folder is generally possible without MM patching so much stuff?

I'm aware, that a lot of paths would become quite long, but the change would allow for more integration with other mods, that provide logos.

Just an idea. I could as well fork'n'push the changes, if you are interested^^

Peace!