[1.4.3] MKS Explainer

[TauPhraim]

This mod adds in game explanations about efficiency/load calculations done by MKS.
It mostly shows intermediate steps, so that you can determine where this "843.52% load" is coming from (and how to improve it).

Known limitations:

• it works by reverse engineering, rather than introspection, so it is prone to becoming incorrect when MKS changes (it seems correct at the time of writing this)
• since it explains in-game vessels, it cannot be used for mission planning. My view is that, although formula are complicated, by seeing them explained often enough, you can eventually get a good enough feeling of how all this works by yourself
• it displays the "ideal" load, that you would get if a converter had room to store it's ouputs, and had enough available inputs. KSP can further reduce the load, for example if an input resource is not available, but is produced by another slower converter.

Source code.

License:

Spoiler

License

 

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2017+ SE/G

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.
 

 

Download.

Installation instructions:

• Just unzip in KSP (the zip contains a GameData folder). If you installed MKS already, you should manage.

Dependencies:

• MKS and USI Life support

Edited June 19, 2018 by TauPhraim
Add details/fix deps

[OctarineNoise]

Thanks for your work, this really helps me in planning out my base in advance.

Could you add a switch to show the production numbers on different timescales? Like per-second, per-hour, per-day, per-month?

[TauPhraim]

10 hours ago, OctarineNoise said:

Could you add a switch to show the production numbers on different timescales? Like per-second, per-hour, per-day, per-month?

I just released version 0.3 with something like that. It's a bit crude, and not switchable

[Grobluk]

Hello TauPhrain. 

 

The idea is awesome since MKS dokumentation seems a bit fragmented.

However, for some reason I find myself unable to get the addon to work. I am playing with the full Umbra suite and little else apart from Kerbal Alarm Clock.

I have unzipped the scr folder and the gitignore, deliver, licence, readme and the Explainer.sln and Explainer.csproj files into my KSP folder. I have unzipped the Explainer folder into my own GameData folder within the KSP folder. 

Nothing fires. No icon to press, no "explain" option when I look at a base module. 

Any idea what might be amiss? I have never experienced problems installing mods before. 

 

 

[ExplorerKlatt]

2 hours ago, Grobluk said:

Hello TauPhrain. 

 

The idea is awesome since MKS dokumentation seems a bit fragmented.

However, for some reason I find myself unable to get the addon to work. I am playing with the full Umbra suite and little else apart from Kerbal Alarm Clock.

I have unzipped the scr folder and the gitignore, deliver, licence, readme and the Explainer.sln and Explainer.csproj files into my KSP folder. I have unzipped the Explainer folder into my own GameData folder within the KSP folder. 

Nothing fires. No icon to press, no "explain" option when I look at a base module. 

Any idea what might be amiss? I have never experienced problems installing mods before. 

 

 

It sounds like you downloaded the source code. The source code is not a finished product. You need to download from Here. 

Inside the zip there will be a Gamedata folder. Inside that there will be a folder named Explainer. That folder is what is placed inside the Gamedata folder for the game.  

 

[Vorg]

This might be a KSP bug as it's been seen before in the past, but I made a salvager ship using the flat 2 seat 2.5m command pod. I put an engineer in it and the second tech probe core to keep it stable when kerbal is EVA. Also have the mechjeb LCD part on it. When the kerbal goes eva, the ship starts tumbling and moving back as if it had been hit. Nether the probe core or MJ is able to hold it stable. Turning on RCS, all the thrusters start firing and it just seems to make it worse. I don't know if this is a bug with this pod or it would do the same with another pod. I know that some time back when you tried do a rescue mission, when the kerbal EVA'd the pod would start spinning faster and faster. But that seemed to have been fixed awhile back. Maybe it's a bug in MKS that is also related to MKS/sounding rockets/etc., chutes acting as pushers making craft act is if coming down in a strong wind, only you can turn the craft and change the direction the craft goes. This happens with the derp escap baloon and the sounding rocket chutes as well as the radial mounted USI chutes.

[N3N]

Hey TauPhraim,

Nice mod!

 

Will it be available on CKAN, too?

[Vorg]

hmm, I ment to post in the MKS thread. Got the wrong one.

[Grobluk]

18 hours ago, ExplorerKlatt said:

It sounds like you downloaded the source code. The source code is not a finished product. You need to download from Here. 

Inside the zip there will be a Gamedata folder. Inside that there will be a folder named Explainer. That folder is what is placed inside the Gamedata folder for the game.  

 

Wow, how did I miss that? Works a treat now, thanks for pointing out the mistake- 

[TauPhraim]

Sorry for the late reply, I had notifications turned off, somehow.

@Grobluk glad you sorted it out. Github automatically offering "release" zips for new tags can be confusing in this context, but I don't think it can be deactivated.

 

On 4/27/2017 at 2:36 AM, N3N said:

Will it be available on CKAN, too?

I just submitted a PR to have it on CKAN, but have no idea how long this will take. Note that it will be simply named "Explainer" unfortunately, as renaming it would have taken more time than I have at the moment.

 

[politas]

4 hours ago, TauPhraim said:

I just submitted a PR to have it on CKAN, but have no idea how long this will take. Note that it will be simply named "Explainer" unfortunately, as renaming it would have taken more time than I have at the moment.

 

PR Merged. It will show up in CKAN as "MKS Explainer" (the short "Explainer" identifier is in the mod info panel).

Edited May 6, 2017 by politas

[TauPhraim]

5 minutes ago, politas said:

PR Merged. It will show up in CKAN as "MKS Explainer" (the short "Explainer" identifier is in the mod info panel).

Thanks, that was quick ! Ideally I should rename everything (especially the folder in GameData), but that would probably break existing users.

[politas]

14 hours ago, TauPhraim said:

Thanks, that was quick ! Ideally I should rename everything (especially the folder in GameData), but that would probably break existing users.

That would make the .netkan file much more complicated, now.  

[TauPhraim]

37 minutes ago, politas said:

That would make the .netkan file much more complicated, now.  

Actually I tried for a while, when writing the netkan, but could not make much sense of that part of the doc

[politas]

16 hours ago, TauPhraim said:

Actually I tried for a while, when writing the netkan, but could not make much sense of that part of the doc

This is the launch page for understanding how Netkan files works

[TauPhraim]

3 hours ago, politas said:

This is the launch page for understanding how Netkan files works

That's what I was using, but the part about "special installations" is not descriptive enough, ex:

Quote

In this case if a .zip file has a path to the mod of GameData/MyAuthorName/MyMod the MyModfolder will be installed to the user as GameData/MyAuthorName/MyMod.

I thought this is what happened without any special options already, so it's puzzling.

[TauPhraim]

 

 

 

Edited May 8, 2017 by TauPhraim
wrong topic

[politas]

On 2017-5-8 at 4:52 PM, TauPhraim said:

That's what I was using, but the part about "special installations" is not descriptive enough, ex:

I thought this is what happened without any special options already, so it's puzzling.

If you have no "install" stanzas, the CKAN client will search for a folder with the same name as the mods "identifier", and install that in the "GameData" folder. 

If your zip file does not have a folder with the same name as the mod's identifier, which is supposed to be installed in GameData, then at least one install stanza is required.

The example you have taken that text from uses an install stanza to place the mod's main folder an extra level down, under a first-level folder using the mod author's name. Some authors of multiple mods set up their installs in that manner, so that all of their mods are grouped together in a player's GameData folder structure.

We don't like to change identifiers in the CKAN repository, so now that your mod is registered as "Explainer", if you change the folder structure of your zip file so that the folder you want installed to GameData is not called "Explainer", then we would need to add an install stanza to get the client to install that new folder name.

Does that clear things up?

Edited May 10, 2017 by politas

[TauPhraim]

29 minutes ago, politas said:

If you have no "install" stanzas, the CKAN client will search for a folder with the same name as the mods "identifier", and install that in the "GameData" folder. 

If your zip file does not have a folder with the same name as the mod's identifier, which is supposed to be installed in GameData, then at least one install stanza is required.

The example you have taken that text from uses an install stanza to place the mod's main folder an extra level down, under a first-level folder using the mod author's name. Some authors of multiple mods set up their installs in that manner, so that all of their mods are grouped together in a player's GameData folder structure.

We don't like to change identifiers in the CKAN repository, so now that your mod is registered as "Explainer", if you change the folder structure of your zip file so that the folder you want installed to GameData is not called "Explainer", then we would need to add an install stanza to get the client to install that new folder name.

Does that clear things up?

Yes, thanks !

I thought ckan was just unzipping (potentially stripping a heading GameData at best).

So does it take the first folder it finds in the zip named ModName, and ignores all the rest ?

[politas]

1 minute ago, TauPhraim said:

Yes, thanks !

I thought ckan was just unzipping (potentially stripping a heading GameData at best).

So does it take the first folder it finds in the zip named ModName, and ignores all the rest ?

If there are no install stanzas, yes, it will install just the matching folder and all subfolders. We (normally) download any dependencies separately, so that the user can manage the versions of all their mods.

[Bit Fiddler]

would this not be possible to do in the VAB or SPH so we can see what is going on at design time?

[TauPhraim]

14 hours ago, Bit Fiddler said:

would this not be possible to do in the VAB or SPH so we can see what is going on at design time?

I gave it some thoughts. But there are a number of missing things in-VAB compared to in-flight (planetary bonuses, surrounding vessels, ground resources concentrations ...) that would both make implementing this a bit bothersome, and render the results not so useful.

[Bit Fiddler]

ah yes the you would be missing the surrounding vehicles and the concentrations of the resources...  but you could still at least see what the current vehicle would be sans those two modifiers.

 

[TauPhraim]

16 hours ago, Bit Fiddler said:

ah yes the you would be missing the surrounding vehicles and the concentrations of the resources...  but you could still at least see what the current vehicle would be sans those two modifiers.

 

If you accept inaccurate results regarding the external factors, just launch the vehicle and check the numbers on the launchpad. It sure would be more convenient to have that in-VAB, but currently I estimate the convenience/work ratio not big enough, sorry.

[Bit Fiddler]

yes understood

 

 

i have made many mods myself, and always users want more than you are willing to give...   it is a fact of life.