KSP Mission Planner/Tracker/Logger development

[linuxgurugamer]

I'm starting design work on a new mod to log missions.  So before I start, I'm presenting the feature list and looking for comments.

The wishlist for the mod is to have the following functionality:

1. Mission Planning
2. Mission Tracking
3. Mission Logging

Mission Planning

• Specify a mission goal (or goals, if more than one)
• Specify requirements
• Be able to export checklists which Wernher's Checker can use both in the Editor and in Flight
• Interact with Kerbal Alarm Clock to set custom alarms for the planned start date of the mission.

Mission and Event Tracking

• Track a mission from launch until recovery
• Track all crew
• Track all detached stages/vessels, possibly as a sub-mission
• Track all significant events which occur during the mission
  • Initial launch of vessel
  • Any structural damage
  • EVA events (going EVA, boarding after EVA)
  • Kerbal death
  • SOI change
  • Staging

Mission Logging

• Allow entry and editing of mission notes during the mission
• Log all significant events
• Manually add screenshots

Tracking and Logging will most likely be merged together, I'm just making a list of desired requirements right now.

Display

• Mission Planner
  • Add and remove goal (no limit on number of goals)
  • Add and remove requirement (no limit on requirements
  • Export Wernher's Checker checklists
  • Import requirements from contract (only contracts from Contract Configurator to start)
• Current Mission List
  • Show list of events for selected mission in separate window
  • Add or remove an event
  • Add or remove mission notes

Requirements (taken from ContractConfigurator)

• Vessel Attributes
  • HasAntenna
  • HasCrew
  • HasCrewCapacity
  • HasPassengers
  • HasResource
  • HasResourceCapacity
  • IsNotVessel
  • PartValidation
  • VesselIsType
  • VesselMass
• Vessel State
  • Docking
  • Orbit
  • ReachSpecificOrbit
  • ReachState
  • RecoverVessel
  • Rendezvous
  • ResourceConsumption
  • ReturnHome
  • VesselDestroyed
  • VesselNotDestroyed
• Vessel History
  • CollectScience
  • NewVessel
  • VisitWaypoint
• RemoteTech
  • CelestialBodyCoverage
  • HasAntenna
  • KSCConnectivity
  • SignalDelay
  • VesselConnectivity
• Kerbal Parameters
  • HasAstronaut
  • RecoverKerbal
• Progression Parameters
  • ReachSpace
• Negative Parameters
  • KerbalDeaths
  • NoStaging
• Set Parameters
  • All
  • Any
  • AtLeast
  • AtMost
  • None
  • Not
  • Sequence
• Planetary Parameters
  • PerformOrbitalSurvey
  • PlantFlag
  • SCANsatCoverage
• Miscellaneous Parameters
  • Duration
  • MissionTimer
  • PartTest
  • TargetDestroyed
  • Timer

 

Edited April 14, 2017 by linuxgurugamer

[MaxZhao]

One suggestion, it would be very nice if the planner can interact with Kerbal Alarm Clock and maybe Astrogator/Launch Window Planner and set custom alarms for the planned start date of the mission.

[HebaruSan]

Obviously this sounds a lot like the recently announced Making History expansion. Is that on purpose?

My feature suggestion would be to support calculating a score, as is often done on the Challenges forum. So, the success condition could be to get to orbit and back, but your score would be 5 points for each ton under 50 launched, plus 2 points for each part under 30 launched (for example). That way multiple players could attempt and compare results, and solo players could optimize.

Edited April 14, 2017 by HebaruSan

[linuxgurugamer]

6 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

Obviously this sounds a lot like the recently announced Making History expansion. Is that on purpose?

My feature suggestion would be to support calculating a score, as is often done on the Challenges forum. So, the success condition could be to get to orbit and back, but your score would be 5 points for each ton under 50 launched, plus 2 points for each part under 30 launched (for example). That way multiple players could attempt and compare results, and solo players could optimize.

Nope, not at all.  While the mission planning sounds somewhat similar, this is going to be much simpler.

First, while the Making History is announced, no real details are known and there is no known release dat

Second, for me at least, the planner isn't as important as the tracking/logging.  I'll be concentrating on that first, and will probably release that before I get to the planner, and yes, that is a result of the Making History; I don't want to do something which will not be needed.

Scoring is an interesting idea, which can become rather difficult, since each person may want things scored differently, and have different things scored.  But it's a good suggestion, thanks

[Heed]

I've been working on a redesign of my alpha FlightOperations mod. Currently I have the following events in my tracking subsystem:

• Rollout
• Launch
• Atmospheric: Mach, Max Q
• Stage: Booster Separation, Stage Separation
• Engine Cutoff: BECO, MECO, SECO, etc.
• Engine Start: Main Engine Start, Booster Engine Start, numbered starts
• Recovered
• Deorbit Burn
• Entry Interface
• Landed: Splashdown, Landed

Still to do:

• Docking: Docking working, Undocking problematic due to relinking mission & flight
• Destroyed
• Orbit: Orbit, Transfer Injection, Capture completed, still need "named orbits" LKO, GKO, MTO etc.
• Separation burn
• Fairing Jettison
• Open Chutes
• Deploy Solar Panels
• Pitch & Roll
• Start Throttle Down
• Throttle At
• Soft Landing Burn
• Deploy payload/spacecraft separation
• Malfunction: Damage, Collision, Malfunction
• Loss of signal
• Acquisition of signal
• Crew: Transfer, EVA, etc.

Happy to add more events to the tracking as required.

I track the lifetime costs, science, contracts achieved for a flight.

I display the events when they happen as a screen message as well as have a dialog window which shows them with their MET. I also store the events as an event stream stored against the vessel nodes so they can be "mined" for more data, in fact this is how I generate some of the "synthetic" events. My intention is to also raise them via an add-on accessible interface.

Unfortunately I recently emigrated to a new country and started a quite challenging job so I went dark for quite a while. Started up again recently, but still have a lot of work to do for a releasable version.

I can share more detail and chat as to how aligned these ideas are.

Edited April 22, 2017 by Heed

[DMagic]

This sounds vaguely similar to something I started working on during the long gap between KSP 1.0 and 1.1. I got to the point where it needed a UI to start getting things working in-game and I stopped because I was waiting to see what kind of support 1.1 would have for the new UI system.

https://github.com/DMagic1/KSP_Vessel_Manager

It started out as just a new mod for making in-game notes (hence the internal name, BetterNotes) to attach to each vessel. But then it expanded based on some of the requests people had for Contracts Window +. You would be able to assign contracts to each vessel, monitor their progress, and keep a record of any assigned contracts that were completed by that vessel (I think all of the contract related code was converted to work with Contract_Parser, the same dependency used for CW+ and CapCom). I expanded it to cover something similar for science: tracking which instruments you had on board, the science results on board, the results that had been transmitted from that vessel, and allowing you to transfer data to different science containers. There were also modules for monitoring and transferring crew, some basic vessel stats, and notes.

I also added a sort-of mission check list module. There are a number of pre-defined parameters, things like land, take-off, rendezvous, collect science, etc.... And all of the code for actually monitoring such events is there in some capacity (without taking into account any changes made since 1.1 or 1.2), including things like making sure that you actually pass some altitude threshold when taking off from another planet (to avoid mixing up a proper take-off with a little hop, or the kind of jumps you get while driving around).

Everything was written with the intent of being used with the new UI system, though I wasn't as familiar with it as I am now.

In any event, I never got around to actually doing anything with it and am unlikely to do so in the future.

 

[mattssheep4]

On 4/13/2017 at 2:55 PM, linuxgurugamer said:

Manually add screenshots

This could be done automagically with something like this: https://spacedock.info/mod/43/Automated Screenshots & Saves

[Fly Angry]

Was playing career and thought "I wonder if anyone is working on a planning / tracking mod". Sure enough, It's linuxgurugamer to the rescue. Again. When do you find the time to sleep, man?!

This is exactly what I was just thinking I wanted. Most important thing to me is being able to track how long individual crew have been on a flight, but everything else here would be really useful, especially interaction with KAC for launch windows, resupply missions etc etc.

[NashThe]

On 4/13/2017 at 7:55 PM, linuxgurugamer said:

Mission and Event Tracking

• Track a mission from launch until recovery
• Track all crew
• Track all detached stages/vessels, possibly as a sub-mission
• Track all significant events which occur during the mission
  • Initial launch of vessel
  • Any structural damage
  • EVA events (going EVA, boarding after EVA)
  • Kerbal death
  • SOI change
  • Staging

Nereid's Final Frontier mod does something quite similar to this. You should check it out. Here's the link:

Otherwise this mod sounds great and I'd really like to see it finished, especially now that Making History is out.

[linuxgurugamer]

This is discontinued

[Snark]

Moving to Add-on Development.

(Rationale:  Plug-in Development Help and Support is for questions and answers about how to write code for KSP mods, e.g. "Hey, I want the game to <do thing>, how do I do that?"  If a thread's about the development of a specific mod, e.g. for the mod author to provide updates, then it belongs in Add-on Development; that's what that forum is for.)