I'm writing a plugin and I don't know where to start

[Deus Zed Machina]

So basically I'm trying to make a generator that takes a certain amount of electric charge to activate before it starts producing power. I'm completely new to the KSP API and I have no idea how to go about doing this. Does anyone know how I should start? I think once I know which classes to use, I'll be able to figure out the rest, but at the moment I'm kind of stuck.

[HebaruSan]

Have you checked out the various tutorials yet, such as this one?

It's not quite clear exactly what part of the process you're at yet.

[Deus Zed Machina]

I've checked out most of the tutorials, so I'm somewhat familiar with the way plugins work. Currently, my plugin adds "start" and "stop" actions to the right-click menu that disable themselves when the other one is clicked, but nothing else. I'm having trouble figuring out how to check whether or not the ship has a certain amount of a certain resource. I'm also having trouble adding serialized KSPFields, as my solution apparently doesn't recognized the [Serialized] attribute.

Edited June 3, 2017 by Deus Zed Machina

[HebaruSan]

For how to do things with vessels, try this:  https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/api/class_vessel.html

I think I've seen people mention RequestResource and GetConnectedResourceTotals in relation to what you're trying to do, but I haven't tried them myself.

 

[Deus Zed Machina]

I'm pretty sure GetConnectedResourceTotals is what I'm looking for, but I'm confused about what values to use for the arguments. How would I make proper use of this class?

[HebaruSan]

1 hour ago, Deus Zed Machina said:

I'm pretty sure GetConnectedResourceTotals is what I'm looking for, but I'm confused about what values to use for the arguments. How would I make proper use of this class?

When the documentation isn't clear (90% of the time), I google for "ksp" and the name of the function, which usually brings up the source for a few mods on Github. If I can't figure out how they work from reading, I'll clone the source locally and open the project to investigate where they're getting the parameters in more depth.

I know that doesn't answer your question about GetConnectedResourceTotals, but you know what they say about teaching a man to fish.

[Benjamin Kerman]

If you need to get the resources in a part, try part.Resources.Get(string ResourceName). Store that in a location and you can call on it latter. For getting all the resources in a vessel, maybe vessel.Resources, but i am not sure. 

[Deus Zed Machina]

Okay, I still have no idea how to use GetConnectedResourceTotals, but looking at the source code for other mods helped me figure out a different way to count all the electric charge in the vessel. Thanks!