[WIP] [1.12.x] Kerbal Electric - Back to brighten up your explosions.

[TheKurgan]

Yes, congrats on the release!

Any chance you could add a release version on Github as well?

Curse sitting on their hands wouldn't delay someone from getting such an interesting mod.

 

[Fengist]

3 hours ago, TheKurgan said:

Yes, congrats on the release!

Any chance you could add a release version on Github as well?

Curse sitting on their hands wouldn't delay someone from getting such an interesting mod.

 

That was just a one time delay.  From now on miniavc should notify you when I upload a new version.

[Z3R0_0NL1N3]

This is a great little idea! Have you considered making the lights use electric charge (that's something I've always thought was silly in stock KSP).

[Fengist]

4 minutes ago, Z3R0_0NL1N3 said:

This is a great little idea! Have you considered making the lights use electric charge (that's something I've always thought was silly in stock KSP).

They do. And so do stock lights.

[Li0n]

@Fengist I found a texture load error for the light tower, I've got those line in output_log :

Quote

Load(Texture): Kerbal Electric/Light Tower/Rod

Cannot open MBM file 'D:\KSP\GameData\Kerbal Electric\Light Tower\Rod.mbm'

Texture load error in 'D:\KSP\GameData\Kerbal Electric\Light Tower\Rod.mbm'

The light tower does work in game so probably not very important.

[B-STRK]

Congratulations @Fengiston the (is this the alpha or the beta? The file name suggests beta...) release! And on the collapsible lamp post, it is as I had hoped:

Wondering though, if it can also be made node attachable at the bottom as well as surface attachable. (Not a critical matter, though, I can more or less eyeball centering the mounting.) 

Now, I just need to work out some values to use for KIS and OSE Workshop (any recommended volume I should give this?) with this--the base in the screenshot above (in GC kit form) was already deployed to Minmus, and could use a couple extra lampposts and spotlights all around.  

[Fengist]

1 hour ago, B-STRK said:

Congratulations @Fengiston the (is this the alpha or the beta? The file name suggests beta...) release! And on the collapsible lamp post, it is as I had hoped:

Wondering though, if it can also be made node attachable at the bottom as well as surface attachable. (Not a critical matter, though, I can more or less eyeball centering the mounting.) 

Now, I just need to work out some values to use for KIS and OSE Workshop (any recommended volume I should give this?) with this--the base in the screenshot above (in GC kit form) was already deployed to Minmus, and could use a couple extra lampposts and spotlights all around.  

I can do that.  And so can you.

In the part.cfg for the light tower (and you can do this for the searchlight as well) add the following line under the line that starts "node_attach":

node_stack_bottom = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1

and change this line

attachRules = 0,1,0,0,1

to this

attachRules = 1,1,0,0,1

That should give it a proper attach node until I get the next version out.

No idea what to tell you about OSE.  Never even knew that mod existed till you just mentioned it.

As for alpha/beta... well, it's just whatever you choose to call it.  I think there's around 700 lines of code in the plugin so whatever it is, expect it to screw up at some point, which keeps it from being an actual release.

3 hours ago, Li0n said:

@Fengist I found a texture load error for the light tower, I've got those line in output_log :

The light tower does work in game so probably not very important.

Not sure what's going on there.  The texture is on the parts in Unity so I did a re-export, checked the logs and didn't find that error.  It's not much of a texture to begin with (I don't do textures really well) so I doubt it'll be missed till I get another version out.  Thanks though.

 

And for those who spend time reading posts buried in the middle of threads, here's something to look forward to:

This will eventually be incorporated into KE but in a much different form.  I'm going to look at combining it with @RoverDude's community resource pack so that you can attach a light to a part and have it display a meter or light showing how full that part is of a specific resource.  What I'm hoping to do is have the light select the resource, much like you can select colors on the current light, by cycling through a list.  I already have something very similar to this in the 1869 pack whereby the battery glows a brighter green depending on how much charge it has.

 

Edited September 20, 2017 by Fengist

[SchwinnTropius]

2 hours ago, Fengist said:

And for those who spend time reading posts buried in the middle of threads, here's something to look forward to:

This will eventually be incorporated into KE but in a much different form.  I'm going to look at combining it with @RoverDude's community resource pack so that you can attach a light to a part and have it display a meter or light showing how full that part is of a specific resource.  What I'm hoping to do is have the light select the resource, much like you can select colors on the current light, by cycling through a list.  I already have something very similar to this in the 1869 pack whereby the battery glows a brighter green depending on how much charge it has.

 

Resource indication is already done in IndicatorLights, if you want to take a look.

 

Edited September 20, 2017 by SchwinnTropius
Pruning and link embedding

[B-STRK]

Like to report that both adding the stack node and the KIS module (made it too bulky to be portable, as you had noted earlier) have worked like a charm, and that OSE automatically added the lights to its build menu, so I didn't have to touch anything for them to be built on-site. You may add me as a happy KE customer:

One thing I realized, though, if it's possible to add it in the update: since this light (and its future brethren) were manufactured and installed on-site, they all default to the RBG 1/1/1 setting. Given that premise, would it be possible to make at least the color present tweakable available in the flight scene as well? (Just asking, you don't have to if it's not in the plans or in the code. Still a happy customer here either way.)

Again, thanks, and hope this post will lighten (**ahem, made a punny **) up your day.

Edited September 22, 2017 by B-STRK
I don't know how to attach an album anymore, so I picked a pic.

[nascarlaser1]

I just found this via @Kottabos! Great mod! I've been looking for search lights for a while!

 

btw here is a mod review he did!

Edit:

Also, Is/will this mod be on CKAN by any chance?

Edited September 22, 2017 by nascarlaser1

[Fengist]

6 hours ago, B-STRK said:

Like to report that both adding the stack node and the KIS module (made it too bulky to be portable, as you had noted earlier) have worked like a charm, and that OSE automatically added the lights to its build menu, so I didn't have to touch anything for them to be built on-site. You may add me as a happy KE customer:

 

One thing I realized, though, if it's possible to add it in the update: since this light (and its future brethren) were manufactured and installed on-site, they all default to the RBG 1/1/1 setting. Given that premise, would it be possible to make at least the color present tweakable available in the flight scene as well? (Just asking, you don't have to if it's not in the plans or in the code. Still a happy customer here either way.)

Again, thanks, and hope this post will lighten (**ahem, made a punny **) up your day.

Glad to hear OSE figured it out.  Again, I'm not familiar with that mod but any time I don't have to make things compatible... I'm happy.

As for changing lights outside of the hangar.  I have considered that.  And tbh, it should only require me to change a few lines of code.  My initial thoughts are to not have the colors changeable.  I'm not sure what the exact technology level of Kerbals is but, for us meager humans, we'd have to mostly change the bulb (yes there are a few exceptions).   And I thought along those same lines for the blink settings.  However, with the ability to place these lights outside the hangar with OSE, I may have to reconsider that line of thought.  I'll let you know.

4 hours ago, nascarlaser1 said:

I just found this via @Kottabos! Great mod! I've been looking for search lights for a while!

Also, Is/will this mod be on CKAN by any chance?

That man must be getting desperate to review a light mod.  I'm at work atm and can't watch videos but I'll be sure to watch it later tonite.  Thanks for letting me know.

As far as where this will be released... Curse.

Why?  None of my mods are on CKAN nor do I want them there.  CKAN has a way of doing whatever they want.  Someone submitted one of my mods to them a couple of months ago, didn't ask me if it was ok, and completely got the requirements wrong.  I'm not fond of CKAN.  Furthermore, the more channels I have when I release a mod, the more complex it becomes for me to do.  Out of all of the channels that I could release it on (CKAN, GitHub, Curse, etc.) Curse is the only one that even attempts to reward me (60,000 downloads and I can get a $20.00 Amazon gift card... wheeee.)  which is better than nothing.  Furthermore, of all the channels that accept KSP mods, Curse is the only one that insists on examining my work before it's given to you.  And finally, I like to have some idea of how many copies of my mods have been downloaded.  Releasing via 1 channel, Curse, allows me to know that with some pretty good accuracy.

 

And... Thanks for the screenshots.

I love to see how my mods are put to use.

Edited September 23, 2017 by Fengist

[Fengist]

Just got a chance to watch @Kottabos review on my phone.  I'll have to say, I got a chuckle out of it.  I think that's one of the few reviews he's done where he didn't really dislike some part of the mod and nothing went horribly wrong.  Thanks Kottabos, I'll pop it into the OP when I get off work.

[B-STRK]

7 hours ago, Fengist said:

-snip-  I'm not sure what the exact technology level of Kerbals is but, for us meager humans, we'd have to mostly change the bulb (yes there are a few exceptions).   And I thought along those same lines for the blink settings.  However, with the ability to place these lights outside the hangar with OSE, I may have to reconsider that line of thought.  I'll let you know.

That man must be getting desperate to review a light mod.  I'm at work atm and can't watch videos but I'll be sure to watch it later tonite.  Thanks for letting me know.

-snip-

On the position (at least as far as imagining what's going on when we do these things) that changing the light settings in flight is simply changing the bulb (and I guess for the blink settings, we can say it's a smart bulb with IC and pin switches I guess?), probably we can have it that the settings can only show up in the PAW via a Kerbal on EVA near enough to the part (e.g., the KIS inventory button only showing up about 2.5m away from center of mass, from what I heard). That way it's really like someone's gone out to swap bulbs. 

And to be fair, Kottabos'  not the only one desperate for a light mod. I went and downloaded B9 and deleted everything but the lights (and, admittedly the shielded docking port) just because I wanted moar lights than stock. _{(Good lord have I committed a sacrilege against B9 in doing so? )}

[Fengist]

3 hours ago, B-STRK said:

On the position (at least as far as imagining what's going on when we do these things) that changing the light settings in flight is simply changing the bulb (and I guess for the blink settings, we can say it's a smart bulb with IC and pin switches I guess?), probably we can have it that the settings can only show up in the PAW via a Kerbal on EVA near enough to the part (e.g., the KIS inventory button only showing up about 2.5m away from center of mass, from what I heard). That way it's really like someone's gone out to swap bulbs. 

And to be fair, Kottabos'  not the only one desperate for a light mod. I went and downloaded B9 and deleted everything but the lights (and, admittedly the shielded docking port) just because I wanted moar lights than stock. _{(Good lord have I committed a sacrilege against B9 in doing so? )}

Now that sounds logical. Let me see what I can do.

And yea, the B9 lights were what I thought about before I wrote this mod.  Instead of deleting all those other parts... well... you see my solution.

[swjr-swis]

8 hours ago, B-STRK said:

On the position (at least as far as imagining what's going on when we do these things) that changing the light settings in flight is simply changing the bulb (and I guess for the blink settings, we can say it's a smart bulb with IC and pin switches I guess?), probably we can have it that the settings can only show up in the PAW via a Kerbal on EVA near enough to the part (e.g., the KIS inventory button only showing up about 2.5m away from center of mass, from what I heard). That way it's really like someone's gone out to swap bulbs.

I wonder. Why would one need to physically change the bulb to change the light colour? Or physically switch IC/pin settings for different blinking frequencies? All this is standard lowest possible tech that's been existing for strobe/disco lighting from before our own space age.

Talking low tech, emitted light colour can be controlled by mechanically moved lenses/filters. A 'programmable' strobe can be created by simply varying the feeding current to a rotating mirror/shield. And if you go LED... well then you already have IC technology as well. All of which can be controlled from almost arbitrary distances by extending a few leads and placing a few switches or dials inside the cabin.

[Fengist]

10 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

I wonder. Why would one need to physically change the bulb to change the light colour? Or physically switch IC/pin settings for different blinking frequencies? All this is standard lowest possible tech that's been existing for strobe/disco lighting from before our own space age.

Talking low tech, emitted light colour can be controlled by mechanically moved lenses/filters. A 'programmable' strobe can be created by simply varying the feeding current to a rotating mirror/shield. And if you go LED... well then you already have IC technology as well. All of which can be controlled from almost arbitrary distances by extending a few leads and placing a few switches or dials inside the cabin.

I'm not sure what planet you're from but on the human planet, disco lights came WELL after the space age... like 20 years later.  I know, I was there for both.  At the time we were sending people to the moon, blinking consisted of opening and closing shutters in front of the light and your IC's were composed of a collection of vacuum tubes that filled an entire room.  Furthermore, our technological innovations were  based on more than just the two stats of courage and stupidity.  Had those been our only two traits, it would have taken us considerably longer to achieve any of those things.

But, I digress into pointless semantics. In the end, I'm the one writing the code.

 

[swjr-swis]

2 hours ago, Fengist said:

I'm not sure what planet you're from

Always a pleasure to exchange ideas with some people.

 

[Kottabos]

On 9/22/2017 at 8:48 PM, Fengist said:

Just got a chance to watch @Kottabos review on my phone.  I'll have to say, I got a chuckle out of it.  I think that's one of the few reviews he's done where he didn't really dislike some part of the mod and nothing went horribly wrong.  Thanks Kottabos, I'll pop it into the OP when I get off work.

And thank you for the awesome mod, and ya I can honestly say there isn't anything in this pack I don't like.  Though I do now have you to blame for me loosing a small chunk of my weekend building party buses with this lol

[Jenyaza]

Great mod, and i has some features request)

1) When EC is totally out, lights are disabled. But animation in SearchLight still playing. If rotation caused by servomotor, what about stopping or pausing that animation?

2) Use cheat option (alt+f12, infinite electricity) to power up again

Edited September 26, 2017 by Jenyaza

[Fengist]

6 hours ago, Jenyaza said:

Great mod, and i has some features request)

1) When EC is totally out, lights are disabled. But animation in SearchLight still playing. If rotation caused by servomotor, what about stopping or pausing that animation?

2) Use cheat option (alt+f12, infinite electricity) to power up again

1. Good point. Lemme see if I can't get it to suck some power or at least stop when there is none.

2. Solar panels and then  ". . ." and pray you're facing the right direction.  Sorry, I only use f12 to see where my code crashes and reload the database.

[B-STRK]

And to answer your interest in further screenshots: 

I have gotten precisely ZERO complaints from Redditors about pictures of spacecraft completely bathed in the dark.
(Disclaimer: I'm not on Reddit.)

Just as the lamppost solved a nagging need for lighting up the planets, the Dome Light is the salve to that great sin the KSP Reddit has accused so many of, the sin of "Stop taking pictures at night with your ship completely in the dark, you [insert deprecatory adjective, but not painfully insulting, they usually tend to be kinder than the average Redditor] KSP player." Not kidding, same as before, large-scale self-lighting for spacecraft has been a pain with existing solutions. Okay, maybe I haven't completely self-lit my crew shuttle up there (maybe should have added another Dome Light over the cockpit and ditched the Floodlamp I was using as the docking light as the two Domes would have covered it, fam), but that's one Dome Light near the vertical fin taking care of all the top surfaces lit so far. I'd have to use two other lights to achieve the same effect on the wings alone (until the Dome I was planning on using two taxi lights), and god help me find a way to light up the top surface of the fuselage without some place to stand the light off from. Definitely one of the star players of KE for me in that regard, and hopefully more solutions like this from existing and even new parts in versions to come (especially those that go well with space planes, I might add). 

What I'd probably add though is that the DL is quite powerful that I had to tone it down by dropping the sliders. Due to KSP not allowing for very minute discrete adjustments of the PAW sliders, it means I can only roughly approximate the "subdued"/lower intensity versions of your color presents (I was trying to go for Cool White Fluorescent or Mercury Vapor here, but came off with Silver the Hedgehog, I think?). Would a separate intensity slider be in the market in the future? 

(Maybe I should really have added that dome light over the cockpit. Or at least use the floodlight instead of the taxi light to cover the sides. Gotta go back to the drawing board.)

[Fengist]

9 hours ago, B-STRK said:

And to answer your interest in further screenshots: 

I have gotten precisely ZERO complaints from Redditors about pictures of spacecraft completely bathed in the dark.
(Disclaimer: I'm not on Reddit.)

Just as the lamppost solved a nagging need for lighting up the planets, the Dome Light is the salve to that great sin the KSP Reddit has accused so many of, the sin of "Stop taking pictures at night with your ship completely in the dark, you [insert deprecatory adjective, but not painfully insulting, they usually tend to be kinder than the average Redditor] KSP player." Not kidding, same as before, large-scale self-lighting for spacecraft has been a pain with existing solutions. Okay, maybe I haven't completely self-lit my crew shuttle up there (maybe should have added another Dome Light over the cockpit and ditched the Floodlamp I was using as the docking light as the two Domes would have covered it, fam), but that's one Dome Light near the vertical fin taking care of all the top surfaces lit so far. I'd have to use two other lights to achieve the same effect on the wings alone (until the Dome I was planning on using two taxi lights), and god help me find a way to light up the top surface of the fuselage without some place to stand the light off from. Definitely one of the star players of KE for me in that regard, and hopefully more solutions like this from existing and even new parts in versions to come (especially those that go well with space planes, I might add). 

What I'd probably add though is that the DL is quite powerful that I had to tone it down by dropping the sliders. Due to KSP not allowing for very minute discrete adjustments of the PAW sliders, it means I can only roughly approximate the "subdued"/lower intensity versions of your color presents (I was trying to go for Cool White Fluorescent or Mercury Vapor here, but came off with Silver the Hedgehog, I think?). Would a separate intensity slider be in the market in the future? 

(Maybe I should really have added that dome light over the cockpit. Or at least use the floodlight instead of the taxi light to cover the sides. Gotta go back to the drawing board.)

 

Love that blue color! If that's not one of the built-in colors, you need to save it to the list.

Now, let me share some screenshots of what's coming up next:

From the R&D Department
Idiot Lights are coming back and now, designed for the dumbest Kerbal on your roster.

SOON TO BE RELEASED

Yes, I took these at night to show off the cool emissive.

 

The Details!

This is one part, one mesh, one texture!  Yes, if you look closely there are 13 Idiot Lights in this screenshot and each one is monitoring something different.  How?  By changing a font (I'm so impressed with myself on this one.)

When you place an Idiot Light you cycle through the available resources in the PAW.  ALL resources... ANY resource... even those in the community resource pack, which numbers in the dozens.  And you can monitor any of them.  And, the lights only monitor the resources in your install.  Running stock? You'll just get stock resources.  Running my Maritime Pack?  You'll get compressed water.  Running the community resource pack?  You'll need lots of lights.

From 100% to 50% the lights glow green.  When dropping to between 50% and 25% the green lights fade out and the yellow lights turn on.  When dropping below 25%, the yellow light fades out and the red light fades in.  At 0 resources, all of the lights go out.

Click the "Toggle Resource Scope" and you can switch between monitoring a ship-wide resource or... the resource on the part that the Idiot Light is attached to.  Example in the picture. Three pairs of Idiot Lights are monitoring LF and Oxidizer levels.  One of each on the orange tanks is monitoring just that tank. Two more on the top tank are monitoring ship-wide levels.   You'll notice the two on the top tank are reading <50% and <25%.  The bottom tank is reading full for both.  Because, added together both are >50%, the two in the top row that read LF and Oxidizer are still green... they're monitoring ship-wide levels.

Change the fonts.  For the moment, you only get those built-in fonts.  The main ones are the dot-matrix one used in the main menu and the sans-serif font used in the rest of the game.  I'm desperately trying to get more fonts loaded and have managed to get one, but I can't seem to duplicate the process.  Squad needs to patch up the Parttools library before I can consistently get new ones added.  Once that happens, you can load your own fonts.

Change the font colors.  Well, of course.  Who wants plain white fonts?

Here's some more hype screen shots until I get the final testing done (I just got all this working this afternoon after a long and eloquent rant with @InfiniteDice about the glory of coding KSP mods.)

Edited September 29, 2017 by Fengist

[Fengist]

On 9/20/2017 at 8:03 AM, SchwinnTropius said:

Resource indication is already done in IndicatorLights, if you want to take a look.

 

Yep.  I'm aware of that mod but have never installed it.  I would have replied to this specific post sooner but I wanted to get it all working well enough to post some screenshots (above this post).  My interpretation of this goes back to a very simple mod I created just over a year ago (Idiot Lights) which only monitored 4 resources.  I'll now be incorporating that mod into this one. 

[SchwinnTropius]

36 minutes ago, Fengist said:

Yep.  I'm aware of that mod but have never installed it.  I would have replied to this specific post sooner but I wanted to get it all working well enough to post some screenshots (above this post).  My interpretation of this goes back to a very simple mod I created just over a year ago (Idiot Lights) which only monitored 4 resources.  I'll now be incorporating that mod into this one. 

That works. In any case, take your time, no rush for product or replies. I'm just glad that all these light look awesome.

[Fengist]

Quick update.  I talked with @Igorz a bit ago, the maintainer of Surface Mounted Stock-Alike Lights for Self-Illumination.  We're going to be 'joining forces' in a manner of speaking.  CCK (The Community Category Kit) allows modders to put their parts into categories so that they have their own icon in the hangar. Those of you that use KAS and KIS have probably seen the end results of CCK as they have their own cool icons whereby you can select the EVA tools.  Currently only 3 classes of parts have their own 'hard coded' icons.  In order to create a new 'hard coded' category, two modders must agree to use that category.  Both of ours will use it.

TLDR:  In the next update, KE will be bundled with CCK so that all lights from KE will have their own category button in the hangars.