[1.7.X] KS3P

[The White Guardian]

I was a bit skeptical of my 'autoloader' so I've commented it out for now in favor of a more manual and incredibly more efficient parsing method. All in all it's a matter of hours before all loaders have received their much overdue overhaul. The main mod is about 60% done at this point, 94% if I don't count the loaders. The GUI though is at a mere 20%, as there's still a lot of work to be done there. Rest assured though I'll patch the remaining problems and have it packed up soon. It should take a week to finish at worst. Since I'm about to have a lot more free time on my hands, development speed should accelerate greatly.

Of course, before release I'll ensure the GUI is working properly by giving it its first test, that is creating a significantly less hideous default config setup. KS3P can now also tweak some rendering data, for example shadow distance, shadow quality, shadow resolution, field of view, HDR, MSAA and the camera's near clip plane.

KS3P can also force the camera to use a different rendering path, but beware. Games are usually built around their rendering path, and I suspect that any shader SQUAD wrote for the game is built for Forward rendering and thus won't work with Deferred. The objects should still display just fine, Unity will just continue to render them through Forward rendering. I've added it only to give greater artist control; I cannot stress enough the importance of having at least a basic understanding of Unity's rendering paths before attempting to tweak this feature.

Anyhow, I've made some more changes to the way configs are loaded: configs are no longer case-sensitive, and KS3P skips underscores when reading, thus use whatever style is more convenient for you. Note that this only applies to the names of nodes and values, not the values assigned to values. Assigning "_5" to a field expecting a number will still give an error.

Speaking of which, previously encountering any kind of parsing error would force KS3P to shutdown for safety. Now, whenever KS3P parses a config node, it generates the effect's default settings, and tweaks only the values specified by the given amount. Thus you need not explicitly assign data to fields if you can leave it at its default settings. Should one assign data to a specific field, KS3P will assign the user-defined value only if it can be correctly parsed. If it fails to parse something, it makes a note in the log files and leaves the field unchanged (IE at its default value). Thus if your config results in a post-processing setup that looks a bit funny, check if any of the values failed to load. But hey, a slightly off-looking result is better than KS3P having an error-phobia, no? (Note, the result should be "off-looking" only in the case of a minor config error, it's not like KS3P is going to display funky results all the time)

All in all it shouldn't be long until the next update.

[steve_v]

Windoze only. Would not buy.

[4x4cheesecake]

@The White Guardian Great news  

I'm more hyped for the next KS3P release than any of the last KSP updates

[Beetlecat]

On 1/23/2019 at 1:47 AM, steve_v said:

Windoze only. Would not buy.

glad you can save the expense...

[steve_v]

3 hours ago, Beetlecat said:

glad you can save the expense

So am I.
I happily donate to modders around here, but as cool as this looks it doesn't work at all on OpenGL.
2 out of the 3 PC operating systems supported  by the game use OpenGL, so IMO that's a pretty serious flaw.

[Jognt]

On 1/25/2019 at 5:16 AM, steve_v said:

So am I.
I happily donate to modders around here, but as cool as this looks it doesn't work at all on OpenGL.
2 out of the 3 PC operating systems supported  by the game use OpenGL, so IMO that's a pretty serious flaw.

Agreed. Using OpenGL is a pretty serious flaw. 

[steve_v]

1 hour ago, Jognt said:

OpenGL is a pretty serious flaw

OpenGL predates Direct3D and is supported on every OS in current use. Direct3D is supported on one.
If you really don't like OpenGL feel free to use Vulkan instead, that's also available on all the platforms KSP supports.

Anyhow, I've made my point. If this mod doesn't work with the most widely supported graphics API on the planet, I have no use for it. It's a shame because it looks awesome, but that's how it is.

[VoidCosmos]

Does it crash or something if I use the 1.4 x version for ksp 1.3.1?

[The White Guardian]

I've spent the last few hours teaching KS3P not just how to read config files, but how to write them too. It feels like teaching a dog how to do a somersault, then how to do a backflip. In any case, I have but a few tasks left to complete:
- Implement most of the GUI (framework already in place, I just need to write the effect-specific windows)

- Add the camera patching logic (should be an hour of work at best)

- Finalize the config exporter (no ETA on that yet)

@jrodriguez could you send me your DX11 shader fixes so I can compile them in preparation for release? EDIT: completely forgot about your earlier post where you linked to your GitHub. I'll be implementing your changes shortly with lots of thanks!

@steve_v OpenGL should be fixed with the next release.

@Nigel Cardozo you are always free to use KS3P with releases that it wasn't designed for, though at your own risk. Since KS3P uses very little of KSP's code however, it might actually run on outdated KSP versions so long as the Unity version matches.

Edited January 27, 2019 by The White Guardian

[The White Guardian]

I've been working on KS3P's user inferface and I have to say, it's coming along faster than I expected. Currently the UI works as follows:
- Spawning the UI results in an interface with two buttons: "Setup" and "Editor".
- Pressing the "Setup" button currently redirects to a blank screen, but this will allow users to setup which profiles should be used for which scenes, and will even include a button that will write the changes to KS3P's config file.
- Pressing the "Editor" button results in a screen containing a list of buttons, each redirecting to a blank screen currently, although each of these buttons will ultimately lead to an editor for a specific post-processing effect. In other words, pressing the "Edit Anti-Aliasing" button will result in a screen for editing the Anti-Aliasing settings of the Post-Processing profile currently targeted for editing.

Furthermore, although the UI can be hidden by using the KS3P GUI key combo a second time, there's always an x-shaped button in the top-right corner which will also hide the GUI. Lastly, whenever you're viewing a screen that isn't the GUI's 'main menu', there will be a small button titled "return" in the top-right corner that will take you back one window.

I expect to have the GUI finished tomorrow, or Tuesday evening at worst. After that, there's but a few small things left to fix before release.

EDIT: I should also mention, I forgot to write parsers for deferred-exclusive post-processing effects such as 'screen space reflections' because I'd completely forgotten that KS3P now has the option to force a specific rendering path. I'll be adding parsers for those before release as well.

Edited January 27, 2019 by The White Guardian

[Beetlecat]

This is sounding really encouraging, @The White Guardian! Can't wait to see what you've come up with

[Jognt]

Sounds good! To be honest I've been holding off on getting KS3P because I'd rather not have to delve into .cfgs for basic customization like disabling dirty cam effect and other camera specific limitations.
Having said that, my inner UX person couldn't help but wonder a few things:

On 1/27/2019 at 11:05 PM, The White Guardian said:

Pressing the "Setup" button currently redirects to a blank screen, but this will allow users to setup which profiles should be used for which scenes

Are these preset profiles from the later mentioned Editor part or are you planning on making profiles containing seperate profiles? By which I mean, if the user were to define a custom anti aliasing and a custom something-else, would these be selectable seperately or would they need to be saved into another profile one level up?
Besides my wondering about that, I'd call this section "Profiles" or "Scene setup" to differentiate it from "Editor".

 

On 1/27/2019 at 11:05 PM, The White Guardian said:

Pressing the "Editor" button results in a screen containing a list of buttons, each redirecting to a blank screen currently, although each of these buttons will ultimately lead to an editor for a specific post-processing effect.

Similarly to the above-mentioned setup menu the term "Editor" has quite an overlap with "Setup". I'd recommend naming it a bit more specific or merging it with setup and just having a single screen alltogether. After all, both menus are about customizing (setting up) the mod. I can understand the desire to split up functionality to prevent info-overload but I can't help but wonder what specific actions you wish end-users to be able to perform and what interface structure would be best suited to it.

 

On 1/27/2019 at 11:05 PM, The White Guardian said:

Lastly, whenever you're viewing a screen that isn't the GUI's 'main menu', there will be a small button titled "return" in the top-right corner that will take you back one window.

Sounds good, though I'd place a return button in the top left instead of top right just to keep it easy to grasp at a glance.

---------------------------

Let me know if you could use a hand with deciding on a UI structure

[The White Guardian]

The KS3P in-game editor is almost ready for the next release. Only the color grading editor has to be finalized. All other effects already work perfectly.

The profile selector isn't finished yet, but I wrote all the necessary logic to mostly automate that process. The in-game GUI should be done in a matter of hours.

After that I only need one more day to finish up the last few bits of programming and then it should be good to go; ready to roll and better than ever!

On 1/31/2019 at 6:02 PM, Jognt said:

Are these preset profiles from the later mentioned Editor part or are you planning on making profiles containing seperate profiles? By which I mean, if the user were to define a custom anti aliasing and a custom something-else, would these be selectable seperately or would they need to be saved into another profile one level up?
Besides my wondering about that, I'd call this section "Profiles" or "Scene setup" to differentiate it from "Editor".

No, it's where KS3P lists all of the profiles that it has parsed and indexed. Essentially you can choose here which profile you'd like to use for each scene without having to dive into the configs and do it yourself. It currently doesn't take apart profiles. This section isn't labeled "Editor," the GUI labels it as "Setup," as it is where you configure KS3P in general. Sorry for the confusion.

On 1/31/2019 at 6:02 PM, Jognt said:

Similarly to the above-mentioned setup menu the term "Editor" has quite an overlap with "Setup". I'd recommend naming it a bit more specific or merging it with setup and just having a single screen alltogether. After all, both menus are about customizing (setting up) the mod. I can understand the desire to split up functionality to prevent info-overload but I can't help but wonder what specific actions you wish end-users to be able to perform and what interface structure would be best suited to it.

It is a single screen. Opening the in-game GUI shows a single screen, containing the options 'Setup'  and 'Editor'. Selecting either of these redraws the menu instead of creating a separate window. You're always working with a single screen to avoid clutter. Also, I feel like renaming the button for the in-game profile editor to 'profile editor' rather than just 'editor'.

It's really hard for me to describe the GUI with words, trust me when I say that it's really intuitive and self-explanatory.

On 1/31/2019 at 6:02 PM, Jognt said:

Sounds good, though I'd place a return button in the top left instead of top right just to keep it easy to grasp at a glance.

Oops! The 'return' button is in the top-left corner, the 'close' button in the top-right. That was a typo.

[Jognt]

*anticipation intensifies*

[The White Guardian]

I'm starting the in-game testing phase, and I'm afraid I have to say that it may take me a very, very long time to figure out why exactly KS3P is flailing about quite so spectacularly. For some reason, enabling effects such as anti-aliasing result in an immediate pink screen, while other effects such as ambient occlusion result in log warnings claiming that KS3P is attempting to access a non-existent shader pass.

The strange and for debugging purposes most infuriating thing however is that there is absolutely no report of any kind of exceptions. This leads me to suspect that the error occurs on the GPU and not the CPU, but since I have no knowledge in this field much less have any idea how to debug it I seem to be hitting a roadblock.

@jrodriguez do you have any ideas as to what might be happening?

[jrodriguez]

39 minutes ago, The White Guardian said:

I'm starting the in-game testing phase, and I'm afraid I have to say that it may take me a very, very long time to figure out why exactly KS3P is flailing about quite so spectacularly. For some reason, enabling effects such as anti-aliasing result in an immediate pink screen, while other effects such as ambient occlusion result in log warnings claiming that KS3P is attempting to access a non-e

@jrodriguez do you have any ideas as to what might be happening?

@The White Guardian If you can push your code to a Dev branch I will perform some testing to see if I can find something

[Atlessa]

 

 

Beautiful.

[Jacke]

On 1/31/2019 at 10:02 AM, Jognt said:

Sounds good! To be honest I've been holding off on getting KS3P because I'd rather not have to delve into .cfgs for basic customization like disabling dirty cam effect and other camera specific limitations.

I really want to use this mod.  I feel the lack of OpenGL support is a flaw (as are the various OpenGL artifacts currently in the game), but I can understand why and because I'm playing on Windows 10, I can work around that.

But, when I dug into the .cfg's to look at fixing things, the shear number of dirty cam effects flags I'd have to disable via MM was daunting.  WHY?!?

And then there's the default bloom on every lighted object.  I can see it on every KSC window at night.  And this view in the Tracking Station as an example.

 

When I use this mod, I only see things I dislike and want to remove, not visual improvements like in the initial post.  Which leads me to just remove the whole mod.

Edited February 19, 2019 by Jacke

[Beetlecat]

21 minutes ago, Jacke said:

I really want to use this mod.  I feel the lack of OpenGL support is a flaw (as are the various OpenGL artifacts currently in the game), but I can understand why and because I'm playing on Windows 10, I can work around that.

But, when I dug into the .cfg's to look at fixing things, the shear number of dirty cam effects flags I'd have to disable via MM was daunting.  WHY?!?

And then there's the default bloom on every lighted object.  I can see it on every KSC window at night.  And this view in the Tracking Station as an example.

 

When I use this mod, I only see things I dislike and want to remove, not visual improvements like in the initial post.  Which leads me to just remove the whole mod.

The default configs are messy -- and basically have a bunch of things switch on to full, which is why everything is glowing, looks dirty, is way too dark, etc.

Throughout the thread (maybe even on the OP now, or back a page or two) there are other posted config sheets that tune down the settings to be much more reasonable. What looks good is entirely subjective, so it would be worth tinkering with them on your own as well, but at least getting a better starting point is a lot less discouraging.

Good luck!

Edited February 19, 2019 by Beetlecat

[Jognt]

On 2/19/2019 at 1:37 AM, Beetlecat said:

The default configs are messy -- and basically have a bunch of things switch on to full, which is why everything is glowing, looks dirty, is way too dark, etc.

Throughout the thread (maybe even on the OP now, or back a page or two) there are other posted config sheets that tune down the settings to be much more reasonable. What looks good is entirely subjective, so it would be worth tinkering with them on your own as well, but at least getting a better starting point is a lot less discouraging.

Good luck!

Sometimes I just want be a child end-user and just enjoy plonking something in and having it just work ;-;

[Jiraiyah]

well, looks like we need a rebuild for 1.6.1, having this mod side by side kopenicus, part of the terrain around ksc is missing !

happened as soon as i added this mod to a fresh installation with very few mods. removed, fixed, added, the problem came back. part of the terrain becomes totally black ! moving the camera around shows the terrain sometimes but this mod definitely have issues with 1.6.1

 

http://prntscr.com/motcos

 

EDIT : confirmed this the hard way : nvidia 1080 ti, crashes to black screen for pc, needs a reboot on 1.6.1.

Edited February 22, 2019 by Jiraiyah

[4x4cheesecake]

1 hour ago, Jiraiyah said:

well, looks like we need a rebuild for 1.6.1

If you scroll up a bit, you'll notice that The White Guardian already works on a new version

[Jiraiyah]

3 minutes ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

If you scroll up a bit, you'll notice that The White Guardian already works on a new version

well, my case was much worse than just a pink screen or anything like that, the gpu would crash and the fan on vga would go crazy !

[4x4cheesecake]

1 minute ago, Jiraiyah said:

well, my case was much worse than just a pink screen or anything like that, the gpu would crash and the fan on vga would go crazy !

Sounds unusual...do you use a custom config or the default one? What are the other 'very few' mods which are installed?

You didn't saved a copy of your log so we can take a look at it, did you? Not sure if you actually want to recreate the issue for a log file since it sounds like a huge problem but it will probably help...

[Jiraiyah]

4 minutes ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

Sounds unusual...do you use a custom config or the default one? What are the other 'very few' mods which are installed?

You didn't saved a copy of your log so we can take a look at it, did you? Not sure if you actually want to recreate the issue for a log file since it sounds like a huge problem but it will probably help...

used this config :

 

logs won't help, simply because the game does not crash but the gpu itself gets a crash to black screen and nothing goes into the log before that, to solve it i have to restart the pc and that is another reason nothing will fall into logs.