Electrocutor's Thread

[theonegalen]

The variant switch works now, but I haven't been able to get the part upgrade side to work with it like I'd like. Going to keep working on it.

[theonegalen]

On 11/20/2018 at 9:36 AM, Nightside said:

I had an idea to solve this back when Upgrades first came out but never did anything with it , maybe it would work for you. It’s been a while since I messed wit upgrades though so I may be foggy on the details.

Make a MM clone of you part, let’s say it is called “pod” and the clone is “podAdvanced” (with the new IVA). Both parts are affected by the same Upgrade. The difference is that at Upgrade level 0, “podAdvanced” is category = hidden.

When you buy the next pod Upgrade “pod” becomes category = hidden and “podAdvanced” becomes category = command (or whatever).

I believe that the pods would still show up if you searched for them by name so you could also change the prices to be extremely high for the locked advanced tech, but reduce it to a reasonable price upon upgrade.

Tried this. Apparently ModulePartStatsUpgrade doesn't touch the category or TechHidden fields in part configs. So it's a no go.

@Electrocutor, is there anything you could do, codewise, to allow the addition of new variants through the Part Upgrade function? Currently they don't seem to work that way.

I really shouldn't be surprised that something as half-baked as the stock part upgrade and variant systems would have no way to interact. It would seem kind of obvious to me to make those work together, but KSP development is so piecemeal that I guess they never thought of it.

Edited December 11, 2018 by theonegalen

[Electrocutor]

On 12/10/2018 at 11:09 PM, theonegalen said:

Tried this. Apparently ModulePartStatsUpgrade doesn't touch the category or TechHidden fields in part configs. So it's a no go.

@Electrocutor, is there anything you could do, codewise, to allow the addition of new variants through the Part Upgrade function? Currently they don't seem to work that way.

I really shouldn't be surprised that something as half-baked as the stock part upgrade and variant systems would have no way to interact. It would seem kind of obvious to me to make those work together, but KSP development is so piecemeal that I guess they never thought of it.

I'm unfamiliar with the ins and outs of upgrades, so would need the details of exactly how they do and don't work. Have you tried doing upgrades at the root MODULE level instead of under VARIANT? It's possible that you could surround VARIANT with an upgrade so that a single VARIANT only becomes available after the upgrade is applied (if upgrades support nodes and not just values). If you can figure out the exact needs and functionality of upgrades, then we can work around it.

[theonegalen]

1 hour ago, Electrocutor said:

I'm unfamiliar with the ins and outs of upgrades, so would need the details of exactly how they do and don't work. Have you tried doing upgrades at the root MODULE level instead of under VARIANT? It's possible that you could surround VARIANT with an upgrade so that a single VARIANT only becomes available after the upgrade is applied (if upgrades support nodes and not just values). If you can figure out the exact needs and functionality of upgrades, then we can work around it.

I tried it every way I could think of, including both of those ways. I've looked in the API about the part upgrades, but I can't really make heads or tails of it.

[Electrocutor]

So... I need some direction on what to work on that people would want to use. Here are the current things I have in the fire, some feedback on what to prioritize would be nice:

• There and Back Again: A Kerbal's Tale
  • A story-driven mod that includes all sorts of stuff, but the main purpose is a timeline progression of tech, parts, missions, contracts, etc that makes sense.
  • The story starts like the Wright brothers where Kerbals can just make a basic wooden glider with a pedal-powered propeller
    • A propeller runs on a resource named Torque, which is generated from a part called Pedals (command-seat-like), which use a resource named Stamina that Kerbals possess and can be refilled by eating snacks.
• stock part default upgrades
  • this includes things like removing a bunch of the probe cores so instead of having different parts that allow different navigation features and such, they are all the same part with progressive upgrades.
  • engines and things start out as being less efficient and become more as tech evolves
• standardized parts
  • remove all stock parts and replace them with standardized versions. it is effectively a new base set of parts for KSP that utilizes existing models/textures and or license-allowing mod models/textures along with dynamic capacity.
  • i.e. There is one tank for solid, liquid, and gas for each bulkhead profile, but variants exist for 1, 2, 4, and 8 multiplier capacity, each having a number of visual variants.
• Ven Stock PBR
  • give pbr treatment to Ven's stuff via Blender and Textures Unlimited
  • I was actively working on this until @Nertea dropped the dev post about the new restock mod: as they serve the same purpose and this one is being actively developed, I'm thinking of waiting for its release and then giving it pbr treatment instead
• KSPF
  • Continue work on the framework I've been tinkering on for years that would allow much more ease, efficiency, and consistency to other mods. You can think of it as something like SKSE for Skyrim, only less low-level.
• Other
  • I'm always open for suggestions on things people want to see.

Edited December 27, 2018 by Electrocutor

[swjr-swis]

2 hours ago, Electrocutor said:

• stock part default upgrades

Would love to finally see some use of this feature.

 

2 hours ago, Electrocutor said:

• There and Back Again: A Kerbal's Tale

This comes as a close second in the list you mention.

 

But:

2 hours ago, Electrocutor said:

• KSPF

How close do you feel you are to a starting release for this? Depending the answer, this one might be worth sticking a bit more time and effort in so the other things can benefit from them as well.

 

[Electrocutor]

1 hour ago, swjr-swis said:

How close do you feel you are to a starting release for this? Depending the answer, this one might be worth sticking a bit more time and effort in so the other things can benefit from them as well.

I've been working on it off and on a long time, but it's still a long way out.

[swjr-swis]

5 hours ago, Electrocutor said:

I've been working on it off and on a long time, but it's still a long way out.

My suggestion would be to keep that same pace then. It should be a welcome tool whenever it is ready.

[Delay]

23 hours ago, Electrocutor said:

give pbr treatment to Ven's stuff via Blender and Textures Unlimited

I would appreciate this.

[Nightside]

On 12/27/2018 at 11:12 AM, Electrocutor said:

So... I need some direction on what to work on that people would want to use. Here are the current things I have in the fire, some feedback on what to prioritize would be nice:

@Electrocutor you've been involved in some cool stuff and I like the range of things you are interested in doing in the game. 

1. Story Mode (Kerbal Power!)- This sounds really interesting to me, building up from the first principles of mechanics and aerodynamics. I can imagine a story where kerbals have crashed on a planet and must build a new mothership from scratch. Also, could this allow a kerbal bicycle? How come I've never seen a bicycle modeled in KSP? Torque has potential to be an interesting challenge beyond the scope of the story mode. KSP has a pretty good ability to model or simulate real design challenges and sometimes these are fun to solve and learn about.  Besides turning wheels or propellers torque could also be considered in jet turbines and even rocket engine turbopumps. Getting to mess with the inner workings of how these engines work would be great fun for some people.
   
   However, Kerbal powered crafts will go slow compared to other parts in the game, the level of detail of terrain and buildings is not super-interesting, so although it certainly would be fun to design kerbal-powered crafts it could be boring to fly/use them. Additionally, if "story-mode" relies on the existing "Career Mode" it might be somewhat frustrating - I've never found Career mode to be very satisfying, it is a mishmash of a Tycoon game that kinda wants to be a 4x game... Anyway, I would be wary that the project could creep into a massive career overhaul (which may or may not sound like fun to you).
   
   So, I would guess that this project is pretty ambitious and may be too complex (or have compatibility issues with other mods) and might struggle to attract a following. The torque part could be an interesting stand-alone.
    
2. Stock Part Upgrades - I've always wanted this functionality to work, but I suspect that Squad essentially abandoned it because they didn't want to put in the work to make it fun. In my few experiments with it I got pretty frustrated with figuring out how to get it to work. I think that what would be more interesting and valuable would be a Community Part Upgrades mod, you could still just start with the stock parts, but try to provide a documented framework for other folks to easily add in parts from their favorite mods, or for mod authors to add upgrades without having to figure it all out from scratch. However, before investing too much work into this I think you should consider what benefits it would have, I think this also suffers from essentially being dependent on Career Mode being fun. If the upgrades are interesting and add something to gameplay then great, but if it is just another little box to click without actually reading or making strategic decisions then I don't know that it makes the game a richer experience.
    
3. Standard Parts - I think this would be great to have, but would it work with multiple color schemes and lengths?  Since the Expansion and the reskin of stock parts I have definitely been overwhelmed by the multitudes of similar looking parts in the VAB. I had thought about trying to do this with SSTU, especially with the tanks from Nertea's mods like Near Future.
    
4. PBR - I'd love to see more PBR compatibility, but I don't currently use Ven's. I probably will use Nertea's parts (I can't resist those beautiful parts) so my vote would be to wait.
    
5. KSPF - Unfortunately I don't really know enough about coding to speak to the potential benefits of this. 
    
6. Other - What happened to your efforts to fix normal maps and PBR-ify the KSC buildings? What about the terrain in general could that somehow be improved with PBR?

Thanks for your contributions to the game so far! Mainly I hope you follow what is fun for you. Anyway, hopefully some of this was helpful.

[theonegalen]

KSPF is my favorite. As long as you keep working on that, I'm happy. I also agree with @Nightside - PBR buildings would be amazing, both stock and those from Kerbin-Side Remastered.

[Bottle Rocketeer 500]

@Electrocutor I want to make TU configs for the wings, flaps/slats/spoilers, and S2 airliner parts in @blackheart612's Airplane Plus mod. I have read @Shadowmage's documentation on Github, but am still confused. Can you please explain how to do it?

[Shadowmage]

7 hours ago, Bottle Rocketeer 500 said:

I have read @Shadowmage's documentation on Github, but am still confused.

What parts of the documentation do you feel could use more elaboration/detail/reworking?  (more than happy to help explain things, esp. if it can be used to improve the documentation and reduce future confusion of others)

[Bottle Rocketeer 500]

2 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

What parts of the documentation do you feel could use more elaboration/detail/reworking?  (more than happy to help explain things, esp. if it can be used to improve the documentation and reduce future confusion of others)

I am confused about how to find the normalization parameters, even after re-reading that part of the documentation.

[Electrocutor]

On 12/30/2018 at 11:00 AM, Nightside said:

1. Other - What happened to your efforts to fix normal maps and PBR-ify the KSC buildings? What about the terrain in general could that somehow be improved with PBR?

In my own game, I am using batch-generated and edited normal and metal/gloss maps on all my buildings and all scenery objects use the TU shader except for a couple where the TU shader caused z-fighting that wasn't previously there; I also generated normals for terrain textures. Unfortunately, since these are generated from the game's actual textures I cannot release a mod that includes them. Some artist would have to remake all the textures themselves in order to release them in a mod.

 

@Bottle Rocketeer 500 @Shadowmage has a program that scans a texture and gives you the normal values, or you can just use gimp and desaturate then check the gray level in the region you want to normalize. My hope for TU configs was that part authors would include patches that allowed optional TU support (just like they do for tons of other mods like TAC, USI, tweakscale, etc), but @Nils277 is the only one who packaged compatibility that I know of aside from the couple packs that require it. With the new KSP shader, part authors could break up their meshes and make their parts have PBR in the stock game themselves as well (for non-emissive meshes), but I haven't seen anyone adopting that either yet.

[Shadowmage]

On 1/1/2019 at 3:20 PM, Bottle Rocketeer 500 said:

I am confused about how to find the normalization parameters, even after re-reading that part of the documentation.

Noted -- I'll see if I can come up with some more pointed instructions and/or perhaps a walkthrough video or something.  Its certainly not the easiest or most obvious concept to grasp from an external perspective.

Essentially though it is as how Electrocutor stated it -- you want the average luminance value of the area covered by each of the mask channels.  If you wanted some 'precise' help, feel free to PM me your diffuse/specular/metallic/mask textures and I can run them through my calculation tool (eventually I want to release this tool publicly, but it is not quite ready for general consumption yet).  It is also possible to do it manually by using GIMP or PS and a bit of interpolation.

[proto85]

does anyone have a working kax config? I tried the one in this thread but I cant seem to get it working.

[Tonas1997]

Is this compatible with 1.4.5?

EDIT: Sorry for the necrobump

Edited May 17, 2019 by Tonas1997

[Electrocutor]

On 5/17/2019 at 5:05 PM, Tonas1997 said:

Is this compatible with 1.4.5?

EDIT: Sorry for the necrobump

"this"?

[Nightside]

@Electrocutor, have you thought of revisiting your idea of a torque resource now that the DLC is doing something similar for robotics?

[Electrocutor]

4 hours ago, Nightside said:

@Electrocutor, have you thought of revisiting your idea of a torque resource now that the DLC is doing something similar for robotics?

I actually already have it locally. Did you have a scope in mind? I am no artist, so I would have to re-use existing stock parts for it. I also have steam power locally, but I've not gotten around to making the tech tree, upgrades, contracts, etc to go along with it. I figured most people wouldn't care since it's data-driven and has no models, textures, vfx, or sfx.

Edited June 1, 2019 by Electrocutor

[oniontrain]

Is there a Bluedog config download somewhere in the thread? Or will I have to learn how to make one myself? I've tried searching for one but nothing immediately comes up.

[Electrocutor]

14 hours ago, oniontrain said:

Is there a Bluedog config download somewhere in the thread? Or will I have to learn how to make one myself? I've tried searching for one but nothing immediately comes up.

There is no BDB config. BDB will require that you create a metal map at the very least for nearly every part; and there are a LOT of parts.

[beaucoupzero]

hello, i`m looking for a way for a way to make the old pwings (they still work in 1.8.1) use TU. atm i`m stuck to duplicating the parts and recoloring them in Photoshop but it`s cumbersome and increases part count. A TU cfg would mean alot to me. thank you !!!

[Manwith Noname]

56 minutes ago, beaucoupzero said:

hello, i`m looking for a way for a way to make the old pwings (they still work in 1.8.1) use TU. atm i`m stuck to duplicating the parts and recoloring them in Photoshop but it`s cumbersome and increases part count. A TU cfg would mean alot to me. thank you !!!

I have a pWings recolour ready to go along with some other things. I'm just waiting for TU to update to 1.8 to prevent unwarranted bug reports.

Spoiler

Though, pWings itself has an odd issue in 1.8 too.