[1.12.x] MissingHistory v1.9.3: Handy parts to complement Making History.

[RealKerbal3x]

7 hours ago, Snark said:

Gosh, that does seem like it would have been a pretty obvious thing for me to do, doesn't it?  You'd almost think I would have not only included it in MissingHistory, but also had a description of the new engines right there in the OP of this thread so that anyone who's interested in the mod could find it, huh?

<waits for other shoe to drop>

...

I need a facepalm emoji. I had to forget about the Valiant engine didn’t I.

Sorry :P

[MaverickSawyer]

1 hour ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I need a facepalm emoji.

Gotcha covered:

[maallaard]

What is @Snark going to do about the new confirmed 1.25 meter fuel tank skins soon to be added in update 1.5? Will you still have the modded skins implemented, or do you not know enough about the new update to tell us anything?

btw good job on your work, I'm loving your reskins

Edited October 8, 2018 by RedBee92

[Snark]

22 minutes ago, RedBee92 said:

What is @Snark going to do about the new confirmed 1.25 meter fuel tank skins soon to be added in update 1.5? Will you still have the modded skins implemented, or do you not know enough about the new update to tell us anything?

Hard to say for sure until it's out.  One option would be to just remove the 1.25m stuff from MissingHistory, since the purpose there was "give the 1.25m tanks an experience similar to the other diameters", and they've now done that.  If the 1.25m tanks already shown for KSP 1.5 had been part of KSP 1.4, I expect I never would have added them to MissingHistory in the first place.

The other option would be to try to keep them around as additional variant options on the existing tanks.  I'll need to do some tinkering with it to see what works and how hard it would be to keep them.

[theonegalen]

Hey @Snark, I got the variant switching to work with the bare/tankbutted Part Overhaul engines yesterday. I had to fiddle with the models to make it work (allowed under the Part Overhauls license, thank Squad!). The configs currently build off of your configs from here. I know your license permits it, but I wanted to check that you were ok with me uploading standalone configs (with :NEEDS[!MissingHistory]) based on yours. I'd just hate to have someone install both mods and end up with two copies of the tanks. I'm trying to think of how it would be easiest to prevent doubling the download size / memory usage, but I don't want my mod to be dependent on Missing History.

EDIT: or maybe I could submit a PR to Missing History that changes your configs to have :NEEDS[!PorkjetTankbuttSwitcher]. Might actually work better that way.

Edited October 15, 2018 by theonegalen

[Snark]

Hi all,

I've gotten the next release of MissingHistory, for KSP 1.5 compatibility, ready but not actually released yet.  I'll release it (and post here) just as soon as SpaceDock updates their site so that it's possible for me to mark it as 1.5-compatible.

Just a heads-up to let you know what's coming:

• I've removed the Porkjet reskins of the 1.25m fuel tanks, including Jarin's gray/orange variants.  These tanks all have their own stock variants now.  I may re-add these variants in the future (no promises!), but I'm kinda swamped at the moment and for now it's simplest to just remove them.
• Very, very sadly... I've removed the 1.25m engine plate.    Really didn't want to, because it's one of my favorite parts and I really need it.  However, KSP 1.5 appears to have a physics bug in it that makes any ship that has this part in it completely unusable.

The 1.25m engine plate problem is a real shame.  The symptom is, for some bizarre reason, that one part just gets physically "nailed in place" upon launch.  Is utterly immovable.  It's free to rotate, but not to actually translate along X, Y, or Z axes.  As far as I can tell, there's nothing I can do about it and it's just a bug in the stock game.

Anyway, it still exists (so that if you have an ongoing career that has already-launched ships with this part in them, they won't refuse to load)... but I've edited it to set its editor category to "none" so that it's hidden in the VAB and SPH and therefore won't be available for constructing new ships.  Really sorry about this one folks, nothing I can do. 

 

1 hour ago, theonegalen said:

Hey @Snark, I got the variant switching to work with the bare/tankbutted Part Overhaul engines yesterday. I had to fiddle with the models to make it work (allowed under the Part Overhauls license, thank Squad!). The configs currently build off of your configs from here. I know your license permits it, but I wanted to check that you were ok with me uploading standalone configs (with :NEEDS[!MissingHistory]) based on yours. I'd just hate to have someone install both mods and end up with two copies of the tanks. I'm trying to think of how it would be easiest to prevent doubling the download size / memory usage, but I don't want my mod to be dependent on Missing History.

EDIT: or maybe I could submit a PR to Missing History that changes your configs to have :NEEDS[!PorkjetTankbuttSwitcher]. Might actually work better that way.

Whoa!  Now that sounds super cool.  I'm kinda swamped these days (not just IRL stuff, but am scrambling to update my mods for KSP 1.5), but in the relatively near future why don't I drop you a note and we can work out what to do.  Would love to get the variant tankbutt stuff available in MissingHistory. 

[CobaltWolf]

21 minutes ago, Snark said:

The 1.25m engine plate problem is a real shame.  The symptom is, for some bizarre reason, that one part just gets physically "nailed in place" upon launch.  Is utterly immovable.  It's free to rotate, but not to actually translate along X, Y, or Z axes.  As far as I can tell, there's nothing I can do about it and it's just a bug in the stock game.

Did it have any sort of modules on it that would agitate the game? (I haven't looked at your part, nor any other the stock engine plates, so I don't know)

More just asking to know if I need to comb my own parts to check for similar bugs.

[Snark]

5 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Did it have any sort of modules on it that would agitate the game? (I haven't looked at your part, nor any other the stock engine plates, so I don't know)

More just asking to know if I need to comb my own parts to check for similar bugs.

Literally all it's doing is using ModuleManager to rescale the original part, then tweak some simple things that all the rescaled parts tweak, like cost, mass, part description, etc.

Here's the config file:

https://github.com/KSPSnark/MissingHistory/blob/master/files/rescaled/EnginePlate_1.cfg

It's super vanilla-- this ain't rocket surgery, I'm basically just rescaling the part and adjusting values accordingly.  Darned if I can see anything that's dangerous-looking.

No errors.  No crashes.  Nothing in the log file.  It simply... is stuck in place for no obvious reason.  Had no idea that anything was wrong until I had to launch a ship that had this part in it and "hey, why won't the ship move".

(Most comical test:  a lander can with Mk1 engine plate attached, suspended up in the air with a launch clamp.  When the launch clamp fires, the ship is left hanging there in mid air.  The nailed-in-place engine plate is on the bottom, so the ship falls over to put the CoM under the pivot point, and then just pendulums.  It would be really hilarious were it not the fact that I really need this part, dammit.)

[Snark]

Hi everyone,

I'm happy to announce that I've released MissingHistory v1.4, for KSP 1.5 compatibility.

(Though "happy" might be a slightly strong term, since the only two changes are removing things:  the 1.25m engine plate, and the reskinned 1.25m fuel tanks.)

Anyway, enjoy!

[Tonka Crash]

Sad to see the tanks go away. I downloaded 1.5 and looked around before going back to playing my 1.4.5 while I wait on some mod updates. I looked at the new tanks and really prefer the Porkjet models to the rather plain  cylinders in the new update.

[Bombaatu]

2 hours ago, Snark said:

Hi everyone,

I'm happy to announce that I've released MissingHistory v1.4, for KSP 1.5 compatibility.

(Though "happy" might be a slightly strong term, since the only two changes are removing things:  the 1.25m engine plate, and the reskinned 1.25m fuel tanks.)

Anyway, enjoy!

If I may ask, why did you remove the engine plate?

[therealcrow999]

21 minutes ago, Bombaatu said:

If I may ask, why did you remove the engine plate?

It says above:

Hi all,

I've gotten the next release of MissingHistory, for KSP 1.5 compatibility, ready but not actually released yet.  I'll release it (and post here) just as soon as SpaceDock updates their site so that it's possible for me to mark it as 1.5-compatible.

Just a heads-up to let you know what's coming:

• I've removed the Porkjet reskins of the 1.25m fuel tanks, including Jarin's gray/orange variants.  These tanks all have their own stock variants now.  I may re-add these variants in the future (no promises!), but I'm kinda swamped at the moment and for now it's simplest to just remove them.
• Very, very sadly... I've removed the 1.25m engine plate.    Really didn't want to, because it's one of my favorite parts and I really need it.  However, KSP 1.5 appears to have a physics bug in it that makes any ship that has this part in it completely unusable.

The 1.25m engine plate problem is a real shame.  The symptom is, for some bizarre reason, that one part just gets physically "nailed in place" upon launch.  Is utterly immovable.  It's free to rotate, but not to actually translate along X, Y, or Z axes.  As far as I can tell, there's nothing I can do about it and it's just a bug in the stock game.

Anyway, it still exists (so that if you have an ongoing career that has already-launched ships with this part in them, they won't refuse to load)... but I've edited it to set its editor category to "none" so that it's hidden in the VAB and SPH and therefore won't be available for constructing new ships.  Really sorry about this one folks, nothing I can do.  

[Snark]

57 minutes ago, Tonka Crash said:

Sad to see the tanks go away. I downloaded 1.5 and looked around before going back to playing my 1.4.5 while I wait on some mod updates. I looked at the new tanks and really prefer the Porkjet models to the rather plain  cylinders in the new update.

Yeah, I kinda like some of the Porkjet ones myself.    I assure you, I didn't get rid of them because I dislike them-- it was a matter of (possibly temporary) expedience rather than preference per se.

The main reason I took them out (at least for now) is that doing that would take a fair amount of time (getting all the finicky bits "just so", testing, verifying, etc.), and I wanted to make sure that people had a working MissingHistory as soon as possible for 1.5.  So I just did the (small, quick) amount of work to get it working on 1.5 right off the bat.  I figured it's better to give people something quickly that works, rather than making them wait around a long time with nothing workable at all.

I may re-add at least some of the 1.25m variants at some point in the future, when I have some time.  It's not rocket surgery, it should be pretty straightforward to do some config tinkering so that the number of available 1.25m variants is simply increased by a bit.  So they may not be gone for good. 

The 1.25m engine plate, I definitely want back, because (at least in my own gameplay) that part is seriously necessary.  But that one's out of my hands-- I can't do anything about a physics bug in the stock game.  So it'll have to stay gone until and unless Squad fixes that bug.

[RealKerbal3x]

On 10/17/2018 at 2:04 AM, Snark said:

 

The 1.25m engine plate, I definitely want back, because (at least in my own gameplay) that part is seriously necessary.  But that one's out of my hands-- I can't do anything about a physics bug in the stock game.  So it'll have to stay gone until and unless Squad fixes that bug.

Squad released a 1.5.1 hotfix update, maybe that might change things?

[Snark]

58 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Squad released a 1.5.1 hotfix update, maybe that might change things?

Pretty sure that the only thing they addressed in the hotfix was the aero problem.

My guess is that fixing this particular bug is not going to be super high on their priority list, given that (as far as I can tell) no stock or Making History parts are affected.  For all I know, nobody but me has run into this.

In any case, anyone who wants to play around with the (broken) 1.25m engine plate can easily do so. Its config file is still there. All you need to do is to remove this line from the config file:

@category = none

...and then it'll show up again in the editor and you can (try to) use it. Don't say I didn't warn you.

[JH4C]

5 hours ago, Snark said:

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Lucky for you, I was in need of a distraction this afternoon...

I've got it working! You may not like it, it may not be as pretty as you'd hoped for, but I can restore it to functionality so you can resume using it in your designs.

The problem appears to lie in locating the bottom attachment node. If you check the originals (which i'm sure you did multiple times) you'll see that, although sizes 2, 3, and 4 all grow and move their nodes proportionally in relation to each other, the size 1.5 plate shares the exact node positioning as the size 2. While testing another theory, I accidentally built a size 1 plate that used the longer dimensions, and it worked - it dropped like a stone when the clamp was released, and flew if I remembered to turn the engines on. I also noticed that each size of plate has its own unique build of shrouds, and there's another set in the same folder for size 1; sadly they don't appear to work properly at all, as when I tried swapping them in only the long or short fairings displayed and not in a manner consistent with the user's choices.

So to make everything fit without shims or cludges, what I've done is I've tweaked your EnginePlate_1.cfg into this:

// A 1.25m engine plate. Would love to eliminate every node combination
// except the "single" and "double"... except it looks as though the
// ModulePartVariants class is coded in a brittle way that makes it
// impossible to "hide" any node set via config.  If nodes are baked into
// the .mu, then they *have* to be a config option.  Oh well.

+PART[EnginePlate2]:NEEDS[SquadExpansion/MakingHistory] {
	@name = EnginePlate1
	@author = Snark
	@MODEL,* {
		%scale = 0.5, 1, 0.5
	}
	@NODE,* {
		@size=0
	}
	@title = #MissingHistory_EnginePlate1_title
	@description = #MissingHistory_EnginePlate1_desc
	@mass = 0.075
	@bulkheadProfiles = size1
	@MODULE[ModuleDecouple] {
		@ejectionForce = 100
	}

}

The models are being resized in two dimensions only, so that the shrouds remain the correct length as well as the correct width. This does mean that the lower attachment node is a lot further away from the plate than is pleasing to the eye, but it flies so the trade-off's probably worth it. There may be some wiggle room, you might be able to shrink it a little further, but this works.

Oh, for some reason the main top/bottom attachment nodes still look huge even though they're supposed to be getting changed to size 0. Again, it doesn't affect function.

HTH.

[Snark]

59 minutes ago, JH4C said:

I've got it working! You may not like it, it may not be as pretty as you'd hoped for, but I can restore it to functionality so you can resume using it in your designs.

Whoa!  Seriously nice piece of detective footwork, there!  Thank you so much for finding and sharing that. 

Your "here's a working example" is all I needed as a starting point in order to pin down what's going on.  It turns out that the culprit isn't the size, at all-- that's a total red herring.

It's the mass.

Your config works, where mine doesn't, because your config sets the mass at 0.075 tons and mine sets it at 0.03.

It turns out that this isn't a physics bug at all, but a config bug.  And, technically, it's a config bug on my part, not stock... though I would contend that the rather... odd... design choice that Squad made in their own config exacerbates things by making it much easier for people to run into this sort of problem.

Technobabble in spoiler, for the curious.

Spoiler

So, everything used to work, and then it broke with KSP 1.5.  What changed?

Well... one of the features that's been added to variants is that they can have different mass per-variant.  And with KSP 1.5, they updated the engine plates accordingly.  The longer the variant, the more it weighs.  Makes sense, right?

Now, in any sane universe, the simple and obvious way to set that up is to give the base part some small, minimal mass, and then each successively bigger variant, you give it successively larger amounts of mass to add to it.  Simple, fairly goof-proof, and straightforward.  I can't imagine why anyone would do something differently.

But that's not what they did.

What they did was give the base part a high mass, and then each variant has a negative mass that gets subtracted from it.  And the smaller variants subtract more than the bigger.

So, here's what happened.  I created my 1.25m engine plate, based off the 2.5m one, back when the individual variants didn't do anything to the mass-- basically, all of their mass adjustments were zero.  So in those days, the 2.5m engine plate was 0.075 tons regardless of what variant you picked.  And my rescaled 1.25m engine plate was 0.03 tons, regardless of variant.

Then, in KSP 1.5, they added in the mass differences among the variants.  And the way they chose to do that was to put negative masses onto all the variants.  It's just math, right?  No problem, as long as the mass of the base part is bigger than the negative mass of the variants involved.  The effective mass of any given variant equals the (large) base mass, plus the (negative) mass of the variant involved.

Except that I didn't realize that or take it into account.  My 1.25m engine plate config didn't touch the variant masses at all-- it simply changed the base mass from 0.075 t down to 0.03 t.

And some of those variants now had negative masses bigger than 0.03 tons.

Which means that the part ends up with negative mass.

And guess what happens when you have a part with negative mass in KSP?  The physics engine goes ape, that's what.  Specifically, it nails the part in place and prevents it from moving at all.

So, the solution was simple.  All I had to do was to go into the various VARIANT entries in the config, assign a reasonable mass to each one, and make sure that everything ends up positive.  Voilà, no more bug. 

IMO, Squad really should have modeled it as "low base mass, and then positive mass per variant", because that would stay completely mathematically equivalent while being  much more intuitive and much less error-prone.  Why they didn't do it that way, I have no idea.

Anyway, mystery solved! 

Anyway, all sorted out now-- I'll have a new release out soon that will restore the 1.25m engine plate to its former glory, thanks to you!  Well done, sir.

[Snark]

Hi all,

I'm very pleased to announce the release of MissingHistory v1.4.1, which restores the 1.25m engine plate to its former glory. 

Many thanks to @JH4C for doing the detective footwork that was key to figuring out what the dickens was going on here, so it was possible to fix!

[JH4C]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

It's the mass.

Hah, fancy that... And I only left it at 0.075 because I felt the thicker part would weigh more; I'd totally missed the mass was being adjusted in the variants. Three cheers for blind **** luck! Glad I could help.

[Beetlecat]

10 hours ago, Snark said:

Hi all,

I'm very pleased to announce the release of MissingHistory v1.4.1, which restores the 1.25m engine plate to its former glory. 

 

Many thanks to @JH4C for doing the detective footwork that was key to figuring out what the dickens was going on here, so it was possible to fix!

 

10 hours ago, JH4C said:

Hah, fancy that... And I only left it at 0.075 because I felt the thicker part would weigh more; I'd totally missed the mass was being adjusted in the variants. Three cheers for blind **** luck! Glad I could help.

I LOVE this kind of troubleshooting. Part luck, part skill, all terrific.

[Quantum Jim]

I have a few ModuleManager cfgs that I wrote that I'd like to donate to the project. The first cfg file adds Porkjet's MK1 pod as a variant for Squad's new MK1 pod in 1.5.1. The second file adds a 0.625 engine plate. The final one adds a fairing and top node to the MK16 parachute. How do I get them to you?

[Snark]

2 hours ago, Quantum Jim said:

I have a few ModuleManager cfgs that I wrote that I'd like to donate to the project. The first cfg file adds Porkjet's MK1 pod as a variant for Squad's new MK1 pod in 1.5.1. The second file adds a 0.625 engine plate. The final one adds a fairing and top node to the MK16 parachute. How do I get them to you?

Thank you!

I do appreciate the work-- thank you for being public-spirited.  However, as nice as these ideas are, these don't really "fit" in this mod, per se:

This mod isn't intended as a general "here are all the great things we'd like to see in the game" (not least because different people have different ideas of what "great" means); rather, it's just "here are parts that I really think should have been part of the stock game or Making History, and really seem like a "hole" by their absence.  Specifically:

• Mk1 Porkjet variant:  It's nice, and all... but now we already have three variants available in the stock game, and it doesn't feel to me like it's "missing".
• 0.625m engine plate:  Not "necessary enough" to make it worth the extra space on the parts panel, for me; I made a conscious choice a while back not to add a 0.625m engine plate.
• Fairing and top node for Mk16 parachute:  I get the idea-- allow an "inline parachute" that doesn't have to be at the top of the stack.  That's a neat idea.  However, again, it's not really a "missing" thing in the sense of creating a gap in the lineup-- I think the idea of inline parachutes is cool, but personally, if I were to add one to my game, I'd rather it be a dedicated part that was designed that way.

However, even if these don't quite "fit" in MissingHistory, they're still really neat ideas, and it would be great for them to be available to folks.  Have you considered releasing them as your own mod?  It's pretty straightforward to set up, and publishing it on SpaceDock (plus setting up an Add-on Releases thread for it, of course) only takes a few minutes.

[Quantum Jim]

No worries, that's understandable. I'll add top nodes and fairings to the rest of the node-attach parachutes, do a little more testing, then release them soon. I have a Spanish test on Monday so I have to study too. Hope you had a good Halloween, y feliz diá de los murtos! 

[linuxgurugamer]

9 minutes ago, Quantum Jim said:

No worries, that's understandable. I'll add top nodes and fairings to the rest of the node-attach parachutes, do a little more testing, then release them soon. I have a Spanish test on Monday so I have to study too. Hope you had a good Halloween, y feliz diá de los murtos! 

Given that there are several mods which already provide inline parachutes, is it really necessary to make one which will look odd?

[Quantum Jim]

34 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Given that there are several mods which already provide inline parachutes, is it really necessary to make one which will look odd?

It doesn't really look odd. It uses existing assets and the modification is very lightweight and limited in scope. You can already do it with existing engine plates with the other parachutes; my mod just makes one less part to worry about. It uses inspiration from Gemini and Mercury.

(Bit off topic: sorry Snark.)

Edited November 1, 2018 by Quantum Jim