[1.12.x PlanetShine 0.2.6.6, Feb 22, 2022

[Papa_Joe]

P L A N E T S H I N E

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Download Latest version:

GitHub:  0.2.6.6 for KSP 1.12.x

Source Code:  https://github.com/PapaJoesSoup/ksp-planetshine

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NOTE:  @Valerian has not been active for awhile and has given me his blessing to adopt this fine mod and keep it alive for the community in his absence.  I've cloned his OP and updated it to reflect changes in support.  All credit for this mod belongs to the original author, and licensing will continue to be Apache 2.0.  Should he return, I will gladly relinquish the mod and provide any assistance needed by Valerian to resume support.  Further, @prestja was kind enough to keep this mod alive during my absense.  After discussions with him, I will be resuming support, and accepting any help he wants to throw my way.

prestja's support thread:  

 

Why PlanetShine?

After trying some mods to improve visuals and get something more realistic looking, Valerian transformed KSP into something really good looking, and he was really happy with the result, but felt that something was still missing.

When in low orbit of a planet, the side of his ship which was facing the planet was completely dark, which was not realistic! It should have been illuminated a bit by the planet's own reflective light!

Valerian decided to fix that with this mod, by making planets and moons to reflect their own (colored) light to your vessel.

This phenomenon is called in real life albedo or planetshine :

 

   

 

What does this mod actually do? (Summary)

• When you are close to a planet or moon, its bright side reflects (colored) light to your vessel.
• More realistic ambient light in vacuum, very dark by default, can be customized.
• More realistic ambient light on the ground and atmosphere of planets/moons, tinted by the surface color.
• Very lightweight: almost no RAM used, and your FPS should not change.

Additional features

• Settings menu to customize many parameters, as well as several quality/performance settings.
• Support for the Toolbar mod.
• Planet and moons light configuration supports Module Manager and loading across GameData folder, and can be easily customized by players or other mods.
• Conflicts with the mod "Ambient Light Adjustment" because it has exactly the same feature: custom ambient light settings with a slider.
• When close to the sun, the sunlight becomes dramatically intense.

 

 

Screenshots

You can see the subtle red light over Duna, green over Jool, and blue over Kerbin:

http://imgur.com/a/4MODI

Before / After Screenshots by CaptRobau:

http://imgur.com/a/Nekay

Recommended mods for the best experience

• Environmental Visual Enhancements for clouds and city lights.
• A good galaxy skybox (using Texture Replacer):
  • Oinker's Skybox
  • Teflon's Skybox
• Chatterer for adding ambient sounds that really improve the immersion.
• An atmospheric sky enhancing mod:
  • SkyTonemapper (Stable) makes the sky look better by smoothing it (removes the banding effect)
  • Scatterer (Experimental - many bugs) makes the sky and atmosphere looking really great and much more realistic, sunsets become amazing.
• Engine lighting for adding realistic lighting to engines thrust.
• Surface Lights to illuminate the ship when it gets really dark.

Additional information

I would appreciate feedback on this mod a lot!

Valerian spent a lot of time trying to make this reflected light to behave as consistent as possible, and thinks it's pretty well tuned by now.

Planet and moons colors are all editable in "CelestialBodies.cfg", and you can change a few other settings in "Settings.cfg", such as the vacuum light level (quite low by default), and the reflection light intensity.

Compatible with all game versions from 0.25 to 1.0, and probably older versions as well.

This mod supports version checking using  the KSP-AVC Plugin.  to take advantage of this feature download the plugin.

Changelog

  Reveal hidden contents

v0.2.6.6 Feb 22, 2022
- Add support for Kerbals EVA experiencing planet shine
- Fix broken Blizzy Toolbar support. File was refactored accidentally.
- Correct white line visible.
- Restore Debug lines
- Thanks for the support!

v0.2.6.5 Feb 20, 2022
- Corrected pink square by changing an incorrect shader path for "Particles/Additive.  now "Legacy Shaders/Particles/Additive"
  Unity changed the location of the shader in the object hierarchy as of Unity 2017.

v0.2.6.4
- Recompiled for KSP 1.12.3
- Papa_Joe resumes maintenance.  Many thanks to Prestja for keeping this mod alive in my absense!
- Refactored some code for newer C# styles and .NET 4.8
- Revised build pipeline to match PapaJoe's multi mod build pipeline.

v0.2.6.3 Nov 23, 2019
- Added support for CKAN
- Works in KSP 1.9

v0.2.6.2 Oct 19, 2019
- Recompiled for KSP 1.8
- Fixed issue where magenta plane would be visible in midsection of player's craft
- Temporarily disabled debug lines as they seem to be causing the aforementioned issue

v0.2.6.1 Mar 28, 2018
- Corrected Version number on Main toolbar window.  Updated to automatically display assembly version.
- Added change log to project and distribution files.
 

v0.2.6.0 2018-03-27

- change in mod maintenance Papa_Joe assuming support in Valerian's absence.

- recompiled for KSP 1.4.x

V0.5 EXPERIMENTAL - 2015-12-14  This can be found in valerian's github releases.

- a large part of the code has been rewritten and cleaned to prepare for the future multiple and inter-bodies planetshine feature.

- planets/moons planetshine color is now auto-detected during gameplay through a virtual camera and will vary depending on the visible biomes and clouds: no need to have specific settings for planets or texture packs (although the old "CelestialBodies.cfg" file will still work for non-color settings, but is no longer necessary).

- changes to several furmulas for both albedo and atmospheric lights, Setttings.cfg needs to be replaced with this new version.

 

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v0.2.5.3 - 2018-04-16  (note this is a version specific release using the ksp131recompile branch of PapaJoesSoup/PlanetShine Repo)
- per forum requests, recompiled for KSP 1.3.1, as many are still using this version.  earlier versions of PlanetShine will still work with KSP 1.3.1 and earlier.
- updated KSP-AVC version file to allow proper detection and CKAN indexing for KSP 1.3.1 
  for later versions of PlanetShine look to the master branch releases.
 

V0.2.5.2 - 2016-10-04

- recompiled to fix issue with KSP build 1564

 

V0.2.5.1 - 2016-09-14

- updated for KSP 1.2 pre-release

- does not work with KSP 1.1.* or older

 

V0.2.5 - 2016-04-04
- updated for KSP 1.1.*
- does not work with KSP 1.0.* or older

 

V0.2.4.2 - 2015-11-28

- fixed missing shadows when orbiting close to the sun
- fixed vessel suddenly turning pitch black when deep underwater

 

V0.2.4.1 - 2015-11-25
- removed the obsolete Real Solar System colors and useless README.txt

 

V0.2.4 - 2015-11-25
- fixed a bug that prevented the stock toolbar icon settings to be saved correctly.
- fixed a bug that sometimes displayed unintended atmospheric lights on all other bodies when in map/orbit view.
- a bit of code cleaning and refactoring, might even improve performance and stability.

 

V0.2.3.1 - 2015-05-10

- fixed the bug that created multiple toolbar buttons (sorry for that)
- the config node name for celestial bodies has been renamed from "CelestialBodyColor" to "PlanetshineCelestialBody", however retro-compatibility will be kept for some time
- the celestial bodies are now loaded through "GameDatabase", meaning that:
    * any "PlanetshineCelestialBody" node within any cfg file in the GameData folder will be loaded automatically
    * other plugins can programatically change "PlanetshineCelestialBody" nodes through "GameDatabase"
    * "PlanetshineCelestialBody" nodes are now affected by Module Manager

 

V0.2.3 - 2015-05-09
- fixed the bug preventing to save settings
- added support for stock toolbar (blizzy's toolbar is no longer required, but still supported)
- added a "close" button to the settings window
- tweaked the default settings, now it's a tiny bit brighter in space

V0.2.2.3 - 2015-05-03
- updated the version file for KSP 1.0.2

V0.2.2.2 - 2015-04-30
- updated the version file for KSP 1.0

V0.2.2.1 - 2014-12-20

- updated the version file for KSP 0.90

 

V0.2.2 - 2014-10-20
- Included a custom planets/moons color file to use with the mod Real Solar System
- Vacuum ambient light level can now be set MUCH brighter
- New option in "CelestialBodies.cfg" to change the level of ground ambient overriding (I made it mostly for compatibility with RSS)
- Fixed some small typos and tweaked some calculations a bit

 

V0.2.1 - 2014-10-18

- Fixed a bug that occurred when starting in single light mode
- Added a performance option to change the update frequency
- Added a "reset to default" button for each setting
- Fixed the ground albedo formula for when there is no atmosphere

 

V0.2.0 - 2014-10-17

- Comprehensive settings menu (requires Toolbar)
- Settings have moved and are no more meant to be edited outside of the game
- Added quality preset options (low, medium, high)
- New ground ambient light enhancement system
- Fixed several light angle calculation bugs
- Added option to choose between vertex or pixel lights

 

V0.1.4 - 2014-10-15
- Added support for Add-on Version Checker and included "MiniAVC"
- Added minimal debug menu to toggle the effects (requires Toolbar)
- Performance improvement: forced vertex lights

V0.1.3 - 2014-10-14
- renamed the mod from "Reflective Ambient Light" to "Planetshine"
- fixed a bug that caused an error on loading
- improved performance

V0.1.2 - 2014-10-13
- improved performance

V0.1.1 - 2014-10-12
- much more options and explanations within the config files, I strongly suggest to look into them
- fixed a bug that made the light suddenly disappear when at sunset/sunrise, instead of doing it smoothly
- fixed a bug that made the light always come from the center of the planet instead of the actual illuminated part of the surface
- the sun now has its own light setting, orbiting close to it has a VERY STRONG effect
- added the option to change the ground atmosphere ambient intensity (the ambient light when you are on the ground) in the settings
- added the option to change the atmosphere ambient altitude fading
- added the option to change the light reflection effect atmosphere altitude and fading
- added the option to change the maximum orbital range of the light reflection
- added the option to set the ratio of atmosphere ambient on ground for each planet/moon
- added the option to disable the area light technique in order to get better performance (by default it uses 3 lights to simulate an area, but if you disable it it will only use one light)
- on planets/moons without atmosphere, the reflective light is more spread around the ship when landed
- tweaked many settings to improve the light effects

V0.1.0 - 2014-10-11
- first released version
- each planet/moon has a different color, picked from a config file
- effect range is 4x the radius of a planet/moon
- the effect strength can be changed in the settings file

 

Known issues

• Conflicts with other mods that change ambient light, such as Ambient Light Adjustment and AmbientLightShifter
• Not tested much on x64, might cause issues
• Might have minor issues with Kopernicus, which optionally provides custom atmospheric and vacuum ambient lights.

 

Planned features

• Automatic detection of planet colors and atmosphere, no more need for CelestialBodies.cfg (working on it right now)
• Actual planetshine (reflected lights between two planet/moon)
• Different reflected light color depending on the biome (land/sea/poles)
• Sunset/sunrise lights
• More performance tweaks, such as reducing the number of light depending on the situation, or using a diffuse wrapping shader
• Choice between presets for ambient light (realistic or stock) and other settings
• Better (future) compatibility with other mods

 

Credits

First and foremost to the original Mod Author @Valerian  for creating this great mod.

Original Mod Forum Thread:  

Valerian copied the planets/moons color list from the Distant Object Enhancement mod

Thanks to TheSexiestofClowns on Reddit for his screenshot that is used at the beginning

A lot of thanks to the people who helped Valerian over IRC, such as Thomas, Rbray89, and a few others

 

Copyright 2014, Valerian Gaudeau, Apache license 2.0  Mod maintenance now supported by @Papa_Joe

Edited February 23, 2022 by Papa_Joe
New release 0.2.6.6, Updated to KSP 1.12.3

[ddavis425]

Nice, great to see continued support for this mod

[Papa_Joe]

I've still go a few minor things to clean up, but it works.  Expect another release soon with some minor cleanup (nothing more than cosmetic changes)

[Brigadier]

Thanks for undertaking this.

What would you recommend for engine lighting?

[Papa_Joe]

6 minutes ago, Brigadier said:

Thanks for undertaking this.

What would you recommend for engine lighting?

I would recommend Engine Lighting:  

While it says it is KSP 1.3.1, according to the latest in the thread it seems to work in 1.4.1.

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

Update: I just released a new version of PlaneShine.

v0.2.6.1 Mar 28, 2018
- Corrected Version number on Main toolbar window.  Updated to automatically display assembly version.
- Added change log to project and distribution files.
 

Still no functional changes, just cleanup to make it display the right version, and some back end stuff to make it easier to build and release as I increase the number of mods I support.  I will never reach the level of support that @linuxgurugamer is at (over 130 mods!), but I can help take up a little of the slack..  

 

Edited March 28, 2018 by Papa_Joe
capitalization

[Brigadier]

9 minutes ago, Papa_Joe said:

15 minutes ago, Brigadier said:

Thanks for undertaking this.

What would you recommend for engine lighting?

I would recommend Engine Lighting:  

Hmm...that makes a lot of sense .  I couldn't find a 1.4.1-compatible version on CKAN and I stopped looking.  Silly me.

Edited March 28, 2018 by Brigadier

[Papa_Joe]

3 minutes ago, Brigadier said:

Hmm...that makes a lot of sense .  I couldn't find a 1.4.1-compatible version on CKAN and I stopped looking.  Silly me.

CKAN does make life easy for keeping track of mods, but it is limited in its flexibility.  I typically don't use it.  However, the price I pay is to have to manually install 50+ mods  

[Brigadier]

2 minutes ago, Papa_Joe said:

CKAN does make life easy for keeping track of mods, but it is limited in its flexibility.  I typically don't use it.  However, the price I pay is to have to manually install 50+ mods  

I got onto CKAN early in my KSP career and once I got over about 25 mods I never really looked back.  I'm ok with its limitations but I have to remind myself that not everyone agrees and sometimes I'm late to enjoy certain mods, especially around version update time (like now).  I can also install manually but really couldn't be bothered.  C'est la vie.

[Sunesha]

Thank you for supporting this mod. I use CKAN too. As long there is convenient way to see when it is updated, I'm happy that this mod has AVC. 

[Valerian]

Hi there, thanks a lot for updating PlanetShine, I'm not much active anymore on KSP since some time and you did the right thing.

I was actually about to quickly update the version today (for real!), but if you can take the mod over it's even better! Well, if you are ok with that of course.

I would really appreciate if you could look into this bug with HullCameraVDS :

 

Also do not hesitate to ask me anything

Edited March 28, 2018 by Valerian

[Papa_Joe]

1 hour ago, Valerian said:

Hi there, thanks a lot for updating PlanetShine, I'm not much active anymore on KSP since some time and you did the right thing.

I was actually about to quickly update the version today (for real!), but if you can take the mod over it's even better! Well, if you are ok with that of course.

I would really appreciate if you could look into this bug with HullCameraVDS :

 

Also do not hesitate to ask me anything

Thanks you kind sir!  I will look into it.  thanks for passing me your blessing!

[Novak]

Wow ! Thanks for the update for 1.4 !

[Apaseall]

I will join the queue and add my thanks for the update.

[Brigadier]

6 hours ago, Valerian said:

Hi there, thanks a lot for updating PlanetShine, I'm not much active anymore on KSP since some time and you did the right thing.

I was actually about to quickly update the version today (for real!), but if you can take the mod over it's even better! Well, if you are ok with that of course.

I would really appreciate if you could look into this bug with HullCameraVDS

I love the irony.  Original developer bestows blessing on successor for mod maintenance and then says "Can you fix this bug?"  See what you got yourself into Papa_Joe?

Seriously, thanks to both of you for this mod.  A very nice, immersive graphics addition.

[Beetlecat]

Hot dang!  Now to get Distant Object Enhancement and Scatterer up and running, and let's go to space!

[jfjohnny5]

Hey @Papa_Joe great to see you're taking on the task of keeping this mod up-to-date! It's such a subtle, but awesome enhancement to KSP visuals.

I noticed you said you don't use CKAN personally, but do you plan to continue keeping PlanetShine registered with CKAN?

[lajoswinkler]

This mod has a lajoswinkler stock seal of approval all over it.

[Valerian]

1 hour ago, jfjohnny5 said:

Hey @Papa_Joe great to see you're taking on the task of keeping this mod up-to-date! It's such a subtle, but awesome enhancement to KSP visuals.

I noticed you said you don't use CKAN personally, but do you plan to continue keeping PlanetShine registered with CKAN?

I could try to help with that maybe later today

[Papa_Joe]

I updated the KSP-AVC version file.  If CKAN is using that (last i Checked it is in general) ,then CKAN should pick up the new version file and update its meta file.

 

[Brigadier]

5 hours ago, Papa_Joe said:

I updated the KSP-AVC version file.  If CKAN is using that (last i Checked it is in general) ,then CKAN should pick up the new version file and update its meta file.

 

Not yet (at 5 hours later) but I think the CKAN cycle is 6 hours (I could easily be mistaken).

[Kontrole]

Great work @Papa_Joe

[Papa_Joe]

Th

52 minutes ago, Kontrole said:

Great work @Papa_Joe

Thanks, but the great work was all @Valerian.  I merely dusted it off and recompiled.  

[OhioBob]

@Papa_Joe, the download link in the OP is still taking us to v0.2.6.0.

[Papa_Joe]

4 minutes ago, OhioBob said:

@Papa_Joe, the download link in the OP is still taking us to v0.2.6.0.

thanks.  I'll correct the direct reference to the version.

 

Update:  Corrected.  Now points to the releases in general.  newest is always at the top.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Papa_Joe

[HaydenTheKing]

How do I tell if it’s working?