[1.3.0] Kerbal Engineer Redux 1.1.3.0 (2017-05-28)

[maranble14]

59 minutes ago, Leo_G. said:

 

As Shamus said, it'll be worth the wait.  Though it would be nice to see Squad work out some kind of profit sharing deal and incorporate things like KER, KAS, KIS, and Landing Height Display or Radar Altitude into the stock game, as (I think) they should have been stock from the beginning.  By this point, you ABSOLUTELY @#*$ing AMAZING mod makers have done most of the heavy lifting.

They should, but I doubt they will. Why pay their developers to spend time working on mods when the community can do it for them for free? That is actually an excellent business strategy.

[MartGonzo]

7 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Odd, I consider that incredibly useful information. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I must admit I have no idea what most of the things KER measures are but having them there is reassuring and made me look clever when I was showing off KSP to a friend.

(but he knows me quite well so he probably wasn't fooled )

[lordqarlyn]

I too am really looking forward the 1.2 version. I never realized how much I depended on the measurements it provides, especially the TWR and delta-v per stage, and that I can change the reference from Kerbin to other bodies to get a feel how my spacecraft will perform, well, in space.
In my view, it should be stock. I see KER like your engineering team. You the boss proposes configuration, KER acting as the grunt engineers does the grunt math work to calculate the expected performance.

[FirroSeranel]

10 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Odd, I consider that incredibly useful information. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

It comes up at about -100,000 m, so there's plenty of time to observe that change, say... 500-700 m/s before orbital velocity. You just miss the meaningless ones that are well outside of LKO.

Edited October 17, 2016 by FirroSeranel

[Padishar]

On 10/14/2016 at 5:14 PM, Padishar said:

I do have a couple of bodge fixes to the existing code that improve it a bit that I will try to release some time over the weekend.  The full support for adjustable tank priority (and other things like multi-vessel support and control over staging) will take longer...

Here is a test build of some simple changes that should improve a number of cases.  If you see log spam or obviously incorrect calculations (that don't involve tank priority) then please post useful information here, e.g. complete (zipped) logs, mod list, screenshots of build engineer in "All Stages" mode, craft file, etc.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fd6m86xg5sxdm1t/KerbalEngineer-1.1.2.1p.zip?dl=0

This is simply the built version of my PR #105

Edited October 17, 2016 by Padishar

[Fwiffo]

4 hours ago, Padishar said:

Here is a test build of some simple changes that should improve a number of cases.  If you see log spam or obviously incorrect calculations (that don't involve tank priority) then please post useful information here, e.g. complete (zipped) logs, mod list, screenshots of build engineer in "All Stages" mode, craft file, etc.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fd6m86xg5sxdm1t/KerbalEngineer-1.1.2.1p.zip?dl=0

This is simply the built version of my PR #105

Sweet, thanks!  Does that cover off all the "known" fuel calculation problems, or are there any more you're aware of that still linger?

[Padishar]

11 minutes ago, Fwiffo said:

Sweet, thanks!  Does that cover off all the "known" fuel calculation problems, or are there any more you're aware of that still linger?

It only fixes a couple of issues for the moment, there are quite possibly others remaining and I would appreciate details of problems as mentioned above...

[Rokmonkey]

7 hours ago, Padishar said:

Here is a test build of some simple changes that should improve a number of cases.  If you see log spam or obviously incorrect calculations (that don't involve tank priority) then please post useful information here, e.g. complete (zipped) logs, mod list, screenshots of build engineer in "All Stages" mode, craft file, etc.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fd6m86xg5sxdm1t/KerbalEngineer-1.1.2.1p.zip?dl=0

This is simply the built version of my PR #105

I appreciate you making these fixes while the mainline gets worked on the background.  I am curious if you have noticed (or anyone else who has been using the early releases), the toolbar in the lower right in the VAB vanishing.  It responds to clicks but it can't be seen and the text disappears from the contract and engineering report windows.  I've done tests and found that it's KER but I can't say for sure if it's only KER or just it's interaction with all the other mods.  I did notice it when only KER was being used during the 1.2 pre-release however.

[Padishar]

1 minute ago, Rokmonkey said:

I appreciate you making these fixes while the mainline gets worked on the background.  I am curious if you have noticed (or anyone else who has been using the early releases), the toolbar in the lower right in the VAB vanishing.  It responds to clicks but it can't be seen and the text disappears from the contract and engineering report windows.  I've done tests and found that it's KER but I can't say for sure if it's only KER or just it's interaction with all the other mods.  I did notice it when only KER was being used during the 1.2 pre-release however.

I've not noticed it myself but I haven't been playing that much recently.  I have heard reports of this issue and another issue with the parts in the editor disappearing/flickering but neither have mentioned KER being implicated, both are suspected of being Unity layer rendering bugs.  Do you have an output_log.txt file from a run of KSP where this has happened?

[Torih]

34 minutes ago, Rokmonkey said:

I appreciate you making these fixes while the mainline gets worked on the background.  I am curious if you have noticed (or anyone else who has been using the early releases), the toolbar in the lower right in the VAB vanishing.  It responds to clicks but it can't be seen and the text disappears from the contract and engineering report windows.  I've done tests and found that it's KER but I can't say for sure if it's only KER or just it's interaction with all the other mods.  I did notice it when only KER was being used during the 1.2 pre-release however.

Seems to be related to the number of parts in parts list, been getting worse and worse as the large mod packs came out. Tried removing a couple of big packs and it mostly went. Similar reports in the help section.

[Rantanplan1986]

43 minutes ago, Rokmonkey said:

I appreciate you making these fixes while the mainline gets worked on the background.  I am curious if you have noticed (or anyone else who has been using the early releases), the toolbar in the lower right in the VAB vanishing.  It responds to clicks but it can't be seen and the text disappears from the contract and engineering report windows.  I've done tests and found that it's KER but I can't say for sure if it's only KER or just it's interaction with all the other mods.  I did notice it when only KER was being used during the 1.2 pre-release however.

This is the Support-threat for that flickering issue. As for now its highly likely that a high part-count is causing this unrelated to a specific mod.

 

 

[Tarheel1999]

4 minutes ago, Rantanplan1986 said:

This is the Support-threat for that flickering issue. As for now its highly likely that a high part-count is causing this unrelated to a specific mod.

 

 

It's strongly correlated to part count but I think there's more than that going on. Filter Extensions, which does not add parts just categories in the editor, can make the flicker problem worse if you already have it. FE doesn't appear to cause flicker in a pure stock install though. I think it has to do with the number of parts in any particular category and the number of categories. Searching with a lot of parts tends to make the flicker more likely to occur. 

Edited October 17, 2016 by Tarheel1999

[Rokmonkey]

1 hour ago, Padishar said:

I've not noticed it myself but I haven't been playing that much recently.  I have heard reports of this issue and another issue with the parts in the editor disappearing/flickering but neither have mentioned KER being implicated, both are suspected of being Unity layer rendering bugs.  Do you have an output_log.txt file from a run of KSP where this has happened?

Aha it appears it's not a KER issue but a hodgepodge of issues all happening at once, atleast it appears so after reading that support thread that @Rantanplan1986 linked.

[Fwiffo]

9 hours ago, Padishar said:

Here is a test build of some simple changes that should improve a number of cases.  If you see log spam or obviously incorrect calculations (that don't involve tank priority) then please post useful information here, e.g. complete (zipped) logs, mod list, screenshots of build engineer in "All Stages" mode, craft file, etc.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fd6m86xg5sxdm1t/KerbalEngineer-1.1.2.1p.zip?dl=0

This is simply the built version of my PR #105

Hey @Padishar, minor thing, I noticed the HelpStrings.xml in your distribution seems tremendously cut down compared to what I had in my 1.1.3 Gamedata.  Are you using an old version, or did a bunch of stuff get cut out on purpose?

I recall making some manual additions on my end to improve / add definitions that were missing, but seems to me you have even more SettingItem's missing than that would explain.  (It's been a while since I touched that file so I don't remember all the context off the top of my head).

Anyway, you or @cybutek, let me know if I should do a pull request somewhere to merge in my enhancements (and point me to the version I should use as a baseline).

[pacomatic33]

Just wanted to say thanks for the quick update to keep us all rolling along here. Much appreciated.

[Padishar]

1 hour ago, Fwiffo said:

Hey @Padishar, minor thing, I noticed the HelpStrings.xml in your distribution seems tremendously cut down compared to what I had in my 1.1.3 Gamedata.  Are you using an old version, or did a bunch of stuff get cut out on purpose?

I recall making some manual additions on my end to improve / add definitions that were missing, but seems to me you have even more SettingItem's missing than that would explain.  (It's been a while since I touched that file so I don't remember all the context off the top of my head).

Anyway, you or @cybutek, let me know if I should do a pull request somewhere to merge in my enhancements (and point me to the version I should use as a baseline).

That file hasn't changed in either cybutek's or my repo since 6th November 2014.  I guess you must have made the changes yourself (or possibly some other kind soul on the forum did).

By all means submit a PR.  The best place would be cybutek's master branch...

[Fwiffo]

10 minutes ago, Padishar said:

By all means submit a PR.  The best place would be cybutek's master branch...

Done (hopefully).  Could you take a quick look at the diffs to make sure it's sane?

[ajburges]

20 hours ago, FirroSeranel said:

It comes up at about -100,000 m, so there's plenty of time to observe that change, say... 500-700 m/s before orbital velocity. You just miss the meaningless ones that are well outside of LKO.

You need to remember that Pe is displayed as altitude. Once you develop proper intuition for it, that negative number correlates to dV required for orbit. Remember an object at rest on the surface is locked at Ap of orbit traveling at sidereal velocity with constant 9.8 m/s^2 radial acceleration.

Edited October 18, 2016 by ajburges

[Vegemeister]

6 hours ago, Fwiffo said:

Done (hopefully).  Could you take a quick look at the diffs to make sure it's sane?

Descriptions of semi-major and semi-minor axes are confusing in the context of orbital mechanics. People will probably read "center of orbit" as the focus at the center body, not the geometric center of the orbital ellipse.  Would probably be better to describe as "half the largest/smallest diameter of the orbit". Or possibly length/width, if you don't expect users to understand diameter.

Separator "creats" a line.

I am unsure about the description of Thermal.CriticalPart.  I haven't read the code, but my intuitive expectation is that it should be the part that is closest to it's maximum temperature.  I'm not sure what it would mean for a part to be "most structurally critical", or how KER could make such a determination.

Vessel.SpecificImpulse should probably be described as the "combined" Isp, not the "average". Calling it the average could make people think that it's an arithmetic mean.

Surface.Biome should be correct even if the vessel is landed or splashed, so the description should probably not use the word "flying", and instead say "biome below the vessel".

[Fwiffo]

@Vegemeister Thanks for catching those and enlightening me; please, please feel free to edit away at that file on Github!

In the meantime I've fixed most of what you pointed out and did further cleanup on the file.

I didn't touch Orbital.SemiMinorAxis and Orbital.SemiMinorAxis.  The descriptions there are the ones in KER today.  I agree they might be misleading, although personally (and being someone without much knowledge of orbital mechanics) at first glance I interpreted "centre of an orbit" the way it was intended (i.e. not center of the body being orbited).  Too tired right now to come up with verbiage I like better, so left it as is.  Feel free to take a shot.

To be honest some of the descriptions I don't even remember writing and probably copy/pasted (or programmatically extracted) from documentation elsewhere (or inherited from wherever I got my original HelpStrings.xml file).

If there are opportunities to reduce the verboseness of what's there it would probably also help for when the tooltips are displayed.

BTW @cybutek I'm not sure if AtmosphericEfficiency should be "1" or "100%" (maybe someone here can do a quick vessel launch with KER and remind us what format it shows that in - IIRC it may have changed in one of the prior updates). It's in percent, so my file is correct.

Edited October 18, 2016 by Fwiffo

[maja]

Hi @Padishar, I found a little bug in version 1.1.2.1p. After clicking on the "Return to target selection" button in the Rendevous section, the error message is generated:

[EXC 23:26:49.868] NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
	KerbalEngineer.Flight.Readouts.Rendezvous.TargetSelector.DrawTarget (KerbalEngineer.Flight.Sections.SectionModule section)
	KerbalEngineer.Flight.Readouts.Rendezvous.TargetSelector.Draw (KerbalEngineer.Flight.Sections.SectionModule section)
	KerbalEngineer.Flight.Sections.SectionModule.DrawReadoutModules ()
	KerbalEngineer.Flight.Sections.SectionModule.Draw ()
	KerbalEngineer.Flight.Sections.SectionWindow.Window (Int32 windowId)
	UnityEngine.GUILayout+LayoutedWindow.DoWindow (Int32 windowID)
	UnityEngine.GUI.CallWindowDelegate (UnityEngine.WindowFunction func, Int32 id, UnityEngine.GUISkin _skin, Int32 forceRect, Single width, Single height, UnityEngine.GUIStyle style)

If you need more info (full log etc.), I can post it tomorrow.

[Padishar]

1 hour ago, maja said:

If you need more info (full log etc.), I can post it tomorrow.

Thanks for the report, don't worry about full logs, it looks pretty obvious where the problem is.  I'll try to get a fix out in the morning...

[Janu Hull]

Thank you for the pre-complete version.   Even if the dV computations are a little wonky, just having access to proper altitude and orbital information is a godsend.

[Rantanplan1986]

On 17.10.2016 at 1:36 PM, Padishar said:

Here is a test build of some simple changes that should improve a number of cases.  If you see log spam or obviously incorrect calculations (that don't involve tank priority) then please post useful information here, e.g. complete (zipped) logs, mod list, screenshots of build engineer in "All Stages" mode, craft file, etc.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fd6m86xg5sxdm1t/KerbalEngineer-1.1.2.1p.zip?dl=0

This is simply the built version of my PR #105

Hi there,

i found a quirk while using KER and while i'm using a dev/test-build, i thought i might tell someone.

It happens when using the SkyCrane part from USI-Kolonization mod. If SkyCrane is the rootpart of the vessel the vessel-stat show normal in the VAB, but when it is being rerooted (e.g. to a probecore) and another part is added (the vessel-stats are updated/recalculated) they vanish. When SkyCrane becomes root again and the stats are recalculated they show again.

 

I made a small series of pictures here for illustration. Also the KerbalEngineer.log and the KSP.log if you deem the useful.

[Padishar]

21 minutes ago, Rantanplan1986 said:

Hi there,

i found a quirk while using KER and while i'm using a dev/test-build, i thought i might tell someone.

It happens when using the SkyCrane part from USI-Kolonization mod. If SkyCrane is the rootpart of the vessel the vessel-stat show normal in the VAB, but when it is being rerooted (e.g. to a probecore) and another part is added (the vessel-stats are updated/recalculated) they vanish. When SkyCrane becomes root again and the stats are recalculated they show again.

I made a small series of pictures here for illustration. Also the KerbalEngineer.log and the KSP.log if you deem the useful.

I don't have that mod and it may take me a couple of days to get around to installing it.  In VAB screenshots, you should always click the "All Stages" button in the build engineer.  This will cause the window to also show those stages that have 0 deltaV and this can be a great help to work out what is happening.  Those logs are unlikely to show anything useful for deltaV calculation issues.  To make the logs useful you need to click the Settings button and then click the "Verbose Simulation Log" button.  This will cause the deltaV calculation code to dump a lot of information about the vessel and how the calculations were done into the log.  Do this in each of the situations you want to show and then upload the output_log.txt file from the KSP_x64_Data folder (not either of those other logs).

Do you know what happens if either the fuel tank or the parachute (assuming it lets you) is the root?

One other thing you could try is after setting a different part to be root, detach all the fuel tanks from the new root part and then reattach them.  This may reset some of the fuel flow system (this used to be required when rerooting in earlier versions and I'm not sure if it was fixed in 1.2 so giving it a try can't hurt).

One other thing, you have a large amount of mods installed.  Are you sure that they have all been updated to work with KSP 1.2?  Even a single plugin not specifically built for 1.2 can cause problems for other mods and/or the stock game code.

9 hours ago, Padishar said:

Thanks for the report, don't worry about full logs, it looks pretty obvious where the problem is.  I'll try to get a fix out in the morning...

@maja, you can find a version that should fix your problem here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n936hgqhvjpypu7/KerbalEngineer-1.1.2.2p.zip?dl=0

It may also fix the occasional crashes when switching to target, or it may not...