mod Idea/request: leveled science experiments

[mr. engino]

One of my biggest gripes with ksp is that once you get all the science for an experiment in a certain biome/situation, that's it; any further missions with the same experiment to that same location will not gain any further science points without science labs, though that only allows the experiment to be run once more per lab. I have thought it over numerous times and I have now thought up a potential solution to this problem: leveled science experiments!

The idea is rather simple: any experiments you have can be upgraded by tech tree advancement to where you have higher level experiments, which are similar to the lower level experiments, but are run with 'more sophisticated' hardware! This in turn would allow one to send out subsequent probes with the same experiments, allowing for greater immersion! The best real-life analogy I can think of would be the Mariner missions to mars: Mariner 4 sent us the first glimpse of mars with a somewhat primitive camera, with Mariner 6 and 7 giving us a more detailed image of mars and Mariner 9 giving us an even better look at the Martian surface through better cameras.

If anyone would like to make this idea a reality, please do so!

[goldenpsp]

So just to throw it out there, If you look, most modders become modders because they have some cool idea they wish was in the game.  They look around to find it doesn't exist, and then decide to make it themselves.

Many also have no background in modding or programming.

 

[Tyko]

Adding to what @goldenpsp said...you could start just by playing with the science experiment config files.

You could copy an existing part and it's associated experiment and tweak it. For example: The game includes the 2Hot Thermometer and it's experiment called Temperature Scan. The Stock configs will give you examples of how to create a new higher tech thermometer (3Hot ?) and a new experiment called Advanced Temperature Scan. 

The configs can be opened and played with using a simple text editor and the format is pretty straightforward - especially because you have the originals as a template. Here are a few resources:

This explains how science works: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Science

This is the link to the Module Manager page. You'll find guides and a helpful group of modders on that forum. 

 

 

 

Edited November 28, 2018 by Tyko

[mr. engino]

26 minutes ago, Tyko said:

Adding to what @goldenpsp said...you could start just by playing with the science experiment config files.

You could copy an existing part and it's associated experiment and tweak it. For example: The game includes the 2Hot Thermometer and it's experiment called Temperature Scan. The Stock configs will give you examples of how to create a new higher tech thermometer (3Hot ?) and a new experiment called Advanced Temperature Scan. 

The configs can be opened and played with using a simple text editor and the format is pretty straightforward - especially because you have the originals as a template. Here are a few resources:

This explains how science works: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Science

This is the link to the Module Manager page. You'll find guides and a helpful group of modders on that forum. 

 

 

 

Wonderful suggestion, but I feel it's better to let a more experienced modder create this, as the concept I had in mind is a bit more complex than what I had written, and its currently beyond my mod making expertise.

[Tyko]

5 minutes ago, mr. engino said:

Wonderful suggestion, but I feel it's better to let a more experienced modder create this, as the concept I had in mind is a bit more complex than what I had written, and its currently beyond my mod making expertise.

You gotta start somewhere...and simple now is better than some complex idea that never gets built. I've made a ton of tiny mods for my own use and published three mods built just by reading the references I sent you, studying other people's config files and screwing around with them.

[mr. engino]

2 minutes ago, Tyko said:

You gotta start somewhere...and simple now is better than some complex idea that never gets built. I've made a ton of tiny mods for my own use and published three mods built just by reading the references I sent you, studying other people's config files and screwing around with them.

Yes, but my current skill with mod making is not good enough to pull off my idea in the first post without having it look like excrements.

[Tyko]

6 minutes ago, mr. engino said:

Yes, but my current skill with mod making is not good enough to pull off my idea in the first post without having it look like excrements.

I believe you're making a judgement about the level of skill required without bothering to take a look at what it would actually take because the time it's taking between my explanations and your responses isn't enough to allow for you to be doing any actual research on it. There's nothing that has to "look bad"...but, i'm putting more effort into explaining things than you want to put into trying, so I'm gonna sign off for now.

I understand you were asking someone else to do the work, not asking for help making it yourself...so no biggie...If you change your mind there are plenty of people who would help you learn

Best of luck!   

Edited November 28, 2018 by Tyko

[mr. engino]

4 minutes ago, Tyko said:

I believe you're making a judgement about the level of skill required without bothering to take a look at what it would actually take because the time it's taking between my explanations and your responses isn't enough to allow for you to be doing any actual research on it. There's nothing that has to "look bad"...but, i'm putting more effort into explaining things than you want to put into trying, so I'm gonna sign off for now.

If you actually take the time to read up and come back with questions I'll be happy to give advice, but I can't do it for you 

Best of luck!   

Well to top it all, I have zero ideas on how to implement this myself. Do I add it via upgrades to tech tree? Is it a separate part? Do I add some kind of feature that has never been implemented before? Please don't assume I know what to do, the only "mod" I ever made was for Chatterer, and that was just a simple set of audio files!

[theonegalen]

Yeah, you could do the basic cfg work on your own, no prob. All you would need to make it work coding-wise, is in the game already. You can add new science types through config: for example, the default would be like "Take Pressure Readings" and you could rename it "Take Basic Pressure Readings" and copy/paste "Take Advanced Pressure Readings", then put that experiment in your new copied part.

Look up KSP Part Configs, the ScienceDefs.cfg file, and other config files in the SQUAD folder under GameData. Searching for contents of .cfg files can help (here's a tut: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/search-file-contents-windows/). Use Notepad++ because it's the best way to make basic text files.

I've been amazed at how many times I've seen old posts from forum users who have amazing mods now that say, "I would love this, but I have no idea how to code/model/texture/etc." 90% of KSP mods started with an idea for a mod and no idea how to get it done, and then we learned how to do it by looking at other mods and the SQUAD files.

Good Luck!

Edited November 28, 2018 by theonegalen

[goldenpsp]

@mr. engino

So i was trying to be a bit more subtle in my original reply.

The reality is that contrary to (maybe) popular opinion, there are very few, if any modders who sit around thinking "man I'd love to volunteer my time to make  a KSP mod if only I had a good idea"

Most if not all mods are passion projects.   A cool idea someone had, it didn't exist, so they had the interest and the drive to make it. That includes in many cases teaching themselves coding or modeling (or both).

 

So the bottom line is that if you truly want to see your idea become reality, you most likely will have to write it yourself.

[mr. engino]

1 hour ago, goldenpsp said:

@mr. engino

So i was trying to be a bit more subtle in my original reply.

The reality is that contrary to (maybe) popular opinion, there are very few, if any modders who sit around thinking "man I'd love to volunteer my time to make  a KSP mod if only I had a good idea"

Most if not all mods are passion projects.   A cool idea someone had, it didn't exist, so they had the interest and the drive to make it. That includes in many cases teaching themselves coding or modeling (or both).

 

So the bottom line is that if you truly want to see your idea become reality, you most likely will have to write it yourself.

So I notice. I just had a chat on the discord server about this, and it appears that there is no way to use already existing frameworks to make this happen, it'll have to be done from scratch; which means it won't be easy...

[goldenpsp]

44 minutes ago, mr. engino said:

... which means it won't be easy...

Nothing worthwhile ever is...

[mr. engino]

49 minutes ago, goldenpsp said:

Nothing worthwhile ever is...

True that, but this is even more difficult than it should be.

[Tyko]

17 hours ago, mr. engino said:

So I notice. I just had a chat on the discord server about this, and it appears that there is no way to use already existing frameworks to make this happen, it'll have to be done from scratch; which means it won't be easy...

It all depends on how you define your needs/goals. You could build a set of advanced science experiments - like I and @goldenpsp have been suggesting - in a couple of hours with no programming knowledge, just a text editor.

Once you figure out the first one the others would be super simple and you'd end up with a whole new set of advanced experiments. The only challenging aspect would be 3D modeling, but you could totally get around that by re-using the existing parts and renaming them. The current thermometer model could be used again as thermometer mk2, etc etc.

Why do I feel a bit like Yoda telling Luke he can easily lift the x-wing out of the bog if he'd just believe it's possible and give it a try???

Edited November 29, 2018 by Tyko