[1.12.x] [Planet Pack] Minor Planets Expansion

[Exo's Lab]

On 11/18/2024 at 4:26 AM, Manul said:

Did you see this?

 

I hadn't seen that before! That's some really stunning work! We're continuing to experiment with the "official" scatterer support, today we're playing around with the reworked atmosphere curves and adjusting our own take on Ervo's atmosphere visually, (it'll be more blue than purple). Things have been a little busy these past few days, so time has been tight, but I'm hoping towards the end of the week my schedule will begin to open up, and I'm hoping to have something worth sharing.

Edited November 20 by Exo's Lab

[Exo's Lab]

Yes, we are really working on this! Progress has been slow, but already there are some noticeable enhancements over the previous MPE build! (This is of course nothing groundbreaking, largely just thanks to knowing how to use systems I didn't know how to use at the time, such as terrain scatters. Regardless, we will be certainly leaving MPE nicer looking than when we left it!)

[Exo's Lab]

Here are some additional screenshots:

Been doing experiments to see what can be done to create near-waveless oceans with Scatterer. Cascading wavelets and ripples dance around the partially-submerged probe. This effect isn't perfect yet and there are some visual bugs I'm trying to smash.

Some touch-ups have been given to Ervo's appearance from space, most notably there is now scatterer support for its (newly extended) atmosphere, but the normal and colormap have received adjustments as well. Archae in this screenshot was not changed to use the Vall terrain textures at this point.

Archae has similarly received some additional touchups to its color and normal maps, and both objects have had additional complexity added to their procedural terrain elements.

And here's a shot of sunset on Ervo!

[Iapetus7342]

Nice scatterer configs, I wonder who suggested them?

[Exo's Lab]

Here's two additional teasers! Today managed to be decently productive for the mod, focusing on Havous.

Spoiler

Havous has received an art pass! Terrain scatters, more dramatic PQS terrain, and a new colormap! Like with Archae, we're keeping the spirit of the original intact, while emphasizing terrain features to make smaller scale details more defined.

Another shot of Ervo and Archae together, showing off their own new appearances from space.

[Iapetus7342]

On 12/2/2024 at 9:25 PM, Exo's Lab said:

Here's two additional teasers! Today managed to be decently productive for the mod, focusing on Havous.

  Reveal hidden contents

Havous has received an art pass! Terrain scatters, more dramatic PQS terrain, and a new colormap! Like with Archae, we're keeping the spirit of the original intact, while emphasizing terrain features to make smaller scale details more defined.

Another shot of Ervo and Archae together, showing off their own new appearances from space.

Havous looks amazing, can't wait to visit it (if i ever go back to Kerbol)

[Exo's Lab]

Since I last posted, Havous' moons, Mracksis, and Soden have all received some visual improvements, all the aforementioned bodies plus Flake and Lon have also have visual bugs fixed, all have received terrain scatters, and some have had their terrain forms improved as well.

Spoiler

With all post-Neidon bodies given some new love, I've begun looking into a compatibility patch for the stock system so that MPE, after four years in the wild, can be used standalone without OPM!(More accurately, moving the current orbits into a special patch for OPM, while new default orbits for the stock system are read by default.)
P.S. Skipper Belt is a name I've wanted to assign to the Kerbolar System's outer belt for a long time now. Unclear how heavily I'll lean into the term in new descriptions/science definitions.

 

Other than that, I've been rather occupied lately (and for good holiday reasons! nothing bad!) so progress has somewhat slowed. But don't fret, I'm still working when opportunities present themselves.

Edited December 15 by Exo's Lab

[Iapetus7342]

11 hours ago, Exo's Lab said:

Since I last posted, Havous' moons, Mracksis, and Soden have all received some visual improvements, all the aforementioned bodies plus Flake and Lon have also have visual bugs fixed, all have received terrain scatters, and some have had their terrain forms improved as well.

  Hide contents

With all post-Neidon bodies given some new love, I've begun looking into a compatibility patch for the stock system so that MPE, after four years in the wild, can be used standalone without OPM!(More accurately, moving the current orbits into a special patch for OPM, while new default orbits for the stock system are read by default.)
P.S. Skipper Belt is a name I've wanted to assign to the Kerbolar System's outer belt for a long time now. Unclear how heavily I'll lean into the term in new descriptions/science definitions.

 

Other than that, I've been rather occupied lately (and for good holiday reasons! nothing bad!) so progress has somewhat slowed. But don't fret, I'm still working when opportunities present themselves.

Love the new looks

Also, the images at the start of the post are broken because they're Discord images, which have a lifetime before disappearing. Try uploading the images to Imgur.

Edited December 15 by Iapetus7342

[Interplanet Janet]

Honestly still one of the greatest planet mods of all time, and I can't wait for the official rerelease.

[Exo's Lab]

Hello lovely people!

During this time of revisiting MPE, I've decided to place emphasis on increasing the functionality of the pack's current contents over adding additional objects. To that point, while I'm working on art passes for MPE's resident asteroids, I'd like to show you a new feature I've wanted to add for a long time: Stock System Compatibility!

That's right! OPM is no longer a soft-requirement for MPE! When OPM is not installed, the orbits of Havous, Mracksis, Ervo, and Soden are brought inwards (kept proportional in distance to Jool as they were with Neidon, I opted for this over assigning new resonances for the sake of ease, but this may still change). Crokslev meanwhile is moved from being a centaur into the leading Lagrangian point of Jool, becoming a soft-representative for trojan asteroids!

Where relevant, some objects have had their descriptions changed to avoid mentions of the OPM worlds, and swapping them in for descriptions that reflect their new contexts. (For example, Crokslev has a completely new description, and Havous is referred to as "Eeloo's sister" as opposed to "Plock's sister").

I would like to add compatibilities (and appropriate physically-based descriptions for all objects, that do not reference other planets) for more systems and even some OPM alternatives going forward, but I'll wait until all objects have received their art passes to do so! I'll be showing off the new looks for the asteroids soon!

[modus]

1 hour ago, Exo's Lab said:

I would like to add compatibilities (and appropriate physically-based descriptions for all objects, that do not reference other planets) for more systems and even some OPM alternatives going forward, but I'll wait until all objects have received their art passes to do so! I'll be showing off the new looks for the asteroids soon!

Yeah, so while I understand what you're doing with the stock compatibility, I wonder what will happen if I try this with the wonderfull Kerbol System Expansion, a great OPM replacer.

I haven't tried it yet, but I think I'm going to want to keep the MPE orbits as they were. Is that possible (maybe with some cfg tinkering)?

Anyway, I was a MPE fan, I will definitely remain so, seeing what you're doing, keep it up!

[Exo's Lab]

33 minutes ago, modus said:

Yeah, so while I understand what you're doing with the stock compatibility, I wonder what will happen if I try this with the wonderful Kerbol System Expansion, a great OPM replacer.

I haven't tried it yet, but I think I'm going to want to keep the MPE orbits as they were. Is that possible (maybe with some cfg tinkering)?

Anyway, I was a MPE fan, I will definitely remain so, seeing what you're doing, keep it up!

I am aware of the recently released Kerbol System Expansion, and I think it's a rather impressive piece of work!
I do indeed intend to create a patch that places MPE objects into appropriate locations among KSE's outer planets, I haven't quite gotten around to it yet, but I will!

Need to download the pack and see where its planets are located relative to OPM's, if they're similar we might not need to change MPE's OPM layout very much to make it work.

[FTLparachute]

Looking forward to 1.0.9, keep up the good work

[Exo's Lab]

Greetings again!

I'm here to post some teases for the MPE asteroids and their new art passes! MPE's asteroids were always the weaker of its objects whenever I looked back on this project, so I'm very glad to give them some much-needed love. Vant and Crokslev received relatively minor touch ups, but Zore and Edas are rocking some very new looks!

See for yourself:

Spoiler

Crokslev

Vant

Zore

Edas

Wanna really see for yourself? You can check out MPE 1.1's new features early on the Official MPE GitHub!

Note everything is in a very experimental state right now, this isn't a full-release yet! But if you encounter any problems, let me know!

You might even find a few extra bonus features...

Edited December 21 by Exo's Lab
cool emphasis

[modus]

12 hours ago, Exo's Lab said:

I am aware of the recently released Kerbol System Expansion, and I think it's a rather impressive piece of work!
I do indeed intend to create a patch that places MPE objects into appropriate locations among KSE's outer planets, I haven't quite gotten around to it yet, but I will!

Need to download the pack and see where its planets are located relative to OPM's, if they're similar we might not need to change MPE's OPM layout very much to make it work.

Thanks for checking this out (when you find the time ofc)!

I'm totally guestimating, but I think the KSE orbits are kinda similar to the OPM orbits. I use MPE and KSE and the MPE orbits don't look out of place

When I have time to play I'll try with the modification and with the patch (changing the NEEDS[OPM] to NEEDS [KSE] would do the trick I guess), and see what happens.

Also,

Spoiler

Love the idea of the jool rings, but do you need OPM for this? I'm not a module manager wizard, don't really know what AFTER after NEEDS does

 

[modus]

So following up on my previous post, I tried MPE+KSE, once with the OPM patch (so forcing the orbits to change, because I don't have OPM) and once with a changed patch (NEEDS:[OPM] swapped with NEEDS:[KerbolExpansion]

With OPM Patch

With changed Patch

==> changing the patch works
==> I (but that's just me, I am by no means telling you what to do with your mod!!) like the 'wider' orbits better with KSE.

And
 

Spoiler

I also changed the patch for the Jool rings, because it needs OPM. 
Maybe you should consider removing OPM as a dependency?

But! I have to say: the new textures are chef's kiss

[Exo's Lab]

11 hours ago, modus said:

Thanks for checking this out (when you find the time ofc)!

I'm totally guestimating, but I think the KSE orbits are kinda similar to the OPM orbits. I use MPE and KSE and the MPE orbits don't look out of place

When I have time to play I'll try with the modification and with the patch (changing the NEEDS[OPM] to NEEDS [KSE] would do the trick I guess), and see what happens.

Also,

  Hide contents

Love the idea of the jool rings, but do you need OPM for this? I'm not a module manager wizard, don't really know what AFTER after NEEDS does

 

Ah! re: that patch you mentioned thank you for pointing that out! The ring patches used to all be one config, I originally made that small addon for two friends of mine and their KSP playthrough, when I separated them I forgot to change the logic

I will fix that quickly!

I did download KSE last night and took a look around, I'm a bit split on how I'll organize the dwarf planets within the new outer system (that extra planet makes things interesting, I might put Ervo and Soden beyond it?) but open to suggestions!

[modus]

1 hour ago, Exo's Lab said:

I will fix that quickly!

Swell!

1 hour ago, Exo's Lab said:

I did download KSE last night and took a look around, I'm a bit split on how I'll organize the dwarf planets within the new outer system (that extra planet makes things interesting, I might put Ervo and Soden beyond it?) but open to suggestions!

Yeah I'd definitely put Ervo and Soden beyond the extra planet (like my second screenshot). I also like Geito and Lint-Mikey going really far out.

[Exo's Lab]

28 minutes ago, modus said:

Swell!

Yeah I'd definitely put Ervo and Soden beyond the extra planet (like my second screenshot). I also like Geito and Lint-Mikey going really far out.

Sounds great! Also, I was just in contact with Smushanoob, creator of KSE, and neither of us were quite sure what that eccentric brown planet in your screenshots was...? Is that from KSE or a different pack? I don't seem to have it in my game

[modus]

23 minutes ago, Exo's Lab said:

Sounds great! Also, I was just in contact with Smushanoob, creator of KSE, and neither of us were quite sure what that eccentric brown planet in your screenshots was...? Is that from KSE or a different pack? I don't seem to have it in my game

That's weird. It's Ascension, it's most definitely from KSE (latest release from github)

[Exo's Lab]

We got all of it figured out!

The new KSE Patch is now up on GitHub alongside some small file optimizations!

[DareMightyThingsJPL]

I love the revamps so and the stock system support! Can't wait to go back to the dwarf minor planets in my save. Will need to as well - I think my already planted flags may be either underground or floating in  the air. 

Questions:

- Is it ok if I write some basic Spacedust configs for the comets? I'm unsure of Ervo's atmospheric composition, and how dense resource scattering should be, but I have basic experience adding SpaceDustUnbound support, giving Crokslev and Havous some rock and water to their rings. If you can give like rough percentages of what Ervo's atmosphere should be made of, it would be helpful.

- How much are the rings altered in the optional patch? is it just a higher resolution, or are they extended or made smaller - Again, for SpaceDustUnbound configs.

[Exo's Lab]

27 minutes ago, DareMightyThingsJPL said:

I love the revamps so and the stock system support! Can't wait to go back to the dwarf minor planets in my save. Will need to as well - I think my already planted flags may be either underground or floating in  the air. 

Questions:

- Is it ok if I write some basic Spacedust configs for the comets? I'm unsure of Ervo's atmospheric composition, and how dense resource scattering should be, but I have basic experience adding SpaceDustUnbound support, giving Crokslev and Havous some rock and water to their rings. If you can give like rough percentages of what Ervo's atmosphere should be made of, it would be helpful.

- How much are the rings altered in the optional patch? is it just a higher resolution, or are they extended or made smaller - Again, for SpaceDustUnbound configs.

If you make these configs I would more than happily include them within MPE officially!
Ervo's atmospheric composition is canonically: 94.7% Nitrogen, 3.6% Molecular Oxygen, 1.7% Carbon Dioxide, with Trace Ammounts of Carbon Monoxide, Ammonia, and Methane.

In the optional patches, Jool is given dark rocky rings, the rings already present around Sarnus and Urlum are given backscattering support, and Neidon is given a collection of thin icy rings. Sarnus is also given two additional water ice rings based on the E and G rings of Saturn, they are only visible from the back.

Thank you for your support!

[DareMightyThingsJPL]

6 hours ago, Exo's Lab said:

If you make these configs I would more than happily include them within MPE officially!
Ervo's atmospheric composition is canonically: 94.7% Nitrogen, 3.6% Molecular Oxygen, 1.7% Carbon Dioxide, with Trace Ammounts of Carbon Monoxide, Ammonia, and Methane.

In the optional patches, Jool is given dark rocky rings, the rings already present around Sarnus and Urlum are given backscattering support, and Neidon is given a collection of thin icy rings. Sarnus is also given two additional water ice rings based on the E and G rings of Saturn, they are only visible from the back.

Thank you for your support!

Thanks! Will get to work.  

[modus]

11 hours ago, Exo's Lab said:

We got all of it figured out!

The new KSE Patch is now up on GitHub alongside some small file optimizations!

Thx, will try it out soon!

edit: did a quick check: looking good!

Edited Sunday at 11:05 AM by modus