[WIP] Jade's Dev Thread

[JadeOfMaar]

@FormosaT_9 Semi (Off) vs Solid (On) affects the shield's collider. You don't want to use Solid for aircraft. The idea of it was that it might be useful for some edge cases, namely concerning base building and idk... war cinematics. I really didn't expect it would block thrust with how far away the given craft's engine is from the shield wall. Maybe the colliders aren't as I think they are.

@Ariel Kerman Progress on the orb/pill tanks.

• Sizes shown, 2.5m, 3.75m, 5m. (1.25, 1.875 and 7.5 will happen)
• Variants: Front to back:
  • White matte: General liquid storage
  • Metal: Antimatter and other magnetically confined substances
  • White gloss: Cryoliquid storage
  • Black: Highly toxic storage (like nuclear salts)
• Variants: Heights (not shown). So they come as orbs or tall pills
• Variants: Mounts (shown) are optional

Edited February 27 by JadeOfMaar

[Astra Infinitum]

On 12/16/2023 at 2:07 PM, JadeOfMaar said:

Finally getting around to those after quite a while... They'll be released along with the XXL solar panel in previous post.

• 0.2m height for 0.625m, 1.25m, 1.875m, Mk2
• 0.3m width (linear, 2m height steps)
• 0.4m height for 2.5m

The timing is pretty good. Gonna make sure every kerbal can cheaply power their Christmas lights.

lovely! we've been needing some more shaped solar panels especially for mk2. i dont recall anyone whos made any that fit the shape of mk2 parts. And more round ones are great too. theres too few out there.

On 10/30/2023 at 8:47 PM, JadeOfMaar said:

Giant Shields

10m, 25m, 50m.

• White armor. Standard spaceplane hull-alike. Includes some active radiator capacity. Not optimal for aerocapture shenanigans.
• (Dark) Coated armor. Can hold Ablator and (Kerbalism or Kerbal Health) shielding resource. Optimal for aerocapture shenanigans.
• (Pale gloss) Perfect mirror sun shield. For use by Sun-diver enthusiasts.
• (Dark gloss) Weaker sun shield but also a solar thermal panel (for powering a low Sun orbit station ) or beamed power receiver.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

The black tiled heat shields have always been my fav for any capsule heat shields. are you going to make a tan colored variant too? like similar to the one included with benji10 Artemis Kit for orion

[JadeOfMaar]

16 hours ago, Astra Infinitum said:

are you going to make a tan colored variant too? like similar to the one included with benji10 Artemis Kit for orion

Not really. I don't see tan as very appealing on vessels other than small reentry pods, and the texture files for these shields are quite large. It'll be quite wasteful to produce another main texture just for a specific color option to one of the four variants. (All four variants and all three sizes are in one texture and the file is already quite large -- 21MB.)

[JadeOfMaar]

Tank suite is in a playable state.

[Ariel Kerman]

On 3/2/2024 at 1:48 AM, JadeOfMaar said:

Tank suite is in a playable state.

Lovely work! Cant wait to fit my interstellar ship with those tanks! Unfortunately i don't have much time to spend on ksp lately, but i'll give this release a try for sure. This weekend is the only free one i had, but i chose to go and see Dune part 2  

PD: i figured out about the waterfall configs, so i will send you the templates when they ready, if you like it some of them, feel free to add it.

[JadeOfMaar]

Sterling Systems
Solar Thermal

Where Sterling Systems really seeks to stand apart from other mods that provide solar panels is the provision of solar furnaces. In-game this means solar panels that produce ThermalPower, not ElectricCharge. This part and its kin operate much better at distance from Kerbol than the same size PV panel.

Being a member of the World Power suite, this part unlocks after the previously shown World Power solar panel, has attach nodes for easy clustering and will directly compete with your base's nuclear reactor for the role of primary power source.

 

The solar tower. Its inner clearing is 50m and its outer diameter is 120m. The reflector arrays can be configured (full, 2/3, 1/3) in case space or distance is a concern. The reflectors themselves won't have colliders (to prevent complications). This part is a solar thermal source so bring generators and radiators in order to use this.

 

Sterling Systems
Exotic Radiators

Not the kind of exotic anyone was expecting, but still qualifying as far as how it works and how much it works. Per its requirement of IntakeAtm or Water in order to function and being aimed at use as part of a sprawling industrial settlement, this item is also a member of the World Power suite. An air-breathing radiator can handle quite the amount of waste heat. Just one of these fans will be more than what most players will ever need on their base.

For System Heat players, the condenser block supports the fans and provides generous loop volume. This part is also intended to have some measure of loop temperature selection and not be subject to the penalty of mismatched temperature where it needs to serve.

[Ariel Kerman]

Radiators that use intake atmos to work... nuclear SSTO vibes...

[JadeOfMaar]

Sterling Systems
Exotic Radiators

The kind that everyone is expecting! This is a Liquid Film Radiator where the coolant is exposed as a contiguous curtain-like shower (flowing at several meters per second) and is caught and recycled. Each quality listed in the screenshot is associated with a catcher type (standard or magnetic) and a System Heat loop temperature (650K, 1100K, 1600K).

This one and its 20m tall brother will be available on release and they include stack nodes for ease of clustering. I have some very welcome helpers working on things so these parts don't totally have to rely on a basic emissive gradient (like in 2nd pic) for the fluid film.

Kerbal and Heat Control's Graphene radiator for scale.

 

Edited April 13 by JadeOfMaar

[Manul]

On 4/9/2024 at 5:19 PM, Ariel Kerman said:

Radiators that use intake atmos to work... nuclear SSTO vibes...

Air cooling doesn't work well at mach 5

[Ariel Kerman]

On 4/13/2024 at 1:59 PM, JadeOfMaar said:

...

This one and its 20m tall brother will be available on release and they include stack nodes for ease of clustering. I have some very welcome helpers working on things so these parts don't totally have to rely on a basic emissive gradient (like in 2nd pic) for the fluid film.

 

Now this is original and cool parts! Im wondering how translucency or subsurface scattering works on Unity. As far as i saw, only HabTech has some nice translucent solar panels on his ISS mod. Looking forward to this!

 

 

12 hours ago, Manul said:

Air cooling doesn't work well at mach 5

It does if you orbit at 2km altitude 

[JadeOfMaar]

44 minutes ago, Ariel Kerman said:

It does if you orbit at 2km altitude 

Spoiler

Sounds like someone has Habitable Gilly installed

 

[Oaterson]

I know I’m ungodly late to the party on this

 

but that LSWR from earlier in the thread is the sexiest thing ever 

[JadeOfMaar]

On 6/1/2024 at 12:03 PM, Oaterson said:

I know I’m ungodly late to the party on this

Holy Graham crackers, Batman!

On 6/1/2024 at 12:03 PM, Oaterson said:

but that LSWR from earlier in the thread is the sexiest thing ever 

... Nah

[Oaterson]

14 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Holy Graham crackers, Batman!

... Nah

Nuh uh, very sexy part >:(

[JadeOfMaar]

23 hours ago, theJesuit said:

Also, station base plate for landed bases with nodules to connect launchclamps to when constructed with Extraplanetary Launchpads.

Thanks for the text.

Sterling Structural

 

[theJesuit]

18 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Thanks for the text.

Sterling Structural

 

Are those 'launch clamp' type parts?  Beautiful!

[JadeOfMaar]

1 minute ago, theJesuit said:

Are those 'launch clamp' type parts?  Beautiful!

Not by default but I could make it so. I've been thinking hard about custom and proper locked clamps for a long while. The floor itself or the example pylon can be a clamp.

[The Dressian Exploder]

Excellent!

Reminds me a little of the old 'Firma' mod.

 

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

On 10/31/2023 at 4:47 AM, JadeOfMaar said:

(Dark gloss) Weaker sun shield but also a solar thermal panel (for powering a low Sun orbit station ) or beamed power receiver.

Wait a second, these things are beamed power receivers? How do I activate that? Do I need a different mod?

[JadeOfMaar]

17 minutes ago, KspNoobUsernameTaken said:

Wait a second, these things are beamed power receivers? How do I activate that? Do I need a different mod?

The feature is promised but is not currently implemented. I want to use Beamed Power Standalone for it but I haven't gotten around to playtesting it for myself and its dev has left the modding scene, by my understanding.

I want to make a suite of parts but that's far down in my planned parts timeline and it'll be expecting (at minimum) that beamed power plugin or another lightweight alternative to KSPIE.

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

Please disregard this; I apparently hit post twice.

Edited June 7 by KspNoobUsernameTaken

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

14 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

The feature is promised but is not currently implemented. I want to use Beamed Power Standalone for it but I haven't gotten around to playtesting it for myself and its dev has left the modding scene, by my understanding.

I want to make a suite of parts but that's far down in my planned parts timeline and it'll be expecting (at minimum) that beamed power plugin or another lightweight alternative to KSPIE.

Huh, seems like I had the same idea as you, just a lot later. Beamed Power Standalone doesn't support changing the resource transmitted, but I've identified the values that need to be changed, so all I need now are some magic files needed to compile that I can't seem to find anywhere.

Even if I can't compile it correctly, I'm 80% sure I'll have something working based on it in 1-2 months.

 

Worst case, assuming beamed power standalone doesn't work, you could use KSPIE with everything else stripped out. I've confirmed this works, although it still has the issue of a hardcoded resource.

 

 

So about the 1-2 months, its looking more like 1-2 days now, at least for just changing the resource. 

Ok, so I achieved the functionality, just need to change the tooltips: https://imgur.com/a/BEXEKQQ

Pretty sure that your beamed power stuff should be achievable soon @JadeOfMaar

 

 

Edited June 7 by KspNoobUsernameTaken

[Overlocker96]

20 hours ago, KspNoobUsernameTaken said:

the 1-2 months, its looking more like 1-2 days now, at least for just changing the resource. 

Ok, so I achieved the functionality, just need to change the tooltips: https://imgur.com/a/BEXEKQQ

Oh that's so cool! I have been using the mod for months and from my understanding, the code also have some problems:
- If you want to use the Reflectors, sometimes it doesn't work when conected to an emitter, or making an array of Reflectors to enhance the power of the first Transmitter.
- Also sometimes the Transmitters select badly by themself or they change their intended destination to transmit the power.
- Finally, the background calculation was WIP and totally broken, the game lags a lot with that option and sends thousands of errors to the LOG.
If that things can be fixed that would be awesome! Because apart from Thermal Power, transmitting a lot of energy from solar farms around Kerbin to an AM generator from FFT or the Sterling planned ones that require 100k EC/s, would be great! 

Edited June 7 by Overlocker96

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

12 hours ago, Overlocker96 said:

Oh that's so cool! I have been using the mod for months and from my understanding, the code also have some problems:
- If you want to use the Reflectors, sometimes it doesn't work when conected to an emitter, or making an array of Reflectors to enhance the power of the first Transmitter.
- Also sometimes the Transmitters select badly by themself or they change their intended destination to transmit the power.
- Finally, the background calculation was WIP and totally broken, the game lags a lot with that option and sends thousands of errors to the LOG.
If that things can be fixed that would be awesome! Because apart from Thermal Power, transmitting a lot of energy from solar farms around Kerbin to an AM generator from FFT or the Sterling planned ones that require 100k EC/s, would be great! 

My current goal is un-hardcoding as many values as possible. So exposing stuff like the managed resource etc. I'll need to take a look at the code more deeply to understand all these issues; I only started learning C# 4 days back. But yes, eventually I'll try to fix all these issues. That being said, this thread is intended for @JadeOfMaar's mod, not my attempt at one. I seem to have a bad habit of posting my stuff on his threads. I'll make a different thread somewhere for this. 

 

Current code: https://github.com/ProgrammerFailure/BeamedPowerStandalone

[JadeOfMaar]

Resource Harvesters

@Charle_Roger Lately, I've been pondering this concept which breaks away from the stockalike trend of micromanaged harvesters and shifts to harvesting resource groups and sifting them for combinations of the individual resources. It swaps out "Gotta have a drill for every single resource that X (huge and hugely popular) mod suite might have use for," with "Can have a single drill module for a group or a variant of that group." A variant of a resource group would be, example: Rocks I, Rocks II and Rocks III, each of which has a random abundance value and an associated splitter (sifter) recipe and each recipe has a different ratio of outputs.

 

Resource groups demand a specialty drill which has its own sifting capacity and which is optimized for one group but cannot be optimal for all of them. Some groups are soft and easily shoveled like sand. Others are hard and require carving chunks out or mashing into chunks with diamond drill bits. Some are even harder but have a modest melting point and can be made into hot soup and slurped up with a thermal drill. I plan to provide these specialties in Sterling Systems. These harvesters are no less than 3.75m size and have very high throughputs vs stockish drills (even the 3.75m ones in Stockalike Mining Extension) but they fittingly ask a lot more ElectricCharge (which my battery suite exists for) or ask for ThermalPower for non-electric-driven chemical processes and non-electric mechanical work.

The aim of all this is to deliver some Factorio-like, easily clusterable, higher capacity ISRU to KSP.

In further addition, a drill variant can exist which isn't for chemicals but for Geothermal energy. That is, a super-deep drill for ThermalPower.

 

Resource Converters

I've finally gotten to producing the rough textures for the circular refinery suite for Sterling Systems. (The largest is 5m.) As I mentioned in your thread, these will only be playable via the WBI Omniconverter module due to certain features it provides far beyond stock. If possible (not yet tested) then switching the recipe tags/filters in that module will be tied to a mesh switch so "What you see hints at what you get." The recipes provided for them will be provided in the form of Omniconverter templates, assorted by template tags.

The mesh switch affects the combinations of the greebles that appear in their bays. The variants (by function) are:

• Generic: Does the basic chemical sifting and reacting
  • Can be split down into 3 or more sub-variants for the real chem nerds. idk what these sub-variants are yet but I anticipate them
• Nuclear: For whatever nuclear material processing
  • Sub-variants may apply here too
• Furnace: For smelting, readily consuming ThermalPower
• Phase changer: Gas <--> Liquid
• Smasher: Producing things under extreme force