[1.12.x] Waterfall - a framework for continuous, mesh-driven engine effects (October 9)

[Starseeker]

11 hours ago, Kumquatmonkeyfun said:

waterfall doesn't seem to work for me. I've tried everything, but when I test the engine plume effect, the editor says "couldn't find any effect modules on this craft, add modules via config before using this editor.." I don't know what this means at all. sometimes the mod completely craps out and there's no plume, sound, and the editor says absolutely nothing. I can tell I'm doing something wrong but I have no clue what it is.. can anyone help?

Do you have a mod that adds waterfall effects?

[Not a Spy]

does restock come with configs for this cause those engines havent been working for me

[Folkhoer]

Im still having this bug, any idea what causes this @Nertea?

 

[OrdinaryKerman]

On 9/17/2021 at 7:54 AM, Folkhoer said:

I have this bug/feature? atm, any fix for this?

Do you have Stock Waterfall Effects installed (I'm assuming you do, since there are only 2 erroneous plumes and not 4) (and possibly don't have WaterfallRestock)? SWE's changelog says it's been deconflicted with Restock, but there isn't anything in its configs to suggest that, so I think what's happening is that SWE is applying its effects to parts with Restock models

[OrdinaryKerman]

2 hours ago, Not a Spy said:

does restock come with configs for this cause those engines havent been working for me

 

On 8/15/2020 at 7:04 AM, Nertea said:

WaterfallRestock: Provides patches for most Restock and Restock+ engines. This requires Restock. 

 

[Kumquatmonkeyfun]

19 hours ago, Starseeker said:

Do you have a mod that adds waterfall effects?

I'm an idiot. I followed the instructions on the Readme file wrong. I got it working now 

[Starseeker]

5 hours ago, Kumquatmonkeyfun said:

I'm an idiot. I followed the instructions on the Readme file wrong. I got it working now 

well, glad to hear it's working now!

[ROCKETGOOSE]

On 9/22/2021 at 10:37 AM, Kumquatmonkeyfun said:

couldn't find any effect modules on this craft, add modules via config before using this editor.

This sounds like you don't have any configs for the engine you're using. Waterfall itself doesn't add any configs. I would recommend Stock Waterfall Effects if you're using this with the stock engines  

On 9/23/2021 at 5:20 PM, Kumquatmonkeyfun said:

I'm an idiot. I followed the instructions on the Readme file wrong. I got it working now 

Oops I didn't refresh the page so I missed this! Glad you got it working

[qwery123]

So, are KSP2 visual effects going to be like this?

[RyanRising]

14 hours ago, qwery123 said:

So, are KSP2 visual effects going to be like this?

The engine exhaust effects will.

[Nertea]

On 9/22/2021 at 9:45 PM, Folkhoer said:

Im still having this bug, any idea what causes this @Nertea?

 

Working hypothesis is installing stock waterfall effects without WaterfallRestock. 

[whitespacekilla]

I've been applying templates to other mod added engines and have really enjoyed how easy and powerful this framework is to use. So far I have a set of configs I really like for SpaceY and USI, hoping to make those widely available this weekend after some time playing with them. Thank you!

In my configuration of SpaceY, I got a little overzealous and started preparing files for the SRBs. I deleted those when I was looking for SRB examples and didn't find any and remembered, "oof, this mod says it's for chemical rockets, I really missed the mark by even starting down this path." THEN I thought about the fact this mod has great configs available for thermal and ion rockets. Reel me in a little. Is this mesh based visual framework a bad fit for the SRB propulsion systems by their very nature (particles might be a better framework) or with some creative/original templates, could it be a worthwhile project?

@RyanRising's post about the exhaust effects in KSP2 made me think that air-breathing engines from mods that haven't gotten a waterfall treatment yet should be a high priority for me to target adding effects to...

Edited October 7, 2021 by whitespacekilla

[RyanRising]

2 hours ago, whitespacekilla said:

I've been applying templates to other mod added engines and have really enjoyed how easy and powerful this framework is to use. So far I have a set of configs I really like for SpaceY and USI, hoping to make those widely available this weekend after some time playing with them. Thank you!

In my configuration of SpaceY, I got a little overzealous and started preparing files for the SRBs. I deleted those when I was looking for SRB examples and didn't find any and remembered, "oof, this mod says it's for chemical rockets, I really missed the mark by even starting down this path." THEN I thought about the fact this mod has great configs available for thermal and ion rockets. Reel me in a little. Is this mesh based visual framework a bad fit for the SRB propulsion systems by their very nature (particles might be a better framework) or with some creative/original templates, could it be a worthwhile project?

@RyanRising's post about the exhaust effects in KSP2 made me think that air-breathing engines from mods that haven't gotten a waterfall treatment yet should be a high priority for me to target adding effects to...

There has been some testing on SRB effects from @Al2Me6, I believe:

Looks great, right? But particles are still a much better system for the smoke trail, those can much more easily have physics applied to them and linger on for much longer. You can combine the two so that each is doing what it does best, and get some spectacular results, as seen above, but when you try to move it it becomes apparent you’re applying physics, or just a different reference frame, to the particles and not the mesh:

So there’s still some work to be done on how it properly combine the two. All hope may not be lost, but it’s still a work in progress. I would very much like to see what you have in store for the other ones, though! 
Also, FWIW, SRBs are chemical rockets: they use chemical energy stored in the propellant to create the propulsive force. 

Edited October 7, 2021 by RyanRising

[Knight of St John]

11 hours ago, whitespacekilla said:

Is this mesh based visual framework a bad fit for the SRB propulsion systems by their very nature (particles might be a better framework) or with some creative/original templates, could it be a worthwhile project?

8 hours ago, RyanRising said:

There has been some testing on SRB effects from @Al2Me6, I believe:

personally, I think Al2Me6 proved that waterfall can be used in combination with a the particle system to make some decent SRB plumes, even though it's not ideal. performance will suffer too, since you now have to render both a mesh and particles. I don't know if Al2Me6 made those smoke particles with stock, or with the realplume particles system, but my guess is that using the realplume particle system, you could make the smoke more white (realistic) instead of the stock grey.
I'd say that if someone was gonna tackle srbs by making a waterfall/realplume combo, they better prepare for a long development proces. So only take that path if you have the time to actually walk it the entire way.

Edited October 7, 2021 by Knight of St John

[whitespacekilla]

10 hours ago, Knight of St John said:

I'd say that if someone was gonna tackle srbs by making a waterfall/realplume combo, they better prepare for a long development proces. So only take that path if you have the time to actually walk it the entire way.

Good advice. The free time I have is probably better suited to applying fitting transforms for existing templates on mods that haven't gotten attention yet than trying to craft new combination effects for first stage engines.

Any chance you can speak to why you changed your approach to applying waterfall effects in the presence of restock? Seems to me like the previous `!Restock` specifier saved work in loading and prevented the issue I've seen a few posters have where they have Restock, StockWaterfallEffects, and messed up remodeled engines. "Easier to maintain and develop" is the only thing I can guess (perfectly valid reason, of course).

Edited October 7, 2021 by whitespacekilla

[RyanRising]

7 hours ago, whitespacekilla said:

Good advice. The free time I have is probably better suited to applying fitting transforms for existing templates on mods that haven't gotten attention yet than trying to craft new combination effects for first stage engines.

Any chance you can speak to why you changed your approach to applying waterfall effects in the presence of restock? Seems to me like the previous `!Restock` specifier saved work in loading and prevented the issue I've seen a few posters have where they have Restock, StockWaterfallEffects, and messed up remodeled engines. "Easier to maintain and develop" is the only thing I can guess (perfectly valid reason, of course).

Obviously I’m not Knight of st John, but I believe the reason was so people who do use ReStock and WaterfallRestock can have Waterfall effects on the engines that aren’t replaced by ReStock, such as the Thud, Aerospike, and jet engines, as well as the Making History Titan engines.

[MashAndBangers]

The supplied Waterfall configs in TantaresLV are not working the way I thought they should work for the Proton 3rd stage.

Explanation:  The Proton 3rd stage engine consists of the main engine, and the 4 verniers all in one model.  Beale set the engine up with 2 ModuleEnginesFX, 1 for the main engine and 1 for the verniers.  They both have different engineid's, and the verniers and main engine have different thrust transforms.  The included waterfall configs add a total of four waterfall nodes (2 for engine bell effects and 2 for the plumes).  The configs are set up so that 2 apply to the main engine, and 2 apply to the verniers. 

Problem:  When you activate the main engine, and the main engine only, the effects all play.  If you only activate the verniers, no effects play. 

Is this a stock bug where only the first ModuleEnginesFX takes priority, or a Waterfall bug?

[Al2Me6]

On 10/6/2021 at 11:13 PM, RyanRising said:

There has been some testing on SRB effects from @Al2Me6, I believe:

Ah, I see that my experiments made their way here.

On 10/7/2021 at 8:09 AM, Knight of St John said:

personally, I think Al2Me6 proved that waterfall can be used in combination with a the particle system to make some decent SRB plumes, even though it's not ideal. performance will suffer too, since you now have to render both a mesh and particles. I don't know if Al2Me6 made those smoke particles with stock, or with the realplume particles system, but my guess is that using the realplume particle system, you could make the smoke more white (realistic) instead of the stock grey.
I'd say that if someone was gonna tackle srbs by making a waterfall/realplume combo, they better prepare for a long development proces. So only take that path if you have the time to actually walk it the entire way.

This was indeed made with RealPlume (it'd be hopeless with stock), though I did not spend any time at all looking at the particles themselves -- that'd wait until after I see if the approach works.

Performance would indeed suffer, though I don't think the SL parts of the WF plume would need to be particularly complicated, so I can't imagine it being that much worse than the status quo.  If it does happen, though, I will leave it as an optional feature for those who want the eye-candy.

I spent perhaps an afternoon working on that; you're right that a proper approach would take a lot more time (that I do plan to spend at some point). The issue I encountered is that particles have physics and WF doesn't -- I suspect that I'll have to have two emitters, one producing particles with reduced physics inside the mesh, and another one producing 'normal' particles for the smoke trail. It remains to be seen if this actually works in practice though. Testing and tuning will also be particularly gnarly.

If anyone is interested in helping making this work for Realism Overhaul, I am happy to clean up what I have and put it on my gh.

15 hours ago, MashAndBangers said:

The supplied Waterfall configs in TantaresLV are not working the way I thought they should work for the Proton 3rd stage.

Explanation:  The Proton 3rd stage engine consists of the main engine, and the 4 verniers all in one model.  Beale set the engine up with 2 ModuleEnginesFX, 1 for the main engine and 1 for the verniers.  They both have different engineid's, and the verniers and main engine have different thrust transforms.  The included waterfall configs add a total of four waterfall nodes (2 for engine bell effects and 2 for the plumes).  The configs are set up so that 2 apply to the main engine, and 2 apply to the verniers. 

Problem:  When you activate the main engine, and the main engine only, the effects all play.  If you only activate the verniers, no effects play. 

Is this a stock bug where only the first ModuleEnginesFX takes priority, or a Waterfall bug?

This is a config error. The engineID key (see, for example, https://github.com/Tantares/TantaresLV/blob/09849b35da1ef9dc40b9bf9e975f6fed7b413b11/GameData/TantaresLV/parts/PROTON/_waterfall.cfg#L423) was moved inside the throttle CONTROLLER in Waterfall 0.6.0, so with the current configs all four modules are reading from the first ModuleEngines, hence the observed behavior.

Edited October 9, 2021 by Al2Me6

[whitespacekilla]

On 10/8/2021 at 1:20 AM, RyanRising said:

Obviously I’m not Knight of st John, but I believe the reason was so people who do use ReStock and WaterfallRestock can have Waterfall effects on the engines that aren’t replaced by ReStock, such as the Thud, Aerospike, and jet engines, as well as the Making History Titan engines.

Have you taken a look at the source repo, specifically the changesets affecting these MM configs? They used to just not apply stock waterfall effects to engines restock remodeled if restock was installed. That seems like the perfect way to handle it. Now they apply the stock effects either way and assume WaterfallRestock will strip them off. Because of this, if you have Restock + Waterfall + StockWaterfall but not WaterfallRestock, you will get meshed up Waterfall effects (meshes that don't match the position, size, and number of engine bells/nozzles) where with the old approach you would just not get waterfall effects on engines Restock had changed (much preferred, IMO).

So, it seems like a regression in 2 ways:

• Applying MM edits to parts that you expect to have stripped away by another mod when properly configured (wasting a tiny amount of load time)
• Incorrectly configuring waterfall effects on restock modified engines as if they weren't modified

The first is mitigated by MM caching, the second is mitigated by the fact that the user did mess it up by not installing the recommended mods. That's why I was politely asking KSJ if there was a maintenance reason to introduce those regressions when the old `NEEDS[!Restock] `system for each of those parts worked just fine.

[Nertea]

6 hours ago, whitespacekilla said:

Have you taken a look at the source repo, specifically the changesets affecting these MM configs? They used to just not apply stock waterfall effects to engines restock remodeled if restock was installed. That seems like the perfect way to handle it. Now they apply the stock effects either way and assume WaterfallRestock will strip them off. Because of this, if you have Restock + Waterfall + StockWaterfall but not WaterfallRestock, you will get meshed up Waterfall effects (meshes that don't match the position, size, and number of engine bells/nozzles) where with the old approach you would just not get waterfall effects on engines Restock had changed (much preferred, IMO).

So, it seems like a regression in 2 ways:

• Applying MM edits to parts that you expect to have stripped away by another mod when properly configured (wasting a tiny amount of load time)
• Incorrectly configuring waterfall effects on restock modified engines as if they weren't modified

The first is mitigated by MM caching, the second is mitigated by the fact that the user did mess it up by not installing the recommended mods. That's why I was politely asking KSJ if there was a maintenance reason to introduce those regressions when the old `NEEDS[!Restock] `system for each of those parts worked just fine.

No, the old configs just did not apply effects to an engine if Restock was installed at all. This caused players to need to do config surgery if they wanted to install both mods and get effects on a maximum amount of engines. 

If a player has installed SWE, Restock and Waterfall without WaterfallRestock, that is a user installation error and does not need to be covered by the system. 

If there are specific parts that are not handled by this system, then it would be best to indicate which parts these were so this can be sorted out. 

[RyanRising]

1 hour ago, Nertea said:

No, the old configs just did not apply effects to an engine if Restock was installed at all. This caused players to need to do config surgery if they wanted to install both mods and get effects on a maximum amount of engines. 

If a player has installed SWE, Restock and Waterfall without WaterfallRestock, that is a user installation error and does not need to be covered by the system. 

If there are specific parts that are not handled by this system, then it would be best to indicate which parts these were so this can be sorted out. 

Since you asked, I believe the RAPIER isn't handled well here - Restock remodels the engine, but WatefallRestock doesn't have a configuration for it, leading to the StockWaterfallEffects effects being applied to the Restock model. The result is a plume that's offset from the nozzles and slightly off on scale.

[Knight of St John]

On 10/8/2021 at 12:21 AM, whitespacekilla said:

I've seen a few posters have where they have Restock, StockWaterfallEffects, and messed up remodeled engines. "Easier to maintain and develop" is the only thing I can guess (perfectly valid reason, of course).

Well, if there are any bugs like that, then they should get posted here, and we'll fix them in time.
So, be my guest :-)

On 10/9/2021 at 6:46 PM, Al2Me6 said:

The issue I encountered is that particles have physics and WF doesn't -- I suspect that I'll have to have two emitters, one producing particles with reduced physics inside the mesh, and another one producing 'normal' particles for the smoke trail. It remains to be seen if this actually works in practice though.

yea, that's what i figured would happen. It's a real headache :p

[Rakete]

@Knight of St John: Any Info if a waterfall plume for stock SRBs with stock smoketrail is possible? Thought I read somewhere here, that you are (going to) looking into it? Just a polite asking, no pressure.

Edited October 23, 2021 by Rakete

[SpaceFace545]

33 minutes ago, Rakete said:

@Knight of St John: Any Info if a waterfall plume for stock SRBs with stock smoketrail is possible? Thought I read somewhere here, that you are (going to) looking into it? Just a polite asking, no pressure.

Its all perfectly possible, KNES's Ariane 4 rocket's plume is a blend of waterfall and real plume. The problem is that the SRB plumes are dynamic and trail behind where waterfall plumes are glorified cones attached to the engine nozzle.

[bobjonesisthebest:D]

Do you ever plan to add EXTREME over expanded nozzle support, for example a terrier engine on eve sea level?