[WIP] Dragons Spacial Lab - Working on: KSP Module Parser for Python

[GonDragon]

Hello. In this topic I will be talking about various ideas I have and things I'm working on. If I ever release one of those, they will have it's own post on the Addon's Release section. However while on development, as I will only work on one thing at a time, they all will be here.

As a disclaimer, I'm pretty lazy, I almost never finish a project. So most of the things I say on this post, may never see the light of day.

 

Focus of the development

Recently, I tried to start a career mode campaign. I didn't played the game since 2018, so there were many new things to see, and so many mods to test... However, to my disliking, I wasn't able to find the perfect mods to setup and balance my career. So I decided that is time to clean the dust of some of my never-started proyects, and start modding.

My plan is to make various mods to enhance the experience of the career mod. I don't want to go really over the top, my plan isn't make a complete overhaul. There are many mods that changes completely how the game plays, and they are doing it great (Bureaucracy, Build Rockets Takes Time, Etc...), what I want is to do is make little changes, to have a funnier early game experience (because, for a returning player, early game may feel like an endless grind) and to give direction and things to do on late game.  And everything, without removing the Vanilla feel of the game.

So, this is my plan. First, I need to make small changes to the Technology Tree. I want a experience akin to what Unmanned Before Manned and Probes Before Crew offered, but I don't fully agree with his dispositions. Using Community Tech Tree as a base, I will make an addon to rearrange the first steps of kerbals on space exploration.

My second step, will be science. Most of my concerns are already fixed by Science Revisited, a mod that already was revisited many times by diferent people. So it may be revisited one more time, as I have a different opinion on how some things should be done. Especially in how labs should work, I want to take special attention to them. Maybe even make a plugin if needed.

After that, the focus will be the contracts. Right now, there are a lot of old contract packs. Most of them still work well (some of them with some bugs, like the Tourist Contract Pack) and they generally do the job... But in therms of displaying the missions, they seems cluncky and unorganized, as they have different ways of internal organization. What I want to do it's a mega pack, that should be used alone and that has everything well organized. Making good contracts isn't easy, so I will be using exisisting content when licenses allowed me, fix what is broken, give all the attributions necesary, and create what is left.

At this point, a engaging career campaign is more than doable. However, there is a few more things that I want to revisit. One of them, is Strategia. As a mod cemented in stone, Strategia is probably the very core of most moded career campaigns. And what this glorious little piece of art adds to the game, is a overhaul of the vanilla strategy system. With little to no changes since it's creation, it's hard to believe that it could be improved. But sometimes questioning the very basis of your beliefs, may lead you to astonishing discoveries.

Finally, only left to see if there is any old and unmaintained mod that I want to use and it's worth to revive and maintain.

Finished mods:

• Better Early Tree

 

Currently working on: KSP Module Parser for Python

Python it's a well known programming lenguage. I use it pretty often, from facilitate the deploy of some other code, to read, analyze and process big chunks of data.

Rigth now I'm working on implementing a Python wheel to parsing and reading all the CFG files of the game, and from mods. The idea is to first  being able to read and analyze stock modules, and latter add the capacity of Module Manager to read and process patches, so you can even test your patches without opening the game.

The idea behind this came from a small script I made to facilitate the creation of my Mod, Better Early Tree. The script looks torugh the game files to find parts, and then it printed a file with a list of all the parts, and the Technology with they appear on the Reasearch Center. After that, another script read through a list I wrote, and generate all the patches that relocate the parts on the new tree. These script were quite simple and just work for my specific situation, so I thought of making a more general solution that worked on most situations.

Right now I'm starting to redo most of the code, as I thought that RegEx could do most of the job, but it can barely do it if it's used alone. So it should rely a little less on RegEx.

Github Repo

This Python Module, after finished, could lead to some interesting things, other automation scripting to facilitate modding, or patch testing... for example, a script to easily create/update a Parts Catalog Website from a mod.

 

Edited February 8, 2021 by GonDragon
Update

[hemeac]

Always great to see more tech tree mods, not to mention the fact that you are saving yourself a lot of problems by using python to create the MM patches for you.  

[GonDragon]

7 hours ago, hemeac said:

Always great to see more tech tree mods, not to mention the fact that you are saving yourself a lot of problems by using python to create the MM patches for you.  

Oh, yes! Python is godsend. It saved me a lot of time in a lot of situations... Easy to write, quick to deploy and popular enough to have tons of libraries.

Well, the TechTree is done.

Here it is the download link of the mod, I'll just want to test one more thing before making the post on Addons Releases, and uploading it to SpaceDock... Maybe even push it to CKAN... After that, I will continue with the next point of my list.

 

[theonegalen]

Fantastic! I'm using the tech tree mod with my "light" KSP install without any additional parts mods.