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[WIP][1.12.3] The Twelve Colonies of Kerbol (TCoK)

RayneCloud

By RayneCloud
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RayneCloud

RayneCloud

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Greetings everyone! It's been quite a long time since I was last actively part of this community and game. For those that remember me, I was once one of the Community Managers alongside CaptSkunky way back in the day. A lot of things have changed in my life, including the fact I go by Ciara now (and can't seem to update my display name on the forums) but after a very long time away I'm back! Not only am I back, but I've been inspired by StarCrusher's Galaxies Unbound Project  to attempt not only learning how to mod, but undertaking a massive planet mod pack. I'd like to share this journey with you including my workflow, concepts, and successes and failures. So, please come along for the ride and maybe in the next few months I'll have something I can be proud of contributing to the community along with all these amazing and talented authors.

 

 

 

Workflow Concept
Artist Controlled Procedural Content Generation

The concept of Artist Controlled PCG is one that exists in multiple mainline space projects of note. The primary concept is that an artist will use a tool to procedrually generate a planet or terrain and then utalize the output of that tool as a "Canvas" to work off of using said Canvas as a foundation to contorl the following,

  • Atmospheric Color
  • Points of Interest
  • Specific Terrain Features
  • Scatter and Ground Clutter Control
  • Color Palette

Main Goals and Features
* Utalize a Procedural Star System Generation System to use as a staging point to launch pad off from.
* Utalize a Procedural and Fractal Based Terrain Generation Method to make truly unique planets generating 8bit greyscale height maps procedrually
* Take Real world Orbital Data and Information Generated by the tools in order to create the proper scaled versions in a Kerbol Stock-a-like manner.


Test Map - Low Quality / Low Reolution
Step 1 - Procedurally Generated Height Map
w3FK4Dp.png

Step 2 - Lightness (HSL) Color Desaturation
7g5Fhc3.png?1

Step 3 - Color Inversion
ytjRYa7.png?1

Step 4 - Color Correction
5DMCavt.png?1

 

Obvioulsy this height map wont work, it's just a test of the process that I'm going to attempt to see if I can quickly (a few days or so) generate a height map, normal map, and color map, and with the tools I have work on tweaking the outputs to create unique worlds that are procedurally generated but the final outcome is artist controlled. I'll be running some tests tonight and tommorrow and I hope to have test worlds in game to showcase then. See ya soon! -Ciara (Formerly DR)

Quick Color Map Test (The Color isn't final but I wanted to see how it would look.)

3onPJmr.png?1

Tool Used: Wilbur + GIMP
Procedures Used: Percentage Noise & 1st Pass Erosion Test
(Yes I know the edges are way to sharp, just testing and learning tools.)

Edited by Damion Rayne
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RayneCloud

RayneCloud

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Day 3 of Learning and Testing, felt like sharing the progress so far!

This is just a basic Height Map + Normals + Basic Gradient Color Map.

I still need to learn how to heal and fix polar distortions and the large seam on the planet, but progress is being made! 

 

ya8JdKu.png

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RayneCloud

RayneCloud

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Moving in to my 4th day of learning Kopernicus and modding and with help from 3 very talented and very patient mentors and two discord communities,

I should note, 4th "working day" lol and not 4 actual days..

SR7bdQf.png

Sk8X9JU.png

O8Zethf.png

 

I now have a new star system spawned in and have moved my first test world to said star.

Edited by Damion Rayne
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RayneCloud

RayneCloud

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Greetings everyone! I thought I'd take some time today to showcase some of the new proc gen tools I've been using and work I've been doing to progress forward in the mod. Firstly, I'd like to showcase a terrain test for a martian-like planet.

MartianTest1.png

This is a 1st pass concept for one of the first planets in the Krios star system. Krios VI, which exists just outside  Krio's local habitable ecosphere. The idea here is to generate a matian llike world that both has no polar caps and also has hot great desert sea beds where water once existed. 

 

Now on to the 1st pass concept for Krios IV, a habitable Kerbin Like world orbiting just inside Krios's habitable ecosphere. 
gEibfkL.png

The concept here is a "Semi Pangaean" That is a single large continental enviroment with a supre massive ocean and numerous smaller islands chains. In this I also wanted to shoot for oceangraphic topography. That is something I see missed out sometimes in earth like worlds and with this you can see the continental shelf and where the deep ocean begins.

Also, if we want to, we can apply a heavy latitude bias in order to force the proc gen to basicalyl paint polar caps for us. The image below is a second pass with a different landmass output with that heavy latitude bias. 

unknown.png

That's it for now, so stay tuned for more! 
-Ciara Rayne

Edited by Damion Rayne
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RayneCloud

RayneCloud

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11 hours ago, Poodmund said:

Good to see somebody actually making an effort to work on underwater terrain topology. ;) 

Thanks! Something I really want to work on for any worlds with an ocean. :)

45 minutes ago, Weak Player said:

Very nice!
Its awesome to see someone doing something like this
oh yea btw i really like those poles on the third picture
(I'm An Amongus Sussy Player BTW)

Thank you! <3 

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RayneCloud

RayneCloud

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Morning everyone! I wanted to go ahead and post the current planned Road Map for the Twelve Colonies of Kerbol Planet Pack. For now, I'm starting with the Stars themselves, and including what decisions I've made in regards to distance and local celestial objects. Stay tuned to this post for more as I update it moving forward. With this first iteration of the planned Road Map, I'd also like to lay out some goals for the pack.

1. TCoK is planned to be a Progression Based Pack, as such the star systems are laid out in terms of distance from Kerbol and difficulty of local bodies.
2. TCoK is planned to be an Intermediate Pack. Mostly the hope is that my pack will help players get in to Interstellar Modded Gameplay while also providing a challenge to those that have some experience with packs of this nature such as GU, KHNS, & SNW.
3. TCoK is using a "Kerbal Light Year" Scale (I abbreviate as kbLY) which follows Tradtional Scaling, that being 1/100th Light Year Scale between stars in the pack. Example, Krios, the first star in the pack, is 4kbLY or 0.04LY from Kerbol.
4. TCoK will stay with in a similar 1/10th scaling for Local Celestial Distances and SOI Calculations.
5. Planned Compat to include EVE, Scatterer, and others.
6. Possible "Alternate" Version planned to include 1/10th distance scaling for those that want it or those using FTL mods. (-Subject to Change)

Planned Celestials -  (Subject to Change)
Near Kerbin stars within 5kbLY to 10kbLY (1st Release)

Spoiler
  •     Krios (G9 V Yellow Main)
    • 4kbLY from Kerbol (0.04LY)
    • 7 Primary Local Celestial Objects
  •     Algos (A4 V White Main)
  •     Aquarios (M8V Red Dwarf)
  •     Tauros Binary 
    • Tauros A (B8 IV Blue-White Sub-giant)
    •  Tauros B (Companion Star) (G1 V Yellow Main)

Stars within 10kbLYkbLY to 15kbLY (2nd Release)

Spoiler
  • Castor
  • Pollux
  • Leonis
  • Karkino
  • Zygos
  • Skorpios

Stars within 15kbLY to 20kbLY (3rd Release)

Spoiler
  • Parthenon
  • Sagitarian

 

Edited by Damion Rayne
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RayneCloud

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Gt7N05l.png

 

After a LOT of help and a lot of work and several nights of frustration, Krios is finally where it should be, looking as it should. Hopefully, it blends well enough in to the stock skybox. Though I doubt man will miss where it is in this image. Now that I have a much better understanding of how to build stars, I can move past this road block and get to work. So, stay tuned! Thanks to all those that have helped. 

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RayneCloud

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I started this project last monday, and a week later I've learned so much from so many people. I've learnd GIMP, Wilbur, and other tools. I've learned how to make color maps, normal maps, height maps, I've even learned how to spawn in asteroids and a lot more. The ONE thing that was holding me, was building the stars themselves. The data in the configs are a nightmare and confusing as hell, and if it wasn't for @StarCrusher96 spending many hours with me (thank you for being so amazing and patient and a wonderful teacher and mentor) I wouldn't have gotten here. Now, I'm sure you're asking, "Why care about the stars so much?" The answer, is that I wanted the stars to blend in with the stock skybox like they were always there. Today, I reached that goal, so, let's take a look shall we?

YzO26WB.png

This image shows Krios, the first star in the pack, that sits at 0.04LY from Kerbin. If I don't show you were it's at? Can you pick it out from the crowd? I can because I know where it is, but I doubt others can see it without knowing or zooming out the map. :)

So, where is Krios?

UeyXfHH.png

Right there. :)

Anyway, this week should be FULL of forward progress, so stay tuned!

-Rayne

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shimmy00

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Damn, this is great! I'd also had the similar idea, though it was to write my own procedural planet generator algorithms and then use them to do another GU-style planet pack but more complete, particularly in regard to more thoroughly mapping the systems around our Sun at a similar 1/100 scale distance, given that GU's author seems to have taken toward the direction of making a small "galaxy" with its systems, whereas what I wanted was to feed actual astronomical data through to systematically generate all stars and all known exoplanets out to, say, 10 light years (which then shrinks to become 10 000 "T" in-game) uniform in every direction. I believe there's something like 100-150 stars in that range. I did not manage to get around to this though (though may pick it up again after seeing this.).

What are you using for the procedural generation, may I ask? It's a really tricky thing I've wondered about for a long time because I remember a long time ago - before KSP existed, in fact - when I had tried to create my own planet textures for a different purpose. They are a rather difficult thing to do by hand particularly when it comes to the fact that typical graphics editors work on the presumption of a flat surface geometry only and so do not naturally produce the necessary distortion in the texture map to ensure proper scale near the poles, requiring one to guesstimate the required distortion by hand vs. being mathematically precise.

(And you are really lucky by the way to be able to have other people teach you how to do KSP modding - I've had to figure all this stuff out entirely on my own, including rediscovering the various quirks of the game engine.)

Edited by shimmy00
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An Amongus Sussy Player

An Amongus Sussy Player

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1 hour ago, shimmy00 said:

Damn, this is great! I'd also had the similar idea, though it was to write my own procedural planet generator algorithms and then use them to do another GU-style planet pack but more complete, particularly in regard to more thoroughly mapping the systems around our Sun at a similar 1/100 scale distance, given that GU's author seems to have taken toward the direction of making a small "galaxy" with its systems, whereas what I wanted was to feed actual astronomical data through to systematically generate all stars and all known exoplanets out to, say, 10 light years (which then shrinks to become 10 000 "T" in-game) uniform in every direction. I believe there's something like 100-150 stars in that range. I did not manage to get around to this though (though may pick it up again after seeing this.).

What are you using for the procedural generation, may I ask? It's a really tricky thing I've wondered about for a long time because I remember a long time ago - before KSP existed, in fact - when I had tried to create my own planet textures for a different purpose. They are a rather difficult thing to do by hand particularly when it comes to the fact that typical graphics editors work on the presumption of a flat surface geometry only and so do not naturally produce the necessary distortion in the texture map to ensure proper scale near the poles, requiring one to guesstimate the required distortion by hand vs. being mathematically precise.

(And you are really lucky by the way to be able to have other people teach you how to do KSP modding - I've had to figure all this stuff out entirely on my own, including rediscovering the various quirks of the game engine.)

So you can make configs procedurally?

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shimmy00

shimmy00

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14 hours ago, An Amongus Sussy Player said:

So you can make configs procedurally?

Not yet, but it's something I have planned to build, perhaps after Cochrane is at least at a working level and useful to cruise with. But yes, that's the idea - to generate .CFG from standardized astronomical data sets, though there's quite a few details to work out.

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An Amongus Sussy Player

An Amongus Sussy Player

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1 hour ago, shimmy00 said:

Not yet, but it's something I have planned to build, perhaps after Cochrane is at least at a working level and useful to cruise with. But yes, that's the idea - to generate .CFG from standardized astronomical data sets, though there's quite a few details to work out.

Apparently because a guy called Tholin in Gregs Discord server did that
or close to complete configs, a full procedural thing, although its best to have some control on the inputs

Edited by An Amongus Sussy Player
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shimmy00

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18 minutes ago, An Amongus Sussy Player said:

Apparently because a guy called Tholin in Gregs Discord server did that
or close to complete configs, a full procedural thing, although its best to have some control on the inputs

Hmm. Would be interesting to see what they came up with. Does it parse star catalogs too, or is it just a .CFG generator?

 

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