AD ASTRA: A Reimagining of Stock and The Outer Planets Mod - "It's Cloudin' Time"

[Rutabaga22]

I love the idea of giving the kerbol system a "restock"

[G'th]

34 minutes ago, Rutabaga22 said:

I love the idea of giving the kerbol system a "restock"

Yeah that's basically the idea. 

Also:

[G'th]

Sad

[Rutabaga22]

Cancelled?

[Doc Shaftoe]

Aww...

[Birdman31]

Oh well

[PieMuncher]

No chance of a community version? Was looking so awesome

[Adiri]

On 11/4/2022 at 3:24 PM, G'th said:

Sad

Why?

[G'th]

Sike Edition
Current in-progress Pics:

Moho (kind of overly dark, will need to tweak that):

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Eve:
 

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Kerbin and Minmus (Mun to be redone, Kerbin also to be redone, pictures mostly to show off that I managed to recreate most of the original atmospheric look for Kerbin from the old Ad Astra):

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Minmus:

 

Duna (and Mic and Ike; Ignore what Duna looks like in the picture of Mic, the Duna in the Ike picture is the proper look for it)

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Mic:

Ike and Duna

 

Dres (The canyon's shine in sunlight and mimics the look of Bismuth in some places; color pallete for the rest of the planet is still iffy, so that may change eventually) 
 

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And finally Jool, my first Gas Giant, which looks pretty great considering its a barebones first attempt:
 

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But it looks even better in Motion

[G'th]

Nu Mun.  Heavily cratered like the original Mun, but just so, so, so much better at it. 

[G'th]

Pol



Also occurs to me I'm way off on Jool's size relative to its first moon, so thats about to get hella adjusted. 

As for Pol itself, first go came out great. The massive canyon in the middle is indeed filled with Lava, and I plan on looking into different things I can do to try and make it emit light, which may be possible? IDK, it didn't work on my first try but may be I just did it wrong. 

I think its also going to have an atmosphere as well, to emulate the idea of Pol as a constantly volcanic world; after all, its literally covered in thousands of them. 

Also, in regards to Bop and Gilly, which you might find conspicuously absent from their respective worlds, I plan on moving them into the asteroid belt region, to become analogues to the other 2 bodies in that region. 

[G'th]

Decided to break up the big lava canyon a bit, and added some more bits. 

[Sir Eskomaz]

I'll be waiting beta testing alr.

[G'th]

Vall

 

[G'th]

annnnd Tylo. Normals are jacked, but it gets the idea across for now. (i'm also aware of that seam, it will be dealt with most harshly)

[Probird_23]

Man, all of this looks so cool!

I have a couple questions though:

1. Will this mod be compatible with 2.5 resale (no weird artifacts resulting from rescale)?

2. Is it possible to switch select planets back to their original state? (Eg. Your minmus back into minty minmus)

[G'th]

1 minute ago, Probird_23 said:

Man, all of this looks so cool!

I have a couple questions though:

1. Will this mod be compatible with 2.5 resale (no weird artifacts resulting from rescale)?

2. Is it possible to switch select planets back to their original state? (Eg. Your minmus back into minty minmus)

Its actually being designed at that scale, so no rescale will be necessary, unless you want to squish back down to stock size, which is a potential option I think we might add. 

And sure, but at that point you're on your own as you'd have to make your own kitbashed planet pack. Nothing to stop you from doing that, but its not something that'd be supported. 

[G'th]

NuLaythe

 

And a peak under the clouds



The current cloud set is pilfered directly from the original Huygen config from old Ad Astra.  Most likely I'm not going to adopt the textures out of AVP directly, but instead will remake them in this sort of style. The color set likewise is also not final. I'm still undecided on if I want to keep with this look, or go for more of a blue grey look, which I'm leaning towards. It really depends on Tekto, as I'm going to want the balance the visuals between the two moons so that they're distinct from one another, and the more I look at it the more I think Tekto would probably be better off with this, while Laythe get something else (like its original design coupled with my original ideas for it). 

But, deciding on all that will be for the EVE visuals stage of things. For right now this initial cloud set works for just having pretty screenshots to reference. 

That being said, it is quite amazing thus far. 

[G'th]

Initial Go at Sarnus.  Ring needs to be filled out a bit more. 

Thoughts on the pallette here?  I do want blue in there, but may be we can swap some of the more prominent blues for yellows to bring it closer to Sarnus' original pallete, and then I can concentrate the blues to the Poles. 

[G'th]

Did a color swap on the blue bands and filled out the Ring a bit more.  Sarnus is definitely gonna be a problem child, I can feel it. 


 

[G'th]

Spread out the yellow banding more and adjusted the blending.  I think I'm happy with this for now. 

[Poodmund]

Hi Gth,

Looking at your plans it looks like you intend to do a lot of work here, potentially changing the orbits of some bodies, changing the atmospheres(?), changing the surface topology from both a visual and PQS standpoint, which will require new biome maps, new science definitions, changing the overall 'feel' and 'lore' of some bodies by changing the overall visual look and even adding some additional bodies into the mix. At what point does this cease to become a high fidelity visual change and become a complete system remake?

What I am trying to infer is, why constrain yourself by involving OPM at all, why not use this as an opportunity to create a completely original stock system expansion mod and let the bounds of your imagination be your limiting factor, not a pre-existing mod?

[G'th]

48 minutes ago, Poodmund said:

Hi Gth,

Looking at your plans it looks like you intend to do a lot of work here, potentially changing the orbits of some bodies, changing the atmospheres(?), changing the surface topology from both a visual and PQS standpoint, which will require new biome maps, new science definitions, changing the overall 'feel' and 'lore' of some bodies by changing the overall visual look and even adding some additional bodies into the mix. At what point does this cease to become a high fidelity visual change and become a complete system remake?

What I am trying to infer is, why constrain yourself by involving OPM at all, why not use this as an opportunity to create a completely original stock system expansion mod and let the bounds of your imagination be your limiting factor, not a pre-existing mod?

It already became a full remake when I realized simply swapping in new color maps isn't really enough to make anything look better to my standards, hence falling down the rabbit hole of becoming a big boy planet maker. (which was ultimately a good thing, as my skills are getting better and better every day now). When I first posted this thread my initial attempt was just a cruddy paint-over of the stock Kerbin color map; I didn't even redo the normals lol; and even still some said it was the best looking Kerbin they had seen. 

But, that being said, the idea for the OPM worlds is to stick very close to their original designs, which I've already had a successful trial run with with Laythe; the Laythe in this mod is practically identical to the original in terms of topology, but the height map and resulting color and normal maps are that much better for it after resurfacing it.  For the OPM moons, this same idea is going to be carried forward, and that's actually been what I've been doing since I put Sarnus in; I've been in my Play install hopping around these moons and actually experiencing them as a player, so that I can then carry the best parts of them forward. I have definitely taken more liberties with the Stock planets, but thats because they don't have much going for them otherwise. 

Obviously of course there's going to be instances where things are fundamentally just "different", but thats something I think is going to be good in the long run. OPM is old, and the audience I'd expect would want to play in this system are people who have already put plenty of hours on the original OPM mod, so having some freshness to it is going help play into that. 

I certainly get where you're coming from, but it also has to be said that I don't find working with OPM to be constraining at all. After all, working within the relative confines of the Stock solar system wasn't constraining (creatively speaking I actually work better with constraints than otherwise), and ultimately when it comes down to it, its the same reason when I was doing SOL that I didn't want to just make my own version of the RSS system at Kerbal scale. KSRSS already existed, why go out of my way to make a duplicate mod just for the sake of different visuals? Even abandoning stock entirely would work against that logic.  

That all being said, Ad Astra is factually more than just visuals at this point, and it is probably fair to not label it as though its merely a visual pack for OPM and stock,, so I'll adjust the title to reflect what it is, which is more of a reimagining.  
 

Edited November 9, 2022 by G'th

[Probird_23]

If you are planning on adding a couple new bodies, may I recommend a planet similar to Nara from JNSQ?

I've always been fascinated by the challenge posed by it, but have been rather frustrated with the lack of development and compatibility with some of the more newer and high-quality visual enhancements (eg. Parallax is forever a wip and the old Ad Astra is just plain difficult to work with). Not to say JNSQ is bad planet pack though, its a really cool concept!

Perhaps you could revive Nara in this mod, no pressure though!

[KerbalOnKerbin]

@G'thI would say a combo of the top Sarnus and the bottom Sarnus (having both the yellow and blue bands) would be great. Maybe yellow bands in the northern hemisphere, and blue ones in the southern hemisphere?