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

[Doc Shaftoe]

I love the big crater! 

[louie]

any ideas when abouts this is coming out?  it looks amazing!

[G'th]

22 hours ago, louie said:

any ideas when abouts this is coming out?  it looks amazing!

Eventually. Im running into a bit of a slump over Slate as Slate is just...ugh...but once we get past it things should progress a bit more rapidly; Tekto will be easier in comparison and the rest of the worlds aren't complicated. 

Then comes the EVE visuals stage where Im gonna cleanup each world and finalize their looks.

Then biome and Parallax integration. And at that point is right around when Ill introduce a closed beta to track down bugs and work out mod compatibility. Ill be reaching out for whose interested in that when the time comes. 

 

The EVE stage shouldn't take long at all, as I've slowly been accumulating the assets for it as I go, so its just a matter of sitting down and knocking out the configs, and generally speaking outside if any full redos (ie, Vall) most of the worlds should be finalized otherwise.

Parallax and Biomes will only take me as long as it takes to do the biomes. Parallax is dead simple to implement and Ive already got all the resources for it, including spiffy new scatters. 

And the beta will go on as long as it needs to. The main point for whoever I take on as testers will be to just go to every world and explore it as hard as possible looking for any issues and their approximate location, so I can go in and fix them. But as I pump out different compatibility patches Ill also be asking for double checks on them. (Ie, are my DOE colors good, did I screw up the antenna distanced, is there something misplaced for KSC extended, etc etc)

Im hoping we can get to the first public release before KSP2 drops, and given how fast I can go Im pretty confident we'll make it. 

[Doc Shaftoe]

8 minutes ago, G'th said:

spiffy new scatters.

[Birdman31]

I'm really looking forward to this :D, it will be awesome

[louie]

awesome! cannot wait to see it released. I am gonna need this

Edited November 15, 2022 by louie

[G'th]

Slate is such a pain in the rear lmao. Its telling that this ended up taking me as long as it did.  Its not exact to the original, but it sticks to the general idea of it. The original is just...ugh. Its hard to explain but the way it was done is just, so antithetical to how I work in creating these planets, which is why it took as long as it has to really nail down something I was happy with. 

Still needs some tweaks, namely to make the surface a bit more reflective given what it is, and the normals needs some love (ie, more oomph), but I'm happy enough with it to move along to Tekto to finish out the Sarnus system. 

Oh and the orbit needs tweaked. As nice as the views are its too close to Eeloo atm lol. Completely misjudged how far out the orbit would be. 

[G'th]

Also updated the OP with current state of worlds and things to do. 

[Da Kerbal]

I have a suggestion.  I've always thought Jool needed a callisto analog. Pol=io, Vall=europa Tylo=ganymede, laythe=laythe. I thought of a extremely carbon world covered with craters that you can't see because most of the planet is covered in graphite. 

I don't know a name but can you please consider adding this to the joolian system? i know i'm asking a lot but i think it would help fill the joolian system and make it more interesting since tbh a lot of the gas giant systems in ksp are lacking; especially jool and neidon. So can you please consider this? thank you!

 

[Da Kerbal]

8 hours ago, G'th said:

 

wow, this is epic! the view of sarnus is epic in the background. I wasn't sure if the thin sarnus rings were a good idea but i think so now!

 

 

[G'th]

And here we have Tekto. The EVE set definitely suits it better over Laythe, and ironically without the clouds and additional haze, Tekto just starts to look like Green Titan. 

This is also another one where the OG terrain was more or less recreated perfectly, though it is hard to see all things considered outside of some of the thinner haze areas. 

And here's a shot without any of the clouds, which will give an idea of the terrain and ocean underneath:

[G'th]

Urlummm. Faked axial tilt, but I think it'll do the job. 

Looks neat in motion too:


(Note the flickering is compression)

[Rutabaga22]

9 hours ago, G'th said:

And here we have Tekto. The EVE set definitely suits it better over Laythe, and ironically without the clouds and additional haze, Tekto just starts to look like Green Titan. 

This is also another one where the OG terrain was more or less recreated perfectly, though it is hard to see all things considered outside of some of the thinner haze areas. 

And here's a shot without any of the clouds, which will give an idea of the terrain and ocean underneath:

 

1 hour ago, G'th said:

Urlummm. Faked axial tilt, but I think it'll do the job. 

Looks neat in motion too:


(Note the flickering is compression)

Looks great! I think Tekto looks a little mcuh like jool tho, maybe go with a darker green.

[Probird_23]

2 hours ago, G'th said:

Urlummm. Faked axial tilt, but I think it'll do the job. 

Looks neat in motion too:


(Note the flickering is compression)

How will you handle the planetary rotation?
will you just lock Urlum in place and animate a rotation sequence on the planet itself?

[G'th]

9 hours ago, Rutabaga22 said:

 

Looks great! I think Tekto looks a little mcuh like jool tho, maybe go with a darker green.

Definitely agree on that one. Darker colors are hard lol.
 

7 hours ago, Probird_23 said:

How will you handle the planetary rotation?
will you just lock Urlum in place and animate a rotation sequence on the planet itself?

Thats the neat part, we wont! Lol, To put it simply, this is mostly just to mess around. Most likely the final version will not be tilted, and we'll leave that up to Principia support (as that appears to be the only working mod that actually produces real axial tilt). This will also be important for the sake of the moons, as they're going to be the part you interact with more.  And IIRC KSP2 is going to support tilt natively so whenever we port to KSP2 we'll just be good to go. 

That being said, though, I'm inclined to incline the planet -somewhat-.  So it will be tilted, but only to the extent that the Moons rotating around it normally don't look excessively weird.  Think along the lines of how Saturn looks from Earth; relatively shallow angle but still visibly tilted. If this ends up the case then most likely we'll keep it going forward into real axial tilt. After all, Urlum isn't supposed to be Uranus, so we have leeway to not be the exact same planet. 

[G'th]

Thoughts on this take on Vall? 

And also, here is Wal and newcomer Knut.  Tal is being moved to be an inner ring moonlet for Pun purposes.  I also didn't intend for Knut to look exactly like a blueberry from certain angles but I am not disappointed. 

[G'th]

Gave Knut a little more color. 

[G'th]

Coming in hot with the Urlum system finished for the momento. 

Priax:

Polta:

Tal:

And a nice little orbital shot of the Ring system.  It'll be a fun place to jaunt around in i'm sure. 

[Da Kerbal]

6 hours ago, G'th said:

Coming in hot with the Urlum system finished for the momento. 

Priax:

Polta:

Tal:

And a nice little orbital shot of the Ring system.  It'll be a fun place to jaunt around in i'm sure. 

epic!

9 hours ago, G'th said:

Thoughts on this take on Vall? 

And also, here is Wal and newcomer Knut.  Tal is being moved to be an inner ring moonlet for Pun purposes.  I also didn't intend for Knut to look exactly like a blueberry from certain angles but I am not disappointed. 
 

one thing about vall tho: I feel like it has a bit too many cracks. 

 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Da Kerbal
rephrasing

[G'th]

Neidon. Mildly unimpressive imo, but we'll be coming back around to it for the EVE stage of things, which will be the more exciting time for the gas giants. 

[H4ckerxx44]

2 hours ago, G'th said:

Neidon. Mildly unimpressive imo, but we'll be coming back around to it for the EVE stage of things, which will be the more exciting time for the gas giants. 

That is looking awesome man. I can't wait for this masterpiece of visuals to be released!

[DJ Reonic]

This is indeed looking quite fantastic.

[G'th]

Thatmo and Nissee coming in hot. 

 

Five more bodies left.  Plock and Karen are up next, and then Bop and Gilly (which are going to be in the asteroid belt), and then we're going to do a Callisto thing for Jool to finish out the system. 

After that I plan on taking a short-ish break before moving on to the EVE stage, which will involve obviously getting the various EVE effects in place, but will also involve finalizing each bodies looks. We'll start at Moho and radiate outwards. 

[KerbalOnKerbin]

On 11/17/2022 at 7:35 AM, G'th said:

Thoughts on this take on Vall? 

And also, here is Wal and newcomer Knut.  Tal is being moved to be an inner ring moonlet for Pun purposes.  I also didn't intend for Knut to look exactly like a blueberry from certain angles but I am not disappointed. 

Vall looks great! Definitley better than the other one.

[G'th]

Plock and Karen