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

[G'th]

Some naked Pics of Kerbin in preparation for its eventual Touchy Feely time

[G'th]

Annnnd Moho again, now with solar wind bashing into it. 

This was inspired by Astronomer's Visual Pack which did a similar effect, though mine is a bit more subtle and takes cues off of the scene from For All Mankind when a solar storm hits the Moon, causing weird waves to crest across the surface. (If you have trouble spotting it, watch the reddish areas in the bottom left, as thats where it was most visible in this particular instance)

[Rutabaga22]

Oooh that's really cool!

 

[louie]

oh very nice Moho. very nice indeed. can't wait for the release

[G'th]

On 11/10/2022 at 5:43 AM, wasmic said:

Wow, this looks absolutely stunning - and what a massive amount of work you've gotten done in such a short time! Really impressive.

I have a bit of critique too. The red bands on Sarnus are kinda bluish in tone, which - to my eyes - clashes with the warm, orange ochre-ish tone. I think they would be much easier on the eyes if you increased the lightness slightly and reduced the saturation a bit on both the red and yellow bands. That way you can also bring the yellow bands a bit further towards the first yellow again, rather than using the orange-salmon colour.

As for Eve and Duna, they both look absolutely amazing - much more realistic than the stock ones. However, I think they lose a bit of their "identity", so to say. I think Duna in particular would do well with having its hue adjusted slightly towards the red, making it closer to the stock planet in hue while keeping the more realistic lower saturation of the version you've made here. This would make it more reminiscent of its stock version, rather than just being Mars-coloured. Maybe also adjust Eve's clouds/atmosphere ever so slightly towards purple and away from blue; the current version looks more like a blue-grey planet with a purple and green tint, rather than a purple planet.

Ovok looks amazing, but I think Mun, Dres and Tylo must be the most beautiful among all the worlds you've made so far. Dres just got actually interesting!

While its not quite ready just yet, I believe you're going to be very happy with the work I've done on Eve today.

[G'th]

Alrighty friendos, here's the new Eve.  The terrain was completely redone and is now a more direct recreation of the original topography, and I brought it back to be a bit more purple forward. There's still a healthy amount of blue in there (and some green), but its much less Vaporwave planet now. 

But the real shining star here is the EVE effects.  Featured are, obviously, counter rotating clouds, but also 3 polar vortexes, two smaller ones in the north pole, and a much larger one in the south pole.  Also, my imagining of what Venusian auroras would look like, though modestly exaggerated.  I'm going to be toying with the vortexes a bit to make them look less like just plain ol' hurricanes (and I also need to adjust the aurora texture as we have some polar pinching in there), but otherwise I think we can call Eve more or less finalized for this stage. 

And with EVE:

While unintentional, the Auroras actually "shine" when you change camera positions, so that's a super neat thing I managed to make happen. 

[Rutabaga22]

What happened to the eve lava? I remember you were giving it lava earlier on in devellopement.

[G'th]

1 minute ago, Rutabaga22 said:

What happened to the eve lava? I remember you were giving it lava earlier on in devellopement.

I may return to that idea when we get to Pol. I'm not confident in my ability to do it right at the moment but Pol is going to necessitate it, so thats what we'll look forward to. Eve for me simply isn't the right place to experiment with it as I'm going to want that to be a lot more subtle than it will be on Pol, and I'm going to want to approach Eve with a better idea of how far I can stretch the idea. 

[Birdman31]

Will you keep the spikes on pol?

[KerbalOnKerbin]

Absolutely awesome with the Eve developement. It looks almost like KSP2 Eve with the EVE on.  Also, is there the possibility of making Kerbol slightly less orangey? I know it's supposed to be an orange dwarf, but it just looks kinda odd to me.

[Cytauri]

I have a little suggestion, the clouds on Eve look amazing but I think if they were a little bit thinner then it would look slightly better. The reason why is because Eve looks like Neidon with the thick clouds and maybe thinning the clouds out or adjusting the color would separate the two. Besides that, I like the way this whole project is turning out, with the little details that change everything. One example of this is how you had those waves on Moho which made it look more interesting. Good job and maybe take into consideration my idea.

[G'th]

I'm still alive folks, just to give an update lol. I started a new job and thats been eating up my time, but its also because Kerbin is just proving to be a righteous pain in the ass, but I have some idea of how we can get around this hurdle. 

What that will involve, in the most visible sense, is not adhering to being an exact recreation of Kerbin.  Instead, I'm going to remove the ice caps as we know them (which are just huge sheets of ice in both instances, similar to Earth's North Pole), and replace them with new continents.  This will kill one of the biggest issues I was having, and also just be nice for a refreshed Kerbin. 

In the same vein, we're also going to break up the supercontinent that is Kerbin's landmass.  There will be two of them in addition to the north and south polar regions. 

The next big thing that will change is that KSC's location will change. It will still be along the equator, but it may not be in the exact same spot on that particular landmass. This is because in changing what Kerbin looks like, its just proven extraordinarily difficult to adhere to where the original location was without killing the new terrain, SO, we're going to move it to a new location. That might be as simple as simply picking the whole thing up and moving it more inland, or it might move to somewhere else entirely.  We shall see. 

And the big benefit of going through this rigmarole is primarily going to be for the people who like to build submarines. I'm pretty adamant on getting interesting ocean terrain for Kerbin, and thats also been central to why i've had so many issues. 

Edited December 1, 2022 by G'th

[Rutabaga22]

Maybe do KSCswitcher? I'd like to be able to be able to move my ksc around kerbin (and maybe other bodies).

[louie]

On 12/2/2022 at 10:35 AM, G'th said:

I'm still alive folks, just to give an update lol. I started a new job and thats been eating up my time, but its also because Kerbin is just proving to be a righteous pain in the ass, but I have some idea of how we can get around this hurdle. 

What that will involve, in the most visible sense, is not adhering to being an exact recreation of Kerbin.  Instead, I'm going to remove the ice caps as we know them (which are just huge sheets of ice in both instances, similar to Earth's North Pole), and replace them with new continents.  This will kill one of the biggest issues I was having, and also just be nice for a refreshed Kerbin. 

In the same vein, we're also going to break up the supercontinent that is Kerbin's landmass.  There will be two of them in addition to the north and south polar regions. 

The next big thing that will change is that KSC's location will change. It will still be along the equator, but it may not be in the exact same spot on that particular landmass. This is because in changing what Kerbin looks like, its just proven extraordinarily difficult to adhere to where the original location was without killing the new terrain, SO, we're going to move it to a new location. That might be as simple as simply picking the whole thing up and moving it more inland, or it might move to somewhere else entirely.  We shall see. 

And the big benefit of going through this rigmarole is primarily going to be for the people who like to build submarines. I'm pretty adamant on getting interesting ocean terrain for Kerbin, and thats also been central to why i've had so many issues. 

jeez ocean terrain? a whole new Kerbin? that sounds really difficult. take as much time as you need my dude

[mrphun]

Can I use this without JNSQ?

Edited December 3, 2022 by mrphun
spelling error

[G'th]

8 hours ago, louie said:

jeez ocean terrain? a whole new Kerbin? that sounds really difficult. take as much time as you need my dude

Difficult yes, worth it? Double yes. 

[G'th]

3 hours ago, mrphun said:

Can I use this without JNSQ?

Yep. This mod will be completely standalone so no need for any other mods other than the basic dependencies. 

[MARL_Mk1]

On 12/1/2022 at 10:35 PM, G'th said:

Instead, I'm going to remove the ice caps as we know them (which are just huge sheets of ice in both instances, similar to Earth's North Pole), and replace them with new continents.  

So Kerbin will have no ice caps at all, just a normal continent on them? Will the biome count as Ice caps still?

On a side note, will we be able to resize this system over the normal stock size?

Edited December 4, 2022 by MARL_Mk1

[G'th]

1 hour ago, MARL_Mk1 said:

So Kerbin will have no ice caps at all, just a normal continent on them? Will the biome count as Ice caps still?

On a side note, will we be able to resize this system over the normal stock size?

It will have icecaps, by there will be underlying continents/islands under them. In stock the caps are actually just straight ice; no real land under them.  I'm changing that primarily because for how I'm generating the new height map I needed the poles to be empty. 

 

And its being designed natively at 2.5/2.7x scale, and I think we're still going to do a patch to squeeze it down to stock for those that want it. 

[MARL_Mk1]

14 hours ago, G'th said:

It will have icecaps, by there will be underlying continents/islands under them. In stock the caps are actually just straight ice; no real land under them.  I'm changing that primarily because for how I'm generating the new height map I needed the poles to be empty. 

 

And its being designed natively at 2.5/2.7x scale, and I think we're still going to do a patch to squeeze it down to stock for those that want it. 

Can't wait...  Take your time, it looks awesome so far

[wasmic]

Wow, Eve is absolutely gorgeous like that! Looks both beautiful and dangerous, as it should.

[KerbalOnKerbin]

Question - this might sound annoying - but how is development going? I know it's the holidays and all, but I would just like to hear about how this mod is going.

[funnelton]

Oh my goodness... this is jawdropping! ive been trying to find if someone has been developing something like this for a while, i am definitely gonna keep a close eye on this 

[louie]

can't wait for the next content update. this is an amazing project and it will be interesting to see what comes out of it.

[Gojira]

On 12/26/2022 at 3:49 PM, KerbalOnKerbin said:

Question - this might sound annoying - but how is development going? I know it's the holidays and all, but I would just like to hear about how this mod is going.

author's busy with life stuff i'd wager, they'll post when they're ready