Kethane Pack 0.9.2 - New cinematic trailer! - 1.0 compatibility update

[theSpeare]

Can we please get a "deposit amount" along with mouse coordinates?

[Honeybadga]

Hai, I'm fairly new to Kethane and I already love it. However, I have a question: once I land on a deposit and start drilling, am I supposed to be able to suck it dry in one go or can I move into a direction a couple of kilometers and pump up the rest of it? Also Majiir, would you consider giving us the possibility to scan an area that is wider than only one pixel, maybe similar to the ISA mapsat mechanics? Because I think most of you know how tedious it can be to scan an entire moon's or planet's deposits since you have to babysit a probe until it's done. Even with timewarp it takes a while.

[Alastair412]

I've been using Kethane for a good month and love it.

One thing I've noted that's missing since at least 0.4.3: the 2m converter tends to fall off very easily. Looking at the part.cfg, I noticed that there's two parameters missing, breakingForce and breakingTorque. The default values for these are apparently really low.

For reference, they're set at 50 on the medium converter, and 200 seems a typical value for 2.5m parts.

[KhaosCorp]

Hai, I'm fairly new to Kethane and I already love it. However, I have a question: once I land on a deposit and start drilling, am I supposed to be able to suck it dry in one go or can I move into a direction a couple of kilometers and pump up the rest of it? Also Majiir, would you consider giving us the possibility to scan an area that is wider than only one pixel, maybe similar to the ISA mapsat mechanics? Because I think most of you know how tedious it can be to scan an entire moon's or planet's deposits since you have to babysit a probe until it's done. Even with timewarp it takes a while.

Kinda makes sense that Kethane scan is less area per pass than ISA. A topo satellite only has to scan the surface of a planet, while the kethane scanner has to penetrate the surface.

If you want to scan faster use more scanners. My kethane satellites are huge, usualy 8 or more of the small scanners. That's gets ya about 80% resolution per pass on x100 warp.

[Sapphire]

Hai, I'm fairly new to Kethane and I already love it. However, I have a question: once I land on a deposit and start drilling, am I supposed to be able to suck it dry in one go or can I move into a direction a couple of kilometers and pump up the rest of it? Also Majiir, would you consider giving us the possibility to scan an area that is wider than only one pixel, maybe similar to the ISA mapsat mechanics? Because I think most of you know how tedious it can be to scan an entire moon's or planet's deposits since you have to babysit a probe until it's done. Even with timewarp it takes a while.

I generally slap four of those Kethane detectors onto my four-dish MapSat satellites, then leave it on overnight. Then when I wake up, everything's done and ready to go.

[Pontiac]

@Honeybadga> Each location is of a certain radius, so, as long as you're within that radius, you'll be able to mine until its gone.

@Sapphire> Having more than one is useless. I had 8 on my most recent, with enough RTGs to power a small city, then time accelerated to 100x, and still got the missing dots. This is around Kerbin and Mun.

[Pontiac]

What would be nice is to have the ability to change the colors of what is scanned instead of a shade of green. If we could define something either via the UI for amounts between 0-50k, 50-100k, then by 100k range after, it'd make it even more easier to decide where to go once you have a planet scanned. Right now, its white, green and gray. I can't tell though (Running at 100x and getting some pixels instead) if I'm looking at white within some green, or if the whole area is green.

Or even with the existing, if we were able to change the grey, green, and white to say blue, bright red, and white, we'd CLEARLY see what is where.

I figured that since I've got nothing else to do, other than play with Kethane on one of my saves, I'd download the source and see if I CAN apply this. I spent most of my night throwing my middle finger at the screen because I hadn't quite figured out how to create a new variable in C#, but eventually found a decent example, right within this mod. I have successfully managed to get the scanner to show different colors for 0-20% of max, 20-40%, 40-60%, 60-80% and 80%-100%. For 0-20% is uses RGB values of 0%, 100%, 0% and 20% increase in Alpha for each grade, then yellow for 100%. Looks pretty sharp, and its really clear on where to land.

However, these are still hard-coded values, so, next step is to learn how to handle the config files.

[KhaosCorp]

@Sapphire> Having more than one is useless. I had 8 on my most recent, with enough RTGs to power a small city, then time accelerated to 100x, and still got the missing dots. This is around Kerbin and Mun.

This is just not true....

Running multiple scanners decreases loss of scan resolution in time warp, allowing a completed map to be completed in less real-time than running a single scanner. This is something I have done a lot of testing on myself. If you don't think that's how it works instead of just saying as much you should test for yourself. Put up 2 satellites around Kerbin, both at 282km orbit at 82deg inclination. Have one with a single scanner and the other with 8-12.....run them both at x100 time warp and see what happens....

[CGroinder]

I just read it and read the part description. All I can say is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

I had to read the description twice to understand it....I would have loved to see my face when I clicked on "Blend Kerbal"...that is just so mean xD

[Pontiac]

<offtopic>

Just for the record, I've only started diving into C# over the past couple of weeks, but I've been writing code since the Commodore Vic-20 days and have seen and worked in a LOT of languages. Previous to today (Last 12 hours as of this writing) I'd played in C# by debugging some other code for probably a maximum of 5 hours in total, and what I did was mostly "good guesses". Tonight is by FAR the longest I've spent looking at ANYTHING C#. The last time I touched anything that resembled C anything (Standard, +, ++) was over 15 years ago, probably closer to 20 now. I'm by no means anything of a professional at coding in this language as I'm still learning the nuances of this language, but once I understand the language construct, and what code does what when and where, then reading the code is second nature right after I go further to try understand how the author actually writes their code. Knowing what the language does is one thing, but how the author uses and writes the code is another. With the help of Kethane, SubAssemblyLoader, and ActionsOnTheFly, I'm getting the gist of what is going on, and I look forward to tearing into MechJeb, and writing a small mod of my own ground up. I'll also say that these three mods written by three different authors all have given three very different coding styles.

</offtopic>

Non-Technical:

As the Kethane code sits as of about 12 hours ago, (Specifically in KethaneDetector.cs) if you're running multiple ships within the same Physics Area Of Effect (Henceforth PAOE), then yes, I'll grant you that you get better scans, but not for the reasons, or for the mechanics, you're implying in regards to multiple scanners on a single ship. Throwing more than one scanner onto one ship doesn't do anything more at any speed, 1x or otherwise, other than report back how much Kethane is at that geographical location. If you have 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, or 512 on a single ship, the call to update the map is done either once for all ships in the PAOE regardless of the number of scanners equipped per ship, or, once for as many scanners on the ships at that exact location at that time. Regardless of how many scanners you have, you're only in ONE location at each video or physics frame of time. The code specifically looks at the ships current long/lat. The code doesn't adjust left, right, forward or back by any degree. If you have a trailing ship, that ships scanner may update the map on your screen based on its own location if its in the same AOE, and that COULD give a different pixel. So yes, having a scanner on multiple ships within the PAOE might indeed update your map faster, depending on the differences in distance at that time, but going the other way and having multiple scanners on one ship in the PAOE will absolutely not provide any additional information.

Technical:

[[Just to keep things a bit clear, I'll bold Unity' update routines.]]

Unity fires two events that are relevant to this discussion. The first is called Update. This is called every frame update, and then there is the FixedUpdate which is called every physics update. These two events fire at two very different times for very different reasons.

The physical map updates are done during the unity event FixedUpdate, which is "...called once every physics time step." -- http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/index.html -- Since physics 'is kind of' turned off during normal time acceleration, FixedUpdate probably gets called right after Update. This mods Update routine looks to be just updating the physical location of the "You are here" icon. Both of these events are called at some point, yes, but in which order, I'm not certain at this point, and I don't think it really matters. How things are handled under PHYSICAL acceleration could be a different story, but I don't think you hit 100x under Physical anyways, but then again, I wouldn't want to really since normal time acceleration yields the same results with less risk.

In the situation with multiple scanners within the PAOE, I'm not sure how its handled as of yet. I know multiple MechJebs can do their automation work at the same time so long they're within the same PAOE at 1x. If these scanners work on the same kind of principals as MechJeb I would like to assume that there is one map for the orbiting body, and all scanners just make a call to the proper 'object' that is holding onto that map, and updates the map by drawing the appropriate pixel in memory, there by updating the map you see on screen if it is shown.

As soon as I figure out how to write out log files (Which won't be hard I'm sure, I've just never done it in C#) I'll throw some debugging routines in it, have it write out an entry in a log file for each event, and I can tell you exactly what happens when and how often. I'll even throw in the locations scanned, and amount returned.

But for now, I gotta get to bed so I can plug away at this particular plugin some more. :]

[af22man]

I am having a problem with getting fuel to flow from the kethane converter to fuel tanks across docking ports

http://i.imgur.com/LrAtFPZ.png

this is my rig. I'm using hyperedit just so i can see the new parts and how they look. but i used to be able to mine kethane and when i turned on the converter it would flow across the docking port to an available tank, it is not doing this now.. how can i rectify this situation?

edit:spelling and i also put a fuel tank directly on the end of the converter, and the kethane rig will only fill up that tank, nothing else.. did something break with this update?

edit2: here is a tank at both ends not receiving fuel once the directly attached tank is full.. something definitely broke with this update http://imgur.com/iY0mEHD

Edited June 11, 2013 by af22man

[Pontiac]

Shouldn't have. Try running a fuel line from the converter to the tank. IT WILL NOT WORK GOING FROM TANK TO CONVERTER.

[af22man]

well my problem is that i wish to attach multiple tanks to this unit and i cant run fuel lines to every tank i attach once im on the mun.

[Majiir]

There is no synchronization between detectors. (It's a requested feature.) However, multiple detectors on the same vessel can (but don't always) increase your scan resolution. The key here is that detectors don't talk to each other, so they won't take turns; they'll just all work individually, and if two detectors happen to scan the same space, oh well. So, if you want to increase scan resolution, you should stagger your detectors rather than starting them all with an action group. Alternatively, you could run both detector types; since they have different scan rates, most of the time they'll miss each other. In the next minor revision, I'll add some small variance to the detector timer. This should automatically push detectors out of phase, on average.

It's also worth mentioning that battery capacity is important for scanning at time warp. The small detector uses 0.9 energy per second, or 0.03 per frame (assuming 30 physics FPS). As long as you have 0.03 energy available to draw, the detector will run at full speed. However, if you run at 1000x time warp, the detector now requires 30 energy per frame, and a small probe may not have that capacity. If you use RTGs, it's even worse, because they erroneously use the Update routine (graphics frame) instead of FixedUpdate, so its electrical generation isn't synchronized with consumption. (This is why RTG generation seems bursty.) So, if you have 45 capacity and there are six physics frames between each graphics frame, the small detector will run at full speed for one frame, half speed for the next, and then not at all for the next four frames. This is true no matter how many RTGs you stick on the ship.

Regarding the scan colors: I made an error in that change, and I forgot to test it to boot. I've revised the coloring on my end and I'll include that with the next release.

[KhaosCorp]

Sorry Pontiac, but your wrong. Your basing that on code, not what actually happens ingame. Bottom line is having more than one scanner on A SINGLE SHIP will get a map done faster in REAL TIME if time warp is used than a ship with only one scanner. You can look at the code all day long....Ive done s couple hours of testing just this INGAME.....not looking at code.

And please read what I posed before....I said absolutely nothing about getting it to scan more than a pixle area at once.....I never once said anything about increasing scan area at all. What I'm talking about is SCAN RESOLUTION...as in how solid of a line is made on the map per pass of the satellite.

On x100 time warp a ship with 12 scanners will make a more solid line than a ship with only one....2+ hours of testing lets me KNOW that's how it works, despite what the code says...

[elfindreams]

<offtopic>

Just for the record, I've only started diving into C# over the past couple of weeks, but I've been writing code since the Commodore Vic-20 days and have seen and worked in a LOT of languages. ... [Long read on code snipped]

The key isn't how often FixedUpdate vs Update is called it is based on the cycle time of the modules.

I don't have the code or game in front of me so I am going to invent some numbers Say you have one scanner with a scan time of 1.5s, it hits an update and sees it hasn't added anything in over 1.5s, it puts a dot... repeat over the planets surface you will have missing dots due to gaps in scan time...

If you have three scanners each with a scan time of 1.5s you can stagger them so they are .5s apart and detect 3 dots for every one of the other scenerio... (one scanner triggers on time 0, the next on .5s, the next on 1s, then it cycles back to scanner #1).

[af22man]

Update to the conversion issue. i have taken and created an empty tank and landed it nearby, i docked with the miner and it is still not Xfering fuel across the docking ports naturally, you have to alt click the tanks and Xfer it over, which is extremely inefficient if you have several tanks attached

[Mokmo]

I am having a problem with getting fuel to flow from the kethane converter to fuel tanks across docking ports

http://i.imgur.com/LrAtFPZ.png

this is my rig. I'm using hyperedit just so i can see the new parts and how they look. but i used to be able to mine kethane and when i turned on the converter it would flow across the docking port to an available tank, it is not doing this now.. how can i rectify this situation?

edit:spelling and i also put a fuel tank directly on the end of the converter, and the kethane rig will only fill up that tank, nothing else.. did something break with this update?

edit2: here is a tank at both ends not receiving fuel once the directly attached tank is full.. something definitely broke with this update http://imgur.com/iY0mEHD

I'm not near the game to test this, but is crossfeed enabled on your docking ports ?

At least you have a tank on the converter's stack, you can still make a manual transfer.

[af22man]

Update to the conversion issue. i have taken and created an empty tank and landed it nearby, i docked with the miner and it is still not Xfering fuel across the docking ports naturally, you have to alt click the tanks and Xfer it over, which is extremely inefficient if you have several tanks attached

here is an album of the system so far. ignore hyperedit, again i'[m using it to test things before i actually send them up. as you can see, its processing RCS fuel and its auto filling the RCS tanks just fine. there's no issue there, its when it is converting fuel that it has issue.

http://imgur.com/a/9G9E7

I have also disabled crossfeed and monopropellant still gets converted and stored in tanks, but not liquid fuel or oxidizer.

Edited June 11, 2013 by af22man

[DerekL1963]

If you want to scan faster use more scanners. My kethane satellites are huge, usualy 8 or more of the small scanners. That's gets ya about 80% resolution per pass on x100 warp.

More scanners increase per-pass coverage? I didn't know that...

[PringleMan]

More scanners increase per-pass coverage? I didn't know that...

As per what he said above on this page, it does not increase the area scanned, just how often it scans. It will still only scan a pixel at a time, but when you time warp the scanners do not update fast enough, so having more than one scanner will allow you to map more of the gaps that are usually left behind

[KhaosCorp]

More scanners increase per-pass coverage? I didn't know that...

If done right yes, though there is no real benefit to doing this running at anything less than x50 warp. I found x100 to actually work best with multiple scanners (Since update ive actually been running 3large 6small, 3 separate run groups) due to ideal orbital altitude/inclinations.

[af22man]

Update on fuel conversion.

So, it appears that the blockage is in the docking node itself. I attempted to use the new Largest port,the Clamp-o-tron Sr, and the fuel started to transfer fine. no issues. so it appears that the old standard Clamp-o-tron docking port is the problem.

edit: the shielded docking ports work just fine as well.

edit2: the small clamp-o-tron also does not work. it appears that the only docking ports taht work are the docking ports that can instantly snap to the center of an end of a tank, such as the large clamp-o-tron or the shielded one.

edit3: ok I just downloaded the game fresh. installed kethane and tested. still the same issue with the clamp-o-tron and clamp-o-tron jr ports. everything else works great

Edited June 11, 2013 by af22man

[AchronTimeless]

If done right yes, though there is no real benefit to doing this running at anything less than x50 warp. I found x100 to actually work best with multiple scanners (Since update ive actually been running 3large 6small, 3 separate run groups) due to ideal orbital altitude/inclinations.

I've been running one of the big ones in the center, and 4 of the small ones radially attached. Turn them on one at a time to stagger the scan timers, then throw it to 1000 warp, turn off the sound, and catch up on youtube subscriptions. By the time I get back, I have a very nice map.

[Jaedinator]

Just installed Kethane for the second time (used it ~2 days before 0.20 came out and when stock until now) set up my first satellite around the mun and because of the discussion about several detectors at once, i tried it myself putting up 8 Large detectors and activating them one by one (time gap) and i have a pretty well line even at 1000x

Now, before i spend hours again on designing kethane extraction/converting/storing crafts, i need to ask, is there still this special complicated guideline of building them you have to follow or has it been improved in 0.5?

If yes/no could someone please revise/quote the right way of building those again, as I dont want to go through the whole thread again looking for the right way ~.~

And Thanks alot for every help