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

[Creat]

I'm sure it's answered in this thread, and I apologize now for being that guy.

Is scanning still super friggin slow? Last I played w/Kethane was probably December. Have ranges been increased or can you scan while time warped?

You can scan while time-warping. There are two scanners, a small one and a bigger one ("medium") which differ in scanning speed (interval) and range.

You generally want to scan from higher up, since you can timewarp faster. The problem with that is: the faster you warp the more fields are skipped (the medium will allow for a bit faster timewarp). You can counteract that though by putting more scanners on the craft. Some say they're using like 20 or more, but depending on how fast you actually want to scan, you can do with a lot less (adding two makes a bigger difference than adding another two after them).

[JewelShisen]

WRONG!!!!

Everything you said in inaccurate info. This has been talked about so much in this thread....

You CAN scan at max time warp and not miss a single hex...just add more scanners.

I have personaly made a 100% complete map of Kerbin in UNDER 20MIN!!! And getting 100% map is honestly rather pointless.

For those of you that think scanning is slow please do 2 things:

1)Stop trying to scan like this is ISA..its not, and that mod sucks anyway =)

2)Read back in the thread, there are about 100 different convos disscussing how to scan fast with kethane (also just a good idea to follow threads of mods you use....)

And yet so many, including myself, know for a fact that you are wrong. Scanned Minmus and it took a week of in game time.

[Kimberly]

There are two problems with scanning at the moment:

1) Scanning isn't dependent on your orbital altitude (unlike Mapsat), so it takes long in game time.

2) Scanning at warp requires building ridiculous craft with lots of scanners, so scanning with low real time breaks immersion.

[KhaosCorp]

And yet so many, including myself, know for a fact that you are wrong. Scanned Minmus and it took a week of in game time.

Minmus takes 4-5days game time to scan...Id suggest playing with your orbital parameters a bit, sounds like your inclination may be a bit off ideal.

And not a whole lot that can be done to lessen the game time it takes...and honestly it SHOULD NOT be changed... as is its more realistic the way it is. The point is it does not take alot of time for a player to scan any body.

If YOU want to imposse game time limits on yourself thats fine, more power to you, as for me I will continue to map planets in under 30min for any body....and NO I personally dont mind the long ingame time....I LIKE REALISM!

And if thats not enough for you I beg you please...go hit google and do some research on how REAL satellites help scan for oil, natural gas, and ore deposits in the earth....then tell me again how kethane takes to much game time.....

The only 'problem' with Kethane scan is that people keep comparing it to the super unrealistic scanning of ISA......

Edited August 14, 2013 by KhaosCorp
i typ gud =)

[Creat]

If you want to use less in-game-time for a complete scan, you need to use a lower orbit. The lower the orbit, the faster the craft (and the orbital period), hence it takes less time to complete the number of orbits required to cover everything.

The problem with that is obviously that you can't timewarp as fast (and for bodies with any kind of atmosphere you can't at all and/or you fall out of the sky), so it will take a significantly greater amount of real-time to do so.

[Sunfang]

Every update has one or more major elements, but I also package all the miscellaneous improvements that are ready to deploy. The reason for the 0.7.6 update was to fix two game-breaking issues, and the reason for 0.7.7 was to fix a balance issue that was accidentally introduced in 0.7.6.

Just curious, but what were the two game-breaking issues?

[ASnogarD]

WRONG!!!!

Everything you said in inaccurate info. This has been talked about so much in this thread....

You CAN scan at max time warp and not miss a single hex...just add more scanners.

I have personaly made a 100% complete map of Kerbin in UNDER 20MIN!!! And getting 100% map is honestly rather pointless.

For those of you that think scanning is slow please do 2 things:

1)Stop trying to scan like this is ISA..its not, and that mod sucks anyway =)

2)Read back in the thread, there are about 100 different convos disscussing how to scan fast with kethane (also just a good idea to follow threads of mods you use....)

I take offence to your retarded comment, I did not give 100% completely inaccurate information ... the scan is about the same as it used to be, just the display is changed. Most players will not slap on 3 - 4 scanners on a satellite to scan for Kethane as the power needs to keep it scanning even when solar power is blocked is quiet high.

The scan resolution thus is about the same speed for most players, and as such the person asking the question will experience the same issue.

My information is accurate given the context, but as you may of not noticed I did say you can get a decent idea of the kethane deposits with a good angled orbit at 4x speed and that the person would be missing out if they quit again.

... bloody annoying, like being told by a clown to stop fooling about.

[JewelShisen]

Minmus takes 4-5days game time to scan...Id suggest playing with your orbital parameters a bit, sounds like your inclination may be a bit off ideal.

And not a whole lot that can be done to lessen the game time it takes...and honestly it SHOULD NOT be changed... as is its more realistic the way it is. The point is it does not take alot of time for a player to scan any body.

If YOU want to imposse game time limits on yourself thats fine, more power to you, as for me I will continue to map planets in under 30min for any body....and NO I personally dont mind the long ingame time....I LIKE REALISM!

And if thats not enough for you I beg you please...go hit google and do some research on how REAL satellites help scan for oil, natural gas, and ore deposits in the earth....then tell me again how kethane takes to much game time.....

The only 'problem' with Kethane scan is that people keep comparing it to the super unrealistic scanning of ISA......

You clearly know nothing about how satellite mapping works then because ISA is VERY realistic. Canada's RADARSAT-1 can scan a 50km x 50km area with a resolution of just 10m. THAT is a REAL version of the ISA mod! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RADARSAT-1

[KhaosCorp]

I take offence to your retarded comment, I did not give 100% completely inaccurate information ... the scan is about the same as it used to be, just the display is changed. Most players will not slap on 3 - 4 scanners on a satellite to scan for Kethane as the power needs to keep it scanning even when solar power is blocked is quiet high.

The scan resolution thus is about the same speed for most players, and as such the person asking the question will experience the same issue.

My information is accurate given the context, but as you may of not noticed I did say you can get a decent idea of the kethane deposits with a good angled orbit at 4x speed and that the person would be missing out if they quit again.

... bloody annoying, like being told by a clown to stop fooling about.

Sorry to offend you, but yet again some of your info is wrong......

I run satellites with 20+ scanners and NO batterys. If you incline your orbit at the right time you can get 100% sunlight during your orbit (minus the few rare times it will get eclipsed by other bodys). Better satellites and better piloting leads to better scanning...dont be so closed to new ideas, or to test them for yourself....

@ JewelShisen:

You clearly know nothing about the difference in mapping sats. ISA and RADARSAT-1 are SURFACE scanning satellites...they do NOT penetrate the surface of the body they are mapping....like a resource scaner would have to. Go look up the systems they use for locating various metal deposits on earth. Then go look at the systems used in the natural gas industry to locate deposits...

[JewelShisen]

@ JewelShisen:

You clearly know nothing about the difference in mapping sats. ISA and RADARSAT-1 are SURFACE scanning satellites...they do NOT penetrate the surface of the body they are mapping....like a resource scaner would have to. Go look up the systems they use for locating various metal deposits on earth. Then go look at the systems used in the natural gas industry to locate deposits...

Actually I seem to know more than you do. I wasn't claiming that radarsat-1 is the same as kethane. I was calling you out on your VERY wrong claim that ISA is not realistic when in fact it is.

[KhaosCorp]

Actually I seem to know more than you do. I wasn't claiming that radarsat-1 is the same as kethane. I was calling you out on your VERY wrong claim that ISA is not realistic when in fact it is.

I see it as unrealistic on 3 counts. ISA can scan a far greater area and at far higher resolution than the best surface mapping sats fielded by humans. I also find its power usage (or lack there of) disturbingly over powered. Also it pegs your location on the planet perfectly with only 1 satellite!!! That right there is enough to call it unrealistic imo. Modern day MILITARY grade gps system need at least 3 sat links to be accurate to 10meters....how does ISA do it down to the meter with 1 sat?

[JewelShisen]

I see it as unrealistic on 3 counts. ISA can scan a far greater area and at far higher resolution than the best surface mapping sats fielded by humans. I also find its power usage (or lack there of) disturbingly over powered. Also it pegs your location on the planet perfectly with only 1 satellite!!! That right there is enough to call it unrealistic imo. Modern day MILITARY grade gps system need at least 3 sat links to be accurate to 10meters....how does ISA do it down to the meter with 1 sat?

Ok three issues there... ONE: ISA is NOT GPS!!!! It is surface mapping and does NOT do it down to the meter but rather to the 1/10 of a GPS degree. Second it doesn't scan any better than sats used by the National Weather Service. It doesn't do high resolution mapping or else we would be able to see individual objects. Third, you CAN get your GPS location with one sat IF you use trilateration instead of triangulation. Triangulation relies on measuring the angles between you and the sats, while trilateration relies on the distance between you, the sat, and one or more fixed points on the surface.

Now then, about you saying that i needed to check how they scan for minerals? Hyperspectral Imaging is a real time method of locating minerals and other things under the ground. It is NOT a pulsed system like Kethane but rather a continuous scanning method like ISA. HSI is used to locate oil deposits, mineral fields, and even for thermal imaging and tracking.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperspectral_imaging

Want to claim me wrong? CITE YOUR SOURCE.

[LaydeeDem]

Are you guys done yet?

EDIT:

Now for an actual Kethane related discussion, Majiir, how do the particle effects work in Kethane?

Edited August 14, 2013 by Nutt007

[drtedastro]

Way too funny and true.....

[Aphox]

Please note that this is a development thread for Kethane, not ISA.

Keep discussion in this thread on Kethane and its development. It wasn't made to debate realism or argue about other mods (or argue at all, for that matter) and it's going to stay that way. If you want to discuss those things, please make a thread in the appropriate place.

Also note:

Reminder: Bug reports in this thread will be ignored. Submit them to the issue tracker and follow the bug reporting guidelines.

Remember, if you don't follow the guidelines and include a debug log, you won't be helped, and neither will Majiir.

[Majiir]

By examining the config from 0.7.5 I can say that oxidizer converter also consumed more kethane per cycle, which made it produce slightly more oxidizer per cycle, so the rates of production of both components of the fuel were strictly proportional to their rates of consumption. They aren't in either 0.7.6 or 0.7.7.

True enough, my bad again. For now, the config is an easy tweak, and I'll have a patch out as soon as I've collected some other fixes.

Just curious, but what were the two game-breaking issues?

One issue was the KethaneData module not starting after it was created, and the other was the KSPAddon issue that causes mod compatibility. For the first, I manually added the module to the ScenarioRunner when it's created, and for the second, I implemented the fix I posted in another thread.

The scanning mechanism is about the same

This is incorrect, but for different reasons than you've already been given. December is circa-0.3, and since then a new detector was added, deposits were shaded by quantity, the hex map was added which reduces the number of cells you have to scan for a full map from 32,768 to 10,242, scanners skip already-scanned cells which dramatically increases scan rate in some situations and makes multiple scanners on a single satellite work efficiently, and altitude attenuation was changed to be multiplicative and much reduced on top of that. As a result of all that, a medium scanner at 500km altitude now scans twice as fast, has fewer cells to scan, shows more useful information when you do get a scan, and coordinates with other detectors to increase overall scan speed. There's also the bit where Kethane data isn't lost all the time now, so once you scan, you can be confident your data will remain even through updates.

Now for an actual Kethane related discussion, Majiir, how do the particle effects work in Kethane?

I wrote the KethaneParticleEmitter module to be a wrapper around the Unity particle effects system (legacy, not Shuriken). This module lets me configure the entire particle system in a part config file, but I can also interact with it from other plugin code. For example, the extractor module positions the particle emitters at the point where the drill head enters the ground and turns them on and off. A lot of the fun happens in the KethaneParticleDynamics module, which is responsible for all the "realism" effects on particles: gravity, atmospheric pressure, et cetera. This changes the emitter properties in real time to reflect the emitter's surroundings, and it's why you get long plumes of gas when you mine on Eve but only fast-escaping wisps of vapor when you mine on Gilly.

[Sunfang]

One issue was the KethaneData module not starting after it was created, and the other was the KSPAddon issue that causes mod compatibility. For the first, I manually added the module to the ScenarioRunner when it's created, and for the second, I implemented the fix I posted in another thread.

Sorry, I'm not familiar with the back ends of mods yet. I also missed your post in... what thread was that? but I am assuming you mean resource compatibility with all the user created mods that require the Kethane.DLL. Wouldn't it be simpler to obtain the licenses for the resources from these developers and have them all running from the kethane side?

[Majiir]

Sorry, I'm not familiar with the back ends of mods yet. I also missed your post in... what thread was that? but I am assuming you mean resource compatibility with all the user created mods that require the Kethane.DLL. Wouldn't it be simpler to obtain the licenses for the resources from these developers and have them all running from the kethane side?

No, the KSPAddon issue is a stock bug that causes compatibility issues between completely unrelated mods. Universe Replacer had the most well-known conflict with Kethane, but a fair number of mods are affected by the issue.

[Crater]

Sorry, I'm not familiar with the back ends of mods yet. I also missed your post in... what thread was that? but I am assuming you mean resource compatibility with all the user created mods that require the Kethane.DLL. Wouldn't it be simpler to obtain the licenses for the resources from these developers and have them all running from the kethane side?

Nope, KSPAddon is a way of running some of your code without having to have a part with a partmodule on the current active vessel. E.g. Seeing the kethane map from the tracking station.

There was an issue where if you had several addons that did this (TAC Fuel balancer, modular fuels, Crew Maifest, MANY others) then there could be.... breakages depending on how they were coded to use the system.

The fix was to help avoid the breakages. Nothing to do with other addons that use the Kethane Resource system. The API for that is clean and public and fine for other addons to use. The whole point is that others can use it without Majiir having to make changes in the Kethane addon.

Edit : Ninja'ed by the OP

[Sunfang]

No, the KSPAddon issue is a stock bug that causes compatibility issues between completely unrelated mods. Universe Replacer had the most well-known conflict with Kethane, but a fair number of mods are affected by the issue.

Hmm, interesting. So does the KSPaddonfixed code only stop conflicts with Kethane, or can it be applied as a general workaround for all mods affected by this issue?

[Crater]

Hmm, interesting. So does the KSPaddonfixed code only stop conflicts with Kethane, or can it be applied as a general workaround for all mods affected by this issue?

To sumarize the bug and the fix

If more than one addon tries to use a "load once only" function from stock KSP, then only one of them will succeed.

Majiir provided code that allows an addon to get equivalent functionality, if they use his code snipped instead of just the stock call.

Basically, every addon needs to change their code to cope. You can only ever run one single addon that has not done so, attempting to use two or more will make only one of them work. You can, however mix and match as many addons as you like that have incorporated the fix, plus a single one that has not.

So.... the fix inside Kethane stops conflicts with Kethane, but other mod authors are free to also use it.

[ASnogarD]

Oh for Petes sake ...

I was answering this question :

Is scanning still super friggin slow? Last I played w/Kethane was probably December. Have ranges been increased or can you scan while time warped?

My answer was :

The scanning mechanism is about the same, the map though is a hex grid overlay over the planet / moon you are scanning. It is still kind of slow and you cant max timewarp and leave it for a few minutes as it will miss hexes. It isnt too bad though, a decent angled orbit at about 4x speed will give you a decent idea of where Kethane is.

If you quit Kethane due to the slow scanning before, you will probably quit again which is a pity as it does really add to the game.

You still have to put on a detector, you still cant scan while the craft is not the active craft, orbital scanning still needs to be put in a orbit that will let it take advantage of the planet/moons spin, etc etc... so it is about the same.

It IS kind of slow (not that I have an issue with that).

I was answering the question in the context of the question given, basically is it still a slow process to scan for kethane in this mod and the answer is basically yes. It may not be mechanically exactly the same, or impossible for a experienced user of the mod to min/max the system for optimal speed scanning but, for a new / inexperienced player who will most likely just slap on a single detector on a probe and send it to orbit (like I did), it is still slow.

I am not arguing the system is slow or needs to be fixed, I was merely answering that particular question and basing my answer on the context ie the person considered the slow scan a nuisance before and has the current system been sped up enough for a person who didnt like the slow scan before, and in my opinion the scan is still slow and needs patience.

Personally it doesnt bother me, I just put a single detector at a nice angle so it criss crosses the target planet and gives me a rough idea of where the deposits are and I send in a land craft with a scanner to those spots to mine... I dont need or even care about 100% resolution.

Thats why I got irritable with another poster coming in and saying YOU ARE WRONG!

[KhaosCorp]

My answer was :

The scanning mechanism is about the same, the map though is a hex grid overlay over the planet / moon you are scanning.

More than the map has changed since december, so this is infact inaccurate information. I also sent an apology to for unintentionaly aggresive way I pointed it out.

All that aside, why 'answer in context' when you can enlighten?? Maybe that fella though scanning was super slow because they didn't know you could run multiple scanners and fast time warp if you so choose. Kinda hard to answer a question in context without knowing fully what that context is.

Again, sorry if my response to your post seemed harsh, was not my intent.

[ASnogarD]

Did I say the mechanism is exactly and precisely the same as it was before ? NO!

Did I say the map was the ONLY change Majiir did to the mod ? NO!

How many players would download the mod and think, ahh let me slap on 20 scanners onto a satellite ? 1, at most 2 for symmetry is the norm.

Consider also the question here...

Is scanning still super friggin slow?

Does this sound like a player who would be satisfied to sit for 20 min in real time after nearly maxing out the scan potential with 20 scanners, optimal orbit, and at max warp speed to 100% scan a planet ? (Your claim to have scanned Kerbin in 20 min real time 100% resolution... that I assume is at nearly maximum scanning potential of the mod currently?)

I answered the question in a manner suitable to the person asking, and gently encouraged the player to still try it out.

(Note: This is not to imply that the person who originally asked the question is intolerant or impatient, players have different tolerances for different mechanisms... I for one get annoyed at the vagaries of the atmospherics during ascent, or the limitations of the construction section, or the inefficiency of the client to load from VAB to hangar but I have no issues waiting for a scan to complete when hunting for Kethane)

[Majiir]

I was answering the question in the context of the question given

Understood. I filled in some details because the scanning system has undergone a number of subtle changes, and they add up in a way that can make the current scanning experience rather different than the original. There's no need for anyone to get wound up about it.

Scanning will probably see yet another buff in the 0.8 update, but at the same time the new deposit generator will add incentive for advanced players to have more detailed scans. Note that I say detailed and not complete; there won't be any real benefit to a 100% scan of the entire body, but there will definitely be benefit to having a complete scan of a deposit once you've decided to mine it. Entry-level players shouldn't have to worry about any of this because any landing on a deposit will make some resources available, but in order to extract large quantities (in excess of ~25-50 tons, still tweaking this) you'll need to be careful about where you land.