Scarecrow71 Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 I posted the following in the "What Did You Do In KSP Today" thread yesterday: On 3/17/2025 at 3:06 PM, Scarecrow71 said: Not sure if this belongs in this thread as it's more of a "What I'm doing TO KSP today" instead of "What I'm doing IN KSP today", but... ...I'm working on crafting my first mod for KSP1. I did write a mod for KSP2 to cycle through planets, set a target, and return the focus back to the active ship...but with KSP2 being less-than-alive at the moment, that mod is no longer applicable. So I'm tooling my way through KSP and asking myself "What do I want to see in this game that I don't see currently". Telescopes. I don't see Telescopes. So before I set off to do any mod-crafting, I check the mod discussions subforum, and the latest mod for scopes is from...2017. linuxgurugamer crafted a radio telescope mod in 2017, and there was some activity on it in 2024, so it's still active and works in 1.12.x (per the replies to that thread). Rubber Ducky created an orbital telescope mod back in 2015, and that topic was locked in...2015. So after doing some research here in the forums, it appears that a Telescope mod could be crafted without stepping on any toes. The idea I have is to: Alter the tracking station so that you must build telescopes to actually see planetary information. That is, you can't just waltz in at the start of the game and go "Hey, there's Duna". Build a scope, see the planet, upgrade the scope, get orbital information, upgrade again, profit. Alter the map view so that the same applies here so you can't just launch a simple rocket and go "Hey, Duna is right there, why doesn't it show up in the tracking station". Craft a series of telescopes for use in space to look at and map various aspects of a planet. Terrain and elevation, as well as identifying biomes might be in play here. I'm thinking about generating some science points too. Not a lot, maybe like 5 or 10, depending upon the actual telescope Allow for the building of larger orbital scopes, ala Hubble or JWST. Not sure of how to integrate them into the game so it isn't just "Hey, I put this here for no reason". Update and alter the contract system to: Have custom contracts for the scopes (stuff like "Upgrade the tracking station and unlock Duna" or "Map the biomes on Eeloo" type stuff) Alter the existing contract system so that planets and missions to them aren't available until after you've unlocked a planet through the tracking station. Doesn't stop you from just winging it, though! Again, this is something I want to see in the game, and not necessarily what anyone else wants to see in the game. But I'm going to try learning how to mod the game, and then craft parts through Blender to do this. Wish me luck! Expand After receiving a couple of responses, and after doing some actual coding on this, I figured I would create a development thread to talk about this and to have discussion with the rest of the community on this. I'll also use this first post as a way to provide a quick overview of what is happening with the mod. Not sure how involved or in-depth that will be, but, you know, it can't hurt. Right? @Kimera Industries posted this in response to my original post: On 3/18/2025 at 6:50 PM, Kimera Industries said: If I may, certain planets have been known since ancient times- Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Perhaps something similar for KSP? You can only see the major planets in the map view, though without detail, and moons, dwarf planets, asteroids, etc. are the ones that have to be discovered. Expand I wholly agree with this statement. Long before telescopes were a thing, ancient astronomers were able to see the heavens and identify several of the planets in our own solar system. They were able to calculate distance from Earth, position in the night sky, gravity (or, well, close, based on how light acted around them). And this is something I plan on incorporating into my mod. Here is how I envision both the Tracking Station and the Map View to function: At Tier I - that is, the Tracking Station has had no upgrades to it - you'll be able to see that there is an object, but you won't know what it is. The texture will be replaced by a blurred, dark texture, and most relevant data for the planet/moon will be hidden. Things such as planet name (although, ancient astronomers named the planets before telescopes, so maybe this doesn't get done?), orbit lines, rotation, etc. All that you'll be able to see is that there is an object, and it will state it is unidentified/unknown. At Tier I, the only objects that aren't hidden are Kerbin, Mun, Minmus, and Kerbol. At Tier II - the first building upgrade - you'll be able to do a "scan" of the object to get the actual texture, name and a bit more basic information about the object (such as rotation, length of a day, etc.). You will need to scan each individual object to unlock it, and I'm thinking about using the Contract system to prevent someone from just blindly scanning every planet and moon once the building is upgraded. Like, you have to have a contract to scan Duna before you actually scan it. I don't know on this. Maybe. At Tier III - the second (and last) building upgrade, you'll be able to scan for orbital lines, length of year, and the advanced planetary information (semi-accurate transfer window dates/times, as an example). I'd like to state up front that this impacts what you can see in Map View as well. If it's locked in the Tracking Station, it will be locked in Map View. You'll be able to see that there is an object there, but you won't have any information about it. I am still working out all the details on what unlocks when, and I'm sure that will evolve over time. But for now, this is the plan! As of this morning, I have successfully been able to set planetary names to Unknown Object in the Tracking Station, and I've created a blurred texture for use in the game. I need to implement the texture so that you cannot see the planet until you scan it, and that is next on my list! I welcome any and all comments, suggestions, help, questions...anything you guys want to throw at me on this, provided the discussion is civil and engaging! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffery Kerman Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 I bet someone is gonna try to do a mission to eeloo without discovering it first Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PicoSpace Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 So there are some telescope mods already out there, if you are doing this I'd strongly suggest you consider patching/supporting them to support your mod so you don't spend hours remaking telescope models (unless you want to) and instead focus on making your coding. Plus, this mod sounds like a different take on Research Bodies, where you need to scan planets and spend science to "unlock" them in terms of orbits and information; although it sounds like your implenetation is more appealing it might be worth a look see at how they did it. This does sound like a neat project so if you need/want some testing help, give me a poke! -Tasier Space Technologies Lost of telescopes in this one! - Spacedust Allows you to see resources in low orbit which can be mined by space-only craft, its a hard dependancy for Far Future Technologies. Has a Hubble-like telescope - CactEye-2 Orbital Telescopes Refocused You want telescopes and the ability to image and scan planets? This is the current reining mod for that. Several telescopes and other mods also support some of its functions. - James Webb for Kerbal The highest quality James Webb Telescope Model -HullCamVDS Continued Primarily cameras but they can also be used as "telescopes" if you get close enough to your target! -Neptune Camera Basic Camera for Soviet Era re-creations There are others as well, even a few parts in various packs that are "telescopes" or cameras. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JadeOfMaar Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 @Scarecrow71 You're about to begin making something huge here and I wish you nothing but the best. A discovery telescope mod with more dimensions and better UX is one thing that many players have been crying for. Here are some suggestions for possible gameplay: The telescope parts themselves would need to come with incremental tech for resolution and detection type. They need to be revisited in order to upgrade their lenses once those are unlocked so they can see further or see more types. Shielding tech is needed so that in case they point at the home star their sensors don't overexpose and fry. It would be necessary to build constellations of telescopes and have them treated as a single vessel -- for simplicity, the master vessel gains the capacity of all the slaves it has, and collectively they can increase the discovery rate of a target. Maybe constellations (as wide as Mun's SMA) or scanning periods of whole years (to make use of Parallax, and I don't mean the visual mod) would be required in order to detect orbit lines. Feature Creep: Not all telescopes deal with visible light so a constellation tuned to cosmic signals could be purposed for use as an interstellar antenna. This keeps the system relevant when discovery starts to lose importance. Celestial bodies should have science value buffs due to what they are (exotic kinds) or certain stats (is marked as a binary with another body or its orbital period is in days) or first discovery of their kind (it's really rewarding to find the first giant black hole but not as much when you find the 5th giant black hole). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PicoSpace Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 On 3/18/2025 at 9:38 PM, JadeOfMaar said: @Scarecrow71 You're about to begin making something huge here and I wish you nothing but the best. A discovery telescope mod with more dimensions and better UX is one thing that many players have been crying for. Here are some suggestions for possible gameplay: The telescope parts themselves would need to come with incremental tech for resolution and detection type. They need to be revisited in order to upgrade their lenses once those are unlocked so they can see further or see more types. Shielding tech is needed so that in case they point at the home star their sensors don't overexpose and fry. It would be necessary to build constellations of telescopes and have them treated as a single vessel -- for simplicity, the master vessel gains the capacity of all the slaves it has, and collectively they can increase the discovery rate of a target. Maybe constellations (as wide as Mun's SMA) or scanning periods of whole years (to make use of Parallax, and I don't mean the visual mod) would be required in order to detect orbit lines. Feature Creep: Not all telescopes deal with visible light so a constellation tuned to cosmic signals could be purposed for use as an interstellar antenna. This keeps the system relevant when discovery starts to lose importance. Celestial bodies should have science value buffs due to what they are (exotic kinds) or certain stats (is marked as a binary with another body or its orbital period is in days) or first discovery of their kind (it's really rewarding to find the first giant black hole but not as much when you find the 5th giant black hole). Expand I'll add to this list if I may, image data is MASSIVE so if your telescope has a solid connection with Kerbin and is in Low Kerbin orbit (or heck, is on the planet itself... Research Bodies does this) then you can quickly transmit data. However if you are farther away (doesn't take much) then or imaging megapixels of data, transmission times etc get massive. That's something most/all telescope mods don't cover these days, the amount of "nits" would be 1M times more than a simple temperature scan so expect to need to transmit for a while or require a lot of EC for transmission. Also, consider Kerbalism configs where radiation damages the sensor over time as well, because that would be cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin_kerman Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 On 3/18/2025 at 9:38 PM, JadeOfMaar said: @Scarecrow71 You're about to begin making something huge here and I wish you nothing but the best. A discovery telescope mod with more dimensions and better UX is one thing that many players have been crying for. Here are some suggestions for possible gameplay: The telescope parts themselves would need to come with incremental tech for resolution and detection type. They need to be revisited in order to upgrade their lenses once those are unlocked so they can see further or see more types. Shielding tech is needed so that in case they point at the home star their sensors don't overexpose and fry. It would be necessary to build constellations of telescopes and have them treated as a single vessel -- for simplicity, the master vessel gains the capacity of all the slaves it has, and collectively they can increase the discovery rate of a target. Maybe constellations (as wide as Mun's SMA) or scanning periods of whole years (to make use of Parallax, and I don't mean the visual mod) would be required in order to detect orbit lines. Feature Creep: Not all telescopes deal with visible light so a constellation tuned to cosmic signals could be purposed for use as an interstellar antenna. This keeps the system relevant when discovery starts to lose importance. Celestial bodies should have science value buffs due to what they are (exotic kinds) or certain stats (is marked as a binary with another body or its orbital period is in days) or first discovery of their kind (it's really rewarding to find the first giant black hole but not as much when you find the 5th giant black hole). Expand I completely agree with that I would like there to be the possibilities for planet modders to be able to make custom configs for compatibility with it(e.g having a body list that allows modders to make custom discovery thingy) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarecrow71 Posted March 18 Author Share Posted March 18 On 3/18/2025 at 9:33 PM, PicoSpace said: So there are some telescope mods already out there, if you are doing this I'd strongly suggest you consider patching/supporting them to support your mod so you don't spend hours remaking telescope models (unless you want to) and instead focus on making your coding. Expand I have next-to-zero modding experience, so I want to do this - even if there are already mods out there that have some/all of this functionality - as it will help me learn. Not to mention that I am not comfortable with altering what someone else has done. And, truth be told, I took a look at TextureReplacer...and @shaw hasn't been on the site in more than a year, so any questions I'd have related to this one (as an example) would probably go mostly unanswered. Better to figure it out myself! On 3/18/2025 at 9:38 PM, JadeOfMaar said: Here are some suggestions for possible gameplay: The telescope parts themselves would need to come with incremental tech for resolution and detection type. They need to be revisited in order to upgrade their lenses once those are unlocked so they can see further or see more types. Shielding tech is needed so that in case they point at the home star their sensors don't overexpose and fry. It would be necessary to build constellations of telescopes and have them treated as a single vessel -- for simplicity, the master vessel gains the capacity of all the slaves it has, and collectively they can increase the discovery rate of a target. Maybe constellations (as wide as Mun's SMA) or scanning periods of whole years (to make use of Parallax, and I don't mean the visual mod) would be required in order to detect orbit lines. Feature Creep: Not all telescopes deal with visible light so a constellation tuned to cosmic signals could be purposed for use as an interstellar antenna. This keeps the system relevant when discovery starts to lose importance. Celestial bodies should have science value buffs due to what they are (exotic kinds) or certain stats (is marked as a binary with another body or its orbital period is in days) or first discovery of their kind (it's really rewarding to find the first giant black hole but not as much when you find the 5th giant black hole). Expand I have no idea when I'll actually get to doing scope models. I am no graphic artist, and anything like that is going to be a ways off and take a lot of time. For me, anyhow. Your points and suggestions all have merit, but again, I'm no modder, and with just starting I gotta go slow and steady. First things first, as it were. On 3/18/2025 at 9:46 PM, PicoSpace said: I'll add to this list if I may, image data is MASSIVE so if your telescope has a solid connection with Kerbin and is in Low Kerbin orbit (or heck, is on the planet itself... Research Bodies does this) then you can quickly transmit data. However if you are farther away (doesn't take much) then or imaging megapixels of data, transmission times etc get massive. That's something most/all telescope mods don't cover these days, the amount of "nits" would be 1M times more than a simple temperature scan so expect to need to transmit for a while or require a lot of EC for transmission. Expand I am already planning for EC requirements, just like any other transmitted data. Larger scopes with more data are going to require more power to send. It will also be affected by distance to the KSC, size of the antenna, and all of the other standard stuff that we get used to. On 3/18/2025 at 9:46 PM, PicoSpace said: Also, consider Kerbalism configs where radiation damages the sensor over time as well, because that would be cool. Expand This might be the very last thing that ever gets looked at. I do not play with Kerbalism in any capacity, so I'm not even sure how I'd even start this. Then again, I'm not sure how I started the mod, so there is hope! On 3/18/2025 at 9:48 PM, Kevin_kerman said: I would like there to be the possibilities for planet modders to be able to make custom configs for compatibility with it(e.g having a body list that allows modders to make custom discovery thingy) Expand Well, I have to actually get the mod finished before I can consider adding things to let others mess with it in-game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JadeOfMaar Posted March 19 Share Posted March 19 On 3/18/2025 at 10:38 PM, Scarecrow71 said: I have no idea when I'll actually get to doing scope models. I am no graphic artist, and anything like that is going to be a ways off and take a lot of time. For me, anyhow. Your points and suggestions all have merit, but again, I'm no modder, and with just starting I gotta go slow and steady. First things first, as it were. Expand That's fine. I expect it. Just throwing ideas and hoping. Someone may come along and offer to make models for you. Until then feel free to borrow the models from any ShareAlike-licensed mod to test with. Reveal hidden contents From my experience I can name 5 disciplines that modders tend to gravitate to. Except for the last one which is complementary, modders tend to only pick one and become entrenched. Code monke (as in code as in C#). Someone who can add mechanisms and behaviors to the game. Configs are not code. You are here. Part maker. Can make parts with either great models or great textures or both. Planet maker. Can make planet textures and their configs. Quirk clergyman. Someone who knows the inside-out of a certain bug feature of KSP's physics to the point of being able to write a handbook or a mod that exploits it or works around it. Config wizard. Someone who's very good at patching and can provide compatibility between mods. They can write contract packs and integration for complicated or vast mods like USI, EVE, KSPIE, RO and so on. This is complementary and may occur with one of the other disciplines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manul Posted March 26 Share Posted March 26 On 3/18/2025 at 10:38 PM, Scarecrow71 said: I am no graphic artist, and anything like that is going to be a ways off and take a lot of time. Expand 3d modelling itself is not that bad actually. I don't know what 80% of Blender functions do and have no modelling experience but I managed to make stuff like this Reveal hidden contents But making colliders is another circle of hell because they should always be convex, be as low poly as possible while being as close to the shape of the original mesh as possible. That shouldn't be such a big deal for a telescope though because it's mostly cylinders and flat surfaces, no smooth aerodynamic shape required. UV unwrapping and texturing is the next level of killmeplease, still can't figure this one so my models look like lego bricks digested by a dog. Reveal hidden contents Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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