Vessel Viewer

[Chrison]

Hi together,

within the last days I was hacking into the craft files to see how KSP stores unlaunched vessels and basically because I wanted to view my action groups and vessel descriptions without having to open KSP.

Quite simple, no magic added, all sources available on CodePlex

https://kspvesselviewer.codeplex.com/

Have fun with it, if you wanna use it in your project, feel free, if you find any bugs, fix them and commit if you wish to ;-)

Space Port Link:

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/ksp-vessel-viewer/

Legal Stuff:

License: GPL v3

Icons belong to their rightful owners, taken from iconfinder.com, http://art.gnome.org/themes/icon (SpaceShip Icon)

[jordanjay29]

Interesting tool. I'm honestly not sure how useful it will be, I was kind of hoping for a diagram or image of the parts in the arrangement of the craft. I'm not sure if that's possible, but knowing which parts are connected to which might be quite useful.

Another issue is using the source names rather than the names displayed in KSP, some mods have very eccentric names for their part files that I'd rather not memorize. Surely the friendly name must be available somewhere without loading KSP?

[Chrison]

Hi jordanjey,

its actually nice to see someone around who seems to have a use for my little tool

Originally I planned to have something to see my action groups after having a vessel launched. But parsing craft files is a hell of a mess ...

Anyways your feature request for having a diagram or something like that is in theory possible, specially if it comes to show which part is connected to what. But on the other hand that would require to somehow simulate the part modules or actually visually display them. Thats a lot of work for something that you actually can do by simply starting KSP and watching your vessel in the VAB/SPH.

For the naming thing, in theory it would be possible to display the real part name. But in practical terms that would mean that you have to search for that part in the GameData folder and do that for every mod installed. Thats kinda mess, due to KSPs current serialization system of game objects. It would be far more easy if Squad would have included the part name within the craft file, which is unfortunally not the case. Anyways I'm already working on a new version of my code to enable such a feature in the future But having .22 in mind, lets see how stuff will change in the future and if my code still fits the new KSP logic

[Stone Blue]

Trying this now.

Having issues with the file browser when trying to load a craft file...The window almost locks up, and takes almost 30secs just to move to each different folder. I keep getting "Not Responding"... ... Makes browsing to the .craft file difficult to say the least...I take it that you wrote this using the German version of Windows on your PC?...Some of the window titles, and button titles are in German...That wouldnt cause issues running on a different language version of Windows, would it?...But then this may just be something specific to MY computer, so take it with a grain of salt..

And as to displaying the part "Title" (the name displayed in the VAB/SPH), vs the part "Name" (the folder name for the part), it CAN be done...I have no idea HOW, or how EASILY/DIFFICULT, but MacTee has done it. I know (at least for 0.21), the part "title" is in each .cfg file, along with the "name".

In the Craft tab in KSP MOD Admin, you can display a list of every part on your craft, by TITLE, AND the quantity of each part used in the craft. Also displays which mod each part is from, or if it is stock. You can also dbl-click on a part title, and it will open the part.cfg for you in a text window, so you can quickly view it.

You can also dbl-click the craft title itself, and it will open the .craft file in a text window, so you can quickly view much of the same info you pull in Vessel Viewer...However you have a nice GUI, vs just a text file view.

Vessel Viewer looks like it has some nice features, and I can see how it could be very useful, especially if you are able to expand on it.

Edited October 12, 2013 by Stone Blue

[Chrison]

Trying this now.

Having issues with the file browser when trying to load a craft file...The window almost locks up, and takes almost 30secs just to move to each different folder. I keep getting "Not Responding"... ... Makes browsing to the .craft file difficult to say the least...

Weird... I did not have any issues with all of my craft files, but I've never had a 500++ parts file, so this does not have to mean something

But on the other hand, I did not implement any lazy loading techniques, so it might become a problem if your craft becomes bigger. I will definitly fix that with the next version

I take it that you wrote this using the German version of Windows on your PC?...Some of the window titles, and button titles are in German...That wouldnt cause issues running on a different language version of Windows, would it?...But then this may just be something specific to MY computer, so take it with a grain of salt..

Ups... never intended to have any german words in that program But yes you are right, I'm native german and so it might become a problem if you run it on another language that is not capable of displaying a certain character set. Normally I always use UTF-8 to avoid that, but I would have to lie if I say I did in that project as well

Anyways this should not cause any layout issues other than having those characters not being displayed.

And as to displaying the part "Title" (the name displayed in the VAB/SPH), vs the part "Name" (the folder name for the part), it CAN be done...I have no idea HOW, or how EASILY/DIFFICULT, but MacTee has done it. I know (at least for 0.21), the part "title" is in each .cfg file, along with the "name".

In the Craft tab in KSP MOD Admin, you can display a list of every part on your craft, by TITLE, AND the quantity of each part used in the craft. Also displays which mod each part is from, or if it is stock. You can also dbl-click on a part title, and it will open the part.cfg for you in a text window, so you can quickly view it.

You can also dbl-click the craft title itself, and it will open the .craft file in a text window, so you can quickly view much of the same info you pull in Vessel Viewer...However you have a nice GUI, vs just a text file view.

As I said in the previous post, it is not impossible but currently it seems to be a lot of work (specially a lot of file handling within the code as you have to parse every single part.cfg) So before not having fixed the performance issue with huge craft files, I'm not gonna implement such a feature as it would only increase loading times... Anyways it is already a planned feature and maybe I'll also associate the .craft extension to the program, so you will also be able to open craft files via your windows explorer

Vessel Viewer looks like it has some nice features, and I can see how it could be very useful, especially if you are able to expand on it.

Thanks :-) As I said, the original intention to write it was to get an overview of action groups which currently is not yet supported. But anyways, if I find some time to continue this project, it surely will become very usefull for quite a couple of reasons, not only getting a summarize of your action groups but also for building / manipulating craft files without having to run KSP itself

[jordanjay29]

Hi jordanjey,

its actually nice to see someone around who seems to have a use for my little tool

Originally I planned to have something to see my action groups after having a vessel launched. But parsing craft files is a hell of a mess ...

Anyways your feature request for having a diagram or something like that is in theory possible, specially if it comes to show which part is connected to what. But on the other hand that would require to somehow simulate the part modules or actually visually display them. Thats a lot of work for something that you actually can do by simply starting KSP and watching your vessel in the VAB/SPH.

For the naming thing, in theory it would be possible to display the real part name. But in practical terms that would mean that you have to search for that part in the GameData folder and do that for every mod installed. Thats kinda mess, due to KSPs current serialization system of game objects. It would be far more easy if Squad would have included the part name within the craft file, which is unfortunally not the case. Anyways I'm already working on a new version of my code to enable such a feature in the future But having .22 in mind, lets see how stuff will change in the future and if my code still fits the new KSP logic

I can understand that an image would be too much. What about a diagram with just things like:

[Mk 1 Command Pod]

|

[Decoupler]

|

[Fuel Tank]

etc. This might be just as useful, perhaps even more so with extremely cluttered designs (plus the fact that we have to rely on visual identification once we've placed our parts, as the VAB/SPH doesn't give us a description of the parts on hover once placed).