Kerbonaut Suit colors automatic updaing

[Birrakk]

I'd love to see a future implementation that updates the Kerbonauts' suit colors. We already see Jebediah, Bill, & Bob in orange astronaut suits, with the rest of the Kerbonaut corp in white suits.

My understanding of the suit colors (according to NASA usage), is that once someone has been accepted into the astronaut corp (even if they're still in training), they wear an orange suit. However, once they've actually visited space and returned to terra firma, they then switch to a blue suit. This allows everyone to identify the veteran astronauts.

I think that would be a neat feature to implement in KSP. All applicants wear white suits. Once they've been accepted by the player (or perhaps after going through training, if that's also planned for the future), they automatically switch to an orange suit. And once they survive a mission that exceeds the accepted altitude that is considered "space", they automatically switch to a blue suit.

I know it's a relatively insignificant change. But I think it's one of those little attention to details that makes KSP such a work of art.

And I'd just like to say what an awesome creation KSP is. Well done, and keep up the great work, guys!

[boomerdog2000]

This could be a cool idea but I think Bill Bob and Jeb should stay in their orange suits.

[tom1499]

I do quite like the Idea. But maybe a higher colour for a Kerbalnaught that has completed somethihg like 10+ missions.

[Chi]

This would be awesome! And it should actually be pretty easy to code.

[Leberschnitzel]

I also like the Idea, and maybe add more different colors for interplanetary missions, maybe specific colors for specific planets visited?

[jordanjay29]

This would be awesome! And it should actually be pretty easy to code.

Any basis for that statement? Are you a KSP developer? Have you worked with Unity? Are you familiar with how coding works?

[sumghai]

While the ability to customise the color of Kerbalnaut space suits would be nice, I would prefer that styling be done manually rather than based on some automatic veterancy criteria.

I wrote a comprehensive tome a while back on this subject, which I'll repost (along with some amendments):

Current Known Implementation (0.20.2 / 0.21)

- Kerbals inside vessels wear Orange/Silver flight suits, presumably based on the

Launch Entry Suits

/

Advanced Crew Escape Suits

- Kerbals on EVA wear white suits with red helmet markings, presumably based on the

Apollo Lunar EVA suits

(markings are used to differentiate between astronauts)

- In 0.21's Astronaut Complex GUI, Kerbonaut candidates wear

the blue jumpsuit DanRosas designed

. Once hired, they change into the Silver flight suits (As per

HOCgaming video overview of KSP 0.21 at the 0m46s mark

).

Observations/Issues/Problems

- Inside vessels, Kerbonauts wear their Orange/Silver suits throughout the entire flight (barring the occasional EVA excursion). This is fine for space capsules or during launch/re-entry/landing, but outside of those events most real astronauts wear jumpsuits in a shirt-sleeve environment (

Ref 1

,

Ref 2

).

- The game currently reserves Orange flight suits for the Jeb/Bob/Bill trio, whilst subsequent candidates are forced to wear the silver ones. This is in contrast to real spaceflight, where the entire crew wears flight suits of the same color (Orange for

NASA's ACES

, White/Blue for the

Russian Sokol

)

- While on EVA, all Kerbonauts wear the identical excursion suits. I don't mind the white with the red markings, but there are certain players who want to differentiate between individual based on various criteria arbitrarily defined by the player (e.g. factions, faux "specialisations")

Suggestions

Flight Suits

- worn during launch/re-entry/landing, like right now

- allow selection of one (primary) base color

- can apply globally (i.e. all Kerbonauts) or individually (e.g. some player may want one particular Kerbal to always wear a purple flight suit)

- defaults to orange or silver

Shirt-sleeve Jumpsuits

- worn inside vessels when not at launch/re-entry/landing

- allow selection of one (primary) base color and one (secondary) minor cuff band trim color

- can apply globally (i.e. all Kerbonauts) or individually (e.g. some player may want a specific subset of Kerbals to wear blue jumpsuits with light blue bands on their cuffs)

- defaults to blue with no cuff band color

EVA Suits

- worn outside vehicle during spacewalks / planetary excursions

- allow selection of one (primary) base color and one (secondary) helmet marking color

- can apply globally (i.e. all Kerbonauts) or individually (e.g. EnterElysium may want to differentiate between Elysium Empire and Styx Corporation forces)

- defaults to white with red helmet markings

Suit availability

- By default, any command pod that can hold crew will always show Kerbals wear their default flight suits (customised in whatever colors they chose)

- Part modders like myself can add to our part IVA definitions a variable to force Kerbals to wear jumpsuits instead

INTERNAL

{

MODULE

{

name = InternalSeat

seatTransformName = FrontSeat

allowCrewHelmet = false

forceJumpsuit = true // true for Kerbals to wear shirt-sleeve jumpsuits, false for pressurized flight suits

}

...

}

- Kerbals on EVA will always wear their EVA suits; future versions of KSP may differentiate between habitable environments like Laythe by allowing helmet removal / changing into shirt-sleeve jumpsuits whilst still outside the vessel

Distant Future - Modder-made space suits

- Devise a similar system to part / IVA modification to allow modders to insert rigged models of custom spacesuits. This would satisfy a small minority with decidedly unusual requests such as suits specialized to each planet.

Implementation

Customisable Suit Colors

- Requires mapping of existing space suit models / textures to accept user-selected color choices (Parts of this functionality currently exist in various add-ons -

Universe Replacer

allows access/replacement of default SQUAD assets such as spacesuits, while

KerbPaint

allows users to define custom color "masks" for parts and repaint them using an in-game GUI)

- Storage of user-selected color choices in persistence file

- Moderate work required

Enabling/Disabling shirt-sleeve jumpsuit in IVA

- Current code is able to assign either flight or EVA suits based on IVA or EVA mode

- Extend this code to check for forceJumpsuit variable; if true, replace flight suit with shirt-sleeve jumpsuit

- Relatively easy

Modder-made space suits

- Possibly restructure assets to add "Suits" subdirectory in GameData folder

- Official publication regarding suit dimensions, rigging, functionality (e.g. helmet lights, EVA thruster packs) and color-substitution regions

- Furthest down the line in terms of priority

[Rage097]

I think colored suits for rank would be awesome.

The newbies would have the silver suits, upon completing one mission, they get a white suit, 5 missions for a red suit, 10 missions for a blue suit, and 15 for a green suit and so on.

The big three; Jeb, Bill and Bob, will remain orange but have the normally red stripes on their helmets change color in accordance to their mission count.

[jordanjay29]

<snip>

Interesting proposal. I'm curious, however, when the forceJumpsuit variable would be true. What defines launch and re-entry for the game? Is there already a mechanism or would that have to be created? If there isn't, what would you recommend for that definition?

[UbioZur]

Since we currently have two thread talking about more or less the same things:

Other thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/51831-How-to-make-Kerbals-awesomer-%28AKA-0-23-The-Kerbal-Update%29

May be we could try to continue to the discussion to one of the thread so the ideas can be merged and find in one place instead of duplicated?

There are some good ideas here.

[sumghai]

I think colored suits for rank would be awesome.

The newbies would have the silver suits, upon completing one mission, they get a white suit, 5 missions for a red suit, 10 missions for a blue suit, and 15 for a green suit and so on.

The big three; Jeb, Bill and Bob, will remain orange but have the normally red stripes on their helmets change color in accordance to their mission count.

As I have noted above, real-life astronauts don't wear different colored Flight/Launch Entry suits based on rank or veterancy. NASA adopted International Orange for everyone to facilitate ease of visual identification and rescue in low-visibility and chaotic environments.

Also, the color choices you've listed and their corresponding criteria seem rather arbitary. I believe it would be better to have suits customizable individually, so that different players can implement their own color schemes *manually* based on their own criteria.

Interesting proposal. I'm curious, however, when the forceJumpsuit variable would be true. What defines launch and re-entry for the game? Is there already a mechanism or would that have to be created? If there isn't, what would you recommend for that definition?

Excellent question!

When the vessel is first loaded onto the Launch Pad, the crew will by default be wearing the default flight suits. At any point during their flight, they would be able to change into other attire possibly by clicking on a little button next to their crew portraits.

This "change attire" button could also be added to the airlock context menu to specify what outfit the Kerbal would wear when going on EVA - there might be additional code to check for hazardous environments (e.g. "Cannot wear jumpsuit - no breathable atmosphere outside!")

---

Now that I've thought about this a bit more, I think that the subsystem for creating/editing/deleting/modifying crew outfits could be added into the Astronaut Complex GUI in the form of a "tailor" / "outfitter" / "quartermaster".

[Van Disaster]

I suggest infra-red to ultraviolet

Badges & rank patches at least would be nice, I'm not sure if there's any plans for more experienced kerbals to make an actual difference yet?

[sharpspoonful]

*snip*

Wouldn't adding patches also add more texture files to the already slow loading and hard-to-render program for slower computers?

[Van Disaster]

Can all be done in one small texture file, so a marginal difference. Rendering limited to IVA and whatever crew management menus come up, and anyway I doubt the difference would be noticeable at all, the game isn't currently graphically limited. If they didn't allow colour changing of space suits but added all the colours as different files ( as you'd probably have to do currently ) that would be a bigger impact by far.

[sumghai]

If they didn't allow colour changing of space suits but added all the colours as different files ( as you'd probably have to do currently ) that would be a bigger impact by far.

As I mentioned previously, the KerbPaint add-on has the ability to define areas of an existing texture to repaint (via user-made image "masks"), so I presume SQUAD could take a page out of that book should they consider space suit customisability.

[Ace_Of_Spades]

It would be cool to customize your kerbals' suits in game without having to learn code

[Brickyard]

Speaking of this, I had the a similar idea myself but was unable to locate the model or texture files the the directory. Any idea how to get at them?

[Lexar]

I would rather see achievements. Kind of like the ribbons we make for our sigs.

[Chi]

Any basis for that statement? Are you a KSP developer? Have you worked with Unity? Are you familiar with how coding works?

Yes, I'm an electrical engineering student, so I know how to program. Just throw in a very simple recovery counter, and if (recovery>=1) blue_suit=True;

You wouldn't need a texture for the white suit, because the way the game works right now is just by going to the Austraunaut Complex and "hire" kerbals. That makes them automatically wear the orange suit.

Now, if you want a bit more of realism, you would need to know if the flight has exceded a certain altitude, and that is something that version 0.22 already does: when you recover a craft it tells you if it was a sub-orbital flight or orbital flight. So if it is an orbital flight, then add one to the Recovery counter, otherwise don't, unless recovery is is equal or higher than 1 . So that means that even if you do sub-orbital flights, the counter wouldn't go up untill you've completed at least one orbital flight. After that, every sub-orbital flight would add 1 to the recovery counter. This could be used to control how much "stupidity" a kerbal loses with each flight, if this feature is ever going to be used. If the devs feel like it, they could also make the kerbals wear something like a red suit for every kerbal who has completed more than, say, 20 missions (using the counter).

Edited October 23, 2013 by Chi

[Fox Arcana]

I think colored suits for rank would be awesome.

The newbies would have the silver suits, upon completing one mission, they get a white suit, 5 missions for a red suit, 10 missions for a blue suit, and 15 for a green suit and so on.

The big three; Jeb, Bill and Bob, will remain orange but have the normally red stripes on their helmets change color in accordance to their mission count.

Original three: Orange with helmet stripes (stripe color depends on mission count)

Others: Red with white stripes on suits

Edited April 4, 2014 by CombustibleSanic