[1.02] BioMass - Renewable Bio Fuel and Supplemental Life Support Modules

[seanth]

if i wanna edit these to provide liquid fuel and oxidizer to simulate Duna refueling, what line of code would I need to put it?

I'm not sure what you mean. You can generate oxidizer by compressing oxygen, and you can generate liquid fuel by using the BioReactor. There are a series of flow charts (that look much more complicated than they are) on the development thread if you need help figuring out how to make liquid fuel

[lextacy]

I'm not sure what you mean. You can generate oxidizer by compressing oxygen, and you can generate liquid fuel by using the BioReactor. There are a series of flow charts (that look much more complicated than they are) on the development thread if you need help figuring out how to make liquid fuel

okay, thank god for some charts Now looking at the charts produced even more questions

1. What can biocake be used for?

2. How can I make food?

3. You said in the dev thread that each green house does only 1 purpose. Well I went ahead and launched a blue greenhouse to the space station to make food. But somewhere I read the blue one only outputs oxygen. However ive had it produce biocake by running the reactor. Am I screwed in making food?

4. When dropping out of 2x time warp, my biomass resets to some previous value. Weird , Bug maybe?

5. Ive been making biocake using reactor, but Ive noticed a Biocake resource bar inside the greenhouse as well. This value stays at 0. Very confused :/

Edited December 20, 2014 by lextacy

[seanth]

okay, thank god for some charts Now looking at the charts produced even more questions

1. What can biocake be used for?

2. How can I make food?

3. You said in the dev thread that each green house does only 1 purpose. Well I went ahead and launched a blue greenhouse to the space station to make food. But somewhere I read the blue one only outputs oxygen. However ive had it produce biocake by running the reactor. Am I screwed in making food?

4. When dropping out of 2x time warp, my biomass resets to some previous value. Weird , Bug maybe?

5. Ive been making biocake using reactor, but Ive noticed a Biocake resource bar inside the greenhouse as well. This value stays at 0. Very confused :/

This might end up being a long post.

OK. First, the BioMass mod has evolved a bit since it was first released. There are FOUR different ways it can be played. You can change the difficulty level by using the in-game button (see here for details):

1.) Classic. This is BioMass as it was initially released. Each greenhouse produces a different thing, things are not mass balanced, and there are fewer parts. As Roboto has said to me, it's meant for "casual" players. For details on how Classic works, see here

2.) Easy. Easy is similar to classic, but the reactions are mass balanced. The categories that some parts were in under Classic have changed, as have some of their descriptions

3.) Medium and Hard are, for the time, identical. The various biological and chemical reactions are more complex, mass balanced, and relatively close to reality in terms of rates (read as: things happen slowly). The rest of this post will deal with medium and hard.

There are various greenhouses of differing sizes, but they all work in similar ways: they need seeds. You germinate the seeds by exposing them to IR light. The germinated seeds take in CO2 and water in the presence of light and make O2 and Biomass. Be careful, though, because in the absence of light Biomass +O2 is turned into CO2 and water. Luckily the photosynthetic reaction is 4x greater than the respiration reaction. Once you have Biomass you can harvest it to make Biocake. If you allow the Biomass to grow until it fills the greenhouse, it starts to produce seeds. See here

Biocake and seeds can be combined to make Koylent(food) using the Koylent maker. See here

Biocake can also be used to make liquid fuel in the Bioreactor by combining Biocake, CO2, and H2. See here

And if you need some gasses but only have waste products, you can break them down in the Microbiome (essentially a compost pile). See here

As for the biomass values resetting exiting warp, I'll ping Roboto about it

[lextacy]

Learned alot today! Thanks for following up. The green leave button in the space center doesnt do anything when I press it. I wont be able too see what each difficulty level will do. Any ideas? Ive made lots of things such as hydrogen, oxidizer, monoprop, biocake and mass. I haven’t tried making liquid fuel yet. Later tonight ill try.

I couldnt get food to output. I installed the Koylent maker, a TAC food canister, a couple of 4000k batteries ,the test tank with seeds loaded and biocake. I ran the Koylent maker and nothing happened. I think I have everything?

One thing about the hydrogen. You should include a reaction to break down water into hydrogen. Maybe slipstream the process into the hydrogen compressor or make a separate part. I feel the hydrogen resource has a critcal missing logistics in this regard. Seems like a catch-22 if the only way to get hydrogen is monoprop, but to get monoprop you need hydrogen. So the hydrogen ends up coming from a terrible ratio source such as the air using the air splitter gizmo. Idk if that overbalancing it , but I just have this bad feeling hydrogen is the weakest link in the whole fuel creation scenario.

[Olympic1]

I'm making a patch for BioMass for 0.90 but I need some help with the coding. Does someone have some spare time to help me code?

[seanth]

I'm making a patch for BioMass for 0.90 but I need some help with the coding. Does someone have some spare time to help me code?

After the holidays Roboto and I will be updating BioMass. In the meantime, please do feel free to fork the github repository and work on it.

[Olympic1]

I want to make CRP and BioMass compatible with each other, but therefor I need to change the density, flowMode, and unitCost of BioMass. Can I change it in "BioMass_Resources" itself or do I need to ask it at RoverDude to change it in CRP?

The best idea would be in CRP itself, because it was "taken" from here to make it compatible with MKS.

This is the RESOURCE_DEFINITION in CRP:

RESOURCE_DEFINITION
{
	name = BioMass
	[COLOR="#FF0000"][B]density = 0.018[/B][/COLOR]
	[COLOR="#FF0000"][B]flowMode = ALL_VESSEL[/B][/COLOR]
	transfer = PUMP
	isTweakable = true
	[COLOR="#FF0000"][B]unitCost = 2.5[/B][/COLOR]
}

and this is in BioMass:

RESOURCE_DEFINITION
{
	name = BioMass
	[COLOR="#FF0000"][B]density = 0.003825[/B][/COLOR]
	[COLOR="#FF0000"][B]flowMode = STACK_PRIORITY_SEARCH[/B][/COLOR]
	transfer = PUMP
	isTweakable = true
	[COLOR="#FF0000"][B]unitCost = 3.825[/B][/COLOR]
	ksparpicon = BioMass/Textures/BioMass
}

Edited January 5, 2015 by Olympic1

[seanth]

I think that since BioMass originated with with his mod, CRP is supposed to follow our lead. It could be CRP is using the original BioMass values vs the most recent changes. You can ping RoverDude and see what he has to say

[RoverDude]

Yep, it originated here and my preference is of course to be neighborly. Log a github issue on the CRP bit.

Not too much of a biggie since it makes things lighter, though it will probably result in some really weird conservation of mass issues.

Why the fairly drastic density change?

[seanth]

I will look at my notes, but I think the original incarnation of BioMass mod just made up a density for the BioMass resource.

The most recent versions assume BioMass is a bamboo-like material ("kamboo") with a real world green density of 0.00085 tonnes/L. Since I am convinced the real world to KSP conversion factor is 4.5, 0.00085tonnes/L * 4.5 = 0.003825 tonnes/L

[RoverDude]

I'll need to poke around pretty much everything that uses it and make sure there are no weird mass conversion issues. Will plunk it on the slate for 0.91, as it may end up being a breaking change for MKS/OKS.

[Olympic1]

I'm almost ready with updating it, have to do some tweaking and test till it breaks.

There are still some problems with animations that need some fixes.

I have a problem with the CraftManager where it loads all the icons (checked this) but all the resources only have the ElectricCharge icon. How can I fix this.

Also the BioMass Icons doesn't show up in the Space Center, can't find the code that defines the Btn

Edited January 7, 2015 by Olympic1

[seanth]

Also the BioMass Icons doesn't show up in the Space Center, can't find the code that defines the Btn

Can you stick a copy of the log file somewhere that I can see? I just tested the most recent release of biomass with 0.9 and the biomass button appears in the space center window for me. Roboto reported it worked for him as well. He's on windows and I'm on a mac.

[Roboto]

I'm almost ready with updating it, have to do some tweaking and test till it breaks.

There are still some problems with animations that need some fixes.

I have a problem with the CraftManager where it loads all the icons (checked this) but all the resources only have the ElectricCharge icon. How can I fix this.

http://i59.tinypic.com/b8jo01.png

Also the BioMass Icons doesn't show up in the Space Center, can't find the code that defines the Btn

I can have a look at this too. won't be till later tonight tho. thanks!

[Olympic1]

Can you stick a copy of the log file somewhere that I can see? I just tested the most recent release of biomass with 0.9 and the biomass button appears in the space center window for me. Roboto reported it worked for him as well. He's on windows and I'm on a mac.

Here is the log:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7oyq40jm3czgolz/KSP.log?dl=0

And my GitHub fork if you want to look at my changes

https://github.com/Olympic1/BioMass/tree/develop

[seanth]

Here is the log:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7oyq40jm3czgolz/KSP.log?dl=0

Interesting. I do see from your log it is throwing exceptions. Are you building scratch or are you using the compiled release version?

[Olympic1]

Interesting. I do see from your log it is throwing exceptions. Are you building scratch or are you using the compiled release version?

I just took your source from GitHub and edited some things. When compiling, it didn't show any errors or warnings.

It's just the icon in the space center screen that doesn't show up, the BioCraft window works (except that it only shows the EC icon).

[Roboto]

I just took your source from GitHub and edited some things. When compiling, it didn't show any errors or warnings.

It's just the icon in the space center screen that doesn't show up, the BioCraft window works (except that it only shows the EC icon).

In your craftManager.cs line 380

GUI.Label(new Rect(280, 0, 32, 16), ecIco, bioResourceIcon);

It's only placing the electricCharge icon in there, where it should be switching that out depending on the resource. It looks like when you attempted to convert over to using Texture2D**, the portion that was checking the resource name and setting the icon was lost in the process. You can fix this by creating a check of the resourceName and then set the icon you are showing at that point.

As far as the missing button in the spaceCenter, it's certainly due to the exceptions at the top of that log. The difficulty switching feature is failing to load at all, which I believe is why the button is missing. It is possible your fork may be missing a file(s), directory structure may have been changed, or possibly something to do with missing references in your project, but I'm not really sure about this. Unfortunately I don't have anymore info than that.

Thanks for helping out, btw. It's definitely appreciated!

** Texture2D - If I remember correctly, I had an issue that ate up an entire night when trying to use Texture2D when writing the craftManger, and was the reason I ended up sticking with what you see in the master.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Roboto

[Olympic1]

Interesting. I do see from your log it is throwing exceptions. Are you building scratch or are you using the compiled release version?

As far as the missing button in the spaceCenter, it's certainly due to the exceptions at the top of that log. The difficulty switching feature is failing to load at all, which I believe is why the button is missing. It is possible your fork may be missing a file(s), directory structure may have been changed, or possibly something to do with missing references in your project, but I'm not really sure about this. Unfortunately I don't have anymore info than that.

I tried the release on GitHub (0.2.3.0), installed it and started KSP. Also no icon with the same exceptions.

In your craftManager.cs line 380

GUI.Label(new Rect(280, 0, 32, 16), ecIco, bioResourceIcon);

It's only placing the electricCharge icon in there, where it should be switching that out depending on the resource. It looks like when you attempted to convert over to using Texture2D, the portion that was checking the resource name and setting the icon was lost in the process. You can fix this by creating a check of the resourceName and then set the icon you are showing at that point.

I'll fix the icon problem.

Thanks for helping out, btw. It's definitely appreciated!

I'm also checking the the cfg's for faults - like nodes, animations, conversions, ... - Also I'm making new science reports.

If I can help with something else, let me know.

[Roboto]

I tried the release on GitHub (0.2.3.0), installed it and started KSP. Also no icon with the same exceptions.

You running X64 version of ksp?

[Olympic1]

You running X64 version of ksp?

nope, 32bit, but I can run 64bit.

[Roboto]

nope, 32bit, but I can run 64bit.

I was just checking because I think there is an issue with module manager and x64? Thought maybe that might part of the problem.

- - - Updated - - -

......

Hey, just for my own info..when I declared the icons...

resourceIcons = new Dictionary<string, Texture2D>();

resourceIcons.Add ("BioMass",loadResourceIcon("BioMass"));

resourceIcons.Add ("ElectricCharge", loadResourceIcon("ElectricCharge"));

resourceIcons.Add ("Water",loadResourceIcon("Water"));

resourceIcons.Add ("Light",loadResourceIcon("Light"));

resourceIcons.Add ("MicroFlora",loadResourceIcon("MicroFlora"));

resourceIcons.Add ("Nutrients",loadResourceIcon("Nutrients"));

My plan was to eventually just load an icon directory into a dictionary..is this not an ideal way of doing it for any particular reason? As for the icons you are adding currently, it wouldn't be much trouble to define the other icons in this dictionary...it should work fine as is... i think 0.o

[SmashBrown]

How is this mod coming along? I am really interested in getting an in depth life support mod into my game.

[Olympic1]

How is this mod coming along? I am really interested in getting an in depth life support mod into my game.

They are making progress, they updated the new dll on github, but no release yet

[Thriton]

How I make scientists increase the efficiency of greenhouses?