Alternis Kerbol - Development thread

[NovaSilisko]

This thread no longer serves a purpose, just use the release thread here instead!

Alternis, God of Change and Difference decided to smite the hell out of the Kerbals' home solar system, and this is what happened.

I've posted about this on another thread (and reddit) but considering that thread wasn't actually mine, it's probably better to make my own. Long story short, I've been on and off working on a mod that grabs and re-arranges the existing bodies in the solar system, as well as changing some of their surface features, atmosphere shades, the sunlight and ambient colors, and so on.

I would hope to eventually make a series of mods on this premise, with varying degrees of change - from a total re-arrangement as the current version is, to just changing the colors of the existing planets. Maybe even going as far as completely removing all default celestial bodies and starting you in a totally alien environment.

Update 1: Now with comets!

Release thread

Current list of changes, probably missing many:

• Jool: Moved to Kerbin's original orbital position, blu-ified, ships overheat before they can reach the surface
  
• Kerbin: Now orbits Jool at the same point Tylo used to
  
• Laythe: Redone entirely, now a jungle moon with varied terrain, more land, and, eventually, alien trees (panspermia's a hell of a thing)
  
• Minmus: Orbits Jool beneath laythe, now 29km in radius (from 60), and deep reddish orange.
  
• Tylo: orbits the sun a bit past Duna's original orbit, radius increased to 1103 km and surface gravity is 4g, plus an atmosphere 50% the density of Kerbin's.
  
• Duna: Orbits Tylo, completely new terrain
  
• Eve: Atmospheric density reduced a little, but scale height increased, radius reduced to 585km and gravity reduced to 0.901g, orbit scooted inward a bit to be farther from Jool's SOI
  
• Moho: Orbit moved inward and made more eccentric
  
• Gilly: Small comet, shrunk to 8.5km radius
  
• Ike: Fat comet, shrunk to 17.5km radius
  
• Mun: Relocated to Jool orbit, replacing Vall, enlaged to 253km radius
  
• Vall: Now orbits Eeloo, shrunk to 99.8 km radius
  
• Eeloo: Moved outward (myehehe), increased to ~500 km radius, less eccentric and inclined orbit
  
• Dres: First moon of Tylo
  
• Sun: Mesh scaled up to actually match its radius
  
• Lighting: Ambient light now nonexistent in space, dimmer on planet surfaces. Sun is slightly reddish-yellow. Atmosphere colors tweaked to simulate the effect of a slightly redder sun.
  
• General: Most orbits have at least some inclination and eccentricity now, as opposed to being perfect circles like the Kerbin system
  
• Timewarp: All body timewarp limits now follow one universal rule: everything up to 10,000x is allowed below 200 km, 100,000x allowed above
  

Stuff to do, in general:

• Make comet tails that work
  
• Figure out what to do with the Mun and Vall (could swap the two, vall doesn't make sense as close to the sun as it is now)
  
• Change sun surface color somehow, to match new reddish color (maybe)
  
• Delete all easter eggs and replace them with new ones (maybe)
  
• Redo Duna to be more mars-like in color
  
• Change up Eve in some way (maybe, considering making it red)
  
• Return Moho's burning atmosphere (not to the same extreme as before though)
  
• Redo all science multipliers to suit the new layout (maybe)
  
• Rewrite science reports to better suit the system (maybe)
  
• Biomes for altered bodies (maybe)
  

Anyway, I know what you want. You want pretty pictures.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

New gas planet texture by Winston. Going to rename the planets eventually, too. Also want to release a cfg-configurable version of the atmosphere shifter. That'll probably come a lot sooner than the rest of the mod.

I don't know when this will be released. Probably not soon, most definitely after .23 to make sure it's not entirely screwed over by some unexpected change. Also note that I could very well run into some insurmountable obstacle, end up having to give it up. Although, nothing stopping me from just tossing it to the wild and letting someone else have at it if that's the case.

We'll see.

Edited December 31, 2013 by NovaSilisko

[Ralathon]

That's really cool! I especially love the altered height maps to create mountains and canyons. I look forward to trying it out once you have something playable.

I can already imagine some rather hellish landings on Tylo. When you try to land there with DRE i imagine you run into the same issue that we have on Mars: Too much atmosphere to ignore, too little to be usable for a soft landing.

[NovaSilisko]

I can already imagine some rather hellish landings on Tylo. When you try to land there with DRE i imagine you run into the same issue that we have on Mars: Too much atmosphere to ignore, too little to be usable for a soft landing.

I could describe the difficulties in a series of anecdotes, but I think I can sum it up in one phrase: Terminal velocity on Tylo is faster than the speed of sound.

Also, it's really really hard. Took 3 layers of 3.75m heat shields to get through it, and even then, manned landings are practically out of the question given DRE simulates deaths due to G-loading, and there's no shortage of G-loading.

[skykooler]

...Wow. This looks really amazing. Can't wait for a video of this!

[Porkjet]

This looks stunning! I love the removal of ambient light. Space is damn dark. Looking forward to this

[Lack]

Ooh, excellent, looks like I'll be needing yet another parallel copy of KSP. Been working on my own Kepler-7 based re-arrangement (just using Nathan's RealSolarSystem .cfg), so it'll be great to see your work with atmosphere's and changing the light colour.

Also, with the lack of ambient light, shouldn't space technically be somewhat brighter than a star-lit night (at least in the dark of a planet), but then there's contrast to consider from the main star's light. But that's besides the point and I'm sort of just rambling on now.

[N3X15]

Nova, this is just simply damn gorgeous.

[Camacha]

Is the removal of ambient light something that could be added to stock or RSS KSP? Since I know that can be done I need it bad

Adding removal is strange, I know, but that is pretty much what it is.

[The Error]

Holy crap. Paralell KSP, here we come.

..when yuo said smite the hell outta Kerbol, you really weren't kiddin'.

[team.leit]

Please finish this!!! It would be so much fun to work with!!

[Greywind]

Well this is, stunning, to say the least. Nova you do not disappoint, can't wait to see more of this project!

[LaydeeDem]

Absolutely beautiful! I've been working on my own planet shifter/creator using code from Real Solar System and aftokinito's planet API code. However you've had much more success. My planets have really small SOIs and no surfaces!

Edited December 13, 2013 by Nutt007

[NelsonIñigo]

The Project is Brilliant!!! But please, that ends rapidly ... I charmed with it.

[BigFatStupidHead]

Ooh, another amazing project from Nova! It gives me a reason to look forward to .23!

[Spanier]

You need some very passioned modeler, if you want to go for the proposed stock-alike system with real scales, to model planets with 11136% more detail

Anyway, are you planning to also add some asteroids, that are not nearly spherical (i.e. Ida)

[LaydeeDem]

You need some very passioned modeler, if you want to go for the proposed stock-alike system with real scales, to model planets with 11136% more detail

Anyway, are you planning to also add some asteroids, that are not nearly spherical (i.e. Ida)

Why does everyone think the planets are hand sculpted meshes? Unity creates the mesh from the planet's height texture.

[Spanier]

Why does everyone think the planets are hand sculpted meshes? Unity creates the mesh from the planet's height texture.

Ah, ok, so to create some real sized planets, you would just need some noise modules for the height textures, so it doesn't look boring, and you scale it up to 11236% (considering Kerbin becomes like Earth).

[Needles_10]

This I absolutely cannot wait to use.

[frizzank]

Very nice stuff.

[LaydeeDem]

Ah, ok, so to create some real sized planets, you would just need some noise modules for the height textures, so it doesn't look boring, and you scale it up to 11236% (considering Kerbin becomes like Earth).

Where are you pulling that percentage from? Plus I'm using the Real Solar System code because it is a decent example of ConfigNodes. Not for the scale part. Anyways, Kerbin can and has been scaled. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55145-0-22-WIP-Alpha-Real-Solar-System-v5-3

If you want to talk about planet sizes or my plugin send me a PM, this thread is about Nova's mod that makes Minmus less ugly.

[Spanier]

Where are you pulling that percentage from? Plus I'm using the Real Solar System code because it is a decent example of ConfigNodes. Not for the scale part. Anyways, Kerbin can and has been scaled. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55145-0-22-WIP-Alpha-Real-Solar-System-v5-3

If you want to talk about planet sizes or my plugin send me a PM, this thread is about Nova's mod that makes Minmus less ugly.

The surface area of a sphere is proportional to the square of its radius, and Kerbin has a radius of about 1/10.6 of Earth's. So the surface of Earth is 10.6² of the surface of Kerbin, thats 112.36, or 11236%. Since Kerbin's surface allready has 100%, you just have to add 11136%

I know that Kerbin can easily be rescaled, but the surface detail becomes so ugly ...

Seriously, you could land directly on the slope of K2 without tipping in the current build of RSS.

I just wanted re-mention the idea to add a version of his mods, that brings in a version of KSP with somewhat realistic sizes and distances, that Nova allready pointed out on the older threat.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Spanier

[NovaSilisko]

Terrain LOD can easily be increased, it's just a parameter in the PQS controller for the planet. I'm doing this for Tylo, now. No reason it can't work for stuff even bigger.

The problem comes in when you have the heightmap. Beyond 4096x2048, it starts getting prohibitively large - and you really need that much to have a decently detailed heightmap on real-world planet scales. So, the procedural noise would be fine, but the heightmap would be pretty bad.

Edited December 14, 2013 by NovaSilisko

[Galacticruler]

Can this come in original orbits flavor?

[NovaSilisko]

Can this come in original orbits flavor?

Don't see why not. Although, the trimmed versions probably will come after the master version. Easier to get it done, then snip away bits, than to split it early and then update 3 different versions at the same time.

Also, random tidbit. I found a good way to make any object in Unity spew all its components, useful for mods like this that modify existing things...

string s = "Listing all components! \n";
foreach (Component c in desired_gameobject.GetComponentsInChildren(typeof(Component)))
{
    s += (c + " \n");
}
print(s);

That'll print out a list of every component, and which child object from the parent it's attached to. Very useful for planets, then you can inspect whatever component it comes up in whatever IDE you're using for your plugin.

Edit: bonus, Ike has a nice view at perihelion

If only I could get its damn tail working. Anyone know how to load meshes via plugin?

Edited December 14, 2013 by NovaSilisko

[Spanier]

Terrain LOD can easily be increased, it's just a parameter in the PQS controller for the planet. I'm doing this for Tylo, now. No reason it can't work for stuff even bigger.

The problem comes in when you have the heightmap. Beyond 4096x2048, it starts getting prohibitively large - and you really need that much to have a decently detailed heightmap on real-world planet scales. So, the procedural noise would be fine, but the heightmap would be pretty bad.

Yeah, it seems to be more a problem of RAM and so on, to have Earth with 1m detail, you would need a 6378100x12756200 height map, what is about 9.7 million times as big as 4096x2048