[1.8.x] DMagic Orbital Science: New Science Parts [v1.4.3] [11/2/2019]

[Brigadier]

3 hours ago, DMagic said:

@Brigadier Just contracts from Orbital Science.

Thanks.  What agency will they be from? The Orbital Science agency?

[Deimos Rast]

new version?! Say it ain't so! You make some of the best mods around, they (especially this one) are must haves.

I only have one question: what's so important about the Sun? Your Agency keeps giving me contracts to fly low orbital sorties around the sun for 300+ days - I only just got to the Mun! Naturally, I've accepted all of them, and I only just unlocked radiators, so I think I should be solid.

Of course, I can't install this until I complete those missions...dilemma dilemma.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

(and they might be just generic contracts, but it's always DMagic Agency telling me to go to the Sun only)

[JPLRepo]

8 hours ago, DMagic said:

@JPLRepo It's just a standard science instrument, for now, I've been continuing to mull over a more complete overhaul of science collection, but that's a long-term thing.

The Telescope has transforms that would probably work for TST, the aperture is a separate transform, so depending on its rotation it could work with relatively few changes, which would be great.

 

@DMagic I tested it and it works.. but not really usable because your telescopes are really scanners and the transforms are animated so the move backwards and forwards.. Felt like I was on a sailing ship. 

[DMagic]

@Brigadier Some use the DMagic agency (stock and other mod contracts can also use that agency though), but others just use a random agency.

There are four Orbital Science contracts in 1.1: Conduct an orbital survey..., Conduct a scientific study of an asteroid..., Conduct a survey of the magnetic field..., and Study the source of the anomalous readings...

Any stock contracts (satellite requests and waypoint surveys) that ask for Orbital Science parts are not affected by the update.

 

@Deimos Rast Is it just the magnetic field surveys? There should only be one magnetic survey requested for the sun, a three star contract. 

There are also (I think) three star orbital survey contracts that ask for multiple science results, some of which might be in low orbit. I think that you can get a pretty big amount of science from the low sun orbit results, so those can be valuable contracts.

 

@JPLRepo I might need to make a TST mode for those parts so that the telescopes don't rotate. It could be as simple as having one button to open the doors, and another to control the rotation; they are already two separate animations.

[Brigadier]

@DMagic, thanks, that's perfect.

[JPLRepo]

12 minutes ago, DMagic said:

 

@JPLRepo I might need to make a TST mode for those parts so that the telescopes don't rotate. It could be as simple as having one button to open the doors, and another to control the rotation; they are already two separate animations.

Perhaps the animations on the telescopes could be turned off as a partmodule setting, then in the MM cfg I have created it can change that setting to off.
Forgot to mention before I have already made the code changes previously to have the transforms as cfg file settings, so no code change on the TST side is required (had forgotten that I had done this). It's just a MM cfg to add the TST partmodule.
EDIT: If you did this you probably still want them to initially orientate to point outwards / straight when they are opened. TST has code to search a transform for an Open and Close animation clip so it can open and close them itself if you had an animation with 2 clips assigned to a transform.
So I'm thinking a cfg file setting to turn off the Orbital science mode and an Open and Close clip transform then TST can take care of the rest (with an optional MM cfg file). As an option for players. Let me know what you think. Can PM me as well.
EDIT 2: Sorry it only needs an Open clip... which it plays in reverse to close.

Edited March 5, 2016 by JPLRepo

[DMagic]

@JPLRepo Well, technically you can just delete the "loopingAnimName" line from the part configs; it just won't find the rotating animation and so won't try to play it, that's not the best way to go about it in the long-term, but it would work for now.

Do TST telescopes allow for any internal controls, like rotating the telescope without rotating the craft? That would be nice and make sense in terms of these parts.

Edit: Yes, the open/close animation should work, it opens the doors and extends the aperture from the telescope body.

Edited March 5, 2016 by DMagic

[JPLRepo]

1 minute ago, DMagic said:

@JPLRepo Well, technically you can just delete the "loopingAnimName" line from the part configs; it just won't find the rotating animation and so won't try to play it, that's not the best way to go about it in the long-term, but it would work for now.

Do TST telescopes allow for any internal controls, like rotating the telescope without rotating the craft? That would be nice and make sense in terms of these parts.

Yes it does. There are two partmodules and it has built in camera gyros.

[Kerbal01]

These new parts look great, but they are quite big

[TheReadPanda]

Love the new massive spy antenna thing that folds out and won't retract. But..... anyone else see that and go 'That HAS to be a mega antenna for Remote TECH!' ? 

I just have this vision of having like 3 of those to cover EVERYTHING.  

Any chance of getting a antenna config on that huge thing?  

[Corax]

3 hours ago, TheReadPanda said:

Love the new massive spy antenna thing that folds out and won't retract. But..... anyone else see that and go 'That HAS to be a mega antenna for Remote TECH!' ? 

I just have this vision of having like 3 of those to cover EVERYTHING.  

Any chance of getting a antenna config on that huge thing?  

Something along these lines should do the trick (untested, not at KSC right now):

@PART[dmSIGINT]:NEEDS[RemoteTech]{
	%MODULE[ModuleRTAntenna] {
		%Mode0DishRange = 0
		%Mode1DishRange = 50000000000
		%EnergyCost = 1.5
		%MaxQ = 6000
		%DishAngle = 10.0
		
		%TRANSMITTER {
			%PacketInterval = 0.3
			%PacketSize = 3
			%PacketResourceCost = 25.0
		}
	}
	
	%MODULE[ModuleSPUPassive] {}

}

 

Paste that into a .cfg file somewhere below GameData; I suggest making a directory for your own patches, call it ReadPanda or whatever does the trick for you, and put all your personal modifications in there instead of modifying the mods' own configurations. That way, when a mod updates or changes things, all your tweaks are not lost.

[DMagic]

@TheReadPanda & @Corax I thought about transmitter and Remote Tech (and Antenna Range) support, but I didn't really want to spend the time to figure out how to set it up correctly. Specifically I don't want to allow the regular transmitter modules to handle deploying and retracting the antenna.

I also need to figure out how to prevent it from being used after it is broken (and I should probably prevent it from being able to collect science when broken ), RemoteTech's method for breaking antennas in the atmosphere just involves removing the whole part, I think.

@DarthVader That's the idea. 

[akron]

I don't know how I missed this until today. Great to see more parts added! How did you do the transforms on that massive SIGINT dish animation? It looks very cool 

[DMagic]

@akron Very painfully.

The dish is made up of four segments, each constructed from one quarter of a 20-sided cylinder (so the triangle count for the dish itself is actually very reasonable, about 2500). Each vertex on each segment is then parented to an armature, with bones set to fold out. So each dish segment has four sets of bones. I only had to make one segment then clone it four times, but it was a lot of trouble (and I probably remade the entire thing three or four times).

There is a whole other segment of headaches caused by Unity and KSP's handling of SkinnedMeshRenderers. For instance, the VAB icons will try to show the entire, unfolded dish, making the actual closed part just a tiny dot in the center of the icon (thanks @xEvilReeperx for the code in partIconFixer that I used to fix that). The VAB size calculation also does the same thing, so the Engineer's report thing thinks your vessel is about 400m wide (I'm not sure why it thinks it's so big, it should be around 100m wide), it's still a little broken, it thinks the part is about twice as tall as it really is.

The dish texture is a problem too. The transitions between the different size texture mipmaps is easily visible because of the transparent mesh texture. I made the transition a little less harsh by manually editing the mipmaps, but it's still noticeable.

[akron]

2 hours ago, DMagic said:

@akron Very painfully.

The dish is made up of four segments, each constructed from one quarter of a 20-sided cylinder (so the triangle count for the dish itself is actually very reasonable, about 2500). Each vertex on each segment is then parented to an armature, with bones set to fold out. So each dish segment has four sets of bones. I only had to make one segment then clone it four times, but it was a lot of trouble (and I probably remade the entire thing three or four times).

There is a whole other segment of headaches caused by Unity and KSP's handling of SkinnedMeshRenderers. For instance, the VAB icons will try to show the entire, unfolded dish, making the actual closed part just a tiny dot in the center of the icon (thanks @xEvilReeperx for the code in partIconFixer that I used to fix that). The VAB size calculation also does the same thing, so the Engineer's report thing thinks your vessel is about 400m wide (I'm not sure why it thinks it's so big, it should be around 100m wide), it's still a little broken, it thinks the part is about twice as tall as it really is.

The dish texture is a problem too. The transitions between the different size texture mipmaps is easily visible because of the transparent mesh texture. I made the transition a little less harsh by manually editing the mipmaps, but it's still noticeable.

Thank you for sharing. I think the result is its own reward. It looks very good, despite the mipmap problem

[CobaltWolf]

@DMagic are you sure it isn't because you exported the part into Unity in the extended state? That causes the game to think it's the extended size in the VAB.

[DMagic]

@CobaltWolf It was exported correctly, the problem is that Unity seems to treat SkinnedMeshRenderers as if they are fully extended, at least for setting the bounds. It is possible to manually edit the bounds values, I never tried it to see if it would fix some of the problems though (xEvilReeperx's part icon fixer does basically the same thing, it recomputes the bounds for a SkinnerMeshRendered in the closed state).

I don't think it would fix the remaining size error in the editor though, I set the dish transforms as inactive in the editor. I think that I just need to set all of the interior transforms inactive to get the part to register as the correct size. I made a dummy part, with no interior components, for setting the drag cubes, and that registers the correct size in the VAB.

[Genomaniac]

Nevermind - made a mistake

Edited March 9, 2016 by Genomaniac
Didn't read through various threads and found a fix myself.

[TonyC]

The SIGNIT dish is very impressive. Thank you @DMagic !

[SpaceNomad]

@DMagic I just got a contract to perform a long-term orbital reconnaissance survey of the Mun in a 117 by 118 km orbit, which is a high orbit. Is it intentional that it asks for performing the experiments in low munar orbit, though (i.e. below 60km)?

[Brigadier]

This has occurred many times in my career save.  You establish a high orbit (and collect science for so doing) and then need to collect data from a different orbit.  AFAIK, this is normal.

[DMagic]

@SpaceNomad As it says in the editor description, all of the recon parts can be used for low space results at up to five times the normal altitude. This is specifically so that different orbits are allowed while still allowing for the science collection part of the contract to be fulfilled.

[Corvorosso]

I can't finish the long term recon missions..

I build a vassel with the camera and enter in the proper orbit parameter, but the contract don't recognize them.

If you see in the img, i'm in the correct orbit and with the little brother camera, but the contracts don't become green. I can only do the experiment and gain some science but i can't finish the contract.

there is something i miss , or is a bug or some incompatibilities with other mods ?

 

i try to reset and regenerate the contracts but the result is the same.

 

SCREENSHOT

 

in the log i can see this error, but i don't know if is relevant for the camera

[Exception]: MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'FinePrint.Utilities.VesselUtilities.GetPartName'.

this error flood the debug log when i fly one of the vassel with the camera 

PS let me know if you need the complete log of the game

Edited March 13, 2016 by Corvorosso
more info

[DMagic]

@Corvorosso I need to see the complete log files, and preferably a picture of the orbits from map view. Also, which version of KSP are you on? A MissingMethodException implies that this might not be 1.0.5.

Edit: 

Also, a complete view of the contract status would also help. It looks like the part request parameter isn't complete; the orbit parameter can't be complete until the part check is complete.

Edited March 13, 2016 by DMagic

[Corvorosso]

 

@DMagic

I use ksp 1.0.5 32 bit, in openGL mode

For the part check i have the part in my vassel but the contract don't seems identify the little brother camera.

 

LOG ON NEW GAME WHEN I SWITCH ON CAMERA VASSEL 

Gdrive link

MAP VIEW SCREEN  (the rotation direction is correct)

mapview

SCRENSHOT OF THE CONTRACT

contract

Edited March 13, 2016 by Corvorosso