[WIP][0.90?] PlanetFactory CE

[Yaeah]

How are people making custom height maps, without Space Explorer?

Gimp, or photoshop. not very hard

[Revenant]

Hello there. I've come up with some ideas for planets. Specifically, an expansion of sorts to Alternis Kerbol. Mainly filling in that large gap between Tylo and Eeloo and making the inner system more exciting. Said ideas:

-Scraper: The asteroid moon of Moho. Orbits REALLY CLOSE. Or at least as close as it is plausible to do so.

-Sitrus: A smallish yellow moon of Eve. Has an eccentric, highly inclined orbit, making missions here unlike Eve missions despite orbiting Eve.

-Tours: A dwarf planet between Jool and Tylo. Great for tours, hence the name. Has three moons.

-Lop: Pol's evil twin or something.

-Putty: Looks like Silly Putty.

-Goof: Has an eccentric orbit.

-Rebol: The system after Tylo. A "brown dwarf" and practically a miniature system. (Read: gas giant with high surface gravity made to glow red via clouds).

-Staanli: Barely habitable world closely orbiting Rebol.

-Kostner: A dwarf Neptune/ocean world.

-Belan: A moon of Kostner meant to make the planet interesting. How is it interesting? Well, it's a moon of a moon as far as the game is concerned.

-Edmund: The much-discussed "peaks in vacuum" world.

-Victor: A dwarf planet orbiting a dwarf star. An icy body mainly useful for refueling.

-Invurs: Like the original Tylo, but a parent body. No atmosphere. Outside Rebol's orbit.

-Jaeger: Titan-like. Orbits Invurs. Possibly has oceans. Meant to make aerobraking into the Invurs system "interesting."

-Blip: A little moon for when you don't want a challenging landing to go with your challenging insertion.

-Jinks: Gray and green gas giant. 4 moons with a lopsided mass distribution. Outermost planet other than Eeloo.

-Fuzzle: Low gravity, incredibly thick atmosphere. Great for spaceplanes, if you can get them there.

-Squeak: A tiny irregular moon. Getting a lander here is like hauling a pencil to Antarctica.

-Tumble: Has terrain that can only be described as spiky.

-Beast: A subdued version of Thud from default PlanetFactory i.e. very large but not absurdly so.

I have to stress that these are only ideas. I think they would be fun, but they are just ideas. Anything I should change? How should I make these concepts a reality?

[jesusHERCULESchrist]

You must understand that i am not a smart man. I seriously dont know where to start.

[AndreyATGB]

You must understand that i am not a smart man. I seriously dont know where to start.

I guess you can just draw different shades of white on a black background. White being the highest points and you go down from there. I think deformity determines how much of a difference there is between white and black.

[AlternNocturn]

Getting an error and I can't figure out how to fix it.

Error creating planet Pylen

Exception:Argument cannot be null.

Parameter name: key

I feel like this could benefit from some really serious documentation because I am insanely lost.

EDIT: found the problem. I added in something to the planet configs that I shouldn't have. It looked like it should have been added, but it ended up not being important at all. Again, documentation would be helpful and nice.

EDIT2: got everything working and in game, but I can't figure out how to shrink my planet to the size I want. I uncommented the Radius parameters but all that did was break the planets and stop them form loading at all.

Edited February 24, 2014 by AlternNocturn

[Yaeah]

Getting an error and I can't figure out how to fix it.

I feel like this could benefit from some really serious documentation because I am insanely lost.

EDIT: found the problem. I added in something to the planet configs that I shouldn't have. It looked like it should have been added, but it ended up not being important at all. Again, documentation would be helpful and nice.

EDIT2: got everything working and in game, but I can't figure out how to shrink my planet to the size I want. I uncommented the Radius parameters but all that did was break the planets and stop them form loading at all.

With radius values in, Go and orbit your planet, press Ctrl-9 and hit create scaled

[Dooz]

Getting an error and I can't figure out how to fix it.

I feel like this could benefit from some really serious documentation because I am insanely lost.

EDIT: found the problem. I added in something to the planet configs that I shouldn't have. It looked like it should have been added, but it ended up not being important at all. Again, documentation would be helpful and nice.

EDIT2: got everything working and in game, but I can't figure out how to shrink my planet to the size I want. I uncommented the Radius parameters but all that did was break the planets and stop them form loading at all.

I see Your Issue Add your Planet name To the system file edit it with notepad ++ or notepad

Add this code to it

planetName=Pylen

Add it to the Part Before the "}" and Should work.

[AlternNocturn]

With radius values in, Go and orbit your planet, press Ctrl-9 and hit create scaled

Thanks, that worked, but now the atmosphere is too big for the planet lol. Is there any way I can scale that down too?

EDIT: I guess I must have screwed something up because now Kerbin is sitting still in its orbit and the sun appears to be orbiting my planet. Is there any way for me to fix this or is the save file screwed?

Edited February 25, 2014 by AlternNocturn

[KvickFlygarn87]

I'd like to request a feature - easter eggs! You make the model and in the config you specify coordinates and model name.

[VonFrank]

I've seen some of you out there have been recreating our solar system with this using textures found on the internet. I've done the same thing and it's been easy for the most part. Many of the statistics for the planets/dwarf planets/moons are available on wikipedia with some others being available through NASA. One thing I'm finding hard to locate is the range of altitudes on the celestial bodies. This is important to use in the "heightMapDeformity" line in the config file which determines how high to raise the terrain above the mean radius.

Earth, for example, has a lowest point of -11,033m (Mariana Trench) and a highest point of +8,850m (Mount Everest) for a total range of 19,883m.

Mars was an easy one to find as well. Lowest point is -8,200m (Hellas Crater) and the highest point is 21,229m (Olympus Mons) for a total range of 29,429m.

Other planets and moons are proving difficult to find. Some bodies are sporadically mentioned here and there, but I have yet to find a reliable source for this info.

What are you guys using? Are you just making up values like I have so far?

[AlternNocturn]

Okay I'm having a lot of unnecessary trouble with this mod. Now the atmosphere shader on my planet is too low and I can't see it from the surface. Also, I can't get oceans and lakes to work. They show up on the scaled space model but not on the actual surface. I can't find any help on this topic and it's starting to drive me crazy.

EDIT: Is this rotation period in seconds? Minutes?

Edited February 25, 2014 by AlternNocturn

[AndreyATGB]

Rotation period is in seconds. About height deformity I really don't know, I haven't really put much thought in it since finding the color and height maps was a priority.

[Motokid600]

Will it eventually be possible to remove the default planets? To free up room for custom planets..

[VonFrank]

Will it eventually be possible to remove the default planets? To free up room for custom planets..

Are you talking about the default planets with Planet Factory? Or the default planets built into the game? I'm pretty sure removing the game's stock planets is impossible, but for the Planet factory ones, you can just un-tick the "load sentar expansion" button as the game is loading to prevent those from appearing. Your custom planets will still load.

[VonFrank]

Sorry to double-post, but I've found another issue.

it seems that the time warping gets kinda broken with this mod installed. The last two speeds on the warp meter will not activate when clicked, no matter how far I am from planetary objects.

Does anyone else have this problem?

[Motokid600]

No I'm talking about removing the default planets in order to free up room for a new, custom system. ( instead of having to make seperate star systems ). For instance Proot is working on an SoL remake, but he has to make it a seperate star system within the present one. Instead it'd be nice to be able to remove all stock planets this way you just have a sun. And a clean slate to add planets of your own.

It'd do wonders for memory management.

Edited February 26, 2014 by Motokid600

[VonFrank]

No I'm talking about removing the default planets in order to free up room for a new, custom system. ( instead of having to make seperate star systems ). For instance Proot is working on an SoL remake, but he has to make it a seperate star system within the present one. Instead it'd be nice to be able to remove all stock planets this way you just have a sun. And a clean slate to add planets of your own.

It'd do wonders for memory management.

I agree. It would be nice.

I'm remaking the Sol system as well (including every object larger than 170km in radius + Phobos and Diemos). To "get rid" of the game's stock planets (except for Kerbin) I put them all out into the Kuiper belt to represent the various dwarf planets out there.

But it would really be nice to remove them entirely so that I could represent those dwarf planets with objects that have the appropriate names.

[AlternNocturn]

Okay, I think I've got most of the stuff figured out. Planet and its moons all work, except the game seems to be reading individual pixels in my heightmaps and making weird hills with them. Also, water is invisible (but it does work) and I can't stop the atmosphere from freaking out. Other than that, I got most of everything else under control. Good stuff here!

Picture of my WIP planet Pylen (pictured: the moon Hue. Not pictured: the moon Ini).

[VonFrank]

Here's a little info I've found out through trial and error using this mod:

When you use various stock planets as templates, some of the templates override the textures of the new planet you are trying to make. Here's a summary of what templates do:

Template	Orbit Colour	Surface Effect
Jool		Green		Provides no true surface
Eve		Purple		Makes terrain slightly purple
Tylo		Pink		Natural colour
Laythe		Blue		Makes terrain slightly green
Duna		Red		Makes terrain very red
Dres		Dark Brown	Overrides terrain and makes it brown
Vall		Light Blue	Overrides terrain and makes it blue
Moho		Light Brown	Overrides terrain and makes it grey
Eloo		Grey		Makes terrain very white
Mun		Light Grey	Adds craters all over the surface
Ike		White		Natural colour
Bop		Brown		Natural colour
Minmus		Dark Purple	Natural colour
Pol		Light Green	Natural colour
Gilly		Brown		Overrides terrain and makes it brown

Keep this in mind when you are making your planets. If, for example, you try to make a planet using Vall as a template, the colour of the orbit line will be blue and the terrain of your planet will be all blue despite what surface map you tell the config to load.

Therefore, the only templates that show an un-altered representation of the new planet you are making are: Tylo, Ike, Bop, Minmus, and Pol.

Edited February 26, 2014 by VonFrank

[medikohl]

Sorry to double-post, but I've found another issue.

it seems that the time warping gets kinda broken with this mod installed. The last two speeds on the warp meter will not activate when clicked, no matter how far I am from planetary objects.

Does anyone else have this problem?

he removed 5x and 50x warp, and added a couple of faster ones to the end, they work once you are on the ground or past the orbit of dres

[Storywalker4]

I have no clue why, but this mod is incompatible with Ferram Aerospace. Could you fix that. PLEASE. I really wanna have my Saturn and Neptune analogues. Otherwise, 'tis an awesome mod. Opens up many possibilities. Could you add your default stuff in the folders like you do with the default stuff? I just don't like the inclination of Sentar (although inaccessible and ablate really speak to me) and the less stuff I have in my gamedata the better.

Edit: Actually, it's one of my planet packs. But my second still stands.

Edited February 27, 2014 by Storywalker4

[Dooz]

I believe why its incompatible the planets are not in ferram's code. Or not in ferrams config i Think a few pages back there was a discussion on ferram not working.

Edited February 28, 2014 by Dooz

[VonFrank]

OK, I really wish there was some documentation out there on what functions are available to use in the config files and what each function does.

I absolutely love this mod, Kragrathea. This along with Real Solar System are the best mods out there for KSP imo, but it would be great if we had a list of available functions and what they control. Either that or a single config file with all functions inside it with commented out sections to describe what they actually do.

If such documentation existed, it would open this up to many more people who are struggling with how to do things.

I'm gonna start a commented config file here for people to use as a future reference. Everyone can feel free to add info, functions, and tips they have found while experimenting with the mod. I'll add more of the config file as I work through it.

PFBody
{
	//The name of your planet.
	name=Example Planet

	//The name of the stock KSP planet you wish to use as a template for your new planet.
	//The template you choose determines what ground material, ground scatter, and orbit colour your new planet will have.
	templateName=Eeloo

	//A value that identifies this planet as a unique body. 
	//Should be different for every planet you make.
	flightGlobalsIndex=313
}

CelestialBody
{
	//The description of your planet that will appear in the information panel in-game.
	bodyDescription=Description of my Example Planet

	//The gravitational pull at "sea level" on your planet. 
	//"Sea Level" is determined as the point where the altitude meter is 0.
	//This value and the Radius of your planet determines the Mass and Sphere of Influence size.
	//For reference, Kerbin has a value of 1.0
	GeeASL=0.134

	//The radius (in metres) of your planet.
	//This value and the GeeASL of your planet determines the Mass and Sphere of Influence size.
	Radius=1560800

	//If True, your planet will rotate about its axis.
	//If False, it will not.
	rotates=True

	//The amount of time (in seconds) it takes your planet to complete one full rotation about its axis.
	//If the "rotates=" value is set to "False", then this value is ignored.
	rotationPeriod=1000

	//An initial offset (in degrees (0-360)) of the planets rotation.
	initialRotation=0

	//Determines if the planet is tidaly locked to its parent.
	//If True, the planet will rotate about its axis at the same rate it revolves around its parent.
	//If False, rotation will be handled by the above "rotates=" and "rotationPeriod=" functions.
	//Especially useful for moons.
	tidallyLocked=True
}

Edited February 28, 2014 by VonFrank

[Dooz]

Im gonna add a brown dwarf to my planet pack and uses the clouds mod to glow

Name:error code 6

Flavor text:a highly mysterious object wandering in drakas's orbit scientists gave it that name because every time a telescope looked at it the telescope computer crashed and said error code 6.

[Facecakes]

I don't know how to use the clouds mod with this to add custom ambiance or any sort of cloud for that matter. it would be much appreciated if someone could help me.