Kerbal Construction Time/StageRecovery Dev Thread

[Mars Mullo]

I tried the tanker option...

I built a tanker in the SPH with some plane wheels a TAC pod full of food water and oxygen (although don't really need that.)

Points I have learnt

Runway weight limit is 18tons (because I havn't earnet enough dosh to upgrade it)

Keep the command pod real low so your Kerbal can get into it... if you don't have any ladders yet

First option is for a horizontal winch from KAS so you need to build a frame to hang it from.

Aircraft wheels have no motors so you need to push it of the runway somehow.. maybe a thrust limited rocket or some such...

The limit and angle of the pipes or winch leads used.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY

You have to have unlocked the ability to transfer supplies.

Yup ... can't use the tanker until I upgrade something... possibly science or something worth millions of kerbals.

So... back to making sure you land your plane back at KSP and recover parts for quick rebuild times.

On some long missions around the planet you won't be returning for a landing. At least you don't get no points for that when it happens.

Here is a shot of the tanker I trialed... here

Photos of the plane I'm using 1 2 3 4 5

Edited January 17, 2015 by Mars Mullo
corrected image addresses

[magico13]

If anyone wants to help me test a tiny new mod I spent a half hour on, here it is: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25340912/FieldExperience.zip

It's called Field Experience. It gives you experience while out in the field, aka, you don't have to recover Kerbals to gain levels.

For now it is all rights reserved. The 20 or so lines of source code are included to ensure it meets forum standards.

[magico13]

Guess what! A pre-release! Test the crap out of it! Changelog on first post

[JeffreyCor]

Unfortunately build 70, on an existing game at least, doesn't work at all. All but the upgrades button results in a grey box.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5oc7e25iiy45p4m/output_log.txt?dl=0

[magico13]

That's pretty weird since I've been using it (well, not build 70 exactly) in my primary save for a while. I take a look at that log when I get home. Any luck with new saves?

Edit: Taking a look at the log now. First issue I see is with loading, which makes sense to me now. That probably broke everything else.

Edit2: Possibly fixed that issue in build 71 so old saves should load now (hopefully). I'm working on adding an error message that pops up when the OnLoad fails, which will break KCT pretty badly.

Edit3: Build 72 has a popup that will occur if the data fails to load properly (due to KCT's own fault or from another mod breaking it). Hopefully the delay I'm using doesn't return any false positives. Let me know if it does. My limited testing showed that the popup wouldn't occur for a second or two after loading the save.

Edited February 22, 2015 by magico13

[JeffreyCor]

Build 71 is working well with old saves. Haven't had a chance to check 72 yet. Only problem noticed was the KCT icon is blank (empty box in stock, purple box in toolbar) don't know what could cause this since only the DLL changed not the icon files. gremlins

[magico13]

At some point down the line the icons folder was renamed to Icons (capital "I"). If you rename that then the icons will display properly.

[JeffreyCor]

ah ha! I had been going though seeing if there was a graphics compression problem goofing things up. Changed the folder name and will be seeing if anything messes up with 73 today

[magico13]

ah ha! I had been going though seeing if there was a graphics compression problem goofing things up. Changed the folder name and will be seeing if anything messes up with 73 today

Ironically, the reason it's changed is to prevent issues with compression BTW, 74 just has a rewording of some text, no actual changes, so don't worry about testing it if you've already got 73. I purposefully created a bug in KCT during loading data to see if it would pop up the alert message, it did I also created a small mod that will cause a bug during it's own loading (thus preventing all further mods from loading their data) and it also popped up a warning then. So that should help reduce the number of reports where people have no clue what's going wrong (but will hopefully increase the number of reports of that issue). If you want to trigger it yourself (by corrupting your save), go into your save file and remove a whole section or two from one of the KSCs in the KerbalConstructionTimeData section (So find the Stock KSC, then delete the VABList section). That should make it pop up after a second or so when loading the save.

[JeffreyCor]

So far things are looking VERY good. KCT unlocks have been working flawlessly, no glitches in tech upgrades or ships both in progress before upgrade and started after. new crew display with boarding is much more helpful.

[FreeThinker]

ALright, I use KCT for quite some time now, mainly for testing, and if their is one issue that bugs me it's default behavoir for simulation where it set the time to 15 minutes eventhough it have set is to cost no credits. Please offer infinte simulation time be default time when simulation are free!

[magico13]

ALright, I use KCT for quite some time now, mainly for testing, and if their is one issue that bugs me it's default behavoir for simulation where it set the time to 15 minutes eventhough it have set is to cost no credits. Please offer infinte simulation time be default time when simulation are free!

I'll see what I can do. The 15 minute default is hardcoded into the mod and there wasn't a clear point where I could read the current save's settings and change the default based on that when I last looked. I might be able to do it when the simulation configuration window is told to display.

How about, instead of doing that (or in addition to doing that) I make that selection persist within a save (or globally). Then if you set it to unlimited time it will stay that way even after a reload. And if someone always uses 1 hour long limits then they won't have to change it every time they load the game.

Edit: Alright, I did both. It should default to infinite time if the sims are free or 15 minutes otherwise. Additionally, the choice should persist per save now. I haven't tested it, but it should work. It's build 75 (later oneS should have it as well)

Edited February 24, 2015 by magico13

[Svm420]

Somehow i lost the simulation time limit. I pick a limit and pay, but there is never any limit imposed. No time comes up and I just use revert as normal. Is this right? I know i have no free sims. I can post logs if needed.

[magico13]

Somehow i lost the simulation time limit. I pick a limit and pay, but there is never any limit imposed. No time comes up and I just use revert as normal. Is this right? I know i have no free sims. I can post logs if needed.

Seems to be a result of the code I added in build 75. I didn't actually get a chance to test it before I made the commit, so that's what happens when you publish untested code! I'll get it fixed in the next couple days (probably tonight. I've got some other changes I need to make and I'm hoping to do it tonight)

[FreeThinker]

I'll see what I can do. The 15 minute default is hardcoded into the mod and there wasn't a clear point where I could read the current save's settings and change the default based on that when I last looked. I might be able to do it when the simulation configuration window is told to display.

How about, instead of doing that (or in addition to doing that) I make that selection persist within a save (or globally). Then if you set it to unlimited time it will stay that way even after a reload. And if someone always uses 1 hour long limits then they won't have to change it every time they load the game.

Edit: Alright, I did both. It should default to infinite time if the sims are free or 15 minutes otherwise. Additionally, the choice should persist per save now. I haven't tested it, but it should work. It's build 75 (later oneS should have it as well)

Great, that should save a lot of time!

[Svm420]

Awesome glad to hear you already identified the problem. Love the mod now that I have a stable career going I will finally have to plan missions and emergency rescue ahead.

[magico13]

Awesome glad to hear you already identified the problem. Love the mod now that I have a stable career going I will finally have to plan missions and emergency rescue ahead.

I should point out that the builds in this thread are often unstable, so you should be wary of using them in your regular saves. Make sure to make backups and read the changes between builds if you decide to update at all, since one build could be totally stable and the next is full of bugs.

Especially over the next couple days. I'm going to be making some changes that I'm fairly likely will break build time calculations at some point. I'll try not to commit them until they're working properly, but some builds may have issues.

Those changes, for those of you who are interested, will be to open up a few more functions to the KCT_formulas.cfg file. Most notably will be the science/BP "research" formula and the entire build time formula (per part, and total). Yes, that means you'll be able to completely redefine how build times are calculated, including whether they're based on mass or cost. RSS might have an absolute field day with that. I have one user who is using KCT in a challenge and needs to have fine control over the build times. Those of you using Extraplanetary Launchpads might want to make KCT be mass based so the times correspond to each other. It's gonna be sweet

Edit: Build 76 should fix the issues with simulations. I also made some changes to how simulations are reloaded, which might introduce it's own bugs. So please look for odd behavior after exiting a simulation (but now if you crash during a simulation, the backed up save will be loaded properly when loading the game). Thanks to enneract for figuring out the super weird way KSP handles quicksave loading.

Edited February 27, 2015 by magico13

[Svm420]

76 fixed my sims. Thank you! Only hiccup so far was after choosing revert to editor it loaded to the vab, then went into a loading screen and finally the vab textures were all gone add i was floating in the sky. everything worked fine and upon finishing my build and setting it to build i exited the vab. When I went back in everything was as normal. So pretty low priority I didn't get logs since it didn't crash or cause any harm. If I run into it again Ill stop to get logs.

Alright well ran into the same glitch but this time I was building a plane. Did the same thing but instead of exiting I went to test a change i made and I ended up with my plane on the launch pad lol. WHen i stop playing this session ill upload the logs.

Edited February 27, 2015 by Svm420

[magico13]

Hmm. Weird side effect of the change to how simulations are reverted. If I can't fix it I may revert to the previous method and add in an extra thing to have it work after a game crash. I might just do that anyway, since the old method has worked fairly well in the past, it just doesn't work when coming from the Main Menu into the Space Center.

Thanks for your help!

Edit to avoid double posting: Build 77 has the first complete rough draft of opening up the BP calculations to the KCT_Formulas.cfg file. It needs tested pretty thoroughly (normal gameplay most importantly, but some people should try playing with it to see if it responds correctly). It may not seem like much, but this is a fairly monumental change (in my opinion). This is the first time the build time calculations have had the potential for taking a totally different form from the original square root form they've always had.

Now you can make build times depend on mass instead of cost, follow a logarithmic scale, get lower (??) as you add more parts (I mean, if you really want), max out at a predetermined value, have a minimum value, and almost literally ANY other configuration. Want EPL and KCT times to match up, you can do it nearly exactly now. Want mass and cost to be factors? Go for it.

This might be the biggest enhancement to customization ever

Edited February 28, 2015 by magico13

[Svm420]

Has anything improved in relation to compatibility and stability with kerbal konstructs other bases?

[magico13]

Has anything improved in relation to compatibility and stability with kerbal konstructs other bases?

Other than letting you launch from the editor, which removes a scene change that's required to set your launch site, no. I might work on that after this update goes out, but I don't want to delay this any longer by starting work on that.

[JeffreyCor]

These builds have been surprisingly smooth. Nothing have been going kuput so haven't really had anything to report. I hope I didn't just jinx it

[magico13]

These builds have been surprisingly smooth. Nothing have been going kuput so haven't really had anything to report. I hope I didn't just jinx it

I'm still making a few changes every now and then. Mostly small graphical fixes or improvements to some existing systems. Recently there were tweakscale related issues that I fixed and issues with the Upgrades window being out of sync. I've gotta do some testing on the system I just put in last night for resetting modules when recovering to storage.

I moved most of the settings for it out into a config file so that users can add more modules (presumably from mods) that absolutely need to be reset, along with the parameters they should have reset. So things like ModuleEngines and ModuleEnginesFX or ModuleParachute are in there by default to turn off engines and repack chutes, but there isn't anything for RealChutes for instance and people might want that to be reset. A lot easier to change a config file than to have a new release after every new mod gets added. The only hardcoded modules are ModuleScienceData and Log. The first gets totally removed (it's literally science data, which gets recovered and so needs to be removed) and the second gets all of the values removed (that's the trip logger I think).

Adding the RealChutes module should be as easy as adding something like the following (but with the right parameters) to the KCT_ModuleTemplates.cfg

MODULE
{
  name = ModuleRealChute
  state = STOWED
}

I also might play around with the math parser some more. If I change from a character by character parser to a block by block one (with each block being separated by an operator, such as "+") I can probably speed things up. There's also a limitation that nested min(x,y) and max(x,y) functions must be placed in the second slot [the "y" slot, ie min(x, max(a,), not min(max(a,,y)] which I can probably fix by checking the current "depth" when the comma is encountered. The current method splits the string by commas, takes the first split as "x" and everything else as "y". Checking the depth would split it into exactly two parts at the appropriate place, meaning you could nest anything you wanted in any slot as many times as you like. By depth, I mean "how many parenthesis are there" where "(" increases the depth by 1 and ")" decreases the depth by 1. So, starting at depth=0, the first "(" in min(max(a,,y) sets the depth to 1, the second one encountered at max( sets it to 2, a comma is encountered, the sets it back to 1, a second comma is encountered, and the last ) sets it to 0, which lets us know we're done. The appropriate comma would be ONLY in depth 1. The one encountered in depth 2 isn't the correct one and is ignored. Any additional ")" later would be depth -1 or lower, but the parser would have stopped searching already when it got to 0. Technically I think we start at depth 0 and ignore the first "(", and stop when depth goes negative, but it's equivalent.

I might not get to work on things for a few days, but I might push one or two more small changes here and there. I see no reason why a release shouldn't happen by this weekend.

[Svm420]

Would it be possible to change the advanced option from raw UT to a date in kerbin time or the deltaT we want to pass from present? That is much as a user to understand and calculate if i'm interpreting the function correctly being able run the sim at a point in the future without having to actually pass the time. Even better would be for the mod to take into account current est build time and start the sim after it wold be completed + whatever extra time the user specifies idk if that is even possible.

[magico13]

Those were actually all plans for it originally. Maybe I'll get at least the parser to let you enter a date in normal time rather than seconds. I obviously never got around to finishing that feature.

Edit: Aaaannnnnd done! Well, somewhat. You can now enter a time in "colon formatted" format, so yy:dd:hh:mm:ss. You don't have to use higher terms (like years), but must always go down to seconds. So 10:3:16:23 would be day 10, hour 3, minute 16, second 23. You can also now set an "absolute time" like before, or can use time relative to the current time (by clicking the "From Current UT" button). Both ways account for Kerbin days/years vs Earth days/years. Absolute time uses the KSP convention of starting at Year 1, Day 1. So if you put 2:3:0:0:0 it'll go to Year 2, day 3, rather than Year 3, day 4. Relative time doesn't need to worry about that problem, so if you put in 2 years, it'll advance time by two years, which is year 3 if current UT is 0 (a new game).

It doesn't automatically fill in relative time based on when the ship would finish, but you can always do that yourself. It's also backwards compatible with directly putting the UT in as seconds.

Edited March 4, 2015 by magico13