[1.2.2](Dec10/16) Action Groups Extended: 250 Action Groups, in-flight editing. Now kOS/RemoteTech

[Alsimexa]

I would like to use this plugin with EVA, but it does not work. If i click on "Deploy" or "Eva report" then just nothing happends.

[8749236]

Holy ****!!!

This is so ****ing great!!!..

I want the in-fllight editing so much for a real long time...

[Diazo]

@Alsimexa: I will admit I did not test a Kerbal on EVA. Probably something slightly different in the background for it, I'll check it out when I get home tonight.

[Faark]

I intended to wait testing this mod till the is any easy source code version system, but did it now anyway, since there just was a situation where this mod could have made a mission much easier. The interface feels something between clunky and intimidating to new users, thus could really need some "polish". Clicks go though the UI, so instead of adding an action i frequently selected a different part. But it didn't matter, since it didn't let me select my Gravmax Detector i wanted to add to an to an action group anyway...

I would love to develop / try some UI changes, but that seems too much effort just for myself while unpractical to share without some kind of source control system.

[Diazo]

Clicks go through? That should not happen in Editor, although it does happen in Flight as I was unable to find anyway to stop it.

On the UI, I was concerned about screen real estate so I broke things up into the separate windows. A single big window would probably make UI design easier but I can't take up half the screen with a single giant window and have it stay useful.

Gravmax detector? I did not test that part specifically, will check when I get a chance.

On sharing the code, how willing are you to slog through kludge? The code for this thing is a mess at the moment with all the rewrites I had to do to get a working save/load routing, and that's before I get into the hacks I did to get the symmetry bug fixed.

I can go ahead and post it up as I'm not going to get the time to clean it up I was thinking I'd have, but be aware I don't even wave in the general direction of any sort of coding "best practice" with this.

What part specifically were you looking at? I can at least throw some comments in before I post it.

D.

Edited April 9, 2014 by Diazo

[Tery215]

I hope to get a better action group listing system than this.

Maybe enter an integer to get action groups, and a list of action groups excluding unused ones.

[JedTech]

Any progress on integration with the build in action groups?

[Faark]

Clicks go through? That should not happen in Editor, although it does happen in Flight as I was unable to find anyway to stop it.

Yes, in flight :/ Sure someone will find a way eventually.

On sharing the code, how willing are you to slog through kludge? The code for this thing is a mess at the moment with all the rewrites I had to do to get a working save/load routing,[...]

Don't be afraid, no changes necessary, your code won't hurt anyone. Also in my experience will your own code always "look messy", especially to yourself^^

[Diazo]

Alright, Github is up.

I will try to take a bit of time today or tomorrow to add some comments, right now they are pretty sparse. :/

@Tery215: More details on what you would like to see? You can just click in the Groups window to change to that action group.

@jmanidb: Some. I'm currently getting stuck on removing an action from only the custom action groups. I just need to find the right syntax to do it. I do know several ways to remove an action from all groups, but removing landing gear from the Gear group makes it useless.

D.

[TheWampa]

I really love this mod! I used Action Group Manager before, but the messy right click menu and severe lag issued when crashing a vehicle (which is sometimes necessary with Interstellar...) made me switch. Some observations though:

- sometimes it really is hard or impossible to click in small parts midflight and set up new action groups for them (e.g., haven't been able to select a thermometer placed on a regular tank). AGM had an internal catalog of all parts on the ship to choose from, maybe this is something you'd like to look into.

- at least for me, AGX doesn't remember the names for actions groups I set up midflight. after changing the active vessel the still are there and work properly, but the label field is blank

- is there a way to edit which action a single part will execute without deleting it from the "Actions (This Group)" list? E.g., when I select an antenna and accidentally choose "Activate" instead of "Toggle". Maybe make the list item selectable (and thus, editable) in with left-click, and delete it from the list with right-click?

EDIT: also, being able to use action groups under time acceleration and even from map view is great!

Edited April 11, 2014 by TheWampa

[Diazo]

@Parts being selected: It sounds like I need to go back and redo this from scratch, the small parts not being selectable is probably a function of the fact I'm currently using raycasts for this and the collision meshes are not quite where I expect them.

@Not remembering group names midflight: On the list to investigate. I'm intending to release a bugfix version of the mod this weekend sometime, I'll get through as many of these issues as possible.

@Left vs. Right click: That actually is a good point. Right now everything is simply "click" so left and right clicks always do the same thing. Separating left and right click into different functions could make the UI easier to use. This will require some thinking on.

D.

Edited April 11, 2014 by Diazo

[Tery215]

Alright, Github is up.

I will try to take a bit of time today or tomorrow to add some comments, right now they are pretty sparse. :/

@Tery215: More details on what you would like to see? You can just click in the Groups window to change to that action group.

@jmanidb: Some. I'm currently getting stuck on removing an action from only the custom action groups. I just need to find the right syntax to do it. I do know several ways to remove an action from all groups, but removing landing gear from the Gear group makes it useless.

D.

Perhaps..

An "Add action group" button, with the currently existing 10 listed as normal

[NeoMorph]

I really love this mod! I used Action Group Manager before, but the messy right click menu and severe lag issued when crashing a vehicle (which is sometimes necessary with Interstellar...) made me switch. Some observations though:

- sometimes it really is hard or impossible to click in small parts midflight and set up new action groups for them (e.g., haven't been able to select a thermometer placed on a regular tank). AGM had an internal catalog of all parts on the ship to choose from, maybe this is something you'd like to look into.

- at least for me, AGX doesn't remember the names for actions groups I set up midflight. after changing the active vessel the still are there and work properly, but the label field is blank

- is there a way to edit which action a single part will execute without deleting it from the "Actions (This Group)" list? E.g., when I select an antenna and accidentally choose "Activate" instead of "Toggle". Maybe make the list item selectable (and thus, editable) in with left-click, and delete it from the list with right-click?

EDIT: also, being able to use action groups under time acceleration and even from map view is great!

Yeah, I second this. I have been playing with DennyTX's Apollo and there is this docking cone on the LEM that is a right pain to click on. Thank god for Targettron lol.

I do hate the fact that at times you go to click on something and the whole ship twitches causing you miss it for some reason (a core problem with KSP I think). Being able to list the parts of the ship would make a lot of help.

[NeoMorph]

Diazo, how do you save the action groups to the ship. If I revert to the VAB I lose all my action groups that I set up on the launch pad... I'm obviously doing something wrong but for complicated ship builds it's a pain to keep redoing them.

EDIT: Arrgg... Don't mind me. I forgot to go to the action groups page in the VAB and THEN go turn on the AGX button.... otherwise you can just press it and nothing happens.

Edited April 14, 2014 by NeoMorph

[Diazo]

@NeoMorph: It should pop open by default when you goto the Actiongroups tab, will investigate.

Also, important edit to the opening post you just reminded me of.

This mod supports the in-game persistence save/load system.

This means that if you Quickload, any changes made to your action groups since the last quicksave are lost.

This also means if you are building a ship, launch it, change actiongroup assignments on the launchpad and then revert to VAB, changes made to the actiongroups on the launchpad are lost.

D.

[NeoMorph]

I've come across one quirk that throws me every time I launch. When on the pad I have to remember to click the AGX toolbar Icon to make the menu appear and then click it again to hide it. If I don't, no action group will work, including the default 1-10 ones.

It's not a dealbreaker but it's definitely something weird going on.

[KerbMav]

.

Ah, so that is why ...

[Diazo]

@NeoMorph: What? That is certainly not intended.

As for the next release, at this point I'll get to it when I can. Real life is intruding and I did not get any time to look at this on the weekend like I thought I would.

D.

[LORDPrometheus]

Ok I tried using this mod but had to install due to an incompatibility and now the vanilla action groups don't work!

I verified the vanilla games files and all is well

The compatibility has since been fixed so I can reinstall this mod just thought you should know about this issue

[mrBlaQ]

This is really weird but all my action groups stopped working with this mod. I deleted this mod and tried to use stock action groups on a new craft and that didn't work either. It was working, no mods changed, then stopped working on one session so I restarted KSP, it worked again, then stopped working, then wouldn't work after deleting the mod...?

Edit: Got it working again.

I had to go in and re-bind the stock actiongroup hotkeys in settings. Now things seem OK. I can't say how they got unbound in the first place or why AGExt wasn't managing hotkeys on it's own. I had them assigned properly.

Edited April 19, 2014 by mrBlaQ

[Diazo]

@mrBlaq: Because this is a totally separate manager for action groups, it does temporarily unbind the 1-10 keys from the default action groups and rebinds them to groups 1-10 of the mod.

Note the temporary however, it does not save this change. When you go to the Flight scene, it unbinds those keys but does not save the change, so the next time the game loads, the keys are re-bound to the default action groups.

So something saved the unbinding to file somehow. Can you remember if you went into the settings screen at all from the flight scene?

On the keys not working, did you have the Flight Window hidden via the toolbar? The current version has a bug where if the scene loads with the Flight Window hidden, no hotkeys work until the Flight Window is made visible after which the Flight Window can be hidden again.

@Progress on next version: The Kraken has his tentacles in this. I do have the bug with action groups not working with the flight window hidden fixed, but in trying to fix the group names not being saved when edited in flight mode, I turned this mod into a very effective Kerbal launcher. :/

When you go to launch, the ship does not spawn and any crew onboard get locked at their current position, so as Kerbin moves in its orbit, the Kerbal gets launched through the atmosphere.

Fun times.

D.

[evilC]

Does this mod help you deal with the KSP bug where removing a part that has symmetry enabled and re-attaching it breaks all the action groups?

[Pecan]

It certainly helps with that as a by-product evilC. It can't make KSP's own action groups perform properly but the controls/binding for this mod will work.

[Climberfx]

Gonna Install it right away. Thank you Diazo!

[mrBlaQ]

@diazo I'll see if I can replicate and report back.

Another thing: It seems there's a delay to some actions when they do work. I've seen delays as long as 4 seconds from hitting "G" to seeing the gear animation begin. I'll try to replicate that as well.