[1.2.1] RoverScience Revisted (2.2.0) - Better, interactive science for rovers!

[theSpeare]

Don't forget to post all the results, can't wait to hear how it goes

[Interfect]

I really like this mod, but I'm having a problem with it.

I landed a rover on the Mun and drove it about 3km from the landing site. I can find science spots and get ~30-50 science for each of them. However, when I quicksave, accidentally flip my rover, and quick-load, it seems to reset my landing site to wherever the rover is when I reload. The next science spot is reported as only a few hundred meters from my landing site, rather than the 4km or so I actually went. The landing site is not persistent.

Is it supposed to do this? Are there plans to make it save the landing site with the save file in the future? If you have to drive all the way out in one go without quicksaving/quickloading, the distance bonus ought to be quite large.

[theSpeare]

I really like this mod, but I'm having a problem with it.

I landed a rover on the Mun and drove it about 3km from the landing site. I can find science spots and get ~30-50 science for each of them. However, when I quicksave, accidentally flip my rover, and quick-load, it seems to reset my landing site to wherever the rover is when I reload. The next science spot is reported as only a few hundred meters from my landing site, rather than the 4km or so I actually went. The landing site is not persistent.

Is it supposed to do this? Are there plans to make it save the landing site with the save file in the future? If you have to drive all the way out in one go without quicksaving/quickloading, the distance bonus ought to be quite large.

I'd never thought of this being a problem - I'll save the locations of the science spots and landing spots from now on into the persistent file so they load with the quick-save. It's now been added as issue #36, but I might not have the time tonight to try this out and test it out. I'll bundle it along with the rest of the features for the next update, as it doesn't seem overly game-breaking.

A few clarifying questions though:

When you quick-saved, were you at the point where you the spot was "detected", or en-route? I'm having a tiny bit of trouble completely understanding it.

Say,

1. If the rover was in Western USA when it discovered a science spot in Eastern USA.

2. Quick-saved at the location you first discovered the Eastern USA spot.

3. Flipped somewhere Mid-USA

4. Quick-loaded back to Western USA at that first spot, and now the distance reading is saying the spot is now somewhere close to Western USA?

Or was it more like:

1. If the rover was in Western USA when it discovered a science spot in Eastern USA.

2. Drove towards Eastern USA spot.

3. Quick-saved at mid-USA

4. Flipped halfway between mid and east

5. Quick-loaded back to mid-USA

6. Distance is correctly reading from mid-USA to east-USA

(A diagram in mspaint might help me understand better lmao)

EDIT: As it stands I don't want to penalize anyone for quicksaving or quickloading. The distance from your landing site only really matters for when you're first scanning for a science spot. Once you've found it, the two spots are set with lat/long coords and a method is used to calculate the distance between them in real time. As long as you quick load and the science spot is still where it should be (for example eastern USA) and the distance calculated is the distance between you and that science spot (and is correct), then all should be fine.

Edited April 6, 2014 by theSpeare

[Snillum101]

Been having great fun with this mod. Landed rovers on Mun, Minmus, Duna and Eve and drove round for hours doing Science.

Many crashes and handbrake turns later there are three small points of feedback I'd like to give:

- 3 separate rover visits seem to completely max out the planet and make sending any further rovers pointless. I understand this might be a limitation with the way KSP handles experiments but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

- Biomes don't seem to affect total science return. For example if I land a rover on the Mun's farside crater do some experiments and then land another on the highlands the total science left (the green bar) has still depleted by the same amount.

- Would be excellent to see some flavour text for the different planets that you land on (even if its only one line describing the environment of the planet).

Still think this mod is an amazing job, and I'm looking forward to see where it goes from here

Edited April 8, 2014 by Snillum101
Sentence structure.

[theSpeare]

Hey! I'm glad to hear you're really enjoying it.

Flavor text and all that should come along in the next release hopefully sometime next week when I get the time.

Each planet has science maximums just like vanilla, this is simply to encourage exploring other planets. When the values are all available through a configuration file in the future you can change this to whatever you like if you're the type to really enjoy single planet exploration.

Biomes haven't been implemented yet for this mod. There's a chance I may not add it at all, but I will be adding in the ability to get large science spots for planet Easter eggs!

Thanks for the kind words and I hope you continue to have fun

[zilfondel]

Hey, this was just announced by NASA:

http://phys.org/news/2014-04-mars-icebreaker-mission.html

I think this would work well with your mod to add more rover or lander functionality! Drilling for... SCIENCE!

In all seriousness, maybe you could add a 'drill' part (maybe a rather large part, 500 kg?) that has a drilling animation and takes time, but uses your algorithm to generate random science points if its successful. The payoff could be less reliable, but potentially generate far more science points than your rover terminal. The challenge would be in successfully landing such a large and heavy part.

Edited April 18, 2014 by zilfondel

[Hotblack Desiato]

looks like a great mod. I always thought: why are rovers so pointless in this game. this mod clearly solves the problem of useless rovers.

does it play nice with the custom biomes mod? because although I already unlocked virtually all techtree-nodes with mün and minmus, I still want to aquire more science points with useful systems. and this mod seems to add it. and the drill is a very good idea, because jeb can pick a sample from the surface, but this thing can grab a sample from a few meters below. this could also lead to nice robotic sample return missions. (land somewhere, drive around, drill at a science spot, send the sample to the sample return stage and launch it back to kerbin).

another suggestion: how about long term seismic scans on science spots? earthquakes just don't happen in that short period of time when the scan is running.

[theSpeare]

@zilfondel

In the future, hopefully (when I get the free time), I will be adding extra functionality to the "analyze" spot part. Drills and other such things should be part of that. For now I'm more intrigued with spawning multiple science spots around the rover, each visually represented by spheres (like objective markers in GTA for example). Will take awhile though! Core function first

@Hotblack Desiato

I don't believe RoverScience works with biomes at all. I've put biome compatibility on the backburner for now, but it has its own science caps and stuff separate from biomes so even if you've bled an entire planet dry before installing this plugin, you will be able to return to old biomes and do some rover science there.

This plugin doesn't capture seismic scans, the accelerometer is merely a placeholder until I get a better model For now the RoverScience simply just "learns" something from the spot. The main idea is to encourage the player to drive.

[federally]

Hey, this was just announced by NASA:

http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx/news/2014/icebreakingm.jpg

http://phys.org/news/2014-04-mars-icebreaker-mission.html

I think this would work well with your mod to add more rover or lander functionality! Drilling for... SCIENCE!

In all seriousness, maybe you could add a 'drill' part (maybe a rather large part, 500 kg?) that has a drilling animation and takes time, but uses your algorithm to generate random science points if its successful. The payoff could be less reliable, but potentially generate far more science points than your rover terminal. The challenge would be in successfully landing such a large and heavy part.

There is already a mod that has this, along with other cool Rover and Probe science bits. It's called Dmagics Orbital Science. It has great parts with great models and animations and plays wonderfully with SCANsat.

Any way, back to the mod the thread is about. I'm very excited to try your mod out when I get home, it looks like you've done a wonderful job.

Now if only I can get someone to make a mod that adjusts the tech tree so all this extra science is more needed!

[Hyratel]

why the severe falloff after three analyses? it makes it completely useless before you can even upgrade it! and it makes it useless to try and scrape a bunch of little science too.

[theSpeare]

@Hyratel the severe falloff is to encourage sending more rovers, perhaps to different places. The science return for RoverScience is huge enough that three analyses is more than enough to gain science - you just have to make sure you analyze the higher potentials, and not waste the earlier analyses on lower ones. The upgrades pass onto other rovers as well, btw, it's not just limited on individual rovers.

[theSpeare]

OP updated with new link due to Spaceport's shutdown. Added Curseforge link and also a Dropbox link for anyone who doesn't like the former.

[UAL002]

Do you have any updates in the works or should I just continue to use in .24?

[theSpeare]

I have yet to get back to this mod but I will recompile later tonight for 0.24.

Maybe I'll add in money costs for upgrades. For now keep using it for 0.24 and just letme know if an issue comes up.

[jenny]

Still running a .23.5 game (waiting until mods catch up with .24 etc) and noticed RemoteTech2 thinks the rovers I build are manned even though they're not. Which means they're controllable even without dishes/antennas. I'm guessing there is an easy config that can fix this

[Drew Kerman]

Yes, you need to edit them for RT2 to recognize their need for remote connection. It's a simple MM config you should be able to get the gist of it from the configs in the RT2 folder. I haven't bothered doing it myself yet so off the top of my head can't give you more details

[jenny]

Fix it! A file GameData/RoverScience/RemoteTech_RoverScience.cfg with:

@PART[roverBrain]
{
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleSPU
	}

	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleRTAntennaPassive
		OmniRange = 3000

		TRANSMITTER
		{
			PacketInterval = 0.3
			PacketSize = 2
			PacketResourceCost = 15.0
		}
	}
}

Probably not entirely correct but does the trick!

[Drew Kerman]

yup that'll do it. You can even leave out the antenna module since you're going to be putting a longer-range one on the rover anyways. What's important is the SPU module

[Jaxx]

Any word on "official" .24.2 compatibility?

[theSpeare]

Yep, as RoverScience is a command module you'd be able to control from it without antenna in RT as it doesn't have the appropriate modules for RT. You may easily copy from the other probe cfgs.

As of "official" compatibility I haven't had time to go through and test it out. I don't think I'll have time to test it out for now; and I'm more or less relying on feedback if it's causing any issues. I will during this weekend hopefully just recompile it against 24.2 and maybe look at integrating RoverScience to the stock AppLauncher. I may even shuffle the costs around so that you spend money instead of science to upgrade the brain.

Let me know if there are any issues running RoverScience on 24.2 and if there are I'll try to fix it and mark it 24.2 compatible.

[Climberfx]

I made this part a long time ago, to use as my MechJEb one, but if you please it, i can made it yours for this mode only.

Let me know!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7jnt3u83twf0sor/ClimberFX.zip?dl=0

MJ by Climberfx, on Flickr

MechJeb Eye by Climberfx, on Flickr

MechJeb Eye by Climberfx, on Flickr

[Veelay]

I love the idea of this mod and you've done a wonderful job with it! I was wondering, is there a way to get the mod to recognise wheels from other mods? I'm using some wheels from Modular Multiwheels, and they don't seem to count as rover wheels.

[Jaxx]

I love the idea of this mod and you've done a wonderful job with it! I was wondering, is there a way to get the mod to recognise wheels from other mods? I'm using some wheels from Modular Multiwheels, and they don't seem to count as rover wheels.

Speaking as someone with basically no modding experience, I think the first thing I'd try is looking at the part module .cfg's between the two, and comparing to see if the mod is trying to find a specific module.

I would also love to see this mod getting some love!

[theSpeare]

Hey guys, sorry I've just been out of the scene lately. I haven't had the chance or time to fully test RoverScience against 0.25 but I haven't seen any issues and no one has reported them so I'd assume it should be okay.

Thanks climberfx, that's super generous and I'd be keen to take it on but I don't have the time to implement anything let alone go through the code again. Will let you know in the near future if I get back to this.

To Veelay, unfortunately it's been awhile since I've looked back at my code but last I remember I had RoverScience search for modules with names that simply had "wheel" in them. I'll take a look at the source when I get time but unfortunately there won't be a fix for this at the moment; one thing you could always try is just add the stock wheel onto Modular Multiwheels and just set the stock wheel parameters to zero (speed and whatnot). Hopefully it won't conflict. Apologies for this.

Thanks Jaxx Have you had any issues with 0.25 and RoverScience?

[Jaxx]

So far as I can tell, everything works perfectly fine except the Upgrade Menu, that's completely broken. But I don't even know what it did before so I'm not that concerned about it now.