[24.2] Karbonite Ongoing Dev and Discussion

[Wren]

Do the scoops only work on Jool? I can't even get them to deploy or anything on Kerbin. Is there even atmospheric karbonite on kerbin?

[Reign Of Magic]

Good start! here're couple of things that will help you to make it more "Karbonite", Nertea provided these a while back.

Color palette, stick to these colors will keep parts looking more Karbonite. just load it into your image editor and use eye dropper to sample the color blocks while you are make your textures.

http://nertea.the3rdage.net/ksp/palette.png

stock alike attachment plates. add these to ends of parts that are meant for Stack attachment and it will help integrate the Karbonite part's looks with Stock parts

http://nertea.the3rdage.net/ksp/Assets/125attachTemplate.png

Text on machinery and the like are generally san-serif; easier to read at a distance. Helvetica is overly popular, but works well. Arial is good option. I use Tahoma a bit. Arial and Tahoma are both standard on Windows. I think Helvetica is standard on OSX.

Righto I can make those changes, I just personally really liked the look & idea of the coils hence why I went with that in my first go. I shall also attempt to make the model look better so that it isn't as shameful when compared to the other bits in Karbonite. Also size is a bit off right now, I'll try to figure out scaling in my next iteration of the Generator (Right now it is slightly smaller in radius than Karbonite parts and slightly larger than the mk1 command pod and lander can)

[FONT=Verdana]MODULE
[/FONT]{
    name = KarboniteGenerator
    // The ammount of electric charge (in kJ) recieved from 1 unit of karbonite
    conversionRatio = 500
    // The maximum output of the generator in kW
    maxOutput = 100 
}

Thanks for that, Works like a charm!

An aside: While testing the generator with the new module put on, I noticed that the ventral drill supposedly takes 2.5mw which should be (if I understand correctly) should be 2,500 kw. But when I was running it it was taking 2.5 ec (or kw), Not sure if someone missed a coma, or put an m instead of a k.

@ Everyone

Thanks for the feedback, & what is your opinion on the Generator having an RTG embedded in it for a small amount of passive power gen?

Edited July 31, 2014 by Reign Of Magic

[Justin Kerbice]

Looks good so far, may I suggest to add legend in imgur pictures (just to explain a bit what is what) as well as release tags to your github repository (like KAC for examples, it would be more suer-friendly and you could have a dev + stable tags).

Added: Karbonite career "campaign":

Maybe not new, to add more spice with karbonite and career mode, add one 1st contract to investigate something strange and potentially useful found by chance on Kerbin or Mun/Minmus/farer (not on Kerbin = more planing, longer, ...), found what it is => karbonite small deposit. Eventually take a sample (EVA sample if possible).

=> new techtree node unlocked: karbonite (root), with just one simple scanning part.

new contract following: mining, extract a given amount of karbonite to fully study it (Kerbal's "trial and error" thing so this amount may be big ), a basic mining part added.

then: try to use it => convert into useful resource (LF/Ox/others) or use it as-is = converter/engine parts + tanks unlocked

and so on... till it use on a daily basis by kerbals.

Edited July 31, 2014 by Justin Kerbice
added karbonite campaign idea

[AshIzat]

@ Everyone

Thanks for the feedback, & what is your opinion on the Generator having an RTG embedded in it for a small amount of passive power gen?

Personally I think its better to keep it separate. That's one of the things I tried while testing the generator code, and to me it felt a little bit overpowered, although I always find rtgs feel a little cheaty anyway. Its easy to stick one on if you need it, its a lot more difficult to remove one that's embedded in another part if you don't like it.

[RoverDude]

OMG this just gave me an awesome idea (not sure if it'd be viable for this mod or not - that'd be up to RoverDude). Anyhoo... when you said "shoot it back to my space station..." it reminded me of something I'd seen in Anarchy Online. They have these HUGE planet-based cannons that shoot cans of ore to orbiting refineries. Maybe reaching escape velocity on a planet with an atmosphere would be asking too much from a cannon, but from a moon - maybe not. There'd be a lot of math involved depending on each moon's escape velocity if you were going to launch it into an orbit. Hmm... it would have to not be considered "space debris" either, or the game could delete it.

Or maybe not a cannon/launcher. Maybe you attach a couple of SRB's to the side of a can, and a miniature control pod with integrated docking port. Food for thought. Mining and refining fuel on a planetary body is always going to be problematic if you don't have a fairly easy way to get the fuel into space. Is it worth the hassle, or is it easier to simply ferry fuel from Kerbin's space port? If you're taking a ship halfway across the solar system, chances are it won't have the ability to land on a moon, refuel, and take off again.

@RoverDude: No hurry, but please let me know the results of changing "sphere" to "cube" when you get around to it. Oh, and you forgot to add childStageOffset = 1 to the drill's cfg file.

Very out of scope for this But would be a nifty mod in general.

Can't wait to give this a try. Still working on my new .24 installation. Though I would really like to see some rover-size parts as well, so I support the idea. If I wasn't so busy in school, I'd offer a hand. I'm studying 3D game modeling, actually, and would love to do a KSP mod.

Hurry up!

Just for fun, thought I'd show off my karbonite test rig. I know we can test the drills and parts from anywhere, but I have this compulsion to make everything into a plane. So, enjoy!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78157466/Karbonite_Cruiser/Cruiser1.jpg

Gets there fast.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78157466/Karbonite_Cruiser/Cruiser2.jpg

A resource-rich area ahead. Looks like rough terrain though...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78157466/Karbonite_Cruiser/Cruiser3.jpg

Yep, rough. But no worries!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78157466/Karbonite_Cruiser/Cruiser4.jpg

We came prepared.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78157466/Karbonite_Cruiser/Cruiser5.jpg

While the four ventral drills do their work, be sure to repack the parachute for the return trip!

Very cool

Do the scoops only work on Jool? I can't even get them to deploy or anything on Kerbin. Is there even atmospheric karbonite on kerbin?

It should at least deploy - make sure you delete out your Karbonite folder before reinstalling, as ORS is changing at a fairly fast pace.

Righto I can make those changes, I just personally really liked the look & idea of the coils hence why I went with that in my first go. I shall also attempt to make the model look better so that it isn't as shameful when compared to the other bits in Karbonite. Also size is a bit off right now, I'll try to figure out scaling in my next iteration of the Generator (Right now it is slightly smaller in radius than Karbonite parts and slightly larger than the mk1 command pod and lander can)

Thanks for that, Works like a charm!

An aside: While testing the generator with the new module put on, I noticed that the ventral drill supposedly takes 2.5mw which should be (if I understand correctly) should be 2,500 kw. But when I was running it it was taking 2.5 ec (or kw), Not sure if someone missed a coma, or put an m instead of a k.

@ Everyone

Thanks for the feedback, & what is your opinion on the Generator having an RTG embedded in it for a small amount of passive power gen?

Keep at it on the model Just make sure you use metric in your modeling tool and set your cylinder to the right diameter. So much easier than scaling. I agree on no RTG for the generators.

Looks good so far, may I suggest to add legend in imgur pictures (just to explain a bit what is what) as well as release tags to your github repository (like KAC for examples, it would be more suer-friendly and you could have a dev + stable tags).

Added: Karbonite career "campaign":

Maybe not new, to add more spice with karbonite and career mode, add one 1st contract to investigate something strange and potentially useful found by chance on Kerbin or Mun/Minmus/farer (not on Kerbin = more planing, longer, ...), found what it is => karbonite small deposit. Eventually take a sample (EVA sample if possible).

=> new techtree node unlocked: karbonite (root), with just one simple scanning part.

new contract following: mining, extract a given amount of karbonite to fully study it (Kerbal's "trial and error" thing so this amount may be big ), a basic mining part added.

then: try to use it => convert into useful resource (LF/Ox/others) or use it as-is = converter/engine parts + tanks unlocked

and so on... till it use on a daily basis by kerbals.

Contracts out of scope for launch, would love to see someone in the community have some fun with this one. Will do some imgur updates for launch since there will be new pics anyway

Personally I think its better to keep it separate. That's one of the things I tried while testing the generator code, and to me it felt a little bit overpowered, although I always find rtgs feel a little cheaty anyway. Its easy to stick one on if you need it, its a lot more difficult to remove one that's embedded in another part if you don't like it.

Concur

[DuoDex]

Time for me to produce a small contribution: a Karbonite flag.

Download. Just right click and save as.

It's already in flag size, 256x160. If you don't know how (unlikely): To incorporate it into the mod, make a folder called "Flags" in the root directory of the mod and put the flag there.

[RoverDude]

Time for me to produce a small contribution: a Karbonite flag.

http://i.imgur.com/rVh52p0.png

Download. Just right click and save as.

It's already in flag size, 256x160. If you don't know how (unlikely): To incorporate it into the mod, make a folder called "Flags" in the root directory of the mod and put the flag there.

Very nice And yep, will add this in for launch

Right now I have to sort through a ton of PMs so I can get a second round of 'todo's as I'm feeling we're on the cusp of a release candidate.

What I would GREATLY appreciate is for folks, over the next couple of days, to test the heck out of the bits we already have - I want to make sure we have everything operational for the RC, with the intent of doing supplemental parts packs afterwards.

Longer term, since I expect a lot of community content for this, there will be an official (curated) parts pack, and in the event of duplicates, etc. some alternates - in addition to whatever the community throws at us. Curated just means that if we have, say, ten different community created 1.25m Karbonite engines, I'll pick one to include in the official download - the other nine would either be in parts packs by their owner, or links in the thread. Probably the best analogue to this is textures for TAC-LS. There are a dozen community versions of the textures, but only one of the texture sets is now included with the download - which I think works out best for everyone.

Also working on the first draft of the resource document. Additions will be based on released mods that use Karbonite (just so it does not get cluttered with a ton of WIPs). Again, this will be curated but folks are free to do whatever as we have some pretty open licensing. Meaning, if someone wants to add 'bottled water', 'spring water', 'hose water', and 'dog bowl water', and I reserve the right to say that we already have water and lqdwater (which cover TAC and KSPI), but reserve the right to keep the official resource list clean and tidy (as always, folks are free to do whatever they wish and rock on).

Hopefully that makes sense - and especially for the latter bits please raise any concerns now

[blackheart612]

I actually made this double purpose, originally to have a change with the Roundified Stratus V from Squad and submit a Karbonite textured one for radial spheres (because why not). It's almost the same size with the stock radial of the same design. Here is how it looks like in game:

Ya want it? ._.

[RoverDude]

https://i.imgur.com/dYmayCk.png

I actually made this double purpose, originally to have a change with the Roundified Stratus V from Squad and submit a Karbonite textured one for radial spheres (because why not). It's almost the same size with the stock radial of the same design. Here is how it looks like in game:

https://i.imgur.com/vEX0qXQ.png

Ya want it? ._.

Indeed I do

(Edit) some Karbonite orange in the texture would be nice, and if it came already as a mu with cfg that would help me get it in faster

[blackheart612]

Indeed I do

(Edit) some Karbonite orange in the texture would be nice, and if it came already as a mu with cfg that would help me get it in faster

I was thinking where to put some orange in there but can't think of anywhere... Thoughts?

I'll send to you a .mu and textures but if you demand any changes, I can do as well. As for the cfg I copied the config of the Squad's radial tank which has the same design reason being I actually use them as an alternative as I said earlier just for my own use:

[RoverDude]

I was thinking where to put some orange in there but can't think of anywhere... Thoughts?

I'll send to you a .mu and textures but if you demand any changes, I can do as well. As for the cfg I copied the config of the Squad's radial tank which has the same design reason being I actually use them as an alternative as I said earlier just for my own use:

https://i.imgur.com/lYVElFf.png

Oh, no worries - I'll edit the texture. And I never demand

[Mutifex]

What I would GREATLY appreciate is for folks, over the next couple of days, to test the heck out of the bits we already have - I want to make sure we have everything operational for the RC, with the intent of doing supplemental parts packs afterwards.

I thought I'd just drop feedback on what I have been able to test and know works so far, that being resource detection, drilling and converting. I have used these A LOT over the last few days and can confirm that they work reliably and consistently. I have not had any random moments where I am left thinking "hey, that's not what normally happens."

There is something about the converter that I think could be tweaked a little. However, I woud totally understand not even looking at this point until after release because as I say, what is there now is functional and reliable and this thought could be something to simply improve the function later.

The scenario I am interested in goes a little like this: (numbers are fictional and there to illustrate the mechanics only)

1. I deploy 3 drills and start them extracting

2. I turn on my converter and ask it to convert all 3 options, mono/LF and OX

3. To convert all 3 simulateously would require a constant flow of say 99 karbonite per second, 33 for each process. However I am only currently recieving around 75 per second

4. The converter chooses a process and turns it off, leaving only 2 running.

It is the last step that feel a tiny bit clunky to me, meaning that I generally tell my ship to "do all the things" and then come back and fix up whichever resource was not able to complete. I think it would be a better process for the converter to pause one of the operations rather than cancel it, switching it back on when resources than allow and only turning off all process when either a. there is no karbonite being extracted or b. there is nowhere left to place the final product (tanks are full)

Again, I will say that while this would be something on my wish list, I think you could conceivably wait on this until post-launch.. unless of course its just easy enough to do now and get out of the way.

Other than that minor point, I am loving what I have been able to test so far and how much more integrated resources feel now. It all feels somewhat less tacked on when everything works together in a consistent manner.

I'll be into spaceplane design mode on my career save in the next day or so, I'll let you know how everything goes with intakes, etc.

[blackheart612]

Oh, no worries - I'll edit the texture. And I never demand

Ah, Ill just post here. Here you go, sir.

If you are unsatisfied with the texture, feel free to resize and redo it.

[RoverDude]

I thought I'd just drop feedback on what I have been able to test and know works so far, that being resource detection, drilling and converting. I have used these A LOT over the last few days and can confirm that they work reliably and consistently. I have not had any random moments where I am left thinking "hey, that's not what normally happens."

There is something about the converter that I think could be tweaked a little. However, I woud totally understand not even looking at this point until after release because as I say, what is there now is functional and reliable and this thought could be something to simply improve the function later.

The scenario I am interested in goes a little like this: (numbers are fictional and there to illustrate the mechanics only)

1. I deploy 3 drills and start them extracting

2. I turn on my converter and ask it to convert all 3 options, mono/LF and OX

3. To convert all 3 simulateously would require a constant flow of say 99 karbonite per second, 33 for each process. However I am only currently recieving around 75 per second

4. The converter chooses a process and turns it off, leaving only 2 running.

It is the last step that feel a tiny bit clunky to me, meaning that I generally tell my ship to "do all the things" and then come back and fix up whichever resource was not able to complete. I think it would be a better process for the converter to pause one of the operations rather than cancel it, switching it back on when resources than allow and only turning off all process when either a. there is no karbonite being extracted or b. there is nowhere left to place the final product (tanks are full)

Again, I will say that while this would be something on my wish list, I think you could conceivably wait on this until post-launch.. unless of course its just easy enough to do now and get out of the way.

Other than that minor point, I am loving what I have been able to test so far and how much more integrated resources feel now. It all feels somewhat less tacked on when everything works together in a consistent manner.

I'll be into spaceplane design mode on my career save in the next day or so, I'll let you know how everything goes with intakes, etc.

Awesome, thanks for the feedback.

There was supposed to be a provision to turn your generator back on but it's not working at the moment - that being said, you may still have your third guy 'stutter' while two keep processing. I'll see if it's low hanging fruit, otherwise let me noodle over a long term solution.

[Robotengineer]

RoverDude, if you want more carbonate orange or black on the airscoop, I can add that pretty easily.

[Doctor Axel]

So building a config for Water mining for the TAC ended up being stupid easy. =D If only everyone's resources aligned with the ones from ORS.

Once we've figured out how we're gonna handle Xenon extraction I'll look at a config for refining Near Future's Argon and Hydrogen using similar processes.

[nli2work]

Righto I can make those changes, I just personally really liked the look & idea of the coils hence why I went with that in my first go. I shall also attempt to make the model look better so that it isn't as shameful when compared to the other bits in Karbonite. Also size is a bit off right now, I'll try to figure out scaling in my next iteration of the Generator (Right now it is slightly smaller in radius than Karbonite parts and slightly larger than the mk1 command pod and lander can)

The coils are cool looking, just make sure you apply a texture that looks like coil instead of the wood floor tile texture that's on there now. CGtextures.com is my goto source for texture and reference material; high res photos and royalty free.

For scale, make sure you are modeling to actual size, 1.25m; 2.5m; 3.75m; in your 3d app, and the rest can be taken care of in the part's config file.

[Robotengineer]

Here is a texture with an orange and black stripe.

Good? Bad? Other?

[Mutifex]

Awesome, thanks for the feedback.

There was supposed to be a provision to turn your generator back on but it's not working at the moment - that being said, you may still have your third guy 'stutter' while two keep processing. I'll see if it's low hanging fruit, otherwise let me noodle over a long term solution.

Yeah the stutter would be understandable. Actually it is what I would tend to expect. The whole doing the math for exact rates of conversion to maintain all processes at very low gathering rates is to be honest, more effort than the issue deserves.

[dbmorpher]

Has anyone made a Karbonite Scramjet yet? I could make the model but I don't know how to texture yet and I'm not good at modding but I could just copy something in from the turbojets but with a higher thrust-isp tradeoff. I might be able to put something in to only work at certain surface speeds. And it would contain it's own air intake because it's radial.

[RoverDude]

Has anyone made a Karbonite Scramjet yet? I could make the model but I don't know how to texture yet and I'm not good at modding but I could just copy something in from the turbojets but with a higher thrust-isp tradeoff. I might be able to put something in to only work at certain surface speeds. And it would contain it's own air intake because it's radial.

Toss something up

[elfindreams]

Feedback from my tests the last few days, I have created two Karbonite based science landers (drills, tanks, karbonite thrusters and kerbils/science experiments) to explore the Mun and Minmus and utilized them to "bunny hop" from biome to biome.

It would be nice if the drill deploy/undeploy animation was tied to the act of drilling for Karbonite.

I have noticed areas where the amount of carbonite per second I get flickers between two values, is that normal / am I on a border?

While I had a blast doing it, the Karbonite powered thrusters seem... too powerful, even the small ones. I am not sure how to quantify it apart from that but they just feel out of whack. On my Mun lander (used 4 of the smaller ones) I had to dial down the thrust on each of them to something like 10% to even make the lander flyable.

Other than those feedback points, it is a lot of fun and definitely close to prime-time ready.

[rockshow4070]

So building a config for Water mining for the TAC ended up being stupid easy. =D If only everyone's resources aligned with the ones from ORS.

Once we've figured out how we're gonna handle Xenon extraction I'll look at a config for refining Near Future's Argon and Hydrogen using similar processes.

Mind if I ask a few questions? You seem to know whats going on.

Does TAC use ORS? From what I know, KSPI does, and if I understand RoverDude's goals for the mod the goal is to have as many mods as possible using ORS, which has a sort of common resource library. From what I gather from that, mods that use the same or a similar resource (such as TAC and KSPI both using water) only actually require one resource, rather than multiple of what is, functionally, the same thing. Is that right?

If it is, KSPI has a good amount of resources. Would they all be included in ORS for other mods to take advantage of if they so choose? For instance, KSPI and Near Future both use Argon. If the mod authors chose to do so, would they both use the same resource files for argon?

[Justin Kerbice]

A little feedback:

- landing legs of the 'all-in-one' structural frame doesn't deploy/retract using 'g' key ,

- the small sensor is more than over-powered (it may have been feed with karbonite when it was younger ), it can detect hotspots at quite far distances (> 100-200kms !)

[Doctor Axel]

Mind if I ask a few questions? You seem to know whats going on.

Does TAC use ORS? From what I know, KSPI does, and if I understand RoverDude's goals for the mod the goal is to have as many mods as possible using ORS, which has a sort of common resource library. From what I gather from that, mods that use the same or a similar resource (such as TAC and KSPI both using water) only actually require one resource, rather than multiple of what is, functionally, the same thing. Is that right?

If it is, KSPI has a good amount of resources. Would they all be included in ORS for other mods to take advantage of if they so choose? For instance, KSPI and Near Future both use Argon. If the mod authors chose to do so, would they both use the same resource files for argon?

From what I understand, a mod 'uses an ORS resource' as long as its resource simply has the same name as one of ORS's definitions (since ORS actually doesn't create any 'resources' in the stock KSP sense - it just defines where resources named certain things might be found in various concentrations in various parts of the Kerbol system.) TAC, in that sense, can 'use' ORS because its Water is named the same as ORS's Water. Since ORS was made originally for KSPI, all of KSPI's resources use the same names as ORS's resources.

Near Future is very close, but ORS's resource is named 'Argon' while Near Future's is named 'ArgonGas', for example, so you'd have to either modify/extend ORS to have 'ArgonGas' resource definitions, or Near Future would need to be modified to use the ORS resource names.

Since ORS doesn't actually create any KSP resources, it's up to mod authors to create resources and, if they want them to work with ORS, give them the correct names (or create ORS definitions with names that the author wants to use).

Some of that MIGHT be wrong. Just what I've figured out on my own so far. =P