[Early development, 0.24] Kopernicus Planetary System Modifier

[Jetski]

Interesting little short green lines poking up here and there through the surface of Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus. Bug or Feature?

[ABZB]

I actually made a planet and it's moons. One thing I did notice though is that Ike clones are spherical.

Import of textures is implemented?!

[VDNKh]

Don't planets have specular maps as well? I don't see a way to add those in prealpha2.

[Dooz]

Will we get PQScity support? (Easter eggs buildings ect)

Edited September 6, 2014 by Dooz

[NathanKell]

VDNKh: they do not. Mostly. Worlds with oceans will support (like the usual KSP shader) the alpha channel of the diffuse map *as* the specular map.

[VDNKh]

VDNKh: they do not. Mostly. Worlds with oceans will support (like the usual KSP shader) the alpha channel of the diffuse map *as* the specular map.

Alright that makes sense. Also what's up with that normal map. It's got some weird transparency going on. How is it generated and/or edited for KSP?

[_Augustus_]

Import of textures is implemented?!

It's not. And clouds glitch with Kopernicus planets..

[NathanKell]

VDNKh: Unity stores normal maps internally as the R,G,B channels = Y (inverted) and alpha = X. Since those textures are loaded directly without conversion, they need to already be in the desired format.

[medikohl]

can we customize height maps as of yet?

[medikohl]

Can't wait until i can attempt to port these over again.

[Dooz]

can we customize height maps as of yet?

Why make your own when the mod can do it for you PQS Is magic.

Anyways i see the style of your planets so I can see why you need custom ones.

Now a general post

I'm wondering if we will get PQScity support (Easter eggs)

Edited September 7, 2014 by Dooz

[tygoo7]

Why make your own when the mod can do it for you PQS Is magic.

Anyways i see the style of your planets so I can see why you need custom ones.

Now a general post

I'm wondering if we will get PQScity support (Easter eggs)

Doesn't Kerbtown have PQScity? They are static objects.

[VDNKh]

can we customize height maps as of yet?

If you download it and use the prealpha2 build, yes, you can swap out the height, normal, and color maps. To edit the planets radius you have to change it in the source code, or wait for a configuration file to be made.

[medikohl]

If you download it and use the prealpha2 build, yes, you can swap out the height, normal, and color maps. To edit the planets radius you have to change it in the source code, or wait for a configuration file to be made.

damn. was hoping i'd missed that

[Creeperchair]

In response to the license terms that are preventing community maintenance of the existing planet creator mod (discussed here), I've started working on a replacement mod for KSP. I am interested in community input about what people desire in such a mod.

Planned features:

- Free software (LGPL) license

- Well-documented code

- Create the system de novo, rather than be based on copying stock planets.

- Particular attention given to supporting the Sol system.

Not part of the scope of this project:

- Extensive new planets created by me. I might create some kind of example planetary system, but it will not be very sophisticated or detailed.

- Any in-game interface other than possibly selection of which system to use.

Thanks to aftokinito, for technical input, and metaphor, for suggesting the name "Kopernicus."

At this point, I haven't done much, although I do have code for a plugin now that executes just before the default (i.e. Kerbol) system is spawned, and should be able to insert its own planetary system instead and have KSP spawn that one through the same means it would normally use to spawn the default system. (Which is, I think, the essential proof of concept for aftokinito's plan described in the other thread.)

GitHub link, for the adventurous: https://github.com/BryceSchroeder/Kopernicus

Note that this mod is NOT COMPLETE, even in a beta state; it currently just adds one planet. The released version will allow essentially arbitrary planets to be added. See the readme file for details.

The description of Hodor made me think of Giorgio Kerman:

"You say it's the kraken, but HUMANS!"

Edited September 9, 2014 by Creeperchair
MAH BOI!

[VDNKh]

I imported some Space Engine generated terrain as 8k textures, here's an image dump:

http://imgur.com/a/d7R2k

That boxy shading on the higher LOD should be looked at, but otherwise looks good.

There doesn't seem to be any performance difference using 2k vs 8k height maps when generating terrain. On my hardware anyway.

I would really like a way to change how sloped terrain textures looks and at what angle uses the sloped texture. Can we define more than one slope angle and texture?

If you look closely at the ground level pictures, there seems to be micro divisions in the terrain, causing little white pixels here and there.

Textures: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xmpev7wl9whur1i/Selenic1.7z?dl=0

Edited September 9, 2014 by VDNKh

[braininator]

I just downloaded the files. Out of curiosity, did you export them for SE at 8k by 4k or did you scale them up in Gimp or Photoshop? What files did you replace with those textures? Custom PQS is not done yet, and they removed Kopernikus in prealpha 3. Either way I am curious as to the performance of this as 8k textures made my laptop struggle in RSS, and both my computers(both my laptop and gaming desktop) struggle in PF.

[VDNKh]

I just downloaded the files. Out of curiosity, did you export them for SE at 8k by 4k or did you scale them up in Gimp or Photoshop? What files did you replace with those textures? Custom PQS is not done yet, and they removed Kopernikus in prealpha 3. Either way I am curious as to the performance of this as 8k textures made my laptop struggle in RSS, and both my computers(both my laptop and gaming desktop) struggle in PF.

They were exported in 8k. I blurred the height map to smooth it out a bit, PQS was generating very spiky terrain.

The texture folder for Kopernikus is in PluginData\Planets\Kopernikus

If your performance is struggling and you're running Environmental Visual Enhancements there's your problem, EVE is a huge cycle eater.

[KeyserSoze]

Awesome implementation - thanks for your hard work!

I wanted to mention - I tested this with the new StarSystems mod and it appears that the orbit of Kopernicus is not tied to Kerbol, but to Kerbol's location in the stock game. For instance- Kopernicus appears to orbit the black hole in the center of the universe(the stock location for Kerbol), whereby Kerbin orbits Kerbol, which orbits the black hole along with two other stars. It would be awesome if this mod was eventually compatible.

Until then, however, it will be a fun challenge - it currently has an orbital velocity of 436 km/s!

[metaphor]

Awesome implementation - thanks for your hard work!

I wanted to mention - I tested this with the new StarSystems mod and it appears that the orbit of Kopernicus is not tied to Kerbol, but to Kerbol's location in the stock game. For instance- Kopernicus appears to orbit the black hole in the center of the universe(the stock location for Kerbol), whereby Kerbin orbits Kerbol, which orbits the black hole along with two other stars. It would be awesome if this mod was eventually compatible.

Until then, however, it will be a fun challenge - it currently has an orbital velocity of 436 km/s!

I think the StarSystems mod just changes the location of the original stock planets, from the black hole to "Kerbol" (because the black hole is the original "Sun", just retextured). So any new planets won't have their orbits changed and will orbit the black hole.

[Teknoman117]

I be able to put some more time in on Friday. Sorry for the delays everyone. This thing called school decided to start again...

[dreadicon]

No prob, you'd hear more from me, but I didnt want to pressure anyone; Mods are a gift, not a privilege, for us. xD

It seems to be coming along nicely. It seems to really just need the importer for Planet Factory, unless I am missing functionality this has? Maybe a checklist/roadmap would be nice, so we know what's in, what's coming, and what's being worked on? Just a thought.

Also, how does this interact with, say, the EVE plugin?

[VDNKh]

No prob, you'd hear more from me, but I didnt want to pressure anyone; Mods are a gift, not a privilege, for us. xD

It seems to be coming along nicely. It seems to really just need the importer for Planet Factory, unless I am missing functionality this has? Maybe a checklist/roadmap would be nice, so we know what's in, what's coming, and what's being worked on? Just a thought.

Also, how does this interact with, say, the EVE plugin?

I'm not sure how planet factory stores it's terrain data, but importing manually one planet at a time is probably the best way to go. There is currently no way to configure planets without editing the source code, for now. They coding a config file for the mod right now for ease of editing.

If you want to play with terrain use the Pre Alpha\prealpha2 mod folder and change up the textures.

[dreadicon]

*watches tumble weeds roll by*

Sorry, couldn't resist xD

How goes? If I knew more about what needs doing, I'd be willing to jump in and try my hand at fixing it. Finally took some time and figured out how to set up KSP mods. I've got a good amount of C# experience, been working on a plugin for RaterProp Monitor to add Science Experiment controls, and one for ALCOR to make that fancy life support control panel functional.

I just don't know what parts still need done here before it is considered 'feature complete'. If no one comes back with anything, I guess I can look into some implementation of multiple stars; after PF-to-Kopernicus automated conversion, that's what I am most enthusiastic about. (By extension, if people say 'we aren't working on PF conversion any more; it's too hard/impossible/wont work/etc' then I will work on that. Because few things are actually impossible with computers )

[Immashift]

I just don't know what parts still need done here before it is considered 'feature complete'. If no one comes back with anything, I guess I can look into some implementation of multiple stars; after PF-to-Kopernicus automated conversion, that's what I am most enthusiastic about. (By extension, if people say 'we aren't working on PF conversion any more; it's too hard/impossible/wont work/etc' then I will work on that. Because few things are actually impossible with computers )

Far as I know it's just config implementation and such that they're still working on. So looking forward to it though, if only to have my PF stuff working with .24.5.