[1.0.5] Science Containers v.08.3

[SirDargon]

Ok, so KSP .90 is coming out soon, so I figured this would be a good time to make my comeback. What size/shape containers would ya'll like to have? I'm going to start dabbing with blender to try to make these myself, so wish me luck.

Currently looking at making:

• 1.25m cylinder
  
• .625m cylinder
  
• 2.5m cylinder
  
• .625m probe core
  
• 1.25-2.5m adapter
  
• Radial mount drive
  

Also, since no one really seemed interested in my other mod that this relies on, I'm going to be removing the dependency to it.

Something re: the autocollecting science containers - Was driving around KSC, and autocollecting the science from various experiments seemed to generate two reports rather than one (5 experiments - autocollect - 10 available to review when you hit "review stored data")

I'll take a look into this as well.

Edited December 13, 2014 by SirDargon

[GunTuga]

Thanks so much for this mod man, It`s super efficient and good too use with, for example, deadly reentry. Without the science parts needing to go back to kerbin, no sticking out parts explode on re-entry anymore

[SirDargon]

Thanks so much for this mod man, It`s super efficient and good too use with, for example, deadly reentry. Without the science parts needing to go back to kerbin, no sticking out parts explode on re-entry anymore

Glad you like the mod. That was one of the reasons I wanted something like this so bad.

So, I've been messing with blender now and I'm relearning why I gave up 3d animation when I was in high school. Simply put, I suck at it. Like every step of it. I spent all day to get one part working, a radial harddrive. It looks ok, but I didn't need much detail as it was so small. But I fear I may start having problems with the other parts. So, if anyone is interested in helping to make parts for this, please let me know!

[AccidentalDisassembly]

I wish I could help with the parts, but sadly I'm absolutely positive I'd be useless. Another thing I wanted to point out about the mod as it currently exists - I don't know this for a fact, I have really been struggling to figure out what is causing a problem I've been having, but I suspect that one of the DLLs in the 0.71 download *may* cause (alone or in combination with one of a ton of other mods) a problem where returning to the KSC from another body (switch to a craft on the Mun or Minmus or something, then go back to the space center) causes a black screen & input lock. But really am not sure whether it's your mod or not. Removing the ConfigurableScienceData folder seems to have solved the problem..

Anyhoo, could be a total coincidence, but maybe something worth looking at too.

[GunTuga]

Isn`t there a way to re-skin instead of re-modeling? For a temporary change would be great

[SirDargon]

Isn`t there a way to re-skin instead of re-modeling? For a temporary change would be great

That's something I'm going to look into if I can't find anyone willing to help by the time I rewrite this mod.

I wish I could help with the parts, but sadly I'm absolutely positive I'd be useless. Another thing I wanted to point out about the mod as it currently exists - I don't know this for a fact, I have really been struggling to figure out what is causing a problem I've been having, but I suspect that one of the DLLs in the 0.71 download *may* cause (alone or in combination with one of a ton of other mods) a problem where returning to the KSC from another body (switch to a craft on the Mun or Minmus or something, then go back to the space center) causes a black screen & input lock. But really am not sure whether it's your mod or not. Removing the ConfigurableScienceData folder seems to have solved the problem..

Anyhoo, could be a total coincidence, but maybe something worth looking at too.

I will defiantly look into that for the next release. It may have something to do with my other mod that this is currently dependent on, but that dependency is going to be removed for the KSP .90 release.

[AccidentalDisassembly]

Very cool. I really look forward to having this mod - I think it's just so handy not to have to go around with your Kerbal and collect stuff, so much easier to return stuff from probes too that you shoot a lander off of! I also noticed - sorry, I just keep coming up with stuff - that in some cases, with the normal science containers (not autocollect), I seemed to be able to store many copies of the same experiment, like surface samples. I could just keep getting samples, using the containers to collect the science, getting more samples.. Maybe there's some code that can limit the total science stored for a given experiment to the total science available to get from it, or something?

[SirDargon]

Very cool. I really look forward to having this mod - I think it's just so handy not to have to go around with your Kerbal and collect stuff, so much easier to return stuff from probes too that you shoot a lander off of! I also noticed - sorry, I just keep coming up with stuff - that in some cases, with the normal science containers (not autocollect), I seemed to be able to store many copies of the same experiment, like surface samples. I could just keep getting samples, using the containers to collect the science, getting more samples.. Maybe there's some code that can limit the total science stored for a given experiment to the total science available to get from it, or something?

I wanted the ability to put multiple copies of the same experiment into the containers, but I will be adding a capacity to the containers that will limit the amount of data that can be stored in the container, based on the size of the data (in Mits).

[AccidentalDisassembly]

Gotcha, makes sense - but it did result in me getting something like 600 science from one Mun surface sample. Do you think there's a way to look at the total science available for an experiment (like ScienceLibrary or [X] Science or whatever) and then just limit the science for a given experiment to that value? Meaning you can have multiple copies of the same experiment, so you can get 100% of the science from it, like you can if you take a surface sample (which gives something like 80%), then take another for the remaining 20% - but you can't get more than 100%?

Also, limiting size based on Mits sounds like a cool idea.

[SirDargon]

Gotcha, makes sense - but it did result in me getting something like 600 science from one Mun surface sample. Do you think there's a way to look at the total science available for an experiment (like ScienceLibrary or [X] Science or whatever) and then just limit the science for a given experiment to that value? Meaning you can have multiple copies of the same experiment, so you can get 100% of the science from it, like you can if you take a surface sample (which gives something like 80%), then take another for the remaining 20% - but you can't get more than 100%?

Also, limiting size based on Mits sounds like a cool idea.

That (should be) done by KSP itself as you can have multiple copies of the same experiment and they each would report the same amount when viewed, but when collected back at KSC, it should take into account diminishing returns. I'll take a look into that as well.

[AccidentalDisassembly]

Oh! Well, maybe it did then, maybe I just assumed that my large science haul was from that but it wasn't... I'm not sure, it just seemed high. You may be right though...

[SirDargon]

Soooooooo, who wants a sneak peek at the rework of my mod???

ScienceHardDrives Test Build

WARNING! This hasn't been fully tested yet! Use at your own risk! It includes only 1 test part, but in the readme is how to edit its properties. If you find a bug, please let me know!

Also, for those of you who have gotten far in the solar system, can I get some info on the average amount of science you bring back to Kerbin, along with the size of said science (in Mits)? I wanna make sure I can create a decent amount of parts that'll scale into late game, and what I bring isn't always what others bring.

[AccidentalDisassembly]

Also - sorry I didn't post this sooner, wanted to update on my previous comment about black screens/input locks when returning to KSC. I have NO idea why removing your mod made it work the one time that it did, but after extensive testing I found it was TimeControl and not your DLLs that was causing the problem - at least, I hope!

[SirDargon]

Also - sorry I didn't post this sooner, wanted to update on my previous comment about black screens/input locks when returning to KSC. I have NO idea why removing your mod made it work the one time that it did, but after extensive testing I found it was TimeControl and not your DLLs that was causing the problem - at least, I hope!

Thank you for letting me know. I know I personally hadn't had anything like that happen when using my mod. But then again, we probably aren't using the exact same mods, so there may be a incompatibility with some mods. And for all we know, it may have been because of my other mod that was integrated into Science Containers, because that mod was doing some real shady stuff to get what I wanted done.

[SirDargon]

Ok, so I have the plugin for this mod done, now I just need to get models made and then make the configs for each of the parts. This is going to be the most time consuming part as I'm learning blender as I go about doing this.

[GunTuga]

You can just release it with the re-skin for now, the new colors look cool

[SirDargon]

Bah, I said I was done with the plugin, then I think of 2 must haves for this mod (The ability to cancel data transfer and the ability to transfer data from specific containers) that my current code doesn't easily allow me to add..... Soooo, this will still take a bit longer >.< I'm sorry if I got ya'll excited about it being released soon :/.

[GunTuga]

Oh man For me this is a must have mod

[SirDargon]

Oh man For me this is a must have mod

Give Science Containers 0.7.1 a test run in .90. It should still work, I just have been so busy doing this mod that I haven't been able to officially test it. I just wanna make sure what I release is real quality, not halfassed.

[IllicitMedic]

Oh man For me this is a must have mod

Yup I refuse to play KSP without:

Science containers

FAR

DRE

TAC-LS

PF

Tweakscale

All other mods are just extra.

Just got two more to go!

[GunTuga]

Ok I Just tested SC on 0.90, everything is working just fine, not even a compatibility warning on startup, you might just put 0.90 on the thread title Btw I tested the Science Hard Drive and It looks awesome great concept! From what I tested, you can only store on it Crew Reports and Eva reports right? Really wouldn`t make sense anything else. Btw did TweakScale worked with this? Cause if so it ain`t anymore

[IllicitMedic]

Btw did TweakScale worked with this? Cause if so it ain`t anymore

No

You have the 2 different sizes.

[Liquid5n0w]

Think you could add your mod to CKAN? Also why not add a .version file for AVC?

[SirDargon]

The OP has been changed to reflect that it does work in .90. You are able to transfer ANY science to the containers because you can manually collect everything by hand anyways if you wanted to take the time. This mod is made to remove that tedious task, but at a cost of other resources (in this case, ElectricCharge and time). I personally hadn't put anything in to make it work with tweakscale (don't even know what I would need to do if anything tbh). I'll look into CKAN and AVC once I have something working. Last time I actually updated this, CKAN and AVC weren't really a thing (honestly, I had to just look them up as I had no idea what they were, lol).

[AccidentalDisassembly]

The OP has been changed to reflect that it does work in .90. You are able to transfer ANY science to the containers because you can manually collect everything by hand anyways if you wanted to take the time. This mod is made to remove that tedious task, but at a cost of other resources (in this case, ElectricCharge and time). I personally hadn't put anything in to make it work with tweakscale (don't even know what I would need to do if anything tbh). I'll look into CKAN and AVC once I have something working. Last time I actually updated this, CKAN and AVC weren't really a thing (honestly, I had to just look them up as I had no idea what they were, lol).

Depending on how your rewrite works (how you define how much science can or can't be stored in a part), it's actually pretty easy to use TweakScale to make it so that a given value (let's call it ScienceCapacity) scales with part size.

Assuming that your module's name is SirDargon'sModule, and that the variable you want to control within that MODULE{} is ScienceCapacity, you could write a config with this in it:

TWEAKSCALEEXPONENTS

{

name = SirDargon'sModule

ScienceCapacity = 3

}

^^^^^^ That code will tell TweakScale to modify a MODULE{} that looks like this:

MODULE

{

name = SirDargon'sModule

ScienceCapacity = 92830515.85 (or whatever value)

}

... and the result would be that the amount of ScienceCapacity in the part will scale in proportion to its volume. Halve the size of the part = 1/8 the ScienceCapacity, double the size of the part = 8 times as muhc ScienceCapacity. The "3" is an exponent applied to the factor by which you are rescaling the part (factor of 1/2 and 2, respectively, in my example), then multiplied by whatever ScienceCapacity the part originally had.

You could change that exponent too, though, or you could even define specific values for ScienceCapacity at a given part size. Depends on what you want to do.