[0.25/0.90] TechManager Version 1.5

[anonish]

I successfully edited a tech tree file but I can't figure out where to save it and none of the instructions anywhere explain anything about this. What am I missing?

There are two types of tech tree files. 1) with the TECHNOLOGY_TREE_DEFINITION header 2) without

Most if not all tech trees should be in the first format. These include the trees that come with TechManager that can be found in the TechManager folder, for reference. As stated in the included (admittedly light) documentation, you only need to place these files anywhere under GameData for them to be found by TM *at startup*. So, you'll have to restart KSP for them to become visible. The KSP log file will print out a notification for each tree it finds, to confirm its visible and parsed correctly.

The second format does not have the header, must have the name tree.cfg, and must be found in a save game directory. If it is there, TM will find it when you load that save game. In order to add it to the set of active trees, you will have to enter the R&D building, on the science view tab, and press Modifier-F7 (on windows this is Alt-F7). This will open a dialog that will let you activate the tree. This is also mentioned in the installation.txt file.

[thereaverofdarkness]

By "TECHNOLOGY_TREE_DEFINITION header" do you mean the first line inside the file? Mine has: "TECH_TREE".

I have the file in the GameData/TechManager folder and it's not recognizing it on startup. I named the file EarlyScienceConstructionTree.cfg. I tried placing it in the save folder and it was able to find the file but it could not read the file//I had a blank tech tree.

edit: I am using KSP Tech Tree Editor v0.2.3 Alpha to edit the tech tree.

Edited December 16, 2014 by thereaverofdarkness

[anonish]

Take a look at the first few lines of the trees included in the TM folder. That is what the header should look like. I'd be surprised if TED didn't output files like that, but maybe it does. Post a link to your tree and I can look at it later when I get home.

[thereaverofdarkness]

UnofficialKSPI starts like this:

TECHNOLOGY_TREE_DEFINITION

{

id = UnofficialKSPI0

label = Unofficial KSPI

NODE

{

Mine starts like this:

TECH_TREE

{

name = test

TECH_NODE

{

I believe mine is in a different format because KSPI's first section is:

{

name = newnode_7144

techID = interstellarTechFusionPower

pos = -404.5,1175,-18

icon = NUCLEARPROPULSION

cost = 3000

title = Basic Nuclear Fusion

description = This technology represents the first steps into fusion power using large reactors compressing a plasma with large magnets or initiatiating the reaction with tiny quantities of Antimatter.

anyParent = False

hideIfEmpty = False

parents = node6_nuclearPropulsion,node7_metaMaterials

PARTS

{

name = FNFissionFusionCatReactor

name = FusionReactor250

name = FusionReactor375

name = KSPIMagneticNozzle1

name = KSPIMagneticNozzle2

name = KSPIMagneticNozzle3

}

while my first section is:

{

name = node0_start

techID = start

posX = -2022.448

posY = 896.566

icon = START

scienceCost = 0

title = Start

description = The technology we started out with.

anyParentUnlocks = False

hideIfNoparts = False

}

[thereaverofdarkness]

Okay I got it to work. I was saving the file in ATC format (which I thought it told me I'm supposed to do).

I guess it all boils down to a failure in the KSP Tech Tree Editor instructions to mention in the first place that the mod relies on a separate mod to function. After hours of searching, I stumbled upon one of the mods (here) and didn't know it was such. Much later, I go back and re-read the KSP Tech Tree Editor instructions for the umpteenth time and this time I realize finally what it's actually saying.

Got it working! No failure on the part of TechManager but I'll have to put in a word about updating the instructions on KSP Tech Tree Editor.

[Nelien]

Okay I got it to work. I was saving the file in ATC format (which I thought it told me I'm supposed to do).

I guess it all boils down to a failure in the KSP Tech Tree Editor instructions to mention in the first place that the mod relies on a separate mod to function. After hours of searching, I stumbled upon one of the mods (here) and didn't know it was such. Much later, I go back and re-read the KSP Tech Tree Editor instructions for the umpteenth time and this time I realize finally what it's actually saying.

Got it working! No failure on the part of TechManager but I'll have to put in a word about updating the instructions on KSP Tech Tree Editor.

Hey thereaverofdarkness, developer of KSP Tech Tree Editor here. First of all, sorry you had so much trouble with the tool, it is very early alpha (I haven't updated it in ages, been too busy), and I'm well aware that the tool itself is very unintuitive in some areas.

However, I do explain, multiple times in the post and the readme that the tool is just a tool for TechManager and ATC (although I'm dropping ATC support next release). If you look at the readme I think I mention TechManager at least 4 times and even link to a download for it. There's even a whole section in the readme reminding people that you need to follow and abide by the plugins like TechManager or ATC's instruction, in black bold letters! I really don't know how to make it clearer .

That said, I'm glad you got it working in the end and that people are using the, very very, unfinished tool. I suppose there's a real gap for it in the community and I'm glad it's got it's use .

[thereaverofdarkness]

It's mentioned, but you don't say what it is. That's what got me. I wasn't already aware that TechManager was a mod/plugin, so that caused a lot of confusion. I didn't know if it was a file I was supposed to find in the directory I downloaded or what. You should explicitly explain that TechManager is an additional plugin that needs to be downloaded and installed along with your mod in order for it to work.

It's a good program though, the interface is actually pretty intuitive. It works easily and quickly, and it is easy to tell that I made changes correctly. The actual use of the tool is very light and simple.

[DartBoris]

Anybody tested this in 0.90 ?

[asheft]

It's working fine for me so far with the Community Tech Tree.

[Garibaldi2257]

exact same here, CTT and all

[tattagreis]

Looks like 0.90s mission generation breaks if you remove origin techtree nodes. Fixed that by loading the stock tree and my own too.

[cvod]

Is it possible to load a new tree without restarting KSP? I'm trying to edit a tree and then view it in Kerbal. So far I've only had luck with restarting KSP to see the changes.

[anonish]

Is it possible to load a new tree without restarting KSP? I'm trying to edit a tree and then view it in Kerbal. So far I've only had luck with restarting KSP to see the changes.

Yes, but its kinda ugly. First, the format is different. You have to remove the TECHNOLOGY_TREE_DEFINITION header, so that only NODE's are in the file. Then name it tree.cfg and place it in your save game folder. Then go into the R&D building and press Alt-F7 to bring up the tree selection box and add tree.cfg to the list. If you get that far, you are set. Just hit Alt-F7 to reselect trees whenever you want to reload that one tree file. Unfortunately, there is no way (currently) to force a reload of the named tech trees. That is probably a feature that really needs to be added.

[Jim Starluck]

Yes, but its kinda ugly. First, the format is different. You have to remove the TECHNOLOGY_TREE_DEFINITION header, so that only NODE's are in the file. Then name it tree.cfg and place it in your save game folder. Then go into the R&D building and press Alt-F7 to bring up the tree selection box and add tree.cfg to the list. If you get that far, you are set. Just hit Alt-F7 to reselect trees whenever you want to reload that one tree file. Unfortunately, there is no way (currently) to force a reload of the named tech trees. That is probably a feature that really needs to be added.

I'm trying this in 0.90, but nothing is happening when I hit Alt-F7. I know the mod itself is working, because it brought up the tree selection box once when I first loaded this safe after installing TechManager--I must've just picked the wrong option because now a bunch of the mod-added stuff I'd researched is no longer available in the VAB.

Edit: Nevermind, figured it out. I'd disabled the darn thing entirely. Was able to manually edit the config file in the savegame folder to re-enable it, got prompted to pick a tech tree again.

Edited December 23, 2014 by Jim Starluck

[anonish]

I'm trying this in 0.90, but nothing is happening when I hit Alt-F7. I know the mod itself is working, because it brought up the tree selection box once when I first loaded this safe after installing TechManager--I must've just picked the wrong option because now a bunch of the mod-added stuff I'd researched is no longer available in the VAB.

1) I haven't actually tested the tree.cfg in .90. Everything else seemed to be worked in .90 though so I don't expect that to be broken

2) There is a good chance your tree is invalid. Check the log file. It will print a message (search for "TechManager") for each tree it finds and if it has an error trying to parse it. If it can't parse the tree, it will be like the tree doesn't exist.

3) In your save game folder there is a TechManager.cfg file (I think that is the name). It is pretty simple. Open it in a text editor. It should have 'Enabled=True' or something to that effect in there. If its false, then you disabled TM at some point. It will also list the current trees that are active, one per line. So if its false, exit your save, change it to True, then reload. Also you can exit your save game, delete that file entirely, then load that save game. It should present you with a tree selection box first thing when you load the game. Then pick the trees you want.

[Boris-Barboris]

deleted - misunderstanding and addon posting rule violation

Edited December 26, 2014 by Boris-Barboris

[tjsnh]

Are there any tutorials or documentation on "getting started" developing a tech tree with this mod? I'm very interested.

(Or mostly do people reverse-engineer the example cfgs it comes with?)

[Boris-Barboris]

Example is quite self-explanatory, but plugin is not realy developer-friendly. If you're a developer, check out this post: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/98409-Planning-Community-Tech-Tree

[NathanKell]

Boris-Barboris, per the Addon Posting Rules one cannot just link to a dll; any download that includes a dll must include a license (and must comply with the license terms of the project it is forked from, if any), and must either include source or a link to source.

Also, even in cases where the license permits it (as this one does) it's good policy to check with the author before releasing an unofficial update.

[Boris-Barboris]

k, will rework all my past posts tomorrow. Was in a bit of a rush to care.

[Boris-Barboris]

Sorry, i've just noticed the difference between this release and Fractal_UK's branch. Looks like he was supporting separate one for his interstellar mod. I'm terribly sorry, thought that those are the same plugins. This code is really diffirent. I'll delete the post.

Edited December 26, 2014 by Boris-Barboris

[sherkaner]

I'm pretty confused by the behavior of .cfg files in some cases -- basically it seems like parts appear in nodes where they're not actually listed in the .cfg file. For example I load up the KSPI .cfg file. In "node5_supersonicFlight" there are 6 parts listed, but in the game that node lists 12 parts! I can't figure out how those other 6 parts are getting in there.

This has to be related to the issue I'm having creating a fresh .cfg file where I'm not actually sure how to include certain parts because they don't seem to appear in the KSPI or NearFuture files (even though they do appear in those trees in the game). For example, I can't find the part name for the Mk2 Cockpit, which shows up in that node I mention above, but isn't actually listed in the .cfg file for that node.

Help!

Edited December 28, 2014 by sherkaner

[sherkaner]

You've misunderstood, I'm wanting to keep the stock parts and make a custom tech tree but the "Start" node I'm defining is showing every part that has "TechRequired = Start" as opposed to just the mk1 cockpit, swept wings, small gear bay & basic jet engine that I'm setting up in TED.

I ran into this with TED. Open up the .cfg file it creates and you'll probably see that there is a "techID" attribute for each of the nodes you've created, which is set to some value from stock. Change it to something else and things should start working; at least that did it for me with a similar problem.

[sherkaner]

I'm pretty confused by the behavior of .cfg files in some cases -- basically it seems like parts appear in nodes where they're not actually listed in the .cfg file. For example I load up the KSPI .cfg file. In "node5_supersonicFlight" there are 6 parts listed, but in the game that node lists 12 parts! I can't figure out how those other 6 parts are getting in there.

This has to be related to the issue I'm having creating a fresh .cfg file where I'm not actually sure how to include certain parts because they don't seem to appear in the KSPI or NearFuture files (even though they do appear in those trees in the game). For example, I can't find the part name for the Mk2 Cockpit, which shows up in that node I mention above, but isn't actually listed in the .cfg file for that node.

Help!

Well I think I've mostly figured it out. I'm still not entirely sure how the stock-like trees are pulling unlisted parts in (although I think it has to do with the techID flag on the node), but I did figure out how to get them in manually.

TED lists all of the parts and will put them into nodes, so I started using that to dump in the parts I want. But I was still getting parts not showing up in many cases. The problem there seemed to be that the part name that TM is looking for is different than what TED is generating, with TM looking for periods where TED is generating underscores. For example TED generates "mk2Cockpit_Standard", but "mk2Cockpit.Standard" is what actually works in a TM tree.

I can't say for sure which app has it "correct", but there's definitely a mismatch. I will say that looking for the parts manually, the underscore version matches up with some file names that I find, whereas the period version doesn't. I think those filenames are where TED is pulling its names, so it maybe seems like TED is doing it "correctly", but again I'm really not sure if there's something more subtle going on.

Edited December 28, 2014 by sherkaner

[sherkaner]

By way of a feature request, is it at all possible for TM to parse an additional attribute for each node to specify the R&D facility level required? In creating a pretty dramatically different tech tree, I'm finding that the fact that KSP uses the R&D level only to set a threshold on the science costs for nodes to be very, very limiting.

Just to give you an idea of why that would be: I'm working on a stock-parts tech tree using TM that gives the player much more choice in the technology "path" they take by not lumping parts together somewhat arbitrarily into nodes, but instead having most nodes contain a single part. With this, a much broader variety of parts would be available to the player right from the start, such that the player would be able to focus on the sorts of craft they want to build (and spend their science on improving), rather than be constrained by the somewhat rigid upgrade path the stock tree nearly forces. It's about 2/3 done and right now looks like this:

I'm pretty excited about letting others play it. LOTS of nodes, but moving horizontally, the nodes are of a related line of technology. For this kind of tree obviously the cost of each node will be much lower (and have more variance -- upgrading ladders will be a lot cheaper than going from 2.5m to 3.75m boosters). With that, the thresholds set by the R&D center level will make no sense at all, which unfortunately is a pretty major flaw for my tech tree.