[0.90] StarSystems v0.7 (Dec 15) - Under New Managment

[FatherLawrence]

So im getting spawned outside of the solar system instead of on the launch pad.

The "Working Multiple Star Systems" mod had the same problem, but I found a solution there that so far has worked for this mod too.

If you enter the Tracking Station from the main Space Center, exit and then go to the VAB/SPH and launch, that fixes it. Switching between multiple other buildings seems to create the problem again, so the only sure way to launch is to exit whatever building you are in, open the Tracking Station and exit, and then enter your hangar and launch.

What happens is the game focuses on the black hole as the default instead of Kerbin, but opening the TS reminds the game that Kerbin is supposed to be the default. I don't know if that knowledge could lead to a fix for it, but at least it's playable.

[pilot410]

So is anyone working on this mod it's almost been two months and I really want to use it but if you can't save where you were you can use it if anyone has found a solution let me know!!

[_Augustus_]

So is anyone working on this mod it's almost been two months and I really want to use it but if you can't save where you were you can use it if anyone has found a solution let me know!!

Medsouz appears to be dead, as he hasn't posted in a few months.

If I could code I would probably take the important stuff out of here such as modifying the Sun and the properly-working stars, and make a Kopernicus multiple-star-system mod.

[Chezburgar7300]

Medsouz appears to be dead, as he hasn't posted in a few months.

If I could code I would probably take the important stuff out of here such as modifying the Sun and the properly-working stars, and make a Kopernicus multiple-star-system mod.

He's not dead, just taking a break and we can't blame him with all of our complaining and requests .

I know this isn't the place for this, but Augustus, you had your chance with maintaining Starsystems and you didn't quite succeed. Medsouz has already done alot for this mod, and the very least we can do is wait a little while (or a big while) until he gets back.

[gigaboom2]

I think that the KSP executives have been taking them out. All of them. First Kragrathea. (Although he was later let off with a warning) Then OvenProofMars, and now Medsouz. All of them were working on things that Squad were also interested in. As soon as each of them had became to big of a threat, the had been terminated. However,this is good news because we may get a stock galaxy soon!

[Thomas988]

However,this is good news because we may get a stock galaxy soon!

Where'd you hear that?

[tygoo7]

Medsouz appears to be dead, as he hasn't posted in a few months.

If I could code I would probably take the important stuff out of here such as modifying the Sun and the properly-working stars, and make a Kopernicus multiple-star-system mod.

He was last online 3 days ago...

[_Augustus_]

He was last online 3 days ago...

And his last post was like 2 months ago.

Being a lurker and posting are 2 different things.

Also the reason I failed with maintaining StarSystems is because I can't code.

[Thomas988]

Hey _Augustus_, could it be possible to mimic StarSystems with KopernicusTech? I saw at one point on the KopernicusTech thread someone posting on how to redefine the orbital parameters of the stock planets and moons. I thought maybe if we recreated Kerbol, made it orbit the sun (which would be made to look like a black hole), and edited the stock bodies in orbit around this new Kerbol. The main problem already is that stars don't seems to be possible in KopernicusTech yet, but aside from that error could such a proposal actually work?

[_Augustus_]

Hey _Augustus_, could it be possible to mimic StarSystems with KopernicusTech? I saw at one point on the KopernicusTech thread someone posting on how to redefine the orbital parameters of the stock planets and moons. I thought maybe if we recreated Kerbol, made it orbit the sun (which would be made to look like a black hole), and edited the stock bodies in orbit around this new Kerbol. The main problem already is that stars don't seems to be possible in KopernicusTech yet, but aside from that error could such a proposal actually work?

Yeah, however coronas wouldn't work that well.

[gigaboom2]

Where'd you hear that?

I did not hear it. I inferred it when KSP saw them as competition

.

[Teknoman117]

Well, I'm actively working on Kopernicus again. I posted a release today that fixes the reparenting of bodies, you can check out an example of this here: https://github.com/BryceSchroeder/Kopernicus/blob/master/Pre%20Alpha/prealpha3/GameData/KopernicusExamples/MoveEeloo/move_eeloo.cfg

The official dll release for this is here:

https://github.com/BryceSchroeder/Kopernicus/releases/

Obviously I haven't had a chance to write the PQS Loader, I'm spending my first few days cleaning up any known bugs. Also, neither the star fixer from this mod, nor the coronas are build into Kopernicus. Since both these are less complex than the PQS loader I might do that after bug fixes...

[Chezburgar7300]

And his last post was like 2 months ago.

Being a lurker and posting are 2 different things.

Also the reason I failed with maintaining StarSystems is because I can't code.

Not really, as it means he is still 'keeping in touch' with the community and seeing the problems, although in secret.

Also, why on Earth would you attempt to take over a plug-in (which is 99.99% code) if you can't code?

[hakan]

Well, I'm actively working on Kopernicus again.

Welcome back

The official dll release for this is here:

https://github.com/BryceSchroeder/Kopernicus/releases/

Thank you so very much for this. This will clean up my issue list over at github considerably...

[AlonzoTG]

Y0, doodz, I had a hacking session on the code today. I think I nailed the ships misplaced bug. It seemed to be a misguided attempt to fix a problem that wasn't really there. There was another workaround patch that caused planets in interstellar space to orbit normally. I broke that. =( The issue is that the mod does something to break the under-the-hood clock distribution gear-train The "correct" solution is to figure out what's being broken and fix it. There is also another heisenbug in my version that sometimes breaks it when it in the initialization routine. Anyway, lemme know if you need a copy.

[AlonzoTG]

UNOFFICIAL PATCH

Fixed: Ship positioning, I think.

Broken: Planet motions; but the planets that do move, don't move twice as fast as they should anymore.

Limitations: The central black hole must be named something that begins with "Black"

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5EOPstNbJzTZWpqQ0F5VHZteGM/view?usp=sharing

[Norgg]

UNOFFICIAL PATCH

Fixed: Ship positioning, I think.

Broken: Planet motions; but the planets that do move, don't move twice as fast as they should anymore.

Limitations: The central black hole must be named something that begins with "Black"

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5EOPstNbJzTZWpqQ0F5VHZteGM/view?usp=sharing

Hey AlonzoTG, I'd been having a hack at this myself recently too to try and stop the problem with launches. Were you basing it off the most recent git version? It might have been my most recent commits to it which caused the planets to move at double speed (though that manual update also stopped the launch into black hole orbit issue). Medsouz is still around and accepting bugfixes for this if not actively working on it. If you send a pull request with these fixes he'll probably merge them in. Would be interested in seeing what you've changed.

- - - Updated - - -

There is also another heisenbug in my version that sometimes breaks it when it in the initialization routine. Anyway, lemme know if you need a copy.

Is that the bug where when you load a savegame it sometimes throws ships in orbit around moons into orbit around the black hole? It seems that under some conditions the orbits are loaded incorrectly, then KSP makes a call to recalculate the orbit and that moves it. It happens much more frequently on the first savegame load after starting KSP, but subsequent savegame loads are less likely to have the problem (but not immune).

I spent ages trying to figure out a way to work around or fundamental cause for that without success, pretty sure it's also an issue with the official release but I should check that again.

[Teknoman117]

This seems eerily similar to the issue I had with Kopernicus when I wasn't preserving the built in flightGlobalsIndexes. (i.e.) the built in planets were not in the same positions in FlightGlobals.Bodies[]. If the reference id's of the sun and kerbin are mangled, the game just flat out breaks.

[AlonzoTG]

Urk! Yeah, just tested some more, ships in munar space are broken... I'm not sure why it seemed to work on my other machine. So above is just as broken as before. =(

The pattern seems to be that it is loading the ship in some kind of absolute XYZ-V coordinant system, ignoring substantial sections of the saved parameters, and then applying the planet re-arrangement, then the ship ends up in orbit around blakey at it's former relative position to the stock sun at whatever velocity vector it had.

Most problematic is that there are several redundant values....

Here's the top of my test ship's save state:

VESSEL {

pid = 1e56e39216f544278741205606bee623

name = UpGoer 5

type = Ship

sit = ORBITING

landed = False

landedAt =

splashed = False

met = 29020.8219848871

lct = 31127558.383017

root = 0

lat = -3.5004653112855E-06

lon = 129.753269055993

alt = 13585093965.0833

hgt = -1

nrm = -0.9459488,-0.3035043,0.1143074

rot = 0.5643835,-0.3350013,-0.3413306,-0.6728589

CoM = 0.003147781,-1.632112,0.01526368

stg = 6

prst = False

ref = 487503883

ctrl = True

cPch = 0.2

cHdg = 0.3

cMod = 0

ORBIT

{

SMA = 6806880090.07322

ECC = 0.997300610736951

INC = 1.46142507723416E-05

LPE = 13.7662687014929

LAN = 142.940890321566

MNA = 3.23488303439629

EPH = 31156487.005004

REF = 0

}

########

All this is extremely strange because one would think the game loads > all mods act on the solar system model -> a game is loaded loading ships into the solar system and setting the UTC clock which positions the planets. !!!!

That's it! The stock planets load up at their stock locations and the muns at their default locations, using set of parameters A, and then it receives it's first clock tick where the orbit information that we pass it are computed and everything, in that single first instant, jumps to where we want it... Unfortunately our ships are left out with their tail-fins hanging in the vacuum...

So it looks like it might be conceivably possible to give everything a nudge to sanify everything before vessel loading... That should fix it! (I wish.)

[Teknoman117]

Well if I remember correctly, Star Systems rearranges the planets after the game officially loads planets.

[Norgg]

So it looks like it might be conceivably possible to give everything a nudge to sanify everything before vessel loading... That should fix it! (I wish.)

Yeah! It's really strange that the behaviour is different between loads and that it sometimes works absolutely fine. I think there's got to be a race condition in there somewhere where somehow the ships get loaded before planets get moved around or something, but I couldn't track it down myself...

[AlonzoTG]

Use the Matrix, Neo!

D00dz, in 3D gfx you NEVER scale anything by manually multiplying crap point by point. Why? Because the video card does it automatically when it's time to render! What you do is you send a matrix along with the model to tell the video card what to do with it.

There are 3 basic functions of the matrix in 3D graphics, Scaling Rotation and Translation. Basically laid out as follows:

S R R T

R S R T

R R S T

0 0 0 1

Unity has functions in the translation class that let you set the individual components and then view the matrix that is generated. -- namely the local to global matrix. This doesn't cost anything because your crap has to go through several matrix multiplies anyway and the GPU has many hundreds of vertex cores to do precisely this computation.

That said, figuring out exactly what vector to pass into the appropriate function is nontrivial. To do that, I would need to know two things:

1. the original size of the mesh in meters.

2. The conversion factor from physical scale to the rendering engine.

Anyone have any information?

[AlonzoTG]

Update: looks like the correction factor is 6540000, borrowed a line from Planet Factory to make it work, bye bye mesh scaler! =)))

Problem though, the stars seem to get rendered twice for some reason, once with settings provided and again with stock settings. =( If the new star is much larger, then there will be a ghost star inside it, if the new star is smaller, then you have to scroll through the messed up version to see the correct one. I have no idea...

The vessel placement problem remains stubborn. A ship in sun-orbit will remain but all other ships are dropped into the black hole. =( This suggests that there is a discoverable fix in either Star or Root config... I dunno, maybe steal from Planet Factory again...

[AlonzoTG]

=(

I figured it out but you are not going to like what I discovered.

I think the underlying issue is that the low level classes, such as CelestialBody, etc, were too complex to set up directly, too many gotchyas, convenience variables, etc... So what Squad did was abstract it up to a higher level so you get the class PsystemManager -> Psystem -> PSbody stuff. I think the secret to making this work is to set up the PSystem manager class heirarchy up with nice pristine copies of the stuff we want to use. When game initialization progresses, all the stuff will magically get wired up together and JustWorks. Once we get to OnPsystemReady() it's too late... Our feeble attempts to wire things up manually are doomed to failure. The game assumes that the stars/planets/moons/crap is all good to go and that's why things get foobared....

The bottom line is that the mod needs to be completely re-engineered and rewritten based on this new understanding. =0

I made some major code cleanups today, removed several more data structures to reveal the underlying issues... No change in usability, any new changes should probably use the version of the code I'm using because it has fewer classes, and should be easier to work on. I'll be working on it so I'll give you a snapshot if you ask.

[cullyn]

=(

I figured it out but you are not going to like what I discovered.

/snip

I made some major code cleanups today, removed several more data structures to reveal the underlying issues... No change in usability, any new changes should probably use the version of the code I'm using because it has fewer classes, and should be easier to work on. I'll be working on it so I'll give you a snapshot if you ask.

Is there a git of the code that we can contribute to? I know the Op has a git already up but it doesn't look like you have pushed your changes to it.