Jump to content

[1.2.1] Outer Planets Mod (2.1) - Active development has moved, see first post for new thread

CaptRobau

By CaptRobau
in KSP1 Mod Releases

 Share

Recommended Posts

Jasonden

Jasonden

Posted
Posted
The moon could be... ellipsoid.

In real life, one of Saturn's many minor satellites is named Methone. It is characterized by, to quote, "a remarkably smooth surface, with no visible craters". Sounds familiar? ;) I'm willing to bet that Ovok is based off of Methone to a large degree, there's just so many similarities. However, the same Cassini observation also revealed the moon to be "egg-shaped".

The oval shape could be done using smoothly rising surface elevation above the sea level at opposite ends, and accompanying dips below surface level at the sides.

While a cool idea, I can see that this might not work out in KSP. In the real world planets and moons become triaxial ellipsoids due to tidal forces. Those forces are such that each part of the surface has an equal gravitational potential, but the effect should be that the surface gravity isn't terribly different across the surface despite the shape. In KSP, though, with strict 1/r^2 gravity, this would lead to low gravity at the ends of the egg and high at the waist of the egg. Maybe not critical, but certainly weird and unphysical . . .

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Streetwind

Streetwind

Posted
Posted (edited)
The heightmap didn't work out. If we manage to get it working in the future, then we'll change it to that though.

Ah, i see... maybe toss it out to your incredibly helpful crowd of volunteers? Just think of how quickly those science blurbs came in... ;)

While a cool idea, I can see that this might not work out in KSP. In the real world planets and moons become triaxial ellipsoids due to tidal forces. Those forces are such that each part of the surface has an equal gravitational potential, but the effect should be that the surface gravity isn't terribly different across the surface despite the shape. In KSP, though, with strict 1/r^2 gravity, this would lead to low gravity at the ends of the egg and high at the waist of the egg. Maybe not critical, but certainly weird and unphysical . . .

In all honesty? A celestial body with noticably non-uniform gravity would be awesome to explore. You'd have the "roll forward on even ground" effect you see on the runway, except much stronger! ...except that Ovok has no gravity to speak of, so you wouldn't notice anything. But still, I don't mind that effect at all :P

Edited by Streetwind
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tellion

Tellion

Posted
Posted (edited)

What about exporting methone's heightmap from SpaceEngine, is that an option, or did you try that already?

Edit: On my first visit to the solar system I had to find out that Methone actually *gasp* does not seem to be in space engine... So scratch what I said^^

Traveled 900 mly for nothing :D

Edited by Tellion
Link to comment
Share on other sites
hazard-ish

hazard-ish

Posted
Posted (edited)
So, I've been thinking of you reasoning for the design of Slate. I really like NovaSilisko's Fonso. To preserve Slate's uniqueness and still incorporate elements of Fonso, you could make the moon have a dense atmosphere (with mountains reaching into the vacuum), but no seas or lakes.

THIS COMMENT APPLIES TO EVERYONE NOT JUST THE POSTER OF THE COMMENT, WASMIC. (Sorry for the caps spamming! - Also, I would greatly appreciate it if you read this to the end :))

I have requested multiple times for Slate to be given an atmosphere but the mod developers don't seem to want that (I still love them though!). The thing is, they said they didn't want to give Slate an atmosphere because then it would turn into another, beige, Eve which wouldn't be that new or unique. Completely sound reasoning and I agree here. However, apparently Slate used to have a thick atmosphere but do to a 'cataclysm' lost it recently. It is highly unlikely that ALL of it would be lost.

What I have been proposing - and would LOVE - is for Slate to be given a very thin atmosphere. Like half - a third - heck, a quarter as thick as Dunas! Duna has the thinnest atmosphere in the game currently yet is it still thick enough to fly planes pretty well! This is not right! Combined with the high gravity of Slate, landing would not be made much easier at all but would make the whole planet seem more interesting. We already have Tylo! It is essentially a more detailed, farther away Tylo copy with roughly the same size and gravity. Don't get me wrong, I love the attention to detail with the terrain and I have already has a great time exploring one of its mountain ridges (I have barely scratched the surface though - it is huge (in a good way)), but I think it needs something to set it apart from any currently existing planet/moon in the game. Think about it! Slate already has mountains up to 10 km high so the (hopefully soon to be implemented :P) thin atmosphere would bearly exist up there but accumulate in the canyons and on the ancient sea bed a little!

Currently, I don't have any real plans to go there in my career mode series. Eeloo has the same access to other moons in the Sarnus system, has less gravity so is easier to navigate and has the exact same atmospheric properties so I don't have any real motivation to set up a base on Slate over Eeloo. If, however, Slate has a tenuous atmosphere, more science could be gained - resulting in more variety, messing around in the thin atmosphere would still be fun. Parachutes would still open but not have any real affect to slow you down to a safe speed. That's the kind of thickness I'm talking about. At the moment, I can land a large rocket on Duna using parachutes alone! Again, I love Duna and I don't think IT should change, but I do wish there was another type of planet available. One with igh gravity and a thin atmosphere.

Going back to wasmic's original comment, I don't want a thick atmosphere for Slate, we already have those (Kerbin, Laythe and Eve) and I have seen Novaslisko's post about his ideas for moons in the future I just think a THIN atmosphere is the way to go to further improve and expand this already fantastic mod.

Sorry this has been a long post - I got carried away but please take my suggestion seriously. If you (the creators of the mod) really don't want Slate to have an atmosphere, I am fine with that. As I've said, I already like it and admire the attention to detail in it's surface! Also, please don't think of this as a rant - I am very happy with the mod :)

Edited by hazard-ish
Link to comment
Share on other sites
CaptRobau

CaptRobau

Posted
  • Author
Posted

There are a lot of plans about the mod's future we've not shared with you guys yet. We want to be able to surprise our fans with things, so we keep our cards close to our for parts of the interesting stuff. That might make you feel like you're not being heard, but you are. Ideas might not transfer 1-on-1, but I think that once all the moons that we have planned are implemented you'll be happy with what each gas giant has to offer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
hazard-ish

hazard-ish

Posted
Posted
There are a lot of plans about the mod's future we've not shared with you guys yet. We want to be able to surprise our fans with things, so we keep our cards close to our for parts of the interesting stuff. That might make you feel like you're not being heard, but you are. Ideas might not transfer 1-on-1, but I think that once all the moons that we have planned are implemented you'll be happy with what each gas giant has to offer.

Fantastic. I am aware that the mod is still in fairly early days - the majority of planets added with this mod don't have moons yet! After-all, perhaps a new moon for a new planet could fall somewhere in the ballpark of what I have suggested :P

I look forward to seeing changes and additional features in the future :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Borisbee

Borisbee

Posted
Posted

To be honest, the planets seem quite fine the way they are right now. I think everyone just needs to be patient and wait for the new moons to be added and see what other ideas they come up with. A thin atmosphere to me doesn't seem all that useful or interesting, especially if you're trying to take it even thinner than Duna. If you can't really use it to aerobrake or it's not an issue for deadly reentry, then to me it's almost pointless and might as well have no atmosphere at all. Remember guys adding any atmosphere at all is much more difficult to do than having none, which means it's going to take longer for them to get it right and up to the same standards of the other planets.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Olympic1

Olympic1

Posted
Posted
I'm looking for these types of numbers unless Kopernius does it very differently?

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Orbit#Reference_code

If someone wants to make a planet pack they need to mention that in the Kopenicus thread, and then _Augustus_ gives that person some flightglobalsindexes that only he/she may use for his planets. I think he choses those numbers himself, not Squad.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Olympic1

Olympic1

Posted
Posted
How are things going with the Biome fix? I havent' seen anything about it on the Kopernicus thread, and I'm holding off on installing this until the issue is resolved. I'm mostly just wondering if this will be a short wait or a long one.

I think a long one. I tried the instructions that Padishar gave us at the thread, but haven't had it working.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tellion

Tellion

Posted
Posted

Most likely a long one indeed, since even though it has huuge potential, no one seems to be actively working on Kopernicus right now :/

If you need the old biomes (I can totally see why ovok would be less of a concern than minmus with regards to biomes for example) maybe we can come up with an MM config that disables them in the meantime.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Olympic1

Olympic1

Posted
Posted
Most likely a long one indeed, since even though it has huuge potential, no one seems to be actively working on Kopernicus right now :/

If you need the old biomes (I can totally see why ovok would be less of a concern than minmus with regards to biomes for example) maybe we can come up with an MM config that disables them in the meantime.

I'm working on a fix so the new biomes don't override the stock ones, but no succes still.

Any help/tips/references are welcome.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
CaptRobau

CaptRobau

Posted
  • Author
Posted
How are things going with the Biome fix? I havent' seen anything about it on the Kopernicus thread, and I'm holding off on installing this until the issue is resolved. I'm mostly just wondering if this will be a short wait or a long one.

I've talked with some people who are developing Kopernicus and tracked down the problem. It's a side effect of a bug that's also impacting other stuff: some properties applied to new bodies are applied to the template body too. It's even worse when you have multiple bodies use the same template. OPM only reuses Jool for multiple bodies, but for a gas giant that's not that bad as it has less interactivity than solid planets/moons. Anyway, this bug is not easily fixed and will require more than a few changes to the Kopernicus. Hopefully someone will be able to take that on, but in the meantime we're stuck with the biome bug. Maybe there's a workaround without a Kopernicus update, but I'm not counting on it (although trying is never off the table).

I think a MM config that disables the biomes will be best, as the templates used are more important for science than the distant moons of Sarnus and beyond. People can remove that config and reactive the biomes if they want to explore Sarnus' moons with more interesting stuff to see.

That being said, it's a big blow to see this bug pop up. It kinda makes 1.3 feel like a waste of time, since all its features are somewhat useless now. In the future if Kopernicus gets fixed it'll be nice to have all those biomes already done, but in the meantime it just sucks. I think the best thing moving forward is to just make the mod as complete in all the areas that do work. Third party mod support like Regolith, EVE or Astronomers. Adding more moons, that sort of thing. It might not be 100% suited for a serious career save until Kopernicus improves, but for sandbox or just mucking around in career it should be possible to get the mod the way we want.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tellion

Tellion

Posted
Posted

Meh, disabling the biomes via MM does not seem to work (or, more likely, I am missing something), so I will toss this here:

@Kopernicus

{

@Body[Hale]

{

@Properties

{

!biomeMap {}

!Biomes {}

}

}

@Body[Ovok]

{

@Properties

{

!biomeMap {}

!Biomes {}

}

}

@Body[slate]

{

@Properties

{

!biomeMap {}

!Biomes {}

}

}

}

Notice any issues with that? A more brutish method would of course be replacing the system.cfg, but that is less userfriendly than a MM patch.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
tygoo7

tygoo7

Posted
Posted
I've talked with some people who are developing Kopernicus and tracked down the problem. It's a side effect of a bug that's also impacting other stuff: some properties applied to new bodies are applied to the template body too. It's even worse when you have multiple bodies use the same template. OPM only reuses Jool for multiple bodies, but for a gas giant that's not that bad as it has less interactivity than solid planets/moons. Anyway, this bug is not easily fixed and will require more than a few changes to the Kopernicus. Hopefully someone will be able to take that on, but in the meantime we're stuck with the biome bug. Maybe there's a workaround without a Kopernicus update, but I'm not counting on it (although trying is never off the table).

I think a MM config that disables the biomes will be best, as the templates used are more important for science than the distant moons of Sarnus and beyond. People can remove that config and reactive the biomes if they want to explore Sarnus' moons with more interesting stuff to see.

That being said, it's a big blow to see this bug pop up. It kinda makes 1.3 feel like a waste of time, since all its features are somewhat useless now. In the future if Kopernicus gets fixed it'll be nice to have all those biomes already done, but in the meantime it just sucks. I think the best thing moving forward is to just make the mod as complete in all the areas that do work. Third party mod support like Regolith, EVE or Astronomers. Adding more moons, that sort of thing. It might not be 100% suited for a serious career save until Kopernicus improves, but for sandbox or just mucking around in career it should be possible to get the mod the way we want.

Wow that sucks. How do I disable the biomes btw?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
CaptRobau

CaptRobau

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Wow that sucks. How do I disable the biomes btw?

Remove this section from Slate, Ovok and Hale:

	
biomeMap = Kopernicus/Textures/Ovok_biome
		Biomes
                {
                Biome
                {
                    name = Craters
                    value = 1.0
                    color = 0,0.07451,1,1
                }
                Biome
                {
                    name = Flats
                    value = 1.0
                    color = 1,0.81569,0.47451,1
                }
				Biome
                {
                    name = Rises
                    value = 1.0
                    color = 0,1,0.97647,1
                }
			}

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Eudae55

Eudae55

Posted
Posted
What's the status on Urlum's and Neidon's moons? Will Triton and Miranda have analogues?

There is a very exciting analogue for Triton in the pipeline but I'm currently caught up with RL stuff so development is slow at the moment. There is one more moon in the Sarnus system yet to be released but it's still in testing/polish mode atm.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...