Potentially crazy: RP-0 in 6.4x?

[pjf]

This idea is possibly crazy.

Last night I was thinking a lot about biomes. For me, they make the game more fun, because I've got motivation to try and land in a crater, or fly over a certain region. #2 discusses how they'd give players motivations to do things like analyse the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, or land on Olympus Mons on Mars.

However RSS is impoverished for biomes; we have them for Earth, and maybe for the moon. We don't have them for anywhere else.

I'm wondering about thoughts of either having RP-0 set in the 6.4x system, or making it 6.4x compatible. Advantages would include:

• Full CustomBiomes support.
• Full OpenResourceSystem support.

For players going the resource exploration route, this is a big win. It means that we have resources and biome information for all planetary bodies for free.

What I would love even more is CustomBiome and ORS support for the whole of RSS, but that involves someone doing the hard work of producing all the maps.

I have no idea if this is easy or hard. I know that @NathanKell has been playing 6.4x, and so may have additional insights. :)

~ Paul

[NathanKell]

Nothing we have planned precludes 6.4x support; you'd just have higher payload fractions and more science available early on (due to Minmus). I would not suggest specifically targeting it, but it should remain an option since as you say there's less work to be done in expanding things (biomes, also stock KSP hardcodes contract altitudes so the orbital and suborbital part test contracts will work on 6.4x, sometimes, but pretty much always fail on RSS).

[Felger]

Another option would be using the Custom Biomes mod included in RSS to build out our own biomes. I've not looked into it, but I'd be willing to map those out. Shouldn't be too hard for worlds we've had missions to (Mars is a prime example) to make it realistic.

[pjf]

Another option would be using the Custom Biomes mod included in RSS to build out our own biomes. I've not looked into it, but I'd be willing to map those out. Shouldn't be too hard for worlds we've had missions to (Mars is a prime example) to make it realistic.

I would love this more than almost anything else, but I'm aware it's a significant amount of work. (And adding ORS support would also be an equally significant chunk of work.)

[Felger]

I'm actually not sure that it would take a significant amount of work. I have color maps and height maps for every body in the game, it looks like all it takes to make a custom biome map is a png and a config file giving the colors for every Biome in that PNG. Steps seem fairly simple from there:

Open the heightmap and colormap in GIMP, outline areas for biomes, make 5-10 for each world, maybe Poles, Highlands, Lowlands, Crater groups, Notable features. Fill the biome outlines with easily identifiable by rgb256 code, and away you go! I figure ~30 minutes for each world, maybe a little more for those we've visited and have names for features.

I'll see if I can knock that out this week. Might even get fancy and use GIMP's tools and have the biomes match the contour lines or something. I'll do some tinkering at the very least.

[pjf]

@Felger :

You rock!

If, in addition, you add any support for ORS the Community Resource Pack (BobPalmer/CommunityResourcePack#6), that would make my month. I have a dream of mining ice from polar craters on the moon, or harvesting the rich thorium reserves on Olympus Mons. :)

[Felger]

I'll see what I can do for those. Biomes first though. Odds are I'll submit the biomes as a pull to Real Solar System, that makes the most sense.

[pjf]

Aye, biomes first. Thank you SO FREAKIN' MUCH.

[NathanKell]

@Felger, let me add to the chorus of yourockitude. PR will be most gratefully accepted. :)