Surface Structures

This is a KSA mod that will place .glb meshes onto the surface of a Celestial at a specified Landmark. The mod will automatically find all Surface Structures defined in other mods in Documents/My Games/Kitten Space Agency/mods that have a file named Surface Structures.xml.

Requirements:

StarMap mod loader

ModMenu

License: MIT

Source Code: https://github.com/MrJeranimo/Surface-Structures

Usage

To use the mod, download the latest release and extract the folder into the My Games/Kitten Space Agency/mods/ folder.

Finally, add the code below to the manifest.toml file in My Games/Kitten Space Agency/.

[[mods]]
id = "Surface Structures"
enabled = true

Creating your own Surface Structure(s)

To create your own Surface Structure(s), you must create a Surface Structures.xml file in your mod. It can be at the top-level folder of your mod or below, this mod will find it. Inside the XML file, you should follow this layout for each Structure you wish to add.

<Structures>
  <Landmark Name="Example Landmark">
    <Celestial Id="Earth" />
    <Longitude Degrees="-80.604" />
    <Latitude Degrees="28.608" />
    <Visible Value="true" />
  </Landmark>
  <SurfaceStructure Id="Kitten Helmet">
    <Landmark Name="Example Landmark" />
    <MeshID Id="KittenHelmetGlb" />
    <Position X="10" Y="50" Z="100" />
    <Rotation X="0" Y="0" Z="90" />
    <Scale X="0.5" Y="0.5" Z="0.5" />
    <Visible Value="true" />
  </SurfaceStructure>
</Structures>

Each <Surface Structure> set of tags you create will correspond to one new Structure/Mesh drawn by this mod. Once you have your Surface Structures.xml filled out, the Meshes should be automatically drawn to those landmarks.

To easily make complicated structures, there is a built-in Structure Editor ONLY when running in debug mode. To run the mod in debug mode, change the "debug" value to true in config.json.

What each tag means

The id in <SurfaceStructure id=""> is the name of the structure.

The name in <Landmark name="CCSFS LC-39A"/> is the name of the landmark you want to place the mesh at. The landmark must be defined in the planet's or Astronomical's XML definition in Program Files/Kitten Space Agency/Content/Core.

For example,

<Landmark Id="CCSFS LC-39A">
  <Latitude Degrees="28.60829876577433" />
  <Longitude Degrees="-80.60412690984597" />
</Landmark>

The id in <MeshID id="DirectionCube"/> is the defined id in a <GltfFile id=""> that must be defined in an XML file in Program Files/Kitten Space Agency/Content/Core.

<SurfaceStructure id="">, <Landmark name=""/>, and <MeshID id=""/> must all exists and have valid values to register the Mesh to be drawn at the Landmark.

The <Visible> tag just set the mesh to be visible or not. It is an optional tag as, by default, it is set to true.

The <Position>, <Rotation>, and <Scale> tags let you apply transfom offsets to the mesh using the Landmark as (0, 0, 0). These tags are optional as, by default, they will be set to (0, 0, 0), (0, 0, 0), and (1, 1, 1) respectively. <Rotation> uses Degrees for its float values.

The convention follows the Right-Hand-Rule with,

+X = Forward [East]

+Y = Left [North]

+Z = Up [Up]

This is self explanitory for Position and Scale.

For Rotation,

+X will PITCH the Foward side UP

+Y will ROLL the mesh to the LEFT

+Z will YAW the mesh to the RIGHT.

The Position, Rotation, and Scale are all independent of each other so you do not need to worry about order of application. The Rotations are done with a Quaternion so you do not need to worry about gimbal lock.