About and History
ABOUT
Alternis Kerbol replaces the solar system in stock Kerbal Space Program with something new and different. In order of noticeability, it changes the sun lighting to a harsh yellow, it places Kerbin in orbit around a gas giant alongside other moons, and it rearranges and tweaks the entire solar system into something new.
In order of distance and heiarchy, we have:
The Sun: A G5 type main sequence star. Cooler than the stock Sun though it may be, Kerbals in this system seem to have somewhat more light sensitive eyes.
Moho: A brown rock with a thin, angry, superheated atmosphere. Take caution while landing, you don't want your rocket parts to be rendered nonfunctional at the last minute...
Eve: A ringed yellow planet with some sort of tarry oceans.
Jool: A gaseous planet, with a blue atmosphere and white fluffy water vapor clouds.
Minmus: The first moon of Jool, a small ball of reddish ices and rocks.
Laythe: A lush forest planet orbiting Jool.
Mun: A mid-sized chunky rocky satellite of Jool.
Kerbin: Very much like Laythe, a more modest and evolved living satellite of Jool and home to Kerbals.
Bop: A hopelessly dense chunk of sand and lead orbiting, of all things, Kerbin.
Pol: A tenuously held together collection of reddish and yellow rocks flying in roughly the same orbit.
Tylo: A planet orbiting the sun. A huge planet. A huge rocky planet with a thin atmosphere.
Dres: Craters on a ball orbiting Tylo.
Duna: Dunes on a ball orbiting Tylo.
Eeloo: A big icy ball orbiting the sun.
Vall: I legit don't know what's going on here. Ice, probably. Maybe some chocolate? Idk.
Oh and some comets too.
HISTORY
Alternis Kerbol was first in development in December, 2013. The version of KSP at the time was 0.22, the first version to have career mode.
Since around version 0.18, people had been working on planet modding, to little success. Around this time there was the Planet Factory mod and the earliest versions of the Real Solar System plugin. Those would eventually lay the groundwork for the Kopernicus plugin. Somewhat separated from those was the Alternis Kerbol plugin, developed by former KSP developer NovaSilisko. NovaSilisko had designed all of the stock planets (among many other contributions) before leaving SQUAD. It was built to some extent in spite of Planet Factory, but mostly for the rule of cool: "hey wouldn't it be cool if..."
The main feature of the mod was (and still is) to put the home planet in orbit around Jool, alongside other moons. A main feature being the color map made by Winston. This has been replicated several times since, some in homage to Alternis Kerbol, such as in the case of New Horizons. The mod went through several development releases before migrating to the release thread, where it attained a version number of 0.1.
At 0.1, the change log from the stock system was:
* Jool: Moved to Kerbin's original orbital position, blu-ified, ships overheat before they can reach the "surface"
* Kerbin: Now orbits Jool at the same point Tylo used to
* Laythe: Redone entirely, now a jungle moon with varied terrain, more land, and, eventually, alien trees (panspermia's a hell of a thing)
* Minmus: Orbits Jool beneath Laythe, now 29km in radius (from 60), and deep reddish orange
* Tylo: orbits the sun a bit past Duna's original orbit, radius increased to 1103 km and surface gravity is 4g, plus an atmosphere 50% the density of Kerbin's.
* Duna: Orbits Tylo, completely new terrain
* Eve: Atmospheric density reduced a little, but scale height increased
* Moho: Orbit moved inward and made more eccentric
* Gilly: Small comet, shrunk to 8.5km radius
* Ike: Fat comet, shrunk to 17.5km radius
* Mun: Relocated to Jool orbit, replacing Vall, enlaged to 253km radius
* Vall: Now orbits Eeloo, shrunk to 99.8 km radius
* Eeloo: Moved outward, increased to ~500 km radius, less eccentric and inclined orbit
* Dres: First moon of Tylo
* Sun: Mesh scaled up to actually match its radius, shrunken to be less crazy huge
* Lighting: Ambient light now nonexistent in space, dimmer on planet surfaces. Sun is slightly reddish-yellow. Atmosphere colors tweaked to simulate the effect of a slightly redder sun.
* General: Most orbits have at least some inclination and eccentricity now, as opposed to being perfect circles like the Kerbin system
* Timewarp: All body timewarp limits now follow one universal rule: everything up to 10,000x is allowed below 200 km, 100,000x allowed above
By early 2014, NovaSilisko had stopped developing Alternis Kerbol and began his hiatus from Kerbal Space Program modding.
Alternis Kerbol lay dormant as planet modding progressed. Planet Factory and Planet Factory Creator's Edition waxed and waned, The Real Solar System grew to remarkable power and accuracy. It would have been possible throughout much of 2014 or 2015 to recreate Alternis Kerbol during that time with Real Solar System's plugin. No one made that attempt, perhaps because the mod actually worked up until KSP version 1.0. Kopernicus was finally gaining ground, and the Outer Planets Mod, New Horizons, and other complicated system overhauls and additions were cropping up. Some creators wanted to make decent planet products. Others saw the simple tools available to planet modders and decided that they wanted to be famouse moddirs. But nonetheless, Alternis lay dormant, Real Solar System plugin was never updated in the 2015 0.90 update, and now there was only Kopernicus.
I, GregroxMun, was an amateur livestreamer at the time. I had been streaming New Horizons for a few days, excited at the prospect of once again flying around in a solar system where you start on a gas giant moon. But truthfully it really made me miss the old days of Alternis Kerbol even more. So I looked up to see if anyone had updated Alternis Kerbol using Kopernicus yet.
They had. It wasn't a very good job.
I, who had had almost no experience with planet modding, decided that I could do better than... whatever that was. KSP IRC Chat: "hey anyone know how to make planet mods?" "Go to the Kopernicus IRC."
What an adventure that turned out to be.
I released my first version of Rekerjiggered on August 30th, 2015. It was not as complete as that... other version, but it was bug free and complete. I builded slowly and released what I thought made sense as a 1.0 version on September 5th. I felt at that time that it accurately portrayed the classic version of Alternis Kerbol. (Looking back on that version, a lot was wrong with it. But it was fully functional, low on bugs, and well it was actually Alternis Kerbol! For the first time in almost two years! I took a break to work on other projects, occasionally coming back with big updates to fix various things that was left out of the 1.0, in addition to completely new features, like the reddish hot Moho, the yellowish Eve, and fixing whatever was wrong with Laythe or Tylo.
Hint: It was more than spec(tac)ular.
In December I was working on Alternis Real Solar System. Maybe I'll go back to that later. Suffice to say, it changed the objects of the real solar system in much the same way that AKR changed the objects of the kerbal solar system.
After a loooonng hiatus I went from 1.8.0 to 2.0. The 2.0 update introduced many fixes, patches, cleanups, oh and also it changed every single remaining stock planet's terrain to be distinct from its stock characteristics. This was partially motivated by a desire to allow the entire Alternis system to exist as an alien solar system if I wanted it to, without there being cloned objects.
The current changelog from the stock system is as follows:
* Jool: Moved to Kerbin's original orbital position, blu-ified.
* Bop: Turned into a tiny little subsatellite of Kerbin.
* Pol: Inclination lowered, made into a lumpy rubble pile.
* Kerbin: Now orbits Jool at the same place Tylo used to. New terrain.
* Eve: Yellow, ringed, and shrunk to 670km radius, 1.12 G.
* Laythe: Redone entirely, now a jungle moon with varied terrain, more land, and trees. (Panspermia's a heckuva thing.)
* Minmus: Orbits Jool beneath Laythe, now 29km in radius (from 60), and deep reddish orange.
* Tylo: Orbits the sun a bit past Duna's original orbit, radius increased to 1103 km and surface gravity is 4g, plus an atmosphere no more than 80% the density of Kerbin's.
* Duna: Orbits Tylo, completely new terrain.
* Moho: Orbit moved inward and made more eccentric, turned red and given a hot atmosphere and the, well, original Mohole. (New)
* Gilly: Small comet, shrunk to 8.5km radius. Renamed to Gillian's Comet. (Comet tails with Kopernicus Expansion)
* Ike: Fat comet, shrunk to 17.5km radius. Renamed to Isaac's Comet. (Comet tails with Kopernicus Expansion)
* Mun: Relocated to Jool orbit, replacing Vall, enlarged to 257km radius. New terrain.
* Vall: Now orbits Eeloo, shrunk to 99.8 km radius. Totally new terrain.
* Eeloo: Moved outward, increased to ~500 km radius, less eccentric and inclined orbit. Totally new terrain.
* Dres: First moon of Tylo. New, heavily cratered terrain.
* Lighting: Ambient light now nonexistent in space, dimmer on planet surfaces. Sun is slightly reddish-yellow and casts a harsh, warmer light.
* Sun: Shrunk to 7500km, gravity increased to keep planetary speeds the same.
* General: Most orbits have at least some inclination and eccentricity now, as opposed to being perfect circles like the Kerbin system. All atmospheres are defined realistically using OhioBob's calculator.
* Science: Science configs have been made for all modified bodies, and many bodies have modified science multipliers.
*Mods: Compatibility for PlanetShine, Kopernicus Expansion Rekerjiggered, Distant Object Enhancement, Outer Planets Mod, Kronometer, and Principia.
* Visual Mods: E.V.E. configs available through GitHub, alongside WIP Scatterer. (Though I recommend you don't use scatterer with this mod, not yet anyway.)
It's September 4th, 2017. It's been over two years since I started this whole planet modding business. Alternis Kerbol Rekerjiggered will always hold a special place in my heart and mind. Despite, you know, it's not really fully my mod...