KUniverse 4th wall methods¶

structure KUniverse¶

KUniverse is a special structure that allows your Kerboscript programs to access some of the functions that break the “4th Wall”. It serves as a place to access object directly connected to the KSP game itself, rather than the interaction with the KSP world (vessels, planets, orbits, etc.).

Suffix	Type	Get/Set	Description
`CANREVERT`	`Boolean`	Get	Is any revert possible?
`CANREVERTTOLAUNCH`	`Boolean`	Get	Is revert to launch possible?
`CANREVERTTOEDITOR`	`Boolean`	Get	Is revert to editor possible?
`REVERTTOLAUNCH`	None	Method	Invoke revert to launch
`REVERTTOEDITOR`	None	Method	Invoke revert to editor
`REVERTTO(name)`	`String`	Method	Invoke revert to the named editor
`ORIGINEDITOR`	`String`	Get	Returns the name of this vessel’s editor, “SPH” or “VAB”.
`PAUSE`	None	Method	Pauses KSP, bringing up the “Escape Menu”.
`CANQUICKSAVE`	`Boolean`	Get	Returns true if quicksave is currently enabled and available.
`QUICKSAVE()`	None	Method	Invoke KSP’s built in quicksave.
`QUICKLOAD()`	None	Method	Invoke KSP’s built in quickload.
`QUICKSAVETO(name)`	`String`	Method	Perform quicksave to the save with the given name.
`QUICKLOADFROM(name)`	None	Method	Perform quickload from the save with the given name.
`QUICKSAVELIST`	`List` of `String`	Get	A list of all quicksave files for this game.
`HOURSPERDAY`	`Scalar`	Get	Number of hours per day (6 or 24) according to your game settings.
`DEBUGLOG(message)`	None	Method	Causes a `String` to append to the Unity debug log file.
`DEFAULTLOADDISTANCE`	`LoadDistance`	Get	Returns the set of default load and pack distances for the game.
`TIMEWARP`	`TimeWarp`	Get	Returns a value you can use to manipulate Kerbal Space Program’s time warp.
`ACTIVEVESSEL`	`Vessel`	Get/Set	Returns the active vessel, or lets you set the active vessel.
`FORCESETACTIVEVESSEL(vessel)`	None	Method	Lets you switch active vessels even when the game refuses to allow it.
`FORCEACTIVE(vessel)`	None	Method	Same as `FORCESETACTIVEVESSEL`
`GETCRAFT(name, editor)`	`CraftTemplate`	Method	Get the file path for the craft with the given name, saved in the given editor.
`LAUNCHCRAFT(template)`	None	Method	Launch a new instance of the given craft at it’s default launch site.
`LAUNCHCRAFTFROM(template, site)`	None	Method	Launch a new instance of the given craft at the given site.
`LAUNCHCRAFTWITHCREWFROM(template, crewlist, site)`	None	Method	Launch a new instance of the given craft with this crew list at the given site.
`CRAFTLIST()`	`List` of `CraftTemplate`	Method	A list of all craft templates in the save specific and stock folders.
`REALTIME`	`Scalar`	Get only	Real world timestamp (outside of game) in seconds since 1970

KUniverse:CANREVERT¶

Access: Get
Type: Boolean.

Returns true if either revert to launch or revert to editor is available. Note: either option may still be unavailable, use the specific methods below to check the exact option you are looking for.

KUniverse:CANREVERTTOLAUNCH¶

Access: Get
Type: Boolean.

Returns true if either revert to launch is available.

KUniverse:CANREVERTTOEDITOR¶

Access: Get
Type: Boolean.

Returns true if either revert to the editor is available. This tends to be false after reloading from a saved game where the vessel was already in existence in the saved file when you loaded the game.

KUniverse:REVERTTOLAUNCH()¶

Access: Method
Return type: None.

Initiate the KSP game’s revert to launch function. All progress so far will be lost, and the vessel will be returned to the launch pad or runway at the time it was initially launched.

KUniverse:REVERTTOEDITOR()¶

Access: Method
Return type: None.

Initiate the KSP game’s revert to editor function. The game will revert to the editor, as selected based on the vessel type.

KUniverse:REVERTTO(editor)¶

Parameters

editor – The editor identifier

Returns

None

Revert to the provided editor. Valid inputs are “VAB” and “SPH”.

KUniverse:ORIGINEDITOR¶

Access: Get
Type: String.

Returns the name of the originating editor based on the vessel type. The value is one of:

“SPH” for things built in the space plane hangar,
“VAB” for things built in the vehicle assembly building.
“” (empty String) for cases where the vehicle cannot remember its editor (when KUniverse:CANREVERTTOEDITOR is false.)

KUniverse:PAUSE()¶

Access: Method
Return type: None.

Pauses Kerbal Space Program, bringing up the same pause menu that would normally appear when you hit the “Escape” key.

Warning: NO lines of Kerboscript code can run while the game is paused!!! If you call this, you will be stopping your script there until a human being clicks “resume” on the pause menu.

kOS is designed to thematically act like a computer that lives inside the game universe. That means it stops when the game clock stops, for the same reason a bouncing ball stops when the game clock stops.

Until a human being resumes the game by clicking the Resume button in the menu, your script will be stuck. This makes it impossible to have the program run code that decides when to un-pause the game. Once the Resume button is clicked, then the program will continue where it left off, just after the point where it called KUniverse:PAUSE()..

Note, if you use Control-C in the terminal to kill the program, that will work while the game is paused like this. If you make the mistake of having your script keep re-pausing the game every time the game resumes (i.e. you call Kuniverse:PAUSE() again and again in a loop), then using Control-C in the terminal can be a way to break out of this problem.

KUniverse:CANQUICKSAVE¶

Access: Get
Type: Boolean

Returns true if KSP’s quicksave feature is enabled and available.

KUniverse:QUICKSAVE()¶

Access: Method
Return type: None.

Initiate the KSP game’s quicksave function. The game will save the current state to the default quicksave file.

KUniverse:QUICKLOAD()¶

Access: Method
Return type: None.

Initiate the KSP game’s quickload function. The game will load the game state from the default quickload file.

KUniverse:QUICKSAVETO(name)¶

Parameters

name – The name of the save file

Returns

None

Initiate the KSP game’s quicksave function. The game will save the current state to a quicksave file matching the name parameter.

KUniverse:QUICKLOADFROM(name)¶

Parameters

name – The name of the save file

Returns

None

Initiate the KSP game’s quickload function. The game will load the game state from the quicksave file matching the name parameter.

KUniverse:QUICKSAVELIST¶

Access: Get
Type: List of String

Returns a list of names of all quicksave file in this KSP game.

KUniverse:DEFAULTLOADDISTANCE¶

Access: Get
Type: LoadDistance.

Get or set the default loading distances for vessels loaded in the future. Note: this setting will not affect any vessel currently in the universe for the current flight session. It will take effect the next time you enter a flight scene from the editor or tracking station, even on vessels that have already existed beforehand. The act of loading a new scene causes all the vessels in that scene to inherit these new default values, forgetting the values they may have had before.

(To affect the value on a vessel already existing in the current scene you have to use the :LOADDISTANCE suffix of the Vessel structure.)

KUniverse:TIMEWARP¶

Access: Get
Type: TimeWarp.

Returns the TimeWarp structure that you can use to manipulate Kerbal Space Program’s time warping features. See the documentation on TimeWarp for more details.

example: set kuniverse:timewarp:rate to 50.

KUniverse:ACTIVEVESSEL¶

Access: Get/Set
Type: Vessel.

Returns the active vessel object and allows you to set the active vessel. Note: KSP will not allow you to change vessels by default when the current active vessel is in the atmosphere or under acceleration. Use FORCEACTIVE under those circumstances.

KUniverse:FORCESETACTIVEVESSEL(vessel)¶

Parameters

vessel – Vessel to switch to.

Returns

None

Force KSP to change the active vessel to the one specified. Note: Switching the active vessel under conditions that KSP normally disallows may cause unexpected results on the initial vessel. It is possible that the vessel will be treated as if it is re-entering the atmosphere and deleted.

KUniverse:FORCEACTIVE(vessel)¶

Parameters

vessel – Vessel to switch to.

Returns

None

Same as FORCESETACTIVEVESSEL.

KUniverse:HOURSPERDAY¶

Access: Get
Type: Scalar (integer)

Has the value of either 6 or 24, depending on what setting you used on Kerbal Space Program’s main settings screen for whether you wanted to think in terms of Kerbal days (6 hours) or Kerbin days (24 hours). This only affects what the clock format looks like and doesn’t change the actual time in game, which is stored purely as a number of seconds since epoch anyway and is unaffected by how the time is presented to the human being watching the game. (i.e. if you allow 25 hours to pass in the game, the game merely tracks that 39000 seconds have passed (25 x 60 x 60). It doesn’t care how that translates into minutes, hours, days, and years until showing it on screen to the player.)

This setting also affects how values from TimeSpan and TimeStamp calculate the :hours, :days, and :years suffixes.

Note that this setting is not settable. This decision was made because the main stock KSP game only ever changes the setting on the main settings menu, which isn’t accessible during play. It’s entirely possible for kOS to support changing the value mid-game, but we’ve decided to deliberately avoid doing so because there may be other mods with code that only reads the setting once up front and then assumes it never changes after that. Because in the stock game, that assumption would be true.

KUniverse:GETCRAFT(name, editor)¶

Parameters

name – String craft name.
facility – String editor name.

Returns

CraftTemplate

Returns the CraftTemplate matching the given craft name saved from the given editor. Valid values for editor include "VAB" and "SPH".

KUniverse:LAUNCHCRAFT(template)¶

Parameters

template – CraftTemplate craft template object.

Launch a new instance of the given CraftTemplate from the template’s default launch site.

NOTE: The craft will be launched with the KSP default crew assignment, as if you had clicked launch from the editor without manually adjusting the crew.

NOTE: Due to how KSP handles launching a new craft, this will end the current program even if the currently active vessel is located within physics range of the launch site.

KUniverse:LAUNCHCRAFTFROM(template, site)¶

Parameters

template – CraftTemplate craft template object.
site – String launch site name.

Launch a new instance of the given CraftTemplate from the given launch site. Valid values for site include "RUNWAY" and "LAUNCHPAD".

NOTE: The craft will be launched with the KSP default crew assignment, as if you had clicked launch from the editor without manually adjusting the crew. To pick which crew are on the craft use Kuniverse:LAUNCHCRAFTWITHCREWFROM() instead.

NOTE: Due to how KSP handles launching a new craft, this will end the current program even if the currently active vessel is located within physics range of the launch site.

KUniverse:LAUNCHCRAFTWITHCREWFROM(template, crewlist, site)¶

Parameters

template – CraftTemplate craft template object.
crewlist – List of String kerbal names.
site – String launch site name.

Launch a new instance of the given CraftTemplate with the given crew manifest from the given launch site. Valid values for site include "RUNWAY" and "LAUNCHPAD".

If any of the kerbal names you use in the crewlist parameter don’t exist in the game, there will be no error. Instead that name just gets ignored in the list.

NOTE: Due to how KSP handles launching a new craft, this will end the current program even if the currently active vessel is located within physics range of the launch site.

KUniverse:CRAFTLIST()¶

Returns: List of CraftTemplate

Returns a list of all CraftTemplate templates stored in the VAB and SPH folders of the stock Ships folder and the save specific Ships folder.

KUniverse:DEBUGLOG(message)¶

Parameters

message – String message to append to the log.

Returns

None

All Unity games (Kerbal Space Program included) have a standard “log” file where they can store a lot of verbose messages that help developers trying to debug their games. Sometimes it may be useful to make your script log a message to THAT debug file, instead of using kOS’s normal Log function to append a message to some file of your own making.

This is useful for cases where you are trying to work with a kOS developer to trace the cause of a problem and you want your script to mark the moments when it hit different parts of the program, and have those messages get embedded in the log interleaved with the game’s own diagnostic messages.

Here is an example. Say you suspected the game was throwing an error every time you tried to lock steering to up. So you experiment with this bit of code:

kuniverse:debuglog("=== Now starting test ===").
kuniverse:debuglog("--- Locking steering to up----").
lock steering to up.
kuniverse:debuglog("--- Now forcing a physics tick ----").
wait 0.001.
kuniverse:debuglog("--- Now unlocking steering again ----").
unlock steering.
wait 0.001.
kuniverse:debuglog("=== Now done with test ===").

This would cause the messages you wrote to appear in the debug log, interleaved with any error messages kOS, and any other parts of the entire Kerbal Space Program game, dump into the same log.

The location of this log varies depending on your platform. For some reason, Unity chooses a different filename convention for each OS. Consult the list below to see where it is on your platform.

Windows 32-bit: [install_dir]KSP_Dataoutput_log.txt
Windows 64-bit: [install_dir]KSP_x64_Dataoutput_log.txt (not officially supported)
Mac OS X: ~/Library/Logs/Unity/Player.log
Linux: ~/.config/unity3d/Squad/”Kerbal Space Program”/Player.log

For an example of what it looks like in the log, this:

kuniverse:debuglog("this is my message").

ends up resulting in this in the KSP output log:

kOS: (KUNIVERSE:DEBUGLOG) this is my message

KUniverse:REALTIME¶

Access: Get Only
Type: Scalar

Returns the current time in the real world (outside of the game). It uses the so called “UNIX time” convention - that is the number of seconds since the start of 1970, right at midnight, 1st January.

KUniverse:REALWORLDTIME¶

Access: Get Only
Type: Scalar

An alias for KUniverse:REALTIME.

Examples¶

Switch to an active vessel called “vessel 2”:

SET KUNIVERSE:ACTIVEVESSEL TO VESSEL("vessel 2").

Revert to VAB, but only if allowed:

PRINT "ATTEMPTING TO REVERT TO THE Vehicle Assembly Building."
IF KUNIVERSE:CANREVERTTOEDITOR {
  IF KUNIVERSE:ORIGINEDITOR = "VAB" {
    PRINT "REVERTING TO VAB.".
    KUNIVERSE:REVERTTOEDITOR().
  } ELSE {
    PRINT "COULD REVERT, But only to space plane hanger, so I won't.".
  }
} ELSE {
  PRINT "Cannot revert to any editor.".
}