[WIP] KerbinRover Off-road vehicles

[TiktaalikDreaming]

This mod is a very very simple mod.  2 parts.  A half scale Land Rover Defender in "adventure special edition" orange and black, and two different wheels.  I'm intending to add more off-road vehicles over time, now that I've worked out which way around wheels go.  The (2) parts are fully functional, but some of the texturing etc is missing for the IVA.

On power and drive trains.

I had a look around for conversion from Kerbal electric charge to something in the real world.  A prior forum topic covered a few ways of estimating, and I'm basing this on the 1Kerbal Charge = 1MJ, because that is based on the power requirement for ion thrusters, while other electricity uses aren't propulsion related (apart from other wheels).  So, I've divided the Defender's 90KW by 4 (for each wheel), and then by 8 (half scale cubed) and converted KW to MJ per second (the easy part).  It's not a big number. 

Drive train is Kerballed.  It's basically a hybrid running a 90KW generator with a battery, although you won't get far on the stored electricity.  I've made the power generator dual mode.  The "Generator" is air-breathing (air-intake is in the bonnet, front grills are for radiators) and the "Fuel Cell" uses stored oxidizer.  I will do a module manager addition later for RealFuels to convert that to diesel and random oxidizer.

 

Downloadable from http://spacedock.info/mod/602/KerbinRover%20Off-Road%20Vehicles

 

Release forum thread at

 

Edited May 3, 2016 by TiktaalikDreaming
link to release thread

[Stone Blue]

Oooo... Nice!

May I suggest/request Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40, FJ45, & FJ55, as well as Toyota 1980 Hilux dbl-cab pickup, for sometime in the future?

EDIT: Oh, and since I see you live in the land of Oz, then maybe F/R/LJ70/75/79 as well?

Edited April 27, 2016 by Stone Blue

[TiktaalikDreaming]

1 minute ago, Stone Blue said:

Oooo... Nice!

May I suggest/request Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40, FJ45, & FJ55, as well as Toyota 1980 Hilux pickup, for sometime in the future?

I'll probably add the Hilux pickup, but not the Land Cruiser.  LC is too close to the landrover, and there's not a lot of point in just making one of everyone's favourite 4x4.  I'll definitely be looking at a AWD vehicle with a lower centre of mass as well, for doing that going round corners trick without flipping as easily.  Still not sure if I should go to the Impreza RX or GTR ends of the spectrum, but leaning towards the GTR, for extra silliness.

And, I should have mentioned in the OP, the rover body with M1 rover wheels is an awesomely fun monster truck.  Although it may need batteries/RTG/cheats since I nerfed the power.  All the other stock wheels just look stupid.

[Deimos Rast]

I like the green / tan color and sizing combo...but dat pink;p Maybe we could let marketing call it "adobe" or a similar pastel/rustic tone. Or "outback sunset something something."

 

Edited April 28, 2016 by Deimos Rast
tablet

[TiktaalikDreaming]

1 hour ago, Deimos Rast said:

I like the green / tan color and sizing combo...but dat pink;p Maybe we could let marketing call it "adobe" or a similar pastel/rustic tone. Or "outback sunset something something."

 

The pink is temporary.  I'm going to change to some vaguely spacey colour scheme.  The pink stems from the SAS converted LandRovers, which this is clearly not one of.  At the moment I'm blocking out the main colours before adding details etc.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Just made a quick update.

When I started this, I had it in a GameData folder just called Cars.  But that seemed a bit daft if I was releasing it.  So before zipping and uploading I moved the folder and broke the internal spaces (aka IVAs).  This should fix that.

I'm not happy with the dashboard position and steering wheel, so they will change.  I've tweaked the outside shape for the double curved block look that the defender has but that doesn't show in the technical diagrams I had very well.  Which broke the windows and internal spaces again.  And my UV mesh.

Anyway, there's some tweaks to the suspension, mirrors (they don't work), bumper approximations, and still a fair bit of work to go.  But getting there.

[Wolf Baginski]

It's a good start, but the windscreen, side windows, and roof don't look right. There are plenty of good photos, so I shall just summarise

There is a vented air-intake panel between the bottom edge of the windscreen and the top of the hood/bonnet. This has always been there. and without it the bottom edge of the windscreen is too low.

The top of the side windows looks too low, but this may be down to roof shape. They should be lower than the top of the windscreen, but that looks too high. Essentially, the sides are vertical until the top of the door is reached. At the front, with the single-piece windscreen, the top edge was raised, with a small-radius rounded corner. The transition from vertical side to flat roof was always a smooth curve, with a quarter-cone taper ever the front door.

It's easy to see this with the colours you've chosen. The curve at the edge of the roof, the black area, should have a horizontal bottom edge, front to back. The radius is a bit too big at the very front, and there is a bit too much metal at the top and sides of the windscreen. The roof panel, curves and all, unbolts as one piece, and only the top of the rear door was higher than the side panels until the single-panel front windscreen came in.

A usual colour for the metal roof, regardless of the main body colour is white/cream

 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

12 hours ago, Wolf Baginski said:

It's a good start, but the windscreen, side windows, and roof don't look right. There are plenty of good photos, so I shall just summarise

There is a vented air-intake panel between the bottom edge of the windscreen and the top of the hood/bonnet. This has always been there. and without it the bottom edge of the windscreen is too low.

The top of the side windows looks too low, but this may be down to roof shape. They should be lower than the top of the windscreen, but that looks too high. Essentially, the sides are vertical until the top of the door is reached. At the front, with the single-piece windscreen, the top edge was raised, with a small-radius rounded corner. The transition from vertical side to flat roof was always a smooth curve, with a quarter-cone taper ever the front door.

It's easy to see this with the colours you've chosen. The curve at the edge of the roof, the black area, should have a horizontal bottom edge, front to back. The radius is a bit too big at the very front, and there is a bit too much metal at the top and sides of the windscreen. The roof panel, curves and all, unbolts as one piece, and only the top of the rear door was higher than the side panels until the single-panel front windscreen came in.

A usual colour for the metal roof, regardless of the main body colour is white/cream

 

There's a bunch you missed as well. Suffice it to say, I'm still tweaking.  The front headlight area is plain wrong, it doesn't extend to the bumper, which is also (slightly) the wrong shape.  The very front of the bumber is annoying me.  The rear bumber is very roughly approximate.  And I haven't added the spare wheel attachment arm.
Colours I'm (now) aiming for are the Celebration series Avdenture special, which has a black roof and wheel guards as shown.  I'm not sure I'll blazon "110" across the side, but I might, you never know.  The roof "blacked in" area is currently the mesh area that is definitely roof.  The edge will come down to where it should be, which is between the window heights of the windscreen and the side windows. It's also missing the corner sunroof bits.  No idea what else to call those.  A lot of the finer detail isn't done, and some of it probably won't be done.  In some form I will be adding door hinges and handles, some light fittings, the edge to the roof,

Thanks for pointing out the lower edge of the windscreen is too low.  It doesn't show in the tech drawing I have which makes it tricky, but now I re-look at it, it needs raising up again.  It started at the edge of the bonnet, which was horribly wrong.
Some progress visible here.  You can see where the roof edge line is, below the edge of the current black; (also, the windscreen adjustment, except I forgot to adjust the glass mesh, so there's a weird overlapping issue, and as I've been changing meshes, the UV map isn't right anymore and the colouring is a bit misplaced, although less than I thought it would be.)

Edited April 30, 2016 by TiktaalikDreaming
Pic

[Virtualgenius]

Could we have a Mercedes G wagon they go anywhere

[King Something]

If you're going to make a Hilux, remember that it must be indestructible.

Neither fire, nor water, nor lava nor gravity should be able to stop it from moving under its own power.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

5 hours ago, Virtualgenius said:

Could we have a Mercedes G wagon they go anywhere

Nope.  :-P

Too much of the same thing.  Same as for the Toyota Land Cruiser, the Mitsi Pajero, etc etc etc.  Not doing 50 different off-road wagons that all look and behave roughly the same.  If I can figure out tracks, I'll be looking at the Hagglund Bandvagn.  I'll probably do a utility/pickup, which will probably be the Hilux, but I might get lazy and just do the Defender 130 crew cab.  And probably something like the Thales Bushmaster, but I'm not sold on that vs one of the BTRs or one of the thousand other APC type beasts out there.  And at some point I'm going to try to add in a GTR or WRX for the silliness factor.

[Wolf Baginski]

Thinking about the different vehicles, there has always been something very Kerbalish about the Land Rover Defender. It's a set of parts you can just bolt together.

Well, it was. Production has ended.

Those windows in the roof side are called "Alpine lights" or sometimes "Alpine Windows".

You could, if you were so inclined, make a set of parts for KSP and get a whole mix of Land Rovers. hard top, canvas top, pick-up cab and body different chassis lengths, the options go on and on.

The Series III LWB DPV got very well-known because of the Tamiya "pink panther" kit, but the basic style goes back to the early days, and the colour was even used by the Royal Navy to paint ships because it was thought less conspicious at sunset and sunrise.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

5 hours ago, Wolf Baginski said:

Thinking about the different vehicles, there has always been something very Kerbalish about the Land Rover Defender. It's a set of parts you can just bolt together.

Well, it was. Production has ended.

Those windows in the roof side are called "Alpine lights" or sometimes "Alpine Windows".

You could, if you were so inclined, make a set of parts for KSP and get a whole mix of Land Rovers. hard top, canvas top, pick-up cab and body different chassis lengths, the options go on and on.

The Series III LWB DPV got very well-known because of the Tamiya "pink panther" kit, but the basic style goes back to the early days, and the colour was even used by the Royal Navy to paint ships because it was thought less conspicious at sunset and sunrise.

Alpine Windows.  Well, just as well I made up a name.  :-)

Yep, the defender was killed off by a combo of regulations.  Until they design something new and attach the old badge anyway.

I did think of making the defender as a set of parts, but I ditched the idea because there'd be so many parts.  To make it work you'd need different parts at different layers. It's definitely doable, but I chucked in in the unnecessarily-too-hard-bucket.

I think I've about finished the Defender external (damned if I know how to get my browser to refresh the imgur album, but it's got some newly added images), just have some IVA stuff still to do.

I'll upload the current, but there's more to do on IVA

micro album

 

Edited April 30, 2016 by TiktaalikDreaming

[Wolf Baginski]

The latest version on KerbalStuff is looking very good.

If v1.1.2 hadn't appeared I would have added some KIS-storage and sent a bunch of Kerbals on an expedition. It wouldn't be hard, I think, to trade off a couple of passenger seats, and there are ways of having the valiant Kerbals sans pressure helmets. If somebody wants to get some good photos, KIS/KAS would also allow some proper camping equipment to be set up. At the moment, with the transition between versions, I shall just wait a while

I wonder if I can mount some roof-racks with oxygen tanks for an expedition to the Mun.

The real Land Rover is just over 1.5m wide, and I think that makes parts for a roof-rack and ladder available in some mod or another. I am also going to see if I can come up with a variation on the colour scheme. There's the very commonplace white roof with green or blue for most of the rest (The colours changed slightly over the years, and the names) and one scheme you sometimes see on old TV, typically in an African setting, is a white-and-black zebra-stripe (The TV series Daktari also used some ordinary factory paint schemes).

 

 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

26 minutes ago, Wolf Baginski said:

The latest version on KerbalStuff is looking very good.

If v1.1.2 hadn't appeared I would have added some KIS-storage and sent a bunch of Kerbals on an expedition. It wouldn't be hard, I think, to trade off a couple of passenger seats, and there are ways of having the valiant Kerbals sans pressure helmets. If somebody wants to get some good photos, KIS/KAS would also allow some proper camping equipment to be set up. At the moment, with the transition between versions, I shall just wait a while

I wonder if I can mount some roof-racks with oxygen tanks for an expedition to the Mun.

The real Land Rover is just over 1.5m wide, and I think that makes parts for a roof-rack and ladder available in some mod or another. I am also going to see if I can come up with a variation on the colour scheme. There's the very commonplace white roof with green or blue for most of the rest (The colours changed slightly over the years, and the names) and one scheme you sometimes see on old TV, typically in an African setting, is a white-and-black zebra-stripe (The TV series Daktari also used some ordinary factory paint schemes).

 

 

If you want to mess with the colours, here's the layered GiMP image; https://www.dropbox.com/s/jtwfmdwm3jg5dro/Rover.xcf?dl=0

It'll make changing the Orange super easy, the roof colour slightly less so.  The old pink layer is hidden just under the orange, and the bottom two layers are normal and height maps.

The parts for this are half scale, as Kerbals are about 1m tall and most rocket parts are half scale real world.  So you'll need to take that into account.

I've discovered most modders are using a 1 Electric Charge = 1 kJ as well, so I'm beefing up all the electrical values (fuel consumption stays the same).  This makes most of the electrical parts within an order of magnitude of sane, except those ion drives, which then become insanely effective.  But ion drives require long burns without time warp, so that balances out game-play-wise.  I think this means the Rover can now run the stock M1 wheels without outside power sources.  Monster truck here we come.

Interior is roughly done, and I'll be uploading shortly.  I have to go and put the pale glass/mirror look into the mirrors again, as I killed that off during re-UVing.  And the Interior is still quite vague, and there's just no suitable dashboard props.

Also, I burnt most of a day (well, that bit of the day I wasn't sleeping, going to lunch, shopping, etc) on trying to animate emissives in Unity 5 using KSP emissive shaders and the Tools>>Create Color Animation, and it's just not working for me.  So for now, headlights work, but the lights don't light up.  Which is a bit immersion breaking, but they're still functional.  I'm also not too sure what range I should give the headlights.  Which is something I should google instead of just guessing.  Which leads me to saying I will be making some accessories.  Roof rack, yes.  Add-on spotlights, yes.  I really do not know if I can make a trailer though.  And I'll leave winches to KAS etc.  Even though they'll be huge.

[Wolf Baginski]

Thanks for the texture-file.

The headlamp range doesn't look badly wrong, though a bit more would be plausible.

I went exploring with a couple of Mystery Goo cylinders on the roof and an extending aerial on the top of one front wing. Worked fine.

And I see there is another update... I see you can now stick a flag on, but maybe the front door, driver and passenger, would suit better than the roof. Also, I'm not sure the normal map is working right.

[Wolf Baginski]

A couple of Mystery Goo cylinders, load up with Kerbals, and chase Werhner around the KSC, and the science builds up fast, maybe a little too fast. On the other hand, the early stages with stock vehicles can be a bit tedious. Sine the real Land Rover is such an old vehicle design they're quite plausible as something that would be seen around, maybe even doing some applied boffinry. It'd be an interesting challenge to see how far you could travel around Kerbin

It wouldn't be so easy to get Science Points in career mode since there are limits on EVA. Those surface samples add up.

 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

1 hour ago, Wolf Baginski said:

Thanks for the texture-file.

The headlamp range doesn't look badly wrong, though a bit more would be plausible.

I went exploring with a couple of Mystery Goo cylinders on the roof and an extending aerial on the top of one front wing. Worked fine.

And I see there is another update... I see you can now stick a flag on, but maybe the front door, driver and passenger, would suit better than the roof. Also, I'm not sure the normal map is working right.

The flag was going to be roof + front-side-doors, but for some reason only the roof is showing up.  I might actually need multiple flag modules and meshes, which would be tedious.  Normal meshes are at best a fudge.  They work nicely with top down lighting.  But, get the lighting somewhere else (aka all the time) then bits of it look reversed etc.  Bump/height maps are more dependable, but costly on rendering, and KSP only uses normals.  The other option is shift some detail into the mesh itself.  Still tempted for the indicator/brake lights.

At some point I should get around to changing the stack nodes to something other than where they are on a Mk1 pod.

[Wolf Baginski]

It's the gaps around the doors where it looks wrong. Just the line in the texture works.

One of the things that could go well with this would be something resembling a theodolite. It would be a KIS/KAS thing, and a Kerbal doing EVA could set it up, take some measurements, and pick up a few science points, maybe a few more if it was near an anomaly. Nothing big, but it used to be how these things were done, rather than pushing a button on a GPS, and a surveyor running around in a Kerbin Rover sort of feels right. And it's the sort of data that could easily be sent back to base by radio.

 

[Wolf Baginski]

And so our intrepid Kerbals set out to Do Science! (This is an FFR version assigned to R&D, hence the extra battery for the wireless set.)

This vaguely resembles a real Land Rover I drove for many years. The FFR versions were set up for two aerials on the front wings and had a dual 24v electrical system, with separate batteries and control systems for the vehicle and for the radio system, while the ignition system was specially screened, plugs, cables, and distributor. This was designed before the transistor took over from the vacuum tube.

And, as British motorists of a certain era may recall, there were regular sacrifices to Lucas, Prince of Darkness.

 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

7 hours ago, Wolf Baginski said:

And so our intrepid Kerbals set out to Do Science! (This is an FFR version assigned to R&D, hence the extra battery for the wireless set.)

This vaguely resembles a real Land Rover I drove for many years. The FFR versions were set up for two aerials on the front wings and had a dual 24v electrical system, with separate batteries and control systems for the vehicle and for the radio system, while the ignition system was specially screened, plugs, cables, and distributor. This was designed before the transistor took over from the vacuum tube.

And, as British motorists of a certain era may recall, there were regular sacrifices to Lucas, Prince of Darkness.

 

Nice. I should do up some alternate textures. 

[Eskandare]

On 5/1/2016 at 2:52 AM, TiktaalikDreaming said:

If you want to mess with the colours, here's the layered GiMP image; https://www.dropbox.com/s/jtwfmdwm3jg5dro/Rover.xcf?dl=0

It'll make changing the Orange super easy, the roof colour slightly less so.  The old pink layer is hidden just under the orange, and the bottom two layers are normal and height maps.

The parts for this are half scale, as Kerbals are about 1m tall and most rocket parts are half scale real world.  So you'll need to take that into account.

I've discovered most modders are using a 1 Electric Charge = 1 kJ as well, so I'm beefing up all the electrical values (fuel consumption stays the same).  This makes most of the electrical parts within an order of magnitude of sane, except those ion drives, which then become insanely effective.  But ion drives require long burns without time warp, so that balances out game-play-wise.  I think this means the Rover can now run the stock M1 wheels without outside power sources.  Monster truck here we come.

Interior is roughly done, and I'll be uploading shortly.  I have to go and put the pale glass/mirror look into the mirrors again, as I killed that off during re-UVing.  And the Interior is still quite vague, and there's just no suitable dashboard props.

Also, I burnt most of a day (well, that bit of the day I wasn't sleeping, going to lunch, shopping, etc) on trying to animate emissives in Unity 5 using KSP emissive shaders and the Tools>>Create Color Animation, and it's just not working for me.  So for now, headlights work, but the lights don't light up.  Which is a bit immersion breaking, but they're still functional.  I'm also not too sure what range I should give the headlights.  Which is something I should google instead of just guessing.  Which leads me to saying I will be making some accessories.  Roof rack, yes.  Add-on spotlights, yes.  I really do not know if I can make a trailer though.  And I'll leave winches to KAS etc.  Even though they'll be huge.

Yay, time to do British drab or camo versions.

[thomash]

Aside from looking really cool, your Land Rover is essential for gathering science around the space center and the neighboring region early in the game.  And, of course, when you open a node with new science gadgets you get to mount them on the Rover and off to another road trip.

Thanks.  It's a great little mod.  I love it.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

57 minutes ago, thomash said:

Aside from looking really cool, your Land Rover is essential for gathering science around the space center and the neighboring region early in the game.  And, of course, when you open a node with new science gadgets you get to mount them on the Rover and off to another road trip.

Thanks.  It's a great little mod.  I love it.

Basically yeah. It can be used off planet, but it's a bit annoying for that. 

Glad you like it.  :-) 

[thomash]

For anyone who is interested, as soon as it was available, I built the Rover, loaded the thermometer, goo, and air-pressure devices, and after an hour or so driving around the complex (using "For Science") I racked up over 200 science!  And still didn't get it all.  At one point, I rolled it over and after a couple of tries and a running start Valentina pushed it upright again.  Don't mess with her.