Rover Yard development

[oniontrain]

A while back I made a small 'mars yard' type static for Kerbtown. I never really updated it and to be honest kind of hoped somebody else would just run with the idea, but that didn't ever happen. Several versions later, I've decided to just go and do it myself. I have a few ideas of what to do, but suggestions and requests will help really complete things, I think.

@SpannerMonkey(smce) was kind enough to convert the old model to work in 1.1 for me: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21315217/roveryard.zip

 

Now, it doesn't exactly look very good; being a model I threw together as quickly as I could at the time. The new version of Unity was not exactly kind to the normal maps but it's pretty much serviceable if you don't mind looking at it.

What I'd like to do is rework the whole thing with actual planning first, I'd like some input from the forums first.

I'd like to make the whole thing a hex shape to fit with the rest of the KSC facilities, does anybody know about how big the hexes for the research facility and other things are? Depending on how big it ends up, there could be a whole lot of free space to put stuff in. I've got a very basic idea mapped out here:

 

 

Does anybody know how to use the existing KSP textures? If those could be used for everything it would decrease the memory footprint by a whole lot.

Edited September 16, 2016 by oniontrain

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

Hi. the existing old rover yard (which will happily work in 1.2 as well)  now has a permanent spot in my games, along with all those other ancient Kerbtown statics I've recovered.  It works very well actually. with no nasty holes anywhere so the collision is good, tbh, i expected trouble, as there are some large areas that are very concave, and it's not just the obvious crater, if you have any idea about collision meshes you can see half a dozen potential trouble spots.

If you can get that proposed hex size from esky that would be handy as then it'll be a lot easier for those less familiar with KK to place and move.  I don't now about the sand pit. unless you experiment with the unity physics materials to mess with how it will feel when driven over it'd be ornamental.  I think a pile of rocks would be much neater,  and more importantly you wouldn't need to mess with it either, personally i love a bit of rover rock crawling( still got my fingers crossed that my solid axles can live again)  , You'd only need one rock model and rotate and place a dozen times, would certainly prove more than a challenge than an ornamental sandpit.  As for the textures i recall that KSC++ by lack uses a lot of stock textures so have a look there for a clue

[oniontrain]

Cool, thanks. I don't know if I'm up for messing with unity physics, so the rock pile idea sounds a lot better. I'll check out Lack's mod, forgot about that.

[oniontrain]

Got the bridge part modeled, anybody got any thoughts?

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

Hi, just one thought make sure it's wide enough for more than just tiny rovers,( the baha kerbin track that i found and recovered is way too narrow for modern bulky rovers(until i extract and scale it anyways) and perhaps a shallower entry portion as that looks quite steep and a harsh transition initially

[oniontrain]

Road is 6m wide, which is apparently the world standard. So unless you're building some landkreuzer it should fit.

[oniontrain]

I'm starting to work on this some more, going to try to use as many as the Kerbin City textures as possible. Can we even make kerbtown statics yet in 1.2.1?

  [

Edited November 9, 2016 by oniontrain

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

On 09/11/2016 at 11:26 PM, oniontrain said:

Can we even make kerbtown statics yet in 1.2.1?

Yes, as you probably know KK has a new maintainer. It's stable reliable and I've repopulated my statics with no problems whatsoever, there's no difference between making statics in 1.2.1  and any other version, all the same rules still apply.. Good to see you working on this again

[theonegalen]

Looking forward to this.