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RLA Stockalike v10 released 11th August


hoojiwana

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About the stockalike RCS thrusters...

They are now smaller then the stock ones (and then they were previosly)

I think you had forgotten to set the scale parameter to 1.25 when you switched to using emm... this:

MODEL

{

model = RLA_Stockalike/Parts/RCS/RCS_45/model2

scale = 1.0, 1.0, 1.0

texture = RLA_Stockalike/Parts/RCS/RCS/model000

}

instead of just using this:

mesh = model.mu

which has the scale parameter set to 1.25 by default in KSP

Am I wrong?

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How about ion/resistojet/arcjet manoeuvring thrusters?

That cannot be done with the stock RCS system without using a very inelegant solution with multiple generators and things on the part. That's not something I want to do.

Why would you need to code for a vasmir engine? Also any clue about the more powerful nuclear reactors you thinking of making?

It's exactly as Nutter said, it needs a plugin to work.

About the stockalike RCS thrusters...

They are now smaller then the stock ones (and then they were previosly)

I think you had forgotten to set the scale parameter to 1.25 when you switched to using emm... this:

Am I wrong?

You're almost right. I used the MODEL{} tags since the RCS blocks share textures, but the scale was incorrect. That has been fixed on my version and so will be fixed come the update. If you want them fixed now, just change the scale = 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 to scale = 1.25, 1.25, 1.25.

Here's some WIP pics;

First here's the new Cutter (on the bottom), since I wasn't happy with the old ones shape (on the top);

kiq5PYO.jpg

And a gif showing the various stages of the MP engine. I might redo some of this part, I'm not sure.

OVxlxAy.gif

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Might I suggest that the thrust for the Aerospike would be 190 with a ISP of 380 in vacuum/378 in Atmo to make it competitive with the LV-30? And I also didn't see that post about the plugin :(

Edit: Whoops was in my face the hole time xP yeah I see why but I was thinking of a thruster that didn't have gears like VASMIR but was like it in shape, size, thrust, ISP etc for now :D. For the exhaust you could use that awesome blue color!

Edited by CrazyIvan
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It's exactly as Nutter said, it needs a plugin to work.

Because of the 'gears'?

Modular Fuels has a 'hybrid' engine module that could be made to serve the same purpose. Gives you a choice of two engine configurations. Each configuration having two sets of specs and even two sets of fuel...

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It's been a slow week on the parts modding front since I was fiddling with my contribution to the Kerbin City project. That and I had a week off so was enjoying some other games as well!

There's been some interesting discussion on the KSP modders IRC about optimising part memory load, and there's an awful lot I can do with texture sharing on most of my parts that should help lower their memory footprint. If you want to see just how awful my memory optimisation currently is, go look at my RCS blocks. There is some texture sharing there, but I can easily get them all on one texture rather than the four they currently use. My newer parts are being made with texture sharing in mind, as well as simply having better textures overall since I now have a tablet to paint with rather than using my mouse!

Might I suggest that the thrust for the Aerospike would be 190 with a ISP of 380 in vacuum/378 in Atmo to make it competitive with the LV-30? And I also didn't see that post about the plugin :(

Edit: Whoops was in my face the hole time xP yeah I see why but I was thinking of a thruster that didn't have gears like VASMIR but was like it in shape, size, thrust, ISP etc for now :D. For the exhaust you could use that awesome blue color!

Right now the Cutter stats are as follows:

[table=width: 350]

[tr]

[td]Mass[/td]

[td]Thrust[/td]

[td]ISP (Sea level)[/td]

[td]ISP (Vacuum)[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]1.5[/td]

[td]210[/td]

[td]340[/td]

[td]342[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

That puts it between the stock Aerospike and LV-TXX engines in effectiveness at sea level, though it is pretty much the worst inline engine for use in vacuum however due to the low ISP. At one point it actually had ISP that got lower as altitude increased, but that seemed too far from stock to go into a stockalike set!

Is it possible to give RCS ports emissives?

Not without some sort of plugin, as far as I'm aware.

Modular Fuels has a 'hybrid' engine module that could be made to serve the same purpose. Gives you a choice of two engine configurations. Each configuration having two sets of specs and even two sets of fuel...
The coding for a vasmir engine can actually be done using firespitter (If you set the gearing similar to how the sabre engines in the B9 pack work)

Yeah I've been looking at a few plugins that might be able to do it. Firespitter is currently my favoured option since I'd be allowed to chop out the modules I want and recompile them.

You have beaten every single Stocklike addon. :) Nice work!

Thanks, but my parts are nowhere near as high quality as KSPX.

Edited by hoojiwana
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What about more nuclear power options? Nothing special like no power degrade over time or anything like that just a new more powerful reactor that's not like bigger a RTG? It would be much better for these electric thrusters without the need of massive solar arrays. Example: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/JIMO_reactor.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/JIMO_spacecraft.png http://files.air-attack.com/SPACE/jimo/system.gif

If you look you see all the plumbing on the reactors assembles which is required for it to function, of course for now those assembles wouldn't do anything except add size and weight to make it not an OP RTG sized power source. Thoughts?

PS I know of your larger and more powerful RTG's but in order to get power you need a lot of them for sufficient power.

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Could the "Efficiency mode" / "High Power mode" of a vasimr engine be roughly approximated with the selectable modes in B9's SABRE engines? (Already mentioned by Mekan1k)

Edit... I need to leard to read.

Edited by Gryphorim
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So here's the finished engines next to what I based them on:

8bShJck.jpg

Stats are done for them as well, using a similar TWR as the Stocklike linear RCS port (changed in SA 0.6) and the same ISP. All the monopropellent engines end up working pretty well, and far better than their abysmal ISP implies they will. If you're making a lander or short range orbital transfers, then they work pretty great for that. LFO engines are still superior for most things, and these are only a sidegrade at best!

The pictures of the new parts above my reply are quite high quality. :)

Thanks! Still not as high quality as KSPX though. Claira's parts look far more stock than mine do. There's a reason she was brought onto the team.

What about more nuclear power options? Nothing special like no power degrade over time or anything like that just a new more powerful reactor that's not like bigger a RTG? It would be much better for these electric thrusters without the need of massive solar arrays.

If you look you see all the plumbing on the reactors assembles which is required for it to function, of course for now those assembles wouldn't do anything except add size and weight to make it not an OP RTG sized power source. Thoughts?

PS I know of your larger and more powerful RTG's but in order to get power you need a lot of them for sufficient power.

Those things are planned for when I eventually update the PowerGeneration pack. The reason that update hasn't happened yet is threefold; I can't quite wrap my head around how solar panels work, balancing nuclear reactors is very difficult, and the tech tree stuff that was announced for 0.22 means I can try to fiddle with balance a little more easily!

Could the "Efficiency mode" / "High Power mode" of a vasimr engine be roughly approximated with the selectable modes in B9's SABRE engines?

Indeed they could. B9 Aerospace uses (or used) ExsurgentEngineering plugin to do that. I've got an older version of B9 though, so things might be different now.

I'll just leave this here.

Also, I beat you to Radial reaction wheels. Mine are out in the WPA release.

Heh, certainly looks like how I might have done an MPD a couple of months ago. My design for them has always been slightly beyond what I'm capable of and I didn't want to try making them until I thought I might be able to do that design justice. I want to make the MPD's the centerpiece of the EE pack. Well, maybe not going that far, but I want to make something I can really be proud of.

Making parts isn't a race either, especially when rushing something to "beat" someone else can have a severe impact upon the quality of your work.

Dude I love your stuff. Any advice on making stock alike textures?

Look at stock textures and copy them! That's how I started out at least, fumbling about with a mouse, poor UV maps and no idea what I was doing. There's a huge increase in quality between the textures that will be coming out in future compared to what I have out already since I've been UV unwrapping things differently, and I invested in a tablet. I'll go over things in a bit more detail using the Cutter as an example, but take everything with a grain of salt, I barely know what I'm doing. If you compare my work to that of say helldivers, you can really see how much of an amateur I really am!

Everything is done using many many layers, although I probably don't use them to their fullest potential. I tend to use a "fuzzy" brush for much of what I do with the tablet too.

Step zero

Examine related stock parts to see how they look. The idea here is to get a feel for how I should do the latter stages, as well as taking the same colours for use, like the orange paint used on Rockomax parts, or the shade of yellow some pipes use.

Step one

wK61XYp.png

After UV unwrap, the first thing I do is to play around with block colours, getting the shades as close to the stock ones as I can manage. I also move colours around, seeing what works where. If you compare the first version of the Cutter to it's current iteration, you can see the pipe was originally dull flat grey and the orange was too bright. I think changing those really improves the look of it, and I hope you do as well!

Step two

LKoUb1c.png

Edge highlights! If you look at the stock parts, you see the edges of parts are a different shade of colour. This makes the edges appear worn, and helps make each face distinct from those around it. If you look closely at Bac9's parts you can see he takes this to another level of detail. The stock artstyle isn't quite the same as that though, which is why I don't take my highlights that far. If anything my highlights are still wrong because they're too thin.

Step three

ttlva9d.png

After highlights I start fiddling around with other layers on the main colour blocks. Stock parts almost never have a simple flat face of one colour, they all vary a little bit. I try to emulate this by taking the original colour and making it brighter and darker by a few steps and carefully applying that. On the Cutter you can see that I went around the edges of the orange, and added some strips to the flat grey face of the nozzle.

Step four

zmwZxkj.png

The hardest part to do, faking shading. The goal of this is to add depth to the part by carefully darkening places that would be shaded almost all the time. Every change I make here I immediately go and see how it looks on the model in Blender, and I often totally scrap various areas in order to redo them. As you can see on the Cutter, there are areas that still don't look quite right. I also don't hand paint every part of these, sometimes it's easier to draw a straight line and blur it out. The 0.625m monopropellent rocket above uses this in a few places.

Step five

W7fhqUu.png

On top of everything else I add details, like the little warning sticker and the design that sits on the top that you don't see most of the time. Each detail usually takes a few steps of it's own, and almost always requires plenty of fiddling around to place right, or to get looking how I want it. As always, take design pointers from stock parts!

Step six

At the end of all that, I make a specular map of texture and stick that in the alpha channel of the one I'll use in Unity. If the part has an emissive, I'll do that at this stage, along with making a normal map if I feel the part could be improved with one.

Edited by hoojiwana
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regarding the MPD model, I can send you the .skp or I can further work on it. What changes would you have done to it to make it more desireable? Also, I think the VASIMR engines, when you get them in and working, would really be the highlight if the EE pack.

last thing, would it be too much to ask for you do make 2.5m engines with something like a cluster of 4 in the center and an outer ring of 6-8?

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regarding the MPD model, I can send you the .skp or I can further work on it. What changes would you have done to it to make it more desireable?

It's your engine, you keep it and make it your own. MPD's are a rare thing in KSP, so having a few more out there for people to choose from would be nice. As for how to improve it, give it a decent texture. Texturing a part can really bring it to life, and the more effort you put into that the better it will look. Even on simple low poly parts you can add a huge amount of detail with clever texturing. I wouldn't say my parts are a good example of this. B9 aerospace has loads of examples,the best of which is probably the S2 cockpit.

last thing, would it be too much to ask for you do make 2.5m engines with something like a cluster of 4 in the center and an outer ring of 6-8?

Not planning to make any of the current EE engine types into 2.5m parts, or of making cluster engines for Stockalike.

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It's your engine, you keep it and make it your own. MPD's are a rare thing in KSP, so having a few more out there for people to choose from would be nice. As for how to improve it, give it a decent texture. Texturing a part can really bring it to life, and the more effort you put into that the better it will look. Even on simple low poly parts you can add a huge amount of detail with clever texturing. I wouldn't say my parts are a good example of this. B9 aerospace has loads of examples,the best of which is probably the S2 cockpit.

That engine was done up in the style of your pack. If I were to do my own electric engines pack, I'd take some very different routes with it. If you don't want it, a good chunk of it will likely get scrapped.

Not planning to make any of the current EE engine types into 2.5m parts, or of making cluster engines for Stockalike.

:(

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Thank you so much for responding btw! And is your plan to make MPD's long like NERVA's? I see your points about solar panels and if you do make one it should produce over 100 elec per second to stay competitive with Nuclear reactors. Also those Cutters look amazing but the ISP makes my soul burn. Amazing work never the less :D

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Stockalike 0.6 is now available on Spaceport! I decided to release it without the 0.625m propellent tanks since I was taking so long!

If I were to do my own electric engines pack, I'd take some very different routes with it. If you don't want it, a good chunk of it will likely get scrapped.

Well you can still use the nozzle section, and rebuild a new casing and mount for it.

Thank you so much for responding btw! And is your plan to make MPD's long like NERVA's? I see your points about solar panels and if you do make one it should produce over 100 elec per second to stay competitive with Nuclear reactors. Also those Cutters look amazing but the ISP makes my soul burn. Amazing work never the less :D

Yep, the MPD's are going to be pretty big, though how long I don't know just yet. The nuclear reactors and solar panel balancing, well I don't really know. How I compare electrical generators is mass compared to power output. The nuclear reactors will probably end up being worse than solar panels everywhere except past Dres.

As for the Cutter ISP, go and try it out! It's pretty great for 1.25m booster stages I find.

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For today's progress update, I've got this picture here:

eUoiaax.jpg

A small radial decoupler and a small radial stack extender, both of which use the left over space on the existing stack extenders texture, so there will be minimal extra memory used. Continuing the trend of memory optimisation, I completely redid the textures for all the RCS parts and they are now on a single texture as well. That texture has a bit of room left over on it so if you have any suggestions I'm all ears.

Nice work on the aerospike, lovely choice of emissives too.

Thanks, I went with the thrust dependent emissive rather than heat dependent as a stand in for the blue flames that would be along the spike sides.

I love your models! They are so detailed and have great textures.

Thanks! My recent parts have been much higher quality due to better UV unwrapping and my new tablet. Much easier than trying to do anything with just a mouse, and the textures come out looking far better for it as well.

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Okay, so I've downloaded the 0.6 stockalike pack, and the new format for the RCS and MP engines that use {MODEL} parameter to determine which model to use from a list of models in the same part folder, means that these models do not appear in my parts list in VAB or SPH. Is there a plugin dependancy, or any known mod clashes?

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Okay, so I've downloaded the 0.6 stockalike pack, and the new format for the RCS and MP engines that use {MODEL} parameter to determine which model to use from a list of models in the same part folder, means that these models do not appear in my parts list in VAB or SPH. Is there a plugin dependancy, or any known mod clashes?

I had that happen the first time I installed it. If you're like me, you saw the .zip contained a folder named after the mod, as per 0.20+ style, so naturally you dropped that folder in GameData. That won't work. The .zip actually cannot be directly unpacked into your KSP folder like most mods, because inside that mod-named folder is a GameData folder, and inside the GameData folder is yet another mod-named folder, and the pathnames in the config files assume the top-level folder inside the archive does not exist. Dig the deeper mod-named folder out and put it in GameData and it'll work. Alternately, if you're using an unzip program that lets you drill down and selectively unpack a subfolder inside a .zip, you can just go down a level and unpack from there. You just can't unpack the archive as it's currently structured and have it work correctly (without further file management), since the top-level folder shouldn't exist at all (it's at the level that KSP_win should be at, if you were packing from that level... which you shouldn't, since it's named differently on different OS versions of KSP).

tl;dr: Go into your GameData folder, and into your RLA Stockalike 0.6, and you'll find yet another GameData folder, and inside that, yet another RLA_stockalike folder. Pop that folder up two levels, delete the gratuitous RLA Stockalike folder, and all will be fine.

Edited by Gaius
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