curtquarquesso

This is terrific! Great to see Fuji return.

@Beale, wish I had more time to invest in KSP and in this development of Tantares. This thread holds a lot of great memories for me, honestly. Best of luck if you ever start to develop Tantares for KSP2 one day. I remember taking a few stabs at PBR way back when. Good times...

Ye, Beale, yeeeee... (can anyone say a sh"t-ton of polygons???) Feeling a lil' nostalgic, that's all...

Ok, this did it for me. I'm going to start a new save of KSP and get back into the game. Can I get a list of graphical mods? That looks flipping fantastic.

I'm breaking relative radio silence to voice my enthusiastic approval of this image. Well done.

Is this essentially the PBR shader update that was talked about so long ago, but never came to be? Because if so, that would be totally awesome...

I attempted to hand over the Wings model to Beale, but was unable to locate it unfortunately. It's not a very difficult shape to model at all. He's already done the little yellow IGLA antenna, and made a docking light, so it's sensible that he finish up the Soyuz parts with a cupola. @Beale, what think you?

I still poke my head in here and check up on you guys fairly often. I've given up on running KSP until I have a Windows machine built for it. My interests have shift toward building spacecraft in LEGO. (though for what I've spent on LEGO over the past year, I could have built a decent machine instead...) Cygnus Build https://imgur.com/a/fQa5n Soyuz MS Build https://imgur.com/a/fpg8D Delta II Build https://imgur.com/a/3kWir Saturn V to Falcon 9 Conversion https://imgur.com/a/ISqhs P.S. Huh, are imgur album embeds broken now?

Wow. What an amazing evolution of style. It's like Tantares HD. It's got a lot of depth to it. If only KSP could shade it properly in-engine.

Modeling looks excellent. I really love the design and nozzle configuration. I've been majorly out of the loop, and this was the first I've seen of this model. My first thought when looking at the part was "huh, weird that he shaded the model, but didn't apply any textures or color." There definitely needs to be a contrast between the nozzles, and their housing. It has the appearance of an RCS nozzle made from clay.

@RoverDude, this is probably the most you've ever said on this topic, and it's really and truly appreciated. I can relate with you, and understand where you're coming from when our and other developers take the time to discuss things, and let us know what's going on. "Sorry, NDA" does SQUAD absolutely no PR favors, and kills any interest in KSP development. Because of this game's deep modding potential, I'll argue it's as fun to mod and develop for, as it is to play. It's nice to know what people are thinking, and where people are coming from. If there is an art style and direction being pursued, can you explain why it's not being applied retroactively to older parts, and instead only being implemented on new parts that are going to be released only for players that purchase DLC? An element of what I believe makes a game "feature complete" is a cohesive art style that has consistent quality, and KSP still doesn't have that. I think the "placeholder" term arose when people were expecting a stock part art pass. After PorkJet redid every aero part in the game, it was somewhat expected that the rocket parts would be brought up to similar quality, and people therefore started to view the rocket parts as "placeholder", as they were to be redone soon. That hasn't happened, and instead, Squad is backtracking on it's earlier plans to do an art pass on the rocket parts for reasons they won't share at the moment.

No plans at the moment. Tantares has gotten a total overhaul recently, so it'll be some time. There are some craft files that have been recently posted though if you browse through the Tantares topic though.

In addition to what MaxZhao said, I began a topic on this some time ago, and advocated for add-on authors to make use of various unity features allow this functionality to exist in KSP and be useful, and not just for looks.

Go for it. I'm still re-learning Wings3D, and have yet to get Unity up and running again.

He certainly has my blessing. It basically just functions as a docking light. My Unity setup for it consisted of a light beam to illuminate your target, and one soft point light that casts some light on the parts surroundings the window for a pretty glow. Very easy to configure. Old screen:

Surprising to see the QOS docking window still in use. I've since lost the original model for it, so to update it for new Tantares, I'd need to start from scratch.

Aside from all this, will Cormorant Aeronology and AB Launchers suit your needs? Cormorant Aeronology has the Buran parts you're asking for, and AB Launchers has the Energia parts you're looking for. Matter settled?

Here's your Energia parts. They work great with Cormorant Aeronology Buran parts.

Thank you for your service. Can you, or anyone else here recommend good values for SMURFF to make it comfortably playable?

Hidy-ho neighbor!

Apologies for the late reply. Been away from KSP and the forums for a while. Glad to see these types of docking ports really catching on. After messing around with them in the editor: • The model is modeled such that it's 11.25º offset (or whatever the angle is) from parts that follow stock convention. This causes nasty vertex alignment issues. Obviously not fixable without major remodeling, so do what this information what you will. (Also, some parts have 24 sides, and some have 32. This also causes graphical ugliness in many cases.) • The docking process is terrific. Great configurations for roll snap, magnetism, etc. I like that the magnetism isn't as OP as stock. Very nice. • The base on the passive side isn't working for me. It's not 1.25m, and it's not 0.9375m, so what is it supposed to be compatible with then? • Animation of the docking ring is great. Nice work on the telescopic control arms. • Guide fins and other metallic bits could use more specularity. They're a bit dull. (insert gripe over pbr shader support) Keep it up!

Heyo. Thanks to @NathanKell, there are now parameters you can define in the part configs for docking ports that define gender, acquire torque and roll, as well as rotational snaps that make sure docking ports align when docked. Collision-based alignment fins allows for really fun and immersive gameplay, but you have to weigh it against the performance cost, and any risk of accidental kraken-ing and general collision weirdness. I think a bumper and rotational snaps defined in the config are the best and safest way to go. Ven's Stock Revamp, CxAerospace, Tantares, and BDB all currently feature soft-docking and bumpers, so you can look to any one of those mods for cfg info to draw from. The real tricky part is dealing with the nodes in the VAB. You have to make some decisions regarding whether your nodes will activate or deactivate depending on animation state, and whether you'll use the attachment node as your docking node reference, or whether you'll have a deployable docking node similar to the nodes on any of the stock shielded Clamp-O-Trons. Keep me apprised.

This tends to get asked a lot. Any way that info could go in the OP?

I keep forgetting to mention this. It's a combination of the larger parts, as well as some smaller surface attach parts. Gemini and Vostok RCS parts have always clipped too deep into stuff.

YES. I can confirm this. I've been looking through the logs for the issue. It happens 100% when attaching parts in the VAB. Not during scene changes or flight. I can replicate and provide logs. Happens like clockwork every 10 minutes or so. Here's the end of the log right before crash: Updating Skookum (Filename: /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/artifacts/generated/common/runtime/UnityEngineDebugBindings.gen.cpp Line: 64) Voxelization Time (ms): 215 (Filename: /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/artifacts/generated/common/runtime/UnityEngineDebugBindings.gen.cpp Line: 64) Std dev for smoothing: 3 voxel total vol: 27.3548548566617 filled vol: 13.0098882233547 (Filename: /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/artifacts/generated/common/runtime/UnityEngineDebugBindings.gen.cpp Line: 64) Receiving unhandled NULL exception Obtained 10 stack frames. "Updating Skookum" is the point at which I'm attaching to SRBs to a rocket, then it hangs indefinitely at "Obtained 10 stack frames." At that point, waiting won't make it crash or come back, I have to force quit in OS X.