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[WIP] Ground Base Landing Rack


Felbourn

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Greetings Kerbanauts! I've teamed up with an artist to work on a Ground Base part after having seen this picture of a NASA proposal.

QPTLzHV.png

Well, I "innocently" tweeted this...

Edited by Felbourn
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Ah. Too bad the stock parts in question (hitchhiker and mobile lab) are not horizontally orientated. The trick for me is I'd have to find 2.5m (or whatever) parts where the IVAs matched this orientation.

A similar part to the "green" one would be cool with wheels. That or the legs retract, and you throw wheel on such that the legs lift them off the ground once aligned.

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I can make parts do anything for any mod. That said, the greenhouse section is not the mod. The landing base is. But if we DO add a real module to include as a default, we can make it work as a greenhouse if a Life Support mod is installed, yes.

Maybe we ought to include a default module too since this may be a common request.

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So, it's sorta like making landing gear made specifically for a certain part shape and orientation, except that this "gear" is technically a separate object that, I would assume, properly configured and oriented parts could then settle down on, and be locked into place with, the "cradle" so to speak. Interesting. Providing, at the very least, a template model with an example config for a properly oriented and configured "module" for the rack would help other modders make use of this.

From the image, however, it looks like orientation isn't necessarily required to be horizontal. For instance, the second building in the first image is oriented vertically (despite the height of it being almost identical to the width, which would beg the question "which is height and which is width?") and that will be the trick: how to configure the part to accept connections from differently-oriented modular... uhh... modules.

Edited by Gaalidas
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Hello Felbourn, and everyone else!

I've been very busy at work the last couple of days, so have not been too active here unfortunately.

Just a small update from my side:

I've improved the models since last time, geometrically speaking. The rest of the detailing will come from texturing the parts. I am done animating the antenna, it has 3 animations baked into one. The first animation rotates the antenna from a horizontal position parallel to the lander up in a 90 degree vertical position. It then extends its telecopic piston, and finally pivots and pans the antenna by using its hinge on the top.

All models are imported into Unity and I am currently working on the colliders for the "c-bed" part, which turns out, is the most difficult one to get done. It needs multiple colliders in order to work how I envisioned it would, meaning I want to configure it in such a way that it is possible to surface attach parts to any flat area. It is not as easy as using a mesh collider or a box collider.

Anyway that's all I have to report at this moment. If you (Felbourn), or anyone else wants to test out the models (untextured) as soon as I finish the colliders, I'll post a download link here. I'd love some feedback on the models and animation before I finish the parts, in case there is anything I need to add/remove and so on.

And for anyone who still doesn't understand which parts specifically we are working on, everything in this picture except the "tank" is what we are currently adding to the game. The base is divided into two separate pieces, while the antenna is the third.

(Picture of the old model)

5Wnc6bY.png

Edited by liquidhype
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Yes the cradle will have a surface node on the curve and a stack node on the base. That will go to the landing rack that has a stack node. You can use the landing rack without the cradle for stack mounts, and with the cradle for horizontal landing.

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Yes the cradle will have a surface node on the curve and a stack node on the base. That will go to the landing rack that has a stack node. You can use the landing rack without the cradle for stack mounts, and with the cradle for horizontal landing.

If you plan on having parts attach to it only using nodes, I can just slap a box collider on it and call it a day. I was thinking of making it possible to grab, lets say a battery, and slap it on the side if one so desired. Or in your case, "more lights!" :)

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Oh, as far as if these can HAVE surface attached objects, yes we should allow that since it has some nice flat surfaces. If you want to make it work enough to let me get started on CFGs, you can finish the "make it allow surface attachments" part separately. I just need enough for now to enable attaching IT, but don't need things to be attached TO it yet.

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Welp. I also saw your tweet, and have been working on this in my own time (without telling anyone because I have a terrible work ethic and never finish anything). If anyone wants to have a look at the finished article, which should be done in at most 2 weeks, I'll be happy to put it up here. Any constructive criticism would also be greatly appreciated!

I've also been considering making a part similar to this in a different style, more in line with the B9 parts (not sure how great the spindly parts are going to look in game)...

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What I could do is become the place where one-off parts come to live. I'm not sure I'll ever do a complete mod, but I get these ideas for various parts all the time, and I am not an artist, and the artists around me at work are not really KSP players so they're not making parts either. At the same time I see lots of artists who have awesome parts but no idea how to make CFGs, or do game balance, or program C# plugins. It's the perfect marriage if we get together. I'd be happy to help you with your ground rack as well, give feedback, make CFGs that work on both, etc. I'm also an industry veteran game programmer. You know my work. So if people are interested in continuing into game development as a career then this is not a bad way to get started.

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Yea 90% of the reason for me wanting complicated colliders was so that you could add glorious lights all over the place :) The other 10% was for adding batteries, engines and all those other "useless" things.

Edited by liquidhype
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Of you guys need help on some module manager i am able to :) just PM me privately and i will se what i can do ;)

EDIT: also you should name the greenhouse GH-1 "cradle" greenhouse for fun.

Oh! Also.. add a IVA too :D

Edited by Joshwoo69
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Not from a mod it's from NASA site, I just put it in game to see but don't know how to take the models apart :(

EDIT- There is alot of great stuff on NASA site like this great looking rover but just got half of it in game MMSEV.png

Edited by Mecripp2
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Not from a mod it's from NASA site, I just put it in game to see but don't know how to take the models apart :(

EDIT- There is alot of great stuff on NASA site like this great looking rover but just got half of it in game https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72893034/Test%20Parts/MMSEV.png

Oh I see. And those models are not high poly? Seems like most of the NASA 3D models are very high poly and usually causes problems in KSP.

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