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[WIP] KerbinRover Off-road vehicles


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7 hours ago, thomash said:

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.  

I've had Bob manage to flip it spectacularly into somersaults and have it land upright.  It was on it's roof though, so there's a spot under the bonnet of kerbals-can-be-under-collider and then weird stuff happens.  It's actually harder to flip from it's side.  Good work Val.  :-)

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Am I doing something wrong?
In 1.1.2, I added the wheels to the body, launched the rover, released the brakes, hit 'Start Your Engines Gentlemen' and have tried every key on the keyboard.  No movement when I try to go forward or back, and no response from the wheels to left or right turn controls.

It's dead, Jim!

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12 minutes ago, cpottinger said:

Am I doing something wrong?
In 1.1.2, I added the wheels to the body, launched the rover, released the brakes, hit 'Start Your Engines Gentlemen' and have tried every key on the keyboard.  No movement when I try to go forward or back, and no response from the wheels to left or right turn controls.

It's dead, Jim!

Yeah, nevermind - I figured it out.  I had attached wheels incorrectly.
Of course, you try, try and try, can't figure out something you know should be simple. And then as soon as you ask for help, pop! there's the answer, grinning at you.

Edited by cpottinger
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32 minutes ago, cpottinger said:

Yeah, nevermind - I figured it out.  I had attached wheels incorrectly.
Of course, you try, try and try, can't figure out something you know should be simple. And then as soon as you ask for help, pop! there's the answer, grinning at you.

Speaking of wheel attachment - it might be a good idea to add attachment nodes on rover body and wheels. Would be easier to just snap wheels in place without annoying fiddling with gizmos and symmetry.

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3 hours ago, cpottinger said:

Yeah, nevermind - I figured it out.  I had attached wheels incorrectly.
Of course, you try, try and try, can't figure out something you know should be simple. And then as soon as you ask for help, pop! there's the answer, grinning at you.

It's fairly easy to get the Wheel Obstructed annoyance.  With the wheels where they *should* be, I'm pretty sure KSP thinks the wheels shouldn't work.  And, you can't tell until you launch.  It's in the right click menu for the wheel after launch.  It's basically a case where the collision mesh for the body is too close to the wheel and KSP shuts the wheel down.  This is the reason I'm tossing the idea of adding a sedan/hatchback type car.  The gap from wheel arch to wheel just isn't big enough.

2 hours ago, Rho-Mu 34 said:

Speaking of wheel attachment - it might be a good idea to add attachment nodes on rover body and wheels. Would be easier to just snap wheels in place without annoying fiddling with gizmos and symmetry.

I have considered this.  But I like them as more generic wheels.  I could add them as an option.  So surface plus stack nodes, just hold alt(mod) to disable surface attach type thing.

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22 hours ago, PauloRazen said:

Nice mod, but, need better wheels, its is painful. You need to try many times to get this work.

It's intrinsic in wheels inside a wheel arch.  Wheels in Unity need elbow room out to about +25% of radius apparently, and that means moving them a bit from where they *should* be.  I'll be adding stack nodes to place wheels at a nominal functioning position for the next update.

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I assume I'm doing something wrong, but while attempting to assemble the vehicle inside the spaceplane hanger I cannot for the life of me get the wheels to attach inside the wheelarches. There is no place I can find inside there that the wheel unit will attach to, it just stays highlighted red - what obvious thing am I missing? Is there a very specific place I need to hover the wheel part over? Or should I start looking for incompatible mods?

Thanks in advance.

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OK, having fiddled with it some more I'm not hundred percent on this but I don't think this mod likes Editor Extensions - having removed said utility I've managed to get a functioning Land-Rover put together.

I do have to say though, it's really quite tricky to get the wheels to attach anyway - again, unless I've been doing something ridiculous.

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31 minutes ago, Doghead13 said:

OK, having fiddled with it some more I'm not hundred percent on this but I don't think this mod likes Editor Extensions - having removed said utility I've managed to get a functioning Land-Rover put together.

I do have to say though, it's really quite tricky to get the wheels to attach anyway - again, unless I've been doing something ridiculous.

I'll be adding stack nodes to an updated release in an hour or two.  Just need to run some more tests.  I have noticed that stack nodes will not do mirrored symmetry, so you'll end up attaching 4 different wheels, rather than 2 sets of 2.  But of course, I haven't turned off surface attach, so you can still attach the wheels the "old way".  Although, for that, it'd be nice to have an equivalent to the holding Alt so you can disable the stack attach.

 

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Just thought I should let people know what I'm working on.

I've decided to add some more generic parts for 0.625m for building rovers.  So a 1 kerbal 0.625 inline pod (with slightly squared off side to make wheel attachment easier).  Two "engines".  One takes liqFuel and either atmosphere or oxidizer, and converts to electricity.  AKA a generator.  I'll be doing up some different sizes of this, but for now, just one.  And an engine that produces a new resource, UnicornPower (it's like HorsePower, but invisible).

Add to that 3 sets of wheels still very much in dev.  A generic electric wheel modeled off 50's racing wheels, cos I think they look good sticking out the side of a rover.  Plus an unpowered, steering enabled wheel with lots of grip (aka, front wheels).  And some very gripy powered, unsteered wheels that run on UnicornPower.  The Unicorn powered set-up so far is pure silliness, mostly to see how such a thing behaves in KSP.  Off-planet rovering would be the elctric wheels plus a power source of some type, of which the generator is just one.

 

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Awesome! With stack nodes it's much easier to assemble new rover, or even build one in the field.

The only extra feature i hope to see somewhere in the future is RPM integration. MFD is always useful when it comes to exploration.
 

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12 minutes ago, Rho-Mu 34 said:

Awesome! With stack nodes it's much easier to assemble new rover, or even build one in the field.

The only extra feature i hope to see somewhere in the future is RPM integration. MFD is always useful when it comes to exploration.
 

The original dash had a MFD where the CD/GPS console would be.  I'm very unhappy with the dash at the moment.  From time to time I look at prop writing, cos I'd dearly love a speedo and radial fuel gauge.

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2 hours ago, Eskandare said:

Why not call UnicornPower "Torque" it's  invisible but my Acura sure in hell makes sure me feel it. :P

Torque though is not a unit.  It'd be Nm or similar.  But, torque isn't conserved between engine and wheel like energy/power is.  As you gear upwards, torque decreases and speed increases.  But power stays the same.  I have considered making a high rez torque curve for wheel speed though.

Obviously, for easy direct conversion, power in kW would be easiest.  But, kW doesn't say "mechanical" power as clearly as Horse power.  And then an imagined kerbal manager to engineer conversation keeps going through my head;

"So, what's horse power again?"

"It originally meant the amount of energy you can get out of a horse."

"What, when you burn them?"

"No, the mechanical work they do when you harness them"

"So, can I see the horses? I like horses."

"No, the horses are invisible"

"Oh, like unicorns then.  Why didn't you just say Unicorn power?  Geez."

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9 hours ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

Torque though is not a unit.  It'd be Nm or similar.  But, torque isn't conserved between engine and wheel like energy/power is.  As you gear upwards, torque decreases and speed increases.  But power stays the same.  I have considered making a high rez torque curve for wheel speed though.

Obviously, for easy direct conversion, power in kW would be easiest.  But, kW doesn't say "mechanical" power as clearly as Horse power.  And then an imagined kerbal manager to engineer conversation keeps going through my head;

"So, what's horse power again?"

"It originally meant the amount of energy you can get out of a horse."

"What, when you burn them?"

"No, the mechanical work they do when you harness them"

"So, can I see the horses? I like horses."

"No, the horses are invisible"

"Oh, like unicorns then.  Why didn't you just say Unicorn power?  Geez."

In that case someone should create a random wildlife mod and have unicorns be one of the creatures on Kerbin...  oh wait... we won't be able to see them.

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12 hours ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

Torque though is not a unit.  It'd be Nm or similar.  But, torque isn't conserved between engine and wheel like energy/power is.  As you gear upwards, torque decreases and speed increases.  But power stays the same.  I have considered making a high rez torque curve for wheel speed though.

Obviously, for easy direct conversion, power in kW would be easiest.  But, kW doesn't say "mechanical" power as clearly as Horse power.  And then an imagined kerbal manager to engineer conversation keeps going through my head;

"So, what's horse power again?"

"It originally meant the amount of energy you can get out of a horse."

"What, when you burn them?"

"No, the mechanical work they do when you harness them"

"So, can I see the horses? I like horses."

"No, the horses are invisible"

"Oh, like unicorns then.  Why didn't you just say Unicorn power?  Geez."

I didn't go quite so far with Rovers & Roadsters and ended up with Khorsepower. I am liking UnicornPower though. "What's the UPs of this engine?" Sounds better.

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2 minutes ago, AlphaAsh said:

I didn't go quite so far with Rovers & Roadsters and ended up with Khorsepower. I am liking UnicornPower though. "What's the UPs of this engine?" Sounds better.

Khorsepower sounds a bit... um...  coarse.  I'm thinking Unicorns are where it's at.  :-D

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1 minute ago, AlphaAsh said:

Now I must do a KP to UP converter or something. For science mod integration.

Well, for reference, I'll be using a direct conversion of horsepower for craft before I half scale them.  So, basically 8 horsepower = 1 unicorn power.  On the assumption that 1 Electrical Charge = 1 kJ.

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16 hours ago, Eskandare said:

Ok, one more album...

 

@TiktaalikDreaming I know these aren't the typical Land Rover Colours, but a few patterns had been used by the British Army. If you'd like, I'll put them in my drop box if you want to use them.

If you make them available, I'll add them in and put the names in the config.  :-)  The cornier the name the better.  I do still want to do the zebra pattern and that very ubiquitous (and IMHO ugly) almost white with bent stripe that seemed to be on all Defenders about 15-20 years ago. This land-rover-defender-africa-expedition-ka

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My Rover croaked.  It worked fine the other day, but now it won't go.  I started the engine, upped the throttle and nothing.  Not forward or backward.  The wheels don't turn and the front wheels don't steer.  Anybody encounter this?

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1 hour ago, thomash said:

My Rover croaked.  It worked fine the other day, but now it won't go.  I started the engine, upped the throttle and nothing.  Not forward or backward.  The wheels don't turn and the front wheels don't steer.  Anybody encounter this?

Wheel Blocked = yes.

This is caused by the wheel arches being too close to the wheels.  Some time between 1.1 and 1.1.2 KSP seems to have got more aggressive in how much elbow room the wheelCilliders need.  And, I added colliders the the majority of the Rover surface, so encountering the issue will be a lot more likely.  The latest version has stack nodes that should place the wheels low enough to avoid the issue.

I did also note recently, a perfectly functional Rover became wheel blocked after I added a surface attached strip light above the rear wheel, even though said light strip was attached to a collider that obviously wasn't causing the issue. 

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