[WIP] Add on Airlocks

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

@TiktaalikDreaming Hi not sure this will be of any help but did you know that IVAs do not have to be large ? they can in fact be tiny,  IF you build an IVA a 50% of normal scale, as long as the scale is 1 in unity then your kerbs will magically resize themselves to fit in the space. It is in fact possible to fit a crew of four comfortably in the space occupied by a Kerbals helmet so taking up virtually no space inside any other part

[TiktaalikDreaming]

3 hours ago, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

@TiktaalikDreaming Hi not sure this will be of any help but did you know that IVAs do not have to be large ? they can in fact be tiny,  IF you build an IVA a 50% of normal scale, as long as the scale is 1 in unity then your kerbs will magically resize themselves to fit in the space. It is in fact possible to fit a crew of four comfortably in the space occupied by a Kerbals helmet so taking up virtually no space inside any other part

You CAN.  But since 1.1 and the IVA Overlay, I prefer to match IVAs to the part.  Otherwise it'll end up breaking someone's experience.  And, for airlock anyway, the IVAs are pretty simple.  No controls or instruments, just a cylinder an placing a kerbal.

Oh, and new pic of proto part, medium sized AirDock.

Edited September 12, 2016 by TiktaalikDreaming

[mindseyemodels]

so its not really possible to make placeable crew hatches that dont need crew transfers?

[TiktaalikDreaming]

3 hours ago, mindseyemodels said:

so its not really possible to make placeable crew hatches that dont need crew transfers?

Such a part might work on egress, by selecting a kerbal, and then eva, assuming it was the only batch on the craft that wasn't obstructed. But during ingress the game definitely checks for a spare seat on the part with the hatch.

[tater]

The small hatch always disallows EVA, it says it's obstructed.

Doesn't matter, I'll use the larger one

This is really cool. It would be nice if it was more obvious which side was up for use on landers.

(I just noticed the grab bars are set with on at the top! My bad.)

[TiktaalikDreaming]

57 minutes ago, tater said:

The small hatch always disallows EVA, it says it's obstructed.

Doesn't matter, I'll use the larger one

This is really cool. It would be nice if it was more obvious which side was up for use on landers.

(I just noticed the grab bars are set with on at the top! My bad.)

I'll take a look at that hatch. It's been a while since I've even looked sideways at this mod.

[tater]

5 hours ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

I'll take a look at that hatch. It's been a while since I've even looked sideways at this mod.

I tested with a few different parts to make sure it wasn't an issue with the part in question, including the stock hitchhiker.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Oh gawd.  Some of this mod is awful.    The UV unwrap is giving me cancer.  I'm quickly testing shifting the airlock trigger box, as I suspect it was just being obstructed by the ladder triggers.  But I may just accidentally completely revise all the UVs and textures.  That will take a bit longer than moving a box collider though. 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

OK, fixed the hatch, was actually intersecting the main colliders too much.  Also a very quick texture revision on the short airlock.  But I'm going to do a full revamp pass on the airlocks.

I also noticed the mod build has the full JAXA airlock and the short one, plus the rather silly tardis-esque thing.  But it does not have the medium sized or the combo docking node airlock.  It's strangely like I never finished. 

 

[tater]

It's a pretty useful mod, honestly. The tardis door... I won't be using that .

Something with a platform and ladder might be kinda cool.

Here's what I did with it, BTW (you'll get the platform ref):

[TiktaalikDreaming]

22 minutes ago, tater said:

It's a pretty useful mod, honestly. The tardis door... I won't be using that .

Something with a platform and ladder might be kinda cool.

Here's what I did with it, BTW (you'll get the platform ref):

Nice. I did originally intend some airlocks based on things other than the Japanese ISS lock, which is primarily for science experiments after all. And maybe one or two that don't get buried into the middle of the other part's IVA. Adding an extending ladder and so on would certainly add some interest to the parts.

[tater]

6 minutes ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

Nice. I did originally intend some airlocks based on things other than the Japanese ISS lock, which is primarily for science experiments after all. And maybe one or two that don't get buried into the middle of the other part's IVA. Adding an extending ladder and so on would certainly add some interest to the parts.

Yeah, the airlock for experiments is a use case that can't really work in KSP well. An alternate way to use that might be to make one that has a hatch that actually opens, and the player could put a little cubesat in there? Or something? LOL. With something like ExtraPlanetary Launchpads, you could have that be a place to create new spacecraft, but they have to be only some tiny mass such that they fit (a way of launching sats from a station, but very, very tiny ones, only. (I realize this is crazy, just trying to figure how you'd use the JAXA airlock (or the new Nanoracks one) in KSP. I suppose a tiny, craft airlock would be more like a KIS locker...

Something that deploys a platform and ladder (platform sticks out like a tongue, and ladder flops down?) could be pretty useful. I'd thought about trying to set it up for TU to use it so that the colors could match, well, anything.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Begun:  

This allows me to procrastinate about that landing gear I was trying to rig up correctly to have it all work without extreme silliness.

Ladder still to come.

IVA just about ready to go at the same time though,

[tater]

7 hours ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

Begun:  

This allows me to procrastinate about that landing gear I was trying to rig up correctly to have it all work without extreme silliness.

Ladder still to come.

IVA just about ready to go at the same time though,

I'm out of likes this morning, but I  like.

 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

I had mostly got both the new squarish side mounted airlock done (apart from weathering effects etc, and populating the IVA) and also remeshed and started texturing the forgotten combo airlock and docking node part I thought I had in this mod already. 

I do now also want to go back and bake AO maps for the IVAs, as it works really nicely on those backed mesh look walls;

But one (or several) things at a time.

[tater]

Cool!

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Oops.

realised I never dropped a link to the github repo.  Dev releases will get synced up to github, with occasional  releases there.  When I'm happy with them, they'll become full releases on spacedock.  Although, being a half forgotten WIP, the spacedock versions aren't a lot more release worthy than git builds.  Anyways, added a link to the OP over to this thing https://github.com/TiktaalikDreaming/Airlocks/releases

[tater]

[TiktaalikDreaming]

So I pushed out 0.6.4 to spacedock and then remembered I hadn't done the texture for the IVA of the side mounted airlock.  Anyway, I tested the docking node airlock (for some reason I think I had trouble getting it to work once upon a time, but it seems to operate fine now).

Funny thing is the docking nodes act a bit like rubber bands, so if you spin the joined craft not along the long axis, then it pulls them apart, but they're still connected by mystical dock forces, and you can still happily walk between craft.

Anyway, github has a textured IVA for the side airlock, and I'm going to tidy some of the old JAXA locks before pushing to spacedock again.  

(I really need to remember to add lighting to my IVAs.  )

 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

So, turns out new parts are much more interesting to work on than redoing things from a couple of years ago.

For the large docking airlock, I've taken inspiration from the universal ISS docking nodes and the Shuttle docking node (very very similar).  The inside space will have a 2 kerbal limit, a console for docking (with docking cam) and storage space for spare suits.  Because quite frankly, a 2.5m diameter space is huge.

UV unwrapping and AO baking as I go, I'm hoping the texturing won't take all that long.

  

No, I'm not going to do colliders for the alignment petals, although I'm sure it would actually function.  The physics load on the CPU would not be something most people would thank me for.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Got the IVA around the right way and working.  No props besides chairs yet.

Tested docking by making it the control room for a really silly rover;

And the docking cam (will be a screen with collider for the side facing console and a view from the centre facing forward) now works with only one small detail that needs fixing.

Also, I will need to make more complex colliders for the front, as my initial plan results in kerbals hovering over empty space, which just looks weird;

[TiktaalikDreaming]

I am finally revisiting the original part, the good old Kibo "Japanese" airlock. I redid the UV unwrap from scratch.  This time it shall (and does) have a normal map.  Which it really needed, esp on the outside areas.

I've also added the little camera placement that exists on the real one, and have the intention of having a small screen inside the IVA that you can click on for a camera switch.  Because there's no window.

Also, I've removed the petal colliders on the large docking node, as they broke compatibility with the stock nodes.  The collider bundle still has a hollow so you can access the door though.

Next up, I'll be re-unwrapping the IVA, and converting the IVA/External to use one texture atlas, as the standard texel density leaves significant space on a 1k texture for this.

[theJesuit]

19 hours ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

have the intention of having a small screen inside the IVA that you can click on for a camera switch.  Because there's no window.

That sounds awesome... like a stockish docking camera kinda.  Could we please have that on the docking port too?

Peace.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

2 hours ago, theJesuit said:

That sounds awesome... like a stockish docking camera kinda.  Could we please have that on the docking port too?

Peace.

Yep. It's already in the large docking node airlock, specifically as a docking cam. I'm thinking the medium one has a window central and just the traditional window camera switch would do. Either way, I need to add at least a bit of control panel and modules to it before such a thing is useful. And there's not a huge amount of space in that thing.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Messing around with things to put in the docking cam view;