[1.8.x] Kerbal Foundries -- Continued - Tracks, Wheels, and Gear

[Shadowmage]

1 hour ago, 0111narwhalz said:

1.) My Bounder is desirous of a swaybar. It unweights the inside front wheel and has lackluster turning because. If the rear suspension didn't let the body roll so much, it could keep the inside wheel weighted.
2.) Computer-controlled talk between the repulsors.

Well, to be fair, #1 is an unsupported use of repulsors.  (they won't work that way in the future, if I can ever find a way to ignore same-vessel colliders when doing raycasts without significant overhead).

However, I suppose adding a bit more magic pixie dust to the already highly magical parts isn't going to break any of the (non-existent) balance on them.  (And it would actually be more work to exclude repulsors from the anti-roll-bar functionality than to just let hem have it as well).

On a side note -- your use of repulsors there would be more suited to a strut-like part that had a physically visible spring-mesh and exerted spring forces.... (just an idea, don't bug me to implement it, it belongs far more in IR as it would only be usable with IR joints....)

[0111narwhalz]

3 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

On a side note -- your use of repulsors there would be more suited to a strut-like part that had a physically visible spring-mesh and exerted spring forces.... (just an idea, don't bug me to implement it, it belongs far more in IR as it would only be usable with IR joints....)

Oh, of course, but I don't have the appropriate skills to bring the models into the game. I've no idea how to make parts, much less make them work with KSPWheel. Plus there's no free-moving linear joints in IR, AFAIK.

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

1 minute ago, 0111narwhalz said:

Plus there's no free-moving linear joints in IR

But with some adjustments in the cfg you can make an extendatron behave like a sprung damper, , As stock the spring and damper values are 0 this effective makes a solid joint, adding spring and damping softens the joints, in the same way  doing the same to a rotatron gives you something that can be used as a sprung and damped pivot for a trailing arm suspension

[0111narwhalz]

Just now, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

But with some adjustments in the cfg you can make an extendatron behave like a sprung damper, , As stock the spring and damper values are 0 this effective makes a solid joint, adding spring and damping softens the joints, in the same way  doing the same to a rotatron gives you something that can be used as a sprung and damped pivot for a trailing arm suspension

You whaa?

mad typing commences

[stk2008]

Please forgive me if I am being stupid but I cant seem to use the KF Simple Track.

 

I have the track for the left side but I cant use the same track for the right as the attach node is only on one side.

 

Thanks

[Shadowmage]

1 hour ago, stk2008 said:

Please forgive me if I am being stupid but I cant seem to use the KF Simple Track.

 

I have the track for the left side but I cant use the same track for the right as the attach node is only on one side.

 

Thanks

Surface attach?  That is how I mount all my wheels/tracks/whatnot.

File a bug-report on the node issue though and I can probably get it cleaned up for the next release.

 

Edit -- that part, the Simple Track, is a bit of an oddball.  It is intended to -only- be mounted in symmetry.  Attempts to use it with multiple single-part-placements will always result in two 'left' tracks.

Edited March 3, 2017 by Shadowmage

[Shadowmage]

Hoping to have an update available later today, or perhaps tomorrow.  Should fix up a few bugs as well as add some of the recently discussed features:

• Anti-Roll -- in-game and working quite well.  Only works on parts placed in symmetry in the editor.  Additional WIP options exist for pre-rigged/welded type parts to enable anti-roll linking in multiple colliders in the same part.
• Two new wheels -- the 'truck' style wheels shown earlier in the week, single and dual wheel.

I'm currently working through adding a new APU-controller module.  Current line of work is a derivative of the stock ResourceConverter module as is used in the stock fuel-cells -- this takes care of a lot of the heavy lifting for resource conversion, and removes the necessity of the ModuleEngines setup that was in use.  Will be adding custom code to the module to manage the effects and animations and enable manual throttle control and linking to main throttle.  Thinking there might be two APUs eventually (or one with swappable inputs) -- one for 'open cycle' and one for 'closed cycle'.  Open cycle would use intake-air, closed cycle would use oxidizer.

Next up will be some cleanup/fixup on both the 'Screw' and 'Skid' parts.  I have some ideas that should make them both more usable and reliable, as well as cleaning up the L/R part bits on the screw-drive.  Hoping to also squeeze these into the next release, but will depend on how long the APU coding will take.

[damerell]

It'll certainly be a great boon if the APU has "correct" power/weight/fuel-consumption, to at least be able to use a sensibly balanced set of KF parts, so this is very encouraging.

[Space Scumbag]

Just found the thread after a longer break form KSP.  Awesome news for me, Kerbal Foundries is back. I have waited for it.

Thank you and all helpers for your work!  

[Shadowmage]

Updated release is available:

https://github.com/shadowmage45/KerbalFoundries2/releases/tag/2.0.1.4

Lots of bugfixes in the updated KSPWheels plugin, a couple reworked/fixed parts (skid, screw, APU), and three new parts.

Some of the highlights:

@TiktaalikDreaming's debut part for Kerbal Foundries -- the Large Hydraulic Leg.  A large industrial style leg well suited to construction equipment or landers needing a lot of clearance.  This is also the first of the landing legs that will be coming to KF over the next months.

APU is re-enabled, with an updated module capable of either closed or open-cycle operation.  Includes built in air-intake for open-cycle mode.  Subject to further balance changes and bugfixing.

Screw Drive is working as intended now (subject to further balance).  Works on land in in the water, even when fully submerged.

Skid is no longer super-sticky, and once again slides nicely.  Suspension rigging reworked so that it follows the terrain much better.  Steering sold separately.

Single and Dual 'Truck' styled tires.  Reworked from the Large Wheel model.  Configs WIP.

Anti-Roll stability function - reduces body sway.  Helps keep the body of the craft level relative to the wheels.  Enable it for high-speed cornering, disable it for better rough-terrain handling.  Only works on parts placed in two-way symmetry.  Feature is still a bit WIP, may have bugs in certain setups/parts, so please report anything that you find.

[Drew Kerman]

Not sure if the "Link to Main Throttl" label in the APU PAW is a typo or just clipped text since its really small

[Fireheart318]

BEHOLD!

 

Edited March 6, 2017 by Fireheart318

[Fireheart318]

Can we have "shopping cart wheels"?

I want to build a T-180, which is a fictional car where all four wheels can steer 360 degrees. No, I'm not going to use Infernal Robotics

Example image -

[Acvila]

Small request(or that's what i think :). is it possible to make wheels recognizable by Bon Voyage?

 

[Shadowmage]

8 hours ago, Fireheart318 said:

No, I'm not going to use Infernal Robotics

Then I guess you won't be getting your 360' steering.

No, I have zero plans to add those types of wheels to KF.  Either use IR, or you are otherwise free to model and setup the configs for your own parts.

 

2 hours ago, Acvila said:

Small request(or that's what i think :). is it possible to make wheels recognizable by Bon Voyage?

Not a problem that I can solve, needs to be fixed by BonVoyage.  BV will need to do checks for KSPWheel in addition to the stock wheels.

https://github.com/Real-Gecko/KSP-BonVoyage/blob/master/BonVoyage/BonVoyageModule.cs#L128-L155

15 hours ago, Drew Kerman said:

Not sure if the "Link to Main Throttl" label in the APU PAW is a typo or just clipped text since its really small

https://github.com/shadowmage45/KSPWheel/blob/master/VSProject/KSPWheel/PartModules/KFAPUController.cs#L36

Simply clipped text in the GUI window, the full text is present in the source code.

[Bluebottle]

Hi Shadowmage. Got some quibbles with the ALG parts since KSPWheel 9.3.13 - I think this is the right place to post since it's specific to those parts. Since the re-rigging of ALG, I can barely get any torque out of ALG wheels - it takes 20 seconds of 'acceleration' to reach 1 m/s with a 300-ton vessel on Kerbin. Braking and steering works just fine though. There are no log messages related to wheels. A screenshot under acceleration:

Spoiler

The efficiency looks very low indeed. I had no problems with this until KSPWheel 9.3.13 and acceleration was nice and snappy.

Two other minor things I noticed:

• ALG parts attached with mirror symmetry have one unit with an inverted motor and one that is normal
• ALG-Large has lower mass than ALG-Medium and shares the same description.

Thanks so much for resurrecting ALG and making KSPWheel. Vastly better than stock!

KF 2.0.1.4, KSPWheel 0.9.4.14, KSP 1.2.2 on Linux x64.

Edited March 8, 2017 by Bluebottle

[Shadowmage]

7 hours ago, Bluebottle said:

it takes 20 seconds of 'acceleration' to reach 1 m/s with a 300-ton vessel on Kerbin

What scale are those landing gear at?  I am not seeing any of the load-rating/etc info, so I can only assume you've turned part-damage off, otherwise those gear would be popping instantly.

At default scale the large gear is only intended to support ~20t -max-.  And its motor is setup equivalently.  They are also only intended for taxi duty, with a max speed of ~10m/s, and low acceleration even at that load.  So it appears from the info that you have provided that you have simply massively overloaded the wheels.

The reason you had no problems in the previous releases is that the motors were not just overpowered, but ridiculously stupidly incredibly overpowered.  Like aircraft doing wheelies overpowered.  If I were to have left them as-is, they would draw 100-200 ec/s under the new motor module (they had about the same torque as the mole track).

(the ALG could possibly use a small motor output increase, but it would be like 20%-50%, not anything that would help your situation -- it sounds like you simply need larger wheels)
 

7 hours ago, Bluebottle said:

ALG parts attached with mirror symmetry have one unit with an inverted motor and one that is normal

That is why there is an 'invert motor' button.  Or alternatively, file a proper bug report on it, and I'll see about fixing it for the next release (the forum is NOT the proper place for bug reports).

7 hours ago, Bluebottle said:

ALG-Large has lower mass than ALG-Medium and shares the same description.

Pretty sure that was the way the configs were setup from the old ALG mod.  I didn't touch the descriptions, mass, cost, or any of the base config properties (as far as I can remember anyway).

[Gaalidas]

On 3/3/2017 at 10:03 AM, Shadowmage said:

Edit -- that part, the Simple Track, is a bit of an oddball.  It is intended to -only- be mounted in symmetry.  Attempts to use it with multiple single-part-placements will always result in two 'left' tracks.

Back in the day we had a switch that could be hit to toggle the left/right side.  The attach nodes were also my idea for extremely precise and stable connections to the craft.  It helps a lot when retrofitting rover body mods to use tracks instead of the native wheels that come with the mod in question, which usually have attachment nodes for their wheels.

On 3/6/2017 at 7:20 AM, Shadowmage said:

Then I guess you won't be getting your 360' steering.

No, I have zero plans to add those types of wheels to KF.  Either use IR, or you are otherwise free to model and setup the configs for your own parts.

What... no plan to resurrect lo-fi's crawler wheels?  So sad...

 

Overall man... looking amazing with all the new content.  I intend to look into a few of my ideas for improving the dust effects and other improvements I was working on before I gave up on the project... I'll let you know if anything pans out.  Otherwise, though, good stuff.  Keep it up.

Edited March 8, 2017 by Gaalidas
Just can't shut up... even if my life depends on it.

[Gaalidas]

On 3/2/2017 at 11:01 AM, Shadowmage said:

What?  Repulsors have no friction, and thus no steering induced body-sway.

Back in the day I was toying with an idea to create a sort of repulsion-steering module.  The thought behind it was that a repulsion plate could be angled and used to "push" in a direction other than straight down, thus gently nudging the craft away from the surface if one exists within range.  In KSP this would be, basically, an RCS port using the repulsor system instead of fuel.  It would only apply force if a surface to repulse against was detected within range.  This also tied into my idea of an anti-repulsion mode for the repulsor.  (attraction module?)  that was going to allow me to make repulsion crafts able to climb hills without needing a constant thrust to counter gravity-sliding down the hill.  This would also have been the start of a repulsor drive.

I coded the basic constructors for the system and then had to give up due to school.  I might have time in the future to pick it up again.

Edited March 8, 2017 by Gaalidas

[Fireheart318]

5 hours ago, Gaalidas said:

I might have time in the future to pick it up again.

Please do. That would be awesome!

[Shadowmage]

5 hours ago, Gaalidas said:

Back in the day we had a switch that could be hit to toggle the left/right side.  The attach nodes were also my idea for extremely precise and stable connections to the craft.  It helps a lot when retrofitting rover body mods to use tracks instead of the native wheels that come with the mod in question, which usually have attachment nodes for their wheels.

Yeah, I've been investigating ways to allow the user to swap the left/right models through a UI button -- but they all run into the same problem:  the model needs to be fully in place before the PartModules can be allowed to initialize, and the model cannot change once the PartModules have run their init code.  So as soon as the part is initialized the first time it is impossible to change the model, as it will cause all of the PartModules that reference any model tranforms to crash (as the transforms that it once referenced become null once the model is deleted).

There is a giant hacky workaround that I could put in place -- rebuild all of the part-modules to allow for 're-initialization' where they would re-find their transforms anytime he model is changed.  But it is far too hacky for my likes (notably that it will only work if -every- module has been rewritten specifically with that functionality in mind), and would require re-writing each and every part-module.

 

5 hours ago, Gaalidas said:

What... no plan to resurrect lo-fi's crawler wheels?  So sad...

Must not be a part that I'm familiar with, as I've seen no 'crawler wheels' in any release of KF that I ever played with.  I'll take a look through the KF modeling/assets pack to see if I can find anything, but I don't remember seeing any new wheel types when I last looked through it.

Still runs afoul of the problems of how to have such a large steering range on a wheel while still allowing it to be usable for normal purposes.

 

5 hours ago, Gaalidas said:

Overall man... looking amazing with all the new content.  I intend to look into a few of my ideas for improving the dust effects and other improvements I was working on before I gave up on the project... I'll let you know if anything pans out.  Otherwise, though, good stuff.  Keep it up.

Thanks, has certainly been many hours of hard work to get to this point.  If you do end up in a position where you can contribute, would be much appreciated.  I'm more than burned out on all of the feature requests at this point, and don't really have the patience/motivation to do much more.

[Bluebottle]

16 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

What scale are those landing gear at?  I am not seeing any of the load-rating/etc info, so I can only assume you've turned part-damage off, otherwise those gear would be popping instantly.

At default scale the large gear is only intended to support ~20t -max-.  And its motor is setup equivalently.  They are also only intended for taxi duty, with a max speed of ~10m/s, and low acceleration even at that load.  So it appears from the info that you have provided that you have simply massively overloaded the wheels.

The reason you had no problems in the previous releases is that the motors were not just overpowered, but ridiculously stupidly incredibly overpowered.  Like aircraft doing wheelies overpowered.  If I were to have left them as-is, they would draw 100-200 ec/s under the new motor module (they had about the same torque as the mole track).

(the ALG could possibly use a small motor output increase, but it would be like 20%-50%, not anything that would help your situation -- it sounds like you simply need larger wheels)

They were at scale 1.0, and yes, I did have damage turned off. Better at scale 1.5. I just didn't realize the impact of "MAJOR CHANGE - Updated motor mechanics. Use proper math to derive input power from the torque and efficiency stats for the motor" in your changelog.

9 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

I'm more than burned out on all of the feature requests at this point, and don't really have the patience/motivation to do much more.

The persistence and dedication of many modders here never fails to amaze me, obviously yourself included with mammoth projects like SSTU. I can barely finish one texture before getting sick of it!

[Acvila]

I am trying to make a rover which is able to undock and dock in a plane cargobay. the thing is that if i lower the rover and touch with the wheels the cargobay, in order to be able after undocking to rise suspension and dock again, when i fly the plane i get messages that the plane is on the ground and Athmosphere Autopilot don't work. in editor wheels are touching the cargobay, but outside it isn't.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

1 hour ago, Acvila said:

I am trying to make a rover which is able to undock and dock in a plane cargobay. the thing is that if i lower the rover and touch with the wheels the cargobay, in order to be able after undocking to rise suspension and dock again, when i fly the plane i get messages that the plane is on the ground and Athmosphere Autopilot don't work. in editor wheels are touching the cargobay, but outside it isn't.

That's because there are wheels "landed". I suspect there's stuff all that can be done about that short of rewriting bits of ksp. 

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

@Shadowmage Big thanks from me for reawakening the APU controller,  converted the diesels as I mentioned, brilliant,  i wont make any comments regarding "stuff" as I see that you're suffering extreme mod fatigue, The guys who use the ships are going to be either pleased or furious that they'll have to fit APU engines to the ships in order to supplement the EC.  I fully  intend to start ripping the EC generators out of anything 20mtr plus.

Thanks again, I think you more than deserve to shove this to one side for a month or so.  

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For those who haven't suffered , mod fatigue is pretty horrible, one day you're quite happily bashing some other junk through unity and the next it's no longer fun,  just hard work and more and more , The more you keep at it the worse it gets, there is only one known solution. Do something very different and preferably not involving little green men.