[1.8.1-1.12.x] Modular Launch Pads v2.6.1: Launch clamps evolved: Real-style launch bases and towers [03 July 2023]

[Miguelsgamingch]

Hey, Were Does The Extra Go? Can I Delete It Or What?

[AlphaMensae]

8 hours ago, miguelsgamingch said:

Hey, Were Does The Extra Go? Can I Delete It Or What?

It's optional....which is why it's called "Extras".  

 

[AlphaMensae]

Revised the large elevator extension section based on some feedback: The crew arm mount now has an alternate (left) side option, so the section doesn't have to be rotated, breaking the pattern of the vertical beams. Also, the arm mount now just sticks out from the side of the extension section, without any overlapping beams above and below the floors, which would cause problems if a stack of two or more sections was used.

 

The revised section is now on the AlphaDev branch of the GitHub.

[Miguelsgamingch]

On 12/10/2019 at 8:38 PM, AlphaMensae said:

It's optional....which is why it's called "Extras".  

 

ok.

[AlphaMensae]

New single-piece Mini Crew Elevator and revised Mini Crew Arm--now called the Small Crew Arm and available in two mount sizes--are done and now on the AlphaDev branch of the GitHub.  A modular version of the new Mini elevator will follow soon.

The now-named Small Crew Arm comes in two types, one with a mount for the Mini Elevator and one with a mount for the Small Elevator.

 

[AlphaMensae]

The side-hinge style requires that the rotation point (an empty gameobject in Unity that holds the arm meshes) for the crew arm be moved outward for a wider elevator tower, which means an entire duplicate of the arm is needed for a larger mount. This is much easier to done by making a separate part for the larger mount size, so that's why there are now two Small Crew Arms.

For the old General Crew Arm, there's going to be six separate versions of it, each arm style in both Small and Large Elevator mount types. They will still have the two swing direction options, which of course means that there will be two copies of the arm on each part, as switching the rotation point means that it also has to be moved.

Edited December 17, 2019 by AlphaMensae

[AlphaMensae]

The Large Crew Arms are also getting a third length variant.

Just completed the first newly split arm (open-truss style with Small Mount), and noticed that the old combo arm has a .mu size of 13.2 MB, but the new split one is just 1 MB--and that's including the third length variant.  So the six separate arms will total 6MB, less than half of that of the old arm.   I've done some restructering in Unity to remove a lot of mesh duplication, now the length variants are formed from separate pieces. It makes the arm a bit more complicated, but saves a lot in .mu size.

[AlphaMensae]

Ok, I was a bit premature with the .mu file size reductions.   I forgot that the open-truss style was the simplest, and the alt enclosed style much more detailed, and it ended up being 3.9MB in size.

I also gave each arm style a different default color: style 1 is the dark gray, style 2 is the med gray and style 3 is the light gray.

The small-mount versions are done, now to make the large-mount versions (not that difficult  ).

I've also moved the custom tech tree nodes so they are in a single vertical column to the left of the start, both for the stock/CTT and UnKerballedStart trees; the special platforms (Soyuz, Saturn and Shuttle) are in the lower half and the launch stand and general parts are in the upper half. All nodes are directly connected to the start. I might be splitting the general pads node into several ones, depending on how many parts there are in the end.

[Stone Blue]

@AlphaMensae Sorry if this has been brought up already, so just an FYI, but CKAN is not listing AnimatedDecouplers as a dependency, nor as even a recommended mod... vOv

Not sure if you maintain your own CKAN listing or not... vOv

[AlphaMensae]

1 hour ago, Stone Blue said:

@AlphaMensae Sorry if this has been brought up already, so just an FYI, but CKAN is not listing AnimatedDecouplers as a dependency, nor as even a recommended mod... vOv

Not sure if you maintain your own CKAN listing or not... vOv

All I did for CKAN was to just check the CKAN box on Spacedock when I first uploaded. I don't use CKAN anyway so I don't care.  

Animated Decouplers also is still at KSP 1.6.1, so that could be screwing CKAN up too. It works just fine in 1.8.x, and it is included the download .zip along with B9PS and CCK.

[AlphaMensae]

Ok, all the Large Crew Arms are done and now on the AlphaDev branch of the GitHub. There are three arms with the mount for the Small Crew Elevator, and three with the mount for the Large Crew Elevator.

The old General Crew Arm was removed, and the part name is now used by the Small Mount Style 1 arm.

I also revised the Mini Single-Piece Crew Elevator, adding a third height (a short variant), with the other two heights now named the Medium and Tall variants. This was done with only a slight increase in the .mu size as the elevator was broken into separate sections, and each variant turns on the appropriate sections. The "smart" way to do this, rather than simply making three complete elevator towers.  

The new tech tree node .cfg is also on the Alphadev branch, and the stock custom category was also updated.

I also now have two versions of B9PS on the AlphaDev branch, one for KSP 1.8.1 and one for KSP 1.7.3. The 1.8.1 version is the better one, as my deploy limit animations remain with their related B9PS switchers, since the switchers don't get all lumped into the bottom of the PAW in 1.8.1

This will carry over into the release of v2.1

Edited December 21, 2019 by AlphaMensae

[AlphaMensae]

The modular mini crew elevator parts are now on the AlphaDev branch of the GitHub.

Only has three parts: the base, 1.25m section and 5m section; there is no top plate. The base is taller than the others so it can be used a short elevator by itself, with the front wall toggled off. Both the tower sections also have a toggleable front wall for crew access..

There is also only one elevator car max height, 32.5m, so the mini elevator can be used for rockets taller than 20m; lower the car with the deploy limit slider to under 20m for use with the tier 1 launch pad.

[AlphaMensae]

After getting some thumbs-down on the custom sound effect that damonvv made for my Shuttle TSM sparker and General ROFI, I've modified it. The changed .cfgs are on both the Master and AlphaDev branches of the GitHub.

If you want to change the .cfgs manually go into the General-ROFI.cfg and Shuttle-Launcher-TSM.cfg files and look for the EFFECTS { running { AUDIO section, and replace the lines with these:

            channel = Ship
            clip = ModularLaunchPads/FX/AlphaSparkz
            volume = 0.0 0.0
            volume = 1.0 0.2
            pitch = 0.0 0.5
            pitch = 1.0 0.9
            loop = true

The volume is greatly reduced, and the pitch is also reduced, making for a far quieter and lower sound instead of the loud steam hiss.

[AlphaMensae]

Version 2.0.7!

Changelog:

• Modifed the sound effect of the General ROFI and Shuttle Tail Service Mast sparker by a large amount to make it much quieter.
• Changed .cfg and .mu names for the General Hold Downs and General ROFI
• Updated the stock custom category and custom tech tree node .cfgs to those of v2.1
• Now includes separate versions of B9PartSwitch for KSP 1.8.1 and KSP 1.7.3. Folders are named for which KSP version they are for.

Decided to put the modified sparker sound effect into a new point release. I also replaced the old v2.0 General ROFI .cfg and .mu names with the v2.1 names to prevent confustion later on. Also added some v2.1 things like the renamed General Hold Downs and the updated custom category and tech tree nodes.

With v2.1 development, I'm now up to the General Umbilicals. The two General sizes and the Small Tower size now have a similar format.  The color change for the umbilical pipe is now done by a texture switch (among four 256x256 textures) for a single mesh object rather than mesh switching among a bunch of separate mesh objects, which made the construction a whole lot easier.   There are no separate length options either, each umbilical size is now a single telescoping length: Small Tower is 2.5m nominal max length (disregarding the end connector and adapter rings), General Small is 3.75m and the General Large is 5m (with a 2.5m fixed core rather than the 1.25m cores of the other sizes).

These changes will also be applied to the new separate General Swing Arms.

[OrbitalManeuvers]

Good morning and happy holidays. Will be checking out your new build today (I got 2.0.7 last night but I'll grab the "b" version today)

One question ... I love that there's a category for the MLP parts ... is there an easy way to have these parts *not* listed in the structural category, too? 

[AlphaMensae]

5 minutes ago, OrbitalManeuvers said:

Good morning and happy holidays. Will be checking out your new build today (I got 2.0.7 last night but I'll grab the "b" version today)

One question ... I love that there's a category for the MLP parts ... is there an easy way to have these parts *not* listed in the structural category, too? 

Thank you!

Yeah, the "b" version just has the B9PS versions properly placed. I suddenly realized that I had put .zip files in the GameData folder of the download; now, those who know about installing mods would know not to copy a zip into KSP's GameData, but there are those who will do that. So I moved the KSP 1.7.3 version of B9PS (named as such) out of GameData, and unzipped the default KSP 1.8.1 version and left that in GameData. Nothing in ModularLaunchPads itself was changed, so it didn't really a new version number.  

There's a MM patch in the Extras folder that will hide the parts from the Structural category (very simple, just sets the category to "none"); note that it will also hide them from searches, and I think from mods like Janitor's Closet and the like, so I made it an Extra item.

[AlphaMensae]

The new v2.1 Small Tower Umbilical, Small Tower Swing Arm, and the Small and Large General Drop Umbilical are done and now on the AlphaDev branch of the GitHub. The old combo Small Tower and General Umbilicals have been removed.

The Small Tower ones are on the right, the General Umbilicals are on the left. All have a single telescoping adjustable length from max to min, and either a short or long mount option. They were also partially remade (or rather, restructured would be a better term), and have only 4 colors for the pipe (more can be easily added if there is a demand for it).

Already working on the new General Swing Arms, and these are much more of a remake (the Small arm already has gotten skinnier). Also, the Delta IV-Heavy-style triple side umbilical arm will be a separate part in the three sizes, as it's just too different from the normal arms (for one, it needs a second deploy limit slider for the umbilical connectors). The single side umbilical will be an option for the normal arms, it will be at the end of the arm like the conventional umbilical connectors.

[OrbitalManeuvers]

28 minutes ago, AlphaMensae said:

Yeah, the "b" version just has the B9PS versions properly placed.

I did notice that, and yes knew what to do, but I'm sure you're right that the new layout is a bit easier for some people.

30 minutes ago, AlphaMensae said:

There's a MM patch in the Extras folder that will hide the parts from the Structural category (very simple, just sets the category to "none"); note that it will also hide them from searches, and I think from mods like Janitor's Closet and the like, so I made it an Extra item.

Fantastic - I'm glad you did this because I'm still trying to figure out MM patch files, and wouldn't have come up with this on my own. I get the wildcard to match all your parts, but I wouldn't know how to come up with it. I suppose by looking through all the part cfgs? I also would have been worried about patch ordering because what if this gets read after the parts - wouldn't it wipe out the custom category, too? Stuff like that would have taken me ages to figure out. Maybe now that I'm off work for 2 weeks I can finally dive into this stuff properly...

[AlphaMensae]

1 minute ago, OrbitalManeuvers said:

Fantastic - I'm glad you did this because I'm still trying to figure out MM patch files, and wouldn't have come up with this on my own. I get the wildcard to match all your parts, but I wouldn't know how to come up with it. I suppose by looking through all the part cfgs? I also would have been worried about patch ordering because what if this gets read after the parts - wouldn't it wipe out the custom category, too? Stuff like that would have taken me ages to figure out. Maybe now that I'm off work for 2 weeks I can finally dive into this stuff properly...

I name all my parts now (the internal part name that KSP uses) with "AM_MLP_" as a prefix to enable easy MM patches.  

And no, hiding them this way does not affect the stock custom category (which uses a different kind of .cfg file unrelated to part .cfgs) or the CCK category (which uses a custom plugin).

[AlphaMensae]

Work on v2.1 was a bit slowed down with the holidays and college football bowl games, but have made a lot of progress on the new general swing arms,

First, what was just one beam-type simple swing arm has now been expanded into three sizes, to give small towers extra reach (and to have a full row of three like parts in the part window  )

 

The general swing arm end-umbilical versions are all done for the three sizes, and am now adding the side-umbilical options. I decided to make the side types part of the general swing arms, as I've restructured how they're built in Unity, making a whole new arm part for just the side-style rather pointless.  Another benefit was that the side-style umbilicals can be on either side of the arm, and the heights of the center and outer rails can be toggled separately between tall and short heights.

Complete Small General Swing Arm is now done; pic shows just a few of the many configuration options:

 

Once the arms are done, the next thing will be the restructuring of the general strongback towers.

[AlphaMensae]

And I just realized that for the side-style umbilicals, the arm extension for the triple version doesn't turn off when the outer rails are turned off....since I forgot about it.  

[DJ Reonic]

@AlphaMensae I am getting spammed with a MM error stating "cannot find fx group of that name for decoupler." It only happens with this mod installed. The error is making my game hang every second or so and makes building rockets nearly impossible. It happens when I'm putting any part with a launchpad decouple node in any kind of multi-symmetry. When i finally figured it out I was trying to build a Vulkan, and when I tried to put the Zenit engines on the bottom of the radial boosters in 8x symmetry, the game made it impossible to place them, due to hanging up constantly. Have you encountered this issue before? I will upload a log as soon as I can get 30 minutes to load up the game and go to the VAB.

[AlphaMensae]

17 minutes ago, DJ Reonic said:

@AlphaMensae I am getting spammed with a MM error stating "cannot find fx group of that name for decoupler." It only happens with this mod installed. The error is making my game hang every second or so and makes building rockets nearly impossible. It happens when I'm putting any part with a launchpad decouple node in any kind of multi-symmetry. When i finally figured it out I was trying to build a Vulkan, and when I tried to put the Zenit engines on the bottom of the radial boosters in 8x symmetry, the game made it impossible to place them, due to hanging up constantly. Have you encountered this issue before? I will upload a log as soon as I can get 30 minutes to load up the game and go to the VAB.

That message is caused by the use of ModuleAnimatedDecoupler (from Animated Decouplers) without defining a visual effect (the usual decoupler smoke effect), but it should only happen once, and isn't critical, just KSP complaining since it expectss decouplers to have a visual effect. It has never been a problem for me.

I'll see about adding the effect definition to all uses of ModuleAnimatedDecoupler (the actual decouple node is 1000m below the VAV floor, so it shouldn't be visible). Or you do an MM patch to remove ModuleAnimatedDecoupler from all the AM_MLP* parts:

@PART[AM_MLP*]

{

!MODULE[ModuleAnimatedDecoupler] {}

}

[AlphaMensae]

Ok, adding the visual effect for decuplers prevented the message from appearing as expected, but I had to offset it -1000m so it wouldn't be visible, as the gas burst effect happens at the part's attach node.

Also fixed the single side-umbilical for the small swing arm; now the arm extension doesn't appear when the side rails are turned off:

[AlphaMensae]

The new Medium General Swing Arm with the side-style umbilicals is done.