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


AlphaMensae

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20 minutes ago, computercat04 said:

Can you make more tutorials like these but for building the other launchpads (eg: Atlas V, Titan III, Delta)? 

Eventually yes, but for now, since those are all BDB rockets, you can use the included craft files as a guide; they are the same as the ones in my screenshots.

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2 hours ago, jfjohnny5 said:

Is it possible to define in which direction the Swing Arms swing when activated via staging? The arms decouple and swing away if I activate them in the staging order, but I can't control which way they move. I've tried setting "Toggle Arm <Direction>" via the Action Group for "Staging", but that doesn't seem to do anything. I can "Toggle Arm <Direction>" via a numbered Action Group, but I liked the previous behavior where I could fire up the engines and swing the arms just by hitting Spacebar for that first stage (which technically still works, but it's not so great when a swing arm is attached to the side of the spacecraft, and then tries to swing "through" the vehicle).

I always just roll the arms 180 degrees if they don't retract in the right way. All the arms that can be staged are symmetrical in roll, so they look just the same.

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Whenever I launch a rocket with a Soyuz launch clamp the screen goes black. If I switch to the map mode with M and then back, I can see my rocket, but the skybox is glitched out, and eventually the map/background goes black too.

Here is the log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jaecnqthmwo52uq/output_log.txt?dl=0

 

I tried with the SOCK Shuttle pad and it did not have the same issue.

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22 minutes ago, Spike88 said:

Whenever I launch a rocket with a Soyuz launch clamp the screen goes black. If I switch to the map mode with M and then back, I can see my rocket, but the skybox is glitched out, and eventually the map/background goes black too.

Well. That's pretty strange.

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2 hours ago, Spike88 said:

Whenever I launch a rocket with a Soyuz launch clamp the screen goes black. If I switch to the map mode with M and then back, I can see my rocket, but the skybox is glitched out, and eventually the map/background goes black too.

Here is the log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jaecnqthmwo52uq/output_log.txt?dl=0

 

I tried with the SOCK Shuttle pad and it did not have the same issue.

That happens if you aim the camera at an animated part while it's moving.

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2 minutes ago, AlphaMensae said:

That happens if you aim the camera at an animated part while it's moving.

As in the part is the focus when it’s moving? I would have to check that.

It always happens on launch which decouples everything, so it makes sense. When I get home tonight I’ll double check to see if the rocket itself is the focus. 

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2 minutes ago, Spike88 said:

As in the part is the focus when it’s moving? I would have to check that.

It always happens on launch which decouples everything, so it makes sense. When I get home tonight I’ll double check to see if the rocket itself is the focus. 

I should clarify that if you aim the camera at an animated part, then move it. Happened when I tested crew arms and had the camera aimed that them when I retracted them.

You might have at aimed at one of the clamp arms.

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41 minutes ago, computercat04 said:

When I load any of the .craft files of the mod, KSP says that is missing ModuleHelperCollider. What mod am I missing?

I think that is due to Collide-O-Scope, but it's harmless, just means I saved them with it present.  Doesn't affect the craft file. If you want, just save it again and reload.

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3 minutes ago, computercat04 said:

Ok. Thanks. btw, What does Collide-O-Scope do?

It shows the colliders in a part, color-coded according to mesh, box, capsule or sphere type.  Mostly a dev tool, but also very helpful if you're the type who  builds mechanical moving things out of stock parts. :D 

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Excellent update! Really enjoying the higher level of historical realism. I just finished rebuilding my Atlas and Titan pads. The Atlas pads went smoothly, but I struggled a bit with the Titan II pad. The umbilicals were difficult to accurately place and required a lot of small tweaks. It was a bit frustrating and tedious, but I got it eventually. To me it seemed as if the nodes for the umbilicals could have been oriented 90 degrees downward for easier placement.

In the end it proved to be a minor issue. Please accept my thanks for all the hard work. This is a fantastic mod!

BTW, I also had trouble with the ModuleColliderHelper. The files associated with it had an error message when I tried to open them in the VAB. So, apparently I can just open them anyway? Didn’t know that. 

Edited by DaveyJ576
Added MCH edit.
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39 minutes ago, DaveyJ576 said:

Excellent update! Really enjoying the higher level of historical realism. I just finished rebuilding my Atlas and Titan pads. The Atlas pads went smoothly, but I struggled a bit with the Titan II pad. The umbilicals were difficult to accurately place and required a lot of small tweaks. It was a bit frustrating and tedious, but I got it eventually. To me it seemed as if the nodes for the umbilicals could have been oriented 90 degrees downward for easier placement.

In the end it proved to be a minor issue. Please accept my thanks for all the hard work. This is a fantastic mod!

BTW, I also had trouble with the ModuleColliderHelper. The files associated with it had an error message when I tried to open them in the VAB. So, apparently I can just open them anyway? Didn’t know that. 

Thanks!

The Titan II tower was weird in that the umbilicals were mounted on these short angled (or straight) arms/beams, but the hoses ran perpendicular to the arms at a 90° angle.  Why, I don't know :D 

Gemini-Titan_5_at_Cape_Canaveral_LC-19_-_S65-43447.jpg

The Titan II arm nodes on the tower are placed where the arms should go, and the arms shouldn't need tweaking. Instead move the tower down a small bit if necessary. Most of the footings are just padding to ensure they reach the pad static's top (due to collider issues with the stock launch pad statics) and can be put below the VAB floor.

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After reading the above post, I went back and reviewed photos of LC-19 (which I should have done to start with) and I realized that the umbilical tower was set on a corner and rotated away from the axis of the rocket. When looked at from that perspective, Alpha's placement of the nodes for the umbilicals makes a lot more sense. I was thinking in a linear fashion, assuming that is what the engineers that designed LC-19 would have done. Having reviewed photos of the launch site, I now have a greater appreciation for their brilliance!

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8 hours ago, epicman81 said:

is it possible to eventually have more flexibilty with elevator heights

I simplified the elevators in v2.1, now all the elevator towers have just one elevator car or pad, put at a maximum height appropriate for the intended use. This way it moves at the same speed and there isn't any needless duplication of the car/pad meshes.

The Large Elevator tower does have two base versions, one with a 70m elevator car and one with a 130m car.

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On 11/2/2020 at 2:50 PM, AlphaMensae said:

I should clarify that if you aim the camera at an animated part, then move it. Happened when I tested crew arms and had the camera aimed that them when I retracted them.

You might have at aimed at one of the clamp arms.

I'm not sure what I'm missing here. Tried moving the parts first before decoupling them, tried launching from IVA view, it all leads to the same issue. Although in IVA it doesn't show up until you return to exterior. I feel like it's something simple that I'm missing. 

Here is a correct log, I realized the first one I uploaded was from an old version:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5f7r8hezf2hzkvl/Player-modular.log?dl=0

 

Edit: In an un-related note, Launch Plates does not show up on the Techtree with Unkerbalized Start,also there is an errant 'ans' in place of an 'and' in the MLP general platform. I sent pull requests if you want them.

Edited by Spike88
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5 hours ago, Spike88 said:

I'm not sure what I'm missing here. Tried moving the parts first before decoupling them, tried launching from IVA view, it all leads to the same issue. Although in IVA it doesn't show up until you return to exterior. I feel like it's something simple that I'm missing. 

Here is a correct log, I realized the first one I uploaded was from an old version:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5f7r8hezf2hzkvl/Player-modular.log?dl=0

 

Edit: In an un-related note, Launch Plates does not show up on the Techtree with Unkerbalized Start,also there is an errant 'ans' in place of an 'and' in the MLP general platform. I sent pull requests if you want them.

Was this in v2.1?  Otherwise I have no idea what's going on, as the Soyuz Base works fine for me:

 

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On 11/3/2020 at 8:01 PM, AlphaMensae said:

Was this in v2.1?  Otherwise I have no idea what's going on, as the Soyuz Base works fine for me:

Yeah, It's 2.1.

After extensive testing, ranging from adding and removing parts from the Soyuz launch pad, adding Soyuz parts to other pads, swapping rockets, and going through a hefty portion of your launchers, I have narrowed the problem down to the Soyuz Gantry and the Soyuz Base Elevator. The issue only occurs when either of these two are present.

 

The next time I get the chance(maybe tomorrow after work) I will add MLP to my Test copy of KSP and add mods to see if it's a conflict of some sort somewhere.

 

 

Edit: @AlphaMensae: After adding all my non-part mods to my Test Copy and slowly removing them one by one, I have come to the conclusion that it's an issue between @MOARdV's  Avionics system and Modular Launch Pads.  As soon as I removed Avionics Systems the problem went away. I'm about to test it in my main install to see if it holds true there also.

  I don't understand why there would be a conflict between MLP and AS, nor why it  is only with the gantry or the  soyuz elevator. Can you test to confirm?

 

Edit2: Can confirm that removing AS from Main game fixed the issue there too.

Edited by Spike88
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I tried to launch my shuttle tonight using the most recent update of this mod. For an unknown reason, when I have the shuttle sitting on the pad and activate one of this mod's part animations, such as rolling back the RSS or retracting the ET intertank access gantry, my left solid rocket booster seems to just fall off the ET, right before the entire vehicle stack explodes and scatters debris in about a 150m radius around the pad. This happens even if I trigger a part like the hammerhead crane, which is clearly far enough from the shuttle itself to be causing this. The entire sequence happens really slowly to me because I run the game on such a bad computer, but here's the best screenshot I could capture:

n1NSOJK.png

 

Now, in fairness, I don't know for certain that Modular Launch Pads is causing the problem. I'm using a lot of mods right now, and my shuttle itself is made from stock parts while I know your shuttle launch infrastructure was designed to be used with SOCK or Cormorant Aeronology. Even so, this mod is the only one I've updated recently, and I've previouly launched seven shuttle missions in my current save without issue, with no changes unique to this flight except the payload. Since the only substantial change to this craft file was the switchover to the new Shuttle FSS/RSS, I think it's pretty likely the issue lies there.

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@pTrevTrevsI've did test runs with both the Cormorant and SOCK shuttle stacks on the pad, and they worked fine.  Make sure no parts of the stack are clipping into the shuttle base, tower and arms. Particularly watch out for the SRB nozzle and skirt, if the SRB is a stock one the collider(s) may not match the visual object and could be clipping the launch base. Realistically, only the nozzle itself should be down in the exhaust hole, the aft skirt should be slightly above the deck. Might have to raise the whole shuttle stack so the nozzles are clear of the base.

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