Little KubeSats

[Nivee~]

I am thinking of jumping into the cliff that's called modding! I am a newb, obviously, but I will learn a lot if I make a mod or two!

I plan on making a KubeSat mod, as a start. It will be a relatively simple undertaking(I hope so) But I was wondering, if KubeSats would be a valid addition to the game. I mean we already have a mod for 0.35m dia probe parts... Will a KubeSat mod still be relevant? If yes, then what features and parts do you think should be present in the mod?

EDIT: I made the following thread in the Add-on Development! Please send in your suggestion there! Thanks in advance!

 

Edited June 11, 2018 by Nivee~
Added some stuff.

[Lisias]

5 hours ago, Nivee~ said:

I am thinking of jumping into the cliff that's called modding! I am a newb, obviously, but I will learn a lot if I make a mod or two!

Buy coffee. Tons of coffee.

 

5 hours ago, Nivee~ said:

I plan on making a KubeSat mod, as a start. It will be a relatively simple undertaking(I hope so)

I'm a old fart with 30 years of experience on the field as professional developer - but never touched CSharp, Mono neither Unity before (I'm Old School - I helped to design and implement our own 3D Engine on the "good days". In C++. For Symbian. Yeah, I live on a loony bin  nowadays!). And this pile of sheet made me cry at first.

So I have some (old fart) advises for you:

1. Don't take it as serious business. Don't allow the thing to make you angry. Frustration is unavoidable,  it's how you manage it that really matters.
2. Don't be shy when asking for help. Cry for it shamelessly.
3. Don't be bothered by impoliteness. Judge the message by its content - every good programmer I know is grumpy, our desire to help is bigger than our patience for the job.  (and caffeine, our main source of coding strength, make us even more jumpy and grumpy!  )
4. But if the messenger became aggressive and/or mean (what is being called "toxic" nowadays), just put the <non forum rules compliant "compliment"> guy into the Ignored User's List and forget about.
5. Learn how to use Blender3D. It helps. A LOT. There're some cheap courses for Blender and Unity on Udemy - give it a peek.
6. Assuming that you will need writing Modules, learn how to install and configure MonoDeveloper and then create a "Hello World" program from scratch. I should had be a bit less arrogant and did it myself - learning everything at once made my entry point harder.

 

5 hours ago, Nivee~ said:

But I was wondering, if KubeSats would be a valid addition to the game. I mean we already have a mod for 0.35m dia probe parts... Will a KubeSat mod still be relevant?

Frankly? The answer for this question is irrelevant. Being your first mod, it's even better to duplicate some already existent one - you will have a benchmark.

Do your own thing. What will come from this is just a bonus, the really importante thing is doing you what you think is interesting, not the others. This is not a job.

 

5 hours ago, Nivee~ said:

what features and parts do you think should be present in the mod?

I can't help you here. I'm a freaking megalomaniac.  I just can't help on designing small, single task, efficient shenanigans.

But every artifact I consider (and sometimes, effectively) doing starts with a good research about what people are doing in the real world. And also on SyFy movies/stories/whatever. This probably will be the best way to gather some guidelines.

 

Edited June 9, 2018 by Lisias
"stand-up' guy? hehehehe =P

[kerbiloid]

There was already a Cubesat mode (looks like it's outdated since 1.3.x)

Spoiler

 

Maybe you could take it as example.

If you don't plan to dig deep inside modelling, there's a nice tutorial how to make parts with Wings3d instead of Blender.
Parts are normal, creation is simplified.

Spoiler

 

 

[Nivee~]

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

how to make parts with Wings3d instead of Blender.

I heard animation isn't possible with Wings3D, will I have to animate my solar panels in Unity then?

[kerbiloid]

21 minutes ago, Nivee~ said:

I heard animation isn't possible with Wings3D, will I have to animate my solar panels in Unity then?

Here is a nice tutorial about simple anmation in Unity.

 

[Sorabh]

11 hours ago, Nivee~ said:

what features and parts do you think should be present in the mod?

Oh, just let your imagination run wild! However, do a literature review about cubesats. A detailed study will help you get the answers you need, while keeping the mod realistic.

[The Minmus Derp]

Try adding really tiny science parts.

[Ultimate Steve]

I wouldn't know how much would have to be changed to make the parts RO/RSS/RP-0 compatible, but that would certainly be nice seeing as the tree currently lacks a good late game small probe core, or a small probe core with 2 stack nodes at all.

[The Minmus Derp]

I agree.

[Nivee~]

19 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

a small probe core with 2 stack nodes at all

Hmm.... could you please elaborate on that? Don't they have a node at the top or bottom. in general? (I have not played RP-0/RO, but I have heard stories...scary stories..)

[Ultimate Steve]

25 minutes ago, Nivee~ said:

Hmm.... could you please elaborate on that? Don't they have a node at the top or bottom. in general? (I have not played RP-0/RO, but I have heard stories...scary stories..)

The procedural probe cores (with nodes on both the top and bottom) can only get so small. The smallest, something about Sputnik sized, has no top connection node, only the bottom. The Explorer satellite probe core has this problem as well, in addition to being long and skinny.

[Nivee~]

1 minute ago, Ultimate Steve said:

The procedural probe cores (with nodes on both the top and bottom) can only get so small. The smallest, something about Sputnik sized, has no top connection node, only the bottom. The Explorer satellite probe core has this problem as well, in addition to being long and skinny.

What could be the smallest practical size in the game? I am aiming for 20x20x20cm as a standard, but I am not so sure...The game will only let me zoom that much in.

[The Minmus Derp]

Yeah. That is TEENYTINYTEENYTINY.

[Nivee~]

18 minutes ago, The Minmus Derp said:

Yeah. That is TEENYTINYTEENYTINY.

Actual cubesats are even smaller (10x10x10cm) Here's a tweakscaled 20x20x20 Probodyne QBE core compared to an untweaked HECS

 

If I reduce the size even further (10x10x10), this happens~

See! The nodes! it would be a bit messy and frustrating with nodes overlapping each other in such a manner..... So i decided to go with 20x20x20 as the base size.

[FreeThinker]

What would be realy cool if we could bring the Planetary Society  cubesat into KSP

What is so cool about it? Well its a cubesat with an solar sail

Which when unfold into this

which enables it to go where no cubesat has gone before and do real exploration interplanetary missions collecting new science

Ideally you combine it with beamed laser network, allowing you to launch it at much lower orbits and arrive at your missing destination faster.

A lightsail and beamed laser propulsion might sound like something hard to achieve, which is correct , but I already have that covered

As you can see it even supports beamed power and takes into account  drag effects, it allows this tiny craft to travel anywhere in the solar system up to the furthers reaches in the ort cloud.

Now the only thing that need to be done is someone to convert this PDF into a working animated ksp model, and we are in busines

Edited June 10, 2018 by FreeThinker

[Gargamel]

On 6/9/2018 at 1:34 AM, Lisias said:

MonoDeveloper

Is this the preferred editor for KSp/Unity/Allthat?  Or will my install of VS '15(ish) work?  I'm just a hack, but I do have a couple mods in mind, but my coding experience is limited to arduino and some simple win apps (background number crunching stuff mainly).  How hard is the coding learning curve for unity/ksp?    *sorry for the thread highjack, but I think the answers will help the OP too*

[Lisias]

Just now, Gargamel said:

Is this the preferred editor for KSp/Unity/Allthat?  Or will my install of VS '15(ish) work?  I'm just a hack, but I do have a couple mods in mind, but my coding experience is limited to arduino and some simple win apps (background number crunching stuff mainly).  How hard is the coding learning curve for unity/ksp?    *sorry for the thread highjack, but I think the answers will help the OP too*

Frankly? I hate MonoDevelop more than I hate C#.  I would be using Eclipse, if the C# plugin were just a bit more useful.  

Other than that, yes, you can use MonoDevelop to build on Unity. Unity's own editor is a derivative from it (as well Visual Studio), but I choose to compile my own MonoDevelop to get rid of the clutter (I'm on a Mac).

It's since the 2010 version that I don't work with VisualStudio, sorry not being able to answer your question about VS'15. My guess, however, is probably not (due outdated libraries). But, frankly, since a long time Visual Studio itself is a MonoDevelop derivative - download the Unity Shebang and just use the embedded IDE. It already came with the thing.

The learning curve is not that harsh - to tell you the true, the less you already know, the better.  A lot of mistakes I made (and annoyances I caused to others) were due my previous experience with decent engines, languages and environments.  

[HFer Kerman]

On 6/10/2018 at 11:44 PM, Nivee~ said:

Actual cubesats are even smaller (10x10x10cm) Here's a tweakscaled 20x20x20 Probodyne QBE core compared to an untweaked HECS

 

If I reduce the size even further (10x10x10), this happens~

See! The nodes! it would be a bit messy and frustrating with nodes overlapping each other in such a manner..... So i decided to go with 20x20x20 as the base size.

Maybe you can add a separate Cubesat Assembly Building which allows further zooming in and a Scrapyard dependency to put it together with the rocket. (I suppose I'm getting things too complicated)

[Nivee~]

4 hours ago, HFer Kerman said:

Maybe you can add a separate Cubesat Assembly Building which allows further zooming in and a Scrapyard dependency to put it together with the rocket. (I suppose I'm getting things too complicated)

Well, that will be beyond my powers  I am thinking of adding a WASD Editor Camera dependency to allow zooming in, but even so, I won't go below the 20x20 form factor.