Procedural Part Textures Added To Stock Part Textures?

[ZooNamedGames]

Ever since the debut of 1.4, with the addition of changable part textures, I was hyped. Mostly because I was hoping to see a surge in new textures and designs flood the modding scene, and being able to have a wide verity of colors and flavors to paint my rockets. However, we have recently just past 1.5 and still there's very little in the market for additions to the stock part texture options from the modding community. Which I felt was ok, maybe modders just don't want to bother with that. But something that made me wonder, why can't the Procedural Parts texture parts be added to the stock texture options? They recolor parts and there's like 40 different variants when you download every pack I can find (through CKAN). Such a wide range of choice would be amazing if it was available to stock, but sadly it isn't (that I'm aware of). So I'm disappointed.

Any modders have comments on this? Maybe interest in making a stock part texture pack?

Thanks for reading.

[Electrocutor]

22 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Ever since the debut of 1.4, with the addition of changable part textures, I was hyped. Mostly because I was hoping to see a surge in new textures and designs flood the modding scene, and being able to have a wide verity of colors and flavors to paint my rockets. However, we have recently just past 1.5 and still there's very little in the market for additions to the stock part texture options from the modding community. Which I felt was ok, maybe modders just don't want to bother with that. But something that made me wonder, why can't the Procedural Parts texture parts be added to the stock texture options? They recolor parts and there's like 40 different variants when you download every pack I can find (through CKAN). Such a wide range of choice would be amazing if it was available to stock, but sadly it isn't (that I'm aware of). So I'm disappointed.

Any modders have comments on this? Maybe interest in making a stock part texture pack?

Thanks for reading.

ModulePartVariants has a number of bugs that makes it less than optimal for use in mods aside from a few low-key texture switches.

• The NODES settings ignore rescaleFactor and scale completely
• If ModulePartVariants is included on the part, it will oftentimes delete attachment nodes unless they are the standard top/bottom/surface; even when you do not specify any change via NODES
• The other part modules, like ModuleEngines, ModuleJettison, FlagDecal, and any others that require a transform to be specified do not look for more than 1 transform, so model switching doesn't work unless all switched models are specifically designed for a single part with multiple variants: namely a single model with multiple meshes to choose from inside. i.e. You switch between two engine models and the second model has its shroud always on and the thrustTransform animation is always visible. The same goes for the ColorChanger module and having a different emissive map.
• The only properties allowed to be changed are mass and cost alongside the model/texture; so integration into upgrades or having distinction between variants, such as resources is out.

 

@Kerbas_ad_astra is currently working on trying to get Ven's Stock Revamp into a variant-friendly form, but it is a lot of work due to having to work around these bugs.

I've written a plugin that expands ModulePartVariants to be able to set any field on any PartModule along with the variant, but I've not seen any interest in it.

[Bottle Rocketeer 500]

@Electrocutor Can you please release the plugin? I am planning to make a GEnx for an upcoming mod and I would like to make it a variant of the Goliath engine. Also, does the plugin have the ability to change IVAs through variants?

[Electrocutor]

16 minutes ago, Bottle Rocketeer 500 said:

@Electrocutor Can you please release the plugin? I am planning to make a GEnx for an upcoming mod and I would like to make it a variant of the Goliath engine. Also, does the plugin have the ability to change IVAs through variants?

Any stats that are at the PART level of a part cannot be altered (except for mass and cost via the stock variant partmodule). This is because none of that data is persisted: it looks back at the original universal part instead of the instance to get that info. That means that for those other stats, it would need a PartModule to be able to persist and apply the changes (like tweak scale does for size). I'd be willing to make such a PartModule to compensate for the other things, but it hasn't been a priority yet as no one asked.

I've already released it in its current form on my thread. No one showed any interest, so I haven't done much with it since, and started working on KSC PBR instead, but if you run into any issues let me know and I can help you through them or code against them if need be.

Due to how engines work, making a variant engine is probably starting off with the most difficult task, so you'll need to pay close attention that everything is working as it should be.

[ShawnPhillips]

@Elctrocutor I am looking into making a mod to allow painting of stock parts, Just texture swapping. Making the Textures and getting them to work in game is pretty easy, https://imgur.com/a/7b4RaAx. The part I want to figure out before I am ready to release the mod is getting the Part Variants working in-game without directly editing the Vanilla config files. Would your thread be a good resource for figuring that out and do you have any other tip for making it work? Note I have zero previous experience making mods for KSP.

[Nightside]

7 hours ago, ShawnPhillips said:

@Elctrocutor I am looking into making a mod to allow painting of stock parts, Just texture swapping. Making the Textures and getting them to work in game is pretty easy, https://imgur.com/a/7b4RaAx. The part I want to figure out before I am ready to release the mod is getting the Part Variants working in-game without directly editing the Vanilla config files. Would your thread be a good resource for figuring that out and do you have any other tip for making it work? Note I have zero previous experience making mods for KSP.

Look into creating Module Manager patches. It is no more difficult than editing the config file. If you have parts mods you probably already have some examples.

[ShawnPhillips]

12 hours ago, Nightside said:

Look into creating Module Manager patches. It is no more difficult than editing the config file. If you have parts mods you probably already have some examples.

I figured Module manager would be the key. After doing a bit of research on creating Module Manager patches I did figure out how to add the new part variants without directly editing the vanilla configs. Thanks!