[WIP] Skylon

[bogieman987]

Hey everyone!!

I'll start off with an introduction to myself.

My name is Ryan or bogieman987,

I love KSP!!,

I have been playing it since about a month or 2 ago,

I'm 17,

I know how to use Blender and Photoshop,

My ambition in life is to own my own game development company,

Nuff said.

And so, i'm here, with my 1st project.

The Skylon suggested from this thread.

So far, i've just modelled most of it, still need to model landing gear and cargo bay.

I will add smoothing groups, if i can remember how ^^

And obviously, it still needs textures.

Rendered 3 simple pictures, here they are.

Edit: Thanks Ferram4, that's exactly what i was looking for

Things i don't know are, naming conventions, for the code and for collisions and so on.

Any info on these will be greatly appreciated.

The main use of this vehicle will be more or less the same as its real life counterparts use, which is basically to transport things to orbit,

Be it satellites or passengers to a space station, or even components to a space station.

The vehicle itself is unmanned. So any Kerbals would have to be in a pod within the cargo bay.

Edited October 17, 2012 by bogieman987

[CERVERUS]

Wow!!!

So awesome!

[tttyto]

looks good! looks very fast.

[Martonaut]

looking realy nice, im wondering if you plan to add the cargo bay? and how will you do the engien go from atmospheric to space one? XD

[Redrumssam]

It's a space cucumber!!!

Seriously though, good job! I eagerly await your progress!

[ferram4]

Very nice work on the spaceplane.

How do i put the pictures in a box that you have to click to see them?

The same way other threads have it, where it says "Pics", you click it and you see the pictures, i can't really explain it.

Sorry for large pictures, i'll use the method i'm reffering to once i know how.

I think the thing you're talking about is the spoiler tag. What you want to do is this:

{spoiler="something"}{/spoiler}

But replace the { and } with [ and ], respectively, to make the BB code work.

Keep up the good work. This has great promise.

[bogieman987]

I will try and add a cargo bay, not sure how it will work out, i would like it to simply be an animation, when in game you right click and choose open like on the Demv mod, where the pod opens.

From the video that was shown in the request thread, it shows a rocket of some sort at the rear of the vehicle, and it seems it only activated while in space.

Also, the engine does go from jet engine to rocket engine, maybe a bit of code to simply, change it's function?

Can that be done?

Basically, all i can think for the code would be, when less than 26km, it would be a jet engine, greaty than, it would be a rocket engine.

And thanks for the feedback guys, all that left mostly is the landing gear, but i just can seem to make it look good, will have to do some research on the space shuttles' landing gear and base it upon that.

[ferram4]

It's not jet engine turns into rocket engine, it's rocket engines all the way up, burning LH2 and LO2. However, in atmosphere the SABRE engine can use atmospheric oxygen in place of LO2, switching over as the atmosphere thins out.

Here's how it should be coded:

A fueltank with resource LH2

A fueltank with resource LO2

An intake that produces resource Air

An engine that burns LH2 and (LO2 or Air) at a 2:1 ratio, prioritizing air

With the shift towards PartModules that the devs have been doing, as well as the shift towards using resources rather than hardcoded fuel types, this shouldn't be hard to code in the coming updates. It can probably be done now with PartModules that have already been implemented in KSP, but which aren't being used yet.

Also, I think the rocket at the back of the vehicle is a very large RCS.

[Hooligan Labs]

I have just started modding, but the Skylon engines could have thrust and fuel consumption based on atmospheric density. Thus, as you ascend it would automatically simulate the change from jet to scramjet to rocket.

Or you could make the modes a toggle to the side. In that case, you would want one engine "controller" part as well.

I've often wished to try the Skylon's engines in KSP

[bogieman987]

It's not jet engine turns into rocket engine, it's rocket engines all the way up, burning LH2 and LO2. However, in atmosphere the SABRE engine can use atmospheric oxygen in place of LO2, switching over as the atmosphere thins out.

Ah right, and you're probably right about the rear rocket being an RCS.

Edit:

Update: Adding front landing gear, going to work on the rear.

Resized the entire model, i had it too small, i think, 1 blender unit = 1 meter for KSP right?

Also, at the moment the model is 5k verts in total so far, the highest is the landing gear with just over 600 verts,

is this too much? Or just ok?

Edited October 18, 2012 by bogieman987

[Martonaut]

that landing gear looks like its gonna break! small wheels indeed ,dont get me wrong its very good modeling, i love that the doors have the thingy that opens themn nice attention to detail, i really want to try this mod when its ready!, keep the good work, now you have the real information about how the engines work!!, just seams harder to do it

[bogieman987]

Update: Added rear landing gear, modified the front to make it look stronger, as i do agree with Martonaut, it did look a bit weak and the wheels were small.

Hopefully now it looks better.

Still a few bits of detail left to do, the cargo bay and engines, just little bits of detail.

Other than that, the model is nearly finished.

On the rear landing gear, you may notice that it goes into the fuselage, it's that way becaus of the way i modelled the wing, basically,

so it can be used on any other vehicle, the sides of the wing are completely flat. One goal for this is that many of the parts can be used for other things

Edited October 19, 2012 by bogieman987

[Chimer4]

Hey guys, not sure how much of this thread has been lost, but I have been looking for a skylon mod for some time and came across this thread. I was wondering how this was coming along and if it was still in the works?

[TheZofDeath]

Yes, same here. I saw the animations on youtube and it would be an awesome thing to have ingame

[Shrogg]

5k should be fine for an entire ship.

600 for the landing gear is good, you could drop a few polys on your wheels though, or make your wheels larger, so you can see the detail in-game. (otherwise i suggest making the detail in a texture.)

[Zeniph]

i was scouting around for a good spaceplane mod (SKYLON in particular) and came across this thread. someone mentioned a video, went on it but found out in the comments Bogeyman had given up on the Spaceplane due to problems of importing the craft to unity and KSP. i'm sorry to hear that the project was cancelled, but you never know, a solution could be found to the problem.

This was looking very good and its a shame it was cancelled.

But all well, perhaps in the future a bigger, better project will emerge and be succesful!

[Bluegobln]

How is this a necro... when I opened it the last post was the one that now shows as being posted on the 19th of October... lol!? It clearly said today... now it's different. *sigh*