Walking, Flying, Custom Replica T-Rex Mech[.23.5]

[VR_Dev]

All development on this project has been moved here

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/80808-Fully-Functional-Customizable-Zoids

Current Status: I just finished inproving the FPS by removing a lot of the decorative pieces and removing polygons from the remaining parts. I just updated to .23.5 and the parts that use the IR plugin broke. So I'm Busy working on that.

This is the full res version, I had to take out a lot of the decorative stuff for sake of the FPS

Forgive the slow gifs, my macbook slows way down when recording. I've also removed about half the polygons since I recorded these.

Once again all credit for the model goes to user DGMM over at deviantart. I simply broke it apart in blender and loaded it into the game via Unity. The mouth, landing stableizers, tail, "open thrusters", and scythe opening are all animations I made. The Infernal Robotics plugin runs all the leg joints, and the scythe arm joints.

DGMM's gallery can be found here

And the IR download here

Way down the line things to be done:

Imagine this:

Except with this zoid flying around. Thats what I want to do. Battle zoids like that, hover this thing around a city environment, blowing stuff up with it's laser mouth. reddit.com/u/CupcakeLanders built that. It's fking sweet

Fully armored and weaponized.

I really want to battle these things by incorporating a lot of things the skillful weapons mod includes. Mostly the damage resistant armor. Eventually I will build a version where all of the armor pieces are seperate from the main body of the mech. I want to give those pieces armor characteristics exactly like the ones in skillfull. Having them resist damage to a certain point then explode exposing the more vulnerable parts underneath.

Also having pieces of the legs stop working or cripple after recieving too much damage would be cool.

If you think you can help in any way I'd love to hear from you. Teamwork is where it's at

Edited May 22, 2014 by clown_baby
Updated

[th3shameless]

i like this, explore planets with style

[MassDivide]

Good news, Everything pretty much is an individual part.

The good news is that, you can do pretty much anything in KSP. We can make this walk no problem. We just make it respond differently to controls based on walk or flight mode. Simple feature that we make toggleable from the cockpit.

Lazer mod? Are you silly? This thing will be fully weaponized when I'm done with her

The Zerk fury had thrusters to make it move, it lifted and thrusted forward, it almost never walked in combat. Lets do both!

Ideas/todo:

incorporate drills into the scythe array for kethane extraction

We really need to meetup on my teamspeak, you'll poop a brick when you see what I've got cooked up

Edited March 23, 2014 by MassDivide

[VR_Dev]

awesome! this is exactly what we need. Just remember what I said about that example. It doesn't have to be super detailed because higher detailed parts make the game run slower. I've been studying the existing robotics parts and seeing what we could cherry pick from there instead of trying to write all new code

[MassDivide]

best news yet, i can low-poly this and still have it detailed.

TEAMSPEAK NUB!

[m1sz]

this looks awesome

[VR_Dev]

We really need to meetup on my teamspeak, you'll poop a brick when you see what I've got cooked up

[MassDivide]

the url in your pm's. use that.

[randomness5555]

This might just be the coolest thing built in kerbal. IF it works. If Mr Roboto was Optimus Prime,your project would be making Grimlock.

[VR_Dev]

I have faith, might take a while though. Mass I don't have a single pm from you. I'm kicking it at the KSP server. Just find me there

[VR_Dev]

So I've been thinking about how to make these parts move. It makes sense to me that we could trick the Infernal Robotics plugin into thinking our parts are included in the mod, instead of writing a new plugin. I make new parts all the time to and add them to IR, granted they are the same model.

But we're gonna do the same thing, just with a different model, with similar animations. When I make new parts I change the Folder name and "name =" in the .cfg and somehow the plugin still recognizes the new part and makes it act correctly. I even put the part in a new folder, without the plugin in it, and it still works. The only thing I know is that in the .cfg the "module = MuMechServo" is always the same, which tells the game which plugin to use. So as far as the .cfg file is concerned, everything could be the same, minus the name/specs/all the attachment rules.

I assume this is because there is something included in the model itself which the plugin recognizes. Now again I'm not really sure how Unity works but I believe the animations have names/locations which the plugin looks for to activate. If we could figure out the name of the animations, such as the hinge, we could make our parts work exactly like the IR hinge, just look different. This way we could have the same GUI and action key options as IR.

We could even just load the part we wanna steal the animation from into unity and figure out whats needed to duplicate them there.

I'm getting visual studio set up now so hopefully I can study the IR source code and figure out how we can trick the mod into thinking our parts are part of the mod. Whatever animation we want to activate we just have to find an existing part that works similarly, and steal that animation name.

Edit at the bottom of next post

Edited March 24, 2014 by clown_baby

[VR_Dev]

We could do the same for all the mods. You want a kethane drill in the scythes? Just make a part that extends out and name the animation the same as the kethane drill animation, name weapons after the laser guided weapons animations and we could just trick all plugins into thinking our parts are part their mod.

This cuts the amount of programming way down. .Cfg's are easy to do.

Then all the stock stuff is easy, engines in the feet, solar panels in the scythes, that stuff will be really easy. Really I believe now any option you wanna add I could find a Module to make it happen.

Edit Again: I lied again, I assume this is common knowledge but I finally have a solid understanding how this stuff works. It's all about the "module =". It doesn't matter what you want the animation to do, we just have to find a module that has the settings we want to apply to the animation. Weather it be the stock module, or a mod module we hijack from a plugin. So MD, do whatever you want, I'm pretty confident we can make it work. It would still help to have an animation in mind when you're making them(hinge, rotation, piston, toggle on/off, ect). Then we can use the .cfg as a template

Still though,

For this to work though I believe we will only be able to have one animation per part we load into the game. If you want a part, say like the tail, where there's three animations on one part that always do the same thing, that's possible. But we wont be able to have one part with two animations you can control separately.

Unless someone corrects me.

Edited March 24, 2014 by clown_baby

[Tidus Klein]

OO god an easy mod script for IR would be a god send for stuff like this, especially for the stuff I try to replicate

This

and this

even this

And even my attempts

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[VR_Dev]

That's what I'm saying. There's already so many blender artists out there with models I'm sure they would want to play with in a real world environment. And now I'm like 90% we can code them pretty easily. We just need a script to help make them walk. It's going to be cool either way but it would be some next level **** if we could make them walk.

I'm gonna post in some gamedev forums and see if anyone has any ideas for walking scripts. But first I want an in game model to show to kick up some interest.

Edited March 24, 2014 by clown_baby

[VR_Dev]

This video by Robbaz is incredibly close to what we are trying to accomplish, except with all movable parts. We can use examples like the electric motor and intersteller mods as well.

Edited March 24, 2014 by clown_baby

[m1sz]

I just want to say that I have a 4 legged skeleton working, able to hold a vertical big SRB rocket while moving (sure it walks worse, but walks anyway!)

Man, YouTube people really gets me into making complex stuff clown_baby ill send you a message

[VR_Dev]

Well I still think a script would be easier. But either way it's gonna walk. M1sz is a genius. All y'all better recognize.

Granted it's extra alpha right now, but it's one hell of a start.

[rillz]

Cant quite say its shiny yet, but definitely looks good! What is shifting the COM from leg to leg?

[VR_Dev]

Talk to M1sz about how it works. I kind of have no idea how to use that robot simulator you gave me. You should definitely converse with M1 over walking ideas. The gif isn't the leg setup we're gonna use. Just proof that a dino shaped mech will walk

[Red Iron Crown]

Cant quite say its shiny yet, but definitely looks good! What is shifting the COM from leg to leg?

If it works like his Mr. Roboto, pod torque. Mr. Roboto used RCS as well but the idea is the same, roll the craft until all the weight is on one leg, then activate the other leg's joints.

[VR_Dev]

It does, those are the mr roboto legs on a dino body.

[m1sz]

At the moment I'm trying to use complex tyrannosaurus legs, with moving tail for balance, so we avoid having so much SAS. Anyway, we still need quite a lot of SAS

gifs soon =)

[VR_Dev]

Hah yeah well it wasn't much to start with. Lemme know how I can help

Edited March 26, 2014 by clown_baby

[m1sz]

So, I have a 10m/s running bipedal T-Rex skeleton...

Code name: Mr. Dinosaur Alpha 1

[rillz]

wow m1sz impressive again, are those anchors from kas on the bottom of the feet?