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Eyes Turned Skywards UPDATE now with Signup Sheet


NathanKell

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eyesskywardlogo04.png

(ETS logo by nyrath)

SEE BOTTOM OF POST FOR UPDATE

This is a thread to discuss development of a mod to bring the universe of Eyes Turned Skywards to KSP.

Eyes Turned Skywards is an "alternate post-Apollo space age," a "history book"-style alternate history timeline by e of pi and Workable Goblin, with contributions from Brainbin and art from nixonshead and MichelVan. Starting from its Point of Departure in 1968 (George M. Low appointed as NASA Administrator rather than Thomas O. Paine) it chronicles the history of spaceflight (and, increasingly, some gradually-diverging terrestrial matters) to the present.

It's part of what got me interested in KSP, it's certainly what got me interested in realism in KSP and what inspired my own Reaching for the Stars, and it's something I think many fans of KSP would enjoy.

The point of this thread, however, is to discuss (and bring about) the Eyes world in KSP. And such a pretty world it is. For example:

challenger-sml.jpg

Apollo Block IV approaching Challenger, the first module of Space Station Freedom

europa.jpg

The successful Europa family of launch vehicles

mir-alone.jpg

This universe's Mir

aardv-blockii-ortho.png?cache=

The AARDV Block II cargo vehicle (Apollo SM-derived)

From the Eyes Wiki:

Spacecraft and Launch Vehicle Data

Artwork

Here is the Worksheet!

On Google Drive

Please edit responsibly.

Please help me fill out cells that haven't been filled out, and start adding your own information to the Contributors list, and start assigning yourself parts (and mention on the Asset Groups you're assigned, and add each individual part you make to the assets list.)

Edited by NathanKell
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I think having those projects in KSP would be amazing.

I sort of poked around the page and the forum thread. Does the artist(s) have any sort of license on the designs, such that one would need to contact them about converting them into KSP?

Sadly modeling replicas isn't one of my strong suits, but I'm down to help however I can.

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As it happened, e of pi contacted me about this to start with (I'd been kicking around the idea, since I'm a regular lurker on AH.com, and posted a Saturn Multibody + Apollo III+ launch in RSS). Which is why I finally got around to posting this thread. I'm reconfirming with them all they're still ok with this (and in particular asking nixonshead how involved he'd like to be with the art, from just letting us use the sources to bake diffuse and normals up to making low-poly stuff). Even if no one wants to take an active hand, I doubt they'd not be in favor, though; nixonshead for instance already offered them up for use in (or as references for new models for) Orbiter at one point.

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I volunteer as tribute. Couldn't show much of my work yet but I can say I'm able to create complex models at least and even import them into unity except for wheels and animated parts (I didn't find any good source of info for them). I also have a project going on but it absolutely lacks in interest.

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I don't have any skills that would lend themselves to this mod, but I want to voice my approval and enthusiasm for it. When I was a child, growing up in the early '70s, America's manned space program was still very vibrant and active - we were still landing men on the Moon, then we had Skylab and the ASTP... I remember looking thorugh books where people had dreamed up designs for our next steps in space. This reminds me of those dreams. I wish you all the success you can get on this, and hope to be trying out some of these things in game someday.

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So what's the end goal here? Is this to be a series of parts, presumably unlocked in order while working up the tech tree, and are they meant to Kerbal-sized, 1.25, 2.5m, etc... or something bigger?

If you have models to work off of I might be able to help. Modeling is fairly easy for me if I have something to work from, even if it's just a few pictures or sketches. You'll probably want someone else handling any texturing though.

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I think just like FASA, it should be standard sized.

Agreed furthermore they should be compatible with each other. I mean the saturn v and nova would be how all that stuff got into space. I mean frizz is done with FASA and wants to move on to different things but it would be cool if he could help adapters, decouplers, and fairing just to make these things compatible with FASA.

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So what's the end goal here? Is this to be a series of parts, presumably unlocked in order while working up the tech tree, and are they meant to Kerbal-sized, 1.25, 2.5m, etc... or something bigger?

If you have models to work off of I might be able to help. Modeling is fairly easy for me if I have something to work from, even if it's just a few pictures or sketches. You'll probably want someone else handling any texturing though.

In hindsight I think it was the right call when I scaled the Gemini parts to the stock sizes. It wasn't 100% accurate but the benefit it gained from being compatible with everything else in the Kerbal universe far out weighed any aesthetic discrepancies.

If you do decided to to it in non-standard sizes adapters to the standard sizes should be a high priority.

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In hindsight I think it was the right call when I scaled the Gemini parts to the stock sizes. It wasn't 100% accurate but the benefit it gained from being compatible with everything else in the Kerbal universe far out weighed any aesthetic discrepancies.

If you do decided to to it in non-standard sizes adapters to the standard sizes should be a high priority.

I couldn't agree more. Keeping the size in line si the stock parts is crucial.

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I think it should be RSS based. It's alternate history, designed around what we can do in reality, not the ridiculous KSP solar system. Stock sizes and fudging proportions are not a good idea. I'd rather have an accurate rocket incompatible with everything else than one that looks off due to wrong proportions (I'm looking at you, FASA Saturn V!). Besides, with Procedural Parts, it's possible to adapt anything to anything else if you really need to.

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I think it should be RSS based. It's alternate history, designed around what we can do in reality, not the ridiculous KSP solar system. Stock sizes and fudging proportions are not a good idea. I'd rather have an accurate rocket incompatible with everything else than one that looks off due to wrong proportions (I'm looking at you, FASA Saturn V!). Besides, with Procedural Parts, it's possible to adapt anything to anything else if you really need to.

Or maybe both? Resizing is not that hard. We'll see if we get there. I don't like RSS scaled replicas for one single reason. It completely misses the point of the mod. To make in-game spaceflight a real challenge with modular stock and procedural parts. Or in other words, if you have a replica built for a specific task (like the Saturn V) and scale it to RSS, it'll be the same if you did it for the stock except it will be way too overpowered and oversized for every other part.

Edited by Reddragon
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Great to see all this interest!

I have updated the OP to include links (that I oops-forgot last night) to the Eyes Wiki, which includes technical data on the launchers and all imagery done so far for the timeline (craft views as well as scenic pictures).

The end goal of this is to recreate the Eyes universe in KSP as much as possible. For that reason, while I absolutely agree that stock-diameter parts should be an option, 100% real scale should also be an option. This is in part because some portion of the audience for this mod would be readers of Eyes coming to KSP to fly missios in the Eyes universe, rather than players of KSP coming to Eyes.

A note on sizes: Freedom's modules are the largest spacecraft in the Eyes universe thus far, something like 8-9m in diameter (they just barely fit inside the 10m "widebody" fairing on the Saturn Heavy).

So we should leverage Procedural Fairings and Procedural Parts (with custom textures) to handle adapters, I think. That will let us stick together rockets and payloads each in their own scale for stock KSP (so they both have stock-stack diameters) and then real-scale where each is 1:1.

I'm currently waiting to hear back from nixonshead; that'll let me know more exactly how much source material we have to work with. At the very least we'll have the hi-poly models in blender format, I think. He's busy enough that I doubt he has time to work on low-poly stuff himself, so that's probably our job.

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I wish I could contribute more than just being really excited about this mod and it's potential! So that being said I will be following this thread very carefully and with anticipation. Good luck!

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I'm also a huge ETS fan. Here's a kit-bashed Apollo Block IV I put together today using only FASA and stock. I'd love to see an implementation or standardisation with FASA so I could truly realise this great alternative.

KOezpRb.jpg

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Reddragon: cool!

I would request, though (and maybe you're planning this anyway) making separate parts rather than an all-in-one SM+engine...

Green Skull: yeah, on the Art link in the OP is all the imagery. Although all suits have thus far been very close to real life, so you can just use real life reference pics...

That said, for this to really work right we need a human, not a kerbal, mesh. Anyone interested in taking that project on? :)

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