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[1.0.x] [V1.9f] Kerbal Foundries wheels, anti-grav repulsors and tracks


lo-fi

What to work on next?  

1,282 members have voted

  1. 1. What to work on next?

    • More wheels
      123
    • More tracks
      453
    • Rover bodies
      241
    • Landing gear
      137
    • Landing legs
      108
    • Something completely different
      193


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How did you get to look at the KSP API? adding the KSP dlls to your project?

Visual studio is genius. All I've been doing is trying something like writing "this.part." and the moment you put the last dot you're given a decent list of stuff you can use from there. Use F12 to get more info on the definition. Also, this is invaluable: https://github.com/Anatid/XML-Documentation-for-the-KSP-API/blob/master/Assembly-CSharp.xml

As long as you reference the DLL's and declare "using UnityEngine;" (which you have to do anyway) it all comes up. Not as good as full documentation, but that's what we've got. It's been the steepest learning curve I've ever been on, and I like to challenge myself!

Unity tutorials are also an absolute blessing and the community here is incredible too.

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Way, way too cool, lo-fi - especially the suspension articulation. Looking forward to the initial release :)

A couple of feature requests, if they're alright with you:

- Crab / sideways steering; I'm planning on making a modular space exploration rover, and I was wondering if it would be possible for a steering system to toggle to and from standard Ackermann steering, so that I can drive the rover sideways right into the docking port on a habitat.

- Rocker-bogie suspensions.

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Way, way too cool, lo-fi - especially the suspension articulation. Looking forward to the initial release :)

A couple of feature requests, if they're alright with you:

- Crab / sideways steering; I'm planning on making a modular space exploration rover, and I was wondering if it would be possible for a steering system to toggle to and from standard Ackermann steering, so that I can drive the rover sideways right into the docking port on a habitat.

- Rocker-bogie suspensions.

:D

Possible on the crab mode, just running through how I could code it... Yup, think I can do that. Will take me a while, I have a LOT on my plate at the moment. Very cool idea, though - nicely fits with the extended functionality and the style of those wheels lends itself perfectly.

You mean having two wheels on the same object and rocker type suspension? I have no idea, but I'll try out a proof of concept. Could be cool, I'll look into it. Again, don't expect anything quickly!

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:D

Possible on the crab mode, just running through how I could code it... Yup, think I can do that. Will take me a while, I have a LOT on my plate at the moment. Very cool idea, though - nicely fits with the extended functionality and the style of those wheels lends itself perfectly.

You mean having two wheels on the same object and rocker type suspension? I have no idea, but I'll try out a proof of concept. Could be cool, I'll look into it. Again, don't expect anything quickly!

Personally, I'm more keen on the crab mode, since that's quite important for what I'd like to do for my project. The rocker-bogie is just an idea other folks may have tossed around throughout the forums, and I included it for the sake of completeness.

Either way, the work you've done so far is amazing - remember to work at your own pace and do what you think is fun :)

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Crab mode is a really nice fit for inclusion so I will definitely look into that one. Multiple colliders in one object is something on my list to look into too, but just out of curiosity really.

Thank you, for both the kind comments and the sage advice! Very easy to lose sight of that :)

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The new version with the wheels rotating to become the anti-grav units looks good, i like that you can get a high hover, without actually using vertical engines.

idea: is there a way to "sense" local gravity, to calculate vertical suspension capability? so the upward thrust would auto-scale to prevent launching to orbit with wheels? (i.e., you need gravity to operate anti-gravity) eg: Local Gravity = X, max height = Z, so hover strength = Z/X*Y or something (math is bad, m'kay?). Or turn it around...Low grav world makes a max hover of X meters (default), high grav world can achieve X*(HG-LG). Something like this should limit the wheels to being wheels, and not a magic space drive.

Although, that would be cool too LOL

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I hope that they'll have some sideways slip like the RollKage wheels do, so that one doesn't instantly flip their rover over when steering at speeds above 5 m/s the way the stock wheels do. I find the stock wheels to be utterly useless for this reason alone.

I really think this has a more fundamental problem: that we're trying to use a few sets of wheels to address a huge spectrum of gravity, rover masses, etc with one set level of friction. Instead of trying to balance for use on the Mun vs Kerbin vs Eve vs Gilly, tweakable frictions might be a better solution.

As an aside, if you want to drift using stock wheels and not roll over, use physical timewarp, it screws with the physics enough to make rovers super easy to drive.

6) Implement anti-roll simulation (The freeform nature of KSP makes this less than simple, though I think I've cracked it)

I'm curious as to what this means/how it works.

Edited by kujuman
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People here are talking about using these parts. How?!? Is the link in that one post a usable build? I thought it was just the source code!

As Will Smith said in 'Independence Day', "We need to work on our communication!"

:)

Update: Well, I just went and looked, and if there's a download in there somewhere, I can't find it and/or don't know what to look for in all that gobbledegook anyway. So I guess I'll wait until there's an actual build available, or until I get less stupid. The first one's more likely to happen sooner, I'm guessing. :confused:

Edited by Neutrinovore
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Really nothing magic going on here, so no need for grav sensing or anything like that. Though you can reach sub-orbital horizontal speed with a flat enough run ;) Just abuse of standard unity stuff, nothing fancy in code.

Anti-roll is something every car has. Essentially a sprung rod that connects wheel pairs left to right. If one wheel is higher than the other, it transfers some of the force to the wheel taking more load and takes from the wheel taking less. The important things is it always sums to zero in the central plane - this is not simply add a magic force pushing the craft onto the floor! Simulated here, of course, and I need to iron out a bug or two in the control loop that's letting rounding errors creep in so they don't _quite_ sum to, but it is effective and I'll get it fixed.

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The REAL trick lo-fi accomplished was to get opposite wheels to sense what the opposing wheel was doing, and adjust itself.

Lo-Fi created essentially an "active" anti-sway system; look on wikipedia for "anti-roll bar", givers a decent description on how it works IRL.

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Exactly. Inspiration taken from here: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/how-to-make-a-physically-real-stable-car-with-wheelcolliders.50643/

Tougher in KSP because you have to find the wheels and index their position in the vessel - you can't just reference the collider name in the model. Still a lot I want to do, but having some experience and a having had to mess about with all sorts of things to get this working it's a heck of a lot easier to code new features now. For the moment, I need to polish the existing ones.

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Hi, Is there a way to allow for disabling the anti roll feature? The reason I ask is that I have noticed a reduction in articulation while under the control of the plugin. Perhaps if there's not maybe you could add an option? I have compared wheel sets with and without plugin and the effective suspension is considerably less supple, anti roll is perfect for higher speeds but on rough terrain you want the suspension as supple as possible

Possible point to note is that I own RL a tweaked jeep cherokee and for off road excursions the anti roll bar is disconnected to enable maximum articulation.

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Yup, that's kinda the idea ;) Latest build has a tweakable. Button/action group to disable for the whole vessel is on the list and will be implemented shortly for those off-road situations, same as removing the rollbars from a jeep.

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Excellent news, so what about anti lock brakes then? :P Just to round the package off...

PS IR working happily alongside plugin now, hope you dont object to pic, it does feature your Wheels.dll in the wheels construction

As a note to other modders wishing to use the plugin, the differences in the hierarchy are not prohibitively difficult to do although as with normal wheels setup can take a bit of fiddling

fEoEeNA.png?1

Edited by SpannerMonkey(smce)
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Lo-Fi created essentially an "active" anti-sway system; look on wikipedia for "anti-roll bar", givers a decent description on how it works IRL.

Ok, I think I got it now. So anti-roll is to keep the body of the vehicle more or less level (left to right) even if the wheels are not. I had originally thought it was some system to limit steering angle to keep the net acceleration (gravity + slope + centripetal) of the vehicle's CoM between the wheels, which seemed like a big task.

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Excellent news, so what about anti lock brakes then? :P Just to round the package off...

PS IR working happily alongside plugin now, hope you dont object to pic, it does feature your Wheels.dll in the wheels construction

As a note to other modders wishing to use the plugin, the differences in the hierarchy are not prohibitively difficult to do although as with normal wheels setup can take a bit of fiddling

http://i.imgur.com/fEoEeNA.png?1

Excellent news and not at all! Nice work, and no on the ABS ;)

Ok, I think I got it now. So anti-roll is to keep the body of the vehicle more or less level (left to right) even if the wheels are not. I had originally thought it was some system to limit steering angle to keep the net acceleration (gravity + slope + centripetal) of the vehicle's CoM between the wheels, which seemed like a big task.

Essentially yes. I was a motorsport mechanic for a while, so I think about these things.

.... Mako?

(tencars)

Hell yes. I've been musing about a design for modular rover body parts and cockpit. I'll play some Mass Effect and draw some inspiration from the Mako. Thanks!

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Here is a secret....if you goto his github, go up one level, there is a "download as zip" button on the right.

If you install that into its own folder in GameData.....you may find some new toys in the utilities tab when you restart KSP...but don't tell anyone I told you....

and do remember, he has not officially released this, so if you nuke your install, blame yourself. Back up your files, then back up your files.

Worked great for me though ;)

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