Justin Kerbice

I have wrote before, I just create the spark here, and luckily, there was a thin trail of gun powder, just hope it leads to a nearby ammunition supplies to create a huge fireworks . Unfortunately, as this is what a community is, there is a chance to get 15 different and similar resources mods because one people here want a blue engine whereas the other like red engine paint, some want one single resource we can find everywhere, some want one or more resources per body, some want direct usage of them, some want conversion into stock propellant first, ... Karbonite could be use as a base, as Roverdude claim it is fully open (but I'm not sure contribution was as much open as the mod itself, it worth check this). Anyway, this is how I see the work needed to get it: a - the resources definition (may or may not use the standard some people try to establish): name, density, way to use it, where to find them this is some KSP related job (creating cfg files) and most importantly think and design job or paper job aside - the location maps (paper work again) - a working system to put resources on bodies (ORS ? something new), map made using point 2 (even as a mere draft) - a resource workflow (scanning, drilling, storing, converting, using devices definition) b - meanwhile, the gameplay modification part have to be defined, designed and done through one or more plug-in => new game mode, difficulty level settings, base game status (empty fuel tanks, parts available), tech tree (new nodes, all parts cfg to update, ...) This is the biggest part of the whole thing as it has never been done before and it need a lot of exploration under the hood of KSP itself. c - then the "easy" part: creating new parts for each function needed (there is plenty example of them) d - and finally the less than easy and quite hard: packaging, with a full documentation, tutorial(s), etc To make a long story short, all of this will be pointless until there is a working gameplay modification (b above) AND a way to put <n> resources where we want them to be on a given body (density map or discrete spots map or whatever). A quick note on existing mod: Karbonite, for what I have understand is "just" a Kethane clone, because Kethane's license is far too restrictive (see "Kethane plus" issue), so no new concept, just a different way to make these concepts alive. Here is a proposal for some new concepts and also a new modding concept: it would be no longer a 1 people/team work, but a shared work without any kind of "polutting onwership" on the material produced (ie: people who want to be involved here have to accept to fully give away their beloved work and let others working on them even in a different/unwanted way). Kind of what was more or less achieved with open source software, it's just amazing to see some old tool from the 70-80s still being working and updated these days like tar, gzip, vi, cron, ... look at the manpage copyright date, it's just crazy !

Don't forget guys camera really sucks when moving under objects (try island runway hangar or KSC bridges), so until there is a fix for this, cave will not be a good thing (the demo on the video above might be quite a cheat, ie without a "roof" over the cave).

Wrong ! You can have as much as command pod as you like in a vessel (one very nice KSP feature ). Try create a plane with a mk1/mk2 occkpit, a mk1 pod, a 1.25m diameter probe core and one octo/cubic probe core. You just have to strap a reluctant kerbal on the seat yourself (without forgetting he'll escape as soon as you turn your eyes off him like adding parts) ! docking port (junior) on top/bottom is also an option as you have the "control from here" command.

It would be great to have some inputs from someone who is really deep into GPU stuff and their drivers but AFAIK, GPU can't afford to loose time in compressing/decompressing, and that's explain why the strongest a Gfx card is, the more fast memory it include on board. Think of modern Nvidia card with 4GB inside. Do you really think those 4GB are just there to increase the sell price ? Give money to memory chips manufacturers ? GPU need to be feed as fast as possible, so models and texture are push into the tube like high pressured gas in the most usable form: uncompressed (and/or converted into some internal, unusable outside, format). It's not a waste of time to compress them as disk space + reading file from disk are still valuable eve with SSD or fast hard drives.

@Volcanix: good to see your enthusiasm on this but it doesn't matter I might say as it needs a proper architecture, at least the foundation of it, to be significant. With the mods available now, it would be pointless. @southernrock: the whole concept of a "completion" is also pointless IMHO. It is and stay a sandbox game, you don't have to follow the whole line to complete a campaign then... be boring and move on ? I think it's better to keep the sandbox style, let people do whatever they want with what they have (unlocked at some point), perhaps aside this, a full set of scenarii can be made, using scenario feature (but it would need a lot of them, between 50 and 100 I guess to cover everything). @to everyone: I just launch the idea, I don't own it, don't want to be kind of team leader or a guide or a guru, if some people find it good and want to work on it, fine, if no one care, it's fine too. As I wrote in the 1st post, it's definitely NOT a single people job, or it need someone who be fuelled over the maximum with energy drink .

@Volcanix: more or less, watch the video quickly, I'm not sure if the gameplay was really modified but yes, I really means start with the bare minimum to start the "campaign", evolving quite slowly, having to get resources, going further every time, ...

I think life support and failures are seriously out of scope of my initial idea, here it just about resources. @impyre: that's good, I like it . I can imagine what it will be to unlock new tech tree branch with amazing technology: using karbonite as a working example, it may exists only on body B, so discover it (by an old meteorite crash site on Kerbin, or by discovering some kind of anomaly on B by chance), research it may unveil crazy engines nil2work and others have made.

Quite good idea you have Lady Athena, but, there is a but sorry, planet editing feature is "locked" I may said and Squad never talk AFAIK about releasing whatever they have used to create the bodies in game. Kerbtown can be use to put static objects but they will never be count as anomaly by mod like ScanSat and I have look a bit at ScanSat source code, anomalies are quite a "magic" thing, don't know where they comes from at all ! And PF (CE, PF has been burried a while ago for some reasons) is quite too "drafty" (editing text file to add bodies... is a bit ridiculous and there is no way to just take existing stock bodies and add or remove some of them). Finally underwater things are only viable if we can use some boat parts, as water is not like real water as it is now. So, unless some magician come and do a magic plug-in that do the job, I'm afraid you'll have to keep your enthusiasm for something else or lower your expectations a little bit. Or I'm totally wrong and I'll be more than happy in this case cause it would open a brand new world of amazing things to do.

Looks like your node attach are wrongly oriented. For example, your crazy funny BeamAxleAlpha have which point on +z whereas this node attach should be oriented on -z (-1 for the last value). More parts suffer the same issue.

There is no 'none' as answer in your poll Kaspervid. Anyway, it would be again a bad move from Squad, it looks like they would improve plane parts due to the demand but failed to do it by themselves so they "have to" add someone else's work as a pitiful plan B.

Stock use mass for drag value, see StockDragFix, it's light and just change the drag at least. Not as big change as FAR/NEAR. it may help . @SpannerMonkey: you made really crazy things .

Agree, buttons are not very friendly as they are and some confirmation would not be a luxury. I usually click on launch instead of save . By the way, visual feedback may be added too because we can't even be sure action have been successfully completed on save and also an overwrite confirmation as nothing prevent us to overwrite an already existing craft AFAIK.

mmm... looks like giving the choice is not a so good idea after all, maybe doing it like a "total conversion", like Quake Rally was, may be better and for those who want their sandbox(es), or stock science/contracts, they just have to play without it as other resources mods are there already.

Unfortunately guys, that's the way it is here and I guess it was the same when Debian have been cleaned up, people are sceptics (fair) and conservative (human standard issue ), so without anything to show, no one would move forward. And I think lot's of mod are pure selfish creation, who can really stand in front and claim "I did it for the community !" ? Not so many according to their behaviour regarding modifying, improving, redistributing their creations.

Good point baijuncheng, that's why I add options/modes/choices. Some people what to play it hard and tough, these people would be happy, I guess, to have to rely on themselves only to get the job done, some others want to play the "human way" (which I could call also, "we"re not alone"), and could rely on some companies to be paid to do the job for them, finally some other want to have some resources but also messing around with rockets and crash everywhere, and they could do it too. As long as the mod (not mine, it's just an idea), is player-oriented and not other thing, it has to let players to choose how they want to play. That's your answer nil2work .

Hi everyone, first of all, I expect this to be and stay a friendly debate and not any kind of hot burning discussion which looks like a fight. IT is not also any kind of implicit criticisms of existing resources mod. We have now quite some mods (Kethane, EPL and Karbonite, maybe more) creating a new area in the sandbox by scanning, mining and converting resources in KSP, but they have all the same "huge" issue: the resources are available everywhere, have no value on their own, and at the end, they is no good/strong motivation to do all the processing of gathering them except kind of role play. The common territory of all great resource games is: -resources are more or less rare and not renewable or at a very slow rate, -resources are valuable, -resources are useful (more than that in fact, they can/have to be used to build buildings and vehicles/units), -resources are completely part of the game (remove them... nothing left almost, except a crazy war game in which you can create as much as units as you want ) Examples: Command & Conquer (or I should write Dune 2, as this one comes first, C&C copy it !) RTS clones like Starcraft, KKND, Dawn of War, ... , Age of everything (empires and the followers I don't remember, ... ), Dominium, Populous, Powermonger (old game on Amiga/Atari ST and old 3-486), Full Metal Planet (older french board game adapted on computers), Westward series, Startopia (in its own way), and many others. The "dark side" of all of them is war, there is opponents doing the same thing and gathering resources to fight you to gather more resources to fight... who ? Til a game over appears in the face of the winner/looser. I really would like to have in KSP a more good resource system, more useful, more valuable and at the end: more interesting to find and mine. I'm aware it will need a lot more work than "just" a resource (or many), some scanning devices, drills, tanks, converters. I don't even know if it would be possible to create such a new gameplay that can completely change the way the game is played. What I know is contracts and money could have been added by a plug-in before Squad release the 0.24, as plug-in like FAR/NEAR completely change a feature/flaw which is probably deep inside the game engine core, and it's work. Contracts needs "only" an API to define and check various conditions (altitude, speed < or >, part X, body Y, landed, flying, ...). Making a resource mandatory could be added in a similar way (yet to define I admit). It's obviously not a one-people easy job and need probably a team of people which could even evolve (people come and go with time) to keep it alive in a better way than an open mod every one is invited to contribute to (like Karbonite, but KSP modders are not really used to this). But, for now, I don't see why I would spend hundreds of hours to set up a mining base far away for a resource I don't even need (any resource converted into standard KSP propellant such LF), or which can be found everywhere (Karbonite through ORS). Regarding these serious issues, it is fully understandable Squad doesn't want to add resources in game this way, as the only way to "force" players would be boring contracts (mine here, mine there => awesome ! And so what ? ). I have not (yet) the amazing idea which can make this happen and one way to achieve this could be: - all fuel tanks start empty (MM config to nullify RESOURCE block of each parts for LF/Ox/Monop/Xenon, disable tweakable) - we have to start with mining rovers with empty tanks, find resources/raw materials spots, mine, harvest, retrieve them - fill a fuel deposit/storage pool in KSC (a big global storage point for all resources gathered anywhere, could be a new building on its own: fuel storage facility, a bit farer than other buildings, or not, kerbal's way ) - all "fuels" could also be bought somewhere (to define, not in the beginning), one to <n> companies, offering different prices at different times. The path to follow would be (to summarize): - find resource near KSC, - gather them - build vehicles which can go further and faster - find better spots - gather more fuel - build better vehicles - ... - and don't forget the space program KSC -> surrounding areas -> other continents -> air & space -> close bodies (Mun first obviously) -> far bodies ... This in a parallel line to science, ie: scaning/mining/storing/shipping resources lead to improvements to go faster, do it cheaper, and more efficiently. There could be new technologies that allow more efficient designs, a better resources usage, use of new resources. Example: starting with "the elephant in a porcelain shop" engine (a big brutal and thirsty engine), improve consumption, thrust, ... going into alternative system like ION Drive or nuclear propulsion, then Electro-magnetic or other crazy thing that's cost less to go farer and faster. Of course this sounds quite tough for beginners, so there could be a mode to have a few units of each fuel available right away (10000 to 1000000 units of the most used ones, monop and xenon are not used as much as Ox/LF so 10000 Xenon and 5000 monop may be enough), EC is not relevant here, I mean it's available in the beginning as well as at least one solar panel (OX-STAT). We could have a difficulty parameters settings window with starting amount of resources and some other things + presets (easy/medium/hard/insane/Jeb's mode), the hardest offer almost no room to wasting resources, so launching tons of rockets everywhere just for fun may lead to loose all available fuels in any of their form (raw solid materials, liquid need to be refined, ...) until resource are renewed or... a providential asteroids come into play (A way to make them more interesting too, a lottery to find a lot's of resources or... nothing). To conclude this quite long post, I have really enjoyed resources oriented games, and I believe it could not be just a nostalgia feeling and adding this to KSP, in a good way, a new way to play our game and to be driven by something more than just GTA & clones missions (=contracts), allowing players to improve one area and follow a given path: science as a priority or resources or something else. Thank you for reading .

You're welcome. No, I think Taverius already did a great job, and it's with Blender (easier for you I guess). I just start playing a bit with NEAR, but not really into it yet. Thanks, good luck to you .

ooohhh Amazing use of this ugly SAS module ! Squad may have never imagines such a use for it !

How to create wings that's produce lift without scratching your head and keep your mood up note: an off-line version is available here, the main feature is better page layout. Introduction: The only piece of information existing yet for wing is this post from EndlessWave: Which is quite not very obvious on all items KSP needs to make wing works (and the little tiny character mistake, a 'e' instead of a 'i' could be very confusing), as we can set-up a GameObject with Parttools component, add another dummy GameObject with it's own orientation as parent of the mesh, ... Plus, it looks like to be wrong or just no longer applicable (post is from may 1st 2013) as you'll see later. So after wasting/spending some time on make a wing works, I decide to make this little how-to to share the knowledge and make life easier for any other wing makers to come. A look at some stock parts and lift: Below you can see an important and helpful tool to see if your wings are correct, the center of lift tool show the lift direction (here the way doesn't matter, KSP doesn't take care of the way, I guess it's because the choice for symmetry which don't use mirror but 180° rotation* on forward, y, axis) (for all pictures included: click on thumbnail to view the full sized picture) Delta wing Swept wing even small winglet *unfortunately, this mean there is no (easy) way to create downforce, or negative lift, for a racing car**. ** What ? Racing car in KSP ? Are you out of your mind ? "No... I just race, not rove like a snail" Jeb said. Set-up your part to make a working wing: For this tutorial, I've created the most simple wing: a mere box, flat and wide, it can't be simpler ! Create your own wing in whatever the modelling tool you use, pivot point here doesn't matter at all, but keep thing simple for unity import later, it looks like a good practice is to have the object centred on origin (0 on all axis), need to be confirmed. Import the object into unity, be careful of the size (FBX file format are imported in 0.01 scale for example, I have not a single clue why it is this way), remove rig if no anim provided (from "legacy", default setting in unity editor 4.3.3 to "none"), create an empty GameObject, move it to origin if it's not the first one (again, unity editor put all GameObjects into a random coordinates instead of origin !), HERE is the important job: rotate the empty GameObject by -90°/270° on x axis in order to have its z axis UP (in blue in the picture below): (90° should do the job too, just +z will be down in this case) THEN, an only THEN, put your object as child to this GameObject, as unity have trouble (again) with parent-child relationships, as soon as an empty GameObject get a child object, it's position and orientation become the one from the child, but rotating GameObject will rotate the child too (which is what we may expect). You just need now to fill the KSP Parttools fields (name/location/...) and export, create a config file* if not already done (not covered here, see many tutorials available), load the game and enjoy seeing something like this: As you can see on the picture above, lift is as expected and you can also notice the symmetry in action, wings have been put one side top and one side down for both left (source part) and right wings. Finally you can now enjoy flying with your brand new wings: (parts use in these pictures comes also from my own sets like the tiny Xenon powered engine (available here) * NOTE: wings don't use main part module but Winglet (module = Winglet in the top of the config file), see stock part for more details. * NOTE 2: the origin (0, 0, 0) of the mesh (this means the unity GO too) is the location of the center of lift vector. If for any reason you want to shift the center of lift away, you'll have to move your wing object accordingly, for example to create lift on a point located below and close to the tip and/or the back of a wing. You have also to be careful when creating pair of non symmetrical wings, both HAVE TO use the same origin or the plan you will build with them can have a weird behaviour. Shapes and properties are not linked: With stock game, whatever the shape is, the lift will be produced on the Z axis, any doubt about this statement, fine, look at the following pictures Convinced now ? With a proper FAR config, and only in case a configuration file or a ModuleManager config is provided, FAR/NEAR won't change this that's much I guess, this worth a try. Control surfaces ? Control surfaces are not covered, yet, in this how-to, I may add later some text here if relevant, but it looks like Tiberion did a good job here. Hope this have been helpful to you and save you a lot of time and troubles. Included files: template and default texture (Gimp format) simple wings parts 1.0 Examples with texture included in the release:

But the best one will be: DIY (=setting) dummies have their 50 % and are happy to see their engines doing something experienced players could do whatever they want (0, 100, or anything between). Too bad Squad don't do it this way.

Don't want to bother you but putting the link of a release in the middle of the thread is not a good idea . Nice work of tex and lights. EDIT: curse is really a bad idea... download won't start til some stupid ds loaded then... this "dumbad" is the redirect page to a so called java upgrade, so no download... thanks to curse and ad servers' morons (most of them can't even handle the load !)...

Remind me Buckaroo Banzai be careful of the mountain

You may try this .

And also to ABZB: I test with a very low-density resource (0.00000001 and even lower) with quite "high" (ie: non human technology ) Isp, the flow is high too and the best way is to add a generator which feed the engine while running. You can try the solaronite powered engine I've made with my flying saucer, I put a fair generator on it, so only thurst <= 11% can work, higher and the engine runs out of propellant. But on all I only try low thrust (20-50 kN), but I think I've made a 200 kN but 4 of them on a light probe was far too crazy (it can reach 2000 m/s in a short time from Kerbin ground and go over 10000 m/s then there is no place to go anyway).

There in a doc on air breathing engines in general/tutorials (a detailled look at jet engines). FYI, 0 of atmo curve is not strictly speaking "vacuum" (atmos. density/pressure very low), maybe a more accurate description would be "no oxygen" (Duna ground level = vacuum with the standard, Kerbin-oriented, definition)