Bit Fiddler

hmm I wonder if better luck to use the MechJeb docking autopilots "force roll" feature or if this will still have issues... guess it is time to do some test builds.

oh yes sorry KSP station was meant to be KSC station... stupid typos.

ok so question... I used the heat sinks and the thermal washers quite a bit in my designs... these are removed because changes to the way KSP deals with heat? or some other reason?

I am having an issue where the extra ground tracking stations no longer talk to my craft. I have verified in the settings that they are activated. and I know Kerbal Konstructs has options to turn them off, so I have ensured they are enabled there. and I have the Konstellation mod that will subdivide the net, so I have ensured all craft are set to the default frequency. does anybody know of other mods that may affect communications with these ground stations? the craft will talk to the KSP station just fine. it is ONLY the extra ground trackers that are missing.

am I missing something obvious? how do I know where the "0 degree" mark on a Konstruction port is? I mean how can I be assured of where they will snap when roll snap is set. I have made 2 ship parts and when roll snap is on they snap at odd angles. I need to be able to set the "up" direction when I build the parts to ensure that "up" is "up" on all the sections. but I do not see any indication of this "Zero Mark" on the port itself. EDIT: ok I see on the mid size and large size there is a window in the door at the "top" however I am using the small size ports... and I do not see any marker on them. do I just need to bump my graphics quality up? is there text on the texture I could be reading that says "^this way up^"?

ah yes this makes sense... the lines are the normal temp and the max safe temp... which as "luck" would have it coincides with the default shutdown temp...

ah yes the time warp bit is indeed the slider I was questioning. the other problem is the small indicator lines on the temp bar do not seem to move even if I change my shutdown temp. the line stays at 1300 or what ever the default was. is this intentional? are these lines not indicating a shutdown temp and a normal temp state?

where can I find a "users manual" for near future electrical's reactor control panel. there are a few bits on it that do not make sense to me.

i have many KSP installs that CKAN is managing mods for. this makes my drive fill up very quickly with the "downloads" folder duplicating many mods. Would it be possible for CKAN to install in a unique directory rather than in KSP, and then keep a single downloads folder that all installs would share?

Any input @linuxgurugamer? what would you prefer for the style? simple or complex or both? once we decide on this I will continue to make the rest of the parts in the same visual style. for various lengths of straight handrails like this, we just need to make the "handle" part longer so any length is possible. maybe even a dynamically sized part? and then for the curved rails we also need to decide on what hull diameters to support.

ah I see what you are getting at now... any way here is an example render with no texturing of the original (mid range?) model, in white. and the higher poly model with an example of adding in more detail, in the gray color. the basic difference is all the "cylinders" on the white are set to 16 faces, while the gray is set to 32. with the additional detail of a bolt and the cutout for the wrench. this is not the actual unity render this is just a sample in blender. so mileage may vary once in game. the actual 3d modeling is not a problem. it can be done in a matter of a few hours. the real time sink is going to be the texturing and the unity import. so what ever is wanted for a final product should be considered now before all the work for texturing and import is done. I am leaning toward just making them a simpler design and making 1 style, but I do not do a lot of screen shots and videos. so i am not the best one to decide what is wanted for that. but the actual work to make the models is quite simple so no worries what ever is decided i can do. This shows what i am leaning toward. just make them as simple as possible, by removing the base and all extra bits. they will still look good enough in game I would think and the functionality does not depend on the 3d model at all. so that part is not an issue. this view does however give you a better idea of the "quality" difference in the original 2 handrails. as the low poly version is now in the foreground and you can more easily see the "facetation" (lol is this is even a word?) caused by the lower poly count. and just to put this all in perspective here is an example of a 2.5m cylinder to give a better idea of what they would look like attached to a 2.5m part I would say it is @linuxgurugamer who would have the final say in this, as it is his mod. but I am open to what ever people want.

well I do not have a "real" answer on this, but in my previous testing it did seem that making a large craft with hundreds of hand rails adversely affected performance. as each handrail is an object that physics must be calculated for, and your video card must interpret and render. it is not so much a question of how much memory is used by the loading of several parts, but rather the load on the physics system, and the work done by the actual video card to render them all.

with this method is it possible to have the player be able to select them at will? as in I have a huge station type of ship, and it has hundreds of ladder/handholds scattered over the surface, so I need low poly hand holds in these locations. then at the high traffic points like the "living" areas where the hand holds are more likely to be seen the high poly version can be inserted so the objects look nicer in the areas most likely to be seen in screen shots etc. this is the ideal setup for a mod of this nature as players may want to mix and match the 2 style of rails on one craft depending on the likelihood of a screen shot or close-up in videos.

@NikusCraft there is also a Kerbal Health mod that looks like it will work along side TAC it does this stuff as well. As of now it deals with cramped quarters, but it is planned to add in more things like radiation or sickness etc. may be worth your time to look into this if you prefer the complexities of TAC over USI. I was just reading up on this myself to see if there were any issues with running the 2. Also look into Keep Fit, and Kabinkraziness.

i used the Fusebox mod back before it died, and have now switched to ampyear. my problem is that now that fuse box is back I must now decide which to use. for instance why is it that both can't be used? what is the conflict? I ask because amp year has some features I like. so I need to get a better understanding of what I loose and gain with each mod.

2 models is easy. I can make 2 parts one is a low poly part for large ships and another high poly part for small ships where you might want some high detail for screen shots or what ever. the creation of the actual 3d mesh files is not the issue. the real problem here is that i still have no idea how to get them textured and into unity. I know the best solution for this will be to reuse an existing squad texture similar to ... SXT? I think that is the mod that does that. basically all the 3d mesh files are told to use a texture supplied by squad so there is very little memory used for the new parts as those textures are all in memory already. so this should not be to big of a problem. however the actual .obj to unity conversion is where my knowledge falls apart. it will take some research to figure this bit out, or a modder who is familiar with this process to join the team and do the conversions for us. EDIT: so in my research into importing the mesh into KSP I have read many conflicting instructions on which version of unity must be used. Can anybody weigh in with a definitive answer to this?

I can easily remove the round bolt plates on the bottom, thus reducing the vertex count. this will be a bit of a savings, but as mentioned, if you end up with a hundred of these on some large craft, that small savings can add up. just need to balance looks with performance or make 2 parts, the low poly version for the over use craft and a high poly version for a craft where only 1 or 2 are used. I am open to all ideas, just say what ever comes to mind, and we as a forum can work out what to do.

Back on this... I will get some new models made, but as before I will need help with the texturing and importing them into the game. if anybody has experience with importing a blender file into the unity engine and or experience with how the textures need to be made I am open to idea sharing. This basic ladder rung can be extended easily to make longer "rails" just by extending the "rung" so any length of this is possible. Also please comment on the mesh? should I make it more simple to make it have less GPU overhead. using less memory and causing less lag? or should I make it more complex, to make it look better by adding more faces to make the curves more smooth? Keep in mind you may end up with a large number of these on a ship if you build custom ladders, or just have a lot of hand rails on a large craft.

finally... I mentioned to him several months ago that he should check for null values and ignore that science part. He said he had more interesting things to do and left it at that. Glad to see that Linux has once again saved the day with his never ending quest to fix every mod ever made.

my previous post has a first run at adding CC to all the squad wings. I am sure it needs fixing but you can give it a go and report/modify any changes that need to be made. First change that needs to be made is the initial amount 1 and volume 100 lines. this is at odds with one another. I was thinking that "initialamount = 1" was what made the tank "full" and the "volume = 100.0" told it to use 100% of the previous defined max volume. but this does not seem to be the case. will look into this agin when I have time to sit and play with KSP again.

Hey... Another request. can you integrate support for fuel tanks in the wings? This mod was great for that, but it relies on Modular Fuel Tanks. it would be nice if CC would add the fuel tanks to the wings as well. EDIT: hmm well upon trying my hand at a MM patch for this I looked into your .cfg files and it looks like you already do some of the Squad Wings. so I guess the ones that are missing must just be overlooked, or are mod parts? EDIT2: what happens if a part has both Module[ModuleTankManager] AND Module[ModuleSwitchableTank]? will this break things, or just have both options in the right click menu? EDIT3: Taking the MM patch directly from the Fuel wings mod and doing a quick conversion to CC gives me this. I am not sure if all the MM syntax is correct, or if I have done the conversion from what I assume was units of liquid fuel to cubic meters correctly. But ya, here it is with the addition of some wing parts the original mod did not cover. I will look at other wing parts from the various mods I have installed and add to this later.

just started a rescue mission and ran into the problems others have mentioned that as soon as I take the contract the timer starts ticking on the Kerbal. this will kill the Kerbal long before I could launch a rescue craft and save them. however I did notice something interesting. when I went to the tracking station to look at the vessel I had to work with it would not allow me to select it as I did not "own" it. So the question is could TAC check if the player "owns" a craft, and if not, do not process LS on the kerbals there? or optionally: I also saw a mod that would ensure all rescue missions will get a real crew part. therefore you do not get a mission to rescue kerbals from a deflated habitat module etc. with no hatches, and therefore no way to rescue them. would it be possible to do something like this, but ensure the craft actually has basic LS on it? this mod used a list file that the player could add parts to that are acceptable for rescue missions. if this was taken 1 step further to be not just a list of parts, but a list of basic craft files. then you could include some that use the stock parts, and players could make more with mod parts as they see fit. maybe create a community rescue craft list where these could be posted and compiled into a supporting mod.

procedural command pods are on the list of planned items. I assume this includes procedural probe cores? with monoprop, battery, reaction wheels, antenna etc. and while we are at it what about just a procedural reaction wheel? also as a side note it seems the procedural parts have 2x the number of "faces" as the majority of KSP parts. while on the surface this is no big deal (no pun intended), it is more overhead for the models. however more importantly (for me anyway), is that they have a funny "seam" where the parts match up, as the geometry is different. I know this is not a big deal to most people but it does cause aesthetic issues for my designs. would it be too much to ask to cut the faces in half so the geometry is the same as the rest of KSP's cylinders?

ah thanks this looks like it will be easier than I thought. the real trick is going to be integrating all the extra stuff like camera, docking indicators, vessel viewer, etc. that are on the various pages. the actual MFD pages look like they will be fairly straight forward.

how does one go about making the "MFD" used in various internals. I would like to maybe try to make custom MFD setup for my use, or even to distribute back to the community. I do not mean the "physical" 3d part. I mean the "software" that runs on it. how do I define what happens when certain buttons are pressed etc. basically where do I begin reading? and what tools will I need?