CobaltWolf

I can dig up my references from back when I was working on Atlas. I was mostly concerned with the art though so it was a lot of trawling through google images with slightly different search terms and saving the ones that piqued my interest. RE: the atlas II not having enough TWR... if I recall, FASA's Atlas is very specifically focused on making Atlas/Mercury. I am not sure if Atlas II's engines differed significantly in appearance from Atlas I's. It may simply be a balance issue IMO. EDIT: Those unflown Atlas variants... I know of some of them, but others are very exciting! Thanks for the links.

I have several things in the pipeline that, while not necessarily dependent on them, would be greatly improved by having custom particle animations. Some examples include a puff of smoke for the ALSEP mortar firing, and a particle getting zapped as it passes through an ion trap instrument. While the latter may be achievable with just a small chunk of transparent geometry and animated emissives/lights, others do not have an obvious workaround. I looked around but didn't see anything - is there any information on having custom particle effects? I hesitate to look for standard unity tutorials because I don't know what would and wouldn't work in KSP. Would the move to 1.1 change anything?

*shudder* That's why I dropped out of the engineering track and become an artist. I could (still can't) get over hopelessly over engineering everything. I'm probably the last person who you'd want to design something light, like a LEM. I was about to say that it's funny to me that the Ariane line is virtually unheard of to the American public, compared to all of our launchers. I had certainly never hear of Ariane before I started getting involved in KSP. But thinking about it, I suppose that the average American doesn't know / wouldn't recognize anything space related besides the Shuttle, Apollo/Saturn and maybe Mercury + Gemini.

(still avoiding homework) You are correct - the attachment point is no longer where it used to be. The change is noted in the part descriptions to ease transition. The interstages now attach to a hidden node inside the mounting plate. The top edge of the interstages line up flush with the bottom of the dark grey rim around the top of the mounting plate. EDIT: To further explain, this change reduced the overall length of the stage and made it more agnostic to which engine you were using. It is theoretically more reliable to assemble as well.

Well this post was over a week ago but I just noticed and feel bad. It was supposed to say ' @hraban is now the official spokesperson for Tantares'. I would have let it go but it almost completely reverses the sentiment of my post.

Ariane IV always looks so fragile to me. *shudder* Looking good though. I love the name (Aliyana)

Did Transtage ever fly on Titan IV? I thought it was just used on Titan III. [WALL OF TEXT INCOMING] Speaking on Transtage, I've decided I will try and make the RCS blocks separate, with detachable aeroshrouds. I feel like that would be a useful part to have. I'll be experimenting with it first thing on stream tonight, since there's no point in putting Transtage in game if I'm going to tear part of it apart and rebuild it. For anyone that wasn't there: The plan is to essentially make the RCS blocks as radial decouplers. The thrusters will be attached to the part that gets left behind on the rocket, while the aerodynamic covers will jettison off. The parts will then be set so other things cannot be surface attached to them, and crossfeed will be enabled to they can draw mono from the fuel tanks. To be clear, the Transtage engine itself is fine and won't be getting ripped apart. Just possibly the fuel tank. I was sitting class and decided to write down what needs to get done. Tonight's agenda (as always we'll see how far we get): 1)Titan ToDo: Experiment w/ RCS block Finish Transtage textures (still too clean) Fix Titan IV tank textures (They need a bit more detail, and the color pallet needs adjustment) Add Transtage in game 2) Thor ToDo: Make changes to 0.9375m decoupler texture Finish adjustments to textures on engine, XL tank, etc Add additional grunge and rust (I've been doing this on the Titan tanks and like the effect) Redo Able stage tanks (end diameter still 0.625m but the main section of the tank will be narrower. Thor fin (small triangle fin) Long 1.25m > 0.625m adapter (for Thor-Able) 1.25m fairing base (shorter/lower profile than stock) 1.25m low profile decoupler (same as above, also to match the Thor textures better) 1.5m Boattail mount (for mounting 1.25m engines on 1.5m rockets. It'll look sexy trust me) Strake fin (long-ish trapezoid fin. Just going to be folded into the Thor stuff there's room on the texture sheet) 3) Delta ToDo: Add texture to AJ10 autoshroud Color match the interstage (it is too bright compared to other parts) Play with color pallet - too much going on I think. Green, yellow, and red - and it's supposed to go with a blue first stage. Thoughts? Add grunge / rust 4) Misc ToDo: 0.625m fairing base (starting tech, more or less meant to be a nose cone fairing for instruments. But might become more useful if I ever add more tiny probes) Fix texture on backside of Ranger solar panels - may require ripping out the broken geometry and rebuilding it Fix the solar panel texture on the Suomi core - some white streaks were added on top of the solar panel texture on this probe core, and as a result the solar panels don't match the rest of the mod's solar panels in color. Finish unwrapping Ranger probe core Finish unwrapping cameras Next order of business - if you haven't noticed, the bros over at Procedural Fairings for Everything (special shoutout to @MeCripp ) have been converting the fairings over to Procedural Fairings. Personally, one of my biggest problems with PFairings is that they lack stockalike textures. I will be making a series of textures for PFairings, and hopefully (if me or Venom can figure it out) custom shapes for the fairings as well. Stay tuned for that. I also want to talk about the next update for a moment. It's approaching a month since the last release of BDB, and the release of 1.1 is approaching. My general plan moving forward is to get one last release out before 1.1, so that everyone will have stuff to play with once I have to start moving things over to Unity 5. Any time between the release of BDB 0.09 and the release of KSP 1.1 will be spent working on art assets for probe parts (including finishing the cameras and other new science), Not-Gemini/Not-MOL (some of those parts have been half modeled since November) and Delta II/III (yes I'll do the darn Delta III upper stage but that's as far as I go) since there likely won't be much point to getting them pushed through Unity 4. The 0.09 release is actually going to be the biggest BDB release yet I think. Titan alone has over 30 parts, and a special thanks goes out to @fs10inator and @TimothyC for helping me wrap my head around such an interesting rocket family. Thor will have been completely redone, to match the real rocket's proportions and improve the art. Almost all the other 'Early Rockets' launchers have had their textures tweaked or redone. The Delta K upper stage was modeled by @VenomousRequiem and added into the game, Centaur got sexy new interstages, and Atlas V got a new texture with a resolution appropriate for the size of the parts. Almost every part in the mod got their stats heavily adjusted, thanks to help from @Jso and @Araym. Not only are the parts less hopelessly OP, but they've also helped set up guidelines for balancing parts in the future. I guess my point is that I'm crazy excited about BDB. It's been growing exponentially better than last couple updates and I wanted to thank everyone here on the thread for participating in its development and putting up with my general craziness. I didn't mean to get all mushy but there I said it. While my homework has definitely been hurt a bit since I started (I've managed to convince myself that BDB work is an equally productive use of my time) overall I have seen huge gains in my skill as a 3D artist. It's been an incredibly enjoyable and rewarding experience. I've always been a huge flake with personal projects and though I've made attempts at modding other games before, I've never come close to releasing something, let alone still going strong 4 months later with no end in sight. Who knows, maybe some day I'll even do Saturn. Speaking of help - I have two things that I need help with. One, I'll need a hand in ensuring that everything that should have TweakScale, does. If anyone wants to list off the parts in the current dev release that should have it but don't, I'd appreciate it. Secondly, if there are any textures that stick out, I'd like to know. For example, the 'black' (dark grey) should be more or less uniform between all the parts, ditto the 'white' (very light grey). If anyone objects to any of the textures in the mod (barring the antennas - they need to get completely redone at some point) I'd like to know so I can take care of it. I'll actually make this three things instead of two. While there has been a lot of work put into balancing the mod, the Titan engines in particular are still up in the air. Please let me know if you have thoughts as to how to adjust them. Stream will go online again somewhere between 4 and 6 PM EST. As usual, feel free to stop in and say hi, ask questions, etc. I'll be working on the things in the todo list above, roughly in the order they appear on it. EDIT: For those that are curious, apparently I took about 45 minutes to write this T.T EDIT2: Couple more questions, because I'm sitting here in the computer lab on my laptop and I'm trying to avoid being an adult. When should I move from '0.xx' to 'Release 1', 'Release 2', etc? Also, is it possible to have the moderators move the thread to the releases board when that happens? My thought would be it won't happen until, at the very least, the antennas are redone because frankly I want to vomit whenever I see some of them. They're currently the oldest thing in the mod and they were all made when I had no idea what I was doing. To give a rough idea of how I feel about them - I think most of the stuff IN THE LAST RELEASE looks pretty bad now. Its just the allure of adding new things is stronger than going back to fix mistakes... now I understand why the Payday 2 devs jumped the shark.

Awesome, thanks!

I already converted most of the adapters to be structural. I definitely want to do the fins. I have a couple more misc parts that are going on those texture sheets to round out Thor. The XL tank is still in, I knew about the visual glitch and fixed it last night. When I originally made it I forgot that the Thor tanks have slight bevels on their rims. I fixed that last night while I was working. It's actually the same texture on both the top and the bottom part of the tank, it's just the top ends before it reaches those black stripes. I changed the color because I didn't want it to be mistaken for the Delta II/III tank. The Delta II tank will make use of that blue color, I'm fairly partial to it. It's hard to find non-monochrome colors that work well for a stockalike style. I was just informed that my evening is open, so I suppose I'll throw the stream up if my renders finish while I'm at class today. Going to get Transtage in game then finish the Thor stuff.

Very interesting... Expect some interesting fairings in the future... EDIT: can you explain what each value does?

Stream is done. Got some work done on Thor, and finished Transtage - didn't have time to get it in game though! Have a dev release, including the new Thor stuff, the Titan fairings, and more balance work. ( @Araym Thor is now built (from bottom up) with the engine, short tank, medium tank, long adapter)

Stream will start as soon as my desktop finishes restarting. As usual it will be on my Twitch channel. Tonight will be work on Thor parts, then texturing Transtage, then if we have time I'll be UV unwrapping some probe stuff. While I was waiting for renders this afternoon I started tweaking the Thor parts again and before I knew it they're almost completely redone, so... yeah. Might as well finish that up.

Eastern? No, my streaming software was open in the background and I felt like trolling. I toggled the stream on and off a couple times to see how quickly you (specifically) came.

My thought was that the longer adapters are tapered fuel tanks, while the shorter ones are essentially fairings / avionics / structural. The Atlas adapter tank comes to mind - Atlas flew with both straight tanks and tapered tanks, depending on the upper stage. Also, we cannot balance the engines based on IRL ISP. Engines in KSP have consistently higher ISP - the Mainsail's ISP is 310/285. My bottom line is I want engines to have ballpark IRL performance RELATIVE to eachother - if one engine has a significantly higher ISP than another in real life, I want that reflected. So the ratios should be more or less right. But the actual values should probably be nudged closer to those of the stock parts. We also have to think of the niches that parts should fill - the Inon/RL-10 should be the most efficient upper stage we have right now, because it runs on hydrolox. What would the downside of that be? EDIT: Also, I realized that there is a bunch of space left over on the texture sheets for the early rocket parts. I could fit some misc parts, like the fins for Thor, on there, and possibly even a new fuel tank or two. Thoughts?

Not much I can do to prepare for 1.1. It's going to take a lot of work either way. Unfortunately for both SEP and BDB by the time it comes out I will likely be busy with finals for this quarter. :S

Is it possible to have custom profiles for fairings? I seem to recall there was a fairing that forced the Proton's biconic/two-tier style fairing. Out of curiosity.

It works fine for me. The interstage now attaches via its top node to the hidden node just below the top rim of the mounting plate. The fuel flows normally on my end. EDIT: @Araym I'll apply your changes to Titan and see how it flies. I'm waiting for renders to finish anyways. EDIT2: @TimothyC I may put some mono in the transtage fuel tank (it has a very low utilization ratio) and add RCS to the blocks. That makes the fuel tank slightly more useful, and makes it a bit different than the other Titan tanks of a similar length. Did Transtage have gimbal on its AJ-10s? EDIT3: Also, @Araym @Jso a thought I had last night: Right now, all the adapters are fuel tanks. Perhaps we should take a look at which ones should be made pure structural adapters? The short / almost flat adapters, the tiny Brun adapter, and the one for the top of Titan 1 come to mind.

I swear... if I start getting bug reports from you while you're running x64...

@Araymwow that's a... a very long post you've got there. I'm going to read it and write down my general thoughts. The Titan 1 parts shouldn't be 'worse' than the Titan 2 and 4 parts. I actually rather like the stock philosophy of adding more options, rather than making old parts obsolete. I may make some early game parts that would intentionally be replaced, but not yet. Also, Titan 1 should theoretically have the best ISP of the bunch due to it using kerolox instead of storable propellants. Also worth pointing out, the LR91 isn't an upper stage - it's a second stage. It is closer to the skipper than it is to the poodle. From your post I gather that you understand this. I appreciate the suggestion of editing the Thor tanks through the cfgs, but I was thinking I would simply scale them in Maya. I want to grab some new orthographics and make sure the tank lengths match them better this time. That will probably happen tonight. Remember that the current 1.5m Thor/Delta parts are only meant to represent Thor up until they stopped using the LR-79. Delta-II is not meant to be built by the current parts - the next big update will likely focus on finishing Delta. The long blue tank was meant to be used to build Thorad. @TimothyC so... what should I do for the transtage tank then? Delete those blocks? I can't think of a way for stock to allow RCS with a detachable cover. I might just add RCS ports to the texture so that they still function. Anyways, that's it from me for the day. I have to try and buckle down and get some compositing work done. Stream starts at 6PM EST but might start as early as 5PM.

I don't mind texturing. It may be my favorite part, actually. I find it relaxing. But that may be because it's what comes after UV mapping, so there's this huge sense of relief, as if you've crossed over a big hump... I started out very slow texturing. It's definitely something that gets faster with practice, as well as learning to make use of layer styles to automate certain effects like panel edge wear.

Oh no no no no that wasn't what I was saying. I was asking what the best way to release the Bluedog Procedural Fairings parts would be. The way I see it, there are 3 options: Include the Bluedog Procedural Fairings in the normal BDB download, and use Module Manager to automatically switch them. Release the Bluedog Procedural Fairings as a separate download. Include them in the Procedural Fairings for Everything download. I was asking what you thought was best. Personally, I've been enjoying having both the stock and PF versions available because sometimes the stock fairing is handy.

I'll have to make sure you get the two new ones to make them compatible. What were you thinking for distribution - would you want to fold them into PF for Everything? Stream tomorrow (Thursday the 14th) at 6PM EST, possibly starting slightly earlier. Work will be on the Transtage, cleaning up some textures and working on probe stuff. On another note, I need someone(s) to help write sciencedefs for the upcoming science parts. Cameras, various things ending in '-meter'. I am awful at writing flavortext and I don't really understand how most of this stuff works. Preferably someone who is scientifically literate, or at least could gain a working understanding of the instruments they'd be writing about.

(Thanks for posting, I thought this was going to be my third post in a row) Oh! You're right. I was hesitant to have it be filled less than 100% because then the player would have to fiddle with it to maintain the proper ratio. But if we have it not be filled 100% by default, and rather, say, 80% (off the top of my head) then the player can just pull the sliders to 100%. TA-Redstone/Agena sounds cool, I'll have to build that next time I play. Agena (with a payload) might be reaching a bit high for Redstone - Ablestar might be more appropriate. Worked a bit this afternoon while I was waiting for renders. I've been playing with the textures for Redstone, Thor, and Vanguard. Mostly passing on the new texturing techniques I used for the Titan stuff. They'll be included in the next release. I also have fairing bases for the Titan I (1.5m) and Titan II (1.875m, with a 1.7m fairing). The stock fairing module is AWFUL, and butchers the textures, kicked my dog, and gave me cancer. If anyone has any tips to make it work better I'd appreciate it.

You are a stronger man than I...

Oof. You just convinced me that it would be worth it to make animated gimbals.