CobaltWolf

BEWARE - PIC HEAVY POST As promised, GATV progress update... I know a lot of people have been patiently waiting for the Gemini Agena Target Vehicle to get refreshed. I finally decided to throw myself into it and am honestly kinda having a great time with it.... So as you can hopefully see here, there are unique models and textures for some of the existing Agena parts - the tank and avionics for example. Remade are the Agena docking port, L-band antenna, materials bay, SPS packs and nose cone. New are the spiral antenna, micrometeoroid detector, and running lights. Plus a bunch of dedicated ATDA stuff. There is probably still a couple more new things to come... Here's a look at the GATV with the new nose cone. I have a specific idea for this - it will attach via nodes to the docking port. Those nodes will also match the nodes for the PFairing patch, AS WELL AS the PFairing nodes for the generic 0.9375m port - meaning you can use the nose cone for other payloads! The textures and detailing on the node cone (and honestly the rest of the model) is, obviously unfinished. A note on that red package above the materials bay - that's a micrometeoroid detector package. It's going to function as a standalone MM detector, but also be a required part for the materials bay to balance its smaller size. I want to try and find a second experiment that would also work standalone, and as a required part for the materials bay. As a note, the materials bay is ahistorical but was necessary to get the proper length, and I think it's a fun kerbalized interpretation of the GATV. Lighting the GATV accurately is an undertaking. I'm working on adding placeable running lights in green, red, and amber (amber ones are still placeholder in these pics). Those are using a trick from @Nertea to add an ambient backing glow to make them cast light, wherever they're attached, without needing to add light sources. I'm still adjusting the falloff on them. The docking cone needs some more external detailing. Additionally, there are two dedicated lighting systems in the Target Docking Adapter (the name for the docking assembly) itself - the Acquisition Lights and the Approach Lights. I might try and bake light maps into an emissive for the Approach Lights - only way I think I can get the inside of the cone to illuminate through bounced light which is what they partially did IRL. Quoted text below from GeminiGuide.com: I CAN'T GET THIS TO EMBED, BUT CLICK FOR AN EXAMPLE OF MY GOAL FOR THE TOGGLEABLE ACQUISITION LIGHTS You can see in the above image the Status Display Panel. I'm going to try and have a trick animation to make some of them unlit until hard docking is achieved. Thanks again to @Nertea for some tips on the emissive. Hopefully the little hooks on the bottom-inside of the cone will animate too. Those weird little spikes you see sticking up from the edge of the cone are the Static Discharge Fingers. Let's see, what else what else... Here are some pics from Maya from earlier yesterday, so a lot isn't as far along, but just because I don't have any good shots of the ATDA setup... Also, I've gotten the lighting tuned better in Maya... Also the various GATV lighting systems look so good in Maya... I just hope I can match in Unity. Again, these are older than the images earlier in the post.

I mean I don't think that has any historical basis... seems like someone just... superimposed the little langley lander over a GATV I can see about like... an adapter to mount to the bottom of the lander?

The hwut?

Some stuff I've started working on... getting the Agena materials bay in line with the current Agena texturing style... Also began work on some other parts....

So, I'd like to do a full remake/revamp/refresh of the Saturn and Apollo parts, along the lines of the current work being done for stuff like Thor, before I add things to them again. That would likely include the Saturns getting remade to a more accurate scale (6.25m first stage, for ex). That would also be quite a bit of work and effort to get back up to the content we have now - Skylab would also have to be redone, for instance. The thought I'd had when starting the current dev cycle I'm on, was the Saturn/Apollo parts were holding up ok while a lot of the early game parts weren't, which is why I focused on them. Then the KSP2 announcement came while I was already starting pre-production on this update. My general idea is hopefully I'll be wrapping up, essentially, everything that isn't Saturn/Apollo to this current higher level of quality around the time KSP2 is out. Once that happens (and this all assumes KSP2 is good and if it isn't I'd probably commit sudoku since I don't know what else I'd do with my time) there would be a fairly long period of me porting as much as possible of the existing parts. My understanding based on the information we have, is that the scales and such won't change so the model assets will likely be able to be reused, but the shaders will be different so the textures will have to be adjusted and new maps created for the newer, more complex inputs inherent in a PBR shader system. I'd basically port everything I want to keep - so all the stuff that's sort of up to this current quality level - and ignore any remaining pieces I haven't gotten around to. By the time I get to that point, hopefully I'm comfortable and have enough practice with the new art style to feel comfortable doing a "definitive" remake of the Apollo/Saturn parts - they're the flagship of the mod so obviously I want them as good as possible, right? And my goal is basically... everything that could possibly come before them (within reason) would already be done... leaving me wide open to spend the rest of my days making crazy post-Apollo, post-Saturn stuff until I get carted off to a farm upstate.

Stack two probe cores? Do you mean the dish? Because the omni antenna does attach through a node. If I had to figure out OGO, you have to figure out OGO yeah I see what you mean

first

Dev stream booting back up! Testing the OGO parts and then getting the Pioneer 6 and early commsats in game!

BDB dev stream starting now - jumping back to OGO since I *really* want to get these parts done!

1. it's BDB 1.7 not KSP 1.7. 2. No. (@mash ) The parts are balanced in line with stock parts, but the stock system is underscaled for the performance of stock parts. Normally that just means rockets built for stock look kinda dumb... but when you're building kerbal scale (and balance) parts, then IRL rocket builds significantly overperform. It's not a simple matter of too much power and fuel but that stock's lower delta V requirements mean your payload ratio can be way higher than IRL. We balance in line with stock parts for people who like that, and people want rockets to perform realistically, they need to install a rescale - 2.5 to 2.7x is considered the sweet spot. That, in turn, is why JNSQ was natively made to be a 2.7x scale system. My point is the parts aren't "balanced for JNSQ", they're balanced against the stock parts, which themselves are fine but the system is underscaled, and to correct this JNSQ was made at 2.7x scale.

Ignore the out of date Telstar textures, see the Twitter video above for what it properly looks like...

So I just checked my Paypal to move some money around and saw there were a couple donations! Just wanted to give a big thanks to whoever sent them - me and my partner weren't sure about treating ourselves to a nice dinner tonight but it looks like we will!

Honestly, at this point my justification is "I don't expect people to use every part on every playthrough". I'm enjoying making these early game parts, there's a lot of overlap, but hey. Variety is the spice of life I think IDCSP is going to be pushed back a bit to match the Titan 3. I think.

Working on some early game communications satellites for establishing early relay nets. Is that still something that's even needed? I haven't played since the RemoteTech days

It will be split up the same way as before, the proportions are just more accurate (it's overall much shorter, slightly wider than it is tall IIRC)

Hello hello... if y'all haven't noticed my life has been busier than normal lately? Thank you to all the lovely people sharing pictures and comments keeping the thread interesting. Here's some stuff I've been working on... first, a quick extra little adapter part for Atlas-Able as part of the Pioneer P3 parts... I'm hoping to get the P3 stuff in game tonight, there's a few areas of the textures that still need to be finished. It's less of an adapter and more a little cap that extends down to get the shape right... I've been away from my OGO files all week despite really wanting to get that finished up... but in the meantime, the quick Pioneer 6 revamp is going swimmingly.

@Beale wanna hang out now that you have free time

I mean, on some level it depends on what you are trying to do - historical builds, or just whatever works. Of course it works just fine without the guidance/avionics unit - KSP works that way but real life doesn't. So I made it, if for no other reason than to get the proportions right. Here's the historical build courtesy of @Friznit

The Able upper stages all have integrated RCS for control now. The control module is an avionics core and doesn't contain any RCS. The raceways are all fairly accurately positioned.