lo-fi

Alpha 1.6 up. Added large mole tracks, texture for oval inverting tracks updated. I've messaged ElectronicFox to see if I can get the models for the smaller tracks. I had a go at the .mu import, it doesn't work for those .mu versions. Thanks Damaske, I'll have a look at that too. Anyway, that's three sets of tracks working and released, though I desperately need to texture mine properly. I'll talk to Spanner about rover bodies, see if I can talk him into releasing some of his

I've got the fbx for the mole tracks, but thanks. I'm lacking an fbx for the two smaller ones, though. I might have to try the .mu importer, but that means opening blender, and it always gives me the rage! Cheers I always liked the tracks, its nice to give them a new lease of life.

I can bung the body from that model out as a part so you can recreate the original by bunging two track units on? Might stick some EC storage in it along with a couple of extra stack nodes. I'll change the tweakable range for the suspension, it's no big deal

I'll have the individual track units of that size out shortly running my plugin I have them working, just tweaking now. I need to work out some texturing stuff with the bump and transparency too. Thanks for the tip on FS.

Ah, superb news, Haifi! The updated code is in Alpha 1.5, so you can dispense with the temporary plugin I gave you earlier. Thanks for bringing it up, that's another bug whacked and something useful learned. That's a pretty cool machine! Does it have a specific purpose, or was it 'just because'? I'm so pleased my plugin is robust enough to deal with something as complex as that, it's really good to know Edit: I just saw the title, all makes sense now! I do have an idea for that mobile launch platform, though I've no idea how to implement it yet... There was a plugin for changing the spawn point kicking about, it was for the battleship stuff I believe. Might have to have a peek at how they do that. One of the biggest issues with the heavy crawler for the mobile pad is the skinning of the track mesh to the links is nowhere near finished. It's what takes the longest when modelling tracks, and it's not easy to get it 'just so'. That and I'll have to partially re-write my plugin :/ One day, maybe! Might be a mid-winter job.

Good point about the exhaust damage! Using the rapier as a base is not possible, sadly. A 'Feature' of ModuleAlternator is that it latches onto the first engine module it finds in the part. As the rapier uses two, MA will only work for one mode or the other. I've had a workaround suggested to convert intake air into oxidiser when available, which seems promising, I just need a little time to implement

Cheers dude, really enjoying myself mod-making Next release (Alpha 1.5) up 2 mintues ago: minor improvements to a few parts, but the big one is the RBI track unit I've rescued from the junk pile. It has a small issue where the steering gets confused if you try to drive with them mounted upside down, but I'll fix that in a later release. Other than that, they're sweet Next release will be repulsor water plugin and the APU for powering them.

I might pass on trying to set that up in my install! I'll get back to you with some testing bits, though, thanks. I did spot a potential pitfall in the code. Try this version of the plugin: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8sxvuhimwydxoz1/Wheels.dll?dl=0 just over-write the current one. Yeah, I quite like that idea Rollcage were always my favoured wheels before I started with my own. Lovely work. That RBI crawler thing is a monster! I might get a flash of inspiration one day, but I won't promise anything! TBH, I think it needs and deserves its own dedicated plugin to make it into a proper mobile launch platform. Edit: Just took a peek at the poll results. It shouldn't take me long to get the RBI track unit I'm working released, which should satisfy at least some of the desire for more tracks I have a couple of robust rover bodies already made that I've had good feedback on from the testing team, though, like everything, they need some texture love. I have a really cool idea for some heavy-duty folding wheels too, with a rather novel tread design

Oh! Haha. I was staring at the damn things a few weeks ago at Duxford! Yes, I imagine that will be possible too.

Just looking to get an idea of what people are after to get a little inspiration. Nice ideas, I'll bear in mind when I'm getting creative with the rover bodies. Eve is next on my list of of planets to visit, and I'm sure it will give me a hundred ideas for interesting roving apparatus

Hello! I'll see if I can get in touch with the RBI guys again, maybe I can get some of the other models. I believe the way I set up is similar, basically a collider for each wheel. The RBI code was complex and I could never quite get to the bottom of what got broken - hence the complete rebuild. Not sure what I can do with the heavy crawler, though, I think that may be a step too far. The small ones should be easy if I can get models, and the larger set might be good if set up as single, large track units. I'll see if Spanner would like to build some tracks too, I know he's always up for a fresh challenge! Interesting issue you've got there! Obviously getting confused about the reference transform somehow. Would you be up for a little testing if I add some debugging stuff and got you to send back some logs? Are there many mod dependencies on that contraption, and would you mind sending me the .craft?

Yeah, no reason why not on the SR-71. Never even heard of the J58, so can't comment there I'm afraid.

Thanks. That's where I was heading too, it's about the closest I can think of. We have a rough idea of the projected flight envelope of the Skylon, so I'll try to make a 'best approximation'.

No problem. however you want to play it. I've got the animation code working with a dummy model and a simple tweakable to move the inlet cone. Ignore the slight jerkiness as it moves, this is to do with the step size of the tweakable. The rest of the code to move it based on airspeed, pressure etc. is trivial, though I'll do a bit of research to find out the correct parameters.

^Results are turning out to be interesting! The tracks are in the lead currently, so I took some time to revisit the RBI stuff. The only model I have that isn't dual tracked is the set you could drive upside down on, so that's what I worked on... I'm really pleased to say they worked perfectly first time with my plugin. I just rigged in Unity, configured the .cfg and bang! There it was, working beautifully! Almost ready for release, couple of bits of tidying to do, but I'm tired and sure I missed something. I always found these the most useful out of the RBI set anyway, so I'm not too fussed about not having the smaller models.

Yep, it'll literally be a tiny plugin just for the nosecones. Only a few lines of code really, it will be quite simple to do. I'm not talking a full blown, general purpose firespitter type affair you'll use a tiny piece of. Yes please, I'll set something up to show you what I mean. It will be something like: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using UnityEngine; namespace Skylon { [KSPModule("SkylonNose")] class SkylonNose : PartModule { public override void OnStart(PartModule.StartState state) //this runs once { base.OnStart(state); //find nosecone animation named in config file. Animation only needs to be full travel front to back over maybe sixty frames. } public override void OnFixedUpdate() //this runs every physics frame { base.OnFixedUpdate(); float speed = (float) this.vessel.srfSpeed; //grab speed float airDensity = (float) this.vessel.atmDensity; //grab air density //some maths to determine how far the cones should be from the two values above //some code to step the animation to the correct point based on the calculation above } } } That's it, the entire thing. Sometimes a few lines of bespoke code is a lot less work than bending something off the shelf into working for you. This, I think, is one of those occasions.

I'll build you a dedicated plugin you can distribute with your mod, Spanner. All I need to do is rename the modules so they don't clash with mine, compile, and job's done

Yeah, most of that is config tweaks, I'll have a play. Bifurcated nozzles... Might be cool Edit: Updated version up now. Less thrust, mode efficient. You're right, it was fuel hungry. The low ISP is because it develops low thrust, and consumes little fuel anyway. It doesn't take the generator into account, so this is a bit of a fudge.

I was thinking of building a dedicated plugin just for the Skylon. I don't think there's an off-the-shelf plugin that'll do it anyway, so you might as well have a custom module you control and distribute yourself. Much like mine for the Kerbal Foundries stuff, it just gets bundled up in the mod install, does its job and you can forget about it. I'll bung a little proof of concept together, it should be quite simple. I was watching an REL video the other day which showed the cone movement and was thinking to myself 'that will look lovely in-game'.

I think having the doors separate from the gear is a great idea to stop any wobble moving the flush fitting doors. I can't think of any other way to stabilise it, unless you make the doors integral to the parts they're mounted in (if this is even possible given other constraints). I can probably write you a little dedicated plugin for animating the cones. Orbitus' animation code will work perfectly for stepping the cone movment depending on speed and air density with a little tinkering. This is too big a visual element to miss out on, it will look stunning! My landing gear module isn't far off finished, I only stopped because I got stuck with animation weirdness and couldn't test that part. I have a feeling you're using Firespitter anyway, which will no doubt be more mature. Agreed on not having too many mod dependencies, that always puts me off. Firespitter is a fair addition though, and common in any case.

the APU is in the dev repo at the moment, so grab from GitHub and have a go There are a few that have been made before, but they're either way out of date, not surface mount or don't auto throttle. I think the oxidiser production is the way I'm going to go, though I'm having a bit of trouble calculating how much oxidiser is currently being consumed to be able to set the conversion rate correctly. If it works, I'll gladly make a standalone plugin! I tried using the rapier as a base, but ModuleAlternator latches onto the first engine module it finds, so it does nothing in the other mode, which is frustrating. Interesting poll results. Not masses of votes yet, but rover bodies are currently up top. I have a few ideas for procedural, robust rover bodies designed specifically for the job. Had some good feedback on the fixed messabout parts in dev at the moment, so I think it's worth pursuing.

Haha! Sorry, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Spanner made the fatal mistake of offering to help, so I challenged him to make an Auxiliary Power Unit. For those of you who don't know, it's a tiny little turbine fitted to aircraft and many other things that supplies electrical power when main engines are off, as well as the power to start them. Basically a self-contained, miniaturised, turbo-electric power plant. Perfect for powering those power hungry repulsors, along with many other things, you might say.... Our version runs off LF+O and a single unit provides enough power to supply four repulsors. I wrote a little plugin to control the throttle independently of the main throttle, so if you've got it in auto mode it spools up and down depending on the draw on the batteries. I'm working on a way to get it to auto switch to using intake air instead of oxidiser when in a suitable atmosphere, but not got there yet. It's very efficient as it is, though. Fuel has a far greater energy density than batteries, so you'll get far more mileage out of one of these than you will a big stack of batteries, and it will automatically adapt if you augment with solar, nuclear or engines with alternators. Target battery charge is 75 percent under automatic control, though this can be over-ridden and the throttles controlled manually. Video shortly, I'll release straight to alpha after a couple more tweaks Here it is, attached to my usual test rig:

Ah, excellent!! I have to admit, I'm really proud of the auto throttle mode. Running those twin control loops for battery state and usage took some doing, but was so worth all the work I didn't have time to test more than one APU on a vessel, that's something I need to do before releasing.

Thanks TSM. Looks like a few structural failures etc. before the messages saying the repulsors retracted due to low electricity. Search the log for 'retracting' and look up from there. I will update the code shortly as the new method is much more robust, but I think something else is at fault there. Regarding the tracks, I'm afraid the RBI's and my version have fairly little in common under the hood. They won't clash, but using the RBI plugin with my model or vice versa just won't work.

I thought I'd got it nailed. Could you post an output_log please? Cool craft design. One thought is you've got an old version of the plugin knocking about, so maybe just double check that. I'm about to overhaul it again anyway, as I found a better method for dealing with power and the next release will add the wicked APU Spanner built. Nice work, Damaske Thanks for helping with the queries and support requests, guys. I really appreciate it.