imdying

Yes, it\'s hard, but people are always willing to help people who help themselves. All the software is free. This forum is free. The game is currently free. It can\'t really get any easier. Start with a cylinder. Get that in the game. Then paint a coke can texture on it. Get that in the game. Once you\'ve been that far the world is your oyster.

Goodness, hadn\'t even considered that.

How are you getting on Hog?

HarversteR, we need you to weigh in here with some insight that basically only you can provide. Without wanting you to give too much away about future directions, is it worth the mod makers collaborating on a standard for a docking clamp? Or is the docking functionality going to be so generic that no such thing is really needed? On the face of it, this is an initiative KGG will gladly support, but only if we as mod makers can have some sort of assurance that it\'s not a wasted effort. Mod town is a bit of a leaderless wilderness at the moment; any chance you could assign one of your minions as a shepherd for the times when we occasionally need some dev input?

For sure. I\'m lucky that I have Godammit taking my models (made in sketchup) and unwraps them in blender for me. When he does that, he optimises it down as far as he can (typically saves around 10% on a model that I\'ve not been too lazy with). You could really go to town on the detailing if you were good, and given there is no bump mapping (yet?), it\'s probably worth it too.

Take a part that has a modest 2000 count, then stack 50 of those together to make a rocket. Still works good doesn\'t it That should pretty much sum up what\'s relevant to you There is bugger all in the way of \'scenery\' to hog your FPS, so you might as well go nuts on the parts. I\'m halfway through my first part (I\'m a programmer but it\'s always good to know how modders work from start to finish!), and I\'ve aimed for < 5000, and if it runs ok on my old 6320/8800GTS, then it should be good to go.

?So you plan to do nothing and take the glory? :-\

Paint.NET is another free one. Again, it\'s no Photoshop, but it\'s a little easier than GIMP IMO.

That\'s a good point, that\'ll matter to some people. Member uploads should be fine, writing something like photobucket is all trivial stuff (as trivial as ones spare time can ever be of course!). Dealing with outliers is what coding is all about; worst case it falls back to the exception handler. If it\'s a cron job though, the user never needs to know. What we need is something like this... http://www.andriets.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=115 That would be sweet

I dunno man, implementing Skunky\'s idea should be relatively trivial, there appear to be plenty of libraries for dealing with archives under Python. Just set it up as a service, and have it run over new additions every 5 minutes. If it finds something, then it extracts it and adds a reference to the image (whether that\'s stored in your db as a binary or on your file system), if it doesn\'t, no bother... if it chokes and dies for some reason (archive version or method that it can\'t deal with, that\'s no bother either, it\'s not on the presentation (www) thread, so it won\'t cause any drama. At the insertion point, that\'s when you resize it to suit. You don\'t have to rebuild everything, just make a table with a foreign key to the part, and a binary field to stash the image data in. When the presentation layer displays a part, it can either find a matching record and displays the image, or can\'t and displays a place holder.

We just need to find some cluey person who can render a DAE inside a virtual VAB and then save a screenshot from the viewport. Give that code to you an bim bam all sorted 8)

Let us know how you get on, always keen to hear about which config tweaks work

Well actually.... that\'s exactly what we did want to make, more or less, you\'ll see 8)

Ahh right The vectors are all specified as 3 digits: x,y,z The nodes are two vectors, position and direction (which is just a line with pos as the start point and direction as the other end), i.e. posx, posy, posz, dirx, diry, dirz RCS thrustvectors are 7 digits posx, posy, posz, dirx, diry, dirz, thrustpower FX vectors are 6 digit, posx, posy, posz, dirx, diry, dirz Does that help or am I on the wrong track?

Got ya! Python on Google Apps? Good luck with that! If it were .NET, I\'d be able to help if you got stuck, but Python... haven\'t done anything in that since I wrote space invaders under PyGame for one of my second year programming assignments, maybe 8 years ago! If I logged on looking for parts, I\'d probably go through a thought process like: - See what\'s new - See if any of my favourite parts have been updated - See what my favourite authors have recently released After that, I\'d start trawling the part libraries, and so long as you have them broken up by module I\'d be a happy man. Having said that, I can definitely appreciate why you\'d like to be able to reorder the result pages on the column headers.

Have you tried:CommandModule: - linPower - rotPower RCSModule: - On each of the 6 thrust vectors there is a 7th number, which is the thrust output for that vector, as far as I can tell Hope that helps.

Yeah buddy, there\'s a couple missing that I saw from a quick glance (supposed to be working!). RCS Modules have 6 vectors (ThrustVector0-ThrustVector5). Download the KSP Factory and load up a parts folder. Flick through each of the parts and the module tab will populate with the part specific parameter fields. In return, if you could tell me any that I have missed, that\'d be swell.... Is this ASP.NET / SQLServer?

Now I\'m not a modellers back side, but I\'m pretty sure he\'s correct, for this game. Some games might use a different coordinate system (as does Blender vs 3DMax as I understand it), but up is always 0, 1, 0 AFAIK, i.e. X=left/right, Y=up/down, Z=depth into/out of screen. I think we use something known as a \'cartesian coordinate system\'; somebody is sure to correct me if that is wrong.Now where some confusion can enter is with the ThrustVector. You have to remember it\'s the opposite to what is intuitive, i.e. it depicts the direciton the rocket will travel, not the direction that the exhaust gases escape the engine from. I don\'t know about the ThrustVector0-5 for RCS though, would have to experiment to find out.

Yes and no. Yes, you can\'t muck up the syntax, no, still no visual reference. I\'m thinking about putting a side/plan/elevation 2D view in though; half as a stop gap, half in case I can\'t get a 3D view.No hurry to try it mate, it\'s still very much a WIP, but all sugggestions welcome.

Bah, excuses! ;D Thanks for your thoughts Captain

TBH I don\'t blame it... the craft files opens a world of pain due to parts with duplicate names etc. I\'m not sure how I\'ll solve that, probably by having the list of possibilities populated and preselecting the one \'most likely\' by however metric I decide that. It\'ll be in interesting problem to solve one night though Another example of things that spiral but open possibilities is telling KSP Factory where ksp.exe is. I need that, so that I can \'play\' the sounds in the editor. Part specific sounds as easy; they are in the parts \'sounds\' folder. But the vanilla ones... I would either have to include the stock sounds, or access the ones the user has. Naturally the latter is preferable, so I\'ll add something to point to ksp.exe. Of course, once I have that value, then having a loader/play functionality is just a natural addition. I don\'t get a lot of time working on winforms, I\'m mostly in the web space doing applications and webservices, but also some windows services (had to rewrite the ServiceBase class for Windows 7 not that long ago, ugh), so this gives me a reason to bone up on how it works.

Cheers for that, good to know... I guess I should download it for a look!If you\'ve seen the Kerpollo, we released that with .craft files, partially because it\'s difficult to assemble, partially because without docking we needed a way to make it all work. The idea is that when you get ready to distribute your \'part pack\', if it requires .craft files for the aforementioned reasons, then it\'ll ensure nothing gets forgotten. Maybe! That\'s the plan at least... but of course a lot of that functionality also lends itself to being a part loader, which is how we got here...!

Can you give it a .craft file and make sure it copies over the parts needed to use it? Can it load a number of packs, say \'Vanilla\' and \'NovaSilisko\', whilst removing unwanted parts? It is possibly all a moot point though, this will likely only last till the SDK is rewritten. Probably what it is best for is setting a minimum standard for that SDK. If the SDK can\'t do everything this can at the very least, it can safely be declared inadequate.

Scoping points for this project include: - Anything that a part modder might find useful - Management of large numbers of parts (typically a modder has all of everybody elses parts, as they love parts!) The loader functionality is an extension of the first and second points; a modder wants to be able to load as much or as little of his part library in order to test things, without waiting any longer than they have to, because of more than the required number of parts to load. At least, when I\'m trying to view parts in the VAB (rather than the modelling program or PartsLab), that\'s how I like it, so that\'s what I\'ll use as a starting point. Unfortunately, I\'m familiar with scope creep and the effect it has on IT projects, but at the moment we\'re still inside the original KGG RFP ;D In my professional capacity, my attitude to it is, 'Sure, you can have that, it\'ll take more time and money'. Interestingly I generally find creep is kept in check by release dates more than budgets :S I didn\'t realise there was an existing program for loading mods into KSP (other than generic mod loader), can you direct me to a download (so I can rip off all their good concepts ;D) /edit: At the moment I\'m building a base to work from, before I start on the 3D stuff. Features like these are pretty trivial compared to the development effort that\'ll require. I\'m disappointed by the loss of the jgjiscool\'s \'Rebuild-the-SDK\' project\'. Judging from reply #5 in his thread, the screenshot depicts a lot of useful looking classes that must\'ve taken some time to write. I can load a texture 3D object and make it spin/move, but that\'s it, and I\'ve never done that with the Collada format. And never in a window on a winform. For me, that\'s where the real learning experience comes in. Go easy on poor KSP Factory though... This represents little more than a weeks mucking about!

It\'s a .NET program, perhaps you can use Mono to run it? I\'m not sure if that\'ll work or if it\'ll still work when I add 3D stuff (although I expect the XNA libraries have already been ported. I won\'t be releasing directly on any platforms I can\'t support though, and that includes Mac, but if you try it and have trouble I\'ll at least see if there\'s something I can do to help you.