purpleivan

Some more pics for my Apollo style flight to the Mun... this time bringing the guys home with the aid of the Textures Unlimited plugin.

Finally got around to doing to obligatory Apollo flight using Making History parts and grabbed some pics on the way to the Mun. and yes... the descent stage of the LEM is a bit porky.

I'm interested in creating PBR texture sets (possibly taking the Substance Painter route like @Jeorge) for some stock parts but I'm unclear as to how to go about this. I've checked through chunks of this thread, in particular the first and last few pages, but I'm not clear on what I need to add to my KSP enable me to provide a texture set for a stock part (or part that looks like stock) to TU to render. I've seen a couple of image and multiple mentions of the TU GUI and recoloring GUI (which might be my jumping off point), but I can't info on how to access them. So if someone with information on this could point me in the right direction, it would be much appreciated.

Depends on what you mean by cool things to do. How about these. Complete the Jool 5. A manned Eve return mission. Air drop a rocket to a some distant location on Kerbin and launch from there. Make mini planes or rovers. Visit all the anomaly sites and take vacation snaps of your visit.

15 degrees is still quite a bit off, unless the ship being docked is very small (e.g. a Mk1 pod, FL-T200 and a terrier at the back). The trick of disabling SAS would probably work with that kind of angle and that kind of craft, but for something larger, then the angle will need to be more accurate. The magnets are really just a fudge, to allow docking to be not too painful (i.e. requireing essentially perfect alignment to succeed) but they only provide a bit of assistence.

The forum seach, which used to work fine, hasn't returned useful results for me in several months. So I've been using Google instead in the period.

The latest posting to my wallpapers thread.

I actually find docking fun, rather than a chore and generally don't have any issues with it. If I do have problem, then it's usually because I've been impatient and not reduced my approach speed sufficiently, or rushed things in some other way. A few tips for a good docking. 1. Set up a good close renedezvous, at most 500m but prefereably quite a bit closer (mine are typically 100 - 200m). This is partly to avoid impatience when manouvering in to dock, that can raise it's ugly head if you're starting your approach from too far out. 2. Move in to about 20 - 50m (depending on the size of the craft involved) then reduce your velocity relative to the target to zero... it's best to know your way around the navball to do this. 3. Target the docking port on the other vehicle that you want to dock with and line you ship up with it. 4. Switch to the target craft and repeat step 3. for that vehicle, so it's lined up with your craft. 5. Step 4. will most likely have made the aim of your ship on the target a bit off when you rotated the target craft, so correct the aim of your ship at the docking port again. 6. Switch back and forth between your the two craft a couple of times to realign them, until the ports are looking straight at each other. 7. Hit the RCS to move your ship in towards the the target at a 0.5 - 2m/s until just a few metres from it, then reduce speed to under 0.5m/s, so you have time to correct last minute errors in alignment. 8. Dock. A couple of other ideas. If you are docking a small craft and you find that when the docking ports touch that the alignment is off, even quite a bit (say 10 - 20 degrees), then turn off SAS and you'll find that the docking port magnets pull the ships together more easily. Get a docking camera mod, e.g. this one... I've used them on and off and they provide a useful tool, while also giving the whole exercise a more cinematic feel.

Another pic today, titled "Duna for science"

You could go for form over function, and make something with an unusual design, such as my station KOSTAR. Assembled in Mun orbit, because why not. It came equiped with 4 mini landers, capable (just about) of making it to the Mun surface and back to dock with the station. The 4 arms of the station could also detach and return everyone to kerbin, landing (almost) in one piece.

In my early days (summer 2014) my designs tended to follow OTAT rules (Orange Tanks All the Time), with Jumbo 64's on pretty much anything I built. Those truncated hot dogs took me everywhere. With plenty of fuel stashed in Kerbin orbit to supply those journeys, in the same orange tanks. This culminated in the ultimate orangey beast, the Eve Party boat. This not only was one huge block of Jumbo 64's, but was also supplied and pushed to its destination by vehicles using them. In addition to OTAT there were also the the NBEF "(Never Bring Enough Fuel) rules to comply with in those early days. Again this meant some trust orange tanks being put to use, in this case to send much needed combustables to some hapless Kerbals, stranded somewhere in the system. After the orange tanks period came that of ITE (Ions To Everywhere) rules that saw them used to venture around the system, land on various moons (including Mun) as well as break some speed records of the time. This of course was in the heyday of SPE (Solar Power Everywhere) and IAF (Ion's Ain't Feeble).

A couple of images from the latest edition of LOST on Laythe

Chapter 3 - Around the fleet “They only remember who gets there first” – Valentina Kerman The Plant “Roger flight, I have the vehicle in view” came the reassuring tones of Jebediah Kerman’s over the speakers at the KSC. “Greeaaat Jeb, good to hear” boomed the voice of Gatler Kerman, a kerbal who took the need to speak in a strong clear voice to aid communication, to the extreme. Jeb winced at this sudden blast of noise in his left ear and pulled the headset back, as a precaution against the next auditory onslaught. “She’s getting mighty close there Gat... you sure you guys have your burn numbers correct” replied Jeb, concerned that the rapidly approaching fuel ship was about to turn the mining ship he commanded into ball of shrapnel. A moment later the engine on the fuel ship erupted into life. “This one’s gonna be close” Jeb muttered, as the relative speed display on the console rapidly shrank, though not as rapidly as he’d like. Jeb watched the numbers tumble as the fuel ship, with its vital supplies, drew ever closer. He wasn’t one to be nervous in the face of imminent peril, but he had a perfect flight record and didn’t want to lose that hard earned statistic. Finally the blazing light at the rear of the fuel ship ceased and its massive bulk sat motionless, some 20m from the pod window. That one had indeed been close. Jeb quickly yanked his headset away from his ear again, as a loud sound of cheering and cork popping sounds erupted from it. “Riiiight on the money there Jeb... some interns are gonna be real happy with that one” boomed Gatler, before his voice was replaced by the sounds of clinking glass and palms slapping palms, in what Jeb assumed were premature high fives. The KSC was missing a lot of staff these days, with some blaming the approaching cataclysm for their absence. However many more were in hospital with injuries resulting from the Mission Director’s attempts to speed up launch preparation. But most were out of action as a result of attempts by pad preparation crews to make cocktails out of the ethanol, the older rocket engines used. Due to this there was a shortage of qualified staff for many positions at the KSC. The solution was to promote interns to full staff positions and fill the remaining gaps by declaring every day as “bring your child to work day”. “Hey there Gat, we’ve still got some work here to get this big slug of fuel docked, so don’t start that party down there too early” pointed out Jeb, concerned that interns plus champagne did not a recipe for a successful docking make. “I’ll do what I can” Gatler replied “but the dance competition is starting and I think I’m in with a chance”. Jeb shuddered at the thought of the very overweight Gatler, making any kind of motion, let alone dance moves. “So this is going to be down to me then” he muttered to himself before switching the Remote Tech unit to local select and preparing to dock the fuel ship himself. The Hab “Nope... won’t need that.” “Not a chance, you took a bite out of me on that trip to Minmus.” “Hmmm... not sure what you are, but don’t like the look of you.” These and many other utterances from Elson Kerman, the pilot assigned to the Hab ship, signaled his disquiet at some newfangled piece of equipment aboard his vessel. With each snarling remark at the controls of the vehicle, a ship system met an untimely deactivation. Not one for change, his motto was “if it ain’t on, it won’t kill you”, was something he had lived by for a considerable time, enough to make him the oldest pilot in the program. Elson’s distrust of new hardware was only matched by his disdain for those who designed it. In its early days Kerbin’s space program had been relatively incident free (at least fatality free) and he attributed its escalating toll on the roster, to the desire of KSP engineers to try out the latest shiny piece of tech. “So how you doing Elson” came the muffled voice of Gatler at the KSC. Elson’s many years in the program had given him the foresight to reduce the megaphone level of the controller’s voice with a sock, duct taped into the speaker. “Just fine, just fine” responded Elson, having turned off the last piece of equipment that seemed superfluous to the journey to Laythe. “You sure... you don’t want us to send up an old valve radio, so you can rip out the comms unit” chuckled Gatler. “No thanks, just fine here” replied Elson, having heard all of these jokes many time before. “How about some flying goggles and a leather jacket?” responded the KSC controller, not giving up on his attempt at hilarity. “Like I said, it’s all good...” said the Habs pilot, before being cut across by the voice from the ground. “I’m sure we could get the techs here to reconfigure those engines to use coal” continued Gatler, breaking into a broad laugh. With that Elson flicked the switch that turned off the comms system, leaving him in the faint glow of the almost entirely deactivated console. In the safe soothing darkness, Elson stared out of the cupola’s main window and contemplated the mission ahead. The Lab Given its low mass compared with the other vessels that would soon be bound for Laythe, the LOST mission’s Lab ship had been placed in high orbit above Kerbin. One of its occupants, although at that moment not strictly speaking occupying it, coasted leisurely alongside the LOST mission’s scientific vehicle, as the two of them circled the home planet. Gelsey Kerman, the product of Kerbin’s most prestigious universities and a member of KSP team for almost 10 years, was having a wonderful dream. She dreamt that she was gently bobbing up and down in the waves of the warm southern oceans, without a care in the world. Certain there was no impending apocalypse, no mission schedules, nor work of any kind to be done. Just a warm blue ocean, clear blue skies and the gentle movement of the waves. All of a sudden the dream was shattered by an ear-splitting whistling sound. “Hey Gelsey, wake up, you got work to do” boomed Gatler voice, out from the scientist’s suit headset and into her surely perforated eardrums. “Huhwuh, er, hmmm... no, not time for school, just five more minutes...” started Gelsey dozily before a sound like nails across a blackboard and a ship’s fog horn had a baby, erupted from her headset. “Time to get at it Gelsey, you fell asleep again and that GravMax’ll be no use to you guys later if you don’t calibrate it now” instructed Gatler seriously; for once not having time for any kind of nonsense. Having woken from her lovely slumber, Gelsey realised that the undulating waves of the ocean was in fact misfiring thrusters on her backpack, that by sheer coincidence had put her into a slow, undulating roll, but kept her just 20 metres or so from the Lab. Using the approved technique of reaching her arm around and giving the backpack a good thump, the thruster misfire ceased, as well as increasing the amount of air indicated by the gauge on her suit by half an hour. “Well, at least it didn’t go down” the scientist muttered, before maneuvering towards the ship, to carry out the calibration on the GravMax . The Lifter Another member of the LOST team coasted alongside the vessel that would take them to Laythe and all that it held for the future of kerbalkind. But this one had not time to listen to the KSC and the “voice of boom”. She she had work to do and no time to be interrupted, so had turned off her comms. Her ride was going to be a little different to the science vessel the pilots called the “School Bus”. It was going to be made for speed, to enable it to get to Laythe first. This wasn’t a priority for the mission, but it certainly was for Valentina, its pilot. Having spent her entire (albeit short) time in the program, in the shadow of Jebediah and his spotless flight record, Laythe was one destination she was determined to be the first to set foot on. She had pulled in every favour she could with the mission planning team to arrange for her vehicle to be the first to arrive at the watery world. But this bit of scheduling skulduggery was going to require her to make some “on orbit alterations” to her vehicle, to achieve that goal. The main one being to remove any unnecessary mass from the vehicle, a task she had set about as soon as she’d made orbit. She started by dumping her least favourite snacks out of the airlock, but even with the size of kerbal appetites, for the big wins, she was going to have to strip the ship of some equipment. A bolt here, a panel there wasn’t going to cut it; she needed to think big.... big as in those four rovers that were awkwardly attached to the nose of the ship. These would provide ground transportation on Laythe, but for now they were just dead weight. For a while she considered cutting all of them loose, as they were making a mess of the aesthetics of her vehicle. However she realised that she might be able to explain how two of them got lost in transit, but all four might be pushing it a bit. Plus when she got to Laythe, those rovers were going to be some sweet, sweet rides.

Some pics from future chapters of my LOST on Laythe story, which I need to get back to (work got in the way after the first couple of chapters). Talking of which this post prompted me to do something about it and write another chapter.

As far as I know I didn't have AVP explicitly installed, but had EVE, SVE and Scatterer. Could be wrong though as it was quite a long time ago (v1.2.2). I took this image around the same time on the Mun... whatever I was running mods wise, it really liked dust.

Hard to decide. Duna dust storms have an eerie beauty. The mountains at the Inland Space Center give a nice dramatic backdrop to launches. ...and then there's Laythe.

Send a bunch of rovers and corner markers and go racing (in my mind at least). Everything you need to go racing. Unloading rovers Unloading corner markers. Green light.... go, go go.

Rolley Kerman - missing presumed lost, November 1st 2014 While on a mission to investigate anomalies on the runway island, part of his vehicle, including its Mk2 Lander Can, mysteriously vanished. At that moment an object appeared approximately 7,000km above Kerbin and moving away from the planet at extreme velocity. It is presumed that the object was the lander can, along with it's sole occupant. An artists impression of the doomed kerbonaut.

Actually looking at the graph on Steam, the opposite seems to be true. There was a large spike in negative reviews out of nowhere on 23rd April, but in the 12 days since then the number of negatives has fallen steeply and it's looking pretty much back to normal now. So the bad reviews are disappearing like Basestars over New Cap.

I'm afraid your analogy isn't correct. A more accurate one would be that you bought the $20 car and drove it free of charge for a few years (steal of a deal BTW), then the dealership says "we have an update available for the car... fixes a few issue and and adds some features to the entertainment system. But we'll need to you to allow us to grab some data from it while you drive if you want the updates." You bought a version of KSP, you can still play that version of KSP (plus any you added before the changed conditions) without any further agreement being made. But if you want the benefit of work which goes beyond the product that the agreement you made (i.e. when you bought the version of KSP available at the time) then the publisher is requiring you to make a new agreement. Nothing dishonest about that.

Perhaps for a physical, unchanging asset, but for software which is periodically updated, changing user agreements is pretty much standard practice. For practical purposes, the agreement for the original software has not been changed, as you could still run that without agreeing to new terms. It's only when updating and therefore adding something not part of the original "deal", that the new conditions apply.

If you're angry enough about something to post a negative review, then most people will feel strongly enough to write something of their own. If a lot of these are identical then it suggest it's not real anger, but either a bot or just people jumping on a bandwagon. Additionally why April 23rd? The EULA change happened weeks ago, so a one day spike so distant from that event looks either suspicious or a freak culmination of events that happened to strike that day. Either way, most likely a blip and not a trend.

A couple of "official" images for size comparison

"Jeb and Val, sitting on a swing. S. C. R. E. A. M. I. N. G."

Those stripes just look wrong to me, as they pass over the circular parts of the texture. It almost looks like an accident that they're there rather than by design. Talking of graphical stuff, I'm a bit disappointed that the male suit model still has very broken normals (reported as a bug). Then again that seems to have been true since the dawn of time, so not too suprised that the fix hasn't been made yet. But go on Squad... it's 50% of the game's character models after all.